I think computer cases would be cool - perhaps with the hostname on the front embedded with differently coloured Legos? And you could have a beowulf cluster *as large as you want* in *only one* big case!;-) Although we would probably beed some of the bigger plates for the construction of the case bottom and top. You could build them out of the 2x8 tiles, but they wont be that stable as one of the big plates (the one with the thickness of a standard tile, I don't know the exact size)
The next thingie would be a writing desk with an integrated computer, covered with the smooth plates for the surface, with hollow legs to contain the networking cables which subsequently go through a hole in the room wall made out of Legos to the server room with the servers neatly arranged in the wall. You would only need one large fan on top of your House to ventilate all the electronic equipment through the built-in vents in all your furniture...:-)
IIRC, some of the well-known remote administration tools like BO2K or NetBus (or something else, I haven't tried them yet) offer the possibility to take screenshots of the remote desktop.
Having said that, I don't think the story is true - too little actual information and too pictures of ugly peple for my taste...:)
IIRC, VBScript wasn't only intended for paragraph formatting. It should be *the* scripting language for Windows (like REXX is for OS/2 or Perl for Unices). It was designed that you could do every administrative task you might want to in VBScript. Of course with the inherently insecure Windows environment, it can also do everything a worm/virus programmer might want to do on your machine...
Yes, they do, but it's not ATA/100 . . . at least, not according to IBM:
Interface transfer rate (max MB/sec) 66.6+ 66.6+
Actually, it is. The ATA/100 interface wasn't officially introduced until monday. HD and chip manufacturers who had their ATA/100 products finished had to wait until Quantum gave them official permission. By calling the interface ATA/66+, IBM was able to get around this restriction. Technically, ther is no difference between ATA/66+ and ATA/100, so I expect IBM to change the name soon (after all, 100 sounds faster than 66, even with a plus sign...:-)
Check out this article on Heise Online for more information. It is in German, so you may want to use Babelfish.
When I talked about RedHat derivates, I was thinking of Mandrake, the chinese Red Flag Linux etc.
BTW are there any Slackware derivates yet? I know that some firms bundle modified SuSEs with computers, and SuSE offers different flavors of their own distro - the standard SuSE and SuSE Aktuell (at least in Germany), which consists of a basic SuSE system together with several ftp mirrors (no, I don't think of SuSE as a Slackware derivate, it was just an example:-)
It might be a good business opportunity, but I fear that yaLd (yet another Linux distribution) won't have that much of a chance on the already fragmentated market. Really, what use would it be to the user? We already have more distriutions based on RedHat than you can count with the fingers of one hand (or can you?), we have SuSE, Slackware etc.
I found that it is often easier for me just to download stuff and install it on a bare-bone system, than to try to understand the innards of a pre-packaged distribution. BTW if/when someone would build a Debian-based distribution w/ KDE included, do you think they would integrate it the RedHat way, the SuSE way or somehow else?
I'm not so concerned about GPL and QPL - I just want a distro that is easy to administer, doesn't spread important files belonging to one package all over the directory tree and doesn't have bootup scripts it takes a week to understand what they really do.
He installed a Linux system for his mother (who didn't know anything about computers before) and showed her how to use mutt on the console. She used the system only for e-mailing him. Later on, she was introduced to newsgroups. One day, she told him she'd heard that "with Linux, you could use several programs at once", so he showed her Alt-Fx (which she considered truly amazing at first). Finally, there was lynx plus some picture viewing program for web browsing. I don't know whether he introduced her to X11 yet, but I doubt it - anything she needs runs quite well off the console, and she's happy with that.
Some time ago she participated in some kind of "Internet for elderly dummies" course. The teacher asked whether anyone already had internet experience. She was the only one. The teacher asked her what kind of browser she would use on her Windows machine, and he was quite shocked when she replied she only used Linux apps - appearantly he hadn't been introduced to the Joys of the Penguin yet.
There could either be an international treaty to introduce more or less the same law in all participating countries (quite unlikely, IMHO), or just one credit "meta" organisation per country. I am not an expert in e-commerce, but I think that most people tend to buy stuff in their own or a neighbouring country - less trouble if you have complains about the delivered goods. In such a case it could be sufficient if only firms in one country exchanged their customer credit information.
To create such a "web of trust" the participating firms will have to share information about the customer. What better possibility to also create profiles for targeted advertising? IMO, the only possibility for customers to have their privacy respected would be an independent organisatiton restricted by law not to share any more information than absolutely necessary, which collected the credit information about the customers. IIRC, there are organisations like this in some countries, e.g. the german SCHUFA (although this one has information about your credit worthiness, not your actual credit card data...)
But if I where you, I would just shop somewhere else...:-)
I think the overlooked point is the speed of light in a vacuum is fixed.
Yes, that may well be. Of course, I was referring to c as "speed of light in vacuum" in my comment above:-) Unfortunately, most people just don't think about it that c_medium != c_vac in most cases. Remember the article some time ago about an artificial "black hole" by sending light through a fluid with very low c_medium? The fluid was planned to rotate at a speed higher than the fluid's speed of light, thus creating a vortex with some of the properties of a black hole. Quite a lot of the comments on slashdot suggested building warp drives and such based on the "black hole generator"...
I have forgotten why they can't carry information; but evanescent waves are waves which are generated by diffraction:
If you take the complete complex wave function of a light beam and calculate a diffraction (e.g. by the transition from glass to air) you will find not only the usual e^-ix part (which can be split in sine and cosine for the electric and magnetic parts of the field) but also an e^-x part which decreases exponentially.
The e^-ix part can propagate into infinity because its intensity stays constant. The e^-x part can not. Technically, it doesn't vanish (e^-x > 0 for all values of x), but it gets REALLY small after only a short distance.
Do these experiments redefine physics as we know it? That is quite easy to find out: just wait one or two years. If Dr. Wang hasn't received the physics Nobel Prize by then, there was probably a fatal flaw in his equations.
Does anyone still remember the hype about cold fusion, the guys claiming to have sent information at v > c (that was the guys who bodulated a laser wave with music, but failed to notice the difference between group speed and phase speed of the light - or at least didn't bother to do so in their works...)
BTW, IAAP ( I am a physicist) and I have become more and more sceptical towards articles like this one during my studies - in almost all cases, "great discoveries" can be easily explained by physical properties not taken into consideration or just some stupid error. If it is published in a non-scientific journal before the scientific community notices it, a "discovery" usually isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Here is a small excerpt from the actual patent text:
The present invention provides an illusion to a user that a desired utility service supported on a remote host resides locally on the user's local host, thereby providing ease of use and minimal software maintenance for users of that remote service. In one embodiment of a Remote Object system according to the present invention, a user appears to activate a Remote Object as a service of the local host. The user actually activates a starter client, which connects to a starter server on the remote host via a starter connection. The starter server interacts with a starter service, which initiates a Remote Object client. The Remote Object client on the remote host then interacts, as a human interface client, with a human interface server on the local host via a second connection, the Remote Object client connection. The Remote Object client also interacts, as a desired utility client with either a desired utility server on the remote host, or directly with the desired utility service on the remote host.
IANAPL, but this sounds to me like they just want to hide as much networking mumbo-jumbo as possible from the user. The user just should not have to care about a) where the data is located (i.e no typing of http://slashdot.org or clicking on the bookmark) b) how the database actually works (there are hundreds of different web interfaces in the world, everyone different from the others) c) how the data is transferred (by http, ftp, smb etc)
They're not trying to patent blatantly obvious stuff - they're even referring to large-scale time-sharing systems in the patent text, and everyone who knows about mainframs knows that ftp and other means for transferring data from one system to the other have been around for decades. It's just that up to now the user has to use different user interfaces for different retrieval systems and also has to distinguish wheter the data is stored locally or on the net (at least in most cases). IIAR they have patented a method to get rid of this (although I wonder how this solution actually might loook like...)
Just check out http://www.winehq.com/Apps and search for the programs you're interested in. You have to be aware that the revievers are not necessarily talking about the same WINE snapshot, so look for the most recent reviews.
IMHO, far from being backwards, this could prove to be Linux' crowning triumph. Not because WINE allows people to use Windows products, but because OS' will no longer be viewable as single, closed entities in their own right, but as interfaces.
From the user's point of view, the difference between emulation or just offering the API is meaningless - he just sees that a Windows program is running under Linux. But I'm not sure whether this will be the "crowning triumph" - remember OS/2, which could also run Win3.1 apps?
WINE will have to continuously adapt to MS's ever-changing Windows APIs - only then it will be a good alternative for the "average" user. (Personally, I wouldn't mind if not all windoze apps were supported - as long as StarCraft runs fine!;-)
You won't get arrested for discussing Hitler. You might only get arrested for violating the rights of other people not to be discriminated against.
Speech is free in Germany, as long as it doesn't infringe the constitutional rights of others! Your own rights have to back off, if by you looking after them the rights of others would be violated. You, on the other hand, also have the constitutional right not to have your rights infringed. If, e.g., you were a nazi and kept all your racist toughts to yourself; nobody would have the right to discriminate you for being racist, as long as you wouldn't discriminate others.
France is no more intelligent than the US in that regard. Sure, they have different views on nudity (whereas many Americans consider all nudity to be pr0n, it takes more than that to be consdered pornographic just about anywhere else). But they do ban other forms of speech. Yes, hate speech is a terrible thing. I have the distinct displeasure of living near a whole family of racists, so I know how bad it can get. But if no one has the right to censor me, then no one has the right to censor them either. And yes, it is annoying to have to put up with them (while I might not be the target of their race hate, I am still distrusted on religious grounds). But it's the only fair way.
I cannot speak for the French, but the first article of the German constitution goes like this: "The dignity of a human being is inviolable." This is considered even more important than free speech in most european countries, I think mostly because of WW II. If, e.g., you are an ethnic person living next to racists ofer here in Europe, your right not to be discriminated against is more important than the racist's right to freely spread his racist ideas all over the neighborhood. In fact, it is every other person's right and even duty to defend your dignity even if you don't do it yourself - if your race is discrimimnated against in general. If the racist just insults you personally, it's your thing alone to stop him. But racist speech violates the dignity rights of the people discriminated against in general, and is thus illegal.
It really depends on which right you consider more important. For the US, it seems to be the right for free speech; in Europe (or at least in some european countries), it's the right not to have your dignity violated. Note that racist speech may be banned in public, but in private the racist may usually still say what he thinks. During a private meeting of a racist group, they can say what they want.
Wasn't D-VHS supposed to be commercially available several years ago? I heard about it only shortly after DV was announced - way before recordable DVDs. I'm not sure this system (good as it may be) has much of a chance against the established digital recording media. Since most video enthusiasts already have high-quality (S)VHS tape recorders, the ability to play back analog tapes is a nice gimmick, but not the most important thing. DCC was also able to play back analog audio cassettes, and it wasn't much of a success. If the price isn't considerably lower than DV or DVD-R(W), D-VHS won't last long.
The list of features is quite impressive, but I'm not sure if I really want to use small-size versions of Software well-loved for their crashativity...:-) Honestly, the hardware features seem much better than the palm's, but I'd always prefer a PDA with less features but better (that is, less likely to crash) software. But it's definitely time for Palm to come out with an overhauled version (bigger display, USB and HotSync via IRDa).
Junk mail I have to throw out (which is bad for the enviroment)
When I receive snail mail which is clearly advertising, I write "acceptance refused" on the unopened envelope and throw it back in the letter box (without a new stamp, of course). The advertising firm gets its letter back for recycling (good for the environment:-), has to pay the postal service and I usually don't get bothered a second time.
The problem with the telemarketers not using a caller ID could perhaps be gotten around the following way:
A friend of mine, who has ISDN, uses his computer as an answering machine. He doesn't accept calls without caller ID on principle. Every time he receives a call without ID, the computer answers the phone and tells the caller to activate his ID. He lives in Germany, though, and not only is ISDN quite common there, they also don't have the telemarketer problem (AFAIK unsolicided commercial calls are forbidden by law).
That is pure basic research. It may be that for several years there isn't any "practical" gain from this research, but the same goes for quite a lot of current scientific research. It is the foundation upon practical appliances can be built.
E.g. think of electricity. It is known for several hundred years, but till the end of the 19th century nobody thought that it might have any use at all. Along came the telegraph and the first light bulb, and this viewpoint changed quite drastically.
At very low temperatures, previously unknown properties of matter can surface which nobody even thought they existed, e.g. superconductivity. It was discovered more or less by accident, and this discovery wouldn't have been possible without the low temperatures of liquid Helium.
If we were to abolish basic research, because we don't have any immediate gain from it, our technological advance would come to a slow, grinding halt. BTW when the first laser was constructed, nobody thought about its possible application in medicine. And not all lasers are equally good for everything. You wouldn't try an operation with a cd drive laser or one of the high energy systems standing in the physics building where I work!:-) Those babys are so fscking powerful, the air molecules crossing their beams fluorescate.
IANASB, but quite a lot of the "real share value" you are talking about is more or less fake and not backed by real worth.
One problem with the past hi-tech IPOs is that the number of shares on the free market is quite low (compared to the number of shares still in the hands of the companies' founders).
If Bill Gates would decide to sell all his MS stock to finance a private space station, MS price would suffer quite a drop - simply because there wouldn't be a demand for such a large number of shares. The price would drop even Bill sold his stock for entirely personal reasons which hadn't anything to do with Microsoft's economical situation. The same goes for quite some small hi-tech firms and even the larger ones.
E.g. in these days T-Online (the online service of the German Telekom) is having its IPO. The shares are oversubscribed 20-fold and a high share value is expected. But the majority of shares is owned by the German state - if these would also be on the free market, the share value would drop, because the relative demand wouldn't be as strong.
With the "classical" financial, automotive or chemical industry shares this problem isn't as strong because a) the shares are spread wider (in most cases) and b) with most firms, the stock value is backed by real worth (e.g. high profits on the products they sell). Most of the new hi-tech firms have a much too high share value/profit ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
I think computer cases would be cool - perhaps with the hostname on the front embedded with differently coloured Legos? And you could have a beowulf cluster *as large as you want* in *only one* big case! ;-) Although we would probably beed some of the bigger plates for the construction of the case bottom and top. You could build them out of the 2x8 tiles, but they wont be that stable as one of the big plates (the one with the thickness of a standard tile, I don't know the exact size)
The next thingie would be a writing desk with an integrated computer, covered with the smooth plates for the surface, with hollow legs to contain the networking cables which subsequently go through a hole in the room wall made out of Legos to the server room with the servers neatly arranged in the wall. You would only need one large fan on top of your House to ventilate all the electronic equipment through the built-in vents in all your furniture...:-)
IIRC, some of the well-known remote administration tools like BO2K or NetBus (or something else, I haven't tried them yet) offer the possibility to take screenshots of the remote desktop.
Having said that, I don't think the story is true - too little actual information and too pictures of ugly peple for my taste...:)
IIRC, VBScript wasn't only intended for paragraph formatting. It should be *the* scripting language for Windows (like REXX is for OS/2 or Perl for Unices). It was designed that you could do every administrative task you might want to in VBScript. Of course with the inherently insecure Windows environment, it can also do everything a worm/virus programmer might want to do on your machine...
Yes, they do, but it's not ATA/100 . . . at least, not according to IBM:
Interface transfer rate (max MB/sec) 66.6+ 66.6+
Actually, it is. The ATA/100 interface wasn't officially introduced until monday. HD and chip manufacturers who had their ATA/100 products finished had to wait until Quantum gave them official permission. By calling the interface ATA/66+, IBM was able to get around this restriction. Technically, ther is no difference between ATA/66+ and ATA/100, so I expect IBM to change the name soon (after all, 100 sounds faster than 66, even with a plus sign...:-)
Check out this article on Heise Online for more information. It is in German, so you may want to use Babelfish.
When I talked about RedHat derivates, I was thinking of Mandrake, the chinese Red Flag Linux etc.
BTW are there any Slackware derivates yet? I know that some firms bundle modified SuSEs with computers, and SuSE offers different flavors of their own distro - the standard SuSE and SuSE Aktuell (at least in Germany), which consists of a basic SuSE system together with several ftp mirrors (no, I don't think of SuSE as a Slackware derivate, it was just an example :-)
Because I liked it :-)
It might be a good business opportunity, but I fear that yaLd (yet another Linux distribution) won't have that much of a chance on the already fragmentated market. Really, what use would it be to the user? We already have more distriutions based on RedHat than you can count with the fingers of one hand (or can you?), we have SuSE, Slackware etc.
I found that it is often easier for me just to download stuff and install it on a bare-bone system, than to try to understand the innards of a pre-packaged distribution. BTW if/when someone would build a Debian-based distribution w/ KDE included, do you think they would integrate it the RedHat way, the SuSE way or somehow else?
I'm not so concerned about GPL and QPL - I just want a distro that is easy to administer, doesn't spread important files belonging to one package all over the directory tree and doesn't have bootup scripts it takes a week to understand what they really do.
He installed a Linux system for his mother (who didn't know anything about computers before) and showed her how to use mutt on the console. She used the system only for e-mailing him. Later on, she was introduced to newsgroups. One day, she told him she'd heard that "with Linux, you could use several programs at once", so he showed her Alt-Fx (which she considered truly amazing at first). Finally, there was lynx plus some picture viewing program for web browsing. I don't know whether he introduced her to X11 yet, but I doubt it - anything she needs runs quite well off the console, and she's happy with that.
Some time ago she participated in some kind of "Internet for elderly dummies" course. The teacher asked whether anyone already had internet experience. She was the only one. The teacher asked her what kind of browser she would use on her Windows machine, and he was quite shocked when she replied she only used Linux apps - appearantly he hadn't been introduced to the Joys of the Penguin yet.
There could either be an international treaty to introduce more or less the same law in all participating countries (quite unlikely, IMHO), or just one credit "meta" organisation per country. I am not an expert in e-commerce, but I think that most people tend to buy stuff in their own or a neighbouring country - less trouble if you have complains about the delivered goods. In such a case it could be sufficient if only firms in one country exchanged their customer credit information.
To create such a "web of trust" the participating firms will have to share information about the customer. What better possibility to also create profiles for targeted advertising? IMO, the only possibility for customers to have their privacy respected would be an independent organisatiton restricted by law not to share any more information than absolutely necessary, which collected the credit information about the customers. IIRC, there are organisations like this in some countries, e.g. the german SCHUFA (although this one has information about your credit worthiness, not your actual credit card data...)
But if I where you, I would just shop somewhere else...:-)
I think the overlooked point is the speed of light in a vacuum is fixed.
Yes, that may well be. Of course, I was referring to c as "speed of light in vacuum" in my comment above :-) Unfortunately, most people just don't think about it that c_medium != c_vac in most cases. Remember the article some time ago about an artificial "black hole" by sending light through a fluid with very low c_medium? The fluid was planned to rotate at a speed higher than the fluid's speed of light, thus creating a vortex with some of the properties of a black hole. Quite a lot of the comments on slashdot suggested building warp drives and such based on the "black hole generator"...
I have forgotten why they can't carry information; but evanescent waves are waves which are generated by diffraction:
If you take the complete complex wave function of a light beam and calculate a diffraction (e.g. by the transition from glass to air) you will find not only the usual e^-ix part (which can be split in sine and cosine for the electric and magnetic parts of the field) but also an e^-x part which decreases exponentially.
The e^-ix part can propagate into infinity because its intensity stays constant. The e^-x part can not. Technically, it doesn't vanish (e^-x > 0 for all values of x), but it gets REALLY small after only a short distance.
Do these experiments redefine physics as we know it? That is quite easy to find out: just wait one or two years. If Dr. Wang hasn't received the physics Nobel Prize by then, there was probably a fatal flaw in his equations.
Does anyone still remember the hype about cold fusion, the guys claiming to have sent information at v > c (that was the guys who bodulated a laser wave with music, but failed to notice the difference between group speed and phase speed of the light - or at least didn't bother to do so in their works...)
BTW, IAAP ( I am a physicist) and I have become more and more sceptical towards articles like this one during my studies - in almost all cases, "great discoveries" can be easily explained by physical properties not taken into consideration or just some stupid error. If it is published in a non-scientific journal before the scientific community notices it, a "discovery" usually isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Here is a small excerpt from the actual patent text:
The present invention provides an illusion to a user that a desired utility service supported on a remote host resides locally on the user's local host, thereby providing ease of use and minimal software maintenance for users of that remote service. In one embodiment of a Remote Object system according to the present invention, a user appears to activate a Remote Object as a service of the local host. The user actually activates a starter client, which connects to a starter server on the remote host via a starter connection. The starter server interacts with a starter service, which initiates a Remote Object client. The Remote Object client on the remote host then interacts, as a human interface client, with a human interface server on the local host via a second connection, the Remote Object client connection. The Remote Object client also interacts, as a desired utility client with either a desired utility server on the remote host, or directly with the desired utility service on the remote host.
IANAPL, but this sounds to me like they just want to hide as much networking mumbo-jumbo as possible from the user. The user just should not have to care about
a) where the data is located (i.e no typing of http://slashdot.org or clicking on the bookmark)
b) how the database actually works (there are hundreds of different web interfaces in the world, everyone different from the others)
c) how the data is transferred (by http, ftp, smb etc)
They're not trying to patent blatantly obvious stuff - they're even referring to large-scale time-sharing systems in the patent text, and everyone who knows about mainframs knows that ftp and other means for transferring data from one system to the other have been around for decades. It's just that up to now the user has to use different user interfaces for different retrieval systems and also has to distinguish wheter the data is stored locally or on the net (at least in most cases). IIAR they have patented a method to get rid of this (although I wonder how this solution actually might loook like...)
Just check out http://www.winehq.com/Apps and search for the programs you're interested in. You have to be aware that the revievers are not necessarily talking about the same WINE snapshot, so look for the most recent reviews.
IMHO, far from being backwards, this could prove to be Linux' crowning triumph. Not because WINE allows people to use Windows products, but because OS' will no longer be viewable as single, closed entities in their own right, but as interfaces.
From the user's point of view, the difference between emulation or just offering the API is meaningless - he just sees that a Windows program is running under Linux. But I'm not sure whether this will be the "crowning triumph" - remember OS/2, which could also run Win3.1 apps?
WINE will have to continuously adapt to MS's ever-changing Windows APIs - only then it will be a good alternative for the "average" user. (Personally, I wouldn't mind if not all windoze apps were supported - as long as StarCraft runs fine! ;-)
You won't get arrested for discussing Hitler. You might only get arrested for violating the rights of other people not to be discriminated against.
Speech is free in Germany, as long as it doesn't infringe the constitutional rights of others! Your own rights have to back off, if by you looking after them the rights of others would be violated. You, on the other hand, also have the constitutional right not to have your rights infringed. If, e.g., you were a nazi and kept all your racist toughts to yourself; nobody would have the right to discriminate you for being racist, as long as you wouldn't discriminate others.
France is no more intelligent than the US in that regard. Sure, they have different views on nudity (whereas many Americans consider all nudity to be pr0n, it takes more than that to be consdered pornographic just about anywhere else). But they do ban other forms of speech. Yes, hate speech is a terrible thing. I have the distinct displeasure of living near a whole family of racists, so I know how bad it can get. But if no one has the right to censor me, then no one has the right to censor them either. And yes, it is annoying to have to put up with them (while I might not be the target of their race hate, I am still distrusted on religious grounds). But it's the only fair way.
I cannot speak for the French, but the first article of the German constitution goes like this:
"The dignity of a human being is inviolable."
This is considered even more important than free speech in most european countries, I think mostly because of WW II. If, e.g., you are an ethnic person living next to racists ofer here in Europe, your right not to be discriminated against is more important than the racist's right to freely spread his racist ideas all over the neighborhood. In fact, it is every other person's right and even duty to defend your dignity even if you don't do it yourself - if your race is discrimimnated against in general. If the racist just insults you personally, it's your thing alone to stop him. But racist speech violates the dignity rights of the people discriminated against in general, and is thus illegal.
It really depends on which right you consider more important. For the US, it seems to be the right for free speech; in Europe (or at least in some european countries), it's the right not to have your dignity violated. Note that racist speech may be banned in public, but in private the racist may usually still say what he thinks. During a private meeting of a racist group, they can say what they want.
Wasn't D-VHS supposed to be commercially available several years ago? I heard about it only shortly after DV was announced - way before recordable DVDs. I'm not sure this system (good as it may be) has much of a chance against the established digital recording media. Since most video enthusiasts already have high-quality (S)VHS tape recorders, the ability to play back analog tapes is a nice gimmick, but not the most important thing. DCC was also able to play back analog audio cassettes, and it wasn't much of a success. If the price isn't considerably lower than DV or DVD-R(W), D-VHS won't last long.
The list of features is quite impressive, but I'm not sure if I really want to use small-size versions of Software well-loved for their crashativity...:-) Honestly, the hardware features seem much better than the palm's, but I'd always prefer a PDA with less features but better (that is, less likely to crash) software. But it's definitely time for Palm to come out with an overhauled version (bigger display, USB and HotSync via IRDa).
When I receive snail mail which is clearly advertising, I write "acceptance refused" on the unopened envelope and throw it back in the letter box (without a new stamp, of course). The advertising firm gets its letter back for recycling (good for the environment :-), has to pay the postal service and I usually don't get bothered a second time.
The problem with the telemarketers not using a caller ID could perhaps be gotten around the following way:
A friend of mine, who has ISDN, uses his computer as an answering machine. He doesn't accept calls without caller ID on principle. Every time he receives a call without ID, the computer answers the phone and tells the caller to activate his ID. He lives in Germany, though, and not only is ISDN quite common there, they also don't have the telemarketer problem (AFAIK unsolicided commercial calls are forbidden by law).
That is pure basic research. It may be that for several years there isn't any "practical" gain from this research, but the same goes for quite a lot of current scientific research. It is the foundation upon practical appliances can be built.
E.g. think of electricity. It is known for several hundred years, but till the end of the 19th century nobody thought that it might have any use at all. Along came the telegraph and the first light bulb, and this viewpoint changed quite drastically.
At very low temperatures, previously unknown properties of matter can surface which nobody even thought they existed, e.g. superconductivity. It was discovered more or less by accident, and this discovery wouldn't have been possible without the low temperatures of liquid Helium.
If we were to abolish basic research, because we don't have any immediate gain from it, our technological advance would come to a slow, grinding halt. BTW when the first laser was constructed, nobody thought about its possible application in medicine. And not all lasers are equally good for everything. You wouldn't try an operation with a cd drive laser or one of the high energy systems standing in the physics building where I work! :-) Those babys are so fscking powerful, the air molecules crossing their beams fluorescate.
IANASB, but quite a lot of the "real share value" you are talking about is more or less fake and not backed by real worth.
One problem with the past hi-tech IPOs is that the number of shares on the free market is quite low (compared to the number of shares still in the hands of the companies' founders).
If Bill Gates would decide to sell all his MS stock to finance a private space station, MS price would suffer quite a drop - simply because there wouldn't be a demand for such a large number of shares. The price would drop even Bill sold his stock for entirely personal reasons which hadn't anything to do with Microsoft's economical situation. The same goes for quite some small hi-tech firms and even the larger ones.
E.g. in these days T-Online (the online service of the German Telekom) is having its IPO. The shares are oversubscribed 20-fold and a high share value is expected. But the majority of shares is owned by the German state - if these would also be on the free market, the share value would drop, because the relative demand wouldn't be as strong.
With the "classical" financial, automotive or chemical industry shares this problem isn't as strong because
a) the shares are spread wider (in most cases) and
b) with most firms, the stock value is backed by real worth (e.g. high profits on the products they sell).
Most of the new hi-tech firms have a much too high share value/profit ratio.