It's always been my contention that the current economic model used for the Internet is fundamentally flawed, and that some form of "pay-per-bit" is inevitable. Anybody familiar with "The Tragedy of the Commons" want to explain to me why that principle doesn't apply to the 'Net? Bandwidth is neither infinite nor free; at somepoint, people need to be discouraged from grabbing as much as they can, otherwise our ping times will be measured in minutes. Why do we take it as a given that the Granny checking her email once a week should pay the same as the student hosting a huge peer-to-peer file sharing node up 24/7? Next you'll be telling me that bicylists should pay the same road use fees as semis...
Any idea what using OLED instead of TFT active matrix will do for the battery life of a Laptop? Sounds like portables, not CRT replacement, is the real market for this technology.
Read the post, moron. I was comparing Windows to Mac, not Windows to Linux. Yes, Linux has much better support for obsolete hardware than Windows. I know, having installed both Mandrake and Win2K on serveral old boxes. Way to demonstrate your ignorance, and in the most obnoxious manner possible.
...if for not other reason than because the set of hardware on which it must run is much more restricted. Microsoft is attempting to do the impossible -- support every PC and PC peripheral that has ever been shipped. This is the source of many M$ software headaches -- especially during installation.
Well, you're half right... the "continual upgrades" are free, so in fact their only real profit center IS support contracts. But I don't think people would pay for support contracts unless they already beleived the software to be of high quality, so I don't think intentionally shipping buggy software would work as a business model for Red Hat. However, nearly everyone concedes that M$ software in unreliable and yet many continue to pay for it. Seems like shipping buggy software DOES work as a business model for Microsoft. And by the way, can't everybody quickly get the security patches for Red Hat for free? I don't think people buy Red Hat support mainly because of security concerns!
Yes, but Linux, MAC OS X, and Solaris attempt to ship with reasonable defaults... the Windows philosophy to date has been "everything wide open by default".
What incentive does M$ have to make sure the operating system they sell you today works, when their business model calls for them to sell you a new operating system every year? (In fact, they've even used the fact that their previous release was a POS to sell new releases!) What incentive does M$ have to fix the vast security holes in their standard releases, when they can make even more money by charging you for the security patches?
At what point does the consumer stop doing business with a company that admits that everything they sold you in the past is a POS in order to get you to buy yet another upgrade? At what point do corporations decide it might be a bad idea to single source all its software from a company that considers security to be optional?
Well, yes and no. Do you really want every net-enabled device on your network directly addressable from the internet? Any sane person would put in a least one firewall. And as long as the firewall is examining every packet, it's not that much more additional overhead to have it do NAT. Certainly controlling network security at the firewall is easier than securing every device separately. Also, when using IPMasq, you can use default settings of the non-routable IP address ranges for your DHCP server rather than configuring your assigned IP addresses, so it is actually LESS work.
1) Hide the camera 2) Put the camera behind a two-way mirror (like all the ones in vegas, or best yet 3) Decorate your ceiling with thousands of little plastic imitation cameras, all of which look just like the real camera.
Interesting side note: how effective would this technique be against photo-radar or stoplight photo tickets?
1. Despite the proliferation of broadband, the vast majority of internet users are still using dial-up? Why? Broadband costs more! While I'd love to be able to surf the net wireless, I don't see any killer application that will convince people to pay the extra money for 3G. And no, mobile movies can't possible beat the price/performance of a DVD. Instant messaging and email don't really require 384 Kbits. Videoconferencing? Nobody's using that over land lines, what makes you think they'll use it over wireless? That leaves file transfer as the only real application of the technology -- how many people actually need that? (Imaging counts as a special case if file transfer.)
2. I agree for the most part: conversion to digital HDTV will trigger an upswing in both consumer and professional electronics. The question is: when? I beleive we will see continued pushing-back of the deadlines.
3. The beginning of the switch from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing. Wanna explain to me why this requires new hardware? Seems to me this just requires a patch to the software in the existing routers, which shouldn't really generate a lot of revenue. Also, it seems like the imminent switch to IPV6 has been predicted for the last 10 years; as it turns out, with IPMasq and NAT, it's not really necessary. (Ok, I've heard rumors that it helps in routing IP over wireless, so that might be a compelling reason to switch.)
Do the math: 3636 11 Megapixel images should fit on a 120GB drive (on sale now at Fry's Electronics). How many pictures to you keep in each album? How long does it take you to even look at 3600 images? At 1 per second, that's at least on hour...
The advantage of digital data is that it can be infinitely duplicated at near-zero cost. If you make 1000 copies of the data, and keep transfering them to new media every few years, it will last _forever_. Never underestimate the value of massive reduncancy! Even the best film could be wiped out in a fire or other natural disaster; with proper off-site backup, bits are almost impossible to destroy. So, unless you're burying it in a time capsule, digital is the way to go!
Isn't this essentially a laptop with an external keyboard? Seems like a "green" laptop would be just as usable, with the added advantage of being portable. And don't try to convince me this thing is cheaper than a laptop; it's got a laptop display which probably accounts for 75% of the price.
What kind of connectivity do you have to the clothes washer and dryer? Shouldn't the washing machine be able to send me email at work telling me it's entered the spin cycle?
Seriously, though, for energy saving, I should be able to send a single from my computer to my washing machine to start operation during off-peak hours.
P.S. The "loo" sounds like a better place for wireless connectivity to me! For years I've wanted to be able to take a web pad into the "reading room" with me...
Actually, I just got the new Jackson Brown, India.Arie, and Peter Gabriel CDs that came out last Tuesday. Likewise Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor a few weeks ago. Costco appears to get them the same day the record stores do. Granted, the new releases don't last very long, so after a couple weeks all that's left are the BS CDs... If you're implying Costco doesn't carry the independent record labels, guilty as charged. But that doesn't mean everything they have there is crap.
Er, If I'm planning on using the drive as part of my audio/video system at home (TV tuner, MP3 player, personal video recorder) then noise is THE most importantant consideration!
Seems like the record company profit is based on the wholesale price they charge the stores. Shouldn't higher retail prices result in LESS record company profits, as fewer units are sold at a higher price? Or was the price fixing really an attempt to squeeze out the independents by not allowing them to compete with the RIAA by selling their music for less? How does retail price fixing maximize RIAA profit?
Actually, all those CDs that are $17.99 at Tower Records are $11.99 at Price/Costco warehouse stores. Re-releases are cheaper still. So, much as I love B.C., I doubt if I'll be driving up over the border to purchase CDs -- sounds like they're about the same price.
You're confusing amortized capitol costs with marginal costs. Marginal costs for each additional CD once you've paid for the up-front costs is probably less than a dollar. But you've probably got to sell about 100,000 CDs to pay back the production, advertising and distribution cost (note that they pay the independents about $100,000 per album to bribe the radio stations for air time). So what you're really paying for when you drop you $17.99 down on the counter is all the albums that sucked so badly they never paid back the production costs. Sort of like your credit card -- 3% interest is to cover the minimum incentive for a lender given no risk, while the other 15% is to pay for everbody that files bankruptcy and leave the credit card company holding the bag.
Actually, I think Libertarians beleive that one of the few valid functions of government is to enforce truth in advertising and truth in labeling, thus allowing consumers to make their own informed choices. Last time I checked, 90% of the SPAM I received was blatently lying about who it was from and lying about the subject to get my attention. This is and should be illegal, and I think even most Libertarians would agree. The basic principle is "You're freedom to swing you fist ends where my nose begins." SPAMMERS are wasting my time and money without my permission (not by force or coercion, but rather by deceit), thus they are effectively connecting with my nose, and their freedom should be limited.
I had RK (Radial Kerotomy) surgery a dozen years ago and have come to regret it, for reasons that also apply to LASIK. 1) The procedure leaves scars on the eye that refract light (simular to to the edges of hard contacts, but much worse). This light scattering is what causes "night blindness"; any bright lights in front of you effectively blind you. 2) As people age, they get more farsighted. Correct to 20/20 now, and 10 years from now you'll need glasses to read or see a CRT. As opposed to my father, who no longer wears glasses to drive. 3) RK was very much a crap-shoot; they couldn't precisely predict if they would over-correct or under correct. LASIK is more precise, but 20/20 is still not guaranteed.
On the plus side, surgery done properly DOES do a better job of correcting astigmatism than corrective lenses. If you are only astigmatic in one eye, consider having only that one eye done. RK 10 years after took my good eye and made it extremely farsighted and astigmatic, while it took my bad eye and fixed most of the astigmatism and made it only slightly farsighted. (Before RK both eyes were severly nearsighted.) If I had it to do over again, I'd only have one eye done.
One more thing: go to ALL your scheduled follow-up doctor visits!
In a faux living room, Gruver shows how documents on a computer at work can be accessed easily at home... or in the air or in a car... or in the garage of a hacker halfway across the world!
Memo to Microsoft: maybe you should work on making your VPN infrastructure secure before encouraging people to access documents from anywhere!
E-mails are forwarded to car dashboards... I wonder how the NTSA (National Traffic Safety Association) feels about this...
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you know this just means you have kids... or at least I _hope_ that's what it means...
It's always been my contention that the current economic model used for the Internet is fundamentally flawed, and that some form of "pay-per-bit" is inevitable. Anybody familiar with "The Tragedy of the Commons" want to explain to me why that principle doesn't apply to the 'Net? Bandwidth is neither infinite nor free; at somepoint, people need to be discouraged from grabbing as much as they can, otherwise our ping times will be measured in minutes. Why do we take it as a given that the Granny checking her email once a week should pay the same as the student hosting a huge peer-to-peer file sharing node up 24/7? Next you'll be telling me that bicylists should pay the same road use fees as semis...
That should make it extremely quiet, don't you think? Eventually... once the fire trucks leave, it should be pretty darn quiet...
Any idea what using OLED instead of TFT active matrix will do for the battery life of a Laptop? Sounds like portables, not CRT replacement, is the real market for this technology.
Read the post, moron. I was comparing Windows to Mac, not Windows to Linux. Yes, Linux has much better support for obsolete hardware than Windows. I know, having installed both Mandrake and Win2K on serveral old boxes. Way to demonstrate your ignorance, and in the most obnoxious manner possible.
...if for not other reason than because the set of hardware on which it must run is much more restricted. Microsoft is attempting to do the impossible -- support every PC and PC peripheral that has ever been shipped. This is the source of many M$ software headaches -- especially during installation.
Well, you're half right... the "continual upgrades" are free, so in fact their only real profit center IS support contracts. But I don't think people would pay for support contracts unless they already beleived the software to be of high quality, so I don't think intentionally shipping buggy software would work as a business model for Red Hat. However, nearly everyone concedes that M$ software in unreliable and yet many continue to pay for it. Seems like shipping buggy software DOES work as a business model for Microsoft. And by the way, can't everybody quickly get the security patches for Red Hat for free? I don't think people buy Red Hat support mainly because of security concerns!
Yes, but Linux, MAC OS X, and Solaris attempt to ship with reasonable defaults... the Windows philosophy to date has been "everything wide open by default".
At what point does the consumer stop doing business with a company that admits that everything they sold you in the past is a POS in order to get you to buy yet another upgrade? At what point do corporations decide it might be a bad idea to single source all its software from a company that considers security to be optional?
Well, yes and no. Do you really want every net-enabled device on your network directly addressable from the internet? Any sane person would put in a least one firewall. And as long as the firewall is examining every packet, it's not that much more additional overhead to have it do NAT. Certainly controlling network security at the firewall is easier than securing every device separately. Also, when using IPMasq, you can use default settings of the non-routable IP address ranges for your DHCP server rather than configuring your assigned IP addresses, so it is actually LESS work.
2) Put the camera behind a two-way mirror (like all the ones in vegas, or best yet 3) Decorate your ceiling with thousands of little plastic imitation cameras, all of which look just like the real camera.
Interesting side note: how effective would this technique be against photo-radar or stoplight photo tickets?
2. I agree for the most part: conversion to digital HDTV will trigger an upswing in both consumer and professional electronics. The question is: when? I beleive we will see continued pushing-back of the deadlines.
3. The beginning of the switch from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing.
Wanna explain to me why this requires new hardware? Seems to me this just requires a patch to the software in the existing routers, which shouldn't really generate a lot of revenue. Also, it seems like the imminent switch to IPV6 has been predicted for the last 10 years; as it turns out, with IPMasq and NAT, it's not really necessary. (Ok, I've heard rumors that it helps in routing IP over wireless, so that might be a compelling reason to switch.)
Well, at least that's what they say they were doing down at the pub during working hours! Why didn't I think of this one!
Do the math: 3636 11 Megapixel images should fit on a 120GB drive (on sale now at Fry's Electronics). How many pictures to you keep in each album? How long does it take you to even look at 3600 images? At 1 per second, that's at least on hour...
The advantage of digital data is that it can be infinitely duplicated at near-zero cost. If you make 1000 copies of the data, and keep transfering them to new media every few years, it will last _forever_. Never underestimate the value of massive reduncancy! Even the best film could be wiped out in a fire or other natural disaster; with proper off-site backup, bits are almost impossible to destroy. So, unless you're burying it in a time capsule, digital is the way to go!
Isn't this essentially a laptop with an external keyboard? Seems like a "green" laptop would be just as usable, with the added advantage of being portable. And don't try to convince me this thing is cheaper than a laptop; it's got a laptop display which probably accounts for 75% of the price.
Seriously, though, for energy saving, I should be able to send a single from my computer to my washing machine to start operation during off-peak hours.
P.S. The "loo" sounds like a better place for wireless connectivity to me! For years I've wanted to be able to take a web pad into the "reading room" with me...
Actually, I just got the new Jackson Brown, India.Arie, and Peter Gabriel CDs that came out last Tuesday. Likewise Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor a few weeks ago. Costco appears to get them the same day the record stores do. Granted, the new releases don't last very long, so after a couple weeks all that's left are the BS CDs... If you're implying Costco doesn't carry the independent record labels, guilty as charged. But that doesn't mean everything they have there is crap.
Er, If I'm planning on using the drive as part of my audio/video system at home (TV tuner, MP3 player, personal video recorder) then noise is THE most importantant consideration!
Seems like the record company profit is based on the wholesale price they charge the stores. Shouldn't higher retail prices result in LESS record company profits, as fewer units are sold at a higher price? Or was the price fixing really an attempt to squeeze out the independents by not allowing them to compete with the RIAA by selling their music for less? How does retail price fixing maximize RIAA profit?
Actually, all those CDs that are $17.99 at Tower Records are $11.99 at Price/Costco warehouse stores. Re-releases are cheaper still. So, much as I love B.C., I doubt if I'll be driving up over the border to purchase CDs -- sounds like they're about the same price.
You're confusing amortized capitol costs with marginal costs. Marginal costs for each additional CD once you've paid for the up-front costs is probably less than a dollar. But you've probably got to sell about 100,000 CDs to pay back the production, advertising and distribution cost (note that they pay the independents about $100,000 per album to bribe the radio stations for air time). So what you're really paying for when you drop you $17.99 down on the counter is all the albums that sucked so badly they never paid back the production costs. Sort of like your credit card -- 3% interest is to cover the minimum incentive for a lender given no risk, while the other 15% is to pay for everbody that files bankruptcy and leave the credit card company holding the bag.
Actually, I think Libertarians beleive that one of the few valid functions of government is to enforce truth in advertising and truth in labeling, thus allowing consumers to make their own informed choices. Last time I checked, 90% of the SPAM I received was blatently lying about who it was from and lying about the subject to get my attention. This is and should be illegal, and I think even most Libertarians would agree. The basic principle is "You're freedom to swing you fist ends where my nose begins." SPAMMERS are wasting my time and money without my permission (not by force or coercion, but rather by deceit), thus they are effectively connecting with my nose, and their freedom should be limited.
On the plus side, surgery done properly DOES do a better job of correcting astigmatism than corrective lenses. If you are only astigmatic in one eye, consider having only that one eye done. RK 10 years after took my good eye and made it extremely farsighted and astigmatic, while it took my bad eye and fixed most of the astigmatism and made it only slightly farsighted. (Before RK both eyes were severly nearsighted.) If I had it to do over again, I'd only have one eye done.
One more thing: go to ALL your scheduled follow-up doctor visits!
Memo to Microsoft: maybe you should work on making your VPN infrastructure secure before encouraging people to access documents from anywhere!
E-mails are forwarded to car dashboards... I wonder how the NTSA (National Traffic Safety Association) feels about this...