I actually prefer the "nipple mouse" to a touchpad
I actually prefer not using the word "nipple" to describe an input device... As if nipple is the most obscene way to describe it.
I actually prefer the "nipple mouse" to a touchpad
Agree, but not all nipples were created equally. There was something about the ThinkPad nipple on my old school (circa 2001) T-22 that made it a pleasure to work with. If you really want to make a great UMPC (Ultra Mobile) then take the technology that went into the old school ThinkPad T-series nipples and use that. Honestly... beats the Trackpad hands down, and Toshiba nipples just never seemed to cut it.
"Imagine what it was like to live through the era where in roughly one century we went from taking weeks to get a message across a country and taking literally MONTHS to travel across the sea... to the point where you could talk to someone on the other side of the world using a device no bigger than your fist, and could travel from New York to Australia in a matter of hours."
Imagine what it was like to live through the era when Iron was being developed that could slice right through the Bronze that protected inferior armies... to the point where you could rape and pillage an entire village in under a week. You could march from Cairo to Rome in a matter of years and being conquering and conquering all along the way!
No, seriously. Technology in the future is going to be *way* cooler than it is now. You never reflect on what life was like for your grandparents before the automobile or refrigerators were standards for every family. Your grandchildren won't reflect on what life was like for you without the internet or the cell phone...
How much do we spend yearly on the pentagon again?
The Death and Taxes Poster breaks up all government budget outlays greater than $200 million. The link provided is a Flash Movie (so you can zoom in) but it takes a super-long time to become clear enough to actually read (at least for me).
You might find "The Total Budget" section with the Penny in the bottom-right corner to be helpful.
one of Microsoft's new tricks is to use OOXML extensions to tie businesses to Sharepoint
This is news to me. If this is true, it sounds like the Microsoft is making an attempt to entrench businesses with OOXML through there popular web-based collaboration software.
A quick search on Google turns up Alfresco as a F/OSS alternative to Sharepoint. Can anybody comment on the quality and effectiveness of Alfresco, and mention if it is mature enough to be a viable (and recommendable) alternative to Sharepoint as an enterprise solution for collaboration within large businesses?
The fact that the IP debate resembles the abortion debate in that both sides think their right and the other sides wrong and that's that.
Abortion?!?!? You just EXTENDED the bounds of a good old-fashioned argument-ending Internet "Godwin attack". All those crazy kids with their Pro-Choice/Pro-Sharing agenda will be proud. Not only are will they willingly download the latest Justin Timberlake album, but they will do it using their Buy-One/Get-One OX Laptop (because they are humanitarians, too!) on a wireless network at the abortion clinic. Superb!
Man... it is a shame that you are AC and can't take credit for your accomplishment of using Abortion to Godwin an argument.
This is related to the PRO-IP Act (press released on Dev 5, 2007) that is in Congress. Here is who to blame:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX), Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Ric Keller (R-FL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL) introduced the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property ("PRO IP") Act of 2007"
Here's the "SHOCK AND AWE" value that the industry is using to get people's attention:
It costs the United States between $200 and $250 billion/year in lost sales, including 750,000 jobs.
Obviously, any rational thinking individual knows that 750,000 individuals are not "out on the streets" because piracy has taken away the revenue streams necessary for employing them.
Similarly, *if* $200-250 Billion isn't flowing into the pockets of Imaginary Property companies each year, doesn't that just mean that Americans are free to spend that same money elsewhere? Shouldn't Americans NOT NEED A $150 Billion handout from the government, if they have all this extra money from their copyright infringement?
It is certainly possible that IBM, Sun, Google, and FSF could have played a role in leveraging ODF over OOXML, but Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with OOXML by publishing a faulty standard that was easily demonstrated to be non-standard (i.e. "implement the way Word '97 does").
Lord only knows what tactics Microsoft will use when usage of ODF is actually twice that of OOXML, and their Office Productivity Suite monopoly disappears...
The patent attorney told me that my idea was very likely patentable because it was a "novel".
That's like a Software Engineer who looks at somebody else's code and says, "This code is shit, it needs to be rewritten."
It *sounds* like you have a good justification to get a patent, but keep in mind that it would be in the patent attorneys best interest to recommend that you file for a patent even if it was probably something that isn't patentable.
The metaphor of throwing dirt at the wall to see what sticks comes to mind. Plus, it takes years for a patent to get approved/rejected so as long as he keeps recommending a patent for each of your companies trivial inventions, it would justify his continued employment at your firm. On the other hand, if he only recommends 1-2 applications per year instead of 18-20 the firm would probably fire him. Why would they pay a patent attorney who isn't actively submitting patents?
If CAPTCHAs are easily hackable, why are they the best identification system out there? What is Google doing right that makes it so you never here about Gmail accounts being hacked into? Hell, Microsoft invents their own stupid system and Hotmail is still probably the most hacked e-mail accounts on the net.
Honestly, what gives... and more importantly... how come Google does it better?
This might be a little off-topic, but the common wisdom is that Comcast and other cable companies have monopolies on providing high-speed internet access in many areas. I realize they have competition from DirectTV (Satellite TV) and Broadcast Television for providing varying quality in Cable/TV entertainment, and that there is up-and-coming competition from Verizon to provide high-speed internet.
Is there any way to extend the "Public Broadcast TV" metaphor into the internet space? I could live with whatever downstream connection is required to watch YouTube videos... and upload streams that would pale in comparison to anybody running P2P services. Seriously, though, "light" internet users like me to subsidizing it for everybody else.
As for as throttling, Comcast is behaving unethically by stopping legitimate uses of P2P networks (sharing F/OSS distributions) and they should be heavily fined (I'm going to pull a RIAA-style gross sum of money from my ass), how about $500,000 per unethical P2P blockage? So divide the number of FCC complains in half, and then add the words "Millions" after it, and hand Comcast the bill.
colleges and universities are engaged in serious efforts to inform and educate students about the importance of copyright
When I entered college in 2001, my college was engaged in a serious effort to show all incoming freshman a film depicting the trouble of over-indulging in alcohol and the risks of taking advantage of women while they are intoxicated. To me, this is a real serious concern because of the way lives can be ruined during only a single thoughtless night of events.
I hardly think "copyright" should even be considered in the same ballpark as "rape". If the music industry really has a problem with college students, they should fund their own damned "info sessions" and see how effective it is.
I have seen a device that you insert a CD/DVD into and then it pops out a clear plastic disc with some dusty residue. Highly effective at eliminating any data on your CDs.
OK, I'm going to end this before I devolve into my standard socialist agenda.
I've heard Portland is fun. I am living in Boston these days. Lots of socialism. Lots of fun and vibrant events taking place. Lots of money being spent on beer and beer being used to foot the bill to cover events (whether they be in Harvard Square or local taverns).
The most perplexing thing about socialism, though, is that the people who tell you it is doomed to fail are either (a) not involved in the community, or (b) the first to complain if the subway is 15 minutes late because of trouble on the line.
What I mean is complex, and it includes many different factors. First off, living and existing requires money: for food, shelter, power, and security. There's no avoiding it.
Quite true.
That said, for most artists and content creators making great work, they do need cash in order to continue to spend their time making high quality content.
That said, for most artists and content creators making great work, they do need [food, shelter, power, and security] in order to continue to spend their time making high quality content.
There, I fixed that for you. And now, I am going to level with you. Food is cheap. One-thousand farmers, ranchers, packagers, distributors, and supermarket clerks can supply 1,000,000 people with a years worth of adequate food to live. Shelter is cheap. The only reason real estate costs so much is because of an irrational market. Power? It is cheap, too. I assume your area hasn't have issues with black/brownouts, which indicates that there is more than enough power to go around. And security... well... I assume you mean a local police force - and if you that you pay for through taxes, which everybody shares. That is actually pretty cheap. The much larger burden is paying for public education which is needed to teach the children.
In any case, I guess my point is that we have accustomed ourselves to living standards that place a high burden on affordability compared to what the "inputs" to the system are. Values are out of whack and (sadly) your pragmatic argument holds true because most artists need to earn a living doing something else and they are denied the time to do what they truly enjoy.
Xbox would likely be scrapped by then (admittedly though, the 360 is the only current gen system I own, but I bought it pretty much exclusively for Mass Effect).
I think you are wrong that their video game system is going anywhere. This is their foray into having a Super-Duper Locked-Down Proprietary "Does not play well with Others" Hardware/Software Integrated FULL SYSTEM (like Sony).
The Xbox line was a $4 Billion loss when it was originally introduced so the company could position itself to get 10% of the $40 Billion video game industry for the next two or three video game generations (10-15 years). [disclaimer: numbers are educated guesses, at best].
In fact, I would be so bold as to propose that a large part of their profits that are being reported are "Halo-related"...
The "download" page currently says that it is "unpublished" and that I am still revising it. There is a note that encourages feedback. If I could put a value on the free "editing" assistance that I've received, I would say, "Intangibly, several hundred dollars" from feedback from several individuals.
In real "bank account" terms, I haven't made anything yet - but since I don't have a finished product yet, this makes sense.
The key to "online distribution" isn't that the sale price is zero. The key is that the "cost of goods sold" is zero. It costs $0 to sell 10,000 copies of a book online for $0 each (yes, webservers cost money to operate, but it is negligible). For printed books, a run of 10,000 copies would cost a publisher $10,000 to $50,000 (depending on several factors: book length, color or b/w, binding, quality). Thus, it would be foolish to just give those books away.
Additionally, I believe the world is changing from (a) pay and enjoy, to (b) enjoy and pay. With online distribution, a copy of a novel can be downloaded for free and "enjoyed", and then through PayPal donations an author can easily setup a system for users who think his work is "worthy" to pay him.
I call this Open Publication and it is a business model that I have adopted for distribution of my own novel.
you have to be a good writer in the first place - if your stuff sucks, it doesn't matter whether you give it away or not
I disagree. I would say, "You need to have a good story to tell". Good writing, on the other hand, is a matter of having a good editing process. As far as I can tell, editing a novel can be as much of a community effort as developing an Open Source computer program, where there is a central architect and several supporting developers.
Why do I think this? I have written a novel and published a version of it last summer. I have received several critiques from people who I would have otherwise never had heard of. I welcome comments and criticism from anybody who is willing to take a chance on a story that is "a work in progress". If the C&C is constructive, then you can bet that you'll get a mention in the acknowledgments paragraph at the beginning of the story to recognize your help.
So, no. I would freely admit that I am not the best writer in the world, but I think I have a good enough story that with some time I can publish a novel that will be enjoyable and attractive to a wide range of read
Don't get me wrong... I completely AGREE with everything else you say. During the AOL days, I would type pornographic words into the Address Bar hoping to find the content that should have been there. I would use "ESPN" and a relatively small subset of URLs which I had memorized. But that list of URLs included mainly search engines, because search makes it unimportant to have common URL names.
Maybe we just started using the internet in different ways at different times, but up until 2001 or 2002, search engines Excite and Yahoo competed with each other to be my "homepage" based on which served the best results. Lycos and Ask never had a chance because their results have always lagged behind others. Altavista was known for being about to find esoteric results, when the "Big 2" failed. Also, they had bablefish, which was a particularly helpful tool for High School Spanish class. But in any case, nothing about these other search engines ever bothered be because I couldn't quickly find what I was looking for. I could use quote marks and plus/minus signs to make tougher searches more refined... but I do that now with Google, anyway.
Google got me to use them exclusively since about 2002 because of simplicity and speed. I think to this day Yahoo continues to have the same "efficacy of searches" as Google, but it takes longer for the page to load (because of the bloated Portal mentality) and it isn't as fast as Google (i.e. "10 of 2 million results in 0.03 seconds"). So, I believe it is wrong to give credit to Google for providing a "significant boost in efficacy of web searches".
If you really want to give credit to Google for their innovation, credit them for realizing that users want a simple, straightforward, easy-to-use User Interface.
You are wrong. Web searching was available from Altavista.com, Yahoo.com, and Excite.com LONG before Google.com made a meaningful impact on the World Wide Web. Hell, even AOL's proprietary crapware gave you the ability to search the web.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree, but not all nipples were created equally. There was something about the ThinkPad nipple on my old school (circa 2001) T-22 that made it a pleasure to work with. If you really want to make a great UMPC (Ultra Mobile) then take the technology that went into the old school ThinkPad T-series nipples and use that. Honestly... beats the Trackpad hands down, and Toshiba nipples just never seemed to cut it.
Imagine what it was like to live through the era when Iron was being developed that could slice right through the Bronze that protected inferior armies... to the point where you could rape and pillage an entire village in under a week. You could march from Cairo to Rome in a matter of years and being conquering and conquering all along the way!
No, seriously. Technology in the future is going to be *way* cooler than it is now. You never reflect on what life was like for your grandparents before the automobile or refrigerators were standards for every family. Your grandchildren won't reflect on what life was like for you without the internet or the cell phone...
The Death and Taxes Poster breaks up all government budget outlays greater than $200 million. The link provided is a Flash Movie (so you can zoom in) but it takes a super-long time to become clear enough to actually read (at least for me).
You might find "The Total Budget" section with the Penny in the bottom-right corner to be helpful.
This is news to me. If this is true, it sounds like the Microsoft is making an attempt to entrench businesses with OOXML through there popular web-based collaboration software.
A quick search on Google turns up Alfresco as a F/OSS alternative to Sharepoint. Can anybody comment on the quality and effectiveness of Alfresco, and mention if it is mature enough to be a viable (and recommendable) alternative to Sharepoint as an enterprise solution for collaboration within large businesses?
Hurt them, indeed!
Abortion?!?!? You just EXTENDED the bounds of a good old-fashioned argument-ending Internet "Godwin attack". All those crazy kids with their Pro-Choice/Pro-Sharing agenda will be proud. Not only are will they willingly download the latest Justin Timberlake album, but they will do it using their Buy-One/Get-One OX Laptop (because they are humanitarians, too!) on a wireless network at the abortion clinic. Superb!
Man... it is a shame that you are AC and can't take credit for your accomplishment of using Abortion to Godwin an argument.
This is related to the PRO-IP Act (press released on Dev 5, 2007) that is in Congress. Here is who to blame:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX), Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Ric Keller (R-FL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL) introduced the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property ("PRO IP") Act of 2007"Here's the "SHOCK AND AWE" value that the industry is using to get people's attention:
It costs the United States between $200 and $250 billion/year in lost sales, including 750,000 jobs.Obviously, any rational thinking individual knows that 750,000 individuals are not "out on the streets" because piracy has taken away the revenue streams necessary for employing them.
Similarly, *if* $200-250 Billion isn't flowing into the pockets of Imaginary Property companies each year, doesn't that just mean that Americans are free to spend that same money elsewhere? Shouldn't Americans NOT NEED A $150 Billion handout from the government, if they have all this extra money from their copyright infringement?
Something isn't right...
It is certainly possible that IBM, Sun, Google, and FSF could have played a role in leveraging ODF over OOXML, but Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with OOXML by publishing a faulty standard that was easily demonstrated to be non-standard (i.e. "implement the way Word '97 does").
Lord only knows what tactics Microsoft will use when usage of ODF is actually twice that of OOXML, and their Office Productivity Suite monopoly disappears...
That's like a Software Engineer who looks at somebody else's code and says, "This code is shit, it needs to be rewritten."
It *sounds* like you have a good justification to get a patent, but keep in mind that it would be in the patent attorneys best interest to recommend that you file for a patent even if it was probably something that isn't patentable.
The metaphor of throwing dirt at the wall to see what sticks comes to mind. Plus, it takes years for a patent to get approved/rejected so as long as he keeps recommending a patent for each of your companies trivial inventions, it would justify his continued employment at your firm. On the other hand, if he only recommends 1-2 applications per year instead of 18-20 the firm would probably fire him. Why would they pay a patent attorney who isn't actively submitting patents?
If CAPTCHAs are easily hackable, why are they the best identification system out there? What is Google doing right that makes it so you never here about Gmail accounts being hacked into? Hell, Microsoft invents their own stupid system and Hotmail is still probably the most hacked e-mail accounts on the net.
Honestly, what gives... and more importantly... how come Google does it better?
Microsoft funded business pirates Microsoft SQL.... story at 11.
This might be a little off-topic, but the common wisdom is that Comcast and other cable companies have monopolies on providing high-speed internet access in many areas. I realize they have competition from DirectTV (Satellite TV) and Broadcast Television for providing varying quality in Cable/TV entertainment, and that there is up-and-coming competition from Verizon to provide high-speed internet.
Is there any way to extend the "Public Broadcast TV" metaphor into the internet space? I could live with whatever downstream connection is required to watch YouTube videos... and upload streams that would pale in comparison to anybody running P2P services. Seriously, though, "light" internet users like me to subsidizing it for everybody else.
As for as throttling, Comcast is behaving unethically by stopping legitimate uses of P2P networks (sharing F/OSS distributions) and they should be heavily fined (I'm going to pull a RIAA-style gross sum of money from my ass), how about $500,000 per unethical P2P blockage? So divide the number of FCC complains in half, and then add the words "Millions" after it, and hand Comcast the bill.
When I entered college in 2001, my college was engaged in a serious effort to show all incoming freshman a film depicting the trouble of over-indulging in alcohol and the risks of taking advantage of women while they are intoxicated. To me, this is a real serious concern because of the way lives can be ruined during only a single thoughtless night of events.
I hardly think "copyright" should even be considered in the same ballpark as "rape". If the music industry really has a problem with college students, they should fund their own damned "info sessions" and see how effective it is.
Me, too! This page outlines a distribution/sales plan for my novel once I revise it and decide that it is "done".
My theory is that the traditional standard of "pay first, then enjoy" can be satisfactorily substituted with "enjoy first, then pay".
I have seen a device that you insert a CD/DVD into and then it pops out a clear plastic disc with some dusty residue. Highly effective at eliminating any data on your CDs.
I've heard Portland is fun. I am living in Boston these days. Lots of socialism. Lots of fun and vibrant events taking place. Lots of money being spent on beer and beer being used to foot the bill to cover events (whether they be in Harvard Square or local taverns).
The most perplexing thing about socialism, though, is that the people who tell you it is doomed to fail are either (a) not involved in the community, or (b) the first to complain if the subway is 15 minutes late because of trouble on the line.
What I mean is complex, and it includes many different factors. First off, living and existing requires money: for food, shelter, power, and security. There's no avoiding it.
Quite true.
That said, for most artists and content creators making great work, they do need cash in order to continue to spend their time making high quality content.That said, for most artists and content creators making great work, they do need [food, shelter, power, and security] in order to continue to spend their time making high quality content.
There, I fixed that for you. And now, I am going to level with you. Food is cheap. One-thousand farmers, ranchers, packagers, distributors, and supermarket clerks can supply 1,000,000 people with a years worth of adequate food to live. Shelter is cheap. The only reason real estate costs so much is because of an irrational market. Power? It is cheap, too. I assume your area hasn't have issues with black/brownouts, which indicates that there is more than enough power to go around. And security... well... I assume you mean a local police force - and if you that you pay for through taxes, which everybody shares. That is actually pretty cheap. The much larger burden is paying for public education which is needed to teach the children.
In any case, I guess my point is that we have accustomed ourselves to living standards that place a high burden on affordability compared to what the "inputs" to the system are. Values are out of whack and (sadly) your pragmatic argument holds true because most artists need to earn a living doing something else and they are denied the time to do what they truly enjoy.
I think you are wrong that their video game system is going anywhere. This is their foray into having a Super-Duper Locked-Down Proprietary "Does not play well with Others" Hardware/Software Integrated FULL SYSTEM (like Sony).
The Xbox line was a $4 Billion loss when it was originally introduced so the company could position itself to get 10% of the $40 Billion video game industry for the next two or three video game generations (10-15 years). [disclaimer: numbers are educated guesses, at best].
In fact, I would be so bold as to propose that a large part of their profits that are being reported are "Halo-related"...
The "download" page currently says that it is "unpublished" and that I am still revising it. There is a note that encourages feedback. If I could put a value on the free "editing" assistance that I've received, I would say, "Intangibly, several hundred dollars" from feedback from several individuals.
In real "bank account" terms, I haven't made anything yet - but since I don't have a finished product yet, this makes sense.
The key to "online distribution" isn't that the sale price is zero. The key is that the "cost of goods sold" is zero. It costs $0 to sell 10,000 copies of a book online for $0 each (yes, webservers cost money to operate, but it is negligible). For printed books, a run of 10,000 copies would cost a publisher $10,000 to $50,000 (depending on several factors: book length, color or b/w, binding, quality). Thus, it would be foolish to just give those books away.
Additionally, I believe the world is changing from (a) pay and enjoy, to (b) enjoy and pay. With online distribution, a copy of a novel can be downloaded for free and "enjoyed", and then through PayPal donations an author can easily setup a system for users who think his work is "worthy" to pay him.
I call this Open Publication and it is a business model that I have adopted for distribution of my own novel.
I disagree. I would say, "You need to have a good story to tell". Good writing, on the other hand, is a matter of having a good editing process. As far as I can tell, editing a novel can be as much of a community effort as developing an Open Source computer program, where there is a central architect and several supporting developers.
Why do I think this? I have written a novel and published a version of it last summer. I have received several critiques from people who I would have otherwise never had heard of. I welcome comments and criticism from anybody who is willing to take a chance on a story that is "a work in progress". If the C&C is constructive, then you can bet that you'll get a mention in the acknowledgments paragraph at the beginning of the story to recognize your help.
So, no. I would freely admit that I am not the best writer in the world, but I think I have a good enough story that with some time I can publish a novel that will be enjoyable and attractive to a wide range of read
Don't get me wrong... I completely AGREE with everything else you say. During the AOL days, I would type pornographic words into the Address Bar hoping to find the content that should have been there. I would use "ESPN" and a relatively small subset of URLs which I had memorized. But that list of URLs included mainly search engines, because search makes it unimportant to have common URL names.
Maybe we just started using the internet in different ways at different times, but up until 2001 or 2002, search engines Excite and Yahoo competed with each other to be my "homepage" based on which served the best results. Lycos and Ask never had a chance because their results have always lagged behind others. Altavista was known for being about to find esoteric results, when the "Big 2" failed. Also, they had bablefish, which was a particularly helpful tool for High School Spanish class. But in any case, nothing about these other search engines ever bothered be because I couldn't quickly find what I was looking for. I could use quote marks and plus/minus signs to make tougher searches more refined... but I do that now with Google, anyway.
Google got me to use them exclusively since about 2002 because of simplicity and speed. I think to this day Yahoo continues to have the same "efficacy of searches" as Google, but it takes longer for the page to load (because of the bloated Portal mentality) and it isn't as fast as Google (i.e. "10 of 2 million results in 0.03 seconds"). So, I believe it is wrong to give credit to Google for providing a "significant boost in efficacy of web searches".
If you really want to give credit to Google for their innovation, credit them for realizing that users want a simple, straightforward, easy-to-use User Interface.
You are wrong. Web searching was available from Altavista.com, Yahoo.com, and Excite.com LONG before Google.com made a meaningful impact on the World Wide Web. Hell, even AOL's proprietary crapware gave you the ability to search the web.