Please take a moment to view the Tech Republic video: http://video.techrepublic.com.com/2422-13792_11-175596.html of Paul Otellini as he says that the web expanded by means of Web 2.0, not that people like us developed and deployed applications for video, text processing, and new ways to visualize not just information, but the world. He doesn't recognize that Web 2.0 is just a term for the applications, and people that populate the web, and not a "tool" or "application" in and of itself. The question: What is the place for each of the various OS's? I am thinking Palm, Windows CE (or whatever the Vista equivalent is), Linux, Embedded Linux, MAC OSX (or whatever), Solaris, and whatever other OS's you might know. Are any of you aware of DVB and DVB-H, the digital video standards being developed? How do you see our favorite OS fitting into the picture? Among the applications are things like Second Life, Croquet, Net Meeting, Facebook, Blogging, and other interpersonal media. Three D interactive media currently is the burgeoning area of internet development, not as passive experience, but as participants. What about the "Walls" used in some development and gaming for a greater participant experience, or some of the enviro suits and bits. Faxing 3-D models is possible today, and there are foundries that will take your model or engineering files, create a mold and cast the real thing in high precision. This can revolutionize manufacturing, and eventually purchasing. You can select a component on line from a vendor, they can pass the model to a local foundry, and it can be in your hands, as an original casting in just hours or a day. How many flops and how many mega or giga bits per second do you see as necessary to provide a virtual experience, or a virtual community with somewhat seamless reality? And more important, as our lives become bound (perhaps unbound?) by the evolution of such technologies, how vital will it become to power, connect and preserve these systems? Who will create, maintain and evolve them? These are vital and important questions. They are especially important to the FOSS community, because our development model is already a distributed one, and is one that the current media are struggling to understand, compete with and/or adapt. How will our successors be compensated so that they will have happy lives and contented families? This is "wayyyy off thread" here, and I appologize for that, but we need to think about it. If we are to continue to enjoy our hobby/work/passion, these are important issues to understand. If you wish that we take it somewhere off line, please suggest a location and I will be happy to repost there. Regards, Les H
