Oh, right. There's no Undo in Unix. rm * is permanent.:-) The customer service attitude sucks, for sure, but I kinda gulped with recognition at the headline. I've done it, accidentally. Oops. Sorry.
Bill Gates' philanthropy has saved 2.3 million lives because of vaccinations alone. 140 million children have been vaccinated since 1999 when this program started. He has done this through the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunizations, which receive donations from other sources as well, including nations. The US gave $70 million last year, about the same as Norway. Gates has given $1.5 Billion over the years just to this initiative alone. (Seattle Times, 1/26/07) Though health issues are by far the foundation's largest activities, they also contribute substantial amounts to education ($284 million in 2005), public libraries ($25 million), community grants to at-risk families, from homeless to early learning ($75 million) for a total, with all their other initiatives of well over $1.5 billion a year. Operating costs are fairly low as a percentage of their grants, less than 10%. The foundation is worth about $30 billion. Gates keeps throwing money into it and pledges from people like Warren Buffet will double the size. Indeed, it's a problem giving all that away, which Gates says will be accomplished within fifty years of his own death. As is always the case, there has been some criticism of the foundation, including its investment strategy, but, then, everyone seems to feel they are in a position to tell Gates what he ought to be doing.
If you change the definition to something Moore never said, then of course it might not fit.
Moore's original definition had to do with number of transistors on "an integrated circuit." The original graph didn't even specify size. (Goto Intel.com, search Moore's Law, all that stuff is there.) That engineers have been unable to keep up with exploiting the law isn't really all that surprising or uncommon. However, the interesting thing about Moore's Law is that if you extrapolate the graph backwards in time, it still fits. Take the original switches in the Hollerith card reader used to tabulate the 1890 census, through all the iterations from electrical circuits (like in the old telco switching rooms)to vacuum tubes of the Eniac to transistors of the size used in two-transistor radios to core memory to the 45 nm chips of today or tomorrow and the graph is boggling. The Law has been functioning since the 1890's. And there is no real reason to think it can't keep going, if you don't fixate on silicon. Every time Moore's Law has met an impasse in the past, e.g. vacuum tubes, the technology changes the medium to something else, first to transistors, then to integrated circuits. Moore has said he thinks the law will go to 2015, but that's on silicon. The next medium will carry it further, whether that's some sort of 3D or atomic, or even biological memory. Kurzweil.com has a lot of good stuff on what's about to happen.
So the fact that a word processor works as well on a three year old computer is not really the point of the law. What the law will allow is the next generation of word processor, one you can talk to instead of type in, one that will quickly and accurately translate what you say into radically different languages, one that fits in your eyeglasses and projects a screen in front of you, or one that is simply implanted. To say 'when will this be ready for my laptop and will it lower the price (somewhere on this thread) is not the right question.
The funny thing about this is that every few weeks you read some article that says, "Yup! That's it! We simply cannot get any more out of Moore's Law! It's dead."
Then a couple weeks later someone says, "Yup! We're gonna squeeze a few more years out of Moore's law. New advance! It isn't dead!"
Moore's Law is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keep's going.
CEO's (should be) are outward focused. They steer the ship where, if they are correct, it is supposed to be to return the most value, blah blah. That's their job and their responsibility. It's not just about the product, but also about regulatory and personnel issues, accounting, and competition, all significant hazards to be avoided. Yes, of course it's about "the customer," but not in the belly-button staring sense most customers think. "The customer is always right" means the customer knows what he or she wants to buy (including services and treatment) therefore the corporation must produce products and services and treatment that the customer will buy in advance of their doing so, in the hopes that they will, e.g. iPhone.
The CIO, on the other hand, is very inward focused or, if recently enlightened, certainly has an inward focused background. It's about code and deadlines and infrastructure support. These are the guys who oil the pumps and valves that keep that whonking 100,000 HP steam engine in the bowels of the ship working. They don't stear the ship. They don't decide where it's going to go. They don't even have to know the mission. They are responsible for making sure it gets there in good shape. In many cases, they don't even have time to go above deck and look outside.
It is very rare for an engineering officer to make Admiral, even rarer for a supply officer or personnel officer, or, for that matter, a medical officer or JAG. These are all support roles, and if you've done your homework, you KNOW THAT IN ADVANCE. Admirals come from the surface warfare officer community or, in the case of carriers, through the aviation route. It's the same in the army: Schwarzkopf was an Infantry Officer, not a technician, who, incidentally, in the lower ranks is ALWAYS subservient to an infantryman of the same rank.
If a potential CIO is interested in doing the CEO thing, the best thing for him or her to do is make sure he or she gains significant experience outside the CIO ladder. A significant stint in accounting, personnel, or an "assistant to the CEO" type position will show significantly in the bid to become CEO. Narrowly focusing on just IT will never get you to the Board Room.
I know many of you don't like this. From an idealistic point of view, it's "wrong." because, as anyone here knows, IT people are the smartest, sharpest people ever to walk the planet who KNOW how the world works, REALLY. They deserve to become CEO, and if they don't, there's something wrong with the system, not them, and certainly not their attitude. But as a Board Member (or head hunter) I'm not really interested in whether you know C++ or even if you have managed to keep the servers online 24x7. (Can you imagine a bid for CEO: "I know C++ and Open Source is the way to go and Linux is cool and Bill Gates is an idiot capitalist pig dog.") The fact that you are a proven manager of infrastructure issues is great. That's what is expected of you. Keep doing that. Swap out my PC any time you want. But I want someone who knows precisely where the ship is going for CEO.
The bottom line is that there's a heirarchy out there that exists in every walk of life. Laws to fix heirarchy are artificial; the heirarchy is still there. If you are not the CEO then either you didn't want to be (not always a bad thing?) or you screwed up in your perception of what was necessary to get you there. Whining about it is not going to "fix" anything. Perhaps a little introspection will.
You'll get a new phone before you will need a new battery. The Treo also has a built in battery. Mine has been in daily use for, umm, I think 4 years now with no loss of power. The average Ameican replaces his cell every 18 months. The average European: 12 months. The average Japanese: 6 months. The fact that the battery is not easily replaceable is a non-issue.
Also, do you really think they'll only be one iPhone? How many iPod models are there? Jobs even said this in his speech. This is a family of products, not a single product.
If you want to climb the ladder, be the executive, make the biggest bucks, etc., for whatever reason, whether anyone else wants to, understands, or approves your motives, then telecommuting is not for you. There's always an exception, so there's got to be one or two die hard telecommuters who have become CEO, but it also has to be rare. You schmooze, or you lose. If you're Type "A" driven you may very well give up some personal freedom, but that's not inherent in wanting to work 'with people.' Some people prefer it.
If you don't care about any of that, for any reason, whether you value your 'family time' or think you are saving the environment by staying home, or are simply a crumudgeon who doesn't get along with people, but are otherwise competent to do the work from home, then it can be a delightful way to make a living. You gain that at the expense of the schmooze factor. You are less likely to be promoted, as has been well attested to here with examples.
The mistake is thinking that these two methods of work absolutely must be "equal" or otherwise "it's not fair." They each have advantages, but they are never going to be equal. You give up something and you gain something with either choice. The point is that by and large it is your choice. If the company provides it and you take it, don't complain about your lack of promotion. You made the choice and need to take responsibility for it.
You have to be a "supervisor" or a "professional." I know cops are pros, by and large, but this is a more technical definition of the term. If he's a "line cop" he's unlikely in the supervisor category, and if he ever gets 1.5 x he definitely is not. He might be able to make a claim for hours, but if he didn't keep records, that's a long shot. REALLY too bad he accepted a state-owned computer and used work time initially. That really mucks it up. If he had independently done the work and presented it to the state, it would be a much more pure case.
Actually, I was thinking of systems such as the Garmin Streetpilot 7500 or the iWay 500C. They both retail close to $1K, though I've seen them discounted to $699 or so so I agree that prices are coming down. The auto navi systems that are built into a dash are $2K and up for sure. I have one. Unlike the 310C, you can actually update these and they have a feature set that is far more comprehensive than the low-end models, including real-time traffic updates. I would expect the iPhone to include a quality system rather than something that barely gets by. I've used some of the hand helds offered in rental cars, and they just don't cut it for me. One scared the hellout of me when it turned me the wrong way down a one way street. (My fault for trusting it, of course.) You're going to have to turn yours in for a new one in a couple of years just to get updates. But maybe that's cost-effective for you. If you're happy, cool.
I've been a Treo fan because I get phone and PDA in one package. I paid $499 for the 600 when I upgraded from a 170. My company did not pay for it; I did. Frankly, I couldn't care less about iPod capability, but I can see how it would add considerable value to the package for those whose lives revolve around music. What does it for me is cool phone with new features plus what I would call "near-robust" internet connectivity that goes way beyond Blackberry's push email technology. They've got three cool things in there, and I figure if they can get you to want two out of three, you can justify it financially and they've got a sale. They do not need to get you on all three. In terms of competing with Treo and Blackberry, they are way ahead on that point alone. They will own high end, end of story.
I hope they can get away from Cingular exclusivity as soon as possible, though I have had good luck with Cingular with a good plan, good price, and effectively unlimited minutes with rollover. It will be easy to remove the chip from my Treo and plug it into a iPhone. Given the infrastructure build on Cingular's part I understand why they did it, but I hope other carriers will make the changes necessary and find a way into this. To me it does not make marketing sense to go exclusive forever.
Given what they have done with Google Maps I think the iPhone is ripe for GPS. That would put it over the top for me. I don't use it very much, but when I do it is extremely handy. Plus it will knock the GPS-only systems out, or at least force them to reduce their sky-high prices. Navigation in a vehicle is $2K plus and the stand-alones push $1K easy.
In terms of "Apple arrogance," get over it. Around here that is the pot calling the kettle black.:-)
I think an amazing number of people will go for this. Sure, it's not as small as your average dinky cell phone, but it IS about the size of a Treo or Blackberry. The Treo was just as expensive when it came out--and there will be "deals" just like now. Sign up for XX years and we'll give you an iPhone for $YY. I also don't think cost will be a big issue. There are a lot of discretionary dollars out there and the heart rather than the mind is going to drive this purchase. If I cared at all about music I'd jump on the chance to 'converge' to the iPhone. As it is my Treo 600 works pretty well. I'll keep it until it breaks, THEN get an iPhone! (That is, if implants haven't come out yet.)
Riiiight! Thanks. Now I get it. Just like all those unionized steel mills in the rust be -er- midwest.
1. Unionize. 2. Demand more money 3. Demand more benefits because they are your "right!" 4. Demand extra money for extra breathing. 5. Demand "job security." 6. Demand MORE money. 7. If you don't get what you want, strike. 8. Lose job to China. 9. Watch another American company go bankrupt. 10. Get job in retail at minimum wage. Radio Shack will hire you! 11. Retire on social security. 12. Complain about government.
But hey! If you HAD a job, it'd be a really good one!
Thank you for one of the few intelligent posts in this thread. If I had mod points, I'd give them all to you. For every asshole boss story there is an asshole employee story to match. Statistically speaking, more. I was in the workforce for forty years. Thank God I could get out early. I've been an employee whose had many, many bosses, and a boss who has had many employees. That someone "doesn't like" their boss could have two main reasons: Either their boss really is a bad boss, or they are a bad employee. I don't know ANY bad employees who thought highly of their superiors. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the bad employees I have encountered thought their boss was at fault. "My boss is so bad that I'm forced to show up drunk and smoke pot on the roof." If I could impart just one shred of advise from those forty years of work it would be this:
If you do not like where you are at, leave.
Everyone will thank you now; and you'll thank yourself later.
I thought it would be fun to compare slashdot comments to the previous posting to see how many geniuses out there fell into it with "I told you so," "It's because Apple is a big meanie," "Songs are no good," and similiar contributions. But I have to say after reading through the previous posting's comments, though there were a few like the above, the vast majority of slashdotters called it correctly and said the previous study was flawed, giving all the reasons why. Impressive!
"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."
Thus providing a perfect example of what the BBC is talking about. Even if you never take your eyeballs off slashdot itself, there is ample evidence to the contrary, including the very detailed analysis by Moncton: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml. Don't just glance at the head; download the PDF and see what he's saying. Are there dissenters to this point of view? Sure there are. Did the United Nations cook the books on the evidence here? Yes, they did, and THAT ought to be a serious warning bell to anyone. Don't ignore this. WHY did the UN CHANGE the data to make global warming look worse than it is? This is a smoking gun. Even if you push it under the rug it's going to make an ugly lump.
The issue here is not so much whether global warming is true. After all, we're coming off an ice age. At some level of course it's true. The issue is, Why does there seem to be a concerted push to make this a 'done deal' by people whose political interests would suggest they very nuch want it to be for their own agenda. The backlash to Moncton is interesting. It's similar to the Christian church demonizing Pan into Satan simply to gain control of he largely ignorant populace. A lot of the counter claims amount to argumentum ad hominem, an argument against the person, not the evidence. For all you folks who bristle every time someone calls Stallman a big fat smelly boy, well, this is the same thing.
If there are no alarm bells going off in your head over at least some of the issues raised by the dissenters, then you are already converted. If you believe the world was created on October 29, 4004 BC at 10:00 in the morning, there is nothing anyone can do to convince you otherwise. For the rest, you owe it to yourselves to take a dispassionate and serious look at what the dissenters are saying without letting your SUV-loathing get in the way. Let us all see what the issues are here without jumping on either extremist side.
Or they take it out because it's easier to steal. The plastic wrap with embedded security tag is as much to keep thieves at bay as anything else.
(plea) Oh, and by the way, working retail sucks. If at all possible, be nice to the next sales clerk you deal with (assuming they are themselves.) The holidays are absolute killers for these folks. They make zilch and work very long hours. (/plea)
Lots of good comments and suggestions. I notice costs vary widely around the country. Just to aid comparison.
1. I pay $135 month for $5K deductible at age 57. Every five year increment goes up a few bucks. Every year the whole grid goes up a few bucks. "Full" insurance with a small deductible and small co-pays would be about $550/month. Rationale: At $550/month that's, umm $6600/year. $135 is $1620. If I get 'really' sick, I break even. In any case it would appear this is a lot less expensive than some of you are paying for a similar $5K deductible.
2. Several people seem to think voting Democratic or moving to Canada/Britain/etc. will solve the problem. Does anyone really think nationalized health care will give us a BETTER system? Do you REALLY want Hiliary calling the shots here? Just look at our military or the VA system. The VA, if you can get on it, is totally free. I won't say it's a bad system, but let me say this. My father was on it. I thought it was a good deal at the time. But had he been on medicare plus a supplemental he could have used local doctors instead of the long ride to a VA facility--and he just might still be alive today. I dunno, it's hard to figure it out in hindsight, but I wish we had the option of doing his health care over again the other way. He DID get a free slot in the wall at the Veteran's Cemetery, though.
3. The worst problem, imho, is that we've messed up by insisting health care be part of employment. Now people think employer-paid insurance is a "right" and will strike if the employer wants to reduce some costs with a co-pay. Insurance companies have lept on this, too because by and large if you are working, you are healthy. Really sick people can't hold a job. It's in insurance companies' best interests to further such a system. People keep working in terrible jobs just to keep insurance. I have a buddy who could otherwise retire. I say to him, "Why not?" and he always says, "Insurance." Now that sucks.
4. Health care is not in the Constitution. On the one hand we demand government be responsible and take care of every individual every time he has a cold and winds up going to the emergency room for it, stupidly. We are so risk averse that we blame anyone we can for anything that happens to us. Government is a prime target, but so is anyone, including McDodalds with hot coffee. Then we turn around and say, well, government should not invade my privacy (which isn't exactly in the Constiution either.) The thing is, we have INVITED government into our lives on a very personal basis, then wonder why it is there. You can't expect government to NOT be in your life if you won't take responsibility for your own life in the first place.
I would prefer government NOT be in my life, or there as little as possible. I will trade that for taking responsibility for my own health and my own life. Just get out and leave me alone. We'll all be better for it.
Draw a triangle. At the first point write "Good". At the second point write "Fast". At the third point write "Cheap". Below the triangle write "Pick any two."
"Planned" obsolescence is not a conspiracy to get you to buy more stuff. It is a natural evolutionary trend in products; and it is mostly a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. (Secondly, it's mostly not true. How often did a car in the fifties require a tune-up? New plugs, points, distributor cap, etc.? Every 10,000 miles or less for my 62 Ford Galaxy. My car today requires it's first tune up at 100,000 miles.)
Consider: My first IBM PC was $1500 bare (at a discount): No hard drive, no floppies, no monitor, no RAM. Just a box, a motherboard, a power supply, and a wonderful keyboard that felt so nice compared to my older Apple ][ minus. The keyboard alone had 500 parts. I know; I took one apart to "clean" it--bad idea. RAM cost $120 for 16K ("K"--not "M" not "G"). A 160K floppy drive was $350, down from the $500 I paid for my 144K Apple drives (traded a Honda 350 motorcycle for one). The first hard drive was 10MB for $1000. Total price of the Apple with all the cards, accessories, etc.? $7,000 in 1979. The IBM was a little cheaper in 1981. Those are 79/81 dollars so each one today would cost in the realm of $15,000 (assuming inflation halved the dollar--I don't know for sure.)
Was the IBM well built? Like a tank! Would that tank be useful today? Sure, if I ran DOS 3.3 and Word 1.1 that came on two floppy disks and its own mouse in the box, printed on a dot matrix Epson MX-100 ($1000 for one of those) and was content with GW Basic and ASCII character art. Of course that didn't happen and that old box is in a landfill somewhere and will be for a few thousand years. Hopefully someone recycled the case--it was heavy metal, but the rest is toast. Did I overpay? For me, not really. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I made the money back in software sales and it boosted my career tremendously. I got a lot out of the whole deal at a lot of levels.
But it's not about ME. It's about millions of people who couldn't possibly ever spend $15,000 on a PC who can now pick up a fully functional one for less than $500, maybe half that. It's about companies that can now afford to put a PC on EVERY desk and network them together (Not just a Mac for the Art Department.) The result is a tremendous productivity gain. Without it we'd be back in the stone age seventies. As a whole, we'd all be a lot worse off. "Cheap" PCs have empowered a generation. But the fact is in five years you're going to want another one anyway because the present one simply will not do all the new cool stuff that requires more RAM, bigger disks, greater resolution, 3-D displays, etc. Add it all up and you still have paid exponentially less than you did for that battle tank in 1981.
For you guys who have a broken RAZR--c'mon--you didn't buy that because of function. You just had to have the sleekest, coolest phone around. I've had my Treo 600 for several years, dropped it dozens of times; it doesn't care. Of course, it IS kind of bulky and fits in a huge case on my belt like a -er- geek. Those new thin phones WOULD fit in my pocket a lot better. The key pad is pretty cool looking. Nothing wrong with the Treo, but a new thin phone wouldn't be THAT expensive. I could pick one up pretty cheap, maybe for Christmas, then put my Treo in a drawer (Oh, there's my old Treo 170! Forgot it was there!)
So who planned this obsolescence? I think I just did!
Let's do a test. (We may actually be able to do this with historical data.) Take the average European city with houses made of stones, bricks, etc. Take a similar US/Canadian city with houses made of wood. Apply a 7.9 Richter scale quake. Measure resulting destruction. Would you rather be in a 17th century English brick house on the historical register with no changes allowed? Or in a modern American wood house building-code compliant? Would you rather have a tile roof in such a situation? or maybe composition?
FYI Re: Building code compliance. I've just participated in building a few houses. The new codes are really putting the screws to earthquake construction, literally. The new braces required between foundation and joists are really incredible. Zillions of nails in each brace and every hole must be filled. Contractors amy not want to do it, but they MUST use the new techniques or they don't pass inspection. The codes are evolutionary, but hey do keep getting tougher.
FYI: Wood houses. Seattle, for example, is only 150 years old. Tere are still lots of forests here, lots of wood. Great Britain, for example, ran out of oak to build the Royal Navy ships, so one of the admirals under Lord Nelson planted a bunch of oak trees on his property in hopes there would be enough oak for the Royal Navy to build ships in 1900.
For the life of me I do not understand how each PC could have cost so much. I was the admin for a public library for 25 years. I have installed many hundreds of library public-use PCs. My most recent full-PC installs, on Windows XP, were running about $800 each for brand new fully capable machines complete with per-seat security software of various kinds (the public is REALLY hard on machines) such as Centurion Guard and Fortres. Just before I left I installed thin clients which were running about $400 per seat (including the servers).
I realize lots of folks here see this as a Linux vs Windows issue. It's really not. The OS in this equation just isn't that much. The issue is total cost of installed base: dollars (pounds) spent divided by number of machines. These were 2500 POUNDS! That's got to be something like $4700 per machine.
I'm kind of surprised that the forward-thinking, technically-oriented, mensa-qualified slashdot crowd would be so negative about this (not universally, I realize.) I would have thought you would have taken a "we can solve this, go for it" approach instead of screaming it can't be done. For a positive approach, see: http://www.liftport.com/ Buy the book. Read the stories. Check out what's been done so far. It's just a matter of time. Naysayers will be left on earth.
Actually, this might be very cool. I'm sitting here downstairs on my laptop. I just backed up today's work on an SD card in the machine (Umm, that would be Drive F: because the elves at HP put in a @#$! partition they didn't tell me about.), and then on a USB drive connected to the machine (That would be Drive G:). It would be dandy if I could set up a simple wireless USB drive upstairs and zap this stuff up there to H:\HOME as well. No fuss remote backup, not quite off-site, but Hey! I'm retired; I don't get out much. I know I could "go thru the network" on a mapped network drive" but what if the other machines aren't on? Green power and all that. And I know it might be cool to send it to Mongolia or Google, but the fact is I don't quite trust my stuff in those places. So if it were cheap and simple, I'd buy it. At least the way I'm envisioning this (which may be entirely wrong), I could see its use.
Slashdot Mirror
Double Whoosh. That post went right over your head.
Oh, right. There's no Undo in Unix. rm * is permanent. :-) The customer service attitude sucks, for sure, but I kinda gulped with recognition at the headline. I've done it, accidentally. Oops. Sorry.
Bill Gates' philanthropy has saved 2.3 million lives because of vaccinations alone. 140 million children have been vaccinated since 1999 when this program started. He has done this through the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunizations, which receive donations from other sources as well, including nations. The US gave $70 million last year, about the same as Norway. Gates has given $1.5 Billion over the years just to this initiative alone. (Seattle Times, 1/26/07) Though health issues are by far the foundation's largest activities, they also contribute substantial amounts to education ($284 million in 2005), public libraries ($25 million), community grants to at-risk families, from homeless to early learning ($75 million) for a total, with all their other initiatives of well over $1.5 billion a year. Operating costs are fairly low as a percentage of their grants, less than 10%. The foundation is worth about $30 billion. Gates keeps throwing money into it and pledges from people like Warren Buffet will double the size. Indeed, it's a problem giving all that away, which Gates says will be accomplished within fifty years of his own death. As is always the case, there has been some criticism of the foundation, including its investment strategy, but, then, everyone seems to feel they are in a position to tell Gates what he ought to be doing.
Okay, you're willfully ignorant. PC World THE STORE, not PC World, the MAGAZINE.
If you change the definition to something Moore never said, then of course it might not fit.
Moore's original definition had to do with number of transistors on "an integrated circuit." The original graph didn't even specify size. (Goto Intel.com, search Moore's Law, all that stuff is there.) That engineers have been unable to keep up with exploiting the law isn't really all that surprising or uncommon. However, the interesting thing about Moore's Law is that if you extrapolate the graph backwards in time, it still fits. Take the original switches in the Hollerith card reader used to tabulate the 1890 census, through all the iterations from electrical circuits (like in the old telco switching rooms)to vacuum tubes of the Eniac to transistors of the size used in two-transistor radios to core memory to the 45 nm chips of today or tomorrow and the graph is boggling. The Law has been functioning since the 1890's. And there is no real reason to think it can't keep going, if you don't fixate on silicon. Every time Moore's Law has met an impasse in the past, e.g. vacuum tubes, the technology changes the medium to something else, first to transistors, then to integrated circuits. Moore has said he thinks the law will go to 2015, but that's on silicon. The next medium will carry it further, whether that's some sort of 3D or atomic, or even biological memory. Kurzweil.com has a lot of good stuff on what's about to happen.
So the fact that a word processor works as well on a three year old computer is not really the point of the law. What the law will allow is the next generation of word processor, one you can talk to instead of type in, one that will quickly and accurately translate what you say into radically different languages, one that fits in your eyeglasses and projects a screen in front of you, or one that is simply implanted. To say 'when will this be ready for my laptop and will it lower the price (somewhere on this thread) is not the right question.
You're not going to need a laptop any more.
The funny thing about this is that every few weeks you read some article that says, "Yup! That's it! We simply cannot get any more out of Moore's Law! It's dead."
Then a couple weeks later someone says, "Yup! We're gonna squeeze a few more years out of Moore's law. New advance! It isn't dead!"
Moore's Law is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keep's going.
CEO's (should be) are outward focused. They steer the ship where, if they are correct, it is supposed to be to return the most value, blah blah. That's their job and their responsibility. It's not just about the product, but also about regulatory and personnel issues, accounting, and competition, all significant hazards to be avoided. Yes, of course it's about "the customer," but not in the belly-button staring sense most customers think. "The customer is always right" means the customer knows what he or she wants to buy (including services and treatment) therefore the corporation must produce products and services and treatment that the customer will buy in advance of their doing so, in the hopes that they will, e.g. iPhone.
The CIO, on the other hand, is very inward focused or, if recently enlightened, certainly has an inward focused background. It's about code and deadlines and infrastructure support. These are the guys who oil the pumps and valves that keep that whonking 100,000 HP steam engine in the bowels of the ship working. They don't stear the ship. They don't decide where it's going to go. They don't even have to know the mission. They are responsible for making sure it gets there in good shape. In many cases, they don't even have time to go above deck and look outside.
It is very rare for an engineering officer to make Admiral, even rarer for a supply officer or personnel officer, or, for that matter, a medical officer or JAG. These are all support roles, and if you've done your homework, you KNOW THAT IN ADVANCE. Admirals come from the surface warfare officer community or, in the case of carriers, through the aviation route. It's the same in the army: Schwarzkopf was an Infantry Officer, not a technician, who, incidentally, in the lower ranks is ALWAYS subservient to an infantryman of the same rank.
If a potential CIO is interested in doing the CEO thing, the best thing for him or her to do is make sure he or she gains significant experience outside the CIO ladder. A significant stint in accounting, personnel, or an "assistant to the CEO" type position will show significantly in the bid to become CEO. Narrowly focusing on just IT will never get you to the Board Room.
I know many of you don't like this. From an idealistic point of view, it's "wrong." because, as anyone here knows, IT people are the smartest, sharpest people ever to walk the planet who KNOW how the world works, REALLY. They deserve to become CEO, and if they don't, there's something wrong with the system, not them, and certainly not their attitude. But as a Board Member (or head hunter) I'm not really interested in whether you know C++ or even if you have managed to keep the servers online 24x7. (Can you imagine a bid for CEO: "I know C++ and Open Source is the way to go and Linux is cool and Bill Gates is an idiot capitalist pig dog.") The fact that you are a proven manager of infrastructure issues is great. That's what is expected of you. Keep doing that. Swap out my PC any time you want. But I want someone who knows precisely where the ship is going for CEO.
The bottom line is that there's a heirarchy out there that exists in every walk of life. Laws to fix heirarchy are artificial; the heirarchy is still there. If you are not the CEO then either you didn't want to be (not always a bad thing?) or you screwed up in your perception of what was necessary to get you there. Whining about it is not going to "fix" anything. Perhaps a little introspection will.
I think you might have missed his point. Go ahead and visit that url he provided and get back to us. Learn anything? :-)
You'll get a new phone before you will need a new battery. The Treo also has a built in battery. Mine has been in daily use for, umm, I think 4 years now with no loss of power. The average Ameican replaces his cell every 18 months. The average European: 12 months. The average Japanese: 6 months. The fact that the battery is not easily replaceable is a non-issue.
Also, do you really think they'll only be one iPhone? How many iPod models are there? Jobs even said this in his speech. This is a family of products, not a single product.
If you want to climb the ladder, be the executive, make the biggest bucks, etc., for whatever reason, whether anyone else wants to, understands, or approves your motives, then telecommuting is not for you. There's always an exception, so there's got to be one or two die hard telecommuters who have become CEO, but it also has to be rare. You schmooze, or you lose. If you're Type "A" driven you may very well give up some personal freedom, but that's not inherent in wanting to work 'with people.' Some people prefer it.
If you don't care about any of that, for any reason, whether you value your 'family time' or think you are saving the environment by staying home, or are simply a crumudgeon who doesn't get along with people, but are otherwise competent to do the work from home, then it can be a delightful way to make a living. You gain that at the expense of the schmooze factor. You are less likely to be promoted, as has been well attested to here with examples.
The mistake is thinking that these two methods of work absolutely must be "equal" or otherwise "it's not fair." They each have advantages, but they are never going to be equal. You give up something and you gain something with either choice. The point is that by and large it is your choice. If the company provides it and you take it, don't complain about your lack of promotion. You made the choice and need to take responsibility for it.
(I work at home.)
You have to be a "supervisor" or a "professional." I know cops are pros, by and large, but this is a more technical definition of the term. If he's a "line cop" he's unlikely in the supervisor category, and if he ever gets 1.5 x he definitely is not. He might be able to make a claim for hours, but if he didn't keep records, that's a long shot. REALLY too bad he accepted a state-owned computer and used work time initially. That really mucks it up. If he had independently done the work and presented it to the state, it would be a much more pure case.
Actually, I was thinking of systems such as the Garmin Streetpilot 7500 or the iWay 500C. They both retail close to $1K, though I've seen them discounted to $699 or so so I agree that prices are coming down. The auto navi systems that are built into a dash are $2K and up for sure. I have one. Unlike the 310C, you can actually update these and they have a feature set that is far more comprehensive than the low-end models, including real-time traffic updates. I would expect the iPhone to include a quality system rather than something that barely gets by. I've used some of the hand helds offered in rental cars, and they just don't cut it for me. One scared the hellout of me when it turned me the wrong way down a one way street. (My fault for trusting it, of course.) You're going to have to turn yours in for a new one in a couple of years just to get updates. But maybe that's cost-effective for you. If you're happy, cool.
I've been a Treo fan because I get phone and PDA in one package. I paid $499 for the 600 when I upgraded from a 170. My company did not pay for it; I did. Frankly, I couldn't care less about iPod capability, but I can see how it would add considerable value to the package for those whose lives revolve around music. What does it for me is cool phone with new features plus what I would call "near-robust" internet connectivity that goes way beyond Blackberry's push email technology. They've got three cool things in there, and I figure if they can get you to want two out of three, you can justify it financially and they've got a sale. They do not need to get you on all three. In terms of competing with Treo and Blackberry, they are way ahead on that point alone. They will own high end, end of story.
:-)
I hope they can get away from Cingular exclusivity as soon as possible, though I have had good luck with Cingular with a good plan, good price, and effectively unlimited minutes with rollover. It will be easy to remove the chip from my Treo and plug it into a iPhone. Given the infrastructure build on Cingular's part I understand why they did it, but I hope other carriers will make the changes necessary and find a way into this. To me it does not make marketing sense to go exclusive forever.
Given what they have done with Google Maps I think the iPhone is ripe for GPS. That would put it over the top for me. I don't use it very much, but when I do it is extremely handy. Plus it will knock the GPS-only systems out, or at least force them to reduce their sky-high prices. Navigation in a vehicle is $2K plus and the stand-alones push $1K easy.
In terms of "Apple arrogance," get over it. Around here that is the pot calling the kettle black.
I think an amazing number of people will go for this. Sure, it's not as small as your average dinky cell phone, but it IS about the size of a Treo or Blackberry. The Treo was just as expensive when it came out--and there will be "deals" just like now. Sign up for XX years and we'll give you an iPhone for $YY. I also don't think cost will be a big issue. There are a lot of discretionary dollars out there and the heart rather than the mind is going to drive this purchase. If I cared at all about music I'd jump on the chance to 'converge' to the iPhone. As it is my Treo 600 works pretty well. I'll keep it until it breaks, THEN get an iPhone! (That is, if implants haven't come out yet.)
Riiiight! Thanks. Now I get it. Just like all those unionized steel mills in the rust be -er- midwest.
1. Unionize.
2. Demand more money
3. Demand more benefits because they are your "right!"
4. Demand extra money for extra breathing.
5. Demand "job security."
6. Demand MORE money.
7. If you don't get what you want, strike.
8. Lose job to China.
9. Watch another American company go bankrupt.
10. Get job in retail at minimum wage. Radio Shack will hire you!
11. Retire on social security.
12. Complain about government.
But hey! If you HAD a job, it'd be a really good one!
Thank you for one of the few intelligent posts in this thread. If I had mod points, I'd give them all to you. For every asshole boss story there is an asshole employee story to match. Statistically speaking, more. I was in the workforce for forty years. Thank God I could get out early. I've been an employee whose had many, many bosses, and a boss who has had many employees. That someone "doesn't like" their boss could have two main reasons: Either their boss really is a bad boss, or they are a bad employee. I don't know ANY bad employees who thought highly of their superiors. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the bad employees I have encountered thought their boss was at fault. "My boss is so bad that I'm forced to show up drunk and smoke pot on the roof." If I could impart just one shred of advise from those forty years of work it would be this:
If you do not like where you are at, leave.
Everyone will thank you now; and you'll thank yourself later.
I thought it would be fun to compare slashdot comments to the previous posting to see how many geniuses out there fell into it with "I told you so," "It's because Apple is a big meanie," "Songs are no good," and similiar contributions. But I have to say after reading through the previous posting's comments, though there were a few like the above, the vast majority of slashdotters called it correctly and said the previous study was flawed, giving all the reasons why. Impressive!
"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."
e ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml. Don't just glance at the head; download the PDF and see what he's saying. Are there dissenters to this point of view? Sure there are. Did the United Nations cook the books on the evidence here? Yes, they did, and THAT ought to be a serious warning bell to anyone. Don't ignore this. WHY did the UN CHANGE the data to make global warming look worse than it is? This is a smoking gun. Even if you push it under the rug it's going to make an ugly lump.
Thus providing a perfect example of what the BBC is talking about. Even if you never take your eyeballs off slashdot itself, there is ample evidence to the contrary, including the very detailed analysis by Moncton: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
The issue here is not so much whether global warming is true. After all, we're coming off an ice age. At some level of course it's true. The issue is, Why does there seem to be a concerted push to make this a 'done deal' by people whose political interests would suggest they very nuch want it to be for their own agenda. The backlash to Moncton is interesting. It's similar to the Christian church demonizing Pan into Satan simply to gain control of he largely ignorant populace. A lot of the counter claims amount to argumentum ad hominem, an argument against the person, not the evidence. For all you folks who bristle every time someone calls Stallman a big fat smelly boy, well, this is the same thing.
If there are no alarm bells going off in your head over at least some of the issues raised by the dissenters, then you are already converted. If you believe the world was created on October 29, 4004 BC at 10:00 in the morning, there is nothing anyone can do to convince you otherwise. For the rest, you owe it to yourselves to take a dispassionate and serious look at what the dissenters are saying without letting your SUV-loathing get in the way. Let us all see what the issues are here without jumping on either extremist side.
Or they take it out because it's easier to steal. The plastic wrap with embedded security tag is as much to keep thieves at bay as anything else.
(plea)
Oh, and by the way, working retail sucks. If at all possible, be nice to the next sales clerk you deal with (assuming they are themselves.) The holidays are absolute killers for these folks. They make zilch and work very long hours.
(/plea)
Lots of good comments and suggestions. I notice costs vary widely around the country. Just to aid comparison.
1. I pay $135 month for $5K deductible at age 57. Every five year increment goes up a few bucks. Every year the whole grid goes up a few bucks. "Full" insurance with a small deductible and small co-pays would be about $550/month. Rationale: At $550/month that's, umm $6600/year. $135 is $1620. If I get 'really' sick, I break even. In any case it would appear this is a lot less expensive than some of you are paying for a similar $5K deductible.
2. Several people seem to think voting Democratic or moving to Canada/Britain/etc. will solve the problem. Does anyone really think nationalized health care will give us a BETTER system? Do you REALLY want Hiliary calling the shots here? Just look at our military or the VA system. The VA, if you can get on it, is totally free. I won't say it's a bad system, but let me say this. My father was on it. I thought it was a good deal at the time. But had he been on medicare plus a supplemental he could have used local doctors instead of the long ride to a VA facility--and he just might still be alive today. I dunno, it's hard to figure it out in hindsight, but I wish we had the option of doing his health care over again the other way. He DID get a free slot in the wall at the Veteran's Cemetery, though.
3. The worst problem, imho, is that we've messed up by insisting health care be part of employment. Now people think employer-paid insurance is a "right" and will strike if the employer wants to reduce some costs with a co-pay. Insurance companies have lept on this, too because by and large if you are working, you are healthy. Really sick people can't hold a job. It's in insurance companies' best interests to further such a system. People keep working in terrible jobs just to keep insurance. I have a buddy who could otherwise retire. I say to him, "Why not?" and he always says, "Insurance." Now that sucks.
4. Health care is not in the Constitution. On the one hand we demand government be responsible and take care of every individual every time he has a cold and winds up going to the emergency room for it, stupidly. We are so risk averse that we blame anyone we can for anything that happens to us. Government is a prime target, but so is anyone, including McDodalds with hot coffee. Then we turn around and say, well, government should not invade my privacy (which isn't exactly in the Constiution either.) The thing is, we have INVITED government into our lives on a very personal basis, then wonder why it is there. You can't expect government to NOT be in your life if you won't take responsibility for your own life in the first place.
I would prefer government NOT be in my life, or there as little as possible. I will trade that for taking responsibility for my own health and my own life. Just get out and leave me alone. We'll all be better for it.
Draw a triangle. At the first point write "Good". At the second point write "Fast". At the third point write "Cheap". Below the triangle write "Pick any two."
"Planned" obsolescence is not a conspiracy to get you to buy more stuff. It is a natural evolutionary trend in products; and it is mostly a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. (Secondly, it's mostly not true. How often did a car in the fifties require a tune-up? New plugs, points, distributor cap, etc.? Every 10,000 miles or less for my 62 Ford Galaxy. My car today requires it's first tune up at 100,000 miles.)
Consider: My first IBM PC was $1500 bare (at a discount): No hard drive, no floppies, no monitor, no RAM. Just a box, a motherboard, a power supply, and a wonderful keyboard that felt so nice compared to my older Apple ][ minus. The keyboard alone had 500 parts. I know; I took one apart to "clean" it--bad idea. RAM cost $120 for 16K ("K"--not "M" not "G"). A 160K floppy drive was $350, down from the $500 I paid for my 144K Apple drives (traded a Honda 350 motorcycle for one). The first hard drive was 10MB for $1000. Total price of the Apple with all the cards, accessories, etc.? $7,000 in 1979. The IBM was a little cheaper in 1981. Those are 79/81 dollars so each one today would cost in the realm of $15,000 (assuming inflation halved the dollar--I don't know for sure.)
Was the IBM well built? Like a tank! Would that tank be useful today? Sure, if I ran DOS 3.3 and Word 1.1 that came on two floppy disks and its own mouse in the box, printed on a dot matrix Epson MX-100 ($1000 for one of those) and was content with GW Basic and ASCII character art. Of course that didn't happen and that old box is in a landfill somewhere and will be for a few thousand years. Hopefully someone recycled the case--it was heavy metal, but the rest is toast. Did I overpay? For me, not really. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I made the money back in software sales and it boosted my career tremendously. I got a lot out of the whole deal at a lot of levels.
But it's not about ME. It's about millions of people who couldn't possibly ever spend $15,000 on a PC who can now pick up a fully functional one for less than $500, maybe half that. It's about companies that can now afford to put a PC on EVERY desk and network them together (Not just a Mac for the Art Department.) The result is a tremendous productivity gain. Without it we'd be back in the stone age seventies. As a whole, we'd all be a lot worse off. "Cheap" PCs have empowered a generation. But the fact is in five years you're going to want another one anyway because the present one simply will not do all the new cool stuff that requires more RAM, bigger disks, greater resolution, 3-D displays, etc. Add it all up and you still have paid exponentially less than you did for that battle tank in 1981.
For you guys who have a broken RAZR--c'mon--you didn't buy that because of function. You just had to have the sleekest, coolest phone around. I've had my Treo 600 for several years, dropped it dozens of times; it doesn't care. Of course, it IS kind of bulky and fits in a huge case on my belt like a -er- geek. Those new thin phones WOULD fit in my pocket a lot better. The key pad is pretty cool looking. Nothing wrong with the Treo, but a new thin phone wouldn't be THAT expensive. I could pick one up pretty cheap, maybe for Christmas, then put my Treo in a drawer (Oh, there's my old Treo 170! Forgot it was there!)
So who planned this obsolescence? I think I just did!
Let's do a test. (We may actually be able to do this with historical data.) Take the average European city with houses made of stones, bricks, etc. Take a similar US/Canadian city with houses made of wood. Apply a 7.9 Richter scale quake. Measure resulting destruction. Would you rather be in a 17th century English brick house on the historical register with no changes allowed? Or in a modern American wood house building-code compliant? Would you rather have a tile roof in such a situation? or maybe composition?
FYI Re: Building code compliance. I've just participated in building a few houses. The new codes are really putting the screws to earthquake construction, literally. The new braces required between foundation and joists are really incredible. Zillions of nails in each brace and every hole must be filled. Contractors amy not want to do it, but they MUST use the new techniques or they don't pass inspection. The codes are evolutionary, but hey do keep getting tougher.
FYI: Wood houses. Seattle, for example, is only 150 years old. Tere are still lots of forests here, lots of wood. Great Britain, for example, ran out of oak to build the Royal Navy ships, so one of the admirals under Lord Nelson planted a bunch of oak trees on his property in hopes there would be enough oak for the Royal Navy to build ships in 1900.
For the life of me I do not understand how each PC could have cost so much. I was the admin for a public library for 25 years. I have installed many hundreds of library public-use PCs. My most recent full-PC installs, on Windows XP, were running about $800 each for brand new fully capable machines complete with per-seat security software of various kinds (the public is REALLY hard on machines) such as Centurion Guard and Fortres. Just before I left I installed thin clients which were running about $400 per seat (including the servers).
I realize lots of folks here see this as a Linux vs Windows issue. It's really not. The OS in this equation just isn't that much. The issue is total cost of installed base: dollars (pounds) spent divided by number of machines. These were 2500 POUNDS! That's got to be something like $4700 per machine.
Somebody screwed up.
I'm kind of surprised that the forward-thinking, technically-oriented, mensa-qualified slashdot crowd would be so negative about this (not universally, I realize.) I would have thought you would have taken a "we can solve this, go for it" approach instead of screaming it can't be done. For a positive approach, see: http://www.liftport.com/ Buy the book. Read the stories. Check out what's been done so far. It's just a matter of time. Naysayers will be left on earth.
Actually, this might be very cool. I'm sitting here downstairs on my laptop. I just backed up today's work on an SD card in the machine (Umm, that would be Drive F: because the elves at HP put in a @#$! partition they didn't tell me about.), and then on a USB drive connected to the machine (That would be Drive G:). It would be dandy if I could set up a simple wireless USB drive upstairs and zap this stuff up there to H:\HOME as well. No fuss remote backup, not quite off-site, but Hey! I'm retired; I don't get out much. I know I could "go thru the network" on a mapped network drive" but what if the other machines aren't on? Green power and all that. And I know it might be cool to send it to Mongolia or Google, but the fact is I don't quite trust my stuff in those places. So if it were cheap and simple, I'd buy it. At least the way I'm envisioning this (which may be entirely wrong), I could see its use.