Granted the Internet itself has been around longer than 25 years, but so has email, fiber optics, cellphones, PCs and others in some form or another. Those older technologies have become important because of the explosive growth and evolution of the Internet in the last 25 years.
I firmly believe that without the Internet none of these innovations would be where they are now in terms of development and wide spread adoption.
Anyway here is their top 25, almost everything on this list has benifited from the Interent or the Internet has facilited the development of the innovation:
2. Cell phone - Not a direct link here, though phones have been offering internet access for years, as well as acted like modems for laptops and portable PCs for even longer. Also as WIFI becomes more ubiquitous, VOIP over the Internet may replace traditional cellphones.
The electronics that enabled the cellphone to shrink to a small size, and was arguably the driver for their ubiquity, was a benifit of the development going into electronics for the computers and communications infrastructure and by extension the Internet.
3. Personal computers - When was the last time you sat at a computer without at least Dialup access?
4. Fiber optics - Used in the physical backbone of the Internet.
5. E-mail - The original "Killer app" of the Internet.
6. Commercialized GPS - The logistics industry and other mapping industries have greatly benifited for the ability to track trucks, cargo, people in real time, over the Internet. GPS can stand alone as a useful tool, but combined with such a powerful means to transmit that information quickly, it is clear how important the Internet is to commercial GPS adoption.
7. Portable computers - Get the Internet where and when you need it.
8. Memory storage discs - This is an interim benifit, As computers got faster and the internet got better, more information was able to be transferred. So people naturally used the Internet to collect everything, from programs, photos (and now music and movies). As that collection out grew the computer memory disks were need to off load the stuff you got from the Internet. I say it is interim, because eventually broader broadband, and further refined searching (via google) and improved P2P (i.e. bit torrent) will make it so easy (and reliable) to get things of the Internet, that local copies will become less and less important - though they will probably never go away.
9. Consumer level digital camera - Now that taking pictures is cheap, what do you do with those pictures? Share them! Via email, websites, etc. The Internet has made it easy to get baby pictures to Grandma in Florida. Now we're also seeing Masss market use of the internet, for example you can have 4x5 prints done and waiting for you at Walmart via there web interface.
10. Radio frequency ID tags - What good would all that info they will collect if it could not easily be transmitted to remote locations? Sure private networks (both local and wide area) will make up a significant portion. But combined with the Internet (and things like GPS tracking) RFIDs have even more value.
11. MEMS - Also fiber optics grow, mems will be a critical component in new switching quipment.
12. DNA fingerprinting - Law enforcemnet can share results quickly and easily. Researchers can collaborate much more easily.
13. Air bags - Ok you got me on this one. Fall back on the Internet improved the logistics and development of the airbag. It has helped engineers co-operate, and helped consumers understand the advantages of having an airbag (with out having to experience it first hand).
14. ATM - Remote sites talking to a home network, I wonder how that can be done cost effectively? While they may not be on the Internet directly, they certainly make use of the same infrastructure the Internet does, some certainly use VPNs over the internet to get a connection.
There are a lot of skills, as you've already realized, that go into web development. But to be successful commercially, you are going to need to learn to work as a team. Quite simply, if you are a good designer, you'll have too much work and will be a bottle neck.
The hard part of being a developer is troubleshooting, debugging and optimizing. The only way to know effectively do it is to have a complete understanding of the entire web process. Those skills really come only from experience.
It is learning how ALL the pieces of the equation fit together and interact. I.e How does the HTML in the site render with the browser, is the traffic effecting the performance, if so are the images to blame or possible a database connection? Is there a caching issue in the browser causing upodates not to show? What version of apache/PHP are running, how is each configured?
I own and run a small hosting company. I also do a lot of development using mainly PHP, but there are a few PERL scripts, shell scripts and even a C program here or there. My company specializes in hosting small developer and designers who are just getting started. So We actually get a lot of questions and issues, that usually stem from the fact that the people just do not have a complete picture of the system.
For example one of my larger more experienced customers who has two dedicated servers, and hosts about 300 domains on them, called me with a problem with a shopping cart she has used many many times before. For some reason the site was excruiatingly slow, and she did not know why. A quick glance at the config file told me she was running a database off a server in another datacenter. So there was a lot of overhead from the lookups. She knew this, but didn't realize the impact that geography makes, and she wasted a day trying to figure it out before calling me.
Anyway, in my opinion it is good to lear one or two skills really well, and assemble a team of people around you that can fill in the gaps. But it is equally important to know a little bit about as many skills as you can. This is important for several reasons:
1. If you are farming out the work you can give the subcontractor good specs, and can in general communicate your needs better. 2. If you do need to learn the skill it will be easier with some background to start. 3. A lot of the skills and languages and tools you learn share common elements, or at least common ideas. So by learning new things, you can often take those skills and apply them to your area(s) of expertise and become better. 4. learning about the features and benifits of a wide range of tools will help you identify the best tool for the particular project. That will help you be more efficient, and thus make more money.
Anyway if I were starting with a blank slate and wanted to be an independent developer. I would learn HTML and CSS as they are the fundemental building blocks. A server side language is also very handy, and will allow you to truely take advantage of the numerous free scripts. It is one thing to install a script, it is another thing to fully integrate it into a site, knowing the language will help. I prefer PHP.
If you pick up PHP, knowing basic SQL and specificall MySQL will go a long ways.
Flash, is handy but I try to avoid it for most sites, animated banners are pretty worthless none and really do not provided the customer with any bang for the buck. If your client insists on it, it is easier to farm out the Flash dev.
Graphics skills are very handy, but can be very tedious and time consuming. It is a good idea to know how to "tweak" images, change colors, crop, scale, etc using Gimp or Photoshoto, etc. But Like flash you may be better off letting an artist do the none technical design work.
Javascript has come a long way (or more accurately browsers have come a long way) since now it seems much easier to get Javascript to work across the various browsers. There is a plethora of quality free javascripts
Pocket IE blows, and my IPAQ does not yet support Linux (I cannot wait for OPIE). I am way to cheap for a $50/year browser.
Off the subject a little bit, but.... I really like the form factor of my h4355, bluetooth and wireless together are very handy, but being stuck in PPC hell is kind of annoying. I though this model witht he keyboard, and connectivity would be a system admins dream.
But no Linux (yet) and the lack of an escape key, limit the usefulness. Plus I'd like a free application to rotate the screen, especially when I have a ssh window open...
Seems like comparing this to guns makes is more accurate.
Owning a gun = legal, with restrictions Using a gun = legal, legal with restrictions
If someone owns or possesses a gun illegally the maker is not liable. If someone uses a gun for an illegal purpose, like threatening someone or shooting someone the maker is generally not liable.
So are there any scenerios in which a gun maker would be liable for an end users actions? Perhaps, but it would be rare, and a lot of additional evidence would need to be used.
For example if it could be shown that the gun maker knowingly produced a weapon for a single purpose of committing a crime. In this situation the maker would probably not be a big manufauturer, but an individual conspiring to commit a crime. Think of the little epoxy gun in that Clint Eastwood movie a few years back.
In my opinion it is clear that the P2P networks are providing a means to transfer files, it does not appear clear that there sole purpose is to allow illegal file transfers.
these networks exist on top of the Internet, so should not ISPs be equally as liable? Afterall if no one can get online then no one can share files.
Or how about the PC makers, if they weren't providing inexpensive equipment that can connect to the internet and then log on to a P2P network, there would be no P2P piracy.
Where do we draw the line? It is pretty apparent to me that the user is responsible not the tool.
This sort of thing is why I prefer the world of open source. Its also why I trust open source software so much more than software produced at software mills.
When profit from the product is not the number one priority, things like preformance, and overall quality tend to get higher marks.
This is especially true when there is not pressure from a sales forces and marketing dept, to add X Y and Z features just so the product more favorably comparse with the competition.
I just wish hardware had the same awide variety of choice that software curently has.
In a nutshell, I spent about an hour going through goolge links of a few of the people involved in this story (either posting it or writing it or making it up) the URLs are in my original post. Anyway, they all have long histories of being politically biased, and spewing liberal FUD.
some points to consider: - Would a undetecable application that is mneant to be cross platform be written in VB? - why would a journalist, that is former NSA, and supposedly has all these tech credentials use an AOL addres? Fine it may work, and he might like it, but an AOL email address takes away a lot of credibility IMHO. (see original reply). - If this had any validity, why was it not brought up sooner? There were articles on it back in 2002. It seems like the main stream Dems would have been all over this two or three years ago, if they thought there was any truth to it.
What I find disturbing is that slashdot would run this story twice. Clearly every article and source is biased, a quick google search quickly verifies that fact.
So what we get here is supermarket fluff and liberal FUD. We won't tolerate MS FUD, but leftwing FUD must be soooo MmmMmm Good that we get a double dose!
I am not affiliated with any of the thrash that I linked to, but you make a good point all the left wing conspiricy sites are filled with ads.
But that certainly is another point to consider. Hey lets make up a sensational story about vote rigging. It will draw millions of hits, and we'll not only make the Republicans look bad, but we'll line our pockets as well....
Why is Slashdot linking to this shit? Next thing the Yeti hooker does DC from the National Inquirer will be front page slashdot.
First the online journal is essentially nothing but a Republican consiricy site. Its registered to a Bev Conover (courtesy of public WHOIS). There is a ton of anti-bush and anti rebulican shit. She must be a democrat cult hero. A quick google search turns up plenty of stuff. Bev apparently has not liked Bush since his pre-presidential days because in 1999 She shares credit for this article:
Anyway back to the joke of an article. What any self respecting developer write a proof of concept tool thats main function is to be portable and cross platform with aproprietary language like VB?
HELL NO. An undetecable application one definately would not start with a "proof of concept" VB application. Come on, an application that could be untracable would need to have very lowlevel access to the voting machines OS, which by its very nature would make it difficult to be portable. Most cross platform applucations are very bloated, because they need tons of extra code to work on the myriad combination of OSs.
The premise sounds like it is out of one of those cheesy hollywood scripts, where they have the alien computer infiltrated by a virus that crashes a fleet of motherships in about 2 minutes. Or the hacking of the supper secret password from an outdated mac.
Wayne Madsen, the guy who reported this story must have about zero knowledge of programming. Or he's getting his "story" ideas from his left leaning buddies in hollywood.
Interestingly enough he was a cyberterrorist panelist (http://iml.dartmouth.edu/ists/madsen.html) and supposedly has these credentials (taken from the panelist bio website):
Mr. Madsen has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State.
He has also been on many mainstream networks as guest commentator, so he is not totally devoid of creditials.
But any tech creditials are lost when we find out he sports an AOL email address (from http://www.lebanonwire.com/0410/04102002LW.asp): Wmadsen777@aol.com
Damn, I am going to sign up for AOL now that I know former NSA guys use it, it MUST be good. Either that or perhaps he embelished his NSA credentials a bit, anyone who can honestly believes that massive voter fraud was carried out by a VB programmer, must have been the janitor.
Anyway, this guys blog does a better job of me at discrediting this writer, who certainly seems to either be very ignorant of programming, or else he has an agenda to push.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2004/11/round-two-w ayne-madsen-on-funding-for.html
Finally, the "programmer", Clint CUrtis who claims to have written this software operates an anti-Bush, site calling for the boycott of many companies and their products. The site is at: http://justaflyonthewall.com
BTW this bald face liar generously makes this software available at:
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram. htm, but I don't think its open source.
That high quality VB code is sure to make it into diebolds upand coming models.
Additionally, I dug up references to the Clint Curtis guy, apparently the issue goes back way before the 2000 election (here is an article from 2002, responding to similar voting fraud claims):
http://www.informedvolusian.com/2002/Issue_24/issu e_24_article_1.htm
Does this shit BELONG ON SLASHDOT? Why is it that we don't tolerate FUD from Mircoshit, but political FUD is apparently A Okay. We're supposed to be nerds, and look at things objectively. I guess that only applies to technology. Apparently, (at least according to the editors) we're mindless sheep and will believe any written word on the internet like everyone else if the topic is not tech related.
As a side note, I thought the politics section was temporary? I'm definately changing my prefs to avoid this kind of CBS journalism on Slashdot.
Instead of rehashing another holy war, can someone point us to an objective feature by feature comparison of the two apps?
I did a couple of quick google searches looking for a feature vs. feature breakdown of the GIMP vs. Photoshop, I found only one. A very old one comparing Gimp.5 and.62 vs. an older Photoshop.
If there is a current upto date comparison / review can someone post it? It gets so old hearing PhotoShop is far superior to the GIMP, without any refernces to why. Or if there is a reference, it is usually something generic like: color manageent sucks in the GIMP or something like that.
I always liked heavy trackballs, like the kind with pool balls in them. I found the heavier balls more precise for small movements, when photoshopping (and later gimping) images.
Its been sevreal years since I have used a track ball though, since I have not found a new one that feels right.
Some "Ask Slashdot" questions seem a little overly simple, but the point is not necessarily to get all the answers from the Slashdot crowd, we all know Giigle will always be a better tool for RAW info. The point of "Ask Slashdot" is to gather the opinions of peers about a subject that a lot of us may be also be interested in.
I personally am getting a little tired of dismissing every question with a derogatory comment and a link to google.
Mepid is an EXCELLENT CHOICE. What sets it apart is it includes a ton of hard to configure browser plugins. It is a pleasure to boot up and surf the web and see flash, java, etc and more out of the "box".
It lets Linux users take for granted a lot of the things on the web that Windows users do. Which is important for something like this.
I was going to mod some comments, but thought I would help you out instead. KDE built in printing dialog has this functionality.
If you are printing from a non-KDE app, specify "kprinter" as the print command. The Print dialog comes up and choose "Properties" (The should be a button next to the printer select drop down.
Anyway, among the tabs (probably hidden from view) is a "POSTER" tab. This will allow you to pront anything supersized.
I have not used this too much myself so I cannot speak as to quality, but I know the function is there if I need it. I'm sure you can find much better info on the net than I can provide....
I can actually see a couple of possible ways for MS to be hurt by this. Though they are both long shots, but heres to dreamin'
The BSA could come in and do its dirty work, but as has already been mentioned, MS is the BSA's daddy. The BSA would not want to bite the hand that feeds it. Though I wonder if an anonymous MS employee(s) have ever reported piracy from within before?
The other way MS could have some problems is related to their recent speal about protecting all endusers from lawsuits that may stem from IP violations.
What we need is SONY to sue every single MS Windows user. That way MS will be forced to protect the masses, while wasting copious amounts of cash.
The key to this scenerio is it would not matter who, used the cracked software. Contract employee, full time person or even if it was from a royalty free sound bite collection. The fact is that MS distributed it, and end users continually derive endless hours of enjoyment listening to the system sounds (Maybe we should call the RIAA to, because the artists may not have been properly compensated).
Will either of these happen? I very much doubt it. But at least this thread gives us a little pleasure imagining a bad things happening to the worlds favorite monoplistic bastards.
I don't have time to proofread, I'm too busy hitting refresh trying to get a first post. And when I am not doing that, I am begging people for a gmail address, one of these days someone will have sympathy:)
I am going to guess that there is a shortage of "enterprise" open-source people, that being people that big companies feel compelled to hire that have extra letters after their name and a slew of certifications, and the like.
On of the advantages of open source is the community, is its "equal opportunity" nature. Plenty of academics but also plenty of self taught geeks. Anybody can sit down and do the work.
The big shortage is proably in the middle management where those folks don't understand the benifits and the culture, and thus are reluctant to hire the kind of people that probably could Enterprise is reluctant to even consider hiring people without the right pedigree, but its the sefl taught hackers that make major contributions to the software, and the community.
Businesses should stop being so set on worthless paper degrees, and look for people passionate about technology.
Before deciding to work for myself, I worked at a company where if there was an IT opening the prefered method of filling the position was sending a lazy secretary (who usually sat around playing freecell) to CNE class or MSCE, etc.
That company ended up with one sorry IT staff, I was a business analyst at the time, and ended up doing a lot of my departments IT because the most of the real IT group was so pathetic, and the guys there that were good techies, were so burdened cleaning up for and assisting the shitty people that they burnt ou quickly, thus re-enforcing the bad loop.
Anyway, the moral of this story is I am sure there is a lot more to the shortage than the article implies. Able bodies most definately can be found, but the companies are not looking for the most talented people, but rather the people that fit their outdated requirements. In short actions and experience should speak much louder than words on a resume.
Novell may be in it for $$; but they do have to pay the bills, they have to answer to stock holders. So whether they like it or not they need to make $$, as does nearly every enterprise.
Your post almost certainly over generalizes the corporate climate at Novell. Heresay in an aggressive post sounds an awful lot like trolling.
Your words would mean a lot more if they weren't hiding behind an AC post. I find it fun to imagine McBride having to resort to AC astroturfing on Slashdot, taking digs at Novell and IBM.
Sure everyone at Novell could be greedy SOB's but thus far their actions have been mostly benificial to the open source community.
Also why is it that if an open-source company trys to make money it is a bad thing? Software should be open, but services and support need to bring in cash. Money is an important and integral part of open source software. The money just comes from differnet sources. the Open Source economy is values information, and the freedom of information. Ultimately, its that information freedom that is leveraged to make services and support more efficient. If Novell can increase profits by selling and supporting Linux more power to them.
I saw the lights early this morning (~2AM 11/10/2004). I've been in southern Michigan for 30+ years. This was the first display I have witnessed. Quite an impressive site (so much so that I woke my wife up and made her watch them too.)
I've had a couple of unmanaged dedicated box custoemrs install this for their users. They have been really quite pleased with it in terms of reliability. Support has been decent, and there seems to be a large enough community of users to the forums and faq's a good source of information.
My customers have also been pleased with the price. -MS2k
I worked at a small hosting company for three years before taking it over almost 2 years ago. In that time, I have developed my own panel for my customers, at the same time evaluated many other panels / managed options.
The choice you make should depend on the types of clients you market to (or intend to market to). Do you want a lot of "retail" customers that want to host one or two domains with lowend features? Do you want to host business / ecommerce sites? Will you allow your customers to resell the hosting?
Each customer has very different needs. Onesy/twosy customers need A LOT of hand holding and get quickly inundated if the panel is too powerful and has too many options, leading to a lot of support time. Businesses like easy to use features, at a fixed cost. My clients like A LOT of email options and flexibility. Business sites also like the buzzword features like easy to setup SSL, automated backup / restores, etc. Your resellers will want features that allow them to customize the look and feel of the panel so their customers see their logo not yours. They also like the ability to add / remove features.
Anyway, slashdot is probably not the best place for this type of discussion, there are MANY MANY websites that have forums explicitly geared at the hosting community. You'll be much better off to first identify who you want to sell to, then determine what your market needs, then find / write software that fits those needs.
A control panel is a lot more than setting up web sites and email accounts. I strongly suggest finding a couple of hosting sites and lurk on the boards a while. http://webhostingtalk.com is probably agood place to start.
Trust me it is a lot better to do the research and planning now, rather than later. Because once you have customers then you lock yourself in, because it is very difficult to change things on a customer base.
I don't believe slashdot should be used to plug my company/work (besides I have been too busy supporting users, so my own sites look like shit) so I won't get into the specifics of what the software I have written does, but if your interested I'll be happy to exchange emails and share more of my work. You should be able to track me down via my web site if you're interested.
It's this feature along that finally allowed me to switch to Quanta, now all my web development is done right online. So I don't ever have to worry about uploading and accidently overwriting with old versions or even rsyncing the development directories. It has been great.
It also allows me to instantly update any site at the clients whims if need be. I do maintain seperate "offline" backups, And also incremental snapshots is as easy as dragging a remote folder in Konq, to a local directory.
The other cool thing about these in combined with Konq, you can bookmark any of these, and have different "browsing" profiles. So for example each project has a profile with a single window with 4 panes, on the left is the my local "library" directory on the right is teh largest pane, a "preview" of the site, is a smaller pane with a directory listing of the remote directory, next to that is a directory listing of the remote computer. Combined with tabs and the intergrated konsole, it puts a ton of info at my finger tips. In a way its like the whole desktop environment is one big IDE.
I switched from gnome a couple of years ago, and check back every so often. I have not yet found an easy way to get that much info/resources, in that organized a fashion, displayed at my finger tips. I am not saying its not possible, I just have never figured out how.
I cannot imagine anything in the Windows world is remotely close, other than the KDE-Windows port:) Though I could be wrong on that too.
I agree with this, but I doubt it is to keep linux "off" the boxes. Linux can already run on just about anything. The reason I am guessing is to keep "Modern" Windows OS's off the suckers. There is no-way the bloated WinXP could run with a 350Mhz and 128MB RAM. (I imagine Linux +KDE/GNOME would struggle too, but wmaker or xfce would likely be fine).
By supporting this low end HW MS can effectively be free to sell cheap hardware their without worrying about users stealing their "good stuff" since it obviously won't be able to run. On top of that if they are able to sell limited CE versions of software to the that market, they do not have to worry as much about large scale pirating of selling cheap versions back to the western market.
Since MS already faces big problems with piracy, they simply would not want another inexpensive box that could run all their latest apps in the hands of millions of people who are not likely to ever buy anything.
Here's how I see it breaking down. The low-end hardware and CE makes it affordable for the HW company (AMD) in this case to buy the software from MS. So MS makes $$ of the initial sale. Since the cost of the software is factored into the selling price, AMD can still make a profit.
The people who lose out in this scenerio are the poor folks who buy this with 2nd rate Windows software. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Linux to shine, because if it were pre-loaded, it could have everything the people would need.
The target market also does not have to worry about the cost of switching, nor do they have to worry about compatibility with others. They are essentially starting with a blank slate.
I am guessing that MS probably is more involved than just supplying a half-ass OS. If this succeeds it gets them in at the ground floor in large emerging markets with less threat of piracy of their high margin apps.
I have a 4155 too. I like the hardware, but the Windows OS does drive me crazy. I had to buy software to connect to smb shares and FTP and other "standard" things I do on Linux.
I truely miss linux on this machine and continually check various website for the day I can take the shackles off this truely nice little machine.
I'd like to use rsync, I'd like to use kopete, I'd like a real browser. I wish I didn;t have to pay $25 bucks for every little application the improves upon the slop that MS provides.
The nuetered versions of IE and OUTLOOK suck on Pocket PC. Things really aggravated me, liek when buying ebooks, or other things there is a lot of software and applications that require you to have a Windows PC for the setup/installation. ARHHH....I just want to run an app on my POCKET PC.
My opinion is that MS considers the PocketPC OS a second class environment, and that it is subordinant to the full blown windows. Granted these machines are tiny, but they have specs that are MUCH better than the first couple of notebooks I had. These machines only lack a large display, in terms of horse-power and memory they are more than capable of storing addresses and downloading email, and surfing a web page.
Oh well I am ranting....I stop that and go back to anxiously waiting for Linux to be ready on the 4155...
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly it MUST be the Internet:
Granted the Internet itself has been around longer than 25 years, but so has email, fiber optics, cellphones, PCs and others in some form or another. Those older technologies have become important because of the explosive growth and evolution of the Internet in the last 25 years.
I firmly believe that without the Internet none of these innovations would be where they are now in terms of development and wide spread adoption.
Anyway here is their top 25, almost everything on this list has benifited from the Interent or the Internet has facilited the development of the innovation:
2. Cell phone - Not a direct link here, though phones have been offering internet access for years, as well as acted like modems for laptops and portable PCs for even longer. Also as WIFI becomes more ubiquitous, VOIP over the Internet may replace traditional cellphones.
The electronics that enabled the cellphone to shrink to a small size, and was arguably the driver for their ubiquity, was a benifit of the development going into electronics for the computers and communications infrastructure and by extension the Internet.
3. Personal computers - When was the last time you sat at a computer without at least Dialup access?
4. Fiber optics - Used in the physical backbone of the Internet.
5. E-mail - The original "Killer app" of the Internet.
6. Commercialized GPS - The logistics industry and other mapping industries have greatly benifited for the ability to track trucks, cargo, people in real time, over the Internet. GPS can stand alone as a useful tool, but combined with such a powerful means to transmit that information quickly, it is clear how important the Internet is to commercial GPS adoption.
7. Portable computers - Get the Internet where and when you need it.
8. Memory storage discs - This is an interim benifit, As computers got faster and the internet got better, more information was able to be transferred. So people naturally used the Internet to collect everything, from programs, photos (and now music and movies). As that collection out grew the computer memory disks were need to off load the stuff you got from the Internet. I say it is interim, because eventually broader broadband, and further refined searching (via google) and improved P2P (i.e. bit torrent) will make it so easy (and reliable) to get things of the Internet, that local copies will become less and less important - though they will probably never go away.
9. Consumer level digital camera - Now that taking pictures is cheap, what do you do with those pictures? Share them! Via email, websites, etc. The Internet has made it easy to get baby pictures to Grandma in Florida. Now we're also seeing Masss market use of the internet, for example you can have 4x5 prints done and waiting for you at Walmart via there web interface.
10. Radio frequency ID tags - What good would all that info they will collect if it could not easily be transmitted to remote locations? Sure private networks (both local and wide area) will make up a significant portion. But combined with the Internet (and things like GPS tracking) RFIDs have even more value.
11. MEMS - Also fiber optics grow, mems will be a critical component in new switching quipment.
12. DNA fingerprinting - Law enforcemnet can share results quickly and easily. Researchers can collaborate much more easily.
13. Air bags - Ok you got me on this one. Fall back on the Internet improved the logistics and development of the airbag. It has helped engineers co-operate, and helped consumers understand the advantages of having an airbag (with out having to experience it first hand).
14. ATM - Remote sites talking to a home network, I wonder how that can be done cost effectively? While they may not be on the Internet directly, they certainly make use of the same infrastructure the Internet does, some certainly use VPNs over the internet to get a connection.
15.
There are a lot of skills, as you've already realized, that go into web development. But to be successful commercially, you are going to need to learn to work as a team. Quite simply, if you are a good designer, you'll have too much work and will be a bottle neck.
The hard part of being a developer is troubleshooting, debugging and optimizing. The only way to know effectively do it is to have a complete understanding of the entire web process. Those skills really come only from experience.
It is learning how ALL the pieces of the equation fit together and interact. I.e How does the HTML in the site render with the browser, is the traffic effecting the performance, if so are the images to blame or possible a database connection? Is there a caching issue in the browser causing upodates not to show? What version of apache/PHP are running, how is each configured?
I own and run a small hosting company. I also do a lot of development using mainly PHP, but there are a few PERL scripts, shell scripts and even a C program here or there. My company specializes in hosting small developer and designers who are just getting started. So We actually get a lot of questions and issues, that usually stem from the fact that the people just do not have a complete picture of the system.
For example one of my larger more experienced customers who has two dedicated servers, and hosts about 300 domains on them, called me with a problem with a shopping cart she has used many many times before. For some reason the site was excruiatingly slow, and she did not know why. A quick glance at the config file told me she was running a database off a server in another datacenter. So there was a lot of overhead from the lookups. She knew this, but didn't realize the impact that geography makes, and she wasted a day trying to figure it out before calling me.
Anyway, in my opinion it is good to lear one or two skills really well, and assemble a team of people around you that can fill in the gaps. But it is equally important to know a little bit about as many skills as you can. This is important for several reasons:
1. If you are farming out the work you can give the subcontractor good specs, and can in general communicate your needs better.
2. If you do need to learn the skill it will be easier with some background to start.
3. A lot of the skills and languages and tools you learn share common elements, or at least common ideas. So by learning new things, you can often take those skills and apply them to your area(s) of expertise and become better.
4. learning about the features and benifits of a wide range of tools will help you identify the best tool for the particular project. That will help you be more efficient, and thus make more money.
Anyway if I were starting with a blank slate and wanted to be an independent developer. I would learn HTML and CSS as they are the fundemental building blocks. A server side language is also very handy, and will allow you to truely take advantage of the numerous free scripts. It is one thing to install a script, it is another thing to fully integrate it into a site, knowing the language will help. I prefer PHP.
If you pick up PHP, knowing basic SQL and specificall MySQL will go a long ways.
Flash, is handy but I try to avoid it for most sites, animated banners are pretty worthless none and really do not provided the customer with any bang for the buck. If your client insists on it, it is easier to farm out the Flash dev.
Graphics skills are very handy, but can be very tedious and time consuming. It is a good idea to know how to "tweak" images, change colors, crop, scale, etc using Gimp or Photoshoto, etc. But Like flash you may be better off letting an artist do the none technical design work.
Javascript has come a long way (or more accurately browsers have come a long way) since now it seems much easier to get Javascript to work across the various browsers. There is a plethora of quality free javascripts
Or Konqueror using sftp://
Pocket IE blows, and my IPAQ does not yet support Linux (I cannot wait for OPIE). I am way to cheap for a $50/year browser.
Off the subject a little bit, but.... I really like the form factor of my h4355, bluetooth and wireless together are very handy, but being stuck in PPC hell is kind of annoying. I though this model witht he keyboard, and connectivity would be a system admins dream.
But no Linux (yet) and the lack of an escape key, limit the usefulness. Plus I'd like a free application to rotate the screen, especially when I have a ssh window open...
Seems like comparing this to guns makes is more accurate.
Owning a gun = legal, with restrictions
Using a gun = legal, legal with restrictions
If someone owns or possesses a gun illegally the maker is not liable.
If someone uses a gun for an illegal purpose, like threatening someone or shooting someone the maker is generally not liable.
So are there any scenerios in which a gun maker would be liable for an end users actions? Perhaps, but it would be rare, and a lot of additional evidence would need to be used.
For example if it could be shown that the gun maker knowingly produced a weapon for a single purpose of committing a crime. In this situation the maker would probably not be a big manufauturer, but an individual conspiring to commit a crime. Think of the little epoxy gun in that Clint Eastwood movie a few years back.
In my opinion it is clear that the P2P networks are providing a means to transfer files, it does not appear clear that there sole purpose is to allow illegal file transfers.
these networks exist on top of the Internet, so should not ISPs be equally as liable? Afterall if no one can get online then no one can share files.
Or how about the PC makers, if they weren't providing inexpensive equipment that can connect to the internet and then log on to a P2P network, there would be no P2P piracy.
Where do we draw the line? It is pretty apparent to me that the user is responsible not the tool.
MS2k
This sort of thing is why I prefer the world of open source. Its also why I trust open source software so much more than software produced at software mills.
When profit from the product is not the number one priority, things like preformance, and overall quality tend to get higher marks.
This is especially true when there is not pressure from a sales forces and marketing dept, to add X Y and Z features just so the product more favorably comparse with the competition.
I just wish hardware had the same awide variety of choice that software curently has.
-MS2k
I've already ranted on this shitty story:
1 90 9&cid=11014994
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13
In a nutshell, I spent about an hour going through goolge links of a few of the people involved in this story (either posting it or writing it or making it up) the URLs are in my original post. Anyway, they all have long histories of being politically biased, and spewing liberal FUD.
some points to consider:
- Would a undetecable application that is mneant to be cross platform be written in VB?
- why would a journalist, that is former NSA, and supposedly has all these tech credentials use an AOL addres? Fine it may work, and he might like it, but an AOL email address takes away a lot of credibility IMHO. (see original reply).
- If this had any validity, why was it not brought up sooner? There were articles on it back in 2002. It seems like the main stream Dems would have been all over this two or three years ago, if they thought there was any truth to it.
What I find disturbing is that slashdot would run this story twice. Clearly every article and source is biased, a quick google search quickly verifies that fact.
So what we get here is supermarket fluff and liberal FUD. We won't tolerate MS FUD, but leftwing FUD must be soooo MmmMmm Good that we get a double dose!
I am not affiliated with any of the thrash that I linked to, but you make a good point all the left wing conspiricy sites are filled with ads .
But that certainly is another point to consider. Hey lets make up a sensational story about vote rigging. It will draw millions of hits, and we'll not only make the Republicans look bad, but we'll line our pockets as well....
First the online journal is essentially nothing but a Republican consiricy site. Its registered to a Bev Conover (courtesy of public WHOIS). There is a ton of anti-bush and anti rebulican shit. She must be a democrat cult hero. A quick google search turns up plenty of stuff. Bev apparently has not liked Bush since his pre-presidential days because in 1999 She shares credit for this article:
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/499/Bush /Hiding/hiding.html
Anyway back to the joke of an article. What any self respecting developer write a proof of concept tool thats main function is to be portable and cross platform with aproprietary language like VB? HELL NO. An undetecable application one definately would not start with a "proof of concept" VB application. Come on, an application that could be untracable would need to have very lowlevel access to the voting machines OS, which by its very nature would make it difficult to be portable. Most cross platform applucations are very bloated, because they need tons of extra code to work on the myriad combination of OSs.
The premise sounds like it is out of one of those cheesy hollywood scripts, where they have the alien computer infiltrated by a virus that crashes a fleet of motherships in about 2 minutes. Or the hacking of the supper secret password from an outdated mac.
Wayne Madsen, the guy who reported this story must have about zero knowledge of programming. Or he's getting his "story" ideas from his left leaning buddies in hollywood.
Interestingly enough he was a cyberterrorist panelist (http://iml.dartmouth.edu/ists/madsen.html) and supposedly has these credentials (taken from the panelist bio website):
Mr. Madsen has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State.
He has also been on many mainstream networks as guest commentator, so he is not totally devoid of creditials.
But any tech creditials are lost when we find out he sports an AOL email address (from http://www.lebanonwire.com/0410/04102002LW.asp): Wmadsen777@aol.com
Damn, I am going to sign up for AOL now that I know former NSA guys use it, it MUST be good. Either that or perhaps he embelished his NSA credentials a bit, anyone who can honestly believes that massive voter fraud was carried out by a VB programmer, must have been the janitor.
Anyway, this guys blog does a better job of me at discrediting this writer, who certainly seems to either be very ignorant of programming, or else he has an agenda to push. http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2004/11/round-two-w ayne-madsen-on-funding-for.html
Finally, the "programmer", Clint CUrtis who claims to have written this software operates an anti-Bush, site calling for the boycott of many companies and their products. The site is at: http://justaflyonthewall.com
BTW this bald face liar generously makes this software available at: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram. htm, but I don't think its open source.
That high quality VB code is sure to make it into diebolds upand coming models.
Additionally, I dug up references to the Clint Curtis guy, apparently the issue goes back way before the 2000 election (here is an article from 2002, responding to similar voting fraud claims): http://www.informedvolusian.com/2002/Issue_24/issu e_24_article_1.htm
Does this shit BELONG ON SLASHDOT? Why is it that we don't tolerate FUD from Mircoshit, but political FUD is apparently A Okay. We're supposed to be nerds, and look at things objectively. I guess that only applies to technology. Apparently, (at least according to the editors) we're mindless sheep and will believe any written word on the internet like everyone else if the topic is not tech related.
As a side note, I thought the politics section was temporary? I'm definately changing my prefs to avoid this kind of CBS journalism on Slashdot.
-MS2k
Instead of rehashing another holy war, can someone point us to an objective feature by feature comparison of the two apps?
.5 and .62 vs. an older Photoshop.
I did a couple of quick google searches looking for a feature vs. feature breakdown of the GIMP vs. Photoshop, I found only one. A very old one comparing Gimp
If there is a current upto date comparison / review can someone post it? It gets so old hearing PhotoShop is far superior to the GIMP, without any refernces to why. Or if there is a reference, it is usually something generic like: color manageent sucks in the GIMP or something like that.
-MS2k
I always liked heavy trackballs, like the kind with pool balls in them. I found the heavier balls more precise for small movements, when photoshopping (and later gimping) images.
Its been sevreal years since I have used a track ball though, since I have not found a new one that feels right.
Some "Ask Slashdot" questions seem a little overly simple, but the point is not necessarily to get all the answers from the Slashdot crowd, we all know Giigle will always be a better tool for RAW info. The point of "Ask Slashdot" is to gather the opinions of peers about a subject that a lot of us may be also be interested in.
I personally am getting a little tired of dismissing every question with a derogatory comment and a link to google.
Mepid is an EXCELLENT CHOICE. What sets it apart is it includes a ton of hard to configure browser plugins. It is a pleasure to boot up and surf the web and see flash, java, etc and more out of the "box".
It lets Linux users take for granted a lot of the things on the web that Windows users do. Which is important for something like this.
MS2k
I was going to mod some comments, but thought I would help you out instead. KDE built in printing dialog has this functionality.
If you are printing from a non-KDE app, specify "kprinter" as the print command. The Print dialog comes up and choose "Properties" (The should be a button next to the printer select drop down.
Anyway, among the tabs (probably hidden from view) is a "POSTER" tab. This will allow you to pront anything supersized.
I have not used this too much myself so I cannot speak as to quality, but I know the function is there if I need it. I'm sure you can find much better info on the net than I can provide....
-MS2k
I can actually see a couple of possible ways for MS to be hurt by this. Though they are both long shots, but heres to dreamin'
The BSA could come in and do its dirty work, but as has already been mentioned, MS is the BSA's daddy. The BSA would not want to bite the hand that feeds it. Though I wonder if an anonymous MS employee(s) have ever reported piracy from within before?
The other way MS could have some problems is related to their recent speal about protecting all endusers from lawsuits that may stem from IP violations.
What we need is SONY to sue every single MS Windows user. That way MS will be forced to protect the masses, while wasting copious amounts of cash.
The key to this scenerio is it would not matter who, used the cracked software. Contract employee, full time person or even if it was from a royalty free sound bite collection. The fact is that MS distributed it, and end users continually derive endless hours of enjoyment listening to the system sounds (Maybe we should call the RIAA to, because the artists may not have been properly compensated).
Will either of these happen? I very much doubt it. But at least this thread gives us a little pleasure imagining a bad things happening to the worlds favorite monoplistic bastards.
-MS2K
I don't have time to proofread, I'm too busy hitting refresh trying to get a first post. And when I am not doing that, I am begging people for a gmail address, one of these days someone will have sympathy :)
I am going to guess that there is a shortage of "enterprise" open-source people, that being people that big companies feel compelled to hire that have extra letters after their name and a slew of certifications, and the like.
On of the advantages of open source is the community, is its "equal opportunity" nature. Plenty of academics but also plenty of self taught geeks. Anybody can sit down and do the work.
The big shortage is proably in the middle management where those folks don't understand the benifits and the culture, and thus are reluctant to hire the kind of people that probably could
Enterprise is reluctant to even consider hiring people without the right pedigree, but its the sefl taught hackers that make major contributions to the software, and the community.
Businesses should stop being so set on worthless paper degrees, and look for people passionate about technology.
Before deciding to work for myself, I worked at a company where if there was an IT opening the prefered method of filling the position was sending a lazy secretary (who usually sat around playing freecell) to CNE class or MSCE, etc.
That company ended up with one sorry IT staff, I was a business analyst at the time, and ended up doing a lot of my departments IT because the most of the real IT group was so pathetic, and the guys there that were good techies, were so burdened cleaning up for and assisting the shitty people that they burnt ou quickly, thus re-enforcing the bad loop.
Anyway, the moral of this story is I am sure there is a lot more to the shortage than the article implies. Able bodies most definately can be found, but the companies are not looking for the most talented people, but rather the people that fit their outdated requirements. In short actions and experience should speak much louder than words on a resume.
Novell may be in it for $$; but they do have to pay the bills, they have to answer to stock holders. So whether they like it or not they need to make $$, as does nearly every enterprise.
Your post almost certainly over generalizes the corporate climate at Novell. Heresay in an aggressive post sounds an awful lot like trolling.
Your words would mean a lot more if they weren't hiding behind an AC post. I find it fun to imagine McBride having to resort to AC astroturfing on Slashdot, taking digs at Novell and IBM.
Sure everyone at Novell could be greedy SOB's but thus far their actions have been mostly benificial to the open source community.
Also why is it that if an open-source company trys to make money it is a bad thing? Software should be open, but services and support need to bring in cash. Money is an important and integral part of open source software. The money just comes from differnet sources. the Open Source economy is values information, and the freedom of information. Ultimately, its that information freedom that is leveraged to make services and support more efficient. If Novell can increase profits by selling and supporting Linux more power to them.
MS2k
I saw the lights early this morning (~2AM 11/10/2004).
I've been in southern Michigan for 30+ years. This was the first display I have witnessed. Quite an impressive site (so much so that I woke my wife up and made her watch them too.)
-MS2k
I've had a couple of unmanaged dedicated box custoemrs install this for their users. They have been really quite pleased with it in terms of reliability. Support has been decent, and there seems to be a large enough community of users to the forums and faq's a good source of information.
My customers have also been pleased with the price.
-MS2k
I worked at a small hosting company for three years before taking it over almost 2 years ago. In that time, I have developed my own panel for my customers, at the same time evaluated many other panels / managed options.
The choice you make should depend on the types of clients you market to (or intend to market to). Do you want a lot of "retail" customers that want to host one or two domains with lowend features? Do you want to host business / ecommerce sites? Will you allow your customers to resell the hosting?
Each customer has very different needs. Onesy/twosy customers need A LOT of hand holding and get quickly inundated if the panel is too powerful and has too many options, leading to a lot of support time. Businesses like easy to use features, at a fixed cost. My clients like A LOT of email options and flexibility. Business sites also like the buzzword features like easy to setup SSL, automated backup / restores, etc. Your resellers will want features that allow them to customize the look and feel of the panel so their customers see their logo not yours. They also like the ability to add / remove features.
Anyway, slashdot is probably not the best place for this type of discussion, there are MANY MANY websites that have forums explicitly geared at the hosting community. You'll be much better off to first identify who you want to sell to, then determine what your market needs, then find / write software that fits those needs.
A control panel is a lot more than setting up web sites and email accounts. I strongly suggest finding a couple of hosting sites and lurk on the boards a while. http://webhostingtalk.com is probably agood place to start.
Trust me it is a lot better to do the research and planning now, rather than later. Because once you have customers then you lock yourself in, because it is very difficult to change things on a customer base.
I don't believe slashdot should be used to plug my company/work (besides I have been too busy supporting users, so my own sites look like shit) so I won't get into the specifics of what the software I have written does, but if your interested I'll be happy to exchange emails and share more of my work. You should be able to track me down via my web site if you're interested.
-MS2k
Thank you. I wish I had mod points today. . .
It's this feature along that finally allowed me to switch to Quanta, now all my web development is done right online. So I don't ever have to worry about uploading and accidently overwriting with old versions or even rsyncing the development directories. It has been great.
:) Though I could be wrong on that too.
It also allows me to instantly update any site at the clients whims if need be. I do maintain seperate "offline" backups, And also incremental snapshots is as easy as dragging a remote folder in Konq, to a local directory.
The other cool thing about these in combined with Konq, you can bookmark any of these, and have different "browsing" profiles. So for example each project has a profile with a single window with 4 panes, on the left is the my local "library" directory on the right is teh largest pane, a "preview" of the site, is a smaller pane with a directory listing of the remote directory, next to that is a directory listing of the remote computer. Combined with tabs and the intergrated konsole, it puts a ton of info at my finger tips. In a way its like the whole desktop environment is one big IDE.
I switched from gnome a couple of years ago, and check back every so often. I have not yet found an easy way to get that much info/resources, in that organized a fashion, displayed at my finger tips. I am not saying its not possible, I just have never figured out how.
I cannot imagine anything in the Windows world is remotely close, other than the KDE-Windows port
I agree with this, but I doubt it is to keep linux "off" the boxes. Linux can already run on just about anything. The reason I am guessing is to keep "Modern" Windows OS's off the suckers. There is no-way the bloated WinXP could run with a 350Mhz and 128MB RAM. (I imagine Linux +KDE/GNOME would struggle too, but wmaker or xfce would likely be fine).
By supporting this low end HW MS can effectively be free to sell cheap hardware their without worrying about users stealing their "good stuff" since it obviously won't be able to run. On top of that if they are able to sell limited CE versions of software to the that market, they do not have to worry as much about large scale pirating of selling cheap versions back to the western market.
Since MS already faces big problems with piracy, they simply would not want another inexpensive box that could run all their latest apps in the hands of millions of people who are not likely to ever buy anything.
Here's how I see it breaking down. The low-end hardware and CE makes it affordable for the HW company (AMD) in this case to buy the software from MS. So MS makes $$ of the initial sale. Since the cost of the software is factored into the selling price, AMD can still make a profit.
The people who lose out in this scenerio are the poor folks who buy this with 2nd rate Windows software. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Linux to shine, because if it were pre-loaded, it could have everything the people would need.
The target market also does not have to worry about the cost of switching, nor do they have to worry about compatibility with others. They are essentially starting with a blank slate.
I am guessing that MS probably is more involved than just supplying a half-ass OS. If this succeeds it gets them in at the ground floor in large emerging markets with less threat of piracy of their high margin apps.
-MS2k
I have a 4155 too. I like the hardware, but the Windows OS does drive me crazy. I had to buy software to connect to smb shares and FTP and other "standard" things I do on Linux.
I truely miss linux on this machine and continually check various website for the day I can take the shackles off this truely nice little machine.
I'd like to use rsync, I'd like to use kopete, I'd like a real browser. I wish I didn;t have to pay $25 bucks for every little application the improves upon the slop that MS provides.
The nuetered versions of IE and OUTLOOK suck on Pocket PC.
Things really aggravated me, liek when buying ebooks, or other things there is a lot of software and applications that require you to have a Windows PC for the setup/installation. ARHHH....I just want to run an app on my POCKET PC.
My opinion is that MS considers the PocketPC OS a second class environment, and that it is subordinant to the full blown windows. Granted these machines are tiny, but they have specs that are MUCH better than the first couple of notebooks I had. These machines only lack a large display, in terms of horse-power and memory they are more than capable of storing addresses and downloading email, and surfing a web page.
Oh well I am ranting....I stop that and go back to anxiously waiting for Linux to be ready on the 4155...
-MS2k