but because the "mindshare" of the unwashed masses is so stuck on the existing titans..
Not disagreeing with you as branding is amazingly powerful, but there is more to it than that. Those big companies also have a lot of other advantages besides brand. They have among other things:
Extensive distribution channels which are VERY expensive to replicate
Knowledge of the market and competitive environment as well as infrastructure to use this information
Economies of scale due to their large production volume permitting leverage with supppliers and/or the ability to sell at a lower cost (think Walmart) or for higher margins (think Coke or Intel)
Relationships with government regulators the new guys lack
Existing revenues to support product development
Production/operations experience and debugged processes
Existing and sometimes captive supplier relationships
Extensive patent and other IP portfolios
And a lot more. It's very difficult to attack a market leader directly. They simply have too many advantages (in addition to brand) to have a realistic chance of success.
I've always thought Transmeta's strategy was a bit questionable because they are attacking Intel/AMD on their strength. Sure, Transmeta's processors don't use much power but so what? The processor wasn't the biggest power drain in most devices that would use it. (the display screens usually chew up the most power) And Intel quickly released low(er) power versions of their existing processors which at least narrowed the gap. Plus a processor by itself is useless; it needs a board to plug it into and that creates an installed base problem. Dell doesn't want Transmeta processors because it increases production complexity and adds cost.
Transmeta's real product advantage (IMO) lay in their instruction morphing technology, not low power. It creates another abstraction layer making it easier for board manufacturers to customize products for companies like HP or IBM. This would allow firms that use several different platforms to potentially reduce costs by producing one processor and then tweaking the instruction set. Faster time to market and reduced cost. There are performance issues of course but I think these could have been managed if they didn't focus so heavily on the low power market.
How to calculate rough per store sales
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Amazon Sales Record
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm too lazy to dig through the reports but you can calculate a rough per-store sales number from the financial reports of any of the big retailers. Get a copy of their income statement and the number at the top will be Revenue. (might be called Sales or something else but it's the same number) Dig through a copy of their annual report to find the number of stores the firm has and divide revenue by the number of stores and then divide that by 360 (allowing for holidays) which should give you a rough per-day sales number
If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can get last year's report and find the number of stores and revenue figures for the previous year. This lets you average the current and previous year figures which will give a slightly better estimate. You also should look through the financial statements for non-retail revenues and subtract those from your starting revenue figures. For example if the company has a financing arm, you might want to back those numbers out before starting. Also you need to be careful with companies like WalMart or Dayton-Hudson (Target) or May Company (Famous Barr, Lord & Taylor) since they actually own several different types of stores. You may or may not be able to isolate the number for a given type of store. Please remember however that this number does not represent what any given store is doing, just what the average store within the firm is selling.
An interesting exchange
on
Gone Phishing?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Tangentially related. I just had an interesting conversation with CDW. I ordered some toner from them for my laser printer. Set up an account and gave my credit card number through the website. Very typical online experience. We've all done it hundreds of times.
A day later I get a call from them asking for the security code on the back of my credit card as well as the phone number for my credit card. Odd, I thought. I've been ordering online for years with this credit card and never been asked after the fact for that info. Additionally the card was a Discover card and there is only one number for that which I'm quite sure CDW knows.
While I doubt there was anything malicious going on I had them cancel the transaction. They explained that it was for extra security but the could have easily asked for that information in the online transaction. I have no way of knowing if this rep was acting on her own so I don't see any added security for me. My only criticism of CDW is that I don't think this was a very professional way to handle this transaction.
I don't really think there was anything malicious going on but its a good idea to be very careful when something is out of the ordinary, even a little bit.
Even if you're an employee, you can still be layed off or fired on little more than a whim. Being a contractor simply makes the lack of promise explicit.
More obvious maybe but definitely not more explicit. The law is actually quite clear on this. In fact, if you have a contract you may actually be more protected than a "real" employee depending on the terms of your contract. In most places employment is considered "at-will". The company can dismiss you for whatever reason the management wishes. (with a few exceptions related to race, age, gender and some other criteria) Likewise, you are free to leave the company whenever you like, for whatever reason you like. There is no promise of continued employment or continued work by either side unless you explicitly work out a contract that says otherwise.
This is not generally well understood but absent a contract there never has been any sort of "promise" between you and any employer you ever had. Any feelings of loyalty you or your employer might have had are kind but ultimately empty gestures. You agreed to perform certain services in exchange for renumeration, most likely of a financial nature. That's pretty much as far as it goes. If you felt loyalty to a company you are probably a good and decent person, but that is a very naive view. You should expect no loyalty from a company, and believe me, the company probably doesn't expect it from you no matter what they might say.
The problem with incorporating is you can't get money out as easily. The corporation then takes payment for your work, and has to pay you (the employee) accounting for taxes, etc. At the end of the year, you have to declare that as individual income (and get taxed accordingly.) Plus pay corporate taxes and paperwork overhead. That's where the cake and eat it too thing is.
In the US, you only pay corporate taxes if you have a C-corp. That's one of the major disadvantages of owning a C-Corp; you get taxed twice, once at the corporate level and once at the personal level. If you have an S-Corp, LLC, LLP, Partnership, or Sole Proprietorship all the tax occurs at the personal level. The corporation as an entity pays no tax directly. This sounds bad but it's actually good. It means you only get taxed once. You generally only form a C-Corp if you have to and most small businesses do not have to.
Incorporating is easy to do (generally) but carries some significant overhead in the form of paperwork, accounting and legal costs. Getting money out is not difficult, simply pay yourself a salary. Sure, you can get clever about it and do fancy stuff with assets and dividends but it doesn't have to be that hard. If you need to do the fancy stuff, get a GOOD (and probably pricy) accountant so you can defend yourself in the event of an audit.
Research incorporating thouroughly. It's expensive to start, expensive again to stop, and in order to be done properly has a fair amount of bookeeping overhead, and strict discipline with seperating personal and corporate finances.
Actually incorporating in the USA is very inexpensive. Even if you hire a lawyer to look over the paperwork (a very good idea BTW) it will only cost a few hundred dollars. Perhaps you were referring to the cost in the overhead of accounting, legal fees, time, paperwork etc. That I will agree can add up, though it can be kept under control. The time and paperwork commitment is the biggest hassle IMO. Stopping a business is even easier. In some cases you can just let your registration lapse. In others you have to file some paperwork but generally it isn't too hard to cause a corporation to cease.
C-Corps, S-Corps, LLCs and LLPs provide some protection from liability. Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships provide NO protection. Unless you are quite certain there is no significant liability concerns (rare), its a good idea to use one of the forms of incorporation with protection. And be careful, for example if you start working with a buddy for a few months and then decide to incoporate, guess what? For liability purposes you have effectively formed a Partnership from the time you started business activities and are liabile under those rules until you actually incorporate.
When does it make sense to use a pivot table instead of a simple sql query
Well for one, when you are using Excel instead of a database!:-) Typically I have data provided to me in spreadsheet form and its often easier just to work with it there. Sure, I could import it into a database but most of the time that isn't necessary.
If you do have it in a database, that's great but once you've selected the data you want with a query what are you going to do with it? The query is just the first step. You might have millions of records you need to summarize. Do you want to present the data by averages or maybe the standard deviations? Do you want a graph? Do you want to have subtotals? Pivot Tables let you do all this (and much more) quickly off of queries from a database (or lists in excel) and get good looking output without having to design a report ahead of time. Think of Pivot Tables as an automatic report generator. (they're not exactly but it's not a bad way to think of them)
I'd recommend Excel Data Analysis (ISBN 0-7645-3754-7) by Jinjer Simon to get started. It's a pretty good book and breaks up topics into questions you might be likely to ask and has a good solid 30 pages on Pivot Tables and Charts.
That's one-dimensional data. "Country" is a single-column primary key of that data. Each country exists in only one continent. Each country has only one population.
I'm aware of that. Please note that I was responding to a question about what pivot tables were so I answered with the simplest possible example. There are obviously MANY more sophisticated things that can be done.
The best way to understand pivot tables is probably by example. Lets say we have a spreadsheet with four categories of data: Country, Continent, GDP, and Population. These are listed in columns, with corresponding entries next to each other like so (apologies for bad formatting):
Country Continent GDP Pop China Asia $1000 1,000,000,000 Japan Asia $5000 100,000,000 USA North Am $15000 280,000,000
Then lets say we are interested in finding the population of countries on our list which a located in asia. Pivot table provide a fast way to sort data as well as conduct simple mathematical operations on lists of data.
Using a pivot table I could end up with a matrix that looks like:
Continent Country Population Asia China 1,000,000,000
Japan 100,000,000 North Am USA 280,000,000
Now I have the data sorted by continent. If I decide I'm not interested in population but instead in GDP, it is a simple drag and drop operation to get a table like:
Continent Country GDP Asia China $1000
Japan $5000 North Am USA $15000
Basically pivot tables let you explore lists of data very quickly and efficiently. If you deal with lists of data regularly like I do, they are one of the most indespensible features in a spreadsheet. Excel has the best ones I've used but most modern spreadsheets have some version of them.
I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.
My wife is a pathologist and as part of her training she had to take a death investigators course. According to her, death investigators do nothing but gather evidence. No more, no less. Their job is not to solve the crime but to make sure all the evidence is recorded, catalogued, transported to the appropriate labs as needed, etc. They are not permitted (in general) to try to make conclusions from the data; that's the job of the detective assigned to the case. You are right that firearms are generally not carried, they definitely don't order the cops around and they certainly don't drive around in brand new Hummers!
Apparently applications for forensic examiners & assistant positions are up something like 100X in the last few years. Like JAG, Law & Order, ER and a bunch of other shows, CSI glamorizes a job that really isn't all that glamorous. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing, we do need people in those jobs but it isn't exactly giving people realistic expectations.
I'm not a doctor but I'm married to a pathologist and have worked with a number of infectious disease specialists directly. Given that Patrick is relatively close to Minnesota, if he can't get the problem licked in SD, he should get over to the Mayo Clinic. They are one of the locations where hospitals from around the world (even the big ones like Barnes-Jewish in Saint Louis and the Cleveland Clinic) send unusual microbiology samples for diagnosis. If Mayo cannot help him, probably no one can. They've got very good people and as good a clinical pathology lab as anywhere in the world.
Nurses, at least in California, are hourly workers and most hospitals these days frown on even back-to-back 12 hour shifts for fear of litigation.
The reason they try to keep the nurses happy is because there aren't enough of them. It has (almost) nothing to do with lawsuits. I've done the finances for a 400 bed hospital (which is a midsized hospital) regarding bonus pay for nurses. Last year this hospital paid over $1.7 million in bonus pay to get adequate staffing. Nurse staffing is highly competitive and the nurses can, will and do leave if hospital administration abuses them too much.
Most hospitals have also cut down on the brutla hours that residents are required to put in for the same reason. In the resident's case, they do get a place to crash when (assuming) things slow down for a while (and they usually do, even in ERs that are major trauma centers in major cities)
I'm married to a resident. Hospitals are supposed to cut down on the hours but I can assure you that many do not. And "cutting down" means limiting them to 80 hours/week which is still insane. I don't know why you seem to think that giving residents a bed when they are on call is some kind of benefit. My wife has pulled many 36 hour shifts where she got no where near a bed. Even when she did, it's not like a resident is going to get any real rest. Q4 rotations are typical meaning you are on call every 4th night and I've seen people on Q2 rotations which basically means you don't get any sleep every other night. I know at least one guy who did Q2 for almost 2 years! Talk about your death march.
Residents get abused because they have no alternatives. If they want to be a doctor they have to do a residency. At least with programming there are alternatives, even if they aren't necessarily as fun or creative as game programming. For a supposedly caring profession, medicine is just brutal to their employees.
Frankly I'm shocked that some ambulance chaser lawyers haven't gotten the idea that tired residents who make lots of mistakes would make a very lucrative opportunity. I think the ambulance chasers are scum but at least they would be doing something vaguely useful in forcing hospitals to be humane to employees...
Nokia seems to be unable to implement bluetooth correctly
I use a Nokia 6310i and bluetooth does work great. However I had to get a firmware update on my phone. If you have a 6310i, you need firmware revision 5.50. Other Nokia phones may have similar issues which could be the problem you are facing. If it is under warranty, you can get the upgrade done for free. Don't ask Nokia tech support, they're generally clueless with regard to Bluetooth and will tell you it's your adapter's fault. You might have to mail it in to get flashed depending on your location. I sent mine to Florida.
The bigger problem IMO with Nokia is their software on my PC which, to be blunt, sucks. It's nowhere near seamless to connect, very poorly designed, and is under some bizarre illusion that everyone uses Outlook in recent versions. Furthermore they have different versions for each phone which is completely not necessary.
Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.
Why imagine? This is exactly what I do every day. I have a Nokia 6310i, an Palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth headset. Furthermore my Thinkpad T30 also has bluetooth built in. Bluetooth is a mandatory feature for me now. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you did without. It makes it vastly easier for electronic devices to communicate.
My phone is essentially a portable wireless base station in addition to being a phone. I can check email from either my PDA or laptop and connect through the phone without ever taking it out of my pocket or bag. If I need to sync my pda, no cables are necessary. I can touch dial numbers on my phone directly from my PDA address book. I just tap the number and it dials. I've surfed the web (albiet slowly) from my laptop while riding in a car on the highway and my phone was in the truck. Effectively my PDA and cell phone are a single device but I only have to carry the bits I'm actually going to use.
I see people compare bluetooth to 802.11X all the time but those folks miss the point. It's not about connecting to the internet. It's a replacement for almost any data-carrying wire. Bluetooth replaces my PDA sync cable, phone sync cable, mouse and keyboard USB cables, phone ear bud cable, and if needed my ethernet cable. Furthermore it could replace printer cables, IR ports, serial cables and several others. Most importantly I can take it anywhere.
WiFi is almost non-portable only replaces the ethernet cable because that is all it is designed to do. (and it does a good job of it, I'm not bashing WiFi) Bluetooth isn't optimized for what WiFi does so it's slower but also consumes less power and has other uses WiFi does not. If you are comparing WiFi to Bluetooth, you don't understand Bluetooth. Not everyone needs one or the other, but the comparison between them is silly. It's very much like comparing Firewire cables to Ethernet cables and arguing that one is better than the other. The argument just doesn't make sense.
...they are not currently looking to port any of their flagship products such as Photoshop to Linux yet, as they currently don't see sufficient numbers in the platform to make a good business case for it.
The funny thing is that a tool like photoshop could actually get people to use linux. Abobe would likely lose money for a few years on it until linux captures more market share but they can accelerate the process. The tail wagging the dog if you will.
I understand the finances and strategy of it all, but I've always been a little surprised that Adobe, Intuit, and similar companies to be almost completely uninterested in reducing the threat Microsoft poses. Sure, they've been able to outperform the big gorilla for quite some time, but it only takes one screwup to get squished. I guess Adobe doesn't feel enough pressure from Microsoft or other competitors.
They don't do more because there is a a free rider problem if they promoting linux. If they are successful, other companies get the benefits without the cost while they may or may not recoup the cost of pushing the platform. I'm guessing they see IBM and Novell as absorbing the cost of putting linux on desktops and are just waiting. But if I were them I'd probably see having my products available on linux as like having fire insurance. You might not need it but if you do, you REALLY need it. Photoshop is a great product but there are competitors out there. Adobe is gambling they have the mindshare to come late to the party and still win. And they might, but it is a gamble and possibly an unnecessary one.
If I were them I would make the Mac version easily portable to linux. Underlying technology is similar but the cost isn't as bad. It essentially gives them a Real Option (in the financial as well as strategic sense) they can exercise when they want on porting to linux. Cuts time to market to weeks/months should a linux version be necessary but there is no cost to support it unless linux really takes off.
. . . Wow. As if the tolerance of Windows BSODs wasn't bad enough, now this? Whatever happened to "you pick up the phone and it just works"? In 26 years of using POTS, the only thing I can recall even approaching an outage is very occasional "circuit full" messages on long distance calls on holidays, and I haven't even heard those for over a decade.
There are a couple of point's I'm going to make in response to this.
Vonage's VOIP technology is based on a system that is FAR more complicated and less tested than POTS. Furthermore it is an application of a general purpose technology to a specific use, whereas POTS is a purpose built technology (voice communication) which just happens to be cludged for other uses (modems/DSL). In fact my VOIP is riding on a DSL circuit sitting on top of POTS. Less reliabile is unavoidable.
For $20 a month I get features that would cost me nearly $100 using POTS. (and some features I cannot get at all) Furthermore there are no long distance charges unless I call internationally. Plus I can take my Vonage system anywhere I can find an internet connection which I CANNOT do with my regular land line. While I don't deny that the reliability of POTS is something to be admired, Vonage gives me WAY more bang for my buck.
As an engineer I'm not happy unless something "just works" but I also recognize how rare that really is. VOIP will probably get there someday, once it has had 80 years to develop. I'm not going to stop using a new technology just because all the bugs haven't been worked out.
Supporting (generally) the parent post, Vonage is pretty good. I've been using them for my main work line for about 2 months now. Quality of service is excellent and the voice sounds quite good (think high quality cell phone) most of the time. You get a ton of great features for not too much cash. I love getting my voice mail as an.WAV file in an email, and it is really easy to foward calls wherever you need them.
The only time I have a problem with a connection is if I'm downloading, or worse uploading (dsl) something big at the same time which is entirely expected. (only so much bandwidth after all) My only recurring problem is that the Motorola unit they gave me tends to drop my PPPoE connection about once a day. Not quite sure why and there aren't a lot of settings to tinker with. I don't have that problem very often with my Linksys WRT54G and I'm pretty sure it's not the DSL provider (SBC in this case) causing the problem.
Anyway if you are thinking of Vonage I can readily recommend them if you can tolerate the occasional (and easily fixed) downtime. If phone availability is mission critical to you or you aren't especially technologically inclined, you might look for a more traditional alternative. But overall it's a great service, especially for home or home office use.
Haven't been able to get into Ringworld
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Ringworld's Children
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I know there are a lot of Niven fans out there but I found the Ringworld novels to be rather uninteresting. Sure, the idea of the Ringworld is an interesting one but I found it to be about the only interesting thing in the books. One neat technology idea does not make for a good book. The character development and story line just didn't do it for me. (YMMV) Maybe it's meant to be pulp science fiction, I don't know.
I haven't read a lot of Niven's other stuff but I hope some of it is better (IMO) than Ringworld. So to you Niven fans out there, if I want to read more Niven what (if anything) is actually worth reading? Ringworld just didn't do it for me.
Re:The device isn't usually the issue for me
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Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 1
Interesting reponse. Thanks.
It's much better to simply have a single host-side database to synchronize against, and simply have each application use it for their data storage. Having three different calendar applications each with their own unique databases and ways to correlate their records with the records on the other PIMs and then trying to synchronize the three is often disasterous.
I agree syncing to, say Palm Desktop, and then having everything else sync to that is a much simpler approach. As a user, I'm not especially fussy about the mechanism (so long as it isn't operating system specific - no tying me to Windows ala Outlook) I just want the silly address books to be able to share data. When I say I should be able to sync to 5 different address books a phone and a PDA, I don't mind if I'm really syncing to one application and the others read from it. (exception: my phone should be able to communicate directly with my pda, though the pda can be the master device in that case) In fact that would be prefered since I only *have* to back up one address book then.
Anyway, it's ridiculous that I currently have to manually update 2-3 address books on my windows laptop alone, not to mention trying to keep them up to date on my linux server or mac. I'd much rather have a master address book and have everything else read from that. I had hoped Mozilla could do that for me (it's free, cross platform and open source), but no one seems interested in developing the address book or calendar infrastructure. I'd do it myself if I could. I'm surprised (almost) no one else seems as bothered by this as I am.
A slightly different perspective.
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Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 1
2. Built-in Wi-Fi. Don't care about Bluetooth.
I'm mostly in agreement with you on everything except this one. I'm the opposite in that I want built in Bluetooth and don't care so much about Wi-Fi. Bluetooth lets my phone and PDA work as a single device which is important to me but not really practical with Wi-Fi. (not to mention more power draining) I'm sure that's mostly due to you having different needs than me, but I think having the choice of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (or both or neither) is the best thing they could do.
3. Ability to display all types of document formats. PDF, HTML, CHM, and all the rest I forgot. Ability to view in portrait and landscape mode.No document conversion. Document conversion is a pain. Are you LISTENING Palm?
The Tungsten T3 can do this for at least Word and Excel files with Documents2Go. I can view them converted or native and in portrait or landscape. I agree that conversion is a pain and shouldn't generally be necessary.
The device isn't usually the issue for me
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Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I am the happy owner of a palm tungsten t3. The only things I would change about it is that I would like some sort of mini keyboard, ala the Sharp Zaurus (not sure how on the T3 form factor tho), better battery life and perhaps slightly better resolution. (though it isn't bad as is) I like the digital ink sketchpad, though I'd like it to have better resolution. Bluetooth is essential as far as I'm concerned and a voice recorder is handy. Otherwise the T3 is about exactly what I want. The Sharp Zaurus would be damn good too if it were so expensive and the software was better.
No, the problem I have with most PDAs is the software on the computer side of things. I use Mozilla/Thunderbird for my email but syncing to anything but Outlook/Notes is a painful exercise if it is possible at all. (Yes I've used the Palm sync in Mozilla and it is barely adequate at best, and no I'm not switching email apps as Outlook/Evolution/Eudora/Pine/whatever don't fit my needs) Even when you can sync to a third party app, forget syncing applications besides an address book and maybe calendar. Sunbird still doesn't support any mobile devices and isn't likely to anytime soon. None of the address book applications can talk to each other in any meaningful way. Would it really be so hard to sync to Palm Desktop AND Thunderbird at the same time? And forget trying to keep my palm and phone syncronized along with my address book, (Mobile Master does an ok job but not perfect) I've tried every application out there to do this (Oxygen, Mobile Master, etc) and none of them are more than band-aid fixes.
What I want is for these applications (particularly address books and calendars) to be able to speak to one another. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to sync to 5 different address books, palm desktop, nokia phone editor and my cell phone at the same time.
You haven't used Bluetooth have you? Or maybe you just had a bad experience. I don't know. What I do know is that Bluetooth is a feature I now regard as indespensible in my phone, pda and, soon, headphones. I won't even consider a phone, pda or laptop without it now.
My phone and PDA (nokia 6310i and Palm Tungsten T3) essentially act as one device thanks almost entirely to bluetooth. I can look up a number in my Palm, tap it and it automatically dials on my phone. But unlike a smartphone, I can leave the PDA behind if I don't need it. If I want to sync my phone or pda with my computer, I don't have to find a cable, I just do it. If I want to check email on my laptop or my pda, I connect automatically through the bluetooth modem in my phone and it's like carrying a (admittidly slow until I get an EDGE phone) wifi hotspot with me everywhere. Driving in my car? Bluetooth headset. I don't even have to pull the phone out of the bag and there are no wires needed.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, Bluetooth is seriously cool. It makes it very easy for devices to interact. Will something better come along one day? Sure. But in the mean time, bluetooth does the job and does it very well.
why does the whole hospital network need to be left attached to the public Internet? Have a few stand-alone surf-stations available in the building so they can go look up stuff they need to. Though really, if my doctor *has* to go check something on the internet before he can figure out what to do with me, I'll just stay home
I'm married to a doctor. Doctors look stuff up through the internet all the time and you should be glad they do. Resources like Pub-Med are indespensible and far more convenient to access through the internet. Would you prefer your doctor take a trip to the library every time he has a question about some rare medicine he's thinking of prescribing? Wouldn't you agree that getting this information from sources like the CDC through the internet is a much better use of his/her time? There's nothing wrong, weird or unusual about a doctor needing to use the internet to access reliable sources of data.
The human body is a complicated thing and even the best doctors need to consult references fairly often. Not to mention for things like checking the latest research, communicating with peers for research, and a host of other uses. Doctor's don't use some random blog they found through google as a source of information. They aren't stupid nor are they careless. The internet is a very useful tool to them, and they know it even if you don't.
...but the Average User (like, my mom) has a lot of trouble. She can never seem to remember where she saved something, or what she named it.
I have had the same problem with the family members I support who use windows. I agree that a decent search engine on the home machine would be nice. The only problem is that having stuff spread out all over the place makes backups a bloody nightmare and reliance on a search engine would compound the problem. Of course if backups don't matter for the user in question, or if you simply back up everything (which means you have more bandwidth and hard drive space than me) what I'm talking about doesn't matter.
The best solution I've been able to come up with is to create a directory called documents and then create shortcuts to it from *everywhere*. My Documents, Favorites, any program that likes to save files in its own directory, the desktop, etc... all have a link to this documents folder. Then I spend a bit of time training the family member to always click on the documents folder before saving anything. I also show them how to create new folders and rename files, though this gets ignored by some.
Sure, sometimes they screw it up, so I have to clean up after them a bit (especially if they install something) but it's usually not too hard since they try to follow instructions when possible. The best thing is that I only have to back up documents plus a handful of other folders (usually email related) which they don't touch to keep things together.
Cell phones are to a large degree a commodity product. I can get basically the exact same services from AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile and any other carrier. Plus the carriers give the phones away as a loss leader. In a market with what economists like to call perfect competition, we should expect to see prices drive down to marginal cost by competition. (note for the nitpickers, I'm well aware the cell phone market isn't actually a market with perfect competition) The handset manufacturers sometimes can create a differentiated product (like the Treo 600) which gives them a chance to stay ahead for a while. The service providers don't really have that opportunity for the most part.
Right now Nextel actually is the only service provider I can see that really has a sustainable advantage of any kind in wireless. They've basically hooked the contractor market witht their "push to talk" feature. Yeah, other companies are trying to follow suit but Nextel already has the lions share of these customers who aren't likely to switch and they can charge more as a result.
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Not disagreeing with you as branding is amazingly powerful, but there is more to it than that. Those big companies also have a lot of other advantages besides brand. They have among other things:
And a lot more. It's very difficult to attack a market leader directly. They simply have too many advantages (in addition to brand) to have a realistic chance of success.
I've always thought Transmeta's strategy was a bit questionable because they are attacking Intel/AMD on their strength. Sure, Transmeta's processors don't use much power but so what? The processor wasn't the biggest power drain in most devices that would use it. (the display screens usually chew up the most power) And Intel quickly released low(er) power versions of their existing processors which at least narrowed the gap. Plus a processor by itself is useless; it needs a board to plug it into and that creates an installed base problem. Dell doesn't want Transmeta processors because it increases production complexity and adds cost.
Transmeta's real product advantage (IMO) lay in their instruction morphing technology, not low power. It creates another abstraction layer making it easier for board manufacturers to customize products for companies like HP or IBM. This would allow firms that use several different platforms to potentially reduce costs by producing one processor and then tweaking the instruction set. Faster time to market and reduced cost. There are performance issues of course but I think these could have been managed if they didn't focus so heavily on the low power market.
I'm too lazy to dig through the reports but you can calculate a rough per-store sales number from the financial reports of any of the big retailers. Get a copy of their income statement and the number at the top will be Revenue. (might be called Sales or something else but it's the same number) Dig through a copy of their annual report to find the number of stores the firm has and divide revenue by the number of stores and then divide that by 360 (allowing for holidays) which should give you a rough per-day sales number
If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can get last year's report and find the number of stores and revenue figures for the previous year. This lets you average the current and previous year figures which will give a slightly better estimate. You also should look through the financial statements for non-retail revenues and subtract those from your starting revenue figures. For example if the company has a financing arm, you might want to back those numbers out before starting. Also you need to be careful with companies like WalMart or Dayton-Hudson (Target) or May Company (Famous Barr, Lord & Taylor) since they actually own several different types of stores. You may or may not be able to isolate the number for a given type of store. Please remember however that this number does not represent what any given store is doing, just what the average store within the firm is selling.
Tangentially related. I just had an interesting conversation with CDW. I ordered some toner from them for my laser printer. Set up an account and gave my credit card number through the website. Very typical online experience. We've all done it hundreds of times.
A day later I get a call from them asking for the security code on the back of my credit card as well as the phone number for my credit card. Odd, I thought. I've been ordering online for years with this credit card and never been asked after the fact for that info. Additionally the card was a Discover card and there is only one number for that which I'm quite sure CDW knows.
While I doubt there was anything malicious going on I had them cancel the transaction. They explained that it was for extra security but the could have easily asked for that information in the online transaction. I have no way of knowing if this rep was acting on her own so I don't see any added security for me. My only criticism of CDW is that I don't think this was a very professional way to handle this transaction.
I don't really think there was anything malicious going on but its a good idea to be very careful when something is out of the ordinary, even a little bit.
Even if you're an employee, you can still be layed off or fired on little more than a whim. Being a contractor simply makes the lack of promise explicit.
More obvious maybe but definitely not more explicit. The law is actually quite clear on this. In fact, if you have a contract you may actually be more protected than a "real" employee depending on the terms of your contract. In most places employment is considered "at-will". The company can dismiss you for whatever reason the management wishes. (with a few exceptions related to race, age, gender and some other criteria) Likewise, you are free to leave the company whenever you like, for whatever reason you like. There is no promise of continued employment or continued work by either side unless you explicitly work out a contract that says otherwise.
This is not generally well understood but absent a contract there never has been any sort of "promise" between you and any employer you ever had. Any feelings of loyalty you or your employer might have had are kind but ultimately empty gestures. You agreed to perform certain services in exchange for renumeration, most likely of a financial nature. That's pretty much as far as it goes. If you felt loyalty to a company you are probably a good and decent person, but that is a very naive view. You should expect no loyalty from a company, and believe me, the company probably doesn't expect it from you no matter what they might say.
The problem with incorporating is you can't get money out as easily. The corporation then takes payment for your work, and has to pay you (the employee) accounting for taxes, etc. At the end of the year, you have to declare that as individual income (and get taxed accordingly.) Plus pay corporate taxes and paperwork overhead.
That's where the cake and eat it too thing is.
In the US, you only pay corporate taxes if you have a C-corp. That's one of the major disadvantages of owning a C-Corp; you get taxed twice, once at the corporate level and once at the personal level. If you have an S-Corp, LLC, LLP, Partnership, or Sole Proprietorship all the tax occurs at the personal level. The corporation as an entity pays no tax directly. This sounds bad but it's actually good. It means you only get taxed once. You generally only form a C-Corp if you have to and most small businesses do not have to.
Incorporating is easy to do (generally) but carries some significant overhead in the form of paperwork, accounting and legal costs. Getting money out is not difficult, simply pay yourself a salary. Sure, you can get clever about it and do fancy stuff with assets and dividends but it doesn't have to be that hard. If you need to do the fancy stuff, get a GOOD (and probably pricy) accountant so you can defend yourself in the event of an audit.
Research incorporating thouroughly. It's expensive to start, expensive again to stop, and in order to be done properly has a fair amount of bookeeping overhead, and strict discipline with seperating personal and corporate finances.
Actually incorporating in the USA is very inexpensive. Even if you hire a lawyer to look over the paperwork (a very good idea BTW) it will only cost a few hundred dollars. Perhaps you were referring to the cost in the overhead of accounting, legal fees, time, paperwork etc. That I will agree can add up, though it can be kept under control. The time and paperwork commitment is the biggest hassle IMO. Stopping a business is even easier. In some cases you can just let your registration lapse. In others you have to file some paperwork but generally it isn't too hard to cause a corporation to cease.
C-Corps, S-Corps, LLCs and LLPs provide some protection from liability. Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships provide NO protection. Unless you are quite certain there is no significant liability concerns (rare), its a good idea to use one of the forms of incorporation with protection. And be careful, for example if you start working with a buddy for a few months and then decide to incoporate, guess what? For liability purposes you have effectively formed a Partnership from the time you started business activities and are liabile under those rules until you actually incorporate.
When does it make sense to use a pivot table instead of a simple sql query
:-) Typically I have data provided to me in spreadsheet form and its often easier just to work with it there. Sure, I could import it into a database but most of the time that isn't necessary.
Well for one, when you are using Excel instead of a database!
If you do have it in a database, that's great but once you've selected the data you want with a query what are you going to do with it? The query is just the first step. You might have millions of records you need to summarize. Do you want to present the data by averages or maybe the standard deviations? Do you want a graph? Do you want to have subtotals? Pivot Tables let you do all this (and much more) quickly off of queries from a database (or lists in excel) and get good looking output without having to design a report ahead of time. Think of Pivot Tables as an automatic report generator. (they're not exactly but it's not a bad way to think of them)
Can anyone recommend a good book on Pivot Tables?
I'd recommend Excel Data Analysis (ISBN 0-7645-3754-7) by Jinjer Simon to get started. It's a pretty good book and breaks up topics into questions you might be likely to ask and has a good solid 30 pages on Pivot Tables and Charts.
That's one-dimensional data. "Country" is a single-column primary key of that data. Each country exists in only one continent. Each country has only one population.
I'm aware of that. Please note that I was responding to a question about what pivot tables were so I answered with the simplest possible example. There are obviously MANY more sophisticated things that can be done.
Using a pivot table I could end up with a matrix that looks like:Now I have the data sorted by continent. If I decide I'm not interested in population but instead in GDP, it is a simple drag and drop operation to get a table like:Basically pivot tables let you explore lists of data very quickly and efficiently. If you deal with lists of data regularly like I do, they are one of the most indespensible features in a spreadsheet. Excel has the best ones I've used but most modern spreadsheets have some version of them.
I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.
My wife is a pathologist and as part of her training she had to take a death investigators course. According to her, death investigators do nothing but gather evidence. No more, no less. Their job is not to solve the crime but to make sure all the evidence is recorded, catalogued, transported to the appropriate labs as needed, etc. They are not permitted (in general) to try to make conclusions from the data; that's the job of the detective assigned to the case. You are right that firearms are generally not carried, they definitely don't order the cops around and they certainly don't drive around in brand new Hummers!
Apparently applications for forensic examiners & assistant positions are up something like 100X in the last few years. Like JAG, Law & Order, ER and a bunch of other shows, CSI glamorizes a job that really isn't all that glamorous. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing, we do need people in those jobs but it isn't exactly giving people realistic expectations.
I'm not a doctor but I'm married to a pathologist and have worked with a number of infectious disease specialists directly. Given that Patrick is relatively close to Minnesota, if he can't get the problem licked in SD, he should get over to the Mayo Clinic. They are one of the locations where hospitals from around the world (even the big ones like Barnes-Jewish in Saint Louis and the Cleveland Clinic) send unusual microbiology samples for diagnosis. If Mayo cannot help him, probably no one can. They've got very good people and as good a clinical pathology lab as anywhere in the world.
Nurses, at least in California, are hourly workers and most hospitals these days frown on even back-to-back 12 hour shifts for fear of litigation.
The reason they try to keep the nurses happy is because there aren't enough of them. It has (almost) nothing to do with lawsuits. I've done the finances for a 400 bed hospital (which is a midsized hospital) regarding bonus pay for nurses. Last year this hospital paid over $1.7 million in bonus pay to get adequate staffing. Nurse staffing is highly competitive and the nurses can, will and do leave if hospital administration abuses them too much.
Most hospitals have also cut down on the brutla hours that residents are required to put in for the same reason. In the resident's case, they do get a place to crash when (assuming) things slow down for a while (and they usually do, even in ERs that are major trauma centers in major cities)
I'm married to a resident. Hospitals are supposed to cut down on the hours but I can assure you that many do not. And "cutting down" means limiting them to 80 hours/week which is still insane. I don't know why you seem to think that giving residents a bed when they are on call is some kind of benefit. My wife has pulled many 36 hour shifts where she got no where near a bed. Even when she did, it's not like a resident is going to get any real rest. Q4 rotations are typical meaning you are on call every 4th night and I've seen people on Q2 rotations which basically means you don't get any sleep every other night. I know at least one guy who did Q2 for almost 2 years! Talk about your death march.
Residents get abused because they have no alternatives. If they want to be a doctor they have to do a residency. At least with programming there are alternatives, even if they aren't necessarily as fun or creative as game programming. For a supposedly caring profession, medicine is just brutal to their employees.
Frankly I'm shocked that some ambulance chaser lawyers haven't gotten the idea that tired residents who make lots of mistakes would make a very lucrative opportunity. I think the ambulance chasers are scum but at least they would be doing something vaguely useful in forcing hospitals to be humane to employees...
Nokia seems to be unable to implement bluetooth correctly
I use a Nokia 6310i and bluetooth does work great. However I had to get a firmware update on my phone. If you have a 6310i, you need firmware revision 5.50. Other Nokia phones may have similar issues which could be the problem you are facing. If it is under warranty, you can get the upgrade done for free. Don't ask Nokia tech support, they're generally clueless with regard to Bluetooth and will tell you it's your adapter's fault. You might have to mail it in to get flashed depending on your location. I sent mine to Florida.
The bigger problem IMO with Nokia is their software on my PC which, to be blunt, sucks. It's nowhere near seamless to connect, very poorly designed, and is under some bizarre illusion that everyone uses Outlook in recent versions. Furthermore they have different versions for each phone which is completely not necessary.
Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.
Why imagine? This is exactly what I do every day. I have a Nokia 6310i, an Palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth headset. Furthermore my Thinkpad T30 also has bluetooth built in. Bluetooth is a mandatory feature for me now. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you did without. It makes it vastly easier for electronic devices to communicate.
My phone is essentially a portable wireless base station in addition to being a phone. I can check email from either my PDA or laptop and connect through the phone without ever taking it out of my pocket or bag. If I need to sync my pda, no cables are necessary. I can touch dial numbers on my phone directly from my PDA address book. I just tap the number and it dials. I've surfed the web (albiet slowly) from my laptop while riding in a car on the highway and my phone was in the truck. Effectively my PDA and cell phone are a single device but I only have to carry the bits I'm actually going to use.
I see people compare bluetooth to 802.11X all the time but those folks miss the point. It's not about connecting to the internet. It's a replacement for almost any data-carrying wire. Bluetooth replaces my PDA sync cable, phone sync cable, mouse and keyboard USB cables, phone ear bud cable, and if needed my ethernet cable. Furthermore it could replace printer cables, IR ports, serial cables and several others. Most importantly I can take it anywhere.
WiFi is almost non-portable only replaces the ethernet cable because that is all it is designed to do. (and it does a good job of it, I'm not bashing WiFi) Bluetooth isn't optimized for what WiFi does so it's slower but also consumes less power and has other uses WiFi does not. If you are comparing WiFi to Bluetooth, you don't understand Bluetooth. Not everyone needs one or the other, but the comparison between them is silly. It's very much like comparing Firewire cables to Ethernet cables and arguing that one is better than the other. The argument just doesn't make sense.
...they are not currently looking to port any of their flagship products such as Photoshop to Linux yet, as they currently don't see sufficient numbers in the platform to make a good business case for it.
The funny thing is that a tool like photoshop could actually get people to use linux. Abobe would likely lose money for a few years on it until linux captures more market share but they can accelerate the process. The tail wagging the dog if you will.
I understand the finances and strategy of it all, but I've always been a little surprised that Adobe, Intuit, and similar companies to be almost completely uninterested in reducing the threat Microsoft poses. Sure, they've been able to outperform the big gorilla for quite some time, but it only takes one screwup to get squished. I guess Adobe doesn't feel enough pressure from Microsoft or other competitors.
They don't do more because there is a a free rider problem if they promoting linux. If they are successful, other companies get the benefits without the cost while they may or may not recoup the cost of pushing the platform. I'm guessing they see IBM and Novell as absorbing the cost of putting linux on desktops and are just waiting. But if I were them I'd probably see having my products available on linux as like having fire insurance. You might not need it but if you do, you REALLY need it. Photoshop is a great product but there are competitors out there. Adobe is gambling they have the mindshare to come late to the party and still win. And they might, but it is a gamble and possibly an unnecessary one.
If I were them I would make the Mac version easily portable to linux. Underlying technology is similar but the cost isn't as bad. It essentially gives them a Real Option (in the financial as well as strategic sense) they can exercise when they want on porting to linux. Cuts time to market to weeks/months should a linux version be necessary but there is no cost to support it unless linux really takes off.
There are a couple of point's I'm going to make in response to this.
Does that clarify my statement sufficiently?
Supporting (generally) the parent post, Vonage is pretty good. I've been using them for my main work line for about 2 months now. Quality of service is excellent and the voice sounds quite good (think high quality cell phone) most of the time. You get a ton of great features for not too much cash. I love getting my voice mail as an .WAV file in an email, and it is really easy to foward calls wherever you need them.
The only time I have a problem with a connection is if I'm downloading, or worse uploading (dsl) something big at the same time which is entirely expected. (only so much bandwidth after all) My only recurring problem is that the Motorola unit they gave me tends to drop my PPPoE connection about once a day. Not quite sure why and there aren't a lot of settings to tinker with. I don't have that problem very often with my Linksys WRT54G and I'm pretty sure it's not the DSL provider (SBC in this case) causing the problem.
Anyway if you are thinking of Vonage I can readily recommend them if you can tolerate the occasional (and easily fixed) downtime. If phone availability is mission critical to you or you aren't especially technologically inclined, you might look for a more traditional alternative. But overall it's a great service, especially for home or home office use.
I know there are a lot of Niven fans out there but I found the Ringworld novels to be rather uninteresting. Sure, the idea of the Ringworld is an interesting one but I found it to be about the only interesting thing in the books. One neat technology idea does not make for a good book. The character development and story line just didn't do it for me. (YMMV) Maybe it's meant to be pulp science fiction, I don't know.
I haven't read a lot of Niven's other stuff but I hope some of it is better (IMO) than Ringworld. So to you Niven fans out there, if I want to read more Niven what (if anything) is actually worth reading? Ringworld just didn't do it for me.
Interesting reponse. Thanks.
It's much better to simply have a single host-side database to synchronize against, and simply have each application use it for their data storage. Having three different calendar applications each with their own unique databases and ways to correlate their records with the records on the other PIMs and then trying to synchronize the three is often disasterous.
I agree syncing to, say Palm Desktop, and then having everything else sync to that is a much simpler approach. As a user, I'm not especially fussy about the mechanism (so long as it isn't operating system specific - no tying me to Windows ala Outlook) I just want the silly address books to be able to share data. When I say I should be able to sync to 5 different address books a phone and a PDA, I don't mind if I'm really syncing to one application and the others read from it. (exception: my phone should be able to communicate directly with my pda, though the pda can be the master device in that case) In fact that would be prefered since I only *have* to back up one address book then.
Anyway, it's ridiculous that I currently have to manually update 2-3 address books on my windows laptop alone, not to mention trying to keep them up to date on my linux server or mac. I'd much rather have a master address book and have everything else read from that. I had hoped Mozilla could do that for me (it's free, cross platform and open source), but no one seems interested in developing the address book or calendar infrastructure. I'd do it myself if I could. I'm surprised (almost) no one else seems as bothered by this as I am.
2. Built-in Wi-Fi. Don't care about Bluetooth.
I'm mostly in agreement with you on everything except this one. I'm the opposite in that I want built in Bluetooth and don't care so much about Wi-Fi. Bluetooth lets my phone and PDA work as a single device which is important to me but not really practical with Wi-Fi. (not to mention more power draining) I'm sure that's mostly due to you having different needs than me, but I think having the choice of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (or both or neither) is the best thing they could do.
3. Ability to display all types of document formats. PDF, HTML, CHM, and all the rest I forgot. Ability to view in portrait and landscape mode.No document conversion. Document conversion is a pain. Are you LISTENING Palm?
The Tungsten T3 can do this for at least Word and Excel files with Documents2Go. I can view them converted or native and in portrait or landscape. I agree that conversion is a pain and shouldn't generally be necessary.
I am the happy owner of a palm tungsten t3. The only things I would change about it is that I would like some sort of mini keyboard, ala the Sharp Zaurus (not sure how on the T3 form factor tho), better battery life and perhaps slightly better resolution. (though it isn't bad as is) I like the digital ink sketchpad, though I'd like it to have better resolution. Bluetooth is essential as far as I'm concerned and a voice recorder is handy. Otherwise the T3 is about exactly what I want. The Sharp Zaurus would be damn good too if it were so expensive and the software was better.
No, the problem I have with most PDAs is the software on the computer side of things. I use Mozilla/Thunderbird for my email but syncing to anything but Outlook/Notes is a painful exercise if it is possible at all. (Yes I've used the Palm sync in Mozilla and it is barely adequate at best, and no I'm not switching email apps as Outlook/Evolution/Eudora/Pine/whatever don't fit my needs) Even when you can sync to a third party app, forget syncing applications besides an address book and maybe calendar. Sunbird still doesn't support any mobile devices and isn't likely to anytime soon. None of the address book applications can talk to each other in any meaningful way. Would it really be so hard to sync to Palm Desktop AND Thunderbird at the same time? And forget trying to keep my palm and phone syncronized along with my address book, (Mobile Master does an ok job but not perfect) I've tried every application out there to do this (Oxygen, Mobile Master, etc) and none of them are more than band-aid fixes.
What I want is for these applications (particularly address books and calendars) to be able to speak to one another. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to sync to 5 different address books, palm desktop, nokia phone editor and my cell phone at the same time.
Perhaps if we're lucky, Bluetooth will go away.
You haven't used Bluetooth have you? Or maybe you just had a bad experience. I don't know. What I do know is that Bluetooth is a feature I now regard as indespensible in my phone, pda and, soon, headphones. I won't even consider a phone, pda or laptop without it now.
My phone and PDA (nokia 6310i and Palm Tungsten T3) essentially act as one device thanks almost entirely to bluetooth. I can look up a number in my Palm, tap it and it automatically dials on my phone. But unlike a smartphone, I can leave the PDA behind if I don't need it. If I want to sync my phone or pda with my computer, I don't have to find a cable, I just do it. If I want to check email on my laptop or my pda, I connect automatically through the bluetooth modem in my phone and it's like carrying a (admittidly slow until I get an EDGE phone) wifi hotspot with me everywhere. Driving in my car? Bluetooth headset. I don't even have to pull the phone out of the bag and there are no wires needed.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, Bluetooth is seriously cool. It makes it very easy for devices to interact. Will something better come along one day? Sure. But in the mean time, bluetooth does the job and does it very well.
why does the whole hospital network need to be left attached to the public Internet? Have a few stand-alone surf-stations available in the building so they can go look up stuff they need to. Though really, if my doctor *has* to go check something on the internet before he can figure out what to do with me, I'll just stay home
I'm married to a doctor. Doctors look stuff up through the internet all the time and you should be glad they do. Resources like Pub-Med are indespensible and far more convenient to access through the internet. Would you prefer your doctor take a trip to the library every time he has a question about some rare medicine he's thinking of prescribing? Wouldn't you agree that getting this information from sources like the CDC through the internet is a much better use of his/her time? There's nothing wrong, weird or unusual about a doctor needing to use the internet to access reliable sources of data.
The human body is a complicated thing and even the best doctors need to consult references fairly often. Not to mention for things like checking the latest research, communicating with peers for research, and a host of other uses. Doctor's don't use some random blog they found through google as a source of information. They aren't stupid nor are they careless. The internet is a very useful tool to them, and they know it even if you don't.
...but the Average User (like, my mom) has a lot of trouble. She can never seem to remember where she saved something, or what she named it.
I have had the same problem with the family members I support who use windows. I agree that a decent search engine on the home machine would be nice. The only problem is that having stuff spread out all over the place makes backups a bloody nightmare and reliance on a search engine would compound the problem. Of course if backups don't matter for the user in question, or if you simply back up everything (which means you have more bandwidth and hard drive space than me) what I'm talking about doesn't matter.
The best solution I've been able to come up with is to create a directory called documents and then create shortcuts to it from *everywhere*. My Documents, Favorites, any program that likes to save files in its own directory, the desktop, etc... all have a link to this documents folder. Then I spend a bit of time training the family member to always click on the documents folder before saving anything. I also show them how to create new folders and rename files, though this gets ignored by some.
Sure, sometimes they screw it up, so I have to clean up after them a bit (especially if they install something) but it's usually not too hard since they try to follow instructions when possible. The best thing is that I only have to back up documents plus a handful of other folders (usually email related) which they don't touch to keep things together.
Cell phones are to a large degree a commodity product. I can get basically the exact same services from AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile and any other carrier. Plus the carriers give the phones away as a loss leader. In a market with what economists like to call perfect competition, we should expect to see prices drive down to marginal cost by competition. (note for the nitpickers, I'm well aware the cell phone market isn't actually a market with perfect competition) The handset manufacturers sometimes can create a differentiated product (like the Treo 600) which gives them a chance to stay ahead for a while. The service providers don't really have that opportunity for the most part.
Right now Nextel actually is the only service provider I can see that really has a sustainable advantage of any kind in wireless. They've basically hooked the contractor market witht their "push to talk" feature. Yeah, other companies are trying to follow suit but Nextel already has the lions share of these customers who aren't likely to switch and they can charge more as a result.