"Erickson said that Microsoft has been working closely with Apple to ensure compatibility with technologies that will be released in the next version of the operating system, expected sometime in the first half of 2005. Of particular note is Spotlight, Apple's advanced search technology.
Spotlight will index and search Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but unfortunately it will not work with Microsoft's email and information manager, Entourage."
I can't see it. Already people like us are accustomed to running two or three different anti-spyware products each time. I can't think that an MS product will be any more effective over the long term than either of Spybot or Ad-Aware, or the other variants.
Consequently even if you have MS Anti-Spyware running, you will double check with at least one or two other programs just to be sure.
Let's not forget that MS even had anti-virus built into an OS at one time, and it disappeared, had backup software built into an OS, and it disappeared, and has at various times tried to undercut outside vendors without success.
As well, it seems pretty obvious that the Bad Guys are going to find the security holes in the MS product very fast, and begin tailoring their products to exploit them. How fast can MS play catch up?
I heard about the Grey Album and downloaded it to see what the fuss was about. Had they not done anything I would of been none the wiser, now I posess an albums worth of good music.
Exactly my experience too. Downloading MP3s is a pain in the butt and I honestly would rather just buy a CD at Amazon or elsewhere. My time is worth enough that I can't be bothered to troll through eDonkey or whatever, then deal with disrupted downloads, bad rips, and seeded files that are full of garbage.
I do though wind up downloading a few tunes every time that some industry weasel starts whining, or especially when some poor kid gets whacked with an RIAA lawsuit. It's not that there's much major label stuff that I want or need, but I figure it's important to keep reminding these guys that P2P filesharing is here to stay, and that their best choice is to find a business model that exploits the technology instead of driving it underground.
Please set aside the geek outrage. Many, many things are already age regulated - movies, cars, sex, tobacco, liquor, marriage.... the list is long.
Limiting access by age to some things is already a long established practice in this country, so why on earth would it be a surprise that video games also fall under that umbrella?
It may be pointless or of questionable merit, but it's hardly newesworthy. If it bugs you that much go and bootleg some games to your neighbour's kid.
In any setting the quality of cabling does matter. Or, more specifically, the quality of the connectors on the cable, and the quality of their installation.
Anyone who argues otherwise should recall that the first step in troubleshooting is almost invariably to check the cables.
While I am happy to use zip cord to wire my stereo speakers, I wouldn't trust dollar store cables for anything mission critical.
More important though is to document your cable runs, or even better tag each cable so that you have some idea where it begins and ends. You may know what goes into and out of that big ball of CAT-5 on the floor, but the guy who follows you will have no idea.
Hmmm, once again a post about piracy seems to be populated with replies warning about The Danger, and telling how some guy has mended his ways and now refuses to be a pirate. Coincidence? An attempt to make file sharing seem a lot more risky than it is?
What the Wired article really demonstrates is how it will continue to be difficult if not impossible to stop electronic piracy.
Even though I don't condone such theft, and would prefer that all media be acquired through legitimate channels, the fact is that the genie is out of the bottle. The folks who like to distribute music, film, and warez will continue to stay one technological step ahead of the RIAA, MPAA, and the police.
That seems like kind of an unclear idea. How many vendors do you have, and do they all use the same software in the same fashion?
Unless you have pretty carefully surveyed all of those people you really can't choose one file format over another.
In other words, you're asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to figure out what your employees can standardize on, you will first need to find out what what the majority of your vendors have standardized on.
Of course you'll have problems. HTML or PDF are horrible if you're circulating documents that need to be edited or excerpted. And vendors and suppliers will still send you documents in whatever their house file format is.
Really, for this to be effective you need to involve your employees, management, vendors, and probably suppliers in order to get everyone working within the same set of file formats.
All the waiting rooms I'm ever in have these things I understand to be called magazines.
Just last week I was at the doctor, reading the magazines in her waiting room, and I read about the perfect answer to toastyman's problem. It's a brand new software called "Pointcast", and they say that it's going to be the next big thing.
(It was a ) Motorized roadway that connected San Diego, California, and Reno, Nevada, on and around which a metropolitan area grew up; its terminal was called Diego Circle. The automated roads themselves were large enough to accommodate restaurants and other businesses, as well as the engineers' offices.
I told them to simply use Mozilla/FireFox, but as it turns out they access outside applications that only run in Internet Explorer.
Maybe this is an obvious question, but have they actually tested these applications on FF or Opera? I'm sure that somone in the company has told them that they only work on IE, but it seems quite possible that FF would handle them just fine.
Guys who design for IE generally don't have clue about other options.
The music alone makes it worth playing. Even if it wasn't particularly challenging, this was great fun. These guys are brilliant! Boogie piano is perfect for arcade games!
The latest IE did in fact add a number of things like pop-up blocking that it had lacked in the past. SP2 also added a software firewall.
I think your grandpa is probably right - IE does everything that he needs and is built right into Windows. If his PC is more of an entertainment than a mission critical business tool there probably is no reason for him to change.
He has every right to to argue that IE works fine for him, is secure enough to suit him, and to not have a new browser foisted on him.
Despite all of the holier than thou talk on slashdot, it's his computer, and his choice of a user experience. Although I may find IE irritating and cumbersome, he is entitled to his own choice.
We're also working on project that would involve Large Format(LF) digital projection.
From what I understand the resolution just isn't there yet in the digital realm. It is though close, and I'd wager that in a year or so you'll see projection systems, if not cameras, that can handle widescreen or Imax formats in a reasonable fashion.
For instance, we're looking at LF presentation in a gallery setting for 10-20 people at a time. Can't do it right now, but by the time we're ready to launch we should have the technology in hand.
Oh, I so wanted to like this. It seems simple and elegant. Sadly though a simple document, created in OpenOffice, saved as MS Word, which opens just dandy in both, is trashed horribly by AbiWord.
Simple means: 1 logo graphic, one horizontal rule, text and a bulleted list.
Beyond that, why oh why oh why does every word processor default to changing e-mail addresses to clickable links? If my document is formatted in black 12 pt Arial I do NOT want anything on my page changed into blue underlined Times New Roman.
Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?
A former head of the CIA is discussing ways to 'control" access to the Internet by ordinary citizens.
Am I alone in thinking that this probably is an indication that plans have already been developed, and that the powers that be are just waiting for a politically opportune moment to launch them?
Well, I hate to run against the usual slashdot grain, but I actually like this puppy. Sure, a slghtly less glitzy skin might be nice, but overall I'd say that they integreted a number of nice little features with some nice style.
I like the way they integrate newsfeeds, although I haven't figured out how to change them. Note that slashdot is one of the defaults available!
I like the site control on each tab. I think that they have managed to fit a lot of functionality into a fairly small space.
Can't seem to install tinyurl creator yet though. tsk.
In particular all of your questions are answered here, the second entry on Google's list.
On a more practical note, assuming that your existing monitor and video card are in good working order, and that the monitor is positioned properly, the one thing that you need to do is to focus your eyes somewhere other than your monitor at regular intervals - say every five minutes.
Look at the wall, look out the window - anything to break from focusing only at that screen 18 inches in front of you.
Understand that the lighting should be dimmer than the usual office setting.
And sad to say, your need for eye-glasses may just be a reflection of the aging process, not your work environment.
Treat people with respect and listen to what they have to say. Being a bully or demanding 60 hour work weeks is not productive and results in a bad product.
If you haven't done so take some courses in Conflict Resolution techniques or Interest Based Problem solving.
Relish your role as the middle man - your role is twofold:
When the staff need to protect themselves from some unreasonable demand they can refer it to you. They can then rely on you to carry their concerns upstairs in a neutral fashion.
Likewise you are the person to take management's sometimes incomprehensible demands and presents them to staff in a way that they understand and endorse.
Also, planning is good, lots of planning is even better. Before the work starts you should have sketched out the near exact results that the company wants in the product.
Probably no-one in the company know how to do that kind of planning work. Hire a facilitator who does something along the lines of Open Space group faciltiation for a day or two and let them guide you through refining your project and developing a realistic and measurable plan.
All of these people managing and planning skills are specialties, but they can be learned. Some up front money in training or outside help can save you a lot of grief down the road.
You actually have a couple of major problems. There have been some fairly exhaustive tests done in the audio realm, and they have found a couple of things.
The first is that the specific brand that works best will vary from one CD burner to another. The only thing that you can do is buy a lot of samples and try burns at different speeds and with different brands until you know what gives you the best results.
As noted, slower burns usually are better, but the optimal speed will vary too.
The other problem is that manufacturers change their formulations from time to time. You of course have no way to know this, but may find that the media that worked great last month suddenly has problems.
To the discussion I'd also love to see some comparison of the ease of installation, quality of documentation, and how easy it is to design or customize a site. Not all of us are uber-geeks, and a little hand holding is nice.
To most people, "The Internet" is like a black box. They connect to it, and all they care about is that it works. They don't worry about routers and nodes and traffic-balancing and all the sweat that goes into keeping the infrastructure running. A small office computer system should be the same way. It should... arrive, pre-tested, in boxes and get plugged in... by a local, low-level network wiring contractor. As soon as everything is hooked up, people in the office should be able to sit down and go to work.
Actually the author is right on the nose. Small companies should like the option of having a working network installed in their offices, and routine upgrades and/or maintenance handled remotely.
I think that he has identified a possibly profitable niche, supplying companies too small for a staff IT person, but big enough to want consistency and support. These are the people who don't want to do-it-yourself, they just want systems that work, out of the box, without headaches.
Anyways, the best perfected machine (read most accurate) for counting votes should be the one we use. It should be the 99.9% accurate reflection what the votes were.
The concern is less with the accuracy of any given technology, than with the ability to confirm that accuracy.
Paper ballots can be recounted. Or more importantly, you can see them being recounted and confirm that it was done right.
I really can't think that designing a software package to count up votes should be very difficult. It's certainly an order of magnitude simpler than say the backend of Amazon.com.
Why then have there been so many boneheaded problems? These machines should have worked perfectly the first time out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Erickson said that Microsoft has been working closely with Apple to ensure compatibility with technologies that will be released in the next version of the operating system, expected sometime in the first half of 2005. Of particular note is Spotlight, Apple's advanced search technology.
Spotlight will index and search Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but unfortunately it will not work with Microsoft's email and information manager, Entourage."
I can't see it. Already people like us are accustomed to running two or three different anti-spyware products each time. I can't think that an MS product will be any more effective over the long term than either of Spybot or Ad-Aware, or the other variants.
Consequently even if you have MS Anti-Spyware running, you will double check with at least one or two other programs just to be sure.
Let's not forget that MS even had anti-virus built into an OS at one time, and it disappeared, had backup software built into an OS, and it disappeared, and has at various times tried to undercut outside vendors without success.
As well, it seems pretty obvious that the Bad Guys are going to find the security holes in the MS product very fast, and begin tailoring their products to exploit them. How fast can MS play catch up?
I heard about the Grey Album and downloaded it to see what the fuss was about. Had they not done anything I would of been none the wiser, now I posess an albums worth of good music.
Exactly my experience too. Downloading MP3s is a pain in the butt and I honestly would rather just buy a CD at Amazon or elsewhere. My time is worth enough that I can't be bothered to troll through eDonkey or whatever, then deal with disrupted downloads, bad rips, and seeded files that are full of garbage.
I do though wind up downloading a few tunes every time that some industry weasel starts whining, or especially when some poor kid gets whacked with an RIAA lawsuit. It's not that there's much major label stuff that I want or need, but I figure it's important to keep reminding these guys that P2P filesharing is here to stay, and that their best choice is to find a business model that exploits the technology instead of driving it underground.
Please set aside the geek outrage. Many, many things are already age regulated - movies, cars, sex, tobacco, liquor, marriage.... the list is long.
Limiting access by age to some things is already a long established practice in this country, so why on earth would it be a surprise that video games also fall under that umbrella?
It may be pointless or of questionable merit, but it's hardly newesworthy. If it bugs you that much go and bootleg some games to your neighbour's kid.
In any setting the quality of cabling does matter. Or, more specifically, the quality of the connectors on the cable, and the quality of their installation.
Anyone who argues otherwise should recall that the first step in troubleshooting is almost invariably to check the cables.
While I am happy to use zip cord to wire my stereo speakers, I wouldn't trust dollar store cables for anything mission critical.
More important though is to document your cable runs, or even better tag each cable so that you have some idea where it begins and ends. You may know what goes into and out of that big ball of CAT-5 on the floor, but the guy who follows you will have no idea.
Hmmm, once again a post about piracy seems to be populated with replies warning about The Danger, and telling how some guy has mended his ways and now refuses to be a pirate. Coincidence? An attempt to make file sharing seem a lot more risky than it is?
Don't these posts seem to have a real "Reefer Madness" feel to them?
What the Wired article really demonstrates is how it will continue to be difficult if not impossible to stop electronic piracy.
Even though I don't condone such theft, and would prefer that all media be acquired through legitimate channels, the fact is that the genie is out of the bottle. The folks who like to distribute music, film, and warez will continue to stay one technological step ahead of the RIAA, MPAA, and the police.
That seems like kind of an unclear idea. How many vendors do you have, and do they all use the same software in the same fashion?
Unless you have pretty carefully surveyed all of those people you really can't choose one file format over another.
In other words, you're asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to figure out what your employees can standardize on, you will first need to find out what what the majority of your vendors have standardized on.
Of course you'll have problems. HTML or PDF are horrible if you're circulating documents that need to be edited or excerpted. And vendors and suppliers will still send you documents in whatever their house file format is.
Really, for this to be effective you need to involve your employees, management, vendors, and probably suppliers in order to get everyone working within the same set of file formats.
All the waiting rooms I'm ever in have these things I understand to be called magazines.
Just last week I was at the doctor, reading the magazines in her waiting room, and I read about the perfect answer to toastyman's problem. It's a brand new software called "Pointcast", and they say that it's going to be the next big thing.
Oh - Ok... nevermind....
Wow, am I alone in being reminded of the classic Robert Heinlein story The Roads Must Roll?
The Heinlein concordance describes the Diego-Reno Roadtown
(It was a ) Motorized roadway that connected San Diego, California, and Reno, Nevada, on and around which a metropolitan area grew up; its terminal was called Diego Circle. The automated roads themselves were large enough to accommodate restaurants and other businesses, as well as the engineers' offices.
I told them to simply use Mozilla/FireFox, but as it turns out they access outside applications that only run in Internet Explorer.
Maybe this is an obvious question, but have they actually tested these applications on FF or Opera? I'm sure that somone in the company has told them that they only work on IE, but it seems quite possible that FF would handle them just fine.
Guys who design for IE generally don't have clue about other options.
The music alone makes it worth playing. Even if it wasn't particularly challenging, this was great fun. These guys are brilliant! Boogie piano is perfect for arcade games!
The latest IE did in fact add a number of things like pop-up blocking that it had lacked in the past. SP2 also added a software firewall.
I think your grandpa is probably right - IE does everything that he needs and is built right into Windows. If his PC is more of an entertainment than a mission critical business tool there probably is no reason for him to change.
He has every right to to argue that IE works fine for him, is secure enough to suit him, and to not have a new browser foisted on him.
Despite all of the holier than thou talk on slashdot, it's his computer, and his choice of a user experience. Although I may find IE irritating and cumbersome, he is entitled to his own choice.
We're also working on project that would involve Large Format(LF) digital projection.
From what I understand the resolution just isn't there yet in the digital realm. It is though close, and I'd wager that in a year or so you'll see projection systems, if not cameras, that can handle widescreen or Imax formats in a reasonable fashion.
For instance, we're looking at LF presentation in a gallery setting for 10-20 people at a time. Can't do it right now, but by the time we're ready to launch we should have the technology in hand.
Oh, I so wanted to like this. It seems simple and elegant. Sadly though a simple document, created in OpenOffice, saved as MS Word, which opens just dandy in both, is trashed horribly by AbiWord.
Simple means: 1 logo graphic, one horizontal rule, text and a bulleted list.
Beyond that, why oh why oh why does every word processor default to changing e-mail addresses to clickable links? If my document is formatted in black 12 pt Arial I do NOT want anything on my page changed into blue underlined Times New Roman.
Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?
Oh yeah - and it's slow as molasses.
A former head of the CIA is discussing ways to 'control" access to the Internet by ordinary citizens.
Am I alone in thinking that this probably is an indication that plans have already been developed, and that the powers that be are just waiting for a politically opportune moment to launch them?
Remember how fast the Patriot Act was enabled.
Well, I hate to run against the usual slashdot grain, but I actually like this puppy. Sure, a slghtly less glitzy skin might be nice, but overall I'd say that they integreted a number of nice little features with some nice style.
I like the way they integrate newsfeeds, although I haven't figured out how to change them. Note that slashdot is one of the defaults available!
I like the site control on each tab. I think that they have managed to fit a lot of functionality into a fairly small space.
Can't seem to install tinyurl creator yet though. tsk.
Well, You might start here
In particular all of your questions are answered here , the second entry on Google's list.
On a more practical note, assuming that your existing monitor and video card are in good working order, and that the monitor is positioned properly, the one thing that you need to do is to focus your eyes somewhere other than your monitor at regular intervals - say every five minutes.
Look at the wall, look out the window - anything to break from focusing only at that screen 18 inches in front of you.
Understand that the lighting should be dimmer than the usual office setting.
And sad to say, your need for eye-glasses may just be a reflection of the aging process, not your work environment.
Besides, who says glasses aren't a good thing?
Treat people with respect and listen to what they have to say. Being a bully or demanding 60 hour work weeks is not productive and results in a bad product.
If you haven't done so take some courses in Conflict Resolution techniques or Interest Based Problem solving.
Relish your role as the middle man - your role is twofold:
When the staff need to protect themselves from some unreasonable demand they can refer it to you. They can then rely on you to carry their concerns upstairs in a neutral fashion.
Likewise you are the person to take management's sometimes incomprehensible demands and presents them to staff in a way that they understand and endorse.
Also, planning is good, lots of planning is even better. Before the work starts you should have sketched out the near exact results that the company wants in the product.
Probably no-one in the company know how to do that kind of planning work. Hire a facilitator who does something along the lines of Open Space group faciltiation for a day or two and let them guide you through refining your project and developing a realistic and measurable plan.
All of these people managing and planning skills are specialties, but they can be learned. Some up front money in training or outside help can save you a lot of grief down the road.
Ah - here it is - detail on CDR media testing to go with the results above..
You actually have a couple of major problems. There have been some fairly exhaustive tests done in the audio realm, and they have found a couple of things.
The first is that the specific brand that works best will vary from one CD burner to another. The only thing that you can do is buy a lot of samples and try burns at different speeds and with different brands until you know what gives you the best results.
As noted, slower burns usually are better, but the optimal speed will vary too.
The other problem is that manufacturers change their formulations from time to time. You of course have no way to know this, but may find that the media that worked great last month suddenly has problems.
Another test can be found here.
Said it before, and I'll say it again - Give away seats in the Senate and House as lottery prizes. And maybe the White House for a Powerball win.
Not that would be representative government.
To the discussion I'd also love to see some comparison of the ease of installation, quality of documentation, and how easy it is to design or customize a site. Not all of us are uber-geeks, and a little hand holding is nice.
To most people, "The Internet" is like a black box. They connect to it, and all they care about is that it works. They don't worry about routers and nodes and traffic-balancing and all the sweat that goes into keeping the infrastructure running. A small office computer system should be the same way. It should ... arrive, pre-tested, in boxes and get plugged in ... by a local, low-level network wiring contractor. As soon as everything is hooked up, people in the office should be able to sit down and go to work.
Actually the author is right on the nose. Small companies should like the option of having a working network installed in their offices, and routine upgrades and/or maintenance handled remotely.
I think that he has identified a possibly profitable niche, supplying companies too small for a staff IT person, but big enough to want consistency and support. These are the people who don't want to do-it-yourself, they just want systems that work, out of the box, without headaches.
Id there a reason whay you haven't tried Open/Star Office?
I've been happy using it for several months. If you're not involved in extremely complex spreadsheets it should work fine.
Anyways, the best perfected machine (read most accurate) for counting votes should be the one we use. It should be the 99.9% accurate reflection what the votes were.
The concern is less with the accuracy of any given technology, than with the ability to confirm that accuracy.
Paper ballots can be recounted. Or more importantly, you can see them being recounted and confirm that it was done right.
I really can't think that designing a software package to count up votes should be very difficult. It's certainly an order of magnitude simpler than say the backend of Amazon.com.
Why then have there been so many boneheaded problems? These machines should have worked perfectly the first time out.