Broadcasters blocking digital stream ripping is never going to be a reality because stream ripping does not only happen at the application level, it happens at the hardware level. As long as developers on the Windows, Mac, and Linux/BSD platforms can hook into the sound hardware, then it will be impossible to control the digital copying and recording of streamed music.
Upon installing IE 7 Beta 2, my W3SVC service stopped working. Removing the beta fixed nothing. Re-installing IIS had no effect. Finally, I had to uninstall my wireless cell card software to get things working again.
What new features or technologies can Windows users expect to see in upcoming versions of Internet Explorer (and IE OS integration) that will help protect them from spyware/malware, viruses, browser hijacking (inadvertantly installed BHO's)? Furthermore, has Microsoft considered any type of registry tracking tool to help assist users in removing unwanted software that may have hijacked thier PCs?
Any file that I seriously need to send through I rename to the same extension, but with an underscore as the last letter..zip files go across as.zi_.mdb files go across as.md_
My friends all understand the naming convention and we have no problems sending anything through GMail or Outlook for that matter.
I believe that Toyota has addressed any battery issues that existed. Currently, when purchasing a Toyota, your battery is under warranty for 8 years or 100,000 miles.
Another concept the article does not delve into is those of us that will be paying cash for the car. We don't lose money in financing (although we lose it through loss of interest on $30K).
Our local shop in the East-Cleveland, OH area is Java John's at http://www.javajohns.com/. It's a very cool setup with free WiFi and great coffee. It's in a lower-income area of town so it hasn't benefitted from the yuppies stopping in all the time.
Hopefully it won't go out of a business - it's a very cool place.
I would have to disagree with the poster - significant researching efforts have been put into question answering and factual data retrieval from the web. Visit the University of Massachusetts Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval website. For a more specific project, check out QuASM
I'm in a similar situation; however, there's one big difference - I didn't mind taking on the additional responsibilities. I just made that point that I was saving the company additional money by not re-hiring someone or outsourcing the job to a local consulting company.
As for the 1% metric, I would have to disagree (on the network admin side). It's closer to 5%, which isn't really a big deal. The big time crunch comes in when you set it all up - after setup, you will spend 0% of your time maintaining things (especially if you don't worry about firmware upgrades and patches).
Now, if you add in system admin to the whole bunch, people will start treating you like a help desk - how do I do this in Excel/Word/PowerPoint, why doesn't this website work, etc. In my experience sys admin will consume a lot more of your time than the network side because the sys admin side deals with people, not just hardware.
Thinking this through further, what business users need is an inexpensive open-source solution architecture that provides a HTTP-based syncronization mechinism for transferring mail between handhelds and corporate servers.
Blackberry has done the ultimate-super-expensive version of this where it is completely closed-source. They've even brought it to the level of selling their own hardware.
A successful open-sourced project surrounding this topic would do the following:
1. define an xml/soap based protocol for formatting and transmitting email to mobile devices. keeping in mind that this is a business-geared standard, you would want support for encryption, authentication, pass-through authentication, synchronization, etc.
2. somehow hype this so that everyone begins to include it in their products as THE protocol for mobile email syncronization
3. build a server-end piece that integrates with all of the industry standard mail servers
4. build plug-ins for mail clients that utilize this protocol.
Problems that will arise: Microsoft will embrace the protocol, but then create its own protocol called the eProtocol (enhanced-protocol). They'll tout it as the new industry standard and incorporate their new "e" version into Exchange Server 2015. By 2017, everyone will realize that eProtocol sucks and that the standard protocol needs serious revisions. That will lead us back to this same conversation we're in right now. But, by that time, XML and SOAP will be the old industry standard and we'll find even more bloated ways of representing data by encapsulating it with somehting new...but this won't matter because we'll be surfing on our mobile devices at DSL speeds.
The primary users of mobile phones with Windows Mobile are business users - and business users use the phones becaus ehtey nicely integrate into their Windows environment (Exchange, Blackberry, Word, Excel, contacts, emails, etc.)
If they can develop a Linux mobile device that syncs with Exchange or Blackberry (wirelessly like ActiveSync), it would be money.
Although this may be a step in the right direction, Dayton is Nowhereville, USA. We need a big city to jump on board, then others will begin to do the same. At this time, Dayton is not going to make a big impact. Think of it: pretend you run a big city. Free WiFi keeps rearing it's head and you beign to wonder if it's a good thing. Your next step isn't going to think of Dayton, OH...boy, Dayton is doing free WiFi, we should.
Long term IT projects are doomed from the start unless those administrating the project and those performing the project can keep on task.
I have found the main suspects of a failed IT project to be the following:
Lack of customer understanding (both of technology and what their end=product should be)
Over-designing a project
Poor forward-planning and design specs
Scope creep
The "moving target" problem
(1) Technology inherently advances, but many of your end users don't. For example, a database driven feature-rich web application may be just the thing your client needs; however, end-users think of and use solutions they are already comfortable with - they would rather pass around a spreadsheet via email rather than utilize the web app. Often times, the inability for end-users to think of new technology that could benefit them creates a brickwall between them and the develper. The developer has his blinders on because he's getting off about designing a sophistocated system, and the end-user has his blinders on because he can't possibly think why anyone would need anything but Excel (because it already does everything). These problems lead right into my second and third points:
(2)The invariable amount of disconnect between the end-user and the developer causes problems in the initial design specifications of the project - the developer over-analyzes the situation and tries to leverage new technologies (which I call over-technification), often times over-designing something incredibly simple. Due to this over-designing (and other factors), many IT projects suffer from point (3): poor design specs. For whatever reason it may be (complexity, lack of client understanding, over-technification, etc.) the developer can be left to create the design specs by himself without the assistance and review of the client. The greater problem will come down the line because the expert on the end-product functionality shoudl really be the client - they know the nuances and exceptions encountered in their data and tasks. The developer doesn't understand these subtle things that the client knows about. As the client's role in design specification lessens, we see more and more of my fourth point appearing.
(4) As the client begins to see an emerging product based on the initial specification, they realize they forgot something (or the developer forgot something). This leads to scope creep - a customer now wants to add more features. Some times, this will lead to a complete redesign in the project, other times not; however, it always results in an increasing timeline.
(5) My last point is in regards to the "moving target". Due to scope creep, redesign, and changing needs from the customer, developers are preasured into adding features instead of completeing the agreed upon specification and then beginning a new project lifecycle to incorporate the new features. These circumstances create the moving target - a project that never seems to have an ending-point. This is both a developer's and a customer's nightmare.
To begin with, we must first understand the what SciFi channel is and what it delivers. SciFi is a channel dedicated to Science Fiction and the occasional early morning info-mercial (to pay the bills). SciFi channel has brought us some great original series and miniseries (Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Farscape, and the soon-to-come Battlestar Galactica); however, SciFi only has a relatively small viewer-base and small budget. Due to these two major limiting factors, SciFi fills its weekends with class B films. They don't advertise these weekend films as the next Lord of the Rings - they are what they are: class B films. With that said, it's understandable that when SciFi begins to advertise a new miniseries months in advance, you had better listen up.
Enter Earthsea.
I saw the first Earthsea advertisement over two months ago. Sporting a cast of Danny Glover, Isabella Rosellini, and Kristen Kruek, Earthsea was poised for greatness. After seing the tenth commercial for Earthsea in a single day, I decided that I get on the bandwagon and visit my local Half Price Books to read Ursela K. LeGuin's books. I found the books lacking a lot of detail; however, they were captivating reads. After reading the books, I was finally ready for the Earthsea miniseries.
Monday night came and went. After watching the first hour of Earthsea, I was so incredibly disappointed in the lack of honor it did to the original book series. To name a few things, the series changed people's names, the foundation of magic within Earthsea, and the histories and personalities of several major characters. In addition to the perverted storyline, the producers must have spent all of their budget on the main characters because all supporting actors and acrtesses were piss-poor.
In other words, the first hour of Earthsea was just as bad as one of the Saturday afternoon SciFi class B movies. The only difference is that SciFi channel hyped Earthsea like it was a new Stargate movie.
Someday, I may finish watching the remaining three hours, but I'd rather be spending my weekend cutting my toenails.
Finally, I'm disappointed in SciFi. Whomever decided that this Earthsea script was SciFi channel worthy should be severly punished - even fired. SciFi is still a great channel, but I'll think harder next time before wasting my hopes on their next miniseries (except Battlestar Galactica:-)
Our small (approx. 50) person consulting firm uses a product called SalesLogix. It runs on a SQL Server backend and comes with a variety of remote and local clients.
We bought into the product several years ago when it wasn't that good (v5.2.3); however, they've moved up to v6.2, which supposedly integrates much better with your Office Apps. My main complaint about the current version is the difficulties with the remote laptop client. The install process is not easy and requires you to install MSDE - what a pain!
Reports are written in Crystal Reports, the client-side front-ends are extremely easy to modify with some very basic knowledge of VB and SQL Server. If you prefer not to modify the application yourself, they offer by the hour consulting fees to program new functionality and customize the app for your individual company.
Additionally, it integrates with handhelds and pocketpcs. It's also very marketing driven - it's designed to help you follow up with clients and record every single communication with each client into the central database.
As I've said, the version we're on pretty much sucks; however, we're soon upgrading to the latest version which will hopefully take care of the remote laptop users, or at least increase the useabiliy of the application.
Slashdot Mirror
Broadcasters blocking digital stream ripping is never going to be a reality because stream ripping does not only happen at the application level, it happens at the hardware level. As long as developers on the Windows, Mac, and Linux/BSD platforms can hook into the sound hardware, then it will be impossible to control the digital copying and recording of streamed music.
Yep - bug report filed. It is a pain, but once again reaffirms the practice of not installing a beta on a live development machine. Stupid me.
Upon installing IE 7 Beta 2, my W3SVC service stopped working. Removing the beta fixed nothing. Re-installing IIS had no effect. Finally, I had to uninstall my wireless cell card software to get things working again.
What new features or technologies can Windows users expect to see in upcoming versions of Internet Explorer (and IE OS integration) that will help protect them from spyware/malware, viruses, browser hijacking (inadvertantly installed BHO's)? Furthermore, has Microsoft considered any type of registry tracking tool to help assist users in removing unwanted software that may have hijacked thier PCs?
Any file that I seriously need to send through I rename to the same extension, but with an underscore as the last letter. .zip files go across as .zi_ .mdb files go across as .md_
My friends all understand the naming convention and we have no problems sending
anything through GMail or Outlook for that matter.
I believe that Toyota has addressed any battery issues that existed. Currently, when purchasing a Toyota, your battery is under warranty for 8 years or 100,000 miles.
Another concept the article does not delve into is those of us that will be paying cash for the car. We don't lose money in financing (although we lose it through loss of interest on $30K).
Here, here! Yay!
I'm already signed up for a 2006 Toyota Prius. It's the best choice in vehicles I have ever made. No guilt whatsoever.
http://www.priuschat.com/
I've read about Public IP before: http://www.publicip.net/ Perhaps it will give you the solution you're looking for.
Funny - did anyone notice that Windows Media Player 10 has verson number 11?
the sad part is that several well-paid government employees spent 6 months developing this "solution".
Finally, some real evidence for our Gould overlords!
Our local shop in the East-Cleveland, OH area is Java John's at http://www.javajohns.com/. It's a very cool setup with free WiFi and great coffee. It's in a lower-income area of town so it hasn't benefitted from the yuppies stopping in all the time.
Hopefully it won't go out of a business - it's a very cool place.
How many average-joes have a Blu-Ray drive already. Hello!?!?
you crave brains.
That's because Brittany is Toxic
I would have to disagree with the poster - significant researching efforts have been put into question answering and factual data retrieval from the web. Visit the University of Massachusetts Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval website. For a more specific project, check out QuASM
I'm in a similar situation; however, there's one big difference - I didn't mind taking on the additional responsibilities. I just made that point that I was saving the company additional money by not re-hiring someone or outsourcing the job to a local consulting company.
As for the 1% metric, I would have to disagree (on the network admin side). It's closer to 5%, which isn't really a big deal. The big time crunch comes in when you set it all up - after setup, you will spend 0% of your time maintaining things (especially if you don't worry about firmware upgrades and patches).
Now, if you add in system admin to the whole bunch, people will start treating you like a help desk - how do I do this in Excel/Word/PowerPoint, why doesn't this website work, etc. In my experience sys admin will consume a lot more of your time than the network side because the sys admin side deals with people, not just hardware.
I'll just search Google News and then reference the cache.
Thinking this through further, what business users need is an inexpensive open-source solution architecture that provides a HTTP-based syncronization mechinism for transferring mail between handhelds and corporate servers.
Blackberry has done the ultimate-super-expensive version of this where it is completely closed-source. They've even brought it to the level of selling their own hardware.
A successful open-sourced project surrounding this topic would do the following:
1. define an xml/soap based protocol for formatting and transmitting email to mobile devices. keeping in mind that this is a business-geared standard, you would want support for encryption, authentication, pass-through authentication, synchronization, etc.
2. somehow hype this so that everyone begins to include it in their products as THE protocol for mobile email syncronization
3. build a server-end piece that integrates with all of the industry standard mail servers
4. build plug-ins for mail clients that utilize this protocol.
Problems that will arise: Microsoft will embrace the protocol, but then create its own protocol called the eProtocol (enhanced-protocol). They'll tout it as the new industry standard and incorporate their new "e" version into Exchange Server 2015. By 2017, everyone will realize that eProtocol sucks and that the standard protocol needs serious revisions. That will lead us back to this same conversation we're in right now. But, by that time, XML and SOAP will be the old industry standard and we'll find even more bloated ways of representing data by encapsulating it with somehting new...but this won't matter because we'll be surfing on our mobile devices at DSL speeds.
The primary users of mobile phones with Windows Mobile are business users - and business users use the phones becaus ehtey nicely integrate into their Windows environment (Exchange, Blackberry, Word, Excel, contacts, emails, etc.)
If they can develop a Linux mobile device that syncs with Exchange or Blackberry (wirelessly like ActiveSync), it would be money.
Sorry - check out this image. It doesn't look like Google is interested in the porn industry...yet.
Although this may be a step in the right direction, Dayton is Nowhereville, USA. We need a big city to jump on board, then others will begin to do the same. At this time, Dayton is not going to make a big impact. Think of it: pretend you run a big city. Free WiFi keeps rearing it's head and you beign to wonder if it's a good thing. Your next step isn't going to think of Dayton, OH...boy, Dayton is doing free WiFi, we should.
(1) Technology inherently advances, but many of your end users don't. For example, a database driven feature-rich web application may be just the thing your client needs; however, end-users think of and use solutions they are already comfortable with - they would rather pass around a spreadsheet via email rather than utilize the web app. Often times, the inability for end-users to think of new technology that could benefit them creates a brickwall between them and the develper. The developer has his blinders on because he's getting off about designing a sophistocated system, and the end-user has his blinders on because he can't possibly think why anyone would need anything but Excel (because it already does everything). These problems lead right into my second and third points:
(2)The invariable amount of disconnect between the end-user and the developer causes problems in the initial design specifications of the project - the developer over-analyzes the situation and tries to leverage new technologies (which I call over-technification), often times over-designing something incredibly simple. Due to this over-designing (and other factors), many IT projects suffer from point (3): poor design specs. For whatever reason it may be (complexity, lack of client understanding, over-technification, etc.) the developer can be left to create the design specs by himself without the assistance and review of the client. The greater problem will come down the line because the expert on the end-product functionality shoudl really be the client - they know the nuances and exceptions encountered in their data and tasks. The developer doesn't understand these subtle things that the client knows about. As the client's role in design specification lessens, we see more and more of my fourth point appearing.(4) As the client begins to see an emerging product based on the initial specification, they realize they forgot something (or the developer forgot something). This leads to scope creep - a customer now wants to add more features. Some times, this will lead to a complete redesign in the project, other times not; however, it always results in an increasing timeline.
(5) My last point is in regards to the "moving target". Due to scope creep, redesign, and changing needs from the customer, developers are preasured into adding features instead of completeing the agreed upon specification and then beginning a new project lifecycle to incorporate the new features. These circumstances create the moving target - a project that never seems to have an ending-point. This is both a developer's and a customer's nightmare.
To begin with, we must first understand the what SciFi channel is and what it delivers. SciFi is a channel dedicated to Science Fiction and the occasional early morning info-mercial (to pay the bills). SciFi channel has brought us some great original series and miniseries (Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Farscape, and the soon-to-come Battlestar Galactica); however, SciFi only has a relatively small viewer-base and small budget. Due to these two major limiting factors, SciFi fills its weekends with class B films. They don't advertise these weekend films as the next Lord of the Rings - they are what they are: class B films. With that said, it's understandable that when SciFi begins to advertise a new miniseries months in advance, you had better listen up.
:-)
Enter Earthsea.
I saw the first Earthsea advertisement over two months ago. Sporting a cast of Danny Glover, Isabella Rosellini, and Kristen Kruek, Earthsea was poised for greatness. After seing the tenth commercial for Earthsea in a single day, I decided that I get on the bandwagon and visit my local Half Price Books to read Ursela K. LeGuin's books. I found the books lacking a lot of detail; however, they were captivating reads. After reading the books, I was finally ready for the Earthsea miniseries.
Monday night came and went. After watching the first hour of Earthsea, I was so incredibly disappointed in the lack of honor it did to the original book series. To name a few things, the series changed people's names, the foundation of magic within Earthsea, and the histories and personalities of several major characters. In addition to the perverted storyline, the producers must have spent all of their budget on the main characters because all supporting actors and acrtesses were piss-poor.
In other words, the first hour of Earthsea was just as bad as one of the Saturday afternoon SciFi class B movies. The only difference is that SciFi channel hyped Earthsea like it was a new Stargate movie.
Someday, I may finish watching the remaining three hours, but I'd rather be spending my weekend cutting my toenails.
Finally, I'm disappointed in SciFi. Whomever decided that this Earthsea script was SciFi channel worthy should be severly punished - even fired. SciFi is still a great channel, but I'll think harder next time before wasting my hopes on their next miniseries (except Battlestar Galactica
We bought into the product several years ago when it wasn't that good (v5.2.3); however, they've moved up to v6.2, which supposedly integrates much better with your Office Apps. My main complaint about the current version is the difficulties with the remote laptop client. The install process is not easy and requires you to install MSDE - what a pain!
Reports are written in Crystal Reports, the client-side front-ends are extremely easy to modify with some very basic knowledge of VB and SQL Server. If you prefer not to modify the application yourself, they offer by the hour consulting fees to program new functionality and customize the app for your individual company.
Additionally, it integrates with handhelds and pocketpcs. It's also very marketing driven - it's designed to help you follow up with clients and record every single communication with each client into the central database.
As I've said, the version we're on pretty much sucks; however, we're soon upgrading to the latest version which will hopefully take care of the remote laptop users, or at least increase the useabiliy of the application.
If nothing else - it's worth a look.