I own one too and I'd like to add to the other posters comments about the battery. It *would* be nice to have build in rechargables but seeing how my batteries are going to last approximately 6-8 *weeks* between depletion I'm not seeing that as too much of a downer.
The calculator is also far better than the built in Palm calculator (at least on the IIIxe). The visor calculator has nifty modes like scientific and logic.
That said I hope the whole boatload of Palm devices has great success. I'd rather not see 'infighting', rather more one-upmanship.
The lower power part, as I understand it, is the ability to dynamically increase and decrease power requirements as the need arises. *NO* commercial chip offers that kind of feature. That is a truly revolutionary feature. Not even restamping other procs would result in the kind of power consumption that you should be able to get with the Transmeta chips. Currently chips either run at a continuous power level, have multiple steps (Speed Step) or simply go into sleep mode. The ability to throttle back to near nothing is a great energy saver, especially when you consider that most of the time your proc is doing absolutely nothing.
I wholy agree with your point about it basically being a x86 emulator. I'll get excited when it can emulate the PPC chipset effectively. I'm more interested in the Transmeta chips from a 'what's next' point of view. i don't think this first generation of chips will be all that stunning in a price/perfomance area but the next generation or two should prove the technology to be solid, useful, and practical. And in the long run, when Intel and other manufacturers begin reverse engineering these features it'll benefit us all (I hope).
This was one of the key reasons I switched from Linux to FreeBSD. After trying to get things working on Debian, Redhat, and SuSE I tried FreeBSD and haven't looked back.
I remember seeing something about a organization to standardize all the Linux file system layouts etc. but nothing seems to have come of it. Redhat was not a part of it and Slackware falt out refused to abide by any decisions that they made.
It seems to me that Debian has it's act most together but has problems because it there are not standards.
Contrast this with a *BSD OS (and perhaps others) which have a centralized system of source and/or binary (ports/package) installation using trusted files. Download, make, grab and install all dependencies, install, done. And everything is mantained by a group of people who make the latest greatest software buildable and runnable on *BDS. This is, of course, precisely because there is little fracturing in the origanizational structure of the overall OS. A weak point is trying to update a program to a newer version (I've seen ways to do this but it's not exactly simple).
It won't happen untilthe Linux *distro leaders* decide to wake up and compromise on this key area of standardization. I know Linux users love to use the 'multiple choices' argument but at some point you have to start catering to the majority rather than the minority... (yeah yeah, sounds more and more like a commercial OS)
Anyways, I don't mean to slam Linux but it's a key area of weakness. It's ironic that a great strong suit of Linux is also a major headache.
In my opinion the two biggest selling points of the Transmeta chip are it's code morphing and low power consumption. The difference in power is supposed to be on the order of 40 times less than an equivalent Mobile PIII. There was an excellent article in one of the IEEE magazine around May or so. As far as code morphing/architecture support I've only seen support for x86 mentioned.
Many 'experts' believe that Transmeta's future will not be in notebooks but in subnotebooks and the 'web pad' devices. Also consider PDAs. The last WinCE device (Cassiopeia?) I looked at had a nice 200Mhz CPU but also had to be recharged every 14 hours. If Transmeta can offer twice the maximum cpu power and 2-3+ times the operational length and do it cheaply, manufacturers will jump all over them.
Everyone's playing wait and see though. Well, IBM announced a Transmeta laptop a couple months ago but I haven't seen anything about it since.
This will be very interesting in light of Bluetooth's potential and early test runs. If it takes off there will be a literal explosion of new Bluetooth filled gadgets (hardware) but with the need to properly communicate and talk to everyone else (software).
I wonder which markets will benefit most and show most growth? I'm betting on Japan with it's fanatical focus on miniaturization and near over-teching.
One other thing I was interested in was whether it's really just at the consumer level that we experience this wireless 'lag'. After all most of the major players in the production markets (not service markets) have large presence in the US. Something may be made for Europe or Japan but completely dropped in the US for marketing/technical/legal reasons. A decent examples is Japans audio industry: I would say from personal experience that the electronics in Japan are routinely a year or two 'ahead' of whatever crops up in America. Sony, Aiwa, Panasonic, etc. all have large market presence in America but we don't seem to get these gadgets (discman, walkman, steros, mp3 players, etc). Do the marketers think we won't buy them? I guess so.
Anyways, I tihnk the lack of American dominance is not really a bad thing. As the world grows 'closer' through this instant communications having lopsided relationships can become less and less 'acceptable' to others.
I believe part of the problem with the wireless phone market in America is precisely because we have so much competition. For example, in Japan one company (JPhone?) owns over 90% of the market. This translates into simpler 'upgrading' and smoother transisitons and simpler choices for the consumer. Japan is beginning the 3G wireless transition (dsl+ speeds over wireless) which eventaully means video phones becoming reality.
Meanwhile the US and other countries have a proliferation of GSM, CDMA, and other interesting 'standards'. One of the big headaches with phone service is to get proper coverage or compatibilities without having to own 3 or 4 different phones and subscribe to 3 or 4 providers.
(I don't really know what factors that there are in the European market)
Anyways, that's what I have gathered reading about wireless tech and talking to people at places like Ericcson, Altcatel, and Motorola...
One small point I wanted to have clarified. As I understand it the only bugs that are (and should) be reported are bugs in server system software or security software, not every 'bug'. If it was every bug the database for all OSes would be gargantuan.
At least from my personal experince (recent college graduate) this book probably wouldn't have helped at all.
My interviews were at least half behavioral interviews to see how compatible I would be. The other half was technical but almost never at the syntax of a language level. Since I was rarely interviewing for a specific position I wasn't expected to know (nor did I consider trying to learn) every little detail of a language. I would be utterly shocked if companies expected new graduates to be experts in any language.
Anyways, maybe 1 in 10 technical questions was about C or Java or bash, etc. Mostly there were logic puzzles, design steps, and general system problems. What's the key here? They want problem solving skills. You can teach a history major to program (some companies do) but problem solving is a gift that not too many people have. The better and more quickly that you can break a problem apart and come up with a logical, clean, modular solution the more you will impress the interviewers. (Notable exceptions are places like Microsoft and many startups: expect to be *grilled* in the chosen language(s) at those comapnies).
I can't say enough that you should be yourself. In many cases you are interviewing with people who will be your manager or co-workers. To impress them is nice but to be "real" is much more important for your quality of life. If you don't like the people that interview you go elsewhere. You won't like the place.
Always ask what the interviews *dislike* about their company. If they can't say anything reasonable that they don't like they aren't being honest with you. It's not a mark against them unless they give a really whacked response, and it certainly shouldn't be a mark against you.
And I did find myself in the fortunate position of being able to literally take the pick of the litter among the places I applied to.
That's a cool projects page (although rather hideous) but I don't really see where "Redlight = On" teaches you anything about how computers work at the level that the original poster explained. IMO to truly understand that stuff you really need to understand gate logic and circuit design which is an entire semesters course at most colleges. In fact, at my college it was the primary weed out course for CS and engineering students. Personally I think the original poster's level of detail is too low level for most HS students, even many of the geeks.
That said these projects would definitely work in HS for HS kids. With a few thousand dollars you could build one fun tech lab. I would have really gone for this stuff in HS or even MS.
Hehe, sounds like you teacher was very capable. I'm in daily touch with (sometimes painful) software projects that have problems so I felt I had to bring up some of the negatives. The negatives are also the entire reason why software engineering exists in the first place so it needed mentioning.
You're right though: CS wasn't just for programmers/geeks and the project makes more sense in that light. (Been too long since I was in HS =)
This is actually more along the lines of eletrical/computer engineering or embedded systems programming. Mostly I don't think the HS's have the resources to teach all the background needed to fully utilize these sorta of projects (logic, boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, state graphcs, etc).
My HS had some sort of 'advanced technology' center where people got to work with actualy hardware but for the most part CS remains entirely software based. In college I did have to take logic and circuit design but the rest of the courses (including computer architecture) were always dealing with hardware from the software viewpoint.
I would just like to say that you are one of the most fortunate bastards in the world!!! I'm rather jealous. The neatest thing I ever did in HS CS was find a non-recursive way to do Hanoi's Towers and then make that graphical =(
Man that would have been awesome to work on. (real world use, pressure to be accurate, etc)
BTW: If you pick programming contest do *not* choose timed contests. While they are exciting (I participated in quite a few) they don't really _teach_ you anything useful. Pick a contest that has a meaningful goal in mind like creating the neatest shell features, or smallest byte code, or fastest ray-tracer, coolest fractal algorithms, etc. (ingenuity, size optimization, loop optimization, creativity) but don't do the kind of crud like "write a minimal number of coins algorithm given the amount in cents" where the quickest correct ansmwer wins.
Speed programming turns into typing contests when the programmers are good. They learn shortcuts in proramming which is gerenally a bad habit. They also learn not to plan and think things through, etc. I think you get the picture.
You know, part of doing such a project is to limit it in scope to be manageable in the time allotted. My college software engineering course did basically what you mention except we had teams of 5-6 who bid on projects then had to actually deliver (part of the grade). Part of our job was to figure out which project(s) we were best suited and also to define exactly what we were going to do for the project. Almost always this was less than the original grand plan. We had to estimate the resorces we had, the time allotted, the difficulty of the material, our knowledge level, add in a dose of reality (unforseen delays) and come up with a neat project (usually for elementary students).
Now maybe it's not such a big deal in HS but it seems like somebody needs to notice that you guys never got anything done. That means the scope of the project must be scaled down (a real world skill) and project management has to be more efficient. Being a CS course and not a management course it seems to me that it should have focussed more on programming than managment. This *especially* in light of the huge numbers of people applying to colleges when they are not even remotely capable programmers. (In fact most colleges expect you to be a competent programmer by the time you arrive on campus)
I'm not trying to knock the class but as you progress into college and the real world not completing projects means no passing grade or no food on your plate. Granted it is decent practice for *management* activities but you won't usually be doing that for several years. Seems like your teacher was simulating the 'below average' programming project year after year. I hope (s)he pointed out how much programmers underestimate the time it takes to do a project.
I tend to disagree with you there since cdrom.com can set the real world single day download record with a single FreeBSD computer while MS needs to maintain a server farm of dozens of computers to even come close.
So when will I have built in cvs capabilities, a RAD IDE, and built in GIMP-clone module to go along with the nifty browser, instant messager, email, word processor, html editor, news client, spreadsheet all-in-one package?
We just need to put a team in place, scrap all the current StarOffice code, and go at it!
There is a point at which something is so obviously designed and used for illegal purposes that the tool itself is *for all intents and purposes* considered illegal. For example, a sawed off shotgun is considered by courts to be illegal. I believe automatic weaponry in most (all?) states is illegal (for citizens). Why? Because the danger to the public is considered too great and because they have little redeeming, legal value or use.
Granted most things in this category (bioweapons, rape drugs, nuclear weapons, etc)are because of the potential for human harm, but please re-evaluate what you said about guns as well as Napster. There's sometimes quite a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law and in court it can go either way.
Perhaps Napster makes it too easy to pirate *lots* of music. This is why things like IRC and ftp sites aren't being too heavily sought after. Also, those don't have one big public point of attack. Perhaps there are not enough checks to prevent illegal activities (erm, sounding like Carnivore now).
Whether Napster is in such a category is debatable but I hope we are NOT so stupid as to delude ourselves into thinking that they(Napster) acted responsibly, especially in light of their status as a business.
It's just the Slashdot posters trying to generate 'exciting/intriguing' headlines. Unfortunately, Slashdot is also misleading and innaccurate. Somehow the print media that I've dealt with manages to be humorous or exciting without being misleading. I guess Slashdot's not up to policing their own posters.
So what about the games that are still available for purchase but still get traded illegally?
I can see your point about discontinued games. It almost sounds like fair use (or logical use). But you know that the hottest items on the block will be stuff that's new and expensive.
If there's a better middle of the road way which benefits you while not hurting the companies then I'd be all for it. A silly "you promise not to download illegal ROMs" notice is not going to cut it. I didn't see any method of making sure only legal roms were being traded. Can you enlighten me on this issue?
Re:Random ramblings-REALITY CHECK
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
'We' build more power stations.
I see the point that you are trying to make but the fact is, to use the cliche, 'the genie is out of the bottle'. Computer technology has been unleashed and will never be contained again. Why will it never disappear? Because many humans have a pressing need for efficiency and speed (not to mention warfare/defense).
You look too superficially at computers and fail to see places where, while we could do without, we certainly do NOT want to do without. Bridge building, car manufacturing, power regulation, etc. all are key infrastructure areas that benefit greatly from computer technology.
They also aid us in our curiousities which will never become "uncool". Science and exploration are in the blood of too many people.
I'm not too blinded by anti-Luddite sentiments to see that technology has it's negative sides but taking the Luddite stance is certainly not (imo) a well-grounded choice. I believe the point of the article is largley that technology and technologists are so focussed on where they are going and where technology takes them that they don't look around or take time to partake in the general 'human experience'.
That's what I believe this selfishness refers to. Certainly it's not a rule amongst people but general perception is such.
They seem pretty efficient at making money. iirc they don't use any tax dollars. And frankly, USPS does a heck of a lot better at package delivery than UPS, Fedex gives them a run for it but at exorbitant pricing.
What better place to do stamp collection promotions that the post office? And the convenience of postal money orders is nice.
Come to think of it, I don't have a gripe with the post office except for slow lines.
yup, two of them, both with wheels. One has two real buttons and the other has the additional thumb button. I believe that for both the wheel can act as a 3rd button.
I don't think Apple has much intention of penetrating outside the Mac mouse market. Do you think that one button mice would go over well for other OSes? Think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I own one too and I'd like to add to the other posters comments about the battery. It *would* be nice to have build in rechargables but seeing how my batteries are going to last approximately 6-8 *weeks* between depletion I'm not seeing that as too much of a downer.
The calculator is also far better than the built in Palm calculator (at least on the IIIxe). The visor calculator has nifty modes like scientific and logic.
That said I hope the whole boatload of Palm devices has great success. I'd rather not see 'infighting', rather more one-upmanship.
The lower power part, as I understand it, is the ability to dynamically increase and decrease power requirements as the need arises. *NO* commercial chip offers that kind of feature. That is a truly revolutionary feature. Not even restamping other procs would result in the kind of power consumption that you should be able to get with the Transmeta chips. Currently chips either run at a continuous power level, have multiple steps (Speed Step) or simply go into sleep mode. The ability to throttle back to near nothing is a great energy saver, especially when you consider that most of the time your proc is doing absolutely nothing.
I wholy agree with your point about it basically being a x86 emulator. I'll get excited when it can emulate the PPC chipset effectively. I'm more interested in the Transmeta chips from a 'what's next' point of view. i don't think this first generation of chips will be all that stunning in a price/perfomance area but the next generation or two should prove the technology to be solid, useful, and practical. And in the long run, when Intel and other manufacturers begin reverse engineering these features it'll benefit us all (I hope).
This was one of the key reasons I switched from Linux to FreeBSD. After trying to get things working on Debian, Redhat, and SuSE I tried FreeBSD and haven't looked back.
I remember seeing something about a organization to standardize all the Linux file system layouts etc. but nothing seems to have come of it. Redhat was not a part of it and Slackware falt out refused to abide by any decisions that they made.
It seems to me that Debian has it's act most together but has problems because it there are not standards.
Contrast this with a *BSD OS (and perhaps others) which have a centralized system of source and/or binary (ports/package) installation using trusted files. Download, make, grab and install all dependencies, install, done. And everything is mantained by a group of people who make the latest greatest software buildable and runnable on *BDS. This is, of course, precisely because there is little fracturing in the origanizational structure of the overall OS. A weak point is trying to update a program to a newer version (I've seen ways to do this but it's not exactly simple).
It won't happen untilthe Linux *distro leaders* decide to wake up and compromise on this key area of standardization. I know Linux users love to use the 'multiple choices' argument but at some point you have to start catering to the majority rather than the minority... (yeah yeah, sounds more and more like a commercial OS)
Anyways, I don't mean to slam Linux but it's a key area of weakness. It's ironic that a great strong suit of Linux is also a major headache.
In my opinion the two biggest selling points of the Transmeta chip are it's code morphing and low power consumption. The difference in power is supposed to be on the order of 40 times less than an equivalent Mobile PIII. There was an excellent article in one of the IEEE magazine around May or so. As far as code morphing/architecture support I've only seen support for x86 mentioned.
Many 'experts' believe that Transmeta's future will not be in notebooks but in subnotebooks and the 'web pad' devices. Also consider PDAs. The last WinCE device (Cassiopeia?) I looked at had a nice 200Mhz CPU but also had to be recharged every 14 hours. If Transmeta can offer twice the maximum cpu power and 2-3+ times the operational length and do it cheaply, manufacturers will jump all over them.
Everyone's playing wait and see though. Well, IBM announced a Transmeta laptop a couple months ago but I haven't seen anything about it since.
This will be very interesting in light of Bluetooth's potential and early test runs. If it takes off there will be a literal explosion of new Bluetooth filled gadgets (hardware) but with the need to properly communicate and talk to everyone else (software).
I wonder which markets will benefit most and show most growth? I'm betting on Japan with it's fanatical focus on miniaturization and near over-teching.
One other thing I was interested in was whether it's really just at the consumer level that we experience this wireless 'lag'. After all most of the major players in the production markets (not service markets) have large presence in the US. Something may be made for Europe or Japan but completely dropped in the US for marketing/technical/legal reasons. A decent examples is Japans audio industry: I would say from personal experience that the electronics in Japan are routinely a year or two 'ahead' of whatever crops up in America. Sony, Aiwa, Panasonic, etc. all have large market presence in America but we don't seem to get these gadgets (discman, walkman, steros, mp3 players, etc). Do the marketers think we won't buy them? I guess so.
Anyways, I tihnk the lack of American dominance is not really a bad thing. As the world grows 'closer' through this instant communications having lopsided relationships can become less and less 'acceptable' to others.
I believe part of the problem with the wireless phone market in America is precisely because we have so much competition. For example, in Japan one company (JPhone?) owns over 90% of the market. This translates into simpler 'upgrading' and smoother transisitons and simpler choices for the consumer. Japan is beginning the 3G wireless transition (dsl+ speeds over wireless) which eventaully means video phones becoming reality.
Meanwhile the US and other countries have a proliferation of GSM, CDMA, and other interesting 'standards'. One of the big headaches with phone service is to get proper coverage or compatibilities without having to own 3 or 4 different phones and subscribe to 3 or 4 providers.
(I don't really know what factors that there are in the European market)
Anyways, that's what I have gathered reading about wireless tech and talking to people at places like Ericcson, Altcatel, and Motorola...
One small point I wanted to have clarified. As I understand it the only bugs that are (and should) be reported are bugs in server system software or security software, not every 'bug'. If it was every bug the database for all OSes would be gargantuan.
At least from my personal experince (recent college graduate) this book probably wouldn't have helped at all.
My interviews were at least half behavioral interviews to see how compatible I would be. The other half was technical but almost never at the syntax of a language level. Since I was rarely interviewing for a specific position I wasn't expected to know (nor did I consider trying to learn) every little detail of a language. I would be utterly shocked if companies expected new graduates to be experts in any language.
Anyways, maybe 1 in 10 technical questions was about C or Java or bash, etc. Mostly there were logic puzzles, design steps, and general system problems. What's the key here? They want problem solving skills. You can teach a history major to program (some companies do) but problem solving is a gift that not too many people have. The better and more quickly that you can break a problem apart and come up with a logical, clean, modular solution the more you will impress the interviewers. (Notable exceptions are places like Microsoft and many startups: expect to be *grilled* in the chosen language(s) at those comapnies).
I can't say enough that you should be yourself. In many cases you are interviewing with people who will be your manager or co-workers. To impress them is nice but to be "real" is much more important for your quality of life. If you don't like the people that interview you go elsewhere. You won't like the place.
Always ask what the interviews *dislike* about their company. If they can't say anything reasonable that they don't like they aren't being honest with you. It's not a mark against them unless they give a really whacked response, and it certainly shouldn't be a mark against you.
And I did find myself in the fortunate position of being able to literally take the pick of the litter among the places I applied to.
That's a cool projects page (although rather hideous) but I don't really see where "Redlight = On" teaches you anything about how computers work at the level that the original poster explained. IMO to truly understand that stuff you really need to understand gate logic and circuit design which is an entire semesters course at most colleges. In fact, at my college it was the primary weed out course for CS and engineering students. Personally I think the original poster's level of detail is too low level for most HS students, even many of the geeks.
That said these projects would definitely work in HS for HS kids. With a few thousand dollars you could build one fun tech lab. I would have really gone for this stuff in HS or even MS.
Hehe, sounds like you teacher was very capable. I'm in daily touch with (sometimes painful) software projects that have problems so I felt I had to bring up some of the negatives. The negatives are also the entire reason why software engineering exists in the first place so it needed mentioning.
You're right though: CS wasn't just for programmers/geeks and the project makes more sense in that light. (Been too long since I was in HS =)
This is actually more along the lines of eletrical/computer engineering or embedded systems programming. Mostly I don't think the HS's have the resources to teach all the background needed to fully utilize these sorta of projects (logic, boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, state graphcs, etc).
My HS had some sort of 'advanced technology' center where people got to work with actualy hardware but for the most part CS remains entirely software based. In college I did have to take logic and circuit design but the rest of the courses (including computer architecture) were always dealing with hardware from the software viewpoint.
I would just like to say that you are one of the most fortunate bastards in the world!!! I'm rather jealous. The neatest thing I ever did in HS CS was find a non-recursive way to do Hanoi's Towers and then make that graphical =(
Man that would have been awesome to work on. (real world use, pressure to be accurate, etc)
BTW: If you pick programming contest do *not* choose timed contests. While they are exciting (I participated in quite a few) they don't really _teach_ you anything useful. Pick a contest that has a meaningful goal in mind like creating the neatest shell features, or smallest byte code, or fastest ray-tracer, coolest fractal algorithms, etc. (ingenuity, size optimization, loop optimization, creativity) but don't do the kind of crud like "write a minimal number of coins algorithm given the amount in cents" where the quickest correct ansmwer wins.
Speed programming turns into typing contests when the programmers are good. They learn shortcuts in proramming which is gerenally a bad habit. They also learn not to plan and think things through, etc. I think you get the picture.
You know, part of doing such a project is to limit it in scope to be manageable in the time allotted. My college software engineering course did basically what you mention except we had teams of 5-6 who bid on projects then had to actually deliver (part of the grade). Part of our job was to figure out which project(s) we were best suited and also to define exactly what we were going to do for the project. Almost always this was less than the original grand plan. We had to estimate the resorces we had, the time allotted, the difficulty of the material, our knowledge level, add in a dose of reality (unforseen delays) and come up with a neat project (usually for elementary students).
Now maybe it's not such a big deal in HS but it seems like somebody needs to notice that you guys never got anything done. That means the scope of the project must be scaled down (a real world skill) and project management has to be more efficient. Being a CS course and not a management course it seems to me that it should have focussed more on programming than managment. This *especially* in light of the huge numbers of people applying to colleges when they are not even remotely capable programmers. (In fact most colleges expect you to be a competent programmer by the time you arrive on campus)
I'm not trying to knock the class but as you progress into college and the real world not completing projects means no passing grade or no food on your plate. Granted it is decent practice for *management* activities but you won't usually be doing that for several years. Seems like your teacher was simulating the 'below average' programming project year after year. I hope (s)he pointed out how much programmers underestimate the time it takes to do a project.
I tend to disagree with you there since cdrom.com can set the real world single day download record with a single FreeBSD computer while MS needs to maintain a server farm of dozens of computers to even come close.
So when will I have built in cvs capabilities, a RAD IDE, and built in GIMP-clone module to go along with the nifty browser, instant messager, email, word processor, html editor, news client, spreadsheet all-in-one package?
We just need to put a team in place, scrap all the current StarOffice code, and go at it!
(ok people, I'm being sarcastic)
There is a point at which something is so obviously designed and used for illegal purposes that the tool itself is *for all intents and purposes* considered illegal. For example, a sawed off shotgun is considered by courts to be illegal. I believe automatic weaponry in most (all?) states is illegal (for citizens). Why? Because the danger to the public is considered too great and because they have little redeeming, legal value or use.
Granted most things in this category (bioweapons, rape drugs, nuclear weapons, etc)are because of the potential for human harm, but please re-evaluate what you said about guns as well as Napster. There's sometimes quite a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law and in court it can go either way.
Perhaps Napster makes it too easy to pirate *lots* of music. This is why things like IRC and ftp sites aren't being too heavily sought after. Also, those don't have one big public point of attack. Perhaps there are not enough checks to prevent illegal activities (erm, sounding like Carnivore now).
Whether Napster is in such a category is debatable but I hope we are NOT so stupid as to delude ourselves into thinking that they(Napster) acted responsibly, especially in light of their status as a business.
It's just the Slashdot posters trying to generate 'exciting/intriguing' headlines. Unfortunately, Slashdot is also misleading and innaccurate. Somehow the print media that I've dealt with manages to be humorous or exciting without being misleading. I guess Slashdot's not up to policing their own posters.
What OSes does Motorola make?
So what about the games that are still available for purchase but still get traded illegally?
I can see your point about discontinued games. It almost sounds like fair use (or logical use). But you know that the hottest items on the block will be stuff that's new and expensive.
If there's a better middle of the road way which benefits you while not hurting the companies then I'd be all for it. A silly "you promise not to download illegal ROMs" notice is not going to cut it. I didn't see any method of making sure only legal roms were being traded. Can you enlighten me on this issue?
'We' build more power stations.
I see the point that you are trying to make but the fact is, to use the cliche, 'the genie is out of the bottle'. Computer technology has been unleashed and will never be contained again. Why will it never disappear? Because many humans have a pressing need for efficiency and speed (not to mention warfare/defense).
You look too superficially at computers and fail to see places where, while we could do without, we certainly do NOT want to do without. Bridge building, car manufacturing, power regulation, etc. all are key infrastructure areas that benefit greatly from computer technology.
They also aid us in our curiousities which will never become "uncool". Science and exploration are in the blood of too many people.
I'm not too blinded by anti-Luddite sentiments to see that technology has it's negative sides but taking the Luddite stance is certainly not (imo) a well-grounded choice. I believe the point of the article is largley that technology and technologists are so focussed on where they are going and where technology takes them that they don't look around or take time to partake in the general 'human experience'.
That's what I believe this selfishness refers to. Certainly it's not a rule amongst people but general perception is such.
They seem pretty efficient at making money. iirc they don't use any tax dollars. And frankly, USPS does a heck of a lot better at package delivery than UPS, Fedex gives them a run for it but at exorbitant pricing.
What better place to do stamp collection promotions that the post office? And the convenience of postal money orders is nice.
Come to think of it, I don't have a gripe with the post office except for slow lines.
yup, two of them, both with wheels. One has two real buttons and the other has the additional thumb button. I believe that for both the wheel can act as a 3rd button.
I don't think Apple has much intention of penetrating outside the Mac mouse market. Do you think that one button mice would go over well for other OSes? Think about it.
The mouse buttons sound defective... and if the surface is too consistent or non-reflective the mice can have problems tracking movement as well.