The iPhone, with itâ(TM)s global reach and marketing may be the first phone that makes it obvious just how far the US is behind other parts of the world in wireless technology. I hope this opens the eyes of many people.
Most people have no idea how we compare to the rest of the world, due to the AT&T and Verizon stranglehold. Those two companies buying up all the regional carriers, as well as having incompatible technologies, has lowered functionality and disrupted normal market forces.
"As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And itâ(TM)s more bad news for Bing. Itâ(TM)s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. â" yes, thatâ(TM)s less than what Live.com was at last month."
Artificial limitations like this seem to me to be an invitation for problems and end user frustration.
What is an application?
Are tool tray apps possible, or allowed?
What about apps that launch other apps as part of their functionality?
Would Chrome be limited to two tabs? (One for the host window, two and three for the first two tabs.)
I would say this is an invitation for piracy, but if it really is intended for netbooks, most consumers would find it very hard to install a new OS on a computer with no cd drive. It will make users angry, although potentially limit things on machines with small amounts of RAM.
If it's intended for developing countries, I suspect piracy (or Linux) will win out.
See Page Three of the PDF: "And by holding a price umbrella over the entire market, even with arguably better products, Apple allowed the entire Windows ecosystem to establish itself underneath."
This is very interesting technology. These solar races really produce odd looking vehicles. Three wheels makes sense in terms of rolling resistance, but I can help but think what might happen if it needed to take a turn fast.
Programs like this are great, and help push the technology envelope. Although it's neat that it can hit 60Mph...the article really does not have much real information in it.
I hope to see some of this technology filter down into production cars. I've always wondered how much power could result from the sunlight hitting the roof of my car all day long when I'm at work. Seems like there is potential missed opportunity there.
In or around 1999 I had a 1000 device network routing through a 133Mhz PC running Linux. The 133Mhz system practically thought is was sittle idle as it shuffled packets between three 100 megabit networks.
I'm not suprised at all that these Open Source solutions are on par with Cisco for many users. My only real concern would be support. At least back then (I have not dealt with them recently), Cisco had great support and would "own" network problem resolution in a way that made it worth paying their price.
$3,553.00 for a fully loaded system!
on
Apple Unveils 24" iMac
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I selected all top top options (with the exception of software,) included AppleCare, and the thing came out to $3,553.00! Wow. That's certainly not the price point I think of when iMac crosses my mind.
At $.10 per hour, that makes a single server instance about $72 per month. If you have minimal storage needs, it can compete with a low end leased server, plus it has other advantages not present in the physical leased box world.
Personally I don't have any need for a scalable system such as this, but it certainly opens the possibility for products or projects that may not otherwise be feasible.
Have a CPU intensive batch job that can broken up and distributed? Use these boxes during the run then eliminate them when it's done. Only pay for the time you use.
At a previous job I had a task that would have been perfect for a burst-able cloud like this. Example:
Every evening we had a large number of scanned tiff images that needed to be manipulated, and a short time window in which to do it. Tiff image manipulation takes a lot of CPU resources and time. We ended up purchasing a bunch of blade servers that sat idle for the 22 hours a day they we not running images. Something like what Amazon is offering may have been a very high performance and cost effective solution to that type of problem. The control via web services could automate the whole process.
Was I the only Mac user who didn't know what launchd was off the top of my head?
In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd. The launchd daemon takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that traditionally have handled system initialization, called systems scripts, run startup items, and generally prepared the system for the user. And they still exist on Mac OS X Tiger, but launchd has superseded them in many instances. These venerable programs are widely used by system administrators, open source developers, managers of web services, even consumers who want to use cron to manage iCal scheduling, and they can still be called with launchd.
The launchd daemon also provides a big performance boost to your system. At any given time, only those daemons that are actually used are launched; combined with the fact that daemons can shut themselves down and be relaunched as needed means that you can reduce the average memory footprint of the system.
What the new AMD led ATI can do to help show leadership is to release the information (or even drivers) needed for Linux to take full advantage of their card capabilities.
ATI seemed to not want to do this. I hope this changes under the new AMD administration.
What I've heard in the Linux community is to stay away from anything ATI if you plan to use it with Linux. Too bad really, because they really do make nice cards.
Green Hills, a Syracuse NY grocery store also uses Pay By Touch. It's one store only, not a chain. They like to brag about Inc. Magazine naming them the best little grocery store in America.
Not sure how long they've had it. It's part of their "SmartShop" program that also creates custom discounts and shopping lists personalized based on your previous purchases. They seem very advanced in that type of stuff, and it has helped them create a very loyal customer base.
The key to this being an "Excel Killer" is not that it needs to be able to do everything (or even most) of what Excel can do. Most people barely use probably 2% of Excel's capabilities, and don't even know how to use much of the other 98%.
The key to putting some hurt onto Excel sales, and MS Office in general is for Google to offer things like this that are "good enough" for the mass of home users that use 2% of Excel's product offerings. I personally have started using this for a couple personal spreadsheets that I have, where the network availability is more useful than having the whiz-bang Excel features.
Let's not forget that Google has also purchased Writely, which may be a "good enough" web based word processor to start attracting the mass of people who use Word as a fancy notepad.exe with spell-check. I don't need a heavy duty Word processor for most of what I do, and many other home users don't either. Writely is not yet available for users to register, unless they got in pre-Google.
While the Writely and Google Spreadsheets combo are not "killer apps" in terms of features, they may have enough functionality to put a serious dent in the very low end of Microsoft's user base.
I've heard it described as the technology gap will, and has already started to push the first and third worlds further apart. More importantly, it is becoming ever more difficult to improve the living conditions and economies as this gap widens.
This device and plan, if it can be pulled off, could be the single most import thing in helping third world populations on a large scale over the long term.
It's not the technology itself, per say, but the communications that it enables. Getting cell phones into places is a similar type of project. Things as simple as finding the market price of lets say rice, can apparently make big diferences in building economies.
It may have a 20.1" screen, but it's a little light on the pixel density side of things.
"So let's start with that huge screen. With a widescreen aspect ratio, you're getting a native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, which to be honest is pretty low considering the physical size. Considering that many 17in notebook screens have a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, I can't help but find the resolution on this 20.1in display somewhat disappointing. Closer inspection gives some clue as to why the resolution is limited - quite simply, Acer has bolted one of its desktop monitors onto a notebook. Whereas most notebook screens and consequently lids are getting slimmer and slimmer, the lid on the Aspire 9800 is 30mm thick - it's therefore a safe bet that it's exactly the same panel that Acer sells in it's 20.1in desktop monitors."
Personally I have an older Dell C800 (I or something like that) with a 15" 1600x1200 screen. I value pixels more than size, so for me it's great.
1680x1050 is horrible resolution for 20" of screen space, but I guess if you value size more than pixels, then this is the laptop for you. I would guess that for some users, particularly gamers, raw pixel resolution may not be your highest priority. There's also the "mine's bigger than yours" aspect.
Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for a company to bolt a 20" desktop screen onto a laptop base.
Oh yeah...don't forget the Holy 17 Pounds Batman! I'd be willing to bet that doesn't count the power brick. Does it come with wheels and a pull handle?
Anyway, if I had the cash burning a hole in my pocket, I'd pass this one by.
In my work experience, I have concluded that the vast majority of "big name" database users vastly underutilize the features that the big bucks pay for. Many companies that generally only need a step up from MS Access but get sucked into Oracle or DB2 thinking that's the logical next step.
In addition, many database users don't have a realistic understanding of what constitutes a lot of data. I've met quite a few people that think a 10k row database is huge, and anything in the 1 million record range is absolutely gargantuan! To me, anything less than 1 million records is downright tiny. Seriously, many of these users don't need an "enterprise" RDBMS for scalability reasons, which is what leads many customers to open their wallets. Something like Postgres or MySQL would be more than adequate for their needs.
That is not to say there are not users who need the enterprise features, but it amazes me the amount of money that is dumped into features that most small to medium size deployments don't even use.
It is very educational to see how Oracle for example is used in real world deployments. Open source aside, I have seen many where the user may have been better served by just using a properly setup MS Access or FileMaker database!
Theory 1: I bet small changes could be made to Tivo to make it much more of a video on demand box. These changes could be done in such a way that the Tivo is much more dependant on the network for it's content. High network utilization is good for Cisco.
Thoery 2: They own Scientific Atlanta which (last I knew) is one of the major vendors of cable set-top boxes. Including Tivo in a set-top box would be good for sales I would think, even if it's just because Tivo has a good "brand."
"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."
"maintain our market share" is what's interesting. She doesn't even say increase. That is not a good sign for Yahoo's search business.
I can imaging Ask employees giddy with glee seeing that search engine #2 has consciously put their search market share in neutral.
Apple is the only company with any Core Duo machines who is able to get any buzz around there product, for a few reasons.
1. Apple is now on intel, so that's big news. 2. The press likes apple right now. 3. Apple knows how to market to consumers. "iMac" gains more traction that the new "HP Pavilion dv1000." The "iMac" is a product even my parents can name. The HP Pavilion dv1000 is just another part number nobody ever remembers.
Apple isn't goingto open FairPlay anytime soon. It's not in Apple's best intrest. Apple doesn't give a rat's behind about the iTunes music store on it's own. They (currently) have little motivation to license fairplay, and the ability to use itunes to other non-apple mp3 players.
iTunes music store is what helps support and drive iPod sales. That's it's current purpose, and it's working rather well.
I can foresee a time when apple may license fairplay, but I think that's a while off. The introduction of videos have given existing iPod owners an excellent reason to upgrade to a new iPod.
My oppinion is the iPod gravy train is too important for apple to risk by licensing fairplay to other vendors until the market significantly changes.
Slashdot Mirror
"Just as the old AT&T stifled landline innovation in the 20th century, the new AT&T is stifling wireless innovation in the 21st."
The iPhone, with itâ(TM)s global reach and marketing may be the first phone that makes it obvious just how far the US is behind other parts of the world in wireless technology. I hope this opens the eyes of many people. Most people have no idea how we compare to the rest of the world, due to the AT&T and Verizon stranglehold. Those two companies buying up all the regional carriers, as well as having incompatible technologies, has lowered functionality and disrupted normal market forces.
Not so fast. Same source indicates the bing has already fallen back down to (less than) live.com levels.
TechCrunch: Bing was #2 for a day then Yahoo regained its place as Bing fell.
"As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And itâ(TM)s more bad news for Bing. Itâ(TM)s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. â" yes, thatâ(TM)s less than what Live.com was at last month."
Fail.
They missed the chapter on how to encrypt DVD.
Artificial limitations like this seem to me to be an invitation for problems and end user frustration.
What is an application?
Are tool tray apps possible, or allowed?
What about apps that launch other apps as part of their functionality?
Would Chrome be limited to two tabs? (One for the host window, two and three for the first two tabs.)
I would say this is an invitation for piracy, but if it really is intended for netbooks, most consumers would find it very hard to install a new OS on a computer with no cd drive. It will make users angry, although potentially limit things on machines with small amounts of RAM.
If it's intended for developing countries, I suspect piracy (or Linux) will win out.
See Page Three of the PDF:
"And by holding a price umbrella over the entire market, even with arguably better products, Apple allowed the entire Windows ecosystem to establish itself underneath."
Imaging that. Charging more for a better product!
Too big for a standard sidewalk.
Too small to be safe on the road.
Has a roll-cage...because it needs one. /me thinks this idea won't save GM.
This is very interesting technology. These solar races really produce odd looking vehicles. Three wheels makes sense in terms of rolling resistance, but I can help but think what might happen if it needed to take a turn fast.
Programs like this are great, and help push the technology envelope. Although it's neat that it can hit 60Mph...the article really does not have much real information in it.
I hope to see some of this technology filter down into production cars. I've always wondered how much power could result from the sunlight hitting the roof of my car all day long when I'm at work. Seems like there is potential missed opportunity there.
-Pete
With the founder leaving, the name MySQL no longer fits.
Next slashdot poll...
MySQL's new name should be:
1. TheirSQL
2. SunSQL
3. JavaSQL
4. CowboynealSQL
I vote for #4.
Assuming Apple's engineers (the people who actually matter) don't quit when Jobs leaves, Apple will do just fine after Jobs.
Really? Leaders matter. I have two words for you:
John Scully
In or around 1999 I had a 1000 device network routing through a 133Mhz PC running Linux. The 133Mhz system practically thought is was sittle idle as it shuffled packets between three 100 megabit networks.
I'm not suprised at all that these Open Source solutions are on par with Cisco for many users. My only real concern would be support. At least back then (I have not dealt with them recently), Cisco had great support and would "own" network problem resolution in a way that made it worth paying their price.
I selected all top top options (with the exception of software,) included AppleCare, and the thing came out to $3,553.00! Wow. That's certainly not the price point I think of when iMac crosses my mind.
At $.10 per hour, that makes a single server instance about $72 per month. If you have minimal storage needs, it can compete with a low end leased server, plus it has other advantages not present in the physical leased box world.
Personally I don't have any need for a scalable system such as this, but it certainly opens the possibility for products or projects that may not otherwise be feasible.
Have a CPU intensive batch job that can broken up and distributed? Use these boxes during the run then eliminate them when it's done. Only pay for the time you use.
At a previous job I had a task that would have been perfect for a burst-able cloud like this. Example:
Every evening we had a large number of scanned tiff images that needed to be manipulated, and a short time window in which to do it. Tiff image manipulation takes a lot of CPU resources and time. We ended up purchasing a bunch of blade servers that sat idle for the 22 hours a day they we not running images. Something like what Amazon is offering may have been a very high performance and cost effective solution to that type of problem. The control via web services could automate the whole process.
Was I the only Mac user who didn't know what launchd was off the top of my head?
In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd. The launchd daemon takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that traditionally have handled system initialization, called systems scripts, run startup items, and generally prepared the system for the user. And they still exist on Mac OS X Tiger, but launchd has superseded them in many instances. These venerable programs are widely used by system administrators, open source developers, managers of web services, even consumers who want to use cron to manage iCal scheduling, and they can still be called with launchd.
The launchd daemon also provides a big performance boost to your system. At any given time, only those daemons that are actually used are launched; combined with the fact that daemons can shut themselves down and be relaunched as needed means that you can reduce the average memory footprint of the system.
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html
These cards are nice...for windows users.
What the new AMD led ATI can do to help show leadership is to release the information (or even drivers) needed for Linux to take full advantage of their card capabilities.
ATI seemed to not want to do this. I hope this changes under the new AMD administration.
What I've heard in the Linux community is to stay away from anything ATI if you plan to use it with Linux. Too bad really, because they really do make nice cards.
Green Hills, a Syracuse NY grocery store also uses Pay By Touch. It's one store only, not a chain. They like to brag about Inc. Magazine naming them the best little grocery store in America.
Not sure how long they've had it. It's part of their "SmartShop" program that also creates custom discounts and shopping lists personalized based on your previous purchases. They seem very advanced in that type of stuff, and it has helped them create a very loyal customer base.
-Pete
The key to this being an "Excel Killer" is not that it needs to be able to do everything (or even most) of what Excel can do. Most people barely use probably 2% of Excel's capabilities, and don't even know how to use much of the other 98%.
The key to putting some hurt onto Excel sales, and MS Office in general is for Google to offer things like this that are "good enough" for the mass of home users that use 2% of Excel's product offerings. I personally have started using this for a couple personal spreadsheets that I have, where the network availability is more useful than having the whiz-bang Excel features.
Let's not forget that Google has also purchased Writely, which may be a "good enough" web based word processor to start attracting the mass of people who use Word as a fancy notepad.exe with spell-check. I don't need a heavy duty Word processor for most of what I do, and many other home users don't either. Writely is not yet available for users to register, unless they got in pre-Google.
While the Writely and Google Spreadsheets combo are not "killer apps" in terms of features, they may have enough functionality to put a serious dent in the very low end of Microsoft's user base.
Most importantly, what's the bill # and which way do I tell my reps to vote?
I did a quick look around the links and could not find it.
I've heard it described as the technology gap will, and has already started to push the first and third worlds further apart. More importantly, it is becoming ever more difficult to improve the living conditions and economies as this gap widens.
This device and plan, if it can be pulled off, could be the single most import thing in helping third world populations on a large scale over the long term.
It's not the technology itself, per say, but the communications that it enables. Getting cell phones into places is a similar type of project. Things as simple as finding the market price of lets say rice, can apparently make big diferences in building economies.
It may have a 20.1" screen, but it's a little light on the pixel density side of things.
"So let's start with that huge screen. With a widescreen aspect ratio, you're getting a native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, which to be honest is pretty low considering the physical size. Considering that many 17in notebook screens have a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, I can't help but find the resolution on this 20.1in display somewhat disappointing. Closer inspection gives some clue as to why the resolution is limited - quite simply, Acer has bolted one of its desktop monitors onto a notebook. Whereas most notebook screens and consequently lids are getting slimmer and slimmer, the lid on the Aspire 9800 is 30mm thick - it's therefore a safe bet that it's exactly the same panel that Acer sells in it's 20.1in desktop monitors."
Personally I have an older Dell C800 (I or something like that) with a 15" 1600x1200 screen. I value pixels more than size, so for me it's great.
1680x1050 is horrible resolution for 20" of screen space, but I guess if you value size more than pixels, then this is the laptop for you. I would guess that for some users, particularly gamers, raw pixel resolution may not be your highest priority. There's also the "mine's bigger than yours" aspect.
Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for a company to bolt a 20" desktop screen onto a laptop base.
Oh yeah...don't forget the Holy 17 Pounds Batman! I'd be willing to bet that doesn't count the power brick. Does it come with wheels and a pull handle?
Anyway, if I had the cash burning a hole in my pocket, I'd pass this one by.
In my work experience, I have concluded that the vast majority of "big name" database users vastly underutilize the features that the big bucks pay for. Many companies that generally only need a step up from MS Access but get sucked into Oracle or DB2 thinking that's the logical next step.
In addition, many database users don't have a realistic understanding of what constitutes a lot of data. I've met quite a few people that think a 10k row database is huge, and anything in the 1 million record range is absolutely gargantuan! To me, anything less than 1 million records is downright tiny. Seriously, many of these users don't need an "enterprise" RDBMS for scalability reasons, which is what leads many customers to open their wallets. Something like Postgres or MySQL would be more than adequate for their needs.
That is not to say there are not users who need the enterprise features, but it amazes me the amount of money that is dumped into features that most small to medium size deployments don't even use.
It is very educational to see how Oracle for example is used in real world deployments. Open source aside, I have seen many where the user may have been better served by just using a properly setup MS Access or FileMaker database!
-Pete
Cisco is all about the network.
Theory 1:
I bet small changes could be made to Tivo to make it much more of a video on demand box. These changes could be done in such a way that the Tivo is much more dependant on the network for it's content. High network utilization is good for Cisco.
Thoery 2:
They own Scientific Atlanta which (last I knew) is one of the major vendors of cable set-top boxes. Including Tivo in a set-top box would be good for sales I would think, even if it's just because Tivo has a good "brand."
Theory 3: (Theory 1 + Theory 2) = Theory 3.
-Pete
"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."
"maintain our market share" is what's interesting. She doesn't even say increase. That is not a good sign for Yahoo's search business.
I can imaging Ask employees giddy with glee seeing that search engine #2 has consciously put their search market share in neutral.
-Pete
Apple is the only company with any Core Duo machines who is able to get any buzz around there product, for a few reasons.
1. Apple is now on intel, so that's big news.
2. The press likes apple right now.
3. Apple knows how to market to consumers. "iMac" gains more traction that the new "HP Pavilion dv1000." The "iMac" is a product even my parents can name. The HP Pavilion dv1000 is just another part number nobody ever remembers.
-Pete
Apple isn't goingto open FairPlay anytime soon. It's not in Apple's best intrest. Apple doesn't give a rat's behind about the iTunes music store on it's own. They (currently) have little motivation to license fairplay, and the ability to use itunes to other non-apple mp3 players.
iTunes music store is what helps support and drive iPod sales. That's it's current purpose, and it's working rather well.
I can foresee a time when apple may license fairplay, but I think that's a while off. The introduction of videos have given existing iPod owners an excellent reason to upgrade to a new iPod.
My oppinion is the iPod gravy train is too important for apple to risk by licensing fairplay to other vendors until the market significantly changes.
(Disclaimer - I'm a happy nano 4gb owner)
-Pete