So basicly, you want java as some kind of c++ superset? That seems to be what Sun thinks too, and also what is ruining the language. Things like garbage collection are the strength of languages like java. If you're serious about implementing an object oriented structure, then you really need a language with these things. Java is more like what the next generation languages will be, allowing you to talk more about meta-objects and sealing off the lower levels of code. However, what is needed for this is a quality compiler that optomizes your code. Lets try to make java more like perl or python, eliminating the large amounts of time spent on memory management.
What I really want is having the ability to just take say a program that displays "hello, world" and displays it to the screen to be easily run on the console command line of a linux machine. I can do that with c++.
What I really would like to know is why all the objectness?
I have done some studying and in general any program can be created from:
for do/while while if
Take the use of functions and you have a superb method of creating programs. Also add recursion and you have very nice programs. It seems like all the "object oriented" nature of languages appears to be of little practal use. Except to save perhaps a couple of minutes.
Doh! Ouch! Well the roughly $1,000 liscencing fees were the first thing that threw me. Second ther dosn't appear to be a linux version. Does it work under WINE?
This is really the beginning of something. Geeks have always despised Java because of speed difficulties, but its starting to actually go somewhere. It more of a "true" OO language than C++ (more like Smalltalk) and once we see some breakthroughs with runtime compilers for it speed will be a nonissue.
Isn't there a simple way to just run java executables? I shure would like to actually be able to learn and use java without needing to get some fancy smansy memory intensive, disk space clogging mess. What about the gnu java compiler: gcj? Can I just run output from said java app with say standard libc stuff?
I think more likely is that computers will just end up speeding up to cover up inefficient implimentations of the language and perhaps poor programming. Hey look what fast computers did for windows.
Slashdot also lets you view other people's comments, and permits everyone to moderate (theoretically)./.'s moderation system looks highly patentable to me; perhaps CmdrTaco et al should put money where mouth is and create a defensive patent.
That means that the use of GPLed code for other projects would be in jeopardy and I don't think we need that.
Note that "prior art" isn't always a defense. IANAL, but IIRC, you've got to have been using the invention/process/whatever for more than a year before the patent is applied for, or else you may be liable for royalties.
A year in the internet world could be quite costly and kill startups if they try to patent anything.
Not that this isn't a good article, and that I'm bashing Slashdot for posting it, but this article pretty much sums up what the typical Slashdotter has said about most of these stupid patents from the beginning.
"Expert" opinion is usually held higher than normal opinion because said expert usually has more of a swap with words and a wider audience.
What I did find more valuable about this article was the fact that he talked more about pushing Linux into the business world. He had some interesting comments that strayed from the patent talk a bit about Open Source.
Well creating something that could read current MS office file formats would be a nice thing.
Re:For proof the world has gone mad ...
on
Perens on Patents
·
· Score: 2
For proof the world has gone mad look at what they allow to be patented.
Ah however never think that evil things are the work of an instable mind. Many evil deeds have been carefully and rationally thought out and then the choice was made. Nuclear weapons, secretive nuclear tests in the Nevada Desert by the DoE, NSA snooping. Just examples.
Question has anyone filed a patent as opensource?
on
Perens on Patents
·
· Score: 2
I am wondering if anyone has actually filed a patent as opensource yet? Seems like a sure fire way to succeede and prevent Amazon like things from happening.
I know what an Operating System is. My quesiton was "Has RedHat dropped their committment (?) to include only Open Source software on their CDs"?
I think that there are some things by default that cannot go into all CDs. I know that when I tried to order a Red Hat CD there were two versions. One was the "GPL" cd the other was the standard version. The starndard version contains a number of other goodies that you have to pay for because otherwise Red Hat would violate liscencing term.
Debian dosn't distribute the non-free or other restricted directores in their CDs because that would violate some liscencing. If you want those programs you have to download the additional.debs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PSX 5 years old? I've tried playing some games on the Playstation, but the graphics are horrible. Even on a 32-inch TV, you can barely see what you're doing. Some games don't even come close to PC quality: Quake 2, NFS and MotoRacer come to mind.
I buy console systems because it's often cheaper to get a console system than a full fledged PC to do the same things. I really don't need super realistic 3d immersive raytraced 32bpp colors when I am trying to shoot everything that moves.
Can these "emulators" render the graphics any better?
Well with things like WINE they use the native access of the OS to do all the cool stuff. Theoretically if they are just emulating the base stuff then perhaps it will look the same.
First of all, this explains the odd news I read yesterday that Connectix is going to ship a copy of RH with VirtualPC for Mac. That just seemed weird, now I see that it was a bastard child of this slightly more rational deal.
Homer: Flanders your the devil? Flamers: Always the people you least suspect.
Usually people do things in secret for quite a while and then only make their intentions known.
Secondly, what's the deal with RedHat including more and more non-OS software on their CDs?
The definition of the OS differs in linux than in any other OS that is usually out there. Generally I can't do anything really cool with just the starndard Win98 install. That would necessitate my purthcess of other apps and such. Now consider what happens with linux. Theoretically you don't need to install one more thing with a recent distribution because everything's there. Oftentimes I have just given up on opensource that isn't part of the distribution because I have spend far, far, far, far too many hours of my life banging my head against the wall trying to get it configured on my distro. Generally with something like debian almost anything you want is there anyway so you can just avoid this problem.
This would be going on their CDs to paying customers to add value to the mix. Now if you really want a playstation emulator in the GPL cd perhaps you can start working on it or help someone who is doing something. MAME springs to mind; although I doubt that anything definitive is actually going on.
There is a great deal of easy money to be made in collecting. Eventually I think it more likely that people will simply have machine generated postage at either the post office or from personal machines (Pittney Bowes has machines for small Businesses already). This will make all those cheasy ET stamps worth some cold hard cash. Unlike pokemon cards these have a future.
Reminds me of most weapons makers who dissolve themselves from blame as the creators by saying that theirs is a tool that is misused.
Suppose you make guns. I don't care any type of guns. Now suppose a couple of stupid kids decide to shoot up a high school? Sound familiar. Are you then to blame because someone did something stupid?
What about a hammer. I have used a hammer many times, however I still can bang the hammer on my thumb does that mean I can sue you because I screwed up?
The answer is no.
There is more than a hint of ego in this guys work (if indeed it was him) by putting it in a public forum (albeit for good reasons) he knew that people were going to abuse his creation.
People like attention nothing new.
Maybe he should have let the relevant people know abot the problem before putting the code in the public domain.
Dear Mr. Police officer I am going to run at least 10 red lights and speed 145 times in resendial zones in the next 6 months please revoke my liscence now ok?
No one is stupid enough to take that level of a hit.
In many ways I suspect he wanted an attack to vindicate himself, show off his skills whilst remaining on the side of the light and generally bask in the publicity...
If you don't open your big mouth you get into less trouble that way.
Essentially if no one can essentially be caught that means that the useless companies will just go bezerk and target everyone including those using our favorite OS.
Sounds like a great book, too bad it's only available overseas. Any ideas why they're not selling it here?
Book companies usually sell authors who have great appeal or who are in the business of making the book chain money. If I just start publishing something I am not likely to get Barnes and Noble to put it on their shelves.
My personal opinion is dump ACs like you proposed, and then start giving moderators two types of points - negative and positive points. They should be expected to use all positive points, and use of negative points should be optional (IE - they don't HAVE to use all of them.) Then, allow moderation down into the -3 range. -3 would be completely undisplayable after it's moderated to that point - and from that point on, someone who has been moderated to -3 automatically has -1 to any posts they make for the next (x) days the first time they get -3, the next time it's (x) + 3, and then after that, it's permenant. They can still post, but, anything they post will be -1 BEFORE moderation. Then, the default threshold for display on/. should be 0, so that -1'ers don't get displayed at all.
Ok but there at least should be some ability to actually look at posts that are at -3. I really think that dissenters should be seen even if they are stupid. Yeah I am rather suprised about this however I think that the borland/inprise spamming and most of the heavy stuff could be effectively stopped by a little banning of the ips involved.
Just my thought on the subject. When I checked out this article, only 10 posts were at +1 or better, out of 30 something! You are right in the fact that SOMETHING has to be done!
Censoring stuff dosn't really promote discussion. Just a thought but perhaps just branding some posts with a spam flag and having them filtered out by defeault. Add that to the preferences or the formatting of the comments and you have a workable solution.
Yes, the general public really is that afraid of a general purpose computer. I prefer a desktop too, as to most other Slashdotters. We prefer the flexibility that it provides. However, there are a vast number of people that wish to benefit from the Internet, and yet are completely clueless and fearful of your standard workstation. Being uneducated is one thing, but the number of people who do not wish to educate themselves remains very large.
I just don't understand it. People have to have a job to eat. I go to college to get a better job. And yet it is theoretically possible to be a compelete fool and get a good job? Please tell me how?
As a customer service representative for a large software company, I get clueless AOLers calling in everyday blaming us for the problems caused by their cluelessness regarding computers. I consider it a Good Thing that your average AOLer will likely be using a set-top box or a web pad in a couple of years. It leaves them with less room to screw things up. You might say that these devices won't encourage them to educate themselves about computers, but the fact is that they're not making any attempts to educate themselves as it is.
This is a bad thing. Let me tell you why. The PC market is run by people usually buying PCs in mass. That means the things that people most want to use a computer for: games, and the internet. Companies come out with small black boxes that do the same things for less but more if you add them together to get the same functionality as a PC. What do you think will happen to general PC prices?
*BOOM* (rocket shoots towards the stratosphere)
And guess what happens then? People like me who are having ecconomic trouble just keeping up with technology will be screwed again.
These are bad things but I guess people who want to learn and get ahead are just usually screwed over anyway.
Endless maze of porn ads, misleading links and self-spawning popups !
I have thought about that. What exactly does this serve? Large ammounts of money. If the goal is to finance the serving of warez then how exactly does prevent access to the content achieve the mission? Maybe I just don't get it.
Actually, that is exactly what it is - accurate. In some form or another, everything *human* is already set into EXACTLY that- categories. Person of colour X is part of religion Y, or person Y doesn't eat meat (vegetarian) whereas person Z doesn't eat one type of meat but will eat another type, etc..etc. What else would you call things like dietary or religious preferences if not categories of some form? I think Katz is right on the money with the trend he's noticed but not for the same reasons he thinks. What we're seeing is nothing more than the Internet reflecting the realities of life and the people living it; to wit- we're seeing the taming of the net, not by some act (stupid or otherwise) of government, but by the sheer will of the people who live it. Incidentally this is proof that the internet has become an extension to modern life and times, with all the good and bad these times have to offer.
But the question is do we really want that? I think that for a lot of people they wanted the net to be a utopia form of interaction and change. If we extend the same restrictions to the net that we do to life then the concept of innovation in terms of social arrangements will be utterly doomed.
Categorizing I think dosn't necessarily tame. Usually this is the case if you actually look at any area where one thinks one has tamed something only to see that it is in fact a complex chaos.
I say categorizing sites by category isn't accurate because there is more than one type of content. Slashdot has multiple types of content and missions all in one.
Look at sites of various OSS people. Most are a mixture of technical, social, personal, etc. That is basically what I am driving at.
Because most people aren't freaks who never watch TV or go to the movies, and because local radio blows goats.
Most people are not freaks if they choose not to watch TV. My reasons to actually watch TV are decreasing every day.
Most of us are sedentary couch and mouse potatoes, and the Kerbango Internet radio sounds like a great way to do a little more digital grazing. No longer will I have to sit at my computer and feign productivity while I listen to decent radio stations in other cities. I can sit on my couch and completely dispel any illusions of productivity, and there's even a possibility I can listen from the comfort of my porcelain couch.
The problem that I see is that eventually even if you are wealthy these little fees could start to add up rather rapidly and no one would ever notice until you actually add them up. Paying over $300/month for various services could start to be common. Until perhaps internet access via this device is as free as common FM or AM radio I think that most people will shy away from it.
Any technology that lets me listen to more baseball games on the radio is a good one. Is Vin Scully still doing Dodgers games?
Television and digital video are better for sports if that's what you really want. Check out something like ESPN or the like.
That's more or less what I thought at first, but consider this: Radio stations all over the US are being gobbled up by Radio conglomerates, resulting in bland coast-to-coast crap. Variety is, well, your choice between easy-listening pop-40 or "alternative" crap or country music, with an occasional 60s/70s classic rock station thrown in. College radio is the only interesting medium, but quality and signal strength can vary. If I wanted to hear Pantera on the radio... I can't. I don;t think internet radio is the answer, but "internet" and "linux" should help their IPO:-)
So you are willing to buy a dedicated device that needs it's own line to access things via wireless internet connections? Wouldn't buying the CDs be a better option?
FreeNet: The huge libertarian presence on the Internet. If you ask why, it's because a lot of libertarians saw a good thing back in 1992-1993 and were "early adopters" of commercial Internet service.
I would guess that in reality many people kind of like the concepts of the internet and of libertarians in general at least for a while. I guess that they are more likely to take risks and develop things that relate to community building and freedom than the average joe. You can't exactly think that communists would want say their political beliefs being challenged would you? I can't say that you would. This is bad for keeping control. With something like the internet you could just go to some page and learn something that summarized material that could take week to wade through on your own.
Slashdot Mirror
So basicly, you want java as some kind of c++ superset? That seems to be what Sun thinks too, and also what is ruining the language. Things like garbage
collection are the strength of languages like java. If you're serious about implementing an object oriented structure, then you really need a language with
these things. Java is more like what the next generation languages will be, allowing you to talk more about meta-objects and sealing off the lower levels of
code. However, what is needed for this is a quality compiler that optomizes your code. Lets try to make java more like perl or python, eliminating the large
amounts of time spent on memory management.
What I really want is having the ability to just take say a program that displays "hello, world" and displays it to the screen to be easily run on the console command line of a linux machine. I can do that with c++.
What I really would like to know is why all the objectness?
I have done some studying and in general any program can be created from:
for
do/while
while
if
Take the use of functions and you have a superb method of creating programs. Also add recursion and you have very nice programs. It seems like all the "object oriented" nature of languages appears to be of little practal use. Except to save perhaps a couple of minutes.
JOVE
Doh! Ouch! Well the roughly $1,000 liscencing fees were the first thing that threw me. Second ther dosn't appear to be a linux version. Does it work under WINE?
There is at least one java compiler than can give Fortran levels of performance.
And that is?
This is really the beginning of something. Geeks have always despised Java because of speed difficulties, but its starting to actually go somewhere. It more of a "true" OO language than C++ (more like Smalltalk) and once we see
some breakthroughs with runtime compilers for it speed will be a nonissue.
Isn't there a simple way to just run java executables? I shure would like to actually be able to learn and use java without needing to get some fancy smansy memory intensive, disk space clogging mess. What about the gnu java compiler: gcj? Can I just run output from said java app with say standard libc stuff?
I think more likely is that computers will just end up speeding up to cover up inefficient implimentations of the language and perhaps poor programming. Hey look what fast computers did for windows.
Just wondering the phrase appears a great deal. The mass murders all quote it as does Legion.
Slashdot also lets you view other people's comments, and permits everyone to moderate (theoretically). /.'s moderation system looks highly patentable to me; perhaps CmdrTaco et al should put money where mouth is and create a
defensive patent.
That means that the use of GPLed code for other projects would be in jeopardy and I don't think we need that.
Note that "prior art" isn't always a defense. IANAL, but IIRC, you've got to have been using the invention/process/whatever for more than a year before the patent is applied for, or else you may be liable for royalties.
A year in the internet world could be quite costly and kill startups if they try to patent anything.
Not that this isn't a good article, and that I'm bashing Slashdot for posting it, but this article pretty much sums up what the typical Slashdotter has said about most of these stupid patents from the beginning.
"Expert" opinion is usually held higher than normal opinion because said expert usually has more of a swap with words and a wider audience.
What I did find more valuable about this article was the fact that he talked more about pushing Linux into the business world. He had some interesting comments that strayed from the patent talk a bit about Open Source.
Well creating something that could read current MS office file formats would be a nice thing.
For proof the world has gone mad look at what they allow to be patented.
Ah however never think that evil things are the work of an instable mind. Many evil deeds have been carefully and rationally thought out and then the choice was made. Nuclear weapons, secretive nuclear tests in the Nevada Desert by the DoE, NSA snooping. Just examples.
I am wondering if anyone has actually filed a patent as opensource yet? Seems like a sure fire way to succeede and prevent Amazon like things from happening.
I know what an Operating System is. My quesiton was "Has RedHat dropped their committment (?) to include only Open Source software on their CDs"?
.debs.
I think that there are some things by default that cannot go into all CDs. I know that when I tried to order a Red Hat CD there were two versions. One was the "GPL" cd the other was the standard version. The starndard version contains a number of other goodies that you have to pay for because otherwise Red Hat would violate liscencing term.
Debian dosn't distribute the non-free or other restricted directores in their CDs because that would violate some liscencing. If you want those programs you have to download the additional
Yes I can finally stop booting into windows to use Bleem!
Does Bleem run under WINE?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PSX 5 years old? I've tried playing some games on the Playstation, but the graphics are horrible. Even on a 32-inch TV, you can barely see what you're doing. Some games don't even come close to
PC quality: Quake 2, NFS and MotoRacer come to mind.
I buy console systems because it's often cheaper to get a console system than a full fledged PC to do the same things. I really don't need super realistic 3d immersive raytraced 32bpp colors when I am trying to shoot everything that moves.
Can these "emulators" render the graphics any better?
Well with things like WINE they use the native access of the OS to do all the cool stuff. Theoretically if they are just emulating the base stuff then perhaps it will look the same.
First of all, this explains the odd news I read yesterday that Connectix is going to ship a copy of RH with VirtualPC for Mac. That just seemed weird, now I see that it was a bastard child of this slightly more rational deal.
Homer: Flanders your the devil?
Flamers: Always the people you least suspect.
Usually people do things in secret for quite a while and then only make their intentions known.
Secondly, what's the deal with RedHat including more and more non-OS software on their CDs?
The definition of the OS differs in linux than in any other OS that is usually out there. Generally I can't do anything really cool with just the starndard Win98 install. That would necessitate my purthcess of other apps and such. Now consider what happens with linux. Theoretically you don't need to install one more thing with a recent distribution because everything's there. Oftentimes I have just given up on opensource that isn't part of the distribution because I have spend far, far, far, far too many hours of my life banging my head against the wall trying to get it configured on my distro. Generally with something like debian almost anything you want is there anyway so you can just avoid this problem.
This would be going on their CDs to paying customers to add value to the mix. Now if you really want a playstation emulator in the GPL cd perhaps you can start working on it or help someone who is doing something. MAME springs to mind; although I doubt that anything definitive is actually going on.
There is a great deal of easy money to be made in collecting. Eventually I think it more likely that people will simply have machine generated postage at either the post office or from personal machines (Pittney Bowes has machines for small Businesses already).
This will make all those cheasy ET stamps worth some cold hard cash. Unlike pokemon cards these have a future.
Reminds me of most weapons makers who dissolve themselves from blame as the creators by saying that theirs is a tool that is misused.
Suppose you make guns. I don't care any type of guns. Now suppose a couple of stupid kids decide to shoot up a high school? Sound familiar. Are you then to blame because someone did something stupid?
What about a hammer. I have used a hammer many times, however I still can bang the hammer on my thumb does that mean I can sue you because I screwed up?
The answer is no.
There is more than a hint of ego in this guys work (if indeed it was him) by putting it in a public forum (albeit for good reasons) he knew that people were going to abuse his creation.
People like attention nothing new.
Maybe he should have let the relevant people know abot the problem before putting the code in the public domain.
Dear Mr. Police officer I am going to run at least 10 red lights and speed 145 times in resendial zones in the next 6 months please revoke my liscence now ok?
No one is stupid enough to take that level of a hit.
In many ways I suspect he wanted an attack to vindicate himself, show off his skills whilst remaining on the side of the light and generally bask in the publicity...
If you don't open your big mouth you get into less trouble that way.
Essentially if no one can essentially be caught that means that the useless companies will just go bezerk and target everyone including those using our favorite OS.
Sounds like a great book, too bad it's only available overseas. Any ideas why they're not selling it here?
Book companies usually sell authors who have great appeal or who are in the business of making the book chain money. If I just start publishing something I am not likely to get Barnes and Noble to put it on their shelves.
My personal opinion is dump ACs like you proposed, and then start giving moderators two types of points - negative and positive points. They should be expected to use all positive points, and use of negative points should be /. should be 0, so that -1'ers don't get displayed at all.
optional (IE - they don't HAVE to use all of them.) Then, allow moderation down into the -3 range. -3 would be completely undisplayable after it's moderated to that point - and from that point on, someone who has been moderated
to -3 automatically has -1 to any posts they make for the next (x) days the first time they get -3, the next time it's (x) + 3, and then after that, it's permenant. They can still post, but, anything they post will be -1 BEFORE
moderation. Then, the default threshold for display on
Ok but there at least should be some ability to actually look at posts that are at -3. I really think that dissenters should be seen even if they are stupid. Yeah I am rather suprised about this however I think that the borland/inprise spamming and most of the heavy stuff could be effectively stopped by a little banning of the ips involved.
Just my thought on the subject. When I checked out this article, only 10 posts were at +1 or better, out of 30 something! You are right in the fact that SOMETHING has to be done!
Censoring stuff dosn't really promote discussion. Just a thought but perhaps just branding some posts with a spam flag and having them filtered out by defeault. Add that to the preferences or the formatting of the comments and you have a workable solution.
Yes, the general public really is that afraid of a general purpose computer. I prefer a desktop too, as to most other Slashdotters. We prefer the flexibility that it provides. However, there are a vast number of people that wish to benefit
from the Internet, and yet are completely clueless and fearful of your standard workstation. Being uneducated is one thing, but the number of people who do not wish to educate themselves remains very large.
I just don't understand it. People have to have a job to eat. I go to college to get a better job. And yet it is theoretically possible to be a compelete fool and get a good job? Please tell me how?
As a customer service representative for a large software company, I get clueless AOLers calling in everyday blaming us for the problems caused by their cluelessness regarding computers. I consider it a Good Thing that your average
AOLer will likely be using a set-top box or a web pad in a couple of years. It leaves them with less room to screw things up. You might say that these devices won't encourage them to educate themselves about computers, but the fact
is that they're not making any attempts to educate themselves as it is.
This is a bad thing. Let me tell you why. The PC market is run by people usually buying PCs in mass. That means the things that people most want to use a computer for: games, and the internet. Companies come out with small black boxes that do the same things for less but more if you add them together to get the same functionality as a PC. What do you think will happen to general PC prices?
*BOOM* (rocket shoots towards the stratosphere)
And guess what happens then? People like me who are having ecconomic trouble just keeping up with technology will be screwed again.
These are bad things but I guess people who want to learn and get ahead are just usually screwed over anyway.
Endless maze of porn ads, misleading links and self-spawning popups !
I have thought about that. What exactly does this serve? Large ammounts of money. If the goal is to finance the serving of warez then how exactly does prevent access to the content achieve the mission? Maybe I just don't get it.
Actually, that is exactly what it is - accurate. In some form or another, everything *human* is already set into EXACTLY that- categories. Person of colour X is part of religion Y, or person Y doesn't eat meat (vegetarian) whereas
person Z doesn't eat one type of meat but will eat another type, etc..etc. What else would you call things like dietary or religious preferences if not categories of some form?
I think Katz is right on the money with the trend he's noticed but not for the same reasons he thinks. What we're seeing is nothing more than the Internet reflecting the realities of life and the people living it; to wit- we're seeing the
taming of the net, not by some act (stupid or otherwise) of government, but by the sheer will of the people who live it. Incidentally this is proof that the internet has become an extension to modern life and times, with all the good
and bad these times have to offer.
But the question is do we really want that? I think that for a lot of people they wanted the net to be a utopia form of interaction and change. If we extend the same restrictions to the net that we do to life then the concept of innovation in terms of social arrangements will be utterly doomed.
Categorizing I think dosn't necessarily tame. Usually this is the case if you actually look at any area where one thinks one has tamed something only to see that it is in fact a complex chaos.
I say categorizing sites by category isn't accurate because there is more than one type of content. Slashdot has multiple types of content and missions all in one.
Look at sites of various OSS people. Most are a mixture of technical, social, personal, etc. That is basically what I am driving at.
Because most people aren't freaks who never watch TV or go to the movies, and because local radio blows goats.
Most people are not freaks if they choose not to watch TV. My reasons to actually watch TV are decreasing every day.
Most of us are sedentary couch and mouse potatoes, and the Kerbango Internet radio sounds like a great way to do a little more digital grazing. No longer will I have to sit at my computer and feign productivity while I listen to
decent radio stations in other cities. I can sit on my couch and completely dispel any illusions of productivity, and there's even a possibility I can listen from the comfort of my porcelain couch.
The problem that I see is that eventually even if you are wealthy these little fees could start to add up rather rapidly and no one would ever notice until you actually add them up. Paying over $300/month for various services could start to be common. Until perhaps internet access via this device is as free as common FM or AM radio I think that most people will shy away from it.
Any technology that lets me listen to more baseball games on the radio is a good one. Is Vin Scully still doing Dodgers games?
Television and digital video are better for sports if that's what you really want. Check out something like ESPN or the like.
That's more or less what I thought at first, but consider this: Radio stations all over the US are being gobbled up by Radio conglomerates, resulting in bland coast-to-coast crap. Variety is, well, your choice between easy-listening :-)
pop-40 or "alternative" crap or country music, with an occasional 60s/70s classic rock station thrown in. College radio is the only interesting medium, but quality and signal strength can vary. If I wanted to hear Pantera on the radio...
I can't. I don;t think internet radio is the answer, but "internet" and "linux" should help their IPO
So you are willing to buy a dedicated device that needs it's own line to access things via wireless internet connections? Wouldn't buying the CDs be a better option?
The millions of mindless "me-too" personal homepages that offer no useful content to the world.
Oh you mean geocities?
FreeNet: The huge libertarian presence on the Internet. If you ask why, it's because a lot of libertarians saw a good thing back in 1992-1993 and were "early adopters" of commercial Internet service.
I would guess that in reality many people kind of like the concepts of the internet and of libertarians in general at least for a while. I guess that they are more likely to take risks and develop things that relate to community building and freedom than the average joe. You can't exactly think that communists would want say their political beliefs being challenged would you? I can't say that you would. This is bad for keeping control. With something like the internet you could just go to some page and learn something that summarized material that could take week to wade through on your own.