Absolutely true. I had an Apple shop. Apple competed with IBM, but not with the clones. I could buy two clones for each Apple. I was absolutely desperate to get CPUs on as many desktops as possible. One vendor then replaced their dumb tubes (Hazeltine Modular Ones) with Intel. Then another vendor offered a mainframe backup system for our most critical enterprise system--via Intel. I really didn't have much choice. This was WAY before Windows. If Apple had just loosened up and not been so proprietary, clones would have resulted, their marketshare would not have plummeted, and it would be a way different world today. It's really too bad. I really felt forced into it, and I look back with regret.
Okay, before you take apart Cringley's idea entirely, read "iCon; Steve Jobs, the greatest second act in the history of business" by Jeffrey Young--just published recently by -umm- Wiley & Sons. Young makes a pretty convincing argument that Jobs is not done yet, and that his NeXT "project" is Microsoft. Young does not speculate on this merger, but these two stories surely fit well together.
I'm recently retired as an IT director for a public library. Two years ago I put WiFi in place at nine branches and INTENTIONALLY placed hubs near windows facing parking lots to allow WiFi access outside the buildings and outside normal open hours. We don't guarantee outide (or inside) 100% coverage. (Dooesn't work? Move to another chair!), but the idea is to provide free public access.
When I was in school they only had Apples and Apple gave the districts a special deal. When the IBM came out it was the same price as the Apples, but then something happened: the "clones." Now that clones cost $600-$800 for a full fledged machine, and Apple still thinks it needs those margins. Well, oh, dear! That's the main reason Apple's market share is in the single digits.
I work in a library that just received 1800 CD's, 30 to 40 copies of each CD (we have nine branches), and mostly junk, and even lots of remaindered stuff. These guys obviously just cleaned out their warehouses of dead wood. The AG of WA state is running around saying what a great win-win deal this is. Nonsense. I won't claim every single title is bad, but it's mostly junk. Lots and lots of junk.
Why would anyone want more than Zardax on an Apple ][? Does anyone else remember this? It was from Australia, used embedded commands much like Wordstar.
I am an e-rate administrator. I have been doing it now for 7 years. I'm the IT guy at my public library, but since no other administrator had the foggiest notion of e-rate, and since it helped pay for our T-1 lines, I got the job added to my IT duties. It is more properly a business office function, but there is no way the business office could have handled it. I have probably received about half a million dollars from e-rate in the first six years. Some observations:
1) E-rate does not pay for ANY equipment unless the poverty rate in your district is above a certain level. Reimbursement percentages are also pegged to the poverty level. Poverty level is measured by the percentage of studens eligible for free or reduced school lunches. If the poverty level is above 50%, the reimbursement rate is 80%. If the poverty level is, say, 6%, the reimbursement level is 40%. The rest fall in-between. You don't get to even apply for equipment unless you're in the 90% category. And THAT usually means urban-decay school districts or rural school district.
2) Most e-rate is for payment for POTS or WANs. A lot of that is tariffed, so there is no competition. There is very little fraud in this huge category, which accounts for the vast majority of erate funding.
3) E-rate funding for equipment actually discriminates against school districts that had the foresight to get tech savvy early on. We have 5 districts in our county. One was well-known early on for the qty and wuality of their computer infrastructure. Another didn't bother with tech at all. Both were at the same reimbursement rate. So whgen erate came along, guess who got a ton of money for infrastructure? The district that didn't know anything.
4) The bureaucracy of e-rate is almost unimaginable. My career has spanned 30 years so far and I've never seen anything like it. You must fill out a Form 470 to allow bidders to bid on your projects, even though, as I said above, this is mostly for tariffed services. The Form 471 must be filled out at least 30 days later, which details to the penny your projected expenses. Form 486 is to show when services actually start and Form 472 is for reimbursement and must be signed off by the telco in advance.
5) (And this is amazing). You must project the costs for services starting in July by December of the previous year and justify these projected expenses by showing bills from the previous year. In other words, Year 7, beginning in July, 2004, must be justified by bills received as far back as December, 2002 through November, 2003. As you know, telco bills are complex and ever-changing. If you happen to attenpt to justify with bills that times 12 show less than you;re asking for, they won't give it to you, so you have to find the biggest bill for the previous 12 months to 'prove' your case even though an average of the entire 12 months is more accurate.
6) If you over-estimate and don't actually spend the money you said you were going to, then, of course, you get reimbursed only for the amount you spend. If you UNDER estimate then, of course, you get reimbursed only for what you spent. This is the 'heads I win, tails you lose' rule.
7) You have to go through EACH bill by hand and ensur ethat you back out the fifty cents you spent on a directory listsing, because that'snot eligible.
8) In one case I know about, the school district provided educational services to the local prison, along with all their elementary schools and such. They were bumped up a notch in reimbursement %'s because the prison inmates all had complete room and board, therefore none of them were in "poverty" as measured by the free anb reduced school lunch numbers. They were 100% 'rich' and qualified only for the lowest rate (20%)
9) the papoerwork is so onerous on erate that many small library districts don't even bother. It costs more than its worth.
OK, I'm done now. I gotta go fill out a few 472's.
Why do you cringe? I'm replacing 150 public computers with $300 thin clients coming off a terminal server (well, a cluster of them), just exactly what you are talking about. Right now, if I need to change anything, I have to visit 150 computers individually, even for the tiniest tweak of a config file. Plus I have to lock these things down tight because John Q. is either stupid and wrecks stuff unintentionally, or he's trying to show me how clever he is by sabotaging the machines and attempting to hack my system. So that means stuff like Centurion Guard, Fortres, keys, and all kinds of crap that wastes my time.
With thin clients, I make the same change on the server and it's all done. It IS a return to the mainframe model, and it's one I'm extremely happy about because it will make my life so much simpler. Once I get these 150 done I'm going after 150 staff computers. Most people simply do not need real PCs, and half of them couldn't see a difference anyway. As long as they get a login screen and a desktop they couldn't care less if the files they create are stored on a server or locally, or whether they have a hard drive somewhere under their desks. Sure, there are a few folks who are going to need local storage for various reasons, so they can keep their PCs. But the vast majority simply don't need it. I'm also saving money. Even when you amortize the servers over the number of thin clients they can support, my capital cost is half what it would be for PCs.
I surely would not advocate that approach for any of us, perish the thought. But in the real world in a production environment, which slashdot certainly is not, it's a viable solution.
I've found that, too. Ad-aware gets a lot of stuff, but Spybot run AFTER Ad-aware always picks up a few more. One by itself doesn't do enough. I now run both about weekly and pick up less than a dozen at a time. The first time I ran it, Yowzee!
I have a first cousin who is a deeply religious man. His father was a minister. His mother (my aunt) was a born again Christian. He has inherited this. He believes with every fiber of his being that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, etc. He simply does not understand why anyone would not be a Christian because it is so certain that if they do not accept Jesus as their personal Savior they are going to Hell, period.
Although I believe he has a right to his beliefs, I feel the same about Jews and Muslims, and even the Mormons. I mean no disrespect to Christians when I say that from my standpoint I don't understand why my cousin is such an idiot. It is not so much that he is a Christian fundamentalist, but that he brooks no opposition. IMO, he is a very scary fellow.
It's the same with the Linux uber alles crowd. They are so convinced of their superiority, so derogatory of any other beliefs (MS being the primary one), and so disdainful of people who actually use and are comfortable NOT using Linux, that there's no talking to them.
From my standpoint, Linux geeks and my cousin look the same, sound the same, have the same belief structure, and are similarly psychotic. I don't expect either group to really understand a simple fundamental fact: The world can get along without you. And I'm not sure it wouldn't be a better place.
There was a recent case of a store employee who was fired. He brought suit against the store for wrongful termination. The company said he was an alcoholic, which wa spart of the reason he was fired. To prove it they trotted out his alcohol purchases that had been recorded because he used his card in the store. That was challenged, of course. I'm not sure how the case turned out.
Theft detection. Checkpoint Systems and 3M are two companies that make them, probably a lot more. You stick a book down your pants and walk out the door between those two post things and 'beep' the buzzer does his thing. In theory.
I support about 500 boxes: a lot to some, few to others, it's all relative. Most of them are Dells. Tech support from Dell varies from excellent to non-existant; it just depends. I've had support orders submitted that never ever got a reply (for a dead system) even though I have the email confirmations to prove they were submitted (That's happened with orders as well.) On the other hand, I've had a new power supply on my desk within a day. I have a test bench and I usually know precisely what is wrong before I contact them, but many times I have to fight them: a blown hard drive and I have to go thru all these diags.
Given all these issues we've grown to simply not expect any competent tech support. PCs are a commodity item. We buy them dozens at a time. If one breaks, it's far easier to replace it and use the broken one for parts. I don't care if it is under warranty. It is FASTER and LESS EXPENSIVE to just replace it.
Yes, that has implications for the land fill. I appreciate that issue. But when MTBF menas sometime TODAY, I simply cannot afford to believe tech support even exists.
I've had my rear-projection, CRT 51" big screen for nine years now (A Prologic). There isn't ANY discernable burn in on this set. I also consider it cheaply made--lots of plywood used in constructing the massive case, for example. I'm looking forward to an LCD the same size as my current set in 16:9, meaning I'll have to get a 62" diagonal to get the same height I have now. But as far as burn in on this set? It hasn't happened.
After all the hype, all the buzz, and all the "we're savvy on the Net" hyperbole, the plain fact of the matter is It-Didn't-Work. There have been some great and insightful posts here on why that happened, with lots of "if he woulda, coulda, shoulda" quarterbacking, but that doesn't disguise the fact that for whatever reason It-Didn't-Work. I suspect that the 'Net exaggerated the phenomenon, but it is not at all new or soley as a result of the 'Net. After all, though he may have gathered it there, Dean did not blow $40 Million on the 'Net.
Remember when Jesse Jackson was surging in the polls because of his "Rainbow Coalition" during the Mondale-Gary Hart fight? The hype was tremendous, and Jackson started to believe it. Amazed at the buzz Jackson, in a major speech, intoned, "There's somethin' happenin' in this land!"
Well, when push came to shove and people actually had to choose their candidate they 'came to their senses' (in quotes in case there are some Jackson fans out there) and voted in a middle-of-the-road, basically boring sort of guy who got himself trounced by....George (Herbert Walker) Bush!
Could it be, instead, that people took a good look at Dean, saw through the hype and bluster and said, "No, thank you."?
I live near Seattle and hgave DirectTV. The rain has NEVER cut out satellite TV reception. I've had it about a year and a half. It sucks for my ISP, which does cut out in the rain, but the TV half has always been perfect. FWIW
It may seem grim at first, but there's plenty of scholarship money out there, particularly if you've prepared yourself. My daughter's business is to find scholarship money for students. She typically finds $200K to $300K in money for qualified students. (Obviously, this is because students apply to more than one school; they need to reject the money for schools they wind up not attending.) For my niece, she found $350K, which wound up a full ride at, in this case, Western Washington University. My daughter pays attention to grants versus loans, with emphasis on the former. I think she charges something like $600 for the entire service.
From what I've seen watching her with 'her' students, I don't think there is any reason at all for anyone to claim they "can't afford" school. These grants and scholarships don't just fall into your lap, and you're not 'entitled' to any of it. They aren't 'just' for certain classes of people. And they probably aren't for 'C' students who've done nothing notable during their high school careers. You have to be prepared and have done good work in high school, and then you have to work for it and be persistent.
Right. 250 mass grave sites have been reported and only 40 or so have been investigated so far:
+ 1983: 8,000 Kurds rounded up an executed
+ 1988: The "Anfal campaign" 180,000 Iraquis disappeared
+ 1986: Sarin, VX, and Tabun chemical weapons kill between 8,000 and 24,000 Kurds, injure thousands more. There are pictures of the attacks where you can see the gas over the villages and pictures of the victims, not to mention Iraqi documentation.
+ 1991: Tens of thousands of Shites killed
+ Iran-Iraq War: Up to 1 million dead. Numbers likely unknowable. Documented chemical attacks against Iranians. Iran estimates 60,000 affected.
+ 4000 Kurdish villages wiped off the map.
+ Human Rights Watch reports from 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds killed in the various attacks and purges over the years with 500,000 becoming refugees.
+ So far: 300,000 victims in mass graves. Some with hands tied behind their backs apparently buried alive.
And we also have credible reports of medical experimentation, beatings, crucifxion, hammering nails into fingers and hands, amputating penis and breasts with an electric carving knife, spraying victim's eyes with insecticide, branding with a hot iron, raping children and wives in front of parents and spouse, nailing tongues to wooden boards, extracting teeth with pliers, cutting off of tongues, victims shredded in plastic shredding machines.
Victims so far: approaching a million in a country with a population of something like 25 million.
This is just another non-issue because Dell doesn't give a rip about slashdot users, who are an extremely small percentage of the marketplace. Few people care. The largest single use of a CD/DVD is simply to load programs like your latest TurboTax or Adobe Photo Elements. Someone who really pushes the envelope may use it for backup, but that's a stretch. Who really watches DVDs on their PC? Maybe in a dorm room, but in the real world, unbless you can buy a laptop with a 50 inch screen, people actually have TV sets and a DVD player.
Will all this converge? Sure, in a few years! But since yer average Dell lasts only three years anyway, it doesn't matter. Fry's sold an Internet ready PC (linux) for $99.95 during the holidays. They are a commodity item. People will just by another one. And by then, we'll have new standards to worry about.
Nah. Ten years ago I told my colleagues I thought this web thing might turn out to be pretty cool. But I was still shoving stuff onto a gopher. I was also using Pine. Oh, wait! I'm STILL using Pine!
I believe PDAs are going to be tremendously transformed over the next few years.
1. Convergence is going to happen with a vengance. The Treo 600 is just the start. More and more apps will make it to the PDA. Speech recognition is one, and that sets up for another dybamic...
PDAs don't really need screens and keyboards if you can talk to them and they can talk to you. If they don't need those components, they can get a whole lot smaller. The next generation PDAs will be like a hearing aid, and the ones after that will be built into your glasses or an implant. That means less power, so less battery. Besides, it will be able to run on your body heat if not tap into your own body's electrical system, so it won't need a battery. Every improvemnt along these lines dwindles the size even more. A heads-up display, made transparent or opaque, ought to handle those times when you need to really observe rather than consult.
A combination of AI and connectivity will mean your PDA is your first line of defense in many of life's situations. Get pulled over by a cop and it will tell you what to do, what NOT to do, and contact your lawyer. Need a cop and it will call them and know just how long it's going to take to get there.
Medicine: It will have a complete medical history of you, remind you to take your meds, and monitor your blood pressure and other vita signs. If you have a heart attack it will call 911 with your location and be the first thing the medics consult when they get to you.
Personality: You'll be able to choose its level of humor and sarcasm. Although clearly a machine, people will develop meaningful relationships with them, at least they'll think so.
Connectivity: Everything you can think of, including your own house, which you'll call up to turn the heat up since you're coming home early. All teh Wi-Fi/cell connectivity you want will be built in.
Finances: It will know everything you do and provide access to your dough. If you get overdrawn it will be intentional because it will have real time access. It will have all the ATM/debit/credit stuff all on-hand. It will also be able to shop for you and tell you where the best deal is.
It will know all your friends and business associates and help remind you, "This is Joe. He's a Cougar. He knows you're a Husky, but don't rub it in. His kid just joined the Navy. He thinks LOTR sucks, and Rush is Right, so be careful. He drinks Guiness. His budget is 250K and he's looking to upgrade the Ciscos."
You'd never think of leaving home without this. Indeed, since it very well may be built-in, you won't have to worry about it. Just keep up the subscription. '
Re:And Bill Gates once said: NOT!
on
First Computers
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· Score: 2, Insightful
By BILL GATES c.1996 Bloomberg Business News
[...] QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
It's still the same world with the same economic realities. This is not a US vs the rest of the world issue. Turning anything anyone says here into that is just bullshit (and it happens all the time). When "workers' rights" affects efficiency, it's just a matter of time before an 'adjustment' happens. In the US unions have often bid up workers' wages to the point that companies can't compete efficiently and jobs are lost. Witness US steel companies trying to hide behind tariffs. Didn't work. Faced with EU retaliation, they were dismissed. That is entirely proper and the EU was right in insisting the US play by the new rules. Get efficient or die. If you need to learn how to make steel, visit a EU factory. Steel can whine all they want, blame government for their troubles, or whatever. (IMHO Bush correographed that whole issue. He placated steel for a few months knowing full well what would happen. When the EU called him on it he could say, "Hey, guys, I'm really sorry. I tried to help, but we just can't go there any more.")
But it works both ways. Witness recent strikes in France over pension plans. Citizens feel it is "their right!" to retire at 55 and get a full salary for the rest of their unproductive lives. That's not going to work either and there will be consequences down the road as this 'entitlement generation' is forced to get a life. The rest of the citizens of France simply cannot afford to keep the boomer generation in the style to which they have become accustomed.
The only time this doesn't work is when there is not good communication/transportation between high and low pressure areas. In the comm area there are few barriers left. If there IS a flow, wind is created, and the high pressure flows to the low pressure until they equal out. In other words, it sucks. If there IS NOT a flow because of barriers (like oceans, for example), then artifically high pressure areas remain. Witness the lock the US West Coast longshoreman have on shipping. There a data entry clerk makes $120K per year. Is that efficient? Hell No. It can't last, but there will be hell to pay to make it go away. And it's the exact same hell the EU faces with artifically high pensions. It's the same dynamic at work.
One commonality between the US and the EU is the rights of workers in government, and the resulting inefficiencies and bureaucracy. Both suffer enormously from it and as a result government not only has a hard time being productive, it becomes a drag on the economy of the respective countries.
It matters not whit what country you're from or what philosophy you espouse. The equation is this: More coddling of workers leads to less accountability, efficiency, and productivity. Compare the civil service of ANY country to the self-employed and figure out just who is more motivated.
Aren't they landing TWO vehicles in the next month or so? We heard the same thing when China launched one man into space, orbited him around the earth a few times, and down he came. Good for them. That's great. But, umm, NASA was on the moon in 1969. And even the beleagured shuttle is, like, reusable, not just spam in a can atop an ICBM. I acknowledge the issues with NASA, many of them brought up here, but just because one otehr agency manages to get one vehicle to Mars does not mean NASA has 'lost the edge."
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely true. I had an Apple shop. Apple competed with IBM, but not with the clones. I could buy two clones for each Apple. I was absolutely desperate to get CPUs on as many desktops as possible. One vendor then replaced their dumb tubes (Hazeltine Modular Ones) with Intel. Then another vendor offered a mainframe backup system for our most critical enterprise system--via Intel. I really didn't have much choice. This was WAY before Windows. If Apple had just loosened up and not been so proprietary, clones would have resulted, their marketshare would not have plummeted, and it would be a way different world today. It's really too bad. I really felt forced into it, and I look back with regret.
Okay, before you take apart Cringley's idea entirely, read "iCon; Steve Jobs, the greatest second act in the history of business" by Jeffrey Young--just published recently by -umm- Wiley & Sons. Young makes a pretty convincing argument that Jobs is not done yet, and that his NeXT "project" is Microsoft. Young does not speculate on this merger, but these two stories surely fit well together.
--if I only still had my Apple ][
I'm recently retired as an IT director for a public library. Two years ago I put WiFi in place at nine branches and INTENTIONALLY placed hubs near windows facing parking lots to allow WiFi access outside the buildings and outside normal open hours. We don't guarantee outide (or inside) 100% coverage. (Dooesn't work? Move to another chair!), but the idea is to provide free public access.
When I was in school they only had Apples and Apple gave the districts a special deal. When the IBM came out it was the same price as the Apples, but then something happened: the "clones." Now that clones cost $600-$800 for a full fledged machine, and Apple still thinks it needs those margins. Well, oh, dear! That's the main reason Apple's market share is in the single digits.
I work in a library that just received 1800 CD's, 30 to 40 copies of each CD (we have nine branches), and mostly junk, and even lots of remaindered stuff. These guys obviously just cleaned out their warehouses of dead wood. The AG of WA state is running around saying what a great win-win deal this is. Nonsense. I won't claim every single title is bad, but it's mostly junk. Lots and lots of junk.
Why would anyone want more than Zardax on an Apple ][? Does anyone else remember this? It was from Australia, used embedded commands much like Wordstar.
I am an e-rate administrator. I have been doing it now for 7 years. I'm the IT guy at my public library, but since no other administrator had the foggiest notion of e-rate, and since it helped pay for our T-1 lines, I got the job added to my IT duties. It is more properly a business office function, but there is no way the business office could have handled it. I have probably received about half a million dollars from e-rate in the first six years. Some observations:
1) E-rate does not pay for ANY equipment unless the poverty rate in your district is above a certain level. Reimbursement percentages are also pegged to the poverty level. Poverty level is measured by the percentage of studens eligible for free or reduced school lunches. If the poverty level is above 50%, the reimbursement rate is 80%. If the poverty level is, say, 6%, the reimbursement level is 40%. The rest fall in-between. You don't get to even apply for equipment unless you're in the 90% category. And THAT usually means urban-decay school districts or rural school district.
2) Most e-rate is for payment for POTS or WANs. A lot of that is tariffed, so there is no competition. There is very little fraud in this huge category, which accounts for the vast majority of erate funding.
3) E-rate funding for equipment actually discriminates against school districts that had the foresight to get tech savvy early on. We have 5 districts in our county. One was well-known early on for the qty and wuality of their computer infrastructure. Another didn't bother with tech at all. Both were at the same reimbursement rate. So whgen erate came along, guess who got a ton of money for infrastructure? The district that didn't know anything.
4) The bureaucracy of e-rate is almost unimaginable. My career has spanned 30 years so far and I've never seen anything like it. You must fill out a Form 470 to allow bidders to bid on your projects, even though, as I said above, this is mostly for tariffed services. The Form 471 must be filled out at least 30 days later, which details to the penny your projected expenses. Form 486 is to show when services actually start and Form 472 is for reimbursement and must be signed off by the telco in advance.
5) (And this is amazing). You must project the costs for services starting in July by December of the previous year and justify these projected expenses by showing bills from the previous year. In other words, Year 7, beginning in July, 2004, must be justified by bills received as far back as December, 2002 through November, 2003. As you know, telco bills are complex and ever-changing. If you happen to attenpt to justify with bills that times 12 show less than you;re asking for, they won't give it to you, so you have to find the biggest bill for the previous 12 months to 'prove' your case even though an average of the entire 12 months is more accurate.
6) If you over-estimate and don't actually spend the money you said you were going to, then, of course, you get reimbursed only for the amount you spend. If you UNDER estimate then, of course, you get reimbursed only for what you spent. This is the 'heads I win, tails you lose' rule.
7) You have to go through EACH bill by hand and ensur ethat you back out the fifty cents you spent on a directory listsing, because that'snot eligible.
8) In one case I know about, the school district provided educational services to the local prison, along with all their elementary schools and such. They were bumped up a notch in reimbursement %'s because the prison inmates all had complete room and board, therefore none of them were in "poverty" as measured by the free anb reduced school lunch numbers. They were 100% 'rich' and qualified only for the lowest rate (20%)
9) the papoerwork is so onerous on erate that many small library districts don't even bother. It costs more than its worth.
OK, I'm done now. I gotta go fill out a few 472's.
Why do you cringe? I'm replacing 150 public computers with $300 thin clients coming off a terminal server (well, a cluster of them), just exactly what you are talking about. Right now, if I need to change anything, I have to visit 150 computers individually, even for the tiniest tweak of a config file. Plus I have to lock these things down tight because John Q. is either stupid and wrecks stuff unintentionally, or he's trying to show me how clever he is by sabotaging the machines and attempting to hack my system. So that means stuff like Centurion Guard, Fortres, keys, and all kinds of crap that wastes my time.
With thin clients, I make the same change on the server and it's all done. It IS a return to the mainframe model, and it's one I'm extremely happy about because it will make my life so much simpler. Once I get these 150 done I'm going after 150 staff computers. Most people simply do not need real PCs, and half of them couldn't see a difference anyway. As long as they get a login screen and a desktop they couldn't care less if the files they create are stored on a server or locally, or whether they have a hard drive somewhere under their desks. Sure, there are a few folks who are going to need local storage for various reasons, so they can keep their PCs. But the vast majority simply don't need it. I'm also saving money. Even when you amortize the servers over the number of thin clients they can support, my capital cost is half what it would be for PCs.
I surely would not advocate that approach for any of us, perish the thought. But in the real world in a production environment, which slashdot certainly is not, it's a viable solution.
I've found that, too. Ad-aware gets a lot of stuff, but Spybot run AFTER Ad-aware always picks up a few more. One by itself doesn't do enough. I now run both about weekly and pick up less than a dozen at a time. The first time I ran it, Yowzee!
I have a first cousin who is a deeply religious man. His father was a minister. His mother (my aunt) was a born again Christian. He has inherited this. He believes with every fiber of his being that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, etc. He simply does not understand why anyone would not be a Christian because it is so certain that if they do not accept Jesus as their personal Savior they are going to Hell, period.
Although I believe he has a right to his beliefs, I feel the same about Jews and Muslims, and even the Mormons. I mean no disrespect to Christians when I say that from my standpoint I don't understand why my cousin is such an idiot. It is not so much that he is a Christian fundamentalist, but that he brooks no opposition. IMO, he is a very scary fellow.
It's the same with the Linux uber alles crowd. They are so convinced of their superiority, so derogatory of any other beliefs (MS being the primary one), and so disdainful of people who actually use and are comfortable NOT using Linux, that there's no talking to them.
From my standpoint, Linux geeks and my cousin look the same, sound the same, have the same belief structure, and are similarly psychotic. I don't expect either group to really understand a simple fundamental fact: The world can get along without you. And I'm not sure it wouldn't be a better place.
There was a recent case of a store employee who was fired. He brought suit against the store for wrongful termination. The company said he was an alcoholic, which wa spart of the reason he was fired. To prove it they trotted out his alcohol purchases that had been recorded because he used his card in the store. That was challenged, of course. I'm not sure how the case turned out.
Theft detection. Checkpoint Systems and 3M are two companies that make them, probably a lot more. You stick a book down your pants and walk out the door between those two post things and 'beep' the buzzer does his thing. In theory.
I support about 500 boxes: a lot to some, few to others, it's all relative. Most of them are Dells. Tech support from Dell varies from excellent to non-existant; it just depends. I've had support orders submitted that never ever got a reply (for a dead system) even though I have the email confirmations to prove they were submitted (That's happened with orders as well.) On the other hand, I've had a new power supply on my desk within a day. I have a test bench and I usually know precisely what is wrong before I contact them, but many times I have to fight them: a blown hard drive and I have to go thru all these diags.
Given all these issues we've grown to simply not expect any competent tech support. PCs are a commodity item. We buy them dozens at a time. If one breaks, it's far easier to replace it and use the broken one for parts. I don't care if it is under warranty. It is FASTER and LESS EXPENSIVE to just replace it.
Yes, that has implications for the land fill. I appreciate that issue. But when MTBF menas sometime TODAY, I simply cannot afford to believe tech support even exists.
Libraries in King and Kitsap Counties in Washington State have had free Wi-Fo for almost two years. No restrictions. No time limits.
I've had my rear-projection, CRT 51" big screen for nine years now (A Prologic). There isn't ANY discernable burn in on this set. I also consider it cheaply made--lots of plywood used in constructing the massive case, for example. I'm looking forward to an LCD the same size as my current set in 16:9, meaning I'll have to get a 62" diagonal to get the same height I have now. But as far as burn in on this set? It hasn't happened.
After all the hype, all the buzz, and all the "we're savvy on the Net" hyperbole, the plain fact of the matter is It-Didn't-Work. There have been some great and insightful posts here on why that happened, with lots of "if he woulda, coulda, shoulda" quarterbacking, but that doesn't disguise the fact that for whatever reason It-Didn't-Work. I suspect that the 'Net exaggerated the phenomenon, but it is not at all new or soley as a result of the 'Net. After all, though he may have gathered it there, Dean did not blow $40 Million on the 'Net.
Remember when Jesse Jackson was surging in the polls because of his "Rainbow Coalition" during the Mondale-Gary Hart fight? The hype was tremendous, and Jackson started to believe it. Amazed at the buzz Jackson, in a major speech, intoned, "There's somethin' happenin' in this land!"
Well, when push came to shove and people actually had to choose their candidate they 'came to their senses' (in quotes in case there are some Jackson fans out there) and voted in a middle-of-the-road, basically boring sort of guy who got himself trounced by....George (Herbert Walker) Bush!
Could it be, instead, that people took a good look at Dean, saw through the hype and bluster and said, "No, thank you."?
I live near Seattle and hgave DirectTV. The rain has NEVER cut out satellite TV reception. I've had it about a year and a half. It sucks for my ISP, which does cut out in the rain, but the TV half has always been perfect. FWIW
It may seem grim at first, but there's plenty of scholarship money out there, particularly if you've prepared yourself. My daughter's business is to find scholarship money for students. She typically finds $200K to $300K in money for qualified students. (Obviously, this is because students apply to more than one school; they need to reject the money for schools they wind up not attending.) For my niece, she found $350K, which wound up a full ride at, in this case, Western Washington University. My daughter pays attention to grants versus loans, with emphasis on the former. I think she charges something like $600 for the entire service.
From what I've seen watching her with 'her' students, I don't think there is any reason at all for anyone to claim they "can't afford" school. These grants and scholarships don't just fall into your lap, and you're not 'entitled' to any of it. They aren't 'just' for certain classes of people. And they probably aren't for 'C' students who've done nothing notable during their high school careers. You have to be prepared and have done good work in high school, and then you have to work for it and be persistent.
Right. 250 mass grave sites have been reported and only 40 or so have been investigated so far:
+ 1983: 8,000 Kurds rounded up an executed
+ 1988: The "Anfal campaign" 180,000 Iraquis disappeared
+ 1986: Sarin, VX, and Tabun chemical weapons kill between 8,000 and 24,000 Kurds, injure thousands more. There are pictures of the attacks where you can see the gas over the villages and pictures of the victims, not to mention Iraqi documentation.
+ 1991: Tens of thousands of Shites killed
+ Iran-Iraq War: Up to 1 million dead. Numbers likely unknowable. Documented chemical attacks against Iranians. Iran estimates 60,000 affected.
+ 4000 Kurdish villages wiped off the map.
+ Human Rights Watch reports from 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds killed in the various attacks and purges over the years with 500,000 becoming refugees.
+ So far: 300,000 victims in mass graves. Some with hands tied behind their backs apparently buried alive.
And we also have credible reports of medical experimentation, beatings, crucifxion, hammering nails into fingers and hands, amputating penis and breasts with an electric carving knife, spraying victim's eyes with insecticide, branding with a hot iron, raping children and wives in front of parents and spouse, nailing tongues to wooden boards, extracting teeth with pliers, cutting off of tongues, victims shredded in plastic shredding machines.
Victims so far: approaching a million in a country with a population of something like 25 million.
This is just another non-issue because Dell doesn't give a rip about slashdot users, who are an extremely small percentage of the marketplace. Few people care. The largest single use of a CD/DVD is simply to load programs like your latest TurboTax or Adobe Photo Elements. Someone who really pushes the envelope may use it for backup, but that's a stretch. Who really watches DVDs on their PC? Maybe in a dorm room, but in the real world, unbless you can buy a laptop with a 50 inch screen, people actually have TV sets and a DVD player.
Will all this converge? Sure, in a few years! But since yer average Dell lasts only three years anyway, it doesn't matter. Fry's sold an Internet ready PC (linux) for $99.95 during the holidays. They are a commodity item. People will just by another one. And by then, we'll have new standards to worry about.
"Standards" is an oxymoron.
Nah. Ten years ago I told my colleagues I thought this web thing might turn out to be pretty cool. But I was still shoving stuff onto a gopher. I was also using Pine. Oh, wait! I'm STILL using Pine!
I believe PDAs are going to be tremendously transformed over the next few years.
1. Convergence is going to happen with a vengance. The Treo 600 is just the start. More and more apps will make it to the PDA. Speech recognition is one, and that sets up for another dybamic...
PDAs don't really need screens and keyboards if you can talk to them and they can talk to you. If they don't need those components, they can get a whole lot smaller. The next generation PDAs will be like a hearing aid, and the ones after that will be built into your glasses or an implant. That means less power, so less battery. Besides, it will be able to run on your body heat if not tap into your own body's electrical system, so it won't need a battery. Every improvemnt along these lines dwindles the size even more. A heads-up display, made transparent or opaque, ought to handle those times when you need to really observe rather than consult.
A combination of AI and connectivity will mean your PDA is your first line of defense in many of life's situations. Get pulled over by a cop and it will tell you what to do, what NOT to do, and contact your lawyer. Need a cop and it will call them and know just how long it's going to take to get there.
Medicine: It will have a complete medical history of you, remind you to take your meds, and monitor your blood pressure and other vita signs. If you have a heart attack it will call 911 with your location and be the first thing the medics consult when they get to you.
Personality: You'll be able to choose its level of humor and sarcasm. Although clearly a machine, people will develop meaningful relationships with them, at least they'll think so.
Connectivity: Everything you can think of, including your own house, which you'll call up to turn the heat up since you're coming home early. All teh Wi-Fi/cell connectivity you want will be built in.
Finances: It will know everything you do and provide access to your dough. If you get overdrawn it will be intentional because it will have real time access. It will have all the ATM/debit/credit stuff all on-hand. It will also be able to shop for you and tell you where the best deal is.
It will know all your friends and business associates and help remind you, "This is Joe. He's a Cougar. He knows you're a Husky, but don't rub it in. His kid just joined the Navy. He thinks LOTR sucks, and Rush is Right, so be careful. He drinks Guiness. His budget is 250K and he's looking to upgrade the Ciscos."
You'd never think of leaving home without this. Indeed, since it very well may be built-in, you won't have to worry about it. Just keep up the subscription.
'
By BILL GATES
c.1996 Bloomberg Business News
[...]
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
It's still the same world with the same economic realities. This is not a US vs the rest of the world issue. Turning anything anyone says here into that is just bullshit (and it happens all the time). When "workers' rights" affects efficiency, it's just a matter of time before an 'adjustment' happens. In the US unions have often bid up workers' wages to the point that companies can't compete efficiently and jobs are lost. Witness US steel companies trying to hide behind tariffs. Didn't work. Faced with EU retaliation, they were dismissed. That is entirely proper and the EU was right in insisting the US play by the new rules. Get efficient or die. If you need to learn how to make steel, visit a EU factory. Steel can whine all they want, blame government for their troubles, or whatever. (IMHO Bush correographed that whole issue. He placated steel for a few months knowing full well what would happen. When the EU called him on it he could say, "Hey, guys, I'm really sorry. I tried to help, but we just can't go there any more.")
But it works both ways. Witness recent strikes in France over pension plans. Citizens feel it is "their right!" to retire at 55 and get a full salary for the rest of their unproductive lives. That's not going to work either and there will be consequences down the road as this 'entitlement generation' is forced to get a life. The rest of the citizens of France simply cannot afford to keep the boomer generation in the style to which they have become accustomed.
The only time this doesn't work is when there is not good communication/transportation between high and low pressure areas. In the comm area there are few barriers left. If there IS a flow, wind is created, and the high pressure flows to the low pressure until they equal out. In other words, it sucks. If there IS NOT a flow because of barriers (like oceans, for example), then artifically high pressure areas remain. Witness the lock the US West Coast longshoreman have on shipping. There a data entry clerk makes $120K per year. Is that efficient? Hell No. It can't last, but there will be hell to pay to make it go away. And it's the exact same hell the EU faces with artifically high pensions. It's the same dynamic at work.
One commonality between the US and the EU is the rights of workers in government, and the resulting inefficiencies and bureaucracy. Both suffer enormously from it and as a result government not only has a hard time being productive, it becomes a drag on the economy of the respective countries.
It matters not whit what country you're from or what philosophy you espouse. The equation is this: More coddling of workers leads to less accountability, efficiency, and productivity. Compare the civil service of ANY country to the self-employed and figure out just who is more motivated.
Aren't they landing TWO vehicles in the next month or so? We heard the same thing when China launched one man into space, orbited him around the earth a few times, and down he came. Good for them. That's great. But, umm, NASA was on the moon in 1969. And even the beleagured shuttle is, like, reusable, not just spam in a can atop an ICBM. I acknowledge the issues with NASA, many of them brought up here, but just because one otehr agency manages to get one vehicle to Mars does not mean NASA has 'lost the edge."