Your point about MS charging full price is well taken but I bet that if Dell, HP, Gateway and others went to MS and told them "We're selling linux too" that some arrangement would be worked out. Microsoft understands business if nothing else.
Either way, I'm not so sure that if Dell, et.al. offered any OS you wanted people would buy it in droves. Didn't Dell try that to almost no effect with Linux on desktop machines?
Many places still use these for billing and whatnot. The thing that is killing dot matrix (besides thermal and cheap lasers) is the price of the multipart carbon forms. It is often cheaper to buy plain paper and print the same thing on 3 sheets instead of a single carbon form.
I haven't had good luck with the SATA Raptor drives. They are fast but I've had two (out of 4) fail in 6 months of very low usage. Heat isn't an issue as they are in their own bay with a big fan all to themselves. I'm not favorably disposed towards them at this point.
is written. It's a revelation to some but people like Tolkein, King, etc often don't really know, beyond the inital premise, what's going to happen in their stories. In Stephen King's "On Writing" he claims a creative process that is more discovery than anything else. There isn't an all-encompassing outline drafted ahead of time. He starts out with an idea like "what if there was a cemetary that brought people back to life" and proceeds from there. He likens it to simply catching the story on paper as it falls out of his head. I don't know if this is what Tolkein was talking about but it works for alot of people.
You know what I'm sick of?
on
NYT on RFID
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· Score: 1
I'm sick of every new (or repurposed) technology being hyped/justified by this type of tripe: "Imagine a that can automatically . This was supposed to happen with all kinds of appliances so far but there's damn little of that stuff available. The argument is usually a red herring. Imagine a washing machine that will automatically select the right setting to wash clothes. My ass. What does it do if I put permanent press in with heavy cotton (reading off my washing machine, I don't know what the fuck that means) Oh no!! not that!! On another note, why isn't my god damn fridge ordering new groceries yet? I'm getting hungry because that lazy bastard won't do anything. I suspect it is a zombie and is ddos'ing my microwave which won't automatically cook my food.
And don't reply posting links, I have yet to see that shit in Best Buy. That's when it will count.
Rant over. sorry.
Re:Getting ready to move my company
on
The Bionic Office
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· Score: 1
You're probably right on for programmers. I don't employ any. I'm the only one that does any coding and I do it from beat to shit $139 desk. Most of my folks are doing outsourced IT stuff so they're gone pretty much all day. Outsourced IT is a cutthroat biz and we need to keep our margins low. Not pissing all our cash away on chairs helps. Don't mistake me, we don't sit on cinderblocks - that wouldn't be comfortable for employees and clients might be a bit suspicious but you won't find Aeron (sp) chairs either.
We don't piss away money on perks for anyone. The only thing we "waste" money on is fast computers and games. Gotta feed the after-hours gaming jones. I expect this to change as the company gets older but I ain't buying plane tickets for anyone.
and I can tell you that 99% of the stuff done here won't make it in my world. Desks? $129 office depot jobs or folding tables from costco. Pastel paints on the wall? Not on your life. Whatever is there is staying. I'm more interested in *gasp* money and having some to reinvest in the business. We haven't finalized the move yet, still negotiating, but before I talked to the landlord we had a short staff meeting. Most people agreed that they'd rather keep the $$ in the bank as a cushion against shitty times (like now) and stay in business. Kudos to these guys if they can afford it but me? I'll shove those bucks into the bank and keep 'em there.
and I can tell you that this is already underway at lower levels. I believe the state of Florida has already mandated that all agencies share data. See, the idea is that all agencies accross a given area share data to make it easier to keep track of the homeless/needy folk to make it easier to refer them to beds/food/whatever. It also reduces the workload on the individual agencies as they won't have to reenter people that are already in the system. It's a good idea but the practical problems implementing it accross public and private entities are big if not insurmountable.
The other attraction to this type of system is that it makes the reporting process easier. You don't get money from the Feds/State if you don't send them some sort of report and getting unduplicated counts of the people served is difficult w/o some sort of advanced software. People come in all the time with fake/different ID's and it trashes our data.
I don't know how I feel about all of the big brother implications of a nationwide system but I can tell you down here where the rubber meets the road, a commercial system where you pay up front ain't much more expensive (probably cheaper) than the time/money we now expend to get our data in order and forwarded to where it needs to go.
As a consultant I get stuck doing alot of this. I've heard most every story and seen most everything that there is to see. The best analogy that I've seen on this discussion is that tech support is like a mechanic trying to fix a car while you're driving it. It is, however, worse than that.
It's like a mechanic trying to fix a car while it is moving and the owner is pulling parts out from under the hood with a "hey!, what's this do? everytime he gets another piece off. Oh, and he's pissed off because the car hasn't worked for two weeks - but he just now brought it in to be fixed.
This is an example from last week of how it usually goes:
User: "hey, we're under a severe time crunch right now and Word won't run and I'm really frustrated as I've had to use other people's computers for the last week."
Me: "why have you been using other copmuters for the last week? Did you call and I missed the message or something?"
User: "No"
Me: "OK, go to the Microsoft Office directory"
User: "I can't find it, all I see is yadda yadda and one called "MSO. Actually, that used to be called something else but I renamed it"
and people generally don't pay. We tried it as a last resort before shutting our site down awhile ago. The only way that worked for us to make money was to syndicate our content onto other web sites. We did pretty good business until the.com bust killed that. Another avenue we pursued was advertising but we didn't have many people on staff and chasing ad dollars (at the time anyways) was a full-time salesman's job. We were all techies. Needless to say, we didn't get many ad contracts. We also tried joining "networks" (think Home and Garden "Channel" on something like MSN)and that was a nightmare. Obviously, we weren't very good businessmen either but it was fun for awhile. People just don't expect to pay on the internet, there's simply too much free stuff.
I just posted about this very thing. I agree, it's a matter of time before clear channel gets into this biz. I do know that they are agressively moving into they live CD market (watch a concert, take home a CD of the show). Honestly, I think they are in a better position than the labels to "cross-over" into the other half of the business. Instead of the artist having to deal with the tour, just sign a deal with CC that would include everything a performer would need from CD's to concerts.
This could turn out to be a battle royale between really big corporations. I know that Clear Channel does alot of concert work as well. Since they own a bazillion radio stations and do the work at many venues, I wonder if they are eyeing a similar cross-over into the recording biz? They are in a similar situation to the recording companies: they have alot of cash and want more of it....
batshit. I can't stand watching over someone's shoulder while they're reading the whole screen. I'm saying "just push next, next, next...go go go" and they're parsing out the disk usage. On the other hand, when they call with a problem their description of the error message is vague at best and could be applied to just about anything.
I was browsing some tech patents today. There is some ridiculous shit in there. I think I'll wander back over to see if the time machine concept has been patented....
Profits don't seem to have much to do with this. There'a charge on every cell phone bill but the "feature" is unavailable....we're already paying for it. Why can't we have it?
An increasing percentage of tech support/consulting work is just finding stuff online. With deja and mfg KB there just isn't any reason to do it the hard way anymore. Customers expect you to perform as efficiently as possbile and the online route is normally it. It isn't a substitute for actual expertise but it is a great adjunct.
forced to upgrade and most non-profits don't. You get by with what you've got. Most here are missing the point - these organizations focus on providing services, not buying hardware/software. I do IT work for a bunch of homeless shelters/soup kitches/etc and everything they have is donated. Even the bigger ones run mostly on donated hardware/software. The majority are running on NT or 98. They get what they can and figure out a way to make it work. When they have to turn in grant applications, they download a shareware pdf maker and print from Word 97 (gasp) and make a pdf. I can tell you from experience, if it's a choice between buying officeXP and feeding 20 hungry people, the people get fed. Everything else is secondary. Can't open that file I sent? Great, I'll paste it into an email....
is the best advice I can give you. Hire an accountant to handle the tax stuff, an attorney if you need one and go from there. Usually the local biz license people are very helpful in pointing you in the right direction to find stuff that you might need. Get the right permits. The last thing you need is a distraction over a $15 permit. Unless you live in Dc which has some hellish professional permitting deal. Then I suggest you move....
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Your point about MS charging full price is well taken but I bet that if Dell, HP, Gateway and others went to MS and told them "We're selling linux too" that some arrangement would be worked out. Microsoft understands business if nothing else.
Either way, I'm not so sure that if Dell, et.al. offered any OS you wanted people would buy it in droves. Didn't Dell try that to almost no effect with Linux on desktop machines?
Many places still use these for billing and whatnot. The thing that is killing dot matrix (besides thermal and cheap lasers) is the price of the multipart carbon forms. It is often cheaper to buy plain paper and print the same thing on 3 sheets instead of a single carbon form.
I haven't had good luck with the SATA Raptor drives. They are fast but I've had two (out of 4) fail in 6 months of very low usage. Heat isn't an issue as they are in their own bay with a big fan all to themselves. I'm not favorably disposed towards them at this point.
If you're against capitalism, what are in favor of?
is written. It's a revelation to some but people like Tolkein, King, etc often don't really know, beyond the inital premise, what's going to happen in their stories. In Stephen King's "On Writing" he claims a creative process that is more discovery than anything else. There isn't an all-encompassing outline drafted ahead of time. He starts out with an idea like "what if there was a cemetary that brought people back to life" and proceeds from there. He likens it to simply catching the story on paper as it falls out of his head. I don't know if this is what Tolkein was talking about but it works for alot of people.
I'm sick of every new (or repurposed) technology being hyped/justified by this type of tripe: "Imagine a that can automatically . This was supposed to happen with all kinds of appliances so far but there's damn little of that stuff available. The argument is usually a red herring. Imagine a washing machine that will automatically select the right setting to wash clothes. My ass. What does it do if I put permanent press in with heavy cotton (reading off my washing machine, I don't know what the fuck that means) Oh no!! not that!! On another note, why isn't my god damn fridge ordering new groceries yet? I'm getting hungry because that lazy bastard won't do anything. I suspect it is a zombie and is ddos'ing my microwave which won't automatically cook my food.
And don't reply posting links, I have yet to see that shit in Best Buy. That's when it will count.
Rant over. sorry.
You're probably right on for programmers. I don't employ any. I'm the only one that does any coding and I do it from beat to shit $139 desk. Most of my folks are doing outsourced IT stuff so they're gone pretty much all day. Outsourced IT is a cutthroat biz and we need to keep our margins low. Not pissing all our cash away on chairs helps. Don't mistake me, we don't sit on cinderblocks - that wouldn't be comfortable for employees and clients might be a bit suspicious but you won't find Aeron (sp) chairs either.
We don't piss away money on perks for anyone. The only thing we "waste" money on is fast computers and games. Gotta feed the after-hours gaming jones. I expect this to change as the company gets older but I ain't buying plane tickets for anyone.
and I can tell you that 99% of the stuff done here won't make it in my world. Desks? $129 office depot jobs or folding tables from costco. Pastel paints on the wall? Not on your life. Whatever is there is staying. I'm more interested in *gasp* money and having some to reinvest in the business. We haven't finalized the move yet, still negotiating, but before I talked to the landlord we had a short staff meeting. Most people agreed that they'd rather keep the $$ in the bank as a cushion against shitty times (like now) and stay in business. Kudos to these guys if they can afford it but me? I'll shove those bucks into the bank and keep 'em there.
but at ~$600 there really isn't a compelling reason to consider them instead of a regular desktop...
and I can tell you that this is already underway at lower levels. I believe the state of Florida has already mandated that all agencies share data. See, the idea is that all agencies accross a given area share data to make it easier to keep track of the homeless/needy folk to make it easier to refer them to beds/food/whatever. It also reduces the workload on the individual agencies as they won't have to reenter people that are already in the system. It's a good idea but the practical problems implementing it accross public and private entities are big if not insurmountable.
The other attraction to this type of system is that it makes the reporting process easier. You don't get money from the Feds/State if you don't send them some sort of report and getting unduplicated counts of the people served is difficult w/o some sort of advanced software. People come in all the time with fake/different ID's and it trashes our data.
I don't know how I feel about all of the big brother implications of a nationwide system but I can tell you down here where the rubber meets the road, a commercial system where you pay up front ain't much more expensive (probably cheaper) than the time/money we now expend to get our data in order and forwarded to where it needs to go.
Welcome our new fuzzy over...nevermind.
As a consultant I get stuck doing alot of this. I've heard most every story and seen most everything that there is to see. The best analogy that I've seen on this discussion is that tech support is like a mechanic trying to fix a car while you're driving it. It is, however, worse than that.
It's like a mechanic trying to fix a car while it is moving and the owner is pulling parts out from under the hood with a "hey!, what's this do? everytime he gets another piece off. Oh, and he's pissed off because the car hasn't worked for two weeks - but he just now brought it in to be fixed.
This is an example from last week of how it usually goes:
User: "hey, we're under a severe time crunch right now and Word won't run and I'm really frustrated as I've had to use other people's computers for the last week."
Me: "why have you been using other copmuters for the last week? Did you call and I missed the message or something?"
User: "No"
Me: "OK, go to the Microsoft Office directory"
User: "I can't find it, all I see is yadda yadda and one called "MSO. Actually, that used to be called something else but I renamed it"
No, I didn't just dream this up.
Thanks for pointing that out, the link on my account is out of date. That used to be the site we ran.
and people generally don't pay. We tried it as a last resort before shutting our site down awhile ago. The only way that worked for us to make money was to syndicate our content onto other web sites. We did pretty good business until the .com bust killed that. Another avenue we pursued was advertising but we didn't have many people on staff and chasing ad dollars (at the time anyways) was a full-time salesman's job. We were all techies. Needless to say, we didn't get many ad contracts. We also tried joining "networks" (think Home and Garden "Channel" on something like MSN)and that was a nightmare. Obviously, we weren't very good businessmen either but it was fun for awhile. People just don't expect to pay on the internet, there's simply too much free stuff.
I just posted about this very thing. I agree, it's a matter of time before clear channel gets into this biz. I do know that they are agressively moving into they live CD market (watch a concert, take home a CD of the show). Honestly, I think they are in a better position than the labels to "cross-over" into the other half of the business. Instead of the artist having to deal with the tour, just sign a deal with CC that would include everything a performer would need from CD's to concerts.
This could turn out to be a battle royale between really big corporations. I know that Clear Channel does alot of concert work as well. Since they own a bazillion radio stations and do the work at many venues, I wonder if they are eyeing a similar cross-over into the recording biz? They are in a similar situation to the recording companies: they have alot of cash and want more of it....
batshit. I can't stand watching over someone's shoulder while they're reading the whole screen. I'm saying "just push next, next, next...go go go" and they're parsing out the disk usage. On the other hand, when they call with a problem their description of the error message is vague at best and could be applied to just about anything.
SCO is IBM's hoe
I was browsing some tech patents today. There is some ridiculous shit in there. I think I'll wander back over to see if the time machine concept has been patented....
Profits don't seem to have much to do with this. There'a charge on every cell phone bill but the "feature" is unavailable....we're already paying for it. Why can't we have it?
An increasing percentage of tech support/consulting work is just finding stuff online. With deja and mfg KB there just isn't any reason to do it the hard way anymore. Customers expect you to perform as efficiently as possbile and the online route is normally it. It isn't a substitute for actual expertise but it is a great adjunct.
forced to upgrade and most non-profits don't. You get by with what you've got. Most here are missing the point - these organizations focus on providing services, not buying hardware/software. I do IT work for a bunch of homeless shelters/soup kitches/etc and everything they have is donated. Even the bigger ones run mostly on donated hardware/software. The majority are running on NT or 98. They get what they can and figure out a way to make it work. When they have to turn in grant applications, they download a shareware pdf maker and print from Word 97 (gasp) and make a pdf. I can tell you from experience, if it's a choice between buying officeXP and feeding 20 hungry people, the people get fed. Everything else is secondary. Can't open that file I sent? Great, I'll paste it into an email....
Where do they vote 50 times per year?
95 in the middle of rush hour is a study in *slow* speeds. All other times of the day, the traffic would give this rocket a run for its money
is the best advice I can give you. Hire an accountant to handle the tax stuff, an attorney if you need one and go from there. Usually the local biz license people are very helpful in pointing you in the right direction to find stuff that you might need. Get the right permits. The last thing you need is a distraction over a $15 permit. Unless you live in Dc which has some hellish professional permitting deal. Then I suggest you move....