Post offices in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh will take a customer's handwritten letter and computer scan it. Then the letter can be e-mailed to remote, high-altitude post-offices in this Himalayan region.
Hrmmm...this technology sounds intriguing. I propose that we name it "fax" (just an arbitrary name that came to my head).
...only component individuals who act in their own self-interest according to their environment and status.
Never worked for a financial company, have you? Matters like this are anticipated occurrences, and as such the risk (of an employee doing something really dumb, which many people are prone to doing) is ameliorated by a set policy and process for such a case. This idea that each employee of a bank is a rogue entity operating on their own best judgement is pretty foolhardy.
so I think CNet's right when they say it's not just for the money savings
Uh...the article clearly states that the impetus for the switch was that the content budget for the site was slashed in half. In any case it's always interesting that when countering claims of inferiority, people counter by claiming superiority -- the Indian authors aren't producing as good of content for the same price...no, instead they're producing "better content" for the same price. I call bullshit. Just as there are close to no Indian based tech denizens, there are virtually no home grown Indian software applications (instead it's virtually all carefully mapped out and pre-designed paint-by-numbers contract work).
When countries stick to what they do best, they benefit more.
I guess it's the definition of "best" that is in question. China is a major center for the manufacture of electronics and plastic goods because of limited/non-existent environmental regulations, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper just dumping it in the river than dealing with massive environmental containment systems and inevitable lawsuits in the West. India is becoming a major software center because they have some billion odd people, and a cost of living that is so low that you can get people for next to nothing. In either case they aren't the "best" at doing something, but world economics dictate that they're the cheapest. It's picking at nits, but it's a pretty major difference.
Let's be realistic about this news item -- basically the editor of a failing website got a dictum that he needs to slash the content budget (because the business model was a failure). In such a case one's options are very limited, and basically include significantly reducing the amount of content, or finding cheaper labour. He chose the latter. The alternative of those options was basically to fold the failure which obviously wouldn't help anyone's jobs out.
Personally I find this whole offshoring paranoia (it's a paranoia because it's a short term trend - already there has been a huge equalization, with savings now being quoted in the 30-50% range. Just a few short years ago the savings were quote at between 90-95%) in these parts fascinating -- I remember having a frank discussion with a Slashdot/Linux enthusiast peer probably 4 years ago, at which point he assured me that in a few short years all software would be open source, and there would be very few professional programmers left (yes of course there'd still be a few, but the idea was that there is such overlapped effort in the industry because of closed source, that the shared effort would dramatically reduce the gross number of man hours), and we'd all be consultants and support. How fascinating to see what is largely the same group of people advocating this utopian world so up in arms about Indians taking software jobs that aren't even supposed to exist anymore.
Both India and China artificial undermine their currency to ensure that their products undercut the West. This has been a very quiet issue, but the US has been raising some serious objections to this as of late.
if you want to send your data encrypted, you don't use zip, winzip, or whatever you call it; you can use some real encryption for the stuff
His point wasn't about the relative strengths of encryption algorithms (everyone knows that the legacy zip encryption format is a joke, though AES is in WinZip 9), but rather that there is an escalation between the virus writers. I get my email through a virus checking server, so I was surprized when I saw the obvious virus make it through, and then saw that the were resorting to "encryption" to beat standard binary virus checks. They could just as easily be using ROT-13, but it's probably easier for the average virus target that'll double click the attachment and just punch the numbers into WinZip.
3-4 spam messages a day are not going to affect my productivity, they are more like 'funny examples' of what has got through the bayesian filter
You're like the anti-immunization whackos that talk up about how unnecessary vaccines are -- I mean they aren't coming down with polio! The reason, of course, is that the general population is protecting them. In your case the general population makes limited use of filters, so thus far the spammers have only moderately upped the ante. However Outlook 2003, for instance, has vastly improved spam detection (indeed it's quite impressive), so you can fully expect the spammers to start going full throttle to overcome spam filters. Would it be difficult? Of course it wouldn't? Hell, the easiest thing would be contextual spam masking: Remember the context that each email address was harvested from, and embed the message with information from that source (for example Linux related things for Slashdot harvested emails).
Oracle will beat a SQL Server hands down in any scenario unless it is a small database system
It's intriguing how the open source community gets the "big brother" syndrome, and because the big OSS products aren't contenders in the big leagues, they latch onto Oracle as the "not Microsoft" option. Oracle is a great DBMS, but if you think that SQL Server doesn't give it a serious run for it's money then you're delusional. Especially telling was your comment "especially on small databases", when one of the strengths of SQL Server is very large scale databases....if that's the case there's no point using SQL Server, you can use MSDE or any freeware product
Even if it's a small database, you still have to develop and maintain it, as well as assure security of the database system. Tossing off the "or any freeware product" is pretty lame advice. Conversely, it might trouble you to know that MSDE is SQL Server (or are you just talking from a "retail cost" perspective?). Yes, it's a real bonafide instance of SQL Server running on your machine with a couple of registry settings to enable a speed governor.
SQL Server 2k has lots of missing features which makes our life very hard and I'm not a fan but at the moment
Companies have been pushing back to M$ for years to slow down their release cycle, build a more secure, more stable product. And now people are complaing that they are doing just that? They can't have it both ways.
Errr...have you ever thought that maybe those are two separate sets of people?
Yes, because if Microsoft cut off HP, customers would just suck it up and start using Mandrake the next time they wanted a new PC, right?
More realistically HP PC sales would fall through the floor as people would just deal with other vendors and save themselves the trouble. To most consumers an HP box is a box just like any -- generally an interchangable commodity part. Claiming that HP holds the power position in such a scenario seems dubious.
Of course this is a silly academic exercise anyways. Microsoft was barred, via the whole antitrust thing, from performing such retaliatory practices. Microsoft doesn't have the option to, as you claim, "cut off their own balls".
The keyword is "graceful degradation". Take away the elements that contribute to the "wow factor" for the power user but the low-power user won't really miss.
Of course there's a flipside to this -- people with low-end machines invariably crank up all of the settings and then complain when it runs at 5fps (this happens all the time with current games, many of which do have detail sliders setting various levels of detail. Some games, like Operation Flashpoint, let you set a desired framerate and it varies the geometry complexity to try to maintain it). Alternately if the visuals are totally automatic people will complain that it looks like crap on their machine but looks great on someone else's machine.
There are plenty of functional computer systems that you can buy at the local used shop for next to nothing. Why are people bothering to upgrade to the latest and greatest, often every two years and often at over $1000 expense?
The reason, of course, is because they want more "features", even if the feature is the ability to run modern software quickly. I don't need any nonsensical, factless replies concerning how it's only because of bloat, blah blah blah -- we're now tossing around 10MB image files like nothing, dealing with incredibly complex web pages, while running streaming CD quality audio in the background.
I recently bought a laptop with a a 60 gig disk, 512 MB ram, Athlon 2400+, 54g wireless, and other goodies... but also WinXP... for $1k. Could I have gotten a comparable machine without Windows for, say, ~$950, or even $1k? Not that I could find.
Let me guess -- eMachine 5312? I have one on my lap right now...great little machine.
However, the general armchair economics that "a laptop minus Windows would be cheaper" seems to be based on some pretty vapid foundations. If this is the case, where are all of the non-Windows laptops? There are few because competitively it would likely be more expensive to make them:
-Ensure that any hardware is supported by whatever OS the customer might want.
-Try to support any customer installing whatever they want.
-Try to market and sell a OS-less laptop (something that a tremendously small percentage of the population wants)
Instantly you've spent a tremendous amount "saving money" on Windows.
This is just a sign that Wall Street is waking up to the fact that Windows isn't worth the money they've been spending.
The real assessment is much more sobering to those of us in the software industry -- this is just another bit of proof that the general perception nowadays is that software should be free, or damn close to free. No one groans about $600 for an LCD monitor, $200 for a hard drive, or $250 for a new video card every two years, but $45 for tens of millions of lines of code that is the single most important element of the PC (how great is that PC minus software)? Whoa, that's just unacceptable!
Consider this a win if you're blinded by your anti-Microsoft rage, but the reality is that this is yet another step towards the caveman mentality that only physical objects that you can hold in your hands have value. Of course I realize that's the going philisophical argument in these parts, so I'm preaching to the wrong crowd.
Did I say loser? Actually my original specific issue was the belief that the Oscars are of such incredible importance that the accomplishment of LOTR is somehow secondary unless it's acknowledged by this, to reuse the word, fickle group.
If you'd like to use a sports analogy, Peter Jackson had already hit the home run, got a field goal, ran the most yards, got a hat trick, and pitched a perfect game. The oscar is like someone, seeing that there's a hubub, running out and giving him a little trophy for it.
Although I do find it interesting how people set aside any desire for personal accomplishment, and instead live vicariously through sports teams.
Oh, thank you for blessing us trolls good karma whore.
If you don't agree with me, then Ask Peter jackson himself is it makes a difference to him or not.
This might be a bit confusing and upsetting, but you're not Peter Jackson. You're not an actor in the movie. You didn't write the script. You didn't compose the soundtrack.
Criticizing someone for liking something? Crawl out of the dungeon, morlock, because "liking" Lord of the Rings doesn't mean that you sit with bated breath, pants around your ankles, desperately hoping that the notoriously fickle academy hands a statue to the Lord of the Rings. "Oh, thank you world! All of my likes have been validated! Now that my favourite movie won an Oscar, and my Britney album got that Grammy, my life is complete!".
Anyways, thanks for the reply 2674. That karma whore sheep-herding really was a thrill.
You were waiting with bated breath? Is your life complete now? Can you extinguish your mortal coil knowing that all is right in the universe?
It hardly matters whether Peter Jackson gets the award or not -- the movies are the rewards of the quest for perfection, and things like rewards or financial success are secondary.
IBM and Microsoft were both working on an advanced, 32-bit operating system, but soon found working together intolerable and split ways. Out of the rubble IBM hacked together OS/2, and Microsoft went on and developed NT.
As to another classic bit of nonsense (mentioned in another reply), NT isn't based upon "VMS" code -- the oft claimed correlation is because a primary designer of NT earned fame and fortune as an architect of VMS. Invariably he will have brought over what worked, while discarding what didn't.
What they said isn't true. All goods are clearly marked with their country of origin, but the thing is that most consumers quite simply don't care, or when they do they ultimately care even more about getting the lowest price. Walmart has, in a few short years, taken over the retailing landscape of the US (and many other nations) basically by huge scale "offshoring", and it's amazing how quickly each new store has full parking lots.
Personally I don't think Walmart is evil because they sell a lot of goods made overseas. Personally I think they're evil because they only deal with the absolutely hugest suppliers that can supply the entire network. This totally cuts out small, regional suppliers, and upsets capitalism. i.e. If a small textile maker has a great business supplying local businesses with shirts, and consumers shop at those local businesses, everything is great. When Walmart moves into town, and invariably the sheep all flock to it under the perception of great value, that local textile maker is complete cut out of the market. Instead of a complex, capitalist heterogenous market you end up with a homogenous megamarket that excludes non-monopolies.
Many Americans believe the clothing purchased in U.S. Wal-Mart stores is manufactured in America
I find this very difficult to believe, and I'd find it more credible if it were supported by some sort of factual statistic rather than the largely meaningless "many". I mean, it really isn't that difficult to look at the tags (which are accurate). I think a fairer statement is "Most Americans don't work in textiles, so they care more that their new bath robe is less expensive at WalMart than it is at Robetectionism".
Hypocritically, Wal-Mart ran a "Buy American" and "Buy Mexican" marketing campaigns simultaneously
How is this hypocritical? In Mexico it caters to the Mexican sense of protectionism, while in the US it caters to the US sense of protectionism. I don't think a "Buy American" campaign would go over as well in a foreign Walmart.
I'm too lazy to look up the link, but on the Bell site a coupl e of weeks ago I saw a link to a "trial service" where you could find out where any phone on your personal or family plan was at a any time (paying a small fee per use). This was based upon traditional phones, and used triangulation (which of course is "short range GPS"). I was amazed at the privacy connotations of that.
Speaking of GPS, I think it is a vastly oversold technology -- my experience has been that you need clear, or close to clear, line of site to 3 or more satellites, each of which are sending an extremely low level radio ping -- if a cell phone has GPS, it would basically be useful if you're standing outside in the middle of a forest, but if you're in practical places like in a garage, or a mall, or downstairs in your home, it won't know where you are at all.
Speaking of oversold technology, how about Intel and those Centrino ads? The latest brutal misadvertisement shows them booting up a Centrino laptop and "networking anywhere" on Everest, or some other large mountain. The implication is that with a Centrino laptop, you just need to pop it open and wirelessly network -- no WAP within short range, itself with a real connection to the internet. Nope, just turn her on.
Uh...thanks for pointing out the intentional hypocrisy -- maybe there was a monkey reading for whom that wasn't clear. Whoops, sorry goes out to all the monkeys out there.
Interesting. Especially telling that you proclaimed that it's good that new arrivals no longer "Americanize" their names -- presuming there was this American race that you speak of, it's fascinating that its names are second rate and unworthy.
Slashdot Mirror
Post offices in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh will take a customer's handwritten letter and computer scan it. Then the letter can be e-mailed to remote, high-altitude post-offices in this Himalayan region.
Hrmmm...this technology sounds intriguing. I propose that we name it "fax" (just an arbitrary name that came to my head).
...only component individuals who act in their own self-interest according to their environment and status.
Never worked for a financial company, have you? Matters like this are anticipated occurrences, and as such the risk (of an employee doing something really dumb, which many people are prone to doing) is ameliorated by a set policy and process for such a case. This idea that each employee of a bank is a rogue entity operating on their own best judgement is pretty foolhardy.
so I think CNet's right when they say it's not just for the money savings
Uh...the article clearly states that the impetus for the switch was that the content budget for the site was slashed in half. In any case it's always interesting that when countering claims of inferiority, people counter by claiming superiority -- the Indian authors aren't producing as good of content for the same price...no, instead they're producing "better content" for the same price. I call bullshit. Just as there are close to no Indian based tech denizens, there are virtually no home grown Indian software applications (instead it's virtually all carefully mapped out and pre-designed paint-by-numbers contract work).
When countries stick to what they do best, they benefit more.
I guess it's the definition of "best" that is in question. China is a major center for the manufacture of electronics and plastic goods because of limited/non-existent environmental regulations, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper just dumping it in the river than dealing with massive environmental containment systems and inevitable lawsuits in the West. India is becoming a major software center because they have some billion odd people, and a cost of living that is so low that you can get people for next to nothing. In either case they aren't the "best" at doing something, but world economics dictate that they're the cheapest. It's picking at nits, but it's a pretty major difference.
Let's be realistic about this news item -- basically the editor of a failing website got a dictum that he needs to slash the content budget (because the business model was a failure). In such a case one's options are very limited, and basically include significantly reducing the amount of content, or finding cheaper labour. He chose the latter. The alternative of those options was basically to fold the failure which obviously wouldn't help anyone's jobs out.
Personally I find this whole offshoring paranoia (it's a paranoia because it's a short term trend - already there has been a huge equalization, with savings now being quoted in the 30-50% range. Just a few short years ago the savings were quote at between 90-95%) in these parts fascinating -- I remember having a frank discussion with a Slashdot/Linux enthusiast peer probably 4 years ago, at which point he assured me that in a few short years all software would be open source, and there would be very few professional programmers left (yes of course there'd still be a few, but the idea was that there is such overlapped effort in the industry because of closed source, that the shared effort would dramatically reduce the gross number of man hours), and we'd all be consultants and support. How fascinating to see what is largely the same group of people advocating this utopian world so up in arms about Indians taking software jobs that aren't even supposed to exist anymore.
Both India and China artificial undermine their currency to ensure that their products undercut the West. This has been a very quiet issue, but the US has been raising some serious objections to this as of late.
if you want to send your data encrypted, you don't use zip, winzip, or whatever you call it; you can use some real encryption for the stuff
His point wasn't about the relative strengths of encryption algorithms (everyone knows that the legacy zip encryption format is a joke, though AES is in WinZip 9), but rather that there is an escalation between the virus writers. I get my email through a virus checking server, so I was surprized when I saw the obvious virus make it through, and then saw that the were resorting to "encryption" to beat standard binary virus checks. They could just as easily be using ROT-13, but it's probably easier for the average virus target that'll double click the attachment and just punch the numbers into WinZip.
3-4 spam messages a day are not going to affect my productivity, they are more like 'funny examples' of what has got through the bayesian filter
You're like the anti-immunization whackos that talk up about how unnecessary vaccines are -- I mean they aren't coming down with polio! The reason, of course, is that the general population is protecting them. In your case the general population makes limited use of filters, so thus far the spammers have only moderately upped the ante. However Outlook 2003, for instance, has vastly improved spam detection (indeed it's quite impressive), so you can fully expect the spammers to start going full throttle to overcome spam filters. Would it be difficult? Of course it wouldn't? Hell, the easiest thing would be contextual spam masking: Remember the context that each email address was harvested from, and embed the message with information from that source (for example Linux related things for Slashdot harvested emails).
Oracle will beat a SQL Server hands down in any scenario unless it is a small database system
...if that's the case there's no point using SQL Server, you can use MSDE or any freeware product
It's intriguing how the open source community gets the "big brother" syndrome, and because the big OSS products aren't contenders in the big leagues, they latch onto Oracle as the "not Microsoft" option. Oracle is a great DBMS, but if you think that SQL Server doesn't give it a serious run for it's money then you're delusional. Especially telling was your comment "especially on small databases", when one of the strengths of SQL Server is very large scale databases.
Even if it's a small database, you still have to develop and maintain it, as well as assure security of the database system. Tossing off the "or any freeware product" is pretty lame advice. Conversely, it might trouble you to know that MSDE is SQL Server (or are you just talking from a "retail cost" perspective?). Yes, it's a real bonafide instance of SQL Server running on your machine with a couple of registry settings to enable a speed governor.
SQL Server 2k has lots of missing features which makes our life very hard and I'm not a fan but at the moment
Which features would those be?
Companies have been pushing back to M$ for years to slow down their release cycle, build a more secure, more stable product. And now people are complaing that they are doing just that? They can't have it both ways.
Errr...have you ever thought that maybe those are two separate sets of people?
Yes, because if Microsoft cut off HP, customers would just suck it up and start using Mandrake the next time they wanted a new PC, right?
More realistically HP PC sales would fall through the floor as people would just deal with other vendors and save themselves the trouble. To most consumers an HP box is a box just like any -- generally an interchangable commodity part. Claiming that HP holds the power position in such a scenario seems dubious.
Of course this is a silly academic exercise anyways. Microsoft was barred, via the whole antitrust thing, from performing such retaliatory practices. Microsoft doesn't have the option to, as you claim, "cut off their own balls".
The keyword is "graceful degradation". Take away the elements that contribute to the "wow factor" for the power user but the low-power user won't really miss.
Of course there's a flipside to this -- people with low-end machines invariably crank up all of the settings and then complain when it runs at 5fps (this happens all the time with current games, many of which do have detail sliders setting various levels of detail. Some games, like Operation Flashpoint, let you set a desired framerate and it varies the geometry complexity to try to maintain it). Alternately if the visuals are totally automatic people will complain that it looks like crap on their machine but looks great on someone else's machine.
How great is that PC without RAM, or a hard disk?
There are plenty of functional computer systems that you can buy at the local used shop for next to nothing. Why are people bothering to upgrade to the latest and greatest, often every two years and often at over $1000 expense?
The reason, of course, is because they want more "features", even if the feature is the ability to run modern software quickly. I don't need any nonsensical, factless replies concerning how it's only because of bloat, blah blah blah -- we're now tossing around 10MB image files like nothing, dealing with incredibly complex web pages, while running streaming CD quality audio in the background.
I recently bought a laptop with a a 60 gig disk, 512 MB ram, Athlon 2400+, 54g wireless, and other goodies... but also WinXP... for $1k. Could I have gotten a comparable machine without Windows for, say, ~$950, or even $1k? Not that I could find.
Let me guess -- eMachine 5312? I have one on my lap right now...great little machine.
However, the general armchair economics that "a laptop minus Windows would be cheaper" seems to be based on some pretty vapid foundations. If this is the case, where are all of the non-Windows laptops? There are few because competitively it would likely be more expensive to make them:
-Ensure that any hardware is supported by whatever OS the customer might want.
-Try to support any customer installing whatever they want.
-Try to market and sell a OS-less laptop (something that a tremendously small percentage of the population wants)
Instantly you've spent a tremendous amount "saving money" on Windows.
This is just a sign that Wall Street is waking up to the fact that Windows isn't worth the money they've been spending.
The real assessment is much more sobering to those of us in the software industry -- this is just another bit of proof that the general perception nowadays is that software should be free, or damn close to free. No one groans about $600 for an LCD monitor, $200 for a hard drive, or $250 for a new video card every two years, but $45 for tens of millions of lines of code that is the single most important element of the PC (how great is that PC minus software)? Whoa, that's just unacceptable!
Consider this a win if you're blinded by your anti-Microsoft rage, but the reality is that this is yet another step towards the caveman mentality that only physical objects that you can hold in your hands have value. Of course I realize that's the going philisophical argument in these parts, so I'm preaching to the wrong crowd.
Did I say loser? Actually my original specific issue was the belief that the Oscars are of such incredible importance that the accomplishment of LOTR is somehow secondary unless it's acknowledged by this, to reuse the word, fickle group.
If you'd like to use a sports analogy, Peter Jackson had already hit the home run, got a field goal, ran the most yards, got a hat trick, and pitched a perfect game. The oscar is like someone, seeing that there's a hubub, running out and giving him a little trophy for it.
Although I do find it interesting how people set aside any desire for personal accomplishment, and instead live vicariously through sports teams.
I will bite.
Oh, thank you for blessing us trolls good karma whore.
If you don't agree with me, then Ask Peter jackson himself is it makes a difference to him or not.
This might be a bit confusing and upsetting, but you're not Peter Jackson. You're not an actor in the movie. You didn't write the script. You didn't compose the soundtrack.
Criticizing someone for liking something? Crawl out of the dungeon, morlock, because "liking" Lord of the Rings doesn't mean that you sit with bated breath, pants around your ankles, desperately hoping that the notoriously fickle academy hands a statue to the Lord of the Rings. "Oh, thank you world! All of my likes have been validated! Now that my favourite movie won an Oscar, and my Britney album got that Grammy, my life is complete!".
Anyways, thanks for the reply 2674. That karma whore sheep-herding really was a thrill.
You were waiting with bated breath? Is your life complete now? Can you extinguish your mortal coil knowing that all is right in the universe?
It hardly matters whether Peter Jackson gets the award or not -- the movies are the rewards of the quest for perfection, and things like rewards or financial success are secondary.
And humans are an offshoot of dolphins.
IBM and Microsoft were both working on an advanced, 32-bit operating system, but soon found working together intolerable and split ways. Out of the rubble IBM hacked together OS/2, and Microsoft went on and developed NT.
As to another classic bit of nonsense (mentioned in another reply), NT isn't based upon "VMS" code -- the oft claimed correlation is because a primary designer of NT earned fame and fortune as an architect of VMS. Invariably he will have brought over what worked, while discarding what didn't.
What they said isn't true. All goods are clearly marked with their country of origin, but the thing is that most consumers quite simply don't care, or when they do they ultimately care even more about getting the lowest price. Walmart has, in a few short years, taken over the retailing landscape of the US (and many other nations) basically by huge scale "offshoring", and it's amazing how quickly each new store has full parking lots.
Personally I don't think Walmart is evil because they sell a lot of goods made overseas. Personally I think they're evil because they only deal with the absolutely hugest suppliers that can supply the entire network. This totally cuts out small, regional suppliers, and upsets capitalism. i.e. If a small textile maker has a great business supplying local businesses with shirts, and consumers shop at those local businesses, everything is great. When Walmart moves into town, and invariably the sheep all flock to it under the perception of great value, that local textile maker is complete cut out of the market. Instead of a complex, capitalist heterogenous market you end up with a homogenous megamarket that excludes non-monopolies.
Commenting upon the quoted material:
Many Americans believe the clothing purchased in U.S. Wal-Mart stores is manufactured in America
I find this very difficult to believe, and I'd find it more credible if it were supported by some sort of factual statistic rather than the largely meaningless "many". I mean, it really isn't that difficult to look at the tags (which are accurate). I think a fairer statement is "Most Americans don't work in textiles, so they care more that their new bath robe is less expensive at WalMart than it is at Robetectionism".
Hypocritically, Wal-Mart ran a "Buy American" and "Buy Mexican" marketing campaigns simultaneously
How is this hypocritical? In Mexico it caters to the Mexican sense of protectionism, while in the US it caters to the US sense of protectionism. I don't think a "Buy American" campaign would go over as well in a foreign Walmart.
I'm too lazy to look up the link, but on the Bell site a coupl e of weeks ago I saw a link to a "trial service" where you could find out where any phone on your personal or family plan was at a any time (paying a small fee per use). This was based upon traditional phones, and used triangulation (which of course is "short range GPS"). I was amazed at the privacy connotations of that.
Speaking of GPS, I think it is a vastly oversold technology -- my experience has been that you need clear, or close to clear, line of site to 3 or more satellites, each of which are sending an extremely low level radio ping -- if a cell phone has GPS, it would basically be useful if you're standing outside in the middle of a forest, but if you're in practical places like in a garage, or a mall, or downstairs in your home, it won't know where you are at all.
Speaking of oversold technology, how about Intel and those Centrino ads? The latest brutal misadvertisement shows them booting up a Centrino laptop and "networking anywhere" on Everest, or some other large mountain. The implication is that with a Centrino laptop, you just need to pop it open and wirelessly network -- no WAP within short range, itself with a real connection to the internet. Nope, just turn her on.
Uh...thanks for pointing out the intentional hypocrisy -- maybe there was a monkey reading for whom that wasn't clear. Whoops, sorry goes out to all the monkeys out there.
First of all, as a self-taught Linux user...
Err...about 99% of Linux users are self-taught.
Interesting. Especially telling that you proclaimed that it's good that new arrivals no longer "Americanize" their names -- presuming there was this American race that you speak of, it's fascinating that its names are second rate and unworthy.