Mozilla is my address book, email and calendar. While it is true that bluetooth doesn't directly matter, since my addressbook and calendar cannot easily synch with any given PDA, bluetooth (or any other connection for that matter) doesn't really help much.
Well I happen to have Bluetooth on my laptop. Would be nice to use and I suspect would be easier on batteries than 802.11b for palm type devices. Plus it would be nifty to have my cell, palm and laptop all able to communicate without any wires or other silliness. (too bad the software on my laptop, mozilla in this case, isn't up to the job yet)
But you are right in that it is definitely less common. Most folks would have to get a Bluetooth USB key or something similar to make it work. Not a big problem but an added expense and possibly mildly redundant. After all, while the two wireless standards are designed for different purposes, one has to admit there is a lot of potential overlap.
I've suspected for some time that Bluetooth may not catch on, not because it isn't good, but because it overlaps too much with 802.11b in capabilities. I fear Firewire may one day suffer the same fate. True, it's better than USB in many ways but USB seems to have better mind share. Network externalities like that seem to push such technology towards a single platform, even if it isn't the best one for a given job.
Ever wonder why MS is so fascinated by the video game market? Sure it has the potential to be profitable one day, but that's not the entire story about why it matters to Microsoft. I doubt Microsoft would want to stake their future on such a fickle industry.
Keep in mind for a moment that televisions are in a central room in the house, they are getting much better resolution and features (HDTV), and they are near one of the two big data pipes that comes into the house (Cable). This makes for a pretty compelling location for a computer.
MS is interested in this market in part because it is possible that if set top boxes take over what PC's do today to any significant degree, that could be a huge threat to Microsoft's future. Imagine a PS2 with a cable converter that can also do word processing, surf the web, etc. That's potentiall pretty compelling and it doesn't require Microsoft at all to happen. Microsoft created the XBox at least in part as a hedge against this future. It's not so tough to get into the market now but if it took off, Microsoft could find themselves high and dry without a console they control.
A PS2 with a cable converter frankly is an unholy alliance as far as Microsoft is concerned.
I am not too keen on a lot of movable(breakable) parts to insure my access to pictures in my digital cameras.
You mean like shutters, auto-focusing lenses, & film winding?
Kidding of course.
Somehow I don't think you are throwing your digital camera around. While a disk drive isn't as reliable as solid state, unless you really abuse it, it shouldn't be a huge issue.
Ok, this makes a certain odd amount of sense as far as why apple might want it. Gives them some freedom to push digital media in whatever direction suits them. (good, bad, or indifferent) It also diversifies the business a bit which given Apple's niche strategy cannot be entirely a bad idea. If they can't beat Dell/Microsoft head on, it might be best to try something else.
A big concern from a business standpoint to me would be focus. Apple has done pretty damn well by focusing on producing really great machines (and software) that appeal to a couple specific segments of the market. Their expertise really is in the "art" of computer design, both hardware and software and experience. This doesn't necessarily translate to running a music label which is a completely different business with completely different requirements.
Granted Jobs has some exposure to this world (via Pixar) but that doesn't make it a good fit for Apple. I expect the culture clash will be huge. Apple is a pretty unique company. I don't see an obvious fit here.
My guess is that this is just a side effect of whatever the standard contract is. When licensing software you don't want to have to negotiate a different licensing agreement with each customer unless you have to. Of course one size doesn't always fit all so this sometimes has some unintended consequences. MS can afford to ignore some of these because there aren't exactly a lot of realistic alternatives. Behavior is nearly always explained by incentives.
While I fully agree that this is not the most ethical behavior, But I also think this might fall under the category of "never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity". I think this is just something that was overlooked or ignored because it was problematic. Plus who else are you going to go to? (*cough* monopoly *cough*)
So what's the answer for low-volume, very intermittent printer user?
The cost of a laser is hard to amortize over a hundred or so pages a year, inkjets hardly last a single cartridge of ink before clogging up, and dot-matrix printers are not only rare as hen's teeth but they're still noisy, slow and produce ugly print.
The way I see it, there are just a few real options.
Dot matrix is not an option. Only use for those is for triplicate forms. Beyond that I cannot conceieve of why anyone would want one. The only reason they were ever popular is that they were cheap and the quality was good enough. (it was never actually good, just adequate)
My solution was to purchase a higher end (for the time) network quality laser printer. Cost a bundle but it also prints 15,000 pages per toner cartidge. I've owned it over 8 years and replaced the toner once. With the amount I print (in the low thousands annually) it works out to a little less than 8 cents per page and drops as my print volume increases.
The other decent option I see is to invest in a multi-function unit. Then you can scan, print, fax, and copy which makes the usefulness of the device more than simply just a low volume printer. I have one of these as well which I only print from occasionally (my laser is cheaper) but use for color and all the other features. If you get one though, get the extended service agreement. More stuff to break...
Beyond that your options are pretty much either bite the bullet on a low end printer (inkjet or laser, pick your poison or get a high quality old used laser. Kind of depends on your particular needs.
I've seen a lot of bashing of Lexmark printers. Presumably much of it is accurate but there are good Lexmark printers out there. I've been using a Lexmark 4039-10R laser printer for about 8 years now. It's been terrific. Toner cartidge lasts 15,000 pages, prints 10PPM, does postscipt and the printer has been rock solid. It's built tough and though I could make a few critiques of the design none are serious problems. Just wish I could find a network interface for it...
I've used some of the Optra lasers as well with similar success at work and have nothing but good things to say about them.
I can't speak about Lexmark's newer stuff. I've never used their inkjets or low end lasers. They may be great or junk, I don't know. But some of what Lexmark makes (or did anyway) is genuinely good.
I know there has been a lot of kvetching on/. about the integration of the browser, mail, etc thinking it is "bloated" and "slow". As long as they communicate well (and I do mean well), I don't really care if they are developed in a more modular fashion. That is not bad and is potentially very good.
What I'm most concerned about in the roadmap is the seeming focus on just the browser and the mail app. (Yes I realize the purpose of mozilla.org is not strictly to produce those apps but realistically, those apps are the main reason anyone cares about Mozilla) I use those heavily and anything that improves them is just ducky as far as I'm concerned. But just as important, and much more ignored IMO, are the address book and calendar. These are applications that almost everyone uses in some form. Obviously people choose other options (Outlook, etc) frequently but that's in part because the ones built into Mozilla are fairly bad. I use them because they are the only transparently cross platform option which is important to me. I use them all and if they were better I think many others might too.
Anyway , I see the browser, mail, address book and calendar as the four major applications that most users really need. The Mozilla browser (and I include Phoenix and Camino here) is great and is arguably the best on the market. But the other three apps have largely been ignored for some time. They have a basic level of capability but haven't been refined significantly in some time. I still have trouble sharing information with co-workers on different systems. I still cannot easily share data with the PDA of my choice. Mozilla could really make a lot of this stuff really transparent for users. I'd love to be able to not worry about OS for these four apps. Mozilla is better than halfway there but I'm not quite sure what this change in direction means.
It's interesting/annoying that since version 1.2, Mozilla only supports Mac OSX, especially given that a large portion of the Apple community is unwilling to move to the new system.
This shouldn't really be so surprising. With OSX replacing MacOS, there really are just two major operating system platforms out there, Windows and unix, of which OSX is one of the many varieties of the latter. It's unix underpinnings make OSX much easier for developers to port their projects to.
MacOS for all its good features is a very unique and hence more difficult to support operating system, at least from the standpoint of cross platform compatibility. Impossible? Obviously not. But since MacOS is no longer under active development, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it isn't really worthwhile for the "official" project to continue to develop for it. There are only a finite amount of development resources out there so it makes sense to develop for the platforms with the best prospects moving forward, namely Windows and unix.
I'm half sure that someone will probably take up the banner and try to port the more recent versions to MacOS. And that's one of the great things about open source. But there is a cost to remaining with older code bases. You take the risk of being left behind. That is among the reasons I no longer run OS/2, Windows 3.1, MacOS and a few other operating systems I've used heavily over the years. Eventually the costs of not switching become tooh great. Apparently for many Mac owners they aren't at that point yet. But they will be sooner or later. It's inevitable. The maintainers of the mozilla project simply recognize this fact and chose to deal with it now rather than later.
The vast majority of the Fortune 500 companies were not venture capital financed. Most of them also did not go public at the earliest opportuntity. Quite frankly for a small company, going public is usually more of a distraction than a benefit. The important thing to think about is why would they need the cash from an IPO?
I suspect Google does not need the money from equity financing. If they can fund all their business with cash from their ongoing operations and don't need equity financing for future growth opportunities, why would they want to go public? (other than greed) An IPO would be pretty much a cash grab at this point, not a useful strategy for growing the business.
Google looks like it is a well run company but I don't really think it's clear that its future growth prospects are such that I'd be willing to purchase its stock. No, I think Google would be much better served by keeping their current path and focusing on developing their business. The company clearly has a great product, they have improved it steadily, and have done well by being focused on that. The growth expectations of equity investors could only hurt that focus at this point.
The biggest problem with the Zaurus (and most PDAs in my opinion) is not the device. Certainly there are issues with most any device and I can think of a few quibbles I have with the Zaurus. But the biggest issue IMO is still that the synch and integration software with PCs is still very poor overall.
I've written about this before (and probably will again) but these devices still only synch with a relatively small body of address books and calendars, much less a lot of the other stuff out there. Sure you can often get a particular PDA to work with a platform (say Windows or linux) but they do not work seamlessly with any and all software on those platforms. Lack of standards I guess. I'm dying to have a PDA that can synch with something besides Outlook without purchasing additional software and do it on any platform regardless of the platform.
That's Washington University, moron
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Collecting Stardust
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
The official name of the school is Washington University in Saint Louis. At least get the name of the school right. That's like calling Harvard University the "University of Harvard". You sound like a moron to anyone who went there.
For future reference it is NOT any of the following: University of Washington Washinton State University Western Washington Universty Central Washington University George Washington University Washington and Lee University
Don't sue corporations in Delaware; Delaware sells itself as corporation-friendly.
This is an understatement. It seems like nearly every other corporation I look at is incorporated in Delaware. While IANAL, there has to be some pretty serious advantages for so many corporations to incorporate there. Even existing ones transfer their incorporation there.
Why is the negotiating position of these bands so weak that they end up with such a shitty deal?
Negotiating strength is dictated in large part by your BATNA. (Best Alternative To the Negotiated Agreement - no I didn't make that up, it's a standard term in negotiation) If you have other options besides the one offered to you, you have a strong BATNA and have little reason to compromise.
In this case the record labels have literally thousands of bands who would dearly love to have a record deal, but there are only a few record labels. (and they essentially collude) No one else has the same marketing reach so the labels. If one band realizes their deal is shitty, the label doesn't care because there are a thousand other bands out there. The labels have a strong BATNA.
This is the same reason why Wal*Mart can get better prices on merchandise than your local mom-n-pop store. Wal*Mart has thousands of vendors (none of whom are more than 2% of sales) who would love to sell through Wal*Mart. But since Wal*Mart has other vendors they have a strong BATNA. Chosing an alternative vendor doesn't really hurt them.
Then develop a conduit for whatever application with which you are trying to sync. Palm is very friendly to developers. My m125 syncs just dandy with iCal and Address Book thanks to iSync Palm Conduit.
Not everyone who reads slashdot is a developer or even wants to be. I'm an engineer but software development is not my cup of tea. (If you want to talk CAD or simulation, that's different...) I'd have to develop such an application for at least 3 different operating systems. It's easy to just say "Oh why don't you develop it yourself" but realistically that's not an option. Obviously you didn't develop the app to let you synch, so what makes you think I could/would?
Besides even if I wanted to do it, I don't have the time. (Wife, work, life, etc...)
All Plam devices sync with GNOME address book and calendar. Just get yourself mail client which can use these.
That would be great except that I use Windows about 3/4 of the time (work & such), OS X and linux about split the rest of the time with occasional IRIX use. GNOME just isn't really a viable option on all of these. All these devices use the Outlook address book and calendard too but I'm not really intersted in maintaining multiple address books. More trouble than it is worth.
It's not the PDA that sucks
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Palm PDA Roundup
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All these PDAs are cool but they all suck in one very important way. None of them work with any email/address/calendar clients besides Outlook, Notes or Eudora. And even there support is iffy. I'm still waiting for ANYTHING to fully sync with Mozilla. (Palm does a very half baked job and nothing else bothers)
I'd love to buy one of these but I need something that works with a genuinely cross platform email/address/calendar client. Evolution is great, Outlook is easy but none of these are on every platform I use. Without that, it's of no use to me.
It also just feels nicer and more polished. It's a much more sophisticated and better done email program than Mozilla.
Sadly, it isn't as cross platform.:-(
Don't get me wrong. I do not think Mozilla is an amazing mail client. It's adequate at best. But it is the only satisfactory mail client that is available on pretty much any platform I want, integrates with an address book and has a calendar available. I need something that will work on Windows, linux, OS X, IRIX, etc. Mozilla Mail pretty much wins by default. I'm not thrilled about it but that's life.
Realistically I'm not all that interested in what client is the best overall. I'm interested in the client that is the best which does not restrict my choice of operating system. Hence whenever possible I use OpenOffice, GIMP, Mozilla, Apache, etc. Outlook and Evolution don't interest me because they restrict me in my choice of operating systems and the tools that go with them.
Are these OSS apps the best apps out there? Mozilla & Apache maybe but overall probably not. But they are plenty good enough for my needs and don't restrict me to a given operating system. I can do my work the way I want to and not have to worry about learning a new system every flippin' time I switch computers. I'm a unix guy at heart but I have to use Windows much of the time.
Heck I haven't bought a new PDA in 5 years because they can't seem to find a way to get OS agnostic software for linking to them. I can't believe no one has established a standard way to connect PDAs (calendars, address books etc) to PCs. Is it really so hard? Palm won't get off their ass, and the Zaurus is promising but doesn't work with my choice of email/address/calendar client so what good is it?
We had one of if not the first 320 systems. It worked ok, though it was a bit flakey. The big problem with it was their graphics system which was integrated on to the motherboard. (called Cobalt if memory serves) Basically they rewrote the standard chipset to eek out a little extra performance. Would have been a lot of extra performance but SGI's design cycle was much too slow and within 6 months of its release you could get a Wildcat graphics card that was faster.
The fact that the graphics weren't upgradable wasn't really a serious problem. Most people in a corporate environment don't do that anyway. The problem was the custom chipset meant you needed a special version of Windows to use the machine. This quickly became more hassle than the machine was worth.
Of course SGI isn't a company that is built for the fast release cycles of the PC industry and their PCs were quickly obsoleted and overpriced. I still can't figure out what they were thinking. Trying to be all things to all people maybe. Smart folks but with the number of blunders they've made I'm somewhat astonished they aren't in bankruptcy court.
I don't use Outlook. I use Mozilla for addresses, email, etc because it is OSS and more importantly cross platform. Last I checked no PDA except palm syncs to Mozilla, and even palm only does a half baked job of it. I'd buy a Zaurus in a heartbeat if it could sync directly to Mozilla, including the calendar project.
Minor rant. I'm really tired of Outlook being the only email/calendar client anything supports. Yes, I know it's popular but not with everyone...
That said I'd like to see bluetooth built in but that's not a deal breaker for me. My laptop has bluetooth built in so it would be uber convenient.
I installed TurboTax recently and this revelation explains a lot. I could install the program but it wouldn't run without admin priviliges. (this should have been a bit tip off) I noticed that it installed a bunch of spyware and the account I installed from became unstable. GRUB still works fine but my linux partition was no longer accessible.
I used think Intuit was ok but no more. I will not use TurboTax again. I'm stuck with Quicken for now but I will migrate off at the earliest opportunity. (unfortunately there isn't another application available to go to right now, even GNUcash) Upgrades will not be happening. If Intuit wants to screw with me they're only cutting their own throats.
AOL lost no money in 2002. In fact they made $7 billion.
Have you actually looked at their financial statements? Apparently not. AOL had $2,291,000,000 in revenue in 2002. AOL/TW had $9,424,000,000 in revenue in 2002. (note that is revenues, not profits) They had a net loss of $54,244,000,000. And in fact they incurred this huge loss in 2002 due to writing off $80 Billion in goodwill. Goodwill is essentially how much they overpaid for their purchase of Time Warner. If you pay more than you can afford, you take a loss. What bit of that is "accounting bullshit"?
In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
No metal cars just rust instead. Much better...
There's a drawback to any material. Plastic scrapes , steel rusts, aluminum corrodes, etc. Plastic is no exception. The "dent resistant" panels work but you can't hammer them either. They're durable, not indestructible. And it's easy enough to touch them up.
I drive a Saturn and it's a fine vehicle. (1993 SC2) Fun to drive (for its price), good fuel mileage, low insurance, very reliable and it isn't offensive to the eyes either. I don't have the problems with the paint the previous poster described either. When washed it looks pretty good for a car with 120,000 miles on it. I expect it to last me another 60-80,000 miles too. Not much more you can ask for really.
I've used a steady series of IBM thinkpads for the last several (6+) years. Overall they are great systems, particularly the higher end models. Pricy of course but generally among the best out there quality-wise. (I've also worked with Dells, Toshiba's and Compaqs so I've got significant time on other makes in case you wondered) If price isn't an issue I generally think Thinkpads are among the best choices to make. That said...
I have to concur though that the batteries in the 600 series do seem to have problems. I bought a 600E for my dad a while back and it definitely goes through batteries more quickly than the 700 series I used to use at work or the T30 I have now. Right now he can get about 30 minutes of charge out of his system with a battery he bought just a few months ago.
One thing I've taken to with my T30 is to use a second battery in the Ultrabay. Since I don't need my CD drive with incredible regularity I normally just run with 2 batteries. Best decision I've made. New the batteries could run for ~5.5 hours if I turned the screen brightness down. They've lost a little (expected) but still I can run without AC for 4-4.5 hours. If you have a thinkpad, get the second battery. Well worth the investment.
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Mozilla is my address book, email and calendar. While it is true that bluetooth doesn't directly matter, since my addressbook and calendar cannot easily synch with any given PDA, bluetooth (or any other connection for that matter) doesn't really help much.
Sorry, that wasn't entirely clear of me...
Well I happen to have Bluetooth on my laptop. Would be nice to use and I suspect would be easier on batteries than 802.11b for palm type devices. Plus it would be nifty to have my cell, palm and laptop all able to communicate without any wires or other silliness. (too bad the software on my laptop, mozilla in this case, isn't up to the job yet)
But you are right in that it is definitely less common. Most folks would have to get a Bluetooth USB key or something similar to make it work. Not a big problem but an added expense and possibly mildly redundant. After all, while the two wireless standards are designed for different purposes, one has to admit there is a lot of potential overlap.
I've suspected for some time that Bluetooth may not catch on, not because it isn't good, but because it overlaps too much with 802.11b in capabilities. I fear Firewire may one day suffer the same fate. True, it's better than USB in many ways but USB seems to have better mind share. Network externalities like that seem to push such technology towards a single platform, even if it isn't the best one for a given job.
Ever wonder why MS is so fascinated by the video game market? Sure it has the potential to be profitable one day, but that's not the entire story about why it matters to Microsoft. I doubt Microsoft would want to stake their future on such a fickle industry.
Keep in mind for a moment that televisions are in a central room in the house, they are getting much better resolution and features (HDTV), and they are near one of the two big data pipes that comes into the house (Cable). This makes for a pretty compelling location for a computer.
MS is interested in this market in part because it is possible that if set top boxes take over what PC's do today to any significant degree, that could be a huge threat to Microsoft's future. Imagine a PS2 with a cable converter that can also do word processing, surf the web, etc. That's potentiall pretty compelling and it doesn't require Microsoft at all to happen. Microsoft created the XBox at least in part as a hedge against this future. It's not so tough to get into the market now but if it took off, Microsoft could find themselves high and dry without a console they control.
A PS2 with a cable converter frankly is an unholy alliance as far as Microsoft is concerned.
I am not too keen on a lot of movable(breakable) parts to insure my access to pictures in my digital cameras.
You mean like shutters, auto-focusing lenses, & film winding?
Kidding of course.
Somehow I don't think you are throwing your digital camera around. While a disk drive isn't as reliable as solid state, unless you really abuse it, it shouldn't be a huge issue.
Ok, this makes a certain odd amount of sense as far as why apple might want it. Gives them some freedom to push digital media in whatever direction suits them. (good, bad, or indifferent) It also diversifies the business a bit which given Apple's niche strategy cannot be entirely a bad idea. If they can't beat Dell/Microsoft head on, it might be best to try something else.
A big concern from a business standpoint to me would be focus. Apple has done pretty damn well by focusing on producing really great machines (and software) that appeal to a couple specific segments of the market. Their expertise really is in the "art" of computer design, both hardware and software and experience. This doesn't necessarily translate to running a music label which is a completely different business with completely different requirements.
Granted Jobs has some exposure to this world (via Pixar) but that doesn't make it a good fit for Apple. I expect the culture clash will be huge. Apple is a pretty unique company. I don't see an obvious fit here.
My guess is that this is just a side effect of whatever the standard contract is. When licensing software you don't want to have to negotiate a different licensing agreement with each customer unless you have to. Of course one size doesn't always fit all so this sometimes has some unintended consequences. MS can afford to ignore some of these because there aren't exactly a lot of realistic alternatives. Behavior is nearly always explained by incentives.
While I fully agree that this is not the most ethical behavior, But I also think this might fall under the category of "never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity". I think this is just something that was overlooked or ignored because it was problematic. Plus who else are you going to go to? (*cough* monopoly *cough*)
So what's the answer for low-volume, very intermittent printer user?
The cost of a laser is hard to amortize over a hundred or so pages a year, inkjets hardly last a single cartridge of ink before clogging up, and dot-matrix printers are not only rare as hen's teeth but they're still noisy, slow and produce ugly print.
The way I see it, there are just a few real options.
Dot matrix is not an option. Only use for those is for triplicate forms. Beyond that I cannot conceieve of why anyone would want one. The only reason they were ever popular is that they were cheap and the quality was good enough. (it was never actually good, just adequate)
My solution was to purchase a higher end (for the time) network quality laser printer. Cost a bundle but it also prints 15,000 pages per toner cartidge. I've owned it over 8 years and replaced the toner once. With the amount I print (in the low thousands annually) it works out to a little less than 8 cents per page and drops as my print volume increases.
The other decent option I see is to invest in a multi-function unit. Then you can scan, print, fax, and copy which makes the usefulness of the device more than simply just a low volume printer. I have one of these as well which I only print from occasionally (my laser is cheaper) but use for color and all the other features. If you get one though, get the extended service agreement. More stuff to break...
Beyond that your options are pretty much either bite the bullet on a low end printer (inkjet or laser, pick your poison or get a high quality old used laser. Kind of depends on your particular needs.
I've seen a lot of bashing of Lexmark printers. Presumably much of it is accurate but there are good Lexmark printers out there. I've been using a Lexmark 4039-10R laser printer for about 8 years now. It's been terrific. Toner cartidge lasts 15,000 pages, prints 10PPM, does postscipt and the printer has been rock solid. It's built tough and though I could make a few critiques of the design none are serious problems. Just wish I could find a network interface for it...
I've used some of the Optra lasers as well with similar success at work and have nothing but good things to say about them.
I can't speak about Lexmark's newer stuff. I've never used their inkjets or low end lasers. They may be great or junk, I don't know. But some of what Lexmark makes (or did anyway) is genuinely good.
I know there has been a lot of kvetching on /. about the integration of the browser, mail, etc thinking it is "bloated" and "slow". As long as they communicate well (and I do mean well), I don't really care if they are developed in a more modular fashion. That is not bad and is potentially very good.
What I'm most concerned about in the roadmap is the seeming focus on just the browser and the mail app. (Yes I realize the purpose of mozilla.org is not strictly to produce those apps but realistically, those apps are the main reason anyone cares about Mozilla) I use those heavily and anything that improves them is just ducky as far as I'm concerned. But just as important, and much more ignored IMO, are the address book and calendar. These are applications that almost everyone uses in some form. Obviously people choose other options (Outlook, etc) frequently but that's in part because the ones built into Mozilla are fairly bad. I use them because they are the only transparently cross platform option which is important to me. I use them all and if they were better I think many others might too.
Anyway , I see the browser, mail, address book and calendar as the four major applications that most users really need. The Mozilla browser (and I include Phoenix and Camino here) is great and is arguably the best on the market. But the other three apps have largely been ignored for some time. They have a basic level of capability but haven't been refined significantly in some time. I still have trouble sharing information with co-workers on different systems. I still cannot easily share data with the PDA of my choice. Mozilla could really make a lot of this stuff really transparent for users. I'd love to be able to not worry about OS for these four apps. Mozilla is better than halfway there but I'm not quite sure what this change in direction means.
It's interesting/annoying that since version 1.2, Mozilla only supports Mac OSX, especially given that a large portion of the Apple community is unwilling to move to the new system.
This shouldn't really be so surprising. With OSX replacing MacOS, there really are just two major operating system platforms out there, Windows and unix, of which OSX is one of the many varieties of the latter. It's unix underpinnings make OSX much easier for developers to port their projects to.
MacOS for all its good features is a very unique and hence more difficult to support operating system, at least from the standpoint of cross platform compatibility. Impossible? Obviously not. But since MacOS is no longer under active development, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it isn't really worthwhile for the "official" project to continue to develop for it. There are only a finite amount of development resources out there so it makes sense to develop for the platforms with the best prospects moving forward, namely Windows and unix.
I'm half sure that someone will probably take up the banner and try to port the more recent versions to MacOS. And that's one of the great things about open source. But there is a cost to remaining with older code bases. You take the risk of being left behind. That is among the reasons I no longer run OS/2, Windows 3.1, MacOS and a few other operating systems I've used heavily over the years. Eventually the costs of not switching become tooh great. Apparently for many Mac owners they aren't at that point yet. But they will be sooner or later. It's inevitable. The maintainers of the mozilla project simply recognize this fact and chose to deal with it now rather than later.
The vast majority of the Fortune 500 companies were not venture capital financed. Most of them also did not go public at the earliest opportuntity. Quite frankly for a small company, going public is usually more of a distraction than a benefit. The important thing to think about is why would they need the cash from an IPO?
I suspect Google does not need the money from equity financing. If they can fund all their business with cash from their ongoing operations and don't need equity financing for future growth opportunities, why would they want to go public? (other than greed) An IPO would be pretty much a cash grab at this point, not a useful strategy for growing the business.
Google looks like it is a well run company but I don't really think it's clear that its future growth prospects are such that I'd be willing to purchase its stock. No, I think Google would be much better served by keeping their current path and focusing on developing their business. The company clearly has a great product, they have improved it steadily, and have done well by being focused on that. The growth expectations of equity investors could only hurt that focus at this point.
The biggest problem with the Zaurus (and most PDAs in my opinion) is not the device. Certainly there are issues with most any device and I can think of a few quibbles I have with the Zaurus. But the biggest issue IMO is still that the synch and integration software with PCs is still very poor overall.
I've written about this before (and probably will again) but these devices still only synch with a relatively small body of address books and calendars, much less a lot of the other stuff out there. Sure you can often get a particular PDA to work with a platform (say Windows or linux) but they do not work seamlessly with any and all software on those platforms. Lack of standards I guess. I'm dying to have a PDA that can synch with something besides Outlook without purchasing additional software and do it on any platform regardless of the platform.
The official name of the school is Washington University in Saint Louis. At least get the name of the school right. That's like calling Harvard University the "University of Harvard". You sound like a moron to anyone who went there.
For future reference it is NOT any of the following:
University of Washington
Washinton State University
Western Washington Universty
Central Washington University
George Washington University
Washington and Lee University
Don't sue corporations in Delaware; Delaware sells itself as corporation-friendly.
This is an understatement. It seems like nearly every other corporation I look at is incorporated in Delaware. While IANAL, there has to be some pretty serious advantages for so many corporations to incorporate there. Even existing ones transfer their incorporation there.
Why is the negotiating position of these bands so weak that they end up with such a shitty deal?
Negotiating strength is dictated in large part by your BATNA. (Best Alternative To the Negotiated Agreement - no I didn't make that up, it's a standard term in negotiation) If you have other options besides the one offered to you, you have a strong BATNA and have little reason to compromise.
In this case the record labels have literally thousands of bands who would dearly love to have a record deal, but there are only a few record labels. (and they essentially collude) No one else has the same marketing reach so the labels. If one band realizes their deal is shitty, the label doesn't care because there are a thousand other bands out there. The labels have a strong BATNA.
This is the same reason why Wal*Mart can get better prices on merchandise than your local mom-n-pop store. Wal*Mart has thousands of vendors (none of whom are more than 2% of sales) who would love to sell through Wal*Mart. But since Wal*Mart has other vendors they have a strong BATNA. Chosing an alternative vendor doesn't really hurt them.
Then develop a conduit for whatever application with which you are trying to sync. Palm is very friendly to developers. My m125 syncs just dandy with iCal and Address Book thanks to iSync Palm Conduit.
Not everyone who reads slashdot is a developer or even wants to be. I'm an engineer but software development is not my cup of tea. (If you want to talk CAD or simulation, that's different...) I'd have to develop such an application for at least 3 different operating systems. It's easy to just say "Oh why don't you develop it yourself" but realistically that's not an option. Obviously you didn't develop the app to let you synch, so what makes you think I could/would?
Besides even if I wanted to do it, I don't have the time. (Wife, work, life, etc...)
All Plam devices sync with GNOME address book
and calendar. Just get yourself mail client
which can use these.
That would be great except that I use Windows about 3/4 of the time (work & such), OS X and linux about split the rest of the time with occasional IRIX use. GNOME just isn't really a viable option on all of these. All these devices use the Outlook address book and calendard too but I'm not really intersted in maintaining multiple address books. More trouble than it is worth.
All these PDAs are cool but they all suck in one very important way. None of them work with any email/address/calendar clients besides Outlook, Notes or Eudora. And even there support is iffy. I'm still waiting for ANYTHING to fully sync with Mozilla. (Palm does a very half baked job and nothing else bothers)
I'd love to buy one of these but I need something that works with a genuinely cross platform email/address/calendar client. Evolution is great, Outlook is easy but none of these are on every platform I use. Without that, it's of no use to me.
It also just feels nicer and more polished. It's a much more sophisticated and better done email program than Mozilla.
:-(
Sadly, it isn't as cross platform.
Don't get me wrong. I do not think Mozilla is an amazing mail client. It's adequate at best. But it is the only satisfactory mail client that is available on pretty much any platform I want, integrates with an address book and has a calendar available. I need something that will work on Windows, linux, OS X, IRIX, etc. Mozilla Mail pretty much wins by default. I'm not thrilled about it but that's life.
Realistically I'm not all that interested in what client is the best overall. I'm interested in the client that is the best which does not restrict my choice of operating system. Hence whenever possible I use OpenOffice, GIMP, Mozilla, Apache, etc. Outlook and Evolution don't interest me because they restrict me in my choice of operating systems and the tools that go with them.
Are these OSS apps the best apps out there? Mozilla & Apache maybe but overall probably not. But they are plenty good enough for my needs and don't restrict me to a given operating system. I can do my work the way I want to and not have to worry about learning a new system every flippin' time I switch computers. I'm a unix guy at heart but I have to use Windows much of the time.
Heck I haven't bought a new PDA in 5 years because they can't seem to find a way to get OS agnostic software for linking to them. I can't believe no one has established a standard way to connect PDAs (calendars, address books etc) to PCs. Is it really so hard? Palm won't get off their ass, and the Zaurus is promising but doesn't work with my choice of email/address/calendar client so what good is it?
Sigh. Too depressing...
We had one of if not the first 320 systems. It worked ok, though it was a bit flakey. The big problem with it was their graphics system which was integrated on to the motherboard. (called Cobalt if memory serves) Basically they rewrote the standard chipset to eek out a little extra performance. Would have been a lot of extra performance but SGI's design cycle was much too slow and within 6 months of its release you could get a Wildcat graphics card that was faster.
The fact that the graphics weren't upgradable wasn't really a serious problem. Most people in a corporate environment don't do that anyway. The problem was the custom chipset meant you needed a special version of Windows to use the machine. This quickly became more hassle than the machine was worth.
Of course SGI isn't a company that is built for the fast release cycles of the PC industry and their PCs were quickly obsoleted and overpriced. I still can't figure out what they were thinking. Trying to be all things to all people maybe. Smart folks but with the number of blunders they've made I'm somewhat astonished they aren't in bankruptcy court.
I don't use Outlook. I use Mozilla for addresses, email, etc because it is OSS and more importantly cross platform. Last I checked no PDA except palm syncs to Mozilla, and even palm only does a half baked job of it. I'd buy a Zaurus in a heartbeat if it could sync directly to Mozilla, including the calendar project.
Minor rant. I'm really tired of Outlook being the only email/calendar client anything supports. Yes, I know it's popular but not with everyone...
That said I'd like to see bluetooth built in but that's not a deal breaker for me. My laptop has bluetooth built in so it would be uber convenient.
I installed TurboTax recently and this revelation explains a lot. I could install the program but it wouldn't run without admin priviliges. (this should have been a bit tip off) I noticed that it installed a bunch of spyware and the account I installed from became unstable. GRUB still works fine but my linux partition was no longer accessible.
I used think Intuit was ok but no more. I will not use TurboTax again. I'm stuck with Quicken for now but I will migrate off at the earliest opportunity. (unfortunately there isn't another application available to go to right now, even GNUcash) Upgrades will not be happening. If Intuit wants to screw with me they're only cutting their own throats.
AOL lost no money in 2002. In fact they made $7 billion.
Have you actually looked at their financial statements? Apparently not. AOL had $2,291,000,000 in revenue in 2002. AOL/TW had $9,424,000,000 in revenue in 2002. (note that is revenues, not profits) They had a net loss of $54,244,000,000. And in fact they incurred this huge loss in 2002 due to writing off $80 Billion in goodwill. Goodwill is essentially how much they overpaid for their purchase of Time Warner. If you pay more than you can afford, you take a loss. What bit of that is "accounting bullshit"?
In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
No metal cars just rust instead. Much better...
There's a drawback to any material. Plastic scrapes , steel rusts, aluminum corrodes, etc. Plastic is no exception. The "dent resistant" panels work but you can't hammer them either. They're durable, not indestructible. And it's easy enough to touch them up.
I drive a Saturn and it's a fine vehicle. (1993 SC2) Fun to drive (for its price), good fuel mileage, low insurance, very reliable and it isn't offensive to the eyes either. I don't have the problems with the paint the previous poster described either. When washed it looks pretty good for a car with 120,000 miles on it. I expect it to last me another 60-80,000 miles too. Not much more you can ask for really.
I've used a steady series of IBM thinkpads for the last several (6+) years. Overall they are great systems, particularly the higher end models. Pricy of course but generally among the best out there quality-wise. (I've also worked with Dells, Toshiba's and Compaqs so I've got significant time on other makes in case you wondered) If price isn't an issue I generally think Thinkpads are among the best choices to make. That said...
I have to concur though that the batteries in the 600 series do seem to have problems. I bought a 600E for my dad a while back and it definitely goes through batteries more quickly than the 700 series I used to use at work or the T30 I have now. Right now he can get about 30 minutes of charge out of his system with a battery he bought just a few months ago.
One thing I've taken to with my T30 is to use a second battery in the Ultrabay. Since I don't need my CD drive with incredible regularity I normally just run with 2 batteries. Best decision I've made. New the batteries could run for ~5.5 hours if I turned the screen brightness down. They've lost a little (expected) but still I can run without AC for 4-4.5 hours. If you have a thinkpad, get the second battery. Well worth the investment.