I don't think online books can work. There is something about holding a book and reading it under a small light in the wee hours of the morning that you just don't get online.
There's also something comforting about placing a well liked book on a shelf, where it will sit until years later you pick it up and refresh your mind with it again or share it perhaps with your children.
For these and other reasons I think not just online, but electric books in general will not do very well.
I have been using Ogg files for a while now. I like them much more than mp3s (mostly political). And they play wonderfully on my Zaurus with tkcPlayer.
Since ogg doesn't have the licensing issues that mp3 does, I would like to see some big companies use it. It would save them money and give mp3 licensing the finger.
I think it is a very wise choice on PTC's part to offer ProE on the Linux platform. It is awesome software and only makes sense to offer it on a powerful and stable OS like Linux.
While your point about Unix consultants being more expensive is true during the initial deployment stage, those costs drop off once the system is in place (assuming consultants). This is not as much the case with Windows, which is why you need those dime a dozen MCSEs. If a company had to pay as much to support Windows as Unix, no company would be running Windows.
Having worked on and supported both ends of the Windows vs. Unix spectrum, my experience has been while the initial setup and configuration of Windows may be shorter than say Linux, the overall support required by the Windows platform quickly eats up any savings a short and easy installation may provide. In the long run, the support costs involved with running Windows is far greater than the support costs running Unix.
This is why I think PTC's desicion to offer Pro/Engineer on Linux is great news for shops that use their software. A lower TCO can only mean increased profits. Who can deny the snazzy of that?
When I was in high school, the teacher who ran the computer lab would let us come in and play games like Zork and King's Quest.
There were no network games (no network either) but one of the most educational and fun times I had there was when she brought a bunch of text based games written in Basica and let us fiddle with the code. She would walk around and help you if you needed it, or provide a crash couse in Basic if you didn't know how to program using it. It was great.
It was a great way, I think, to get students interested in programming at an early age and keep them interested. It was a much better approach than, "Okay class, we're going to print our name to the screen 5000 times..." I would like to see all schools doing something like this.
I like the concept of game nights, but I think they should also use that Java tank game and teach kids something about programming and have fun at the same time.
I can see your point of view and I would love to never have to drive again, but as a person who lives in North America, I don't want the US or Canada to sign or have anything to do with the Kyoto treaty.
The Kyoto treaty is purely political. I have seen absolutely no evidence whatsoever that its contents are valid (in fact, the only evidence I have seen is to the contrary). Perhaps the rest of the world likes blindly rushing into self flagellation, but I don't I don't want my country to inflict it upon me either.
I didn't see this mentioned, so I will mention it. There is a mini distro that caters to the blind called BRLSpeak. I'm not blind so I don't know how good it is, but it is available on linuxiso.org.
I worked at a large company a number of years ago who did essentially the same thing. They had a similar set up to the one in this article only using PCs instead of dumb terminals. Every computer in each section was exactly the same and you just got whichever one was assigned to you each day. Thus, no family photos, desktoys, personal storage, customized wallpaper, customized desktop, etc. They chose to do this because there were three shifts that worked there and they thought this setup would work to minimize hardware and support costs.
This lasted for about three months. Morale was bad, people's productivity was at an all time low and the attrition rate soared. After that they assigned each employee a desk, which was shared with two other people who worked on other shifts. Each employee was assigned a locking drawer and was allowed to make temporary customizations to their work area during their shift. It still wasn't the best work environment, but it was better than what is described in this article.
So far Symantec has not received any submissions of this virus from customers.
Well, of course they haven't. They invented it and haven't unleashed it yet. You've got to build up the hype first right?
Just think about it, what better way for an anti-virus software company to ensure revenue for years to come than writing new viruses all the time. Now that IBM is advertising Linux solutions, Symantec figured they'd start "supporting" Linux too.
Personally, I think the Kyoto treaty is a bunch of political tripe. The whole greenhouse thing has not been proven to have been caused by man and water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas. As a person, there isn't much I can do about the oceans and lakes getting evaporated. Could someone turn down that sun? It's causing problems.
However, to respond to what you said about not buying a car, it's not possible. I hate driving, but I have to do it. I work an hour away from home by car. I could take a bus, in which case it would take me two and a half hours to get to the closest bus stop to my work. The only problem is that the closest bus stop to my work is a 15 minute car ride away. Also, have you ever bought groceries for a family of five and carried them home 9 miles from the grocery store. I can't even carry them all in from the trunk of the car in one trip.
I lived in Japan for a number of years and never owned a car there. I rode the electric train and my bicycle everywhere I went. Public transportation in Japan is far quicker than driving a car. When the US is serious about all the greenhouse nonsense and builds public transportation systems that are as effective as Japan's, I'll consider changing my lifestyle. Until then I won't.
Japan has been trying to come up with tools to do this for a long time. My father in law has a program that attempts to do it (and fails miserably), which runs on CPM.
From my experience learning and speaking Japanese, I think Japanese is a very tight language. Grammar rules have very few exceptions. If you were using translation software to translate between Japanese and another equally strict language, I could fathom it working at some point.
On the other hand, I don't think that Japanese/English translation software can ever work beyond providing just a gist of what is being said or written. English is too radical. Grammar rules are broken almost as often as not and English spelling is goofy to say the least. I think it would be nice if someone could pull it off though.
The different dialects spoken it Tokyo are hardly even noticeable. Even understanding the dialects from all over Japan isn't that big of a deal.
As for using oban, obasan, and obaasan for a 30 year old woman, I would recommend against all of them. Most 30 year old Japanese women prefer the term oneesan. If you call them one of the other three, they will take offense (in spite of the fact that the use of obasan would be technically correct).
I was having problems in my elbows and the backs of my hands. I tried a Kinesis keyboard, which I really liked for typing letters and such, but it was a pain in the butt when typing C, C++ Java or any other code that makes extensive use of the { and } keys.
At the recommendation of a friend, I switched over to the dvorak keyboard layout. The result was my elbows and hands quit hurting (some Kinesis keyboards come with markings for both qwerty and dvorak layouts).
Many people tout the dvorak layout saying that it will make you type faster. This wasn't the case for me (probably because I think at the same speed), but it sure takes a lot less effort to type in the dvorak layout than it does in the qwerty layout. My hands don't have to move nearly as much.
It took me a good two or three weeks of frustration before I felt proficient in the dvorak layout, but it was worth it to me. No more pain. I would recommend, if you want to try it, to switch and never go back. This will shorten the time it takes to learn dvorak.
I've read some creative and very valid solutions to this "problem" in the posts today. But the real reason they want to charge more doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth and usage (otherwise they would just implement one of these better ideas). Comcast and other ISPs like them are simply greedy bastards looking for an excuse to siphon more money from their users.
Everytime I read of some ISP wanting to do this somewhere, I think of DirecPC. They had (may still have) a great satellite service for people who live where broadband doesn't exist yet. The problem was (at least back when I used them) they had a cap on how many megabytes you could download each month (or maybe it was based on hours of use, I don't remember). Many people I told about the service weren't interested because of this limitation. They'd rather use their modems. Also, when an unlimited service became available in my area, I bailed on DirecPC in favor of the unlimited service.
The funny thing in all of this is that to reach the maximum usage on a DirecPC system, you'd have to be logged on for 3 or 4 hours every day (now that I think about it, it was time based; not bandwidth based). Nobody I mentioned DirecPC's service to even comes close to that kind of usage, but the idea of a cap was very distasteful and not one person that I know of ever used their service (I even gave my hardware to one guy, but he still wouldn't use it). I imagine it will be the same for Comcast. People will just go elsewhere.
...so I'm going to ask. If I were to purchase Ximian Desktop Professional for $59.00 do I get the regular StarOffice, or a custom, only-runs-when-Ximian-is-present version?
I would be willing to buy Ximian, not install it, and get StarOffice for a $20.00 discount. If it is just a regular version of StarOffice. But if Ximian has pulled a Dell, I'm not interested.
Well, if you're in Tokyo, you just take the software you want to sell and put it in a big man purse (assuming they still use those there). Then you walk along the street or down a shoten and jump in front of businessmen and say, "katte kure! This is a pen!", and they will buy your software. Just keep doing this until you've unloaded it all.
Well, it's the way of whatever the USA has become. Canada and all the other American countries have different ways than the US.
If the US government would concern themselves more with governing and less with social issues (like whether or not you can ride a rollercoaster or whether or not the government should force businesses to let transvestites use the restrooms of their desired sex rather than there actual sex) it probably wouldn't be this way.
The US patent laws are ridiculous when it comes to software. To illustrate my point, I would like to use Amazon's One-Click shopping and the grocery store as an example.
Amazon's One-Click shopping is only common sense. It didn't take a lot of brains to come up with and it is not a giant technical secret either. Anyone can implement one.
Now look at grocery stores. Sure, there may be patents on the cash register machines, but there aren't patents on having people stand in line and wait their turn in order to pay for their groceries.
If one grocery store decides to cut down on their customers wait by building more checkstands and hiring more cashiers, that store's customers are happier because their shopping experience has become easier and takes less time.
This is synonymous with Amazon's One-Click shopping. Both are nothing more than common sense solutions to the problem of creating a pleasant shopping experience for customers.
If another store decides to open more registers to help their customers too, there is no problem. It is a common sense solution to getting your customers out of the line quicker and cannot be patented.
With software, however, the US Patent office is more than happy to grant patents on the most common sense solutions to computer related problems.
Just think how incredibly piss poor our society would be if we applied these same patenting principles to our grocery stores and other aspects of life.
One store would claim a patent on stacking their goods on shelves so other stores would either have to pay the first store royalties so they could use shelves, or they would have to toss their goods on the floor in piles, or place them in buckets nailed to the walls.
I'm glad that there is some common sense in at least some aspects of our lives. I wish we could extend that to software patents as well.
Why do government officials think that their sole purpose is to create pointless new regulations, laws and special projects? I just want the damn fools to fix the damn roads and shut the hell up.
This is almost as bad as the mayor of my city putting buckets of orange flags at all the crosswalks in town. The idea was that the pedestrians would wave the flag around in a mockery of the mayor and by doing so would alert drivers that they were there and hopefully the drivers wouldn't hit the pedestrians. Unfortunately, somebody stole all the flags (gee, didn't see that coming).
This just goes to show how overbloated the government in the US is. If this is the most important thing they can come up with to work on then the New Jersey taxpayers really aren't getting their money's worth.
I think we should fire government employees to the point that the remaining ones only have time for the important things.
If you want more customers, instead of using trickery and underhandedness, why don't you try offering your customers the same, or better, quality and benefits as all your competitors?
Verisign's service sucks when compared to offerings from other companies, like address forwarding, email accounts, etc. I am aware that you can do these things with Verisign, but they want to nickel and dime you to death (which is why I switched to another company). Other organizations give you these services for the price of signing up; as it should be.
I use the dvorak keyboard layout, so I have a bunch of those IBM clicky button PS/2 keyboards because I can remove the keycaps and arrange them in the dvorak layout.
Another benefit of these keyboards is that you can pop off the keycaps, put them in a nylon stocking and place them in the dishwasher to clean them.
You can also remove the case and pull out the electronics and place the outer case in the dishwasher as well and it is very easy to do.
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I don't think online books can work. There is something about holding a book and reading it under a small light in the wee hours of the morning that you just don't get online.
There's also something comforting about placing a well liked book on a shelf, where it will sit until years later you pick it up and refresh your mind with it again or share it perhaps with your children.
For these and other reasons I think not just online, but electric books in general will not do very well.
I don't know if I like the idea of being a cell relay. My arm would get tired holding the phone up I would think.
I have been using Ogg files for a while now. I like them much more than mp3s (mostly political). And they play wonderfully on my Zaurus with tkcPlayer.
Since ogg doesn't have the licensing issues that mp3 does, I would like to see some big companies use it. It would save them money and give mp3 licensing the finger.
I'm sure that will be the case.
I would like to see them shut down the city and film this sequence.
The Matrix introduced us to a lot of interesting filming techniques. I would like to see them continue that tradition in the next two movies.
I think it is a very wise choice on PTC's part to offer ProE on the Linux platform. It is awesome software and only makes sense to offer it on a powerful and stable OS like Linux.
While your point about Unix consultants being more expensive is true during the initial deployment stage, those costs drop off once the system is in place (assuming consultants). This is not as much the case with Windows, which is why you need those dime a dozen MCSEs. If a company had to pay as much to support Windows as Unix, no company would be running Windows.
Having worked on and supported both ends of the Windows vs. Unix spectrum, my experience has been while the initial setup and configuration of Windows may be shorter than say Linux, the overall support required by the Windows platform quickly eats up any savings a short and easy installation may provide. In the long run, the support costs involved with running Windows is far greater than the support costs running Unix.
This is why I think PTC's desicion to offer Pro/Engineer on Linux is great news for shops that use their software. A lower TCO can only mean increased profits. Who can deny the snazzy of that?
It was a good book, but mostly just a remake of The Idiot's Guide to Rogering.
When I was in high school, the teacher who ran the computer lab would let us come in and play games like Zork and King's Quest.
There were no network games (no network either) but one of the most educational and fun times I had there was when she brought a bunch of text based games written in Basica and let us fiddle with the code. She would walk around and help you if you needed it, or provide a crash couse in Basic if you didn't know how to program using it. It was great.
It was a great way, I think, to get students interested in programming at an early age and keep them interested. It was a much better approach than, "Okay class, we're going to print our name to the screen 5000 times..." I would like to see all schools doing something like this.
I like the concept of game nights, but I think they should also use that Java tank game and teach kids something about programming and have fun at the same time.
I can see your point of view and I would love to never have to drive again, but as a person who lives in North America, I don't want the US or Canada to sign or have anything to do with the Kyoto treaty.
The Kyoto treaty is purely political. I have seen absolutely no evidence whatsoever that its contents are valid (in fact, the only evidence I have seen is to the contrary). Perhaps the rest of the world likes blindly rushing into self flagellation, but I don't I don't want my country to inflict it upon me either.
I didn't see this mentioned, so I will mention it. There is a mini distro that caters to the blind called BRLSpeak. I'm not blind so I don't know how good it is, but it is available on linuxiso.org.
I worked at a large company a number of years ago who did essentially the same thing. They had a similar set up to the one in this article only using PCs instead of dumb terminals. Every computer in each section was exactly the same and you just got whichever one was assigned to you each day. Thus, no family photos, desktoys, personal storage, customized wallpaper, customized desktop, etc. They chose to do this because there were three shifts that worked there and they thought this setup would work to minimize hardware and support costs.
This lasted for about three months. Morale was bad, people's productivity was at an all time low and the attrition rate soared. After that they assigned each employee a desk, which was shared with two other people who worked on other shifts. Each employee was assigned a locking drawer and was allowed to make temporary customizations to their work area during their shift. It still wasn't the best work environment, but it was better than what is described in this article.
I think they will make a change fairly soon.
So far Symantec has not received any submissions of this virus from customers.
Well, of course they haven't. They invented it and haven't unleashed it yet. You've got to build up the hype first right?
Just think about it, what better way for an anti-virus software company to ensure revenue for years to come than writing new viruses all the time. Now that IBM is advertising Linux solutions, Symantec figured they'd start "supporting" Linux too.
Before I get flamed, I'm just kidding.
Personally, I think the Kyoto treaty is a bunch of political tripe. The whole greenhouse thing has not been proven to have been caused by man and water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas. As a person, there isn't much I can do about the oceans and lakes getting evaporated. Could someone turn down that sun? It's causing problems.
However, to respond to what you said about not buying a car, it's not possible. I hate driving, but I have to do it. I work an hour away from home by car. I could take a bus, in which case it would take me two and a half hours to get to the closest bus stop to my work. The only problem is that the closest bus stop to my work is a 15 minute car ride away. Also, have you ever bought groceries for a family of five and carried them home 9 miles from the grocery store. I can't even carry them all in from the trunk of the car in one trip.
I lived in Japan for a number of years and never owned a car there. I rode the electric train and my bicycle everywhere I went. Public transportation in Japan is far quicker than driving a car. When the US is serious about all the greenhouse nonsense and builds public transportation systems that are as effective as Japan's, I'll consider changing my lifestyle. Until then I won't.
Japan has been trying to come up with tools to do this for a long time. My father in law has a program that attempts to do it (and fails miserably), which runs on CPM.
From my experience learning and speaking Japanese, I think Japanese is a very tight language. Grammar rules have very few exceptions. If you were using translation software to translate between Japanese and another equally strict language, I could fathom it working at some point.
On the other hand, I don't think that Japanese/English translation software can ever work beyond providing just a gist of what is being said or written. English is too radical. Grammar rules are broken almost as often as not and English spelling is goofy to say the least. I think it would be nice if someone could pull it off though.
The different dialects spoken it Tokyo are hardly even noticeable. Even understanding the dialects from all over Japan isn't that big of a deal.
As for using oban, obasan, and obaasan for a 30 year old woman, I would recommend against all of them. Most 30 year old Japanese women prefer the term oneesan. If you call them one of the other three, they will take offense (in spite of the fact that the use of obasan would be technically correct).
I am the ogg-man
they are the ogg-men
I am the vorbis
Goo-goo-go-joob
(Xiph Lennon)
That is great! Thanks!
I was having problems in my elbows and the backs of my hands. I tried a Kinesis keyboard, which I really liked for typing letters and such, but it was a pain in the butt when typing C, C++ Java or any other code that makes extensive use of the { and } keys.
At the recommendation of a friend, I switched over to the dvorak keyboard layout. The result was my elbows and hands quit hurting (some Kinesis keyboards come with markings for both qwerty and dvorak layouts).
Many people tout the dvorak layout saying that it will make you type faster. This wasn't the case for me (probably because I think at the same speed), but it sure takes a lot less effort to type in the dvorak layout than it does in the qwerty layout. My hands don't have to move nearly as much.
It took me a good two or three weeks of frustration before I felt proficient in the dvorak layout, but it was worth it to me. No more pain. I would recommend, if you want to try it, to switch and never go back. This will shorten the time it takes to learn dvorak.
I've read some creative and very valid solutions to this "problem" in the posts today. But the real reason they want to charge more doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth and usage (otherwise they would just implement one of these better ideas). Comcast and other ISPs like them are simply greedy bastards looking for an excuse to siphon more money from their users.
Everytime I read of some ISP wanting to do this somewhere, I think of DirecPC. They had (may still have) a great satellite service for people who live where broadband doesn't exist yet. The problem was (at least back when I used them) they had a cap on how many megabytes you could download each month (or maybe it was based on hours of use, I don't remember). Many people I told about the service weren't interested because of this limitation. They'd rather use their modems. Also, when an unlimited service became available in my area, I bailed on DirecPC in favor of the unlimited service.
The funny thing in all of this is that to reach the maximum usage on a DirecPC system, you'd have to be logged on for 3 or 4 hours every day (now that I think about it, it was time based; not bandwidth based). Nobody I mentioned DirecPC's service to even comes close to that kind of usage, but the idea of a cap was very distasteful and not one person that I know of ever used their service (I even gave my hardware to one guy, but he still wouldn't use it). I imagine it will be the same for Comcast. People will just go elsewhere.
...so I'm going to ask. If I were to purchase Ximian Desktop Professional for $59.00 do I get the regular StarOffice, or a custom, only-runs-when-Ximian-is-present version?
I would be willing to buy Ximian, not install it, and get StarOffice for a $20.00 discount. If it is just a regular version of StarOffice. But if Ximian has pulled a Dell, I'm not interested.
Well, if you're in Tokyo, you just take the software you want to sell and put it in a big man purse (assuming they still use those there). Then you walk along the street or down a shoten and jump in front of businessmen and say, "katte kure! This is a pen!", and they will buy your software. Just keep doing this until you've unloaded it all.
Well, it's the way of whatever the USA has become. Canada and all the other American countries have different ways than the US.
If the US government would concern themselves more with governing and less with social issues (like whether or not you can ride a rollercoaster or whether or not the government should force businesses to let transvestites use the restrooms of their desired sex rather than there actual sex) it probably wouldn't be this way.
The US patent laws are ridiculous when it comes to software. To illustrate my point, I would like to use Amazon's One-Click shopping and the grocery store as an example.
Amazon's One-Click shopping is only common sense. It didn't take a lot of brains to come up with and it is not a giant technical secret either. Anyone can implement one.
Now look at grocery stores. Sure, there may be patents on the cash register machines, but there aren't patents on having people stand in line and wait their turn in order to pay for their groceries.
If one grocery store decides to cut down on their customers wait by building more checkstands and hiring more cashiers, that store's customers are happier because their shopping experience has become easier and takes less time.
This is synonymous with Amazon's One-Click shopping. Both are nothing more than common sense solutions to the problem of creating a pleasant shopping experience for customers.
If another store decides to open more registers to help their customers too, there is no problem. It is a common sense solution to getting your customers out of the line quicker and cannot be patented.
With software, however, the US Patent office is more than happy to grant patents on the most common sense solutions to computer related problems.
Just think how incredibly piss poor our society would be if we applied these same patenting principles to our grocery stores and other aspects of life.
One store would claim a patent on stacking their goods on shelves so other stores would either have to pay the first store royalties so they could use shelves, or they would have to toss their goods on the floor in piles, or place them in buckets nailed to the walls.
I'm glad that there is some common sense in at least some aspects of our lives. I wish we could extend that to software patents as well.
Why do government officials think that their sole purpose is to create pointless new regulations, laws and special projects? I just want the damn fools to fix the damn roads and shut the hell up.
This is almost as bad as the mayor of my city putting buckets of orange flags at all the crosswalks in town. The idea was that the pedestrians would wave the flag around in a mockery of the mayor and by doing so would alert drivers that they were there and hopefully the drivers wouldn't hit the pedestrians. Unfortunately, somebody stole all the flags (gee, didn't see that coming).
This just goes to show how overbloated the government in the US is. If this is the most important thing they can come up with to work on then the New Jersey taxpayers really aren't getting their money's worth.
I think we should fire government employees to the point that the remaining ones only have time for the important things.
If you want more customers, instead of using trickery and underhandedness, why don't you try offering your customers the same, or better, quality and benefits as all your competitors?
Verisign's service sucks when compared to offerings from other companies, like address forwarding, email accounts, etc. I am aware that you can do these things with Verisign, but they want to nickel and dime you to death (which is why I switched to another company). Other organizations give you these services for the price of signing up; as it should be.
I use the dvorak keyboard layout, so I have a bunch of those IBM clicky button PS/2 keyboards because I can remove the keycaps and arrange them in the dvorak layout.
Another benefit of these keyboards is that you can pop off the keycaps, put them in a nylon stocking and place them in the dishwasher to clean them.
You can also remove the case and pull out the electronics and place the outer case in the dishwasher as well and it is very easy to do.
I wish IBM made them like they used to.