Step one) goto www.google.com/linux Step two) Enter name and model of component Step three) If lots of people complain about lack of support then pick a different component.
The Apple store in San Francisco is an incredible showcase. It is packed and people are seriously dreaming about owning a Mac. I think people want to be associated with form as well as function and actually using a Mac helps seal that association of the Mac being form and function. That can only lead to a sale. Many people are getting their first Apple product in the form of iTunes and iPod, so the next step will be a laptop or desktop.
The real movement I'm seeing in business is first-class support for the simple applications that are required to do business. For the first time we are seeing managers doing Powerpoint presentations from a Mac. Executives like our CIO are requiring that VPN and other core business services support Mac OSX. Hell I've even heard people talk about picking up an XServe. The icing is that we now have an employee/corporate discount for Apple, which means that we will likely be offering the Mac as an official corporate tool soon.
The truth is there are loads of people at IBM and HP and other companies, average people, making decent livings developing open source. Frankly Linus is fairly average as well, he opted not to make the billions, and instead makes a good wage doing something he believes in. So I think you could argue getting rich off of open source is probably the exception not the rule but the idea that you can't make a living isn't true. As you may know we call people without vested interest in a software product staff programmers.
I own an iPod. Anyone who plays with it says the same thing, it is beautiful and works great and nothing else on the market touches it. But what I really thought was interesting was a comment that an industry analyst made about iPod Mini. Considering Apple's position in the market and a $250 price tag, a competitive product would need to be at least $50 cheaper. I think that is an interesting perspective of a strictly 'business' analysis. Just not the kind of thoughts technical people have.
1. It doesn't connect to existing internal home wiring and telephone sets without a lot of extra cost. Only geeks and their tolerant mothers make computer calls.
Yes it does. Just that simple, you can take an ATA-186 from Cisco, $50 from Vonage and connect it to your inside wiring. Other providers have a similar system. BTW the black box (ATA186) requires no configuration, and no computer to function.
2. It needs QoS, and QoS ain't free. Look at Vonage. It's not free, and extra LD is >3 cents a minute. AT&T service through Sam's Club costs less than that!
$29.99 Unlimited Long distance in the USA, and some providers are offering unlimited International at the $39.99 per month level. QOS is not used, nor required. Technically speaking the ToS bits are set but nobody I know is paying for it.
3. You need a broadband connection for VoIP, plus you pay an extra charge. Think $30-$50 for broadband, and $15-$35 a month to the VoIP carrier which is what they charge for the QoS plus whatever the terminating carrier bills them for access to the PSTN.
I pay for plain ADSL. I set the call bandwidth to 30k on the web page which gives me good voice quality, and I can still surf the web while talking.
4. By contrast, I beseech you ignorant slobs to check out an outfit called Cellsocket.com. They sell a doohickey that holds your cellphone. You plug it into your home wiring and disconnect your home wiring at the NID. Voila, all calls to and from your house go over the cellular network but you can use your regular home phones.
Talk about expensive. And in my building, in downtown San Francisco, I would be hard pressed to get a signal.
You are missing the point that essentally VoIP is rapidly gaining ground. I would even say that we are moving out of the early adopter stage and into the real people phase.
We should overturn Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific, and regain our freedom. In case your wondering that is the case where we lost control of our destiny.
BTW I think the do not call registry is a wonderful thing and we need many more like it. How about a nobillboardsinmycity list. Or the noadvertisementsontelevision list.
It has been apparent that in the post dot-com era Sun has lost touch with reality. Linux has smoothed off the edges, and is close to taking a direct shot at the encumbent operating systems. Sun still builds hardware based upon an instruction set that nobody cares about and lacks a clear exit strategy for a dying product line. Java has been their most successful venture to date, and they have been completely unable to capitalize on their invention as well as third-parties have.
I think Sun has some interesting technologies, and good engineers, but they lack the ability to bring it all together. They think that people care about their OS, when in fact they should dump Solaris and put everyone into Linux development and partner with AMD or PPC to build the same highly available, and manageable equipment with a more acceptable processor.
Living in the heart of a Solaris universe, it is hard to believe that it has come to the point where people are talking treason. "Do we have a Dell rep, I'd like to ask about RedHat compatibility?"
I too find this behavior abhorrent. The very idea of a maintenance contract on top of a sale price is amazing. It is as if an automobile manufacturer sold you a car that was known to suddenly stop because of a software failure but told you unless your car was under a maintenance agreement wouldn't be fixed. If you bought the car used, you would need to relicense the car's OS and then buy a maintenance agreement. Nice.
I'm sorry you either lease the car to me, or you sell it to me. You can't have both. I wouldn't expect free feature enhancements, but I do expect free bug fixes.
This is clearly one of those things we are forced to accept because the manufacturers have us over a barrel. I mean what are you going to do, build your own? Well I think we just might...
I really feel a difference at my company, a major hard drive manufacturer, that people are ready to dump long standing concerns over free software. For example dumping Checkpoint and Microsoft are ideas that people are seriously toying with. Cisco is certainly not the beloved it once was amongst network router people. People are fed up with being abused by businesses, and for the first time in a long time we have an alternative.
I assure you I will fight tooth and nail to keep NetApp out of my company. I know we use NetApp cache servers but I will definitely bring this up as a reason to move back to Squid proxy, instead of Checkpoint and NetApp.
You are simply addressing a symptom of a broken system. The underlying problem is that patents are an artificial creation to promote the enrichment of individuals, and maintain their dominance over the non-patent holders. The issue isn't how to patent correctly, but how to remove the oligopoloy of patent holders, and allow mankind to innovate, to reverse engineer and copy for the good of all.
I always hear the argument, but "shouldn't people be paid for their inventions", which underlys a basic misunderstanding about patents. Patents can be granted, and are granted, for everything, and no, the 'inventor' isn't entitled to a living or even acknowledgement. Once something leaves the confines of your brain it belongs to all of us.
Unfortunately I can't get my coworkers to recycle plastic, paper or cans when the company provides containers in every cube for paper and the kitchens have plastic/glass and aluminum recycling. I have begged, pleaded, tried to make an economic case and an environmental one. The only thing that seems fairly successful is my battery recycling effort, but for the most part people refuse to reuse.
I believe that recycling is a lot like littering. Until it becomes a misdemeanor to throw away recyclable materials, or an extraordinary deposit attached to every piece of plastic or metal then we will not get participation or sympathy for the efficient use of our resources.
God help us when they start selling disposable/expiring DVDs.
No it doesn't. Little Johnny is not a criminal per se. The post is essentially saying that we don't agree with the law of the corporations. We want copyright and all the intellectual property mess to go away. Frankly if you saw T3, which I did, I would gladly have my money back. What a waste! For me little Johnny is a freedom fighter not a criminal.
Nobody is telling them that they can't attempt to make a living through acting, singing or dancing. Make your living any way you can. But if your business model fails don't cry foul.
When you mass produce art it loses its value. Yet here is an industry that insists upon using any method possible to prop up a broken method of enrichment. So as far as I can see the problem is they don't understand that people don't value their work, and they need to adjust it if it is to be more than simply personal gratification.
The drama of out of work actors. Shame The Jaguar and Ferrari repossessed Ignominy The Beverly Hills mansion foreclosed upon Turned away from the country club... The horror!!!
The story could tell how their idyllic lives were shattered by piracy. How large corporate executives and A-list actors are thrown onto the street overnight.
It is inevitable. Some of us will have the ability to copy the new media despite the restrictions the government (read businesses) put on us. However, for the vast majority we can expect yet another disposable piece of plastic. Can't we require that any disposable physical media format, should be 100% recyclable and a deposit attached to it.
Might I also add that such a requirement, while reasonable to ask for, would make adoption of any new format more difficult logistically. So this might be a good rallying point to stick it to the industry without getting stuck in the copyright arguments.
If I understand this, since controlling copyright is so important we are going to create disposable discs that are going to further tax our overburdened land fills.
Does this mean the next big player against the RIAA and MPAA will be environmentalists?
The right to use proprietary software is not freedom of speech. You can legislate that all software must be open source just like you legislate the content of mayonaise must be on the jar.
Further much "unofficial" legislation occurs from the President issuing executive orders. They often detail how much of the governments spending can only go to companies that support certain policies or to open source theoretically. Most would consider that similar to any business making a management decision.
The moronic user argument is bunk. I've seen secretaries that are better at vi than I am. Users will use whatever they are given or used to. So it only goes to further the argument that a little social engineering would ween people off their M$ addction.
Anyone who thinks that this is too far is still buying into the closed source paradigm.
We have been exposed to the consumer culture for so long anything that you don't buy seems unnatural or inferior. When you shop for cereal, software or cars, it is all about brand recognition, warranty, style. You know what I'm talking about. You keep the boxes don't you?
Frankly many people, feel that shaping public opinion (social engineering) through legislation is wrong or outdated. Yet we elect officials to think about these issues and make the best decision for the public. Too bad we can't have a revival of intelligent political conversation. Yet another example of why the USA is closer to the end of its age rather than the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
Step one) goto www.google.com/linux
Step two) Enter name and model of component
Step three) If lots of people complain about lack of support then pick a different component.
Note to self - Do this before spending money.
The Apple store in San Francisco is an incredible showcase. It is packed and people are seriously dreaming about owning a Mac. I think people want to be associated with form as well as function and actually using a Mac helps seal that association of the Mac being form and function. That can only lead to a sale. Many people are getting their first Apple product in the form of iTunes and iPod, so the next step will be a laptop or desktop.
The real movement I'm seeing in business is first-class support for the simple applications that are required to do business. For the first time we are seeing managers doing Powerpoint presentations from a Mac. Executives like our CIO are requiring that VPN and other core business services support Mac OSX. Hell I've even heard people talk about picking up an XServe. The icing is that we now have an employee/corporate discount for Apple, which means that we will likely be offering the Mac as an official corporate tool soon.
The truth is there are loads of people at IBM and HP and other companies, average people, making decent livings developing open source. Frankly Linus is fairly average as well, he opted not to make the billions, and instead makes a good wage doing something he believes in. So I think you could argue getting rich off of open source is probably the exception not the rule but the idea that you can't make a living isn't true. As you may know we call people without vested interest in a software product staff programmers.
Don't foget that it also sounds like a TiVo with wheels and a science arm. I can't help but think of that cute little TiVo guy sunbathing on mars.
The hard drive technology they are using in both iPod and mini are still fairly expensive. The key to lower prices is that component becoming cheaper.
I own an iPod. Anyone who plays with it says the same thing, it is beautiful and works great and nothing else on the market touches it. But what I really thought was interesting was a comment that an industry analyst made about iPod Mini. Considering Apple's position in the market and a $250 price tag, a competitive product would need to be at least $50 cheaper. I think that is an interesting perspective of a strictly 'business' analysis. Just not the kind of thoughts technical people have.
1. It doesn't connect to existing internal home wiring and telephone sets without a lot of extra cost. Only geeks and their tolerant mothers make computer calls.
Yes it does. Just that simple, you can take an ATA-186 from Cisco, $50 from Vonage and connect it to your inside wiring. Other providers have a similar system. BTW the black box (ATA186) requires no configuration, and no computer to function.
2. It needs QoS, and QoS ain't free. Look at Vonage. It's not free, and extra LD is >3 cents a minute. AT&T service through Sam's Club costs less than that!
$29.99 Unlimited Long distance in the USA, and some providers are offering unlimited International at the $39.99 per month level. QOS is not used, nor required. Technically speaking the ToS bits are set but nobody I know is paying for it.
3. You need a broadband connection for VoIP, plus you pay an extra charge. Think $30-$50 for broadband, and $15-$35 a month to the VoIP carrier which is what they charge for the QoS plus whatever the terminating carrier bills them for access to the PSTN.
I pay for plain ADSL. I set the call bandwidth to 30k on the web page which gives me good voice quality, and I can still surf the web while talking.
4. By contrast, I beseech you ignorant slobs to check out an outfit called Cellsocket.com. They sell a doohickey that holds your cellphone. You plug it into your home wiring and disconnect your home wiring at the NID. Voila, all calls to and from your house go over the cellular network but you can use your regular home phones.
Talk about expensive. And in my building, in downtown San Francisco, I would be hard pressed to get a signal.
You are missing the point that essentally VoIP is rapidly gaining ground. I would even say that we are moving out of the early adopter stage and into the real people phase.
We should overturn Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific, and regain our freedom. In case your wondering that is the case where we lost control of our destiny.
BTW I think the do not call registry is a wonderful thing and we need many more like it. How about a nobillboardsinmycity list. Or the noadvertisementsontelevision list.
It has been apparent that in the post dot-com era Sun has lost touch with reality. Linux has smoothed off the edges, and is close to taking a direct shot at the encumbent operating systems. Sun still builds hardware based upon an instruction set that nobody cares about and lacks a clear exit strategy for a dying product line. Java has been their most successful venture to date, and they have been completely unable to capitalize on their invention as well as third-parties have.
I think Sun has some interesting technologies, and good engineers, but they lack the ability to bring it all together. They think that people care about their OS, when in fact they should dump Solaris and put everyone into Linux development and partner with AMD or PPC to build the same highly available, and manageable equipment with a more acceptable processor.
Living in the heart of a Solaris universe, it is hard to believe that it has come to the point where people are talking treason. "Do we have a Dell rep, I'd like to ask about RedHat compatibility?"
Both of you reread the article and get back to me. I need the report of SCO infringing code by COB today.
How much did your last major motion picture gross?
I too find this behavior abhorrent. The very idea of a maintenance contract on top of a sale price is amazing. It is as if an automobile manufacturer sold you a car that was known to suddenly stop because of a software failure but told you unless your car was under a maintenance agreement wouldn't be fixed. If you bought the car used, you would need to relicense the car's OS and then buy a maintenance agreement. Nice.
I'm sorry you either lease the car to me, or you sell it to me. You can't have both. I wouldn't expect free feature enhancements, but I do expect free bug fixes.
This is clearly one of those things we are forced to accept because the manufacturers have us over a barrel. I mean what are you going to do, build your own? Well I think we just might...
I really feel a difference at my company, a major hard drive manufacturer, that people are ready to dump long standing concerns over free software. For example dumping Checkpoint and Microsoft are ideas that people are seriously toying with. Cisco is certainly not the beloved it once was amongst network router people. People are fed up with being abused by businesses, and for the first time in a long time we have an alternative.
I assure you I will fight tooth and nail to keep NetApp out of my company. I know we use NetApp cache servers but I will definitely bring this up as a reason to move back to Squid proxy, instead of Checkpoint and NetApp.
Investors are bullish on bad news. Fairly common, and doesn't mean anything.
You are simply addressing a symptom of a broken system. The underlying problem is that patents are an artificial creation to promote the enrichment of individuals, and maintain their dominance over the non-patent holders. The issue isn't how to patent correctly, but how to remove the oligopoloy of patent holders, and allow mankind to innovate, to reverse engineer and copy for the good of all.
I always hear the argument, but "shouldn't people be paid for their inventions", which underlys a basic misunderstanding about patents. Patents can be granted, and are granted, for everything, and no, the 'inventor' isn't entitled to a living or even acknowledgement. Once something leaves the confines of your brain it belongs to all of us.
You cannot lump copyright infringement and dogs off leashes in the same category!!!
Unfortunately I can't get my coworkers to recycle plastic, paper or cans when the company provides containers in every cube for paper and the kitchens have plastic/glass and aluminum recycling. I have begged, pleaded, tried to make an economic case and an environmental one. The only thing that seems fairly successful is my battery recycling effort, but for the most part people refuse to reuse.
I believe that recycling is a lot like littering. Until it becomes a misdemeanor to throw away recyclable materials, or an extraordinary deposit attached to every piece of plastic or metal then we will not get participation or sympathy for the efficient use of our resources.
God help us when they start selling disposable/expiring DVDs.
No it doesn't. Little Johnny is not a criminal per se. The post is essentially saying that we don't agree with the law of the corporations. We want copyright and all the intellectual property mess to go away. Frankly if you saw T3, which I did, I would gladly have my money back. What a waste! For me little Johnny is a freedom fighter not a criminal.
I would mark that insightful.
Nobody is telling them that they can't attempt to make a living through acting, singing or dancing. Make your living any way you can. But if your business model fails don't cry foul.
When you mass produce art it loses its value. Yet here is an industry that insists upon using any method possible to prop up a broken method of enrichment. So as far as I can see the problem is they don't understand that people don't value their work, and they need to adjust it if it is to be more than simply personal gratification.
The drama of out of work actors.
Shame
The Jaguar and Ferrari repossessed
Ignominy
The Beverly Hills mansion foreclosed upon
Turned away from the country club...
The horror!!!
The story could tell how their idyllic lives were shattered by piracy. How large corporate executives and A-list actors are thrown onto the street overnight.
It is inevitable. Some of us will have the ability to copy the new media despite the restrictions the government (read businesses) put on us. However, for the vast majority we can expect yet another disposable piece of plastic. Can't we require that any disposable physical media format, should be 100% recyclable and a deposit attached to it.
Might I also add that such a requirement, while reasonable to ask for, would make adoption of any new format more difficult logistically. So this might be a good rallying point to stick it to the industry without getting stuck in the copyright arguments.
If I understand this, since controlling copyright is so important we are going to create disposable discs that are going to further tax our overburdened land fills.
Does this mean the next big player against the RIAA and MPAA will be environmentalists?
The right to use proprietary software is not freedom of speech. You can legislate that all software must be open source just like you legislate the content of mayonaise must be on the jar.
Further much "unofficial" legislation occurs from the President issuing executive orders. They often detail how much of the governments spending can only go to companies that support certain policies or to open source theoretically. Most would consider that similar to any business making a management decision.
The moronic user argument is bunk. I've seen secretaries that are better at vi than I am. Users will use whatever they are given or used to. So it only goes to further the argument that a little social engineering would ween people off their M$ addction.
Anyone who thinks that this is too far is still buying into the closed source paradigm.
We have been exposed to the consumer culture for so long anything that you don't buy seems unnatural or inferior. When you shop for cereal, software or cars, it is all about brand recognition, warranty, style. You know what I'm talking about. You keep the boxes don't you?
Frankly many people, feel that shaping public opinion (social engineering) through legislation is wrong or outdated. Yet we elect officials to think about these issues and make the best decision for the public. Too bad we can't have a revival of intelligent political conversation. Yet another example of why the USA is closer to the end of its age rather than the beginning.
Good for Brazil. Power to the people.