If all future devices followed this model, invention and innovation would be severely hampered
This is the problem because this is EXACTLY where we are headed. This is where Apple is headed with Mac OS, this is where OEMs with locked bootloaders on phones and tablets are going. The minimization of the typical PC and the rise of the appliance computer is allowing these manufacturers to lock down these products and decrease our ability to control our own things.
I honestly believe this is the direction the Mac AppStore is heading. I truly believe Lion +1 will not allow software to be installed that isn't in the AppStore. With the removal of the optical drive, it's going to make it that much harder to get around that kind of lock-down.
I don't think Windows will ever go that route. But unfortunately by that point, I don't think most average users are going to care. We enthusiasts will care, but the average person who is used to only getting apps from an approved appstore simply aren't going to try to look anywhere else.
Anytime anyone declares a technology a fad, it always comes back to haunt them.
- PCs were a fad. People decried them, saying no one would ever need a computer in their home.
- The Internet was a fad.
- The Web was a fad. Remember that bloody cook, I can't remember his name, wrote that book I believe called Silicon Snake Oil? He claimed that pretty much everything we take for granted now would never, ever become a reality.
- Social networking was a fad.
- etc.
I think it's impossible to declare any technology a fad.
But when it comes to tablets, I think it's simply a young market. Who knows what the landscape will look like in 6 months or a year? Otherwise, I agree with most everything else you said.
The needs of the home and business markets are very, very different.
THIS
Pundits love to see trends with computing hardware but fail to see that there are two completely different universes when it comes to that. A large number of average Joe, home users can get by with a netbook, a tablet, and (for some) a smartphone. There will of course always be geeks, enthusiasts and prosumer-lever users who want and need more. The custom built PC isn't going anywhere for those enthusiasts. But for the home market as a whole, there's seems to be a shift away from desktops and even laptops bigger than 12 inches. Off the shelf desktops are a dying breed.
But businesses can't move away from the desktop. Sure, you could move to thin-client computing (some do), but you still have a use-case where people need a powerful machine. You simply cannot compare the needs of business with the needs of home users. It's apples to oranges.
I have clients who want to user their iPads and such in their offices and it just doesn't work. It's the same problem that the "tablet PC" has had for the last 10 years. It's absolutely not a form factor that is conducive to productivity. A couple of my physician clients recently purchased convertible tablets to use with their EMR system, and they don't use them. $2,000 a pop for those things, and it's mostly a waste. They find them cumbersome and difficult to use. I've had other physician clients in the past tell me the same thing. They had purchased tablets, used them once, and stuck them on a shelf and never touched them again. What would have been more appropriate for these physicians is either 1) a desktop or thin client in their exam rooms or 2) a desktop or thin at the nursing station they dictate at following a patient consult. Of course their EMR vendor pushed those blasted tablets and the doctor wasn't interested in my input. Either way, tablets just aren't efficient ways to be productive.
The problem is that Walmart sells a large number of its merchandise at a loss. Their prices are artificially low, which makes other stores seem "expensive" by comparison. Small shops who actually depend on their profit margins to make a living simply cannot compete with them. Mom and Pop can't sell anything at a loss or they'd go out of business. Walmart makes it up because they're gigantic.
So they run every other store in town out of business because no one can compete with them, and they buy all of their inventory from overseas manufacturers. They destroy jobs and towns from every angle.
"We don't care how much your app costs, we're going to give it away for free to promote ourselves, we're not going to give you any money for the sales, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it."
The same argument could be made about for Windows administration costs. It costs you money, but then you still have to pay people to manage it. Linux solutions might cost no money, and you still have to have some one manage it. Either way, the people who manage it have to know what they're doing. But even then, there's just as much documentation around the web for managing Linux systems as there is for managing Windows systems.
The real key is whether or not a Linux/FLOSS solution is right for your organization.
I manage a number of clients who are medical facilities. Even with their "web-based" medical software, it still requires Windows/IE/ActiveX nonsense. The rest who have locally hosted databases require Windows (which sparks another rant on the lack of cross platform support in the medical field). These facilities are constantly trying to find ways to cut costs. I would love to move them to free software solutions top-to-bottom, but I can't. I have, however, been successful in converting several of them to OpenOffice/LibreOffice, which has saved thousands of dollars and the users are perfectly happy with that.
Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right
on
Beyond HDTV
·
· Score: 0
I have a 47" 1080p TV in my living room and my couch is somewhere between 10-12 feet from my TV. I believe that I'm supposed to sit 6-7 feet from the TV to be able to see the full range of 1080p. That's just absurd.
Now I did trade up recently from a 32" 720p TV that was 60 Hz and my current TV is 120 Hz. I can definitely see the difference in the refresh rate. But I can see very little difference in actual picture quality between my DVD rips and BluRays played from that distance.
I can see a point, where unlike MySpace, people's accounts aren't named ~$~2Sexy4U~$~ . It's shit like that (along with their stupid profile themes and automatic music and video plays) that made MySpace unusable.
HOWEVER
If I want to use a handle/pseudonym/whatever, then i should be able to. Not everyone uses social networks the same way. And some people NEED to use them under assumed names because of fear of reprisal/oppression/violence/etc. People can still connect and organize and socialize anonymously. We've had plenty of examples to prove this.
You also have the issue with names, that not all names are "normal." So their real name policy runs into that. What about John Doe? Harry Sachs? Dweezil Zappa? Peaches Geldof?
Yes, good sysadmins do keep things up and running, but there are things that inevitably break down. It happens: drives fail, a rat chews a network cable, somebody downloads a virus, whatever. And people freak out. So you always get calls from people who are frustrated, angry, etc., and want their shit fixed. The problem is that in the mind of the users, you are akin to a janitor or a plumber. You get called when things break or when people who THINK they know what they are doing screw things up even worse than they were before because they didn't want to call you. No one pays any attention to the sysadmins when things are working, and then suddenly they start blaming them when things aren't working.
Granted, there are people out there in IT who have no business doing what they are doing. But they aren't the problem.
Every one of my clients thinks that each and every user must have domain admin rights and be able to do whatever they want. But at the same time, they tell me they want me to make sure employees aren't downloading things and to block social networking sites and such. But whenever I try to explain networking security to them, they get irritated.
A large number of my clients are medical facilities. Give people anything more than just basic rights to logon and run their medical software and you expose every single one of their patient's private info. (Which begets another rant on idiot fucking developers who write their EMR or practice management software so that it must run with admin rights.)
You can do whatever you want on your home computer, but in a business environment, you don't get that privilege.
Bloody hell. I think that entire page is written in h1 tags. Apparently this person has never heard of a CMS (though that's the least of their worries, I suppose).
Slashdot Mirror
There is plenty of available bandwidth. All they want to do is throttle you so they can sell you back the thing they just took away from you.
If all future devices followed this model, invention and innovation would be severely hampered
This is the problem because this is EXACTLY where we are headed. This is where Apple is headed with Mac OS, this is where OEMs with locked bootloaders on phones and tablets are going. The minimization of the typical PC and the rise of the appliance computer is allowing these manufacturers to lock down these products and decrease our ability to control our own things.
Banshee
That's a line from the AT&T playbook.
And what exactly is your idea of a "real smartphone or tablet"?
I also have never heard of a car that forbids towing
I've even seen Smart Cars towing trailers down the interstate.
I came here to say this very thing.
Edison didn't invent anything. He just preyed upon others and stole their ideas, passing them off as his own.
Seconded. ceyenne's comment is depressing as hell to me. "Forget doing what you enjoy, it doesn't matter. Only do whatever it takes to make money."
Not how I want to live.
I honestly believe this is the direction the Mac AppStore is heading. I truly believe Lion +1 will not allow software to be installed that isn't in the AppStore. With the removal of the optical drive, it's going to make it that much harder to get around that kind of lock-down. I don't think Windows will ever go that route. But unfortunately by that point, I don't think most average users are going to care. We enthusiasts will care, but the average person who is used to only getting apps from an approved appstore simply aren't going to try to look anywhere else.
Already here: Windows Starter, Windows Home Premium, Windows Professional, Windows Enterprise.
Tablets are a fad
Anytime anyone declares a technology a fad, it always comes back to haunt them.
- PCs were a fad. People decried them, saying no one would ever need a computer in their home.
- The Internet was a fad.
- The Web was a fad. Remember that bloody cook, I can't remember his name, wrote that book I believe called Silicon Snake Oil? He claimed that pretty much everything we take for granted now would never, ever become a reality.
- Social networking was a fad.
- etc.
I think it's impossible to declare any technology a fad.
But when it comes to tablets, I think it's simply a young market. Who knows what the landscape will look like in 6 months or a year? Otherwise, I agree with most everything else you said.
The needs of the home and business markets are very, very different.
THIS
Pundits love to see trends with computing hardware but fail to see that there are two completely different universes when it comes to that. A large number of average Joe, home users can get by with a netbook, a tablet, and (for some) a smartphone. There will of course always be geeks, enthusiasts and prosumer-lever users who want and need more. The custom built PC isn't going anywhere for those enthusiasts. But for the home market as a whole, there's seems to be a shift away from desktops and even laptops bigger than 12 inches. Off the shelf desktops are a dying breed.
But businesses can't move away from the desktop. Sure, you could move to thin-client computing (some do), but you still have a use-case where people need a powerful machine. You simply cannot compare the needs of business with the needs of home users. It's apples to oranges.
I have clients who want to user their iPads and such in their offices and it just doesn't work. It's the same problem that the "tablet PC" has had for the last 10 years. It's absolutely not a form factor that is conducive to productivity. A couple of my physician clients recently purchased convertible tablets to use with their EMR system, and they don't use them. $2,000 a pop for those things, and it's mostly a waste. They find them cumbersome and difficult to use. I've had other physician clients in the past tell me the same thing. They had purchased tablets, used them once, and stuck them on a shelf and never touched them again. What would have been more appropriate for these physicians is either 1) a desktop or thin client in their exam rooms or 2) a desktop or thin at the nursing station they dictate at following a patient consult. Of course their EMR vendor pushed those blasted tablets and the doctor wasn't interested in my input. Either way, tablets just aren't efficient ways to be productive.
The problem is that Walmart sells a large number of its merchandise at a loss. Their prices are artificially low, which makes other stores seem "expensive" by comparison. Small shops who actually depend on their profit margins to make a living simply cannot compete with them. Mom and Pop can't sell anything at a loss or they'd go out of business. Walmart makes it up because they're gigantic. So they run every other store in town out of business because no one can compete with them, and they buy all of their inventory from overseas manufacturers. They destroy jobs and towns from every angle.
No, Amazon basically said:
"We don't care how much your app costs, we're going to give it away for free to promote ourselves, we're not going to give you any money for the sales, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it."
Bypass the interface
The same argument could be made about for Windows administration costs. It costs you money, but then you still have to pay people to manage it. Linux solutions might cost no money, and you still have to have some one manage it. Either way, the people who manage it have to know what they're doing. But even then, there's just as much documentation around the web for managing Linux systems as there is for managing Windows systems.
The real key is whether or not a Linux/FLOSS solution is right for your organization.
I manage a number of clients who are medical facilities. Even with their "web-based" medical software, it still requires Windows/IE/ActiveX nonsense. The rest who have locally hosted databases require Windows (which sparks another rant on the lack of cross platform support in the medical field). These facilities are constantly trying to find ways to cut costs. I would love to move them to free software solutions top-to-bottom, but I can't. I have, however, been successful in converting several of them to OpenOffice/LibreOffice, which has saved thousands of dollars and the users are perfectly happy with that.
I have a 47" 1080p TV in my living room and my couch is somewhere between 10-12 feet from my TV. I believe that I'm supposed to sit 6-7 feet from the TV to be able to see the full range of 1080p. That's just absurd.
Now I did trade up recently from a 32" 720p TV that was 60 Hz and my current TV is 120 Hz. I can definitely see the difference in the refresh rate. But I can see very little difference in actual picture quality between my DVD rips and BluRays played from that distance.
I can see a point, where unlike MySpace, people's accounts aren't named ~$~2Sexy4U~$~ . It's shit like that (along with their stupid profile themes and automatic music and video plays) that made MySpace unusable.
HOWEVER
If I want to use a handle/pseudonym/whatever, then i should be able to. Not everyone uses social networks the same way. And some people NEED to use them under assumed names because of fear of reprisal/oppression/violence/etc. People can still connect and organize and socialize anonymously. We've had plenty of examples to prove this.
You also have the issue with names, that not all names are "normal." So their real name policy runs into that. What about John Doe? Harry Sachs? Dweezil Zappa? Peaches Geldof?
What about Webmasters?
This is a bit backward.
Yes, good sysadmins do keep things up and running, but there are things that inevitably break down. It happens: drives fail, a rat chews a network cable, somebody downloads a virus, whatever. And people freak out. So you always get calls from people who are frustrated, angry, etc., and want their shit fixed. The problem is that in the mind of the users, you are akin to a janitor or a plumber. You get called when things break or when people who THINK they know what they are doing screw things up even worse than they were before because they didn't want to call you. No one pays any attention to the sysadmins when things are working, and then suddenly they start blaming them when things aren't working.
Granted, there are people out there in IT who have no business doing what they are doing. But they aren't the problem.
Every one of my clients thinks that each and every user must have domain admin rights and be able to do whatever they want. But at the same time, they tell me they want me to make sure employees aren't downloading things and to block social networking sites and such. But whenever I try to explain networking security to them, they get irritated.
A large number of my clients are medical facilities. Give people anything more than just basic rights to logon and run their medical software and you expose every single one of their patient's private info. (Which begets another rant on idiot fucking developers who write their EMR or practice management software so that it must run with admin rights.)
You can do whatever you want on your home computer, but in a business environment, you don't get that privilege.
at 3am your servers aren't screaming at you until you clean up their feces and feed them.
Sounds like someone's shop doesn't use Windows...
QFT
Selena Gomez is of age.
Bloody hell. I think that entire page is written in h1 tags. Apparently this person has never heard of a CMS (though that's the least of their worries, I suppose).
I have an older, fat PS3, so maybe things have changed with the slim models, but that thing is VERY LOUD, and hot enough to cook on.