On 3/21/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[Explicative Language] Cool?
Is that a deliberate pun? :-) ("Explicative" != "expletive")
In the field of computers, or the application of computers what would really
get you going?
In order of decreasing practicality and increasing ideology:
MythTV. More than just a DVR that records and plays TV shows. It
can move shows around to arbitrary storage. It can archive shows to
DVD. It can play DVDs. It can act as a jukebox for my FLAC
collection on my PC. It can show my digital photos. It can show me
weather, traffic, and news reports. It can stream video from my PC or
thee 'net on to my TV screen. I'm looking forward to it.
Asterisk. It can answer my phone, route sales calls to voice mail,
forward friends to my cell phone. For a business, it can bring up
customer data on a computer when a known Caller ID comes in, and offer
worldwide off-premise extensions. I wish I was in a position to use
it. ;-)
Wikipedia. For all it's faults, Wikipedia is the most impressive
group collaboration project in human history. Thousands of people
working together to create a compendium of all human knowledge, for
the simple reason that it's a Good Thing to do. And it *works*. If
you'd told me five years ago that a globally writable text file would
one of most useful sites on the web, I'd have thought you were insane.
But Wikipedia *works*. The good overwhelms the bad. Maybe there's
hope for the human race after all.
Wikipedia also has the benefit of (re)introducing everyone to the
idea of Free Content.
Freedom via the 'net. The reason so many companies hate the 'net is
they can't control it. I'd argue that even companies like Verizon and
Microsoft still hate the 'net, deep down inside. Sure, they give it
lip service, but ultimately, they still want to lock you up. (Doc
Searls' "silo" concept.) The 'net lets the little guy talk to the
little guy. You don't need a big software company or a big phone
company or a big record company or a big movie company this way.
Peer-to-peer networking enables peer-to-peer humanity.
-- Ben
_______________________________________________
gnhlug-discuss mailing list
gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org
http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
