If I saw someone wearing that, I would think they were a total goofball--beyond just geeky, into the realm of "do you realize how freaking silly that looks". Perhaps in 5 years, wearable computing won't be so odd... but right now it would look goofy.
One opening I do see for this, however, is in industry. Just as the Xybernaut (a commercialization of Steve Mann's work in wearable computers, IIRC) is selling to workers who need easy access to computer data without the heft and inconvenience of a separate machine, this will probably sell to people who need it. I could see it replacing the handheld scanners that UPS and FedEx people carry now, or allowing utility workers (telephone, internet, electricity) to run line tests or check things without climbing down from a telephone pole or running back to their van.
No. The way it works is you're allowed to charge $X million dollars for the binaries. Once you purchase the binaries (or acquire them otherwise, AFAIK), the source code must be included, available for free, or available for a reasonable fee to cover distribution.
Those look much better. My only (hopefully constructive) criticism is that there is too much body text; it's hard to get the gist of the ad by just looking at it. Perhaps a few bullet points in larger text?
This is interesting, because when you read about old operating systems that ran on computers with several types of memory--fast magnetic core memory for the active programs, slower rotating-drum memory for less active data, large and slow hard drives, and automatic tape drives--they did exactly this. It makes sense that, given that we have L1 cache, L2 cache, and system RAM, each of which is slower and larger than the next, that we would extend this to hard drives, having a small, fast drive for often-used data and larger, slower hard drives for archived data. This would be the sort of thing I would expect Hans Reiser to want to add to reiser4 (or maybe reiser5)--the ability to span a filesystem across multiple block devices to optimize performance.
Despite the increasing size, DSL is still an awesome tool. It manages to pack almost as much coolness as Knoppix (less cohesive, 'cause it's not all KDE, but most of the functionality is still there in discrete applications) in a much smaller size that is more convenient to download when you need a quick but useful bootable Linux disc.
I think the Freenode community deserves to see a mention of this on freenode.net, and an explanation of the circumstances that led to it. I understand that compromises happen, but knowing how they happened will put a lot of people at ease, and the act of explaining it will make Freenode appear more professional, because they aren't trying to hide their mistakes.
In the middle of this, I would like to remind people that Freenode is an awesome service. It is a gigantic network, and a great facilitator of free software efforts.
All of these motherboard factory tours (there have been a few) are pretty scary. We see the really cool equipment, and get to hear the tests each piece of hardware goes through, and then we hear about how their employees do really repetitive tasks, for low wages, with tough ("military-style"), if not abusive, bosses, in an insulting environment (the "grape system"?! What are they, kindergarteners?!?!). Sure, they're efficient, and the product is relatively cheap, but do we want to support the ways these companies treat their workers, even if it's "okay" with the workers?
Oh. That's stupid, the swipe-based ones are more secure, take less space, are cheaper to build (I would suspect a row of LED's and optical sensors is cheaper than an entire grid of them or a small camera), and look niftier.
Yeah. That's a good excuse, I agree. But my point was that the majority of the population will reject it because it is "creepy" to them, without considering how it actually works or the real risks and rewards.
What someone needs to do is create a smart card with a built-in fingerprint reader and PIN pad, so you can use your own, totally secure device. It will authenticate you using the PIN and fingerprint, and then allow you to cryptographically authenticate to another device (e.g. the payment system at a store). That way, you're in control of it. Sorta like the TPM subsystem on a laptop with a fingerprint reader, but just for authentication/encryption stuff. Better yet, make it PC card (or ExpressCard) -sized and you can use it as a crypto processor and accelerator for your laptop too!
Sure, like the first few comments said, the writeup wasn't that amazing, and there's nothing that special about doing this. But it's still cool, nonetheless. As far as I know, nobody else has done this to a BlackBerry. If I were ever to get a BlackBerry, I would want it to be in a color other than black or navy blue. Perhaps RIM will take a hint and offer a choice of colors. (But all the corportate IT depts will buy the black ones, saying it's cheaper and easier to get the default color.)
Let's face it... biometric authentication/payment is really cool. As long as I can be sure the cryptographic basis of it is secure (i.e., that my fingerprint can't be recreated from it), I would be comfortable using it. But you know, most of the world is stupid and doesn't understand this kind of stuff, or has stupid opinions about it, and will be afraid of it. I understand that people are afraid about invasion of privacy and identity theft, but the issue should be "Are we sure that company $X's implementation will preserve our privacy?", not "Aaaaaaaah, fingerprint scanning will get your identity stolen!" or, worse, "Religion $Y says that biometrics are evil!" even though biometrics didn't exist back then, and nobody could have envisioned them.
You know, Google ads are the only ads I look at any more. (Hell, I run them on my own site!) They are short, not ugly (because Google cares about the viewer's experience), and quite often very pertinent to the content. I have to try really hard not to puke when I log in to something like Yahoo! Mail! and I see flashing banner ads for "Get your Credit Rating" or "Cheap Mortgages" or "Warning: Your system is broadcasting an IP address! Ph33rz0r teh RFC!". They are the most useless ads ever. The only reason I think they might survive is if the ad networks charge per impression, not per click--because almost nobody would click on them!
/me did accidentally recommend a G5 to his dad. Sure, it was faster than our 500 MHz, Pentium III, but (since it was single-CPU, not dual) it was nothing like Steve said it would be. It wasn't blazingly fast, it was a little laggy. (Although the startup time started off fast--it's slowed down over time--and the shutdown time has always been fast. That's one good part.) And it cost $2500. I could have recommended a much faster Dell for $2500, but I didn't want to maintain a Windows box, and I wasn't comfortable enough with my own Linux skills to try to get them to use Linux.
It's much easier and cheaper to just get up and move around than it is to get a really expensive chair. I assume you have a laptop, so move around with it. Sit at the desk for a while, sit on the couch, sit on a bed, go outside and sit on the front steps (if it's not raining), etc.... Your day will be less monotonous if you're not staring at the same desk and wall the whole time, too.
It has Mac OS X. For me, that puts it high enough above everything else.
Why? I'm much happier with Linux... the directory names are easier to type, the GNU command-line utilities beat the crap out of the BSD versions most of the time, there's much more software available, features that should be free (virtual desktops, for example) are free, and so on. Why do you like Mac OS X? (Seriously... I'm curious.)
As a Slashdot user (who knows nothing about liquid cooling), it seems to me like the way to ensure each component gets adequate cooling is to have a big, shared radiator and a smaller, separate pump for each component. That way they are each ensured their own coolant flow. The downside, of course, is that you need three pumps, which will cost more and make more noise.
Ballmer doesn't let his kids use Google or iPods. I don't find it so farfetched that Microsoft might have at least a slight bias towards wanting their employees to use their own products, both as a matter of company pride and as a matter of "dog food"--the more people in the company who use a product, the more bugs get squashed before the product gets released.
If, as Microsoft says, Windows offers cheaper TCO, more efficiency, less maintenance, and fewer baby kittens eaten than Linux... why can't they use Windows for their wireless network? Sure, I don't expect them to put a full installation of Windows on it, but the basic OS (and Media Player, of course;-) could be separated out and set up in a stripped-down configuration that just does routing.
This is funny. I want M$ to come out with their own distribution of Linux. One of three things will happen: 1. They will fail miserably. Yay, I get to laugh. 2. They will eat Linux. Not likely. We'd fight back. 3. They will help Linux. Yay, we get more features.
This is really great to see progress on the open format front, even if it isn't in the US. The Massachusetts thing is such a farce... first they say they'll do it, then vendors make them question it, then who knows... I saw an article in the Boston Globe about Microsoft donating $30M "worth" of "advanced software-writing and Web-building technology" software to Massachusetts public high schools and colleges. While it's nice to get free stuff, we can easily see that Microsoft is doing that to keep schools from adopting open solutions. Why try GNU/Linux + the GNU dev tools for development, or Nvu for web site creation, when Microsoft gave us Visual Studio and (gulp) Frontpage for free? It's a good argument, too! I don't know who can do it, but someone needs to sit down and realize that accepting $30M of donated software is really allowing M$ to bypass a real evaluation of the best software for the school's needs, and gaining them favor in future business dealings. If the whole school has Visual Studio for free, of course they'll buy upgrades, especially if M$ throws in another discount! And for M$,it's just pure cash.
/me admits that maybe his chip was old. But in any other industry, if the product is obsolete, or just older, and isn't competitive with the current products, the price drops. It should have cost less since it doesn't perform as well.
My position on Net Neutrality is very simple. If someone provides Internet service to me, they are providing the service of routing my Internet packets to and from the Internet. Nothing else. If they have email service, or Usenet, or VoIP, it is on the Internet, and should be treated like any other Internet host. Nobody gets special treatment.
It's not fair to Internet-based companies to allow network providers to charge both consumers and producers when only the consumers have an account with them. Take the telephone system as an analogy. Similarly, it's been subsidized by the government, and is almost ubiquitous. When I make a long-distance call, it's charged at the same rate once it's outside a certain area. The person receiving the call doesn't get charged (because the caller paid for the call, and the recipient already pays for the physical connection). If network neutrality didn't exist, it would be like allowing each switching office that my call goes through to charge another fee, or rather if the phone company charged large companies to receive calls from consumers, even though the large company has already paid for phone service. The company may have to pay more for a high-volume connection, just as an Internet company pays more for a bigger pipe, and they might have to pay per-minute, just as many larger connections charge per byte, but once the connection is paid for, it's paid for.
You know what would be really cool? A laptop where the entire wrist rest portion of the case could be used as a large speaker. When you were watching a movie, you wouldn't be typing, so the speakers could move freely. Either that or a way to fit a subwoofer into a laptop. It's been done, but like you said, it's all about available space.
If you're right, then I'm not surprised. The article seemed to put too much of an fluffy, AI, cognitive spin on it, when it's impractical for a consumer toy to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
If I saw someone wearing that, I would think they were a total goofball--beyond just geeky, into the realm of "do you realize how freaking silly that looks". Perhaps in 5 years, wearable computing won't be so odd... but right now it would look goofy.
One opening I do see for this, however, is in industry. Just as the Xybernaut (a commercialization of Steve Mann's work in wearable computers, IIRC) is selling to workers who need easy access to computer data without the heft and inconvenience of a separate machine, this will probably sell to people who need it. I could see it replacing the handheld scanners that UPS and FedEx people carry now, or allowing utility workers (telephone, internet, electricity) to run line tests or check things without climbing down from a telephone pole or running back to their van.
No. The way it works is you're allowed to charge $X million dollars for the binaries. Once you purchase the binaries (or acquire them otherwise, AFAIK), the source code must be included, available for free, or available for a reasonable fee to cover distribution.
Those look much better. My only (hopefully constructive) criticism is that there is too much body text; it's hard to get the gist of the ad by just looking at it. Perhaps a few bullet points in larger text?
This is interesting, because when you read about old operating systems that ran on computers with several types of memory--fast magnetic core memory for the active programs, slower rotating-drum memory for less active data, large and slow hard drives, and automatic tape drives--they did exactly this. It makes sense that, given that we have L1 cache, L2 cache, and system RAM, each of which is slower and larger than the next, that we would extend this to hard drives, having a small, fast drive for often-used data and larger, slower hard drives for archived data. This would be the sort of thing I would expect Hans Reiser to want to add to reiser4 (or maybe reiser5)--the ability to span a filesystem across multiple block devices to optimize performance.
Sylpheed is pretty nice. Back when I used GNOME, I tried it as my email client. Really nice, great performance on large folders. (Now I use mutt.)
Despite the increasing size, DSL is still an awesome tool. It manages to pack almost as much coolness as Knoppix (less cohesive, 'cause it's not all KDE, but most of the functionality is still there in discrete applications) in a much smaller size that is more convenient to download when you need a quick but useful bootable Linux disc.
Kudos to the developers, keep up the good work!
I think the Freenode community deserves to see a mention of this on freenode.net, and an explanation of the circumstances that led to it. I understand that compromises happen, but knowing how they happened will put a lot of people at ease, and the act of explaining it will make Freenode appear more professional, because they aren't trying to hide their mistakes.
In the middle of this, I would like to remind people that Freenode is an awesome service. It is a gigantic network, and a great facilitator of free software efforts.
All of these motherboard factory tours (there have been a few) are pretty scary. We see the really cool equipment, and get to hear the tests each piece of hardware goes through, and then we hear about how their employees do really repetitive tasks, for low wages, with tough ("military-style"), if not abusive, bosses, in an insulting environment (the "grape system"?! What are they, kindergarteners?!?!). Sure, they're efficient, and the product is relatively cheap, but do we want to support the ways these companies treat their workers, even if it's "okay" with the workers?
Oh. That's stupid, the swipe-based ones are more secure, take less space, are cheaper to build (I would suspect a row of LED's and optical sensors is cheaper than an entire grid of them or a small camera), and look niftier.
Yeah. That's a good excuse, I agree. But my point was that the majority of the population will reject it because it is "creepy" to them, without considering how it actually works or the real risks and rewards.
What someone needs to do is create a smart card with a built-in fingerprint reader and PIN pad, so you can use your own, totally secure device. It will authenticate you using the PIN and fingerprint, and then allow you to cryptographically authenticate to another device (e.g. the payment system at a store). That way, you're in control of it. Sorta like the TPM subsystem on a laptop with a fingerprint reader, but just for authentication/encryption stuff. Better yet, make it PC card (or ExpressCard) -sized and you can use it as a crypto processor and accelerator for your laptop too!
Sure, like the first few comments said, the writeup wasn't that amazing, and there's nothing that special about doing this. But it's still cool, nonetheless. As far as I know, nobody else has done this to a BlackBerry. If I were ever to get a BlackBerry, I would want it to be in a color other than black or navy blue. Perhaps RIM will take a hint and offer a choice of colors. (But all the corportate IT depts will buy the black ones, saying it's cheaper and easier to get the default color.)
Let's face it... biometric authentication/payment is really cool. As long as I can be sure the cryptographic basis of it is secure (i.e., that my fingerprint can't be recreated from it), I would be comfortable using it. But you know, most of the world is stupid and doesn't understand this kind of stuff, or has stupid opinions about it, and will be afraid of it. I understand that people are afraid about invasion of privacy and identity theft, but the issue should be "Are we sure that company $X's implementation will preserve our privacy?", not "Aaaaaaaah, fingerprint scanning will get your identity stolen!" or, worse, "Religion $Y says that biometrics are evil!" even though biometrics didn't exist back then, and nobody could have envisioned them.
You know, Google ads are the only ads I look at any more. (Hell, I run them on my own site!) They are short, not ugly (because Google cares about the viewer's experience), and quite often very pertinent to the content. I have to try really hard not to puke when I log in to something like Yahoo! Mail! and I see flashing banner ads for "Get your Credit Rating" or "Cheap Mortgages" or "Warning: Your system is broadcasting an IP address! Ph33rz0r teh RFC!". They are the most useless ads ever. The only reason I think they might survive is if the ad networks charge per impression, not per click--because almost nobody would click on them!
/me did accidentally recommend a G5 to his dad. Sure, it was faster than our 500 MHz, Pentium III, but (since it was single-CPU, not dual) it was nothing like Steve said it would be. It wasn't blazingly fast, it was a little laggy. (Although the startup time started off fast--it's slowed down over time--and the shutdown time has always been fast. That's one good part.) And it cost $2500. I could have recommended a much faster Dell for $2500, but I didn't want to maintain a Windows box, and I wasn't comfortable enough with my own Linux skills to try to get them to use Linux.
Others have said it, I'll say it again...
It's much easier and cheaper to just get up and move around than it is to get a really expensive chair. I assume you have a laptop, so move around with it. Sit at the desk for a while, sit on the couch, sit on a bed, go outside and sit on the front steps (if it's not raining), etc.... Your day will be less monotonous if you're not staring at the same desk and wall the whole time, too.
Why? I'm much happier with Linux... the directory names are easier to type, the GNU command-line utilities beat the crap out of the BSD versions most of the time, there's much more software available, features that should be free (virtual desktops, for example) are free, and so on. Why do you like Mac OS X? (Seriously... I'm curious.)
As a Slashdot user (who knows nothing about liquid cooling), it seems to me like the way to ensure each component gets adequate cooling is to have a big, shared radiator and a smaller, separate pump for each component. That way they are each ensured their own coolant flow. The downside, of course, is that you need three pumps, which will cost more and make more noise.
Just my $0.02.
As a Slashdot user
Just my $0.02.
Ballmer doesn't let his kids use Google or iPods. I don't find it so farfetched that Microsoft might have at least a slight bias towards wanting their employees to use their own products, both as a matter of company pride and as a matter of "dog food"--the more people in the company who use a product, the more bugs get squashed before the product gets released.
If, as Microsoft says, Windows offers cheaper TCO, more efficiency, less maintenance, and fewer baby kittens eaten than Linux... why can't they use Windows for their wireless network? Sure, I don't expect them to put a full installation of Windows on it, but the basic OS (and Media Player, of course ;-) could be separated out and set up in a stripped-down configuration that just does routing.
This is funny. I want M$ to come out with their own distribution of Linux. One of three things will happen: 1. They will fail miserably. Yay, I get to laugh. 2. They will eat Linux. Not likely. We'd fight back. 3. They will help Linux. Yay, we get more features.
This is really great to see progress on the open format front, even if it isn't in the US. The Massachusetts thing is such a farce... first they say they'll do it, then vendors make them question it, then who knows... I saw an article in the Boston Globe about Microsoft donating $30M "worth" of "advanced software-writing and Web-building technology" software to Massachusetts public high schools and colleges. While it's nice to get free stuff, we can easily see that Microsoft is doing that to keep schools from adopting open solutions. Why try GNU/Linux + the GNU dev tools for development, or Nvu for web site creation, when Microsoft gave us Visual Studio and (gulp) Frontpage for free? It's a good argument, too! I don't know who can do it, but someone needs to sit down and realize that accepting $30M of donated software is really allowing M$ to bypass a real evaluation of the best software for the school's needs, and gaining them favor in future business dealings. If the whole school has Visual Studio for free, of course they'll buy upgrades, especially if M$ throws in another discount! And for M$,it's just pure cash.
/me admits that maybe his chip was old. But in any other industry, if the product is obsolete, or just older, and isn't competitive with the current products, the price drops. It should have cost less since it doesn't perform as well.
My position on Net Neutrality is very simple. If someone provides Internet service to me, they are providing the service of routing my Internet packets to and from the Internet. Nothing else. If they have email service, or Usenet, or VoIP, it is on the Internet, and should be treated like any other Internet host. Nobody gets special treatment.
It's not fair to Internet-based companies to allow network providers to charge both consumers and producers when only the consumers have an account with them. Take the telephone system as an analogy. Similarly, it's been subsidized by the government, and is almost ubiquitous. When I make a long-distance call, it's charged at the same rate once it's outside a certain area. The person receiving the call doesn't get charged (because the caller paid for the call, and the recipient already pays for the physical connection). If network neutrality didn't exist, it would be like allowing each switching office that my call goes through to charge another fee, or rather if the phone company charged large companies to receive calls from consumers, even though the large company has already paid for phone service. The company may have to pay more for a high-volume connection, just as an Internet company pays more for a bigger pipe, and they might have to pay per-minute, just as many larger connections charge per byte, but once the connection is paid for, it's paid for.
You know what would be really cool? A laptop where the entire wrist rest portion of the case could be used as a large speaker. When you were watching a movie, you wouldn't be typing, so the speakers could move freely. Either that or a way to fit a subwoofer into a laptop. It's been done, but like you said, it's all about available space.
If you're right, then I'm not surprised. The article seemed to put too much of an fluffy, AI, cognitive spin on it, when it's impractical for a consumer toy to do that.