The issue really is over _content_. The mobility of palmtops or laptops does not nearly effect the globe as much as just an available pc of any kind, at any location by anyone, whether they actually had the money to buy the hardware or not. That is the next quantum leap this whole planet will make. as he said as well, but now quoted before: "one zealot can incite not just a beer hall in Munich, but the whole country."
Will it matter if the zealot uses the latest 2gig palmtop with whiz bang full motion graphics, or will it be more important as to what he has to say, and whether than can be said more effectively with text like this. Depends on his information. If he can line out the fundamentals of modern economies and explain what they will do in time for his followers to benefit financially, all the smoke and mirrors of all the geeks on Madison avenue will not be able to keep up. If he has the answers he can put them in ascii. If he dont, then he needs full motion video. We all pick up on different things. Maybe his close is apt: " Open standardsa and evolution change will be important. IBM's 1987 PS/2 MCA was technically superior to the Compaq -led standard, But EISA was good enough, and it was backward compatable. Great design is cool, but so is affordable pricing and openness, which is why Apple is doomed to be a 5% player. As the PC completes its first tow decades and move on, I hope the industry opts to spend less time thinking about processor MIPS, hard drive capacity, and screen resolution and more time on ease of use. For all the usability labs that sprung up and gave us color-coded connectors, setup posters, and on-screen wizards, the PC remains a frustratingly complex device. That was, and remains our biggest challenge: making technology accessible." The only reason hard drive capacity and screen resolution are important is for graphic and moving images. Color coding and wizards go all the way back to the CGA, and color coded data fields on spreadsheets had an enormous impact for the same reason. It is why the pos is red. These conventions are not built overnite, 'red ink' goes back centuries. The usability that the GUI ads dont pan out all that well, which is why it is still a bitch to do the 3-up mail merge. There's still several billion people on this planet, and what they will do with the first access they will get, mostly in email like this, remains to be seen. But when the open source global network emerges we will have a lot more data to deal with, with more real content in ASCII than in GUI. It is not exactly an issue of operating system, but if you dont have anything, and then have dos, that is way ahead of anything in terms of impact you will get after you've had simple text modes. Which any old x86 can do. Speaking of which, I'm still working on it, and gotta get back to the color text mode ebook setup. See ya later. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
