I'm sure few people here actually read this. I can hardly blame you -- it's long, and it's mostly just bland generalities, with the details both rare and disappointing.
There's nothing new in the speech. She talks a lot about data breaches. Those are devastating, sure, but they're hardly an "issue." Being against data breaches offends no constituency (who *isn't* against them?) -- it's like being "tough on crime." She seems to be against a lot of things that nobody is for.
However, she spends very little time on what most of us think of when we talk about "privacy" -- that is, the government's prohibition, under the fourth amendment, against searching us without probable cause, and without a warrant. In fact, she comes to the conclusion that the warrantless searches the Bush administration are doing are probably fine. She believes in the same odious calculation that defines rights and security as mutually exclusive constraints, that have to be "balanced."
Rather, she only takes Bush to task for not letting congress in on the action. That is, had only Bush asked congress for "authorization" -- which would surely have been forthcoming -- everything would have been okay. "Let is in on the action," she seems to say, "and we'll make sure you get the warrants so your policies will be easier to sell to the masses." Instead of real criticism of a policy that's both illegal and that actually makes us less safe, we get criticism over tactics, and parochial self-interest.
The title and blurb for this are completely misleading.
I read a lot of posts claiming that Quark is the lingua franca of the printer/service bureau world. I use InDesign quite a bit, but I use its excellent built in PDF export feature when I'm sending files to a printer. That's more reliable and preferable in every way to sending application files anyway (I don't have to send fonts, external graphics, there's no way to gain/lose lines, etc). It's quickly becoming industry standard in the magazine world, at least. And QuarkXPress is not particularly good at it.
I'm not saying that Quark doesn't have a huge advantage with their market share, but with the shabby way they're treating their corporate customers, there's got to be a better reason to stay on Quark than "it's what my vendors use."
Maybe I'm not the first to mention this, but the article is full of inaccuracies. OS X has had the "ability to create profiles that travel with them among machines," since it was still NextStep (and it had shared directory services before Active Directory was a twinkle in its daddy's eye). I'm not sure what "Terminal Services' access to multiple desktops" means, but Apple Remote Desktop (or the free VNC) will give you most of what Terminal Services gives you. Also, they spelled "Lifescape Solutions's Picassa" wrong (it only has one s). I don't mean to be a nerd about it, but it kind of shoots their point -- which I don't think is far wrong -- in the foot.
I had a very similar situation with Speakeasy, although it involved handoff problems and Verizon screw-ups. They suddenly charged me $300 for my modem a year after _they_ told me to go with a different ISP. I told them to go ahead and bill me but I wouldn't pay it. After a sequence of increasingly nasty collection notices and endless threats and credit warnings, I chickened out and ended up paying.
All throughout, they kept the polite smiley attitude that everybody from Seattle seems to have, but nobody was actually willing to help me there. I would really recommend that folks stay away from all big ISPs, esp Speakeasy, and find local small-fry ISPs who actually want your business.
I manage desktop support for an office not much smaller than yours. For budgetary reasons, I started putting systems together myself instead of buying from Dell/Compaq. It's been a tremendous success for me. Here's why:
1) I like picking the components myself. The components I choose are almost always better (and cheaper) than what Dell or Compaq would choose for me. We got some name-brand systems not long ago that had no-name network cards in them that the installed OS had trouble supporting. That doesn't happen when I buy my components.
2) I can pick components based on the needs of the user, not the need of the ISV to make money off of me -- so the receptionist doesn't get an Audigy and a GeForce 4. I usually get the cheapest video card I can (which is still more than enough for Word/Excel/E-mail) and sink the money into RAM. I'm spending less than I've ever spent per system and my system standard has 512MB of RAM.
3) I'm always one step ahead when troubleshooting hardware problems.
4) I'm able to purchase OEM licenses of the OS and Office suites from the various discount vendors (newegg, etc) because I've bought hardware. That saves real money.
5) I _hate_ Level One tech support at every computer company. Spending an hour on hold so a 17-year-old can treat me like an idiot and not solve my problem is just a waste of time. Onsite support has been similarly disappointing. I don't miss it -- I get the support I need on the web and from Google Groups.
6) I've been doing support for a part of my job for a long long time. Putting stuff together is much less boring than buying a pre-built system. If I see one more "getting started" setup poster, I'm gonna cry.
7) Having homogenous systems isn't what it used to be. Time was, you needed to make sure all your systems were from the same vendor to make sure your apps would all run, your network cards would all behave, etc. That just ain't so nowadays. Frankly, Windows doesn't really care what it's running on (once it's running).
8) Don't even get me started on how much better Linux runs on systems I put together!
I put several Athlon systems together using pretty basic components -- recycled cd-rom, floppy, network card, etc. -- and it's been terrific. The systems are louder and uglier than they'd be if I bought them from Dell/Compaq, but then, I paid half price for them.
My suggestion would be to check out the better books on computer history (imo, the best by far is COMPUTER: A HISTORY OF THE INFORMATION MACHINE by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray), find the author who you admire, and try to go to school where s/he teaches.
It's hard to find departments that will support your area of specialty, but it should be pretty straightforward to find a professor who can help you learn what you need to know and who will already have jumped through the "nobody studies this but me" hurdles.
Take a look at the IEEE's Computer Society -- www.computer.org -- they have a computer history SIG that's chockful of contacts.
OR you could go to a school that specializes in self-designed study, like Gallaudet (NYU).
Good luck! It's a topic I love, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure few people here actually read this. I can hardly blame you -- it's long, and it's mostly just bland generalities, with the details both rare and disappointing.
There's nothing new in the speech. She talks a lot about data breaches. Those are devastating, sure, but they're hardly an "issue." Being against data breaches offends no constituency (who *isn't* against them?) -- it's like being "tough on crime." She seems to be against a lot of things that nobody is for.
However, she spends very little time on what most of us think of when we talk about "privacy" -- that is, the government's prohibition, under the fourth amendment, against searching us without probable cause, and without a warrant. In fact, she comes to the conclusion that the warrantless searches the Bush administration are doing are probably fine. She believes in the same odious calculation that defines rights and security as mutually exclusive constraints, that have to be "balanced."
Rather, she only takes Bush to task for not letting congress in on the action. That is, had only Bush asked congress for "authorization" -- which would surely have been forthcoming -- everything would have been okay. "Let is in on the action," she seems to say, "and we'll make sure you get the warrants so your policies will be easier to sell to the masses." Instead of real criticism of a policy that's both illegal and that actually makes us less safe, we get criticism over tactics, and parochial self-interest.
The title and blurb for this are completely misleading.
I read a lot of posts claiming that Quark is the lingua franca of the printer/service bureau world. I use InDesign quite a bit, but I use its excellent built in PDF export feature when I'm sending files to a printer. That's more reliable and preferable in every way to sending application files anyway (I don't have to send fonts, external graphics, there's no way to gain/lose lines, etc). It's quickly becoming industry standard in the magazine world, at least. And QuarkXPress is not particularly good at it.
I'm not saying that Quark doesn't have a huge advantage with their market share, but with the shabby way they're treating their corporate customers, there's got to be a better reason to stay on Quark than "it's what my vendors use."
Maybe I'm not the first to mention this, but the article is full of inaccuracies. OS X has had the "ability to create profiles that travel with them among machines," since it was still NextStep (and it had shared directory services before Active Directory was a twinkle in its daddy's eye). I'm not sure what "Terminal Services' access to multiple desktops" means, but Apple Remote Desktop (or the free VNC) will give you most of what Terminal Services gives you. Also, they spelled "Lifescape Solutions's Picassa" wrong (it only has one s). I don't mean to be a nerd about it, but it kind of shoots their point -- which I don't think is far wrong -- in the foot.
I had a very similar situation with Speakeasy, although it involved handoff problems and Verizon screw-ups. They suddenly charged me $300 for my modem a year after _they_ told me to go with a different ISP. I told them to go ahead and bill me but I wouldn't pay it. After a sequence of increasingly nasty collection notices and endless threats and credit warnings, I chickened out and ended up paying.
All throughout, they kept the polite smiley attitude that everybody from Seattle seems to have, but nobody was actually willing to help me there. I would really recommend that folks stay away from all big ISPs, esp Speakeasy, and find local small-fry ISPs who actually want your business.
I manage desktop support for an office not much smaller than yours. For budgetary reasons, I started putting systems together myself instead of buying from Dell/Compaq. It's been a tremendous success for me. Here's why:
1) I like picking the components myself. The components I choose are almost always better (and cheaper) than what Dell or Compaq would choose for me. We got some name-brand systems not long ago that had no-name network cards in them that the installed OS had trouble supporting. That doesn't happen when I buy my components.
2) I can pick components based on the needs of the user, not the need of the ISV to make money off of me -- so the receptionist doesn't get an Audigy and a GeForce 4. I usually get the cheapest video card I can (which is still more than enough for Word/Excel/E-mail) and sink the money into RAM. I'm spending less than I've ever spent per system and my system standard has 512MB of RAM.
3) I'm always one step ahead when troubleshooting hardware problems.
4) I'm able to purchase OEM licenses of the OS and Office suites from the various discount vendors (newegg, etc) because I've bought hardware. That saves real money.
5) I _hate_ Level One tech support at every computer company. Spending an hour on hold so a 17-year-old can treat me like an idiot and not solve my problem is just a waste of time. Onsite support has been similarly disappointing. I don't miss it -- I get the support I need on the web and from Google Groups.
6) I've been doing support for a part of my job for a long long time. Putting stuff together is much less boring than buying a pre-built system. If I see one more "getting started" setup poster, I'm gonna cry.
7) Having homogenous systems isn't what it used to be. Time was, you needed to make sure all your systems were from the same vendor to make sure your apps would all run, your network cards would all behave, etc. That just ain't so nowadays. Frankly, Windows doesn't really care what it's running on (once it's running).
8) Don't even get me started on how much better Linux runs on systems I put together!
I put several Athlon systems together using pretty basic components -- recycled cd-rom, floppy, network card, etc. -- and it's been terrific. The systems are louder and uglier than they'd be if I bought them from Dell/Compaq, but then, I paid half price for them.
My suggestion would be to check out the better books on computer history (imo, the best by far is COMPUTER: A HISTORY OF THE INFORMATION MACHINE by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray), find the author who you admire, and try to go to school where s/he teaches. It's hard to find departments that will support your area of specialty, but it should be pretty straightforward to find a professor who can help you learn what you need to know and who will already have jumped through the "nobody studies this but me" hurdles. Take a look at the IEEE's Computer Society -- www.computer.org -- they have a computer history SIG that's chockful of contacts. OR you could go to a school that specializes in self-designed study, like Gallaudet (NYU). Good luck! It's a topic I love, too.