I put the RC up on a 64-bit machine a week or two ago and I've been generally pretty pleased with it. Seems much faster than Vista, the new taskbar is pretty handy and it stays more or less out of my way. No driver problems either (so far).
I never advised a single client to upgrade to Vista (I didn't hate Vista, but didn't think it was a worthwhile upgrade either), but I think I will be comfortable advising some clients to upgrade to Windows 7.
Absolutely. In fact, it turns out that 96% of the public really thinks Jennifer Aniston should go out with me. Or at least they will when I finish getting all of my TwitterBots online.
Watching Twitter to gauge public sentiment has a number of flaws, many of which have already been pointed out here. The largest of which is that it's too easy to "stuff the ballot" by simply launching a campaign to flood Twitter with positive comments about your candidate, issue, product or service.
It's really not that hard to get your product "trending" on Twitter if you have the resources.
I'm not really sure what "RockMelt" is going to do that is so much better than what I get now in FireFox 3.5. I can't remember the last time I wanted to do something in FireFox that I couldn't do - or couldn't easily find a quick little (free) add-on to do.
A vendor who has a roster of satisfied clients and the clear intention to continue doing business in your industry/area is not likely to ruin all of that by stealing from you.
Our firm tries hard to screen our staff and make sure they're trustworthy before allowing them anywhere near our clients and their data.
I want a pilot, or airline official, on the plane that I'm on. Why? Because I want the person who makes the decision about whether or not the plane takes off to have THEIR butt on that plane too. I don't want the decision made in an office building 1,000 miles away by somebody who knows they're going home whether the plane lands wheels up or wheels down.
Well, it may be that I need to read i4i's patent more carefully. On the surface of it it's being reported as "custom XML" which sounds to me like patenting all wheels that aren't made of stone.
I think there are two questions that you're not considering.
1. The patent may be invalid as it may be construed as "overly broad." You really can't patent "everything custom". I'm sure that's an argument that Microsoft's lawyers will make on appeal - whether they succeed or not remains to be seen.
2. If the patent is upheld then the OpenOffice (and virtually everybody else who can read/write custom XML) guys are possibly in violation too. Just because they went after the deep pockets first doesn't mean that a lot of other folks aren't going to be next.
I think it's most likely that Microsoft settles with i4i for some lesser amount and the whole situation goes away.
small size
12 inch while larger than most netbooks is quite a bit smaller than most basic laptops.
light weight
Again while heavier than most laptops lighter than most basic laptops.
Well, again, it's all in how you define it. To me size is a defining characteristic of a Netbook but portability (which allows for a much greater range of size) is a defining characteristic of a laptop.
You can make a 10lb. laptop if you want to. As long as it can be folded closed and lugged around in a bag it's arguably a laptop.
When you get to form factors larger than 7 or 8 by 10 or 11 I think you're really stretching what constitutes a netbook.
So where do you draw the line? Why should there BE a line? I'd much rather there was a range of devices and I could chose the point in that range that best suited me.</p></quote>
You can. At this end of the range are netbooks, at that end of the range are desktops, somewhere in the middle are laptops.:-)
I don't think anybody is suggesting that they shouldn't make 12" screens, and I'm not offended by a 12" netbook...I just think that when you get up to form factors like that you're really getting away from the defining characteristics of a Netbook -- small size, light weight, low cost...
Right, but that's when 6 lbs was light for a full computer. Now we can do a very capable PC in a 3 lb. form factor. And not just 3 lbs. of weight, but due to compact screens and keyboards in a physical size that is easier to slip into a bag or briefcase for travel.
Is my Netbook as fast and powerful as my notebook (which is actually a Tablet PC)? Not quite, no. But it's good enough for most things and smaller/lighter too.
I wouldn't want to use my Netbook all day as a workstation, but that's what I have a desktop PC for. If I have to travel AND spend a lot of time on my computer then I'd probably opt to bring the laptop.
Netbooks are a whole new class of small, but capable, devices though.
Putting larger screens and larger keyboards in a netbook...the device ceases to BE a netbook. When you start getting into 12-13 inch screens you're starting to get into a form factor that is...well...a laptop.
The whole point of a netbook is that it's small, compact, light, low-battery...but that's harder and harder to do when your netbook gets to be the size of your laptop. You can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't make it a leg. Just because you call a device that's 5 lbs and has a 12" screen a netbook doesn't make it a netbook.
So where do you draw the line? I have a netbook and a laptop and a desktop. They serve three distinct purposes (though I rarely use my laptop anymore because my netbook, with the 10" screen, does just fine for most of those tasks).
Perhaps the reason more people are moving to netbooks instead of laptops is that most people have realized that an Atom processor is just fine for their tasks. That spending more to have a dual-core processor that spends 99% of its time idle and sucking up battery life was wasteful.
So while Cloud providers are moving their clouds around for the best deal...what restricts them to hosting in the USA at all? And therein lies one of the fundamental problems with cloud computing for company data. I can think of a number of countries in the world where I would *NOT* want my confidential company data stored and some of those countries might be pretty attractive to hosting providers.
Their sales guys can talk all they want about how wonderfully secure the whole thing is, but if my data physically resides on servers in unfriendly or unstable countries that's all just a lot of hot, moist, air, moving in from the northwest ahead of a low pressure system...
The mainstream media can't choke out all the competition by simply blocking one method of advertising.
Either, as others have suggested, they'll find other ways to present their ads or, as one collapses, three more will spring up behind them. There's no barrier to entry in publishing on the Internet, any fool can do it (and most fools do, from the looks of it).
Perhaps a better strategy for the mainstream media would be to have more compelling content?
Lost productivity due to forgetting the thumb drive with your work at home
That's why we use a VPN to work on documnts from work rather than relying upon a flash drive.
Lost productivity due to your company's internal network going down
If my company's network goes down (which it rarely does) I can troubleshoot it and get it back on it's feet. If Google goes down I can send them an e-mail (assuming I'm NOT using GMail) and get an automated response or maybe I can call them and hear that the next avaialble agent will be with me shortly.
Lost work due to a hard drive failure
If you don't back it up then you don't deserve to have it.
Lost work AND productivity due to computer theft
If my computers get stolen then how do I log into Google?
Lost work AND productivity due to accidental overwrite of a shared file on a network drive
See: Backups.
Many people seem to believe that using something like Google Docs is just like using MS Office, but the reality is that it's fundamentally different in many ways. Nearly ubiquitous accessibility,
I wouldn't have had access to my Google Docs on the flight I just got off.
it all depends on the task at hand, as both approches have their strengths and weaknesses.
Well that I certainly agree with. Google Docs has its place. But that place will never include mission-critical or confidential work product. Not unless some drastic changes are made.
I get the same requesets from my clients. And it's not just GMail they want to use. It's the word processor, spreadsheet, etc as well.
I try to tell them that the security is an issue and they look at me like I just said that "Elvis enjoys tacos". It's startling how unconcerned they are about the risk to their confidential client work product especially in light of the fact that if it were to leak out they could potentially lose thier license to practice.
But...but...it's free, they say, with confused puppy eyes. As if free somehow obviates any need for security.
It's another example, like Cloud Computing, of people running towards the newest shiny things without the least concern for the security implications of it. "Oooh...you can shake it and it does something."
They don't ask key questions, they probably wouldn't understand the answers even if they did, and they just blindly put all of their faith (and their critical data) into things that are easily exploited.
Then they're all surprised when it fails or gets compromised.
Well, the other 30% will be subject to the same filtering systems we use now I assume. I certainly wouldn't scrap my existing filters for a system that only catches 70%.
But it seems to me that there are already a variety of devices you can deploy between the firewall and your mail server (or even as part of your firewall) that promise to filter out significant amounts of spam. Barracuda and other such devices. Many firewalls have some spam filtering too. And there are services like Pau Spam or MailFoundry or others that promise to filter out most spam before it even hits your firewall.
So while these folks might have a new algorhythm it doesn't seem to me like there's anything revolutionary about filtering mail before it hits your mail server.
For one thing I know personally each and every person with physical access to our servers. I handed them their keys to the room.
I have not the slightest idea who can access the servers at Google that are storing my data.
Secondly when Google has an outage (as they sometimes do) my data is still perfectly accessible to me on my servers.
I don't have to worry about somebody at Google misconfiguring something and inadvertently exposing my data to people it wasn't intended for (as they did not too long ago).
The "cloud" is fine for storing your kid's soccer schedule and grandma's brownie recipe. If you think I'm going to advise my clients to store confidential client work product on some anonymous server in god-knows-what country you can forget it.
That's fine for some things but I really don't want my confidential client work-product mirrored around the world. Despite all the cloud hype there is still a subset of data that I really do NOT want to let outside my corporate walls.
Slashdot Mirror
I put the RC up on a 64-bit machine a week or two ago and I've been generally pretty pleased with it. Seems much faster than Vista, the new taskbar is pretty handy and it stays more or less out of my way. No driver problems either (so far).
I never advised a single client to upgrade to Vista (I didn't hate Vista, but didn't think it was a worthwhile upgrade either), but I think I will be comfortable advising some clients to upgrade to Windows 7.
Absolutely. In fact, it turns out that 96% of the public really thinks Jennifer Aniston should go out with me. Or at least they will when I finish getting all of my TwitterBots online.
Watching Twitter to gauge public sentiment has a number of flaws, many of which have already been pointed out here. The largest of which is that it's too easy to "stuff the ballot" by simply launching a campaign to flood Twitter with positive comments about your candidate, issue, product or service.
It's really not that hard to get your product "trending" on Twitter if you have the resources.
I'm not really sure what "RockMelt" is going to do that is so much better than what I get now in FireFox 3.5. I can't remember the last time I wanted to do something in FireFox that I couldn't do - or couldn't easily find a quick little (free) add-on to do.
A vendor who has a roster of satisfied clients and the clear intention to continue doing business in your industry/area is not likely to ruin all of that by stealing from you.
Our firm tries hard to screen our staff and make sure they're trustworthy before allowing them anywhere near our clients and their data.
...landings are mandatory.
I want a pilot, or airline official, on the plane that I'm on. Why? Because I want the person who makes the decision about whether or not the plane takes off to have THEIR butt on that plane too. I don't want the decision made in an office building 1,000 miles away by somebody who knows they're going home whether the plane lands wheels up or wheels down.
Sure, computers are completely reliable and never fai#&#(@(@ NO CARRIER
Well, it may be that I need to read i4i's patent more carefully. On the surface of it it's being reported as "custom XML" which sounds to me like patenting all wheels that aren't made of stone.
I think there are two questions that you're not considering.
1. The patent may be invalid as it may be construed as "overly broad." You really can't patent "everything custom". I'm sure that's an argument that Microsoft's lawyers will make on appeal - whether they succeed or not remains to be seen.
2. If the patent is upheld then the OpenOffice (and virtually everybody else who can read/write custom XML) guys are possibly in violation too. Just because they went after the deep pockets first doesn't mean that a lot of other folks aren't going to be next.
I think it's most likely that Microsoft settles with i4i for some lesser amount and the whole situation goes away.
small size 12 inch while larger than most netbooks is quite a bit smaller than most basic laptops.
light weight Again while heavier than most laptops lighter than most basic laptops.
Well, again, it's all in how you define it. To me size is a defining characteristic of a Netbook but portability (which allows for a much greater range of size) is a defining characteristic of a laptop. You can make a 10lb. laptop if you want to. As long as it can be folded closed and lugged around in a bag it's arguably a laptop. When you get to form factors larger than 7 or 8 by 10 or 11 I think you're really stretching what constitutes a netbook.
So where do you draw the line?
:-)
Why should there BE a line? I'd much rather there was a range of devices and I could chose the point in that range that best suited me.</p></quote>
You can. At this end of the range are netbooks, at that end of the range are desktops, somewhere in the middle are laptops.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that they shouldn't make 12" screens, and I'm not offended by a 12" netbook...I just think that when you get up to form factors like that you're really getting away from the defining characteristics of a Netbook -- small size, light weight, low cost...
Right, but that's when 6 lbs was light for a full computer. Now we can do a very capable PC in a 3 lb. form factor. And not just 3 lbs. of weight, but due to compact screens and keyboards in a physical size that is easier to slip into a bag or briefcase for travel.
Is my Netbook as fast and powerful as my notebook (which is actually a Tablet PC)? Not quite, no. But it's good enough for most things and smaller/lighter too.
I wouldn't want to use my Netbook all day as a workstation, but that's what I have a desktop PC for. If I have to travel AND spend a lot of time on my computer then I'd probably opt to bring the laptop.
Netbooks are a whole new class of small, but capable, devices though.
It's not Dell that's sweating it - it's Intel. Of course same argument could be made if the Via chip starts to cut into their business substantially.
Putting larger screens and larger keyboards in a netbook...the device ceases to BE a netbook. When you start getting into 12-13 inch screens you're starting to get into a form factor that is...well...a laptop.
The whole point of a netbook is that it's small, compact, light, low-battery...but that's harder and harder to do when your netbook gets to be the size of your laptop. You can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't make it a leg. Just because you call a device that's 5 lbs and has a 12" screen a netbook doesn't make it a netbook.
So where do you draw the line? I have a netbook and a laptop and a desktop. They serve three distinct purposes (though I rarely use my laptop anymore because my netbook, with the 10" screen, does just fine for most of those tasks).
Perhaps the reason more people are moving to netbooks instead of laptops is that most people have realized that an Atom processor is just fine for their tasks. That spending more to have a dual-core processor that spends 99% of its time idle and sucking up battery life was wasteful.
Exactly right and that's a potentially very big issue that a lot of companies are turning a blind eye to in the pursuit of cost cutting.
So while Cloud providers are moving their clouds around for the best deal...what restricts them to hosting in the USA at all? And therein lies one of the fundamental problems with cloud computing for company data. I can think of a number of countries in the world where I would *NOT* want my confidential company data stored and some of those countries might be pretty attractive to hosting providers.
Their sales guys can talk all they want about how wonderfully secure the whole thing is, but if my data physically resides on servers in unfriendly or unstable countries that's all just a lot of hot, moist, air, moving in from the northwest ahead of a low pressure system...
The mainstream media can't choke out all the competition by simply blocking one method of advertising.
Either, as others have suggested, they'll find other ways to present their ads or, as one collapses, three more will spring up behind them. There's no barrier to entry in publishing on the Internet, any fool can do it (and most fools do, from the looks of it).
Perhaps a better strategy for the mainstream media would be to have more compelling content?
...Microsoft Office 2007 (and 2010) create PDF files just fine too.
So does Corel's WordPerfect product.
(and yes, I do have OpenOffice installed on this machine...I'm just sayin')
Lost productivity due to forgetting the thumb drive with your work at home
That's why we use a VPN to work on documnts from work rather than relying upon a flash drive.
Lost productivity due to your company's internal network going down
If my company's network goes down (which it rarely does) I can troubleshoot it and get it back on it's feet. If Google goes down I can send them an e-mail (assuming I'm NOT using GMail) and get an automated response or maybe I can call them and hear that the next avaialble agent will be with me shortly.
Lost work due to a hard drive failure
If you don't back it up then you don't deserve to have it.
Lost work AND productivity due to computer theft
If my computers get stolen then how do I log into Google?
Lost work AND productivity due to accidental overwrite of a shared file on a network drive
See: Backups.
Many people seem to believe that using something like Google Docs is just like using MS Office, but the reality is that it's fundamentally different in many ways. Nearly ubiquitous accessibility,
I wouldn't have had access to my Google Docs on the flight I just got off.
it all depends on the task at hand, as both approches have their strengths and weaknesses.
Well that I certainly agree with. Google Docs has its place. But that place will never include mission-critical or confidential work product. Not unless some drastic changes are made.
...and no way to audit Google's data center(s) to establish compliance which is a very big deal in a lot of industries.
I get the same requesets from my clients. And it's not just GMail they want to use. It's the word processor, spreadsheet, etc as well.
I try to tell them that the security is an issue and they look at me like I just said that "Elvis enjoys tacos". It's startling how unconcerned they are about the risk to their confidential client work product especially in light of the fact that if it were to leak out they could potentially lose thier license to practice.
But...but...it's free, they say, with confused puppy eyes. As if free somehow obviates any need for security.
It's another example, like Cloud Computing, of people running towards the newest shiny things without the least concern for the security implications of it. "Oooh...you can shake it and it does something."
They don't ask key questions, they probably wouldn't understand the answers even if they did, and they just blindly put all of their faith (and their critical data) into things that are easily exploited.
Then they're all surprised when it fails or gets compromised.
Well, the other 30% will be subject to the same filtering systems we use now I assume. I certainly wouldn't scrap my existing filters for a system that only catches 70%.
But it seems to me that there are already a variety of devices you can deploy between the firewall and your mail server (or even as part of your firewall) that promise to filter out significant amounts of spam. Barracuda and other such devices. Many firewalls have some spam filtering too. And there are services like Pau Spam or MailFoundry or others that promise to filter out most spam before it even hits your firewall.
So while these folks might have a new algorhythm it doesn't seem to me like there's anything revolutionary about filtering mail before it hits your mail server.
Yes. It is.
For one thing I know personally each and every person with physical access to our servers. I handed them their keys to the room.
I have not the slightest idea who can access the servers at Google that are storing my data.
Secondly when Google has an outage (as they sometimes do) my data is still perfectly accessible to me on my servers.
I don't have to worry about somebody at Google misconfiguring something and inadvertently exposing my data to people it wasn't intended for (as they did not too long ago).
The "cloud" is fine for storing your kid's soccer schedule and grandma's brownie recipe. If you think I'm going to advise my clients to store confidential client work product on some anonymous server in god-knows-what country you can forget it.
That's fine for some things but I really don't want my confidential client work-product mirrored around the world. Despite all the cloud hype there is still a subset of data that I really do NOT want to let outside my corporate walls.
Hmm...last I checked the Goodyear Blimp was still flying, isn't it?