Check out Joel on Software blog. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html He has a nice series of articles on designing his new office space for programmers. Much of it is not relevant to your exact situation, but you will find some good ideas (desks that can be lifted into a standing position for instance.)
I gladly registered, and paid for the download. I even listened to the album. I doubt, though, that I will be hearing any of these songs on the radio. So much for no-payola.
I have always theorized that the biggest deterrent to CD sales was the trend of stores letting people listen to the CDs before they purchased them. The music industry / bands used to be able to write one or two good songs, and fill the remainder of the CD with crap. One would ask themselves, is it really worth $17 for the two songs I liked? I grew up buying 45s at the corner drug store for a couple of bucks. Nothing much has changed except now that I can buy many of the same tunes via the web.
I would love to see paypal links showing up on musicians' websites so I could email some money directly to an artist whose music I had come across in some non-traditional way and decided to keep. So far, the closest I have come (from "mainstream musicians") is the Radiohead experiment. I guess with the traditional distribution model (that we are still utilizing, only we have removed the bike ride to the store), there are too many fingers in the pie to allow for such a sensible situation.
Project Blackbox packages compute, storage, and network infrastructure capabilities into scalable, modular units outfitted with state-of-the-art cooling, monitoring, and power distribution systems. Customers will be able to order a variety of standard and custom configurations of systems, storage, networking, and software. Housed in a standard 20-foot shipping container for maximum flexibility, Project Blackbox will be easily transported using common shipping methods. Simple hookups for water, AC power, and networking will enable customers to quickly deploy Project Blackbox upon delivery.
"There's a point here to be made about government secrecy, actually: government secrecy is not for security reasons, overwhelmingly--it's just to prevent the population here from knowing what's going on. I mean, a lot of secret internal documents get declassified after thirty years or so, and if you look over the entire long record of them, there's virtually nothing in there that ever had any security-related concern...The main purpose of secrecy is just to make sure that the general population here doesn't know what's going on."
Understanding Power The Indispensable Chomsky
2002 by Noam Chomsky, Peter Rounds Mitchell, and John Schoeffel
Page 10
ISBN: 1-56584-703-2
Interesting info in that book too as to why this poster would even post this type comment.
Most people these days are used to the idea of "try before you buy". Take away that ability, and sales will drop.
I agree that there has been a shift to expecting to hear an album before it is purchased, and I think this has been the downfall of the music industry. It is not the ability to download an album for free that is hurting them, but the ability to hear an album for free.
I remember a time when you couldn't listen to a CD before you purchased it. You heard a song on the radio, liked it, and figured the rest of the CD would have the same quality, style etc. So, you would go to the store and buy the album.
When you lucked out, you got a "good" album and found a great band. When you got f*cked, you ended up with a "bad" album, and the song you heard on the radio would stand out. The rest would seem like filler. You would know not to purchase an album by that artist again--but only after you had made that initial purchase.
Now, anyone can walk into a CD store and listen to an album (or download the tracks) before they make the decision to buy it. I know countless times I have decided not to buy an album I would previously have bought upon learning, during my sample listen, that the CD was 11 crappy tracks with one track I liked.
I don't like web based email, calendars etc. It is too time consuming to move email to new folders, move folders, create folders, select categories etc.
I prefer a real client, with spell checking on the fly and no waiting for page reloads.
Also, I don't know how well you can get webmail type applications to interface with your local apps --for instance the File Send To Mail feature that works with Word and WordPerfect in Windows with whatever back end you have in place.
Meffert [city tech officer] who has been working for weeks on the Microsoft deal, recommended the contract cancellation after saying the job could be done for less than $100,000 [emphasis added]
I think you read this wrong. This was not about the MS deal, but about a different, 1.5 million dollar contract that he suggested New Orleans cancel. From how I read the article, it seems like Meffert is all for it.
It does seem like this is a good opportunity for Red Hat, or IBM, or some other company to propose their own "gift" (way of doing things), so New Orleans might have a choice of technologies.
As it is now, they are choosing between an "imminent meltdown", and all new technology.
My Favorite, which I think explains so much in computers:
"...is that the automatic computer is our first large-scale digital device" and consequently "it has, unavoidably, the uncomfortable property that the smallest possible perturbations--i.e. changes in a single bit--can have the most drastic consequences."
That was quoted by an author who was writing a book on Designing Artificial Intelligence, and is sited as Dijkstra, 1989, p. 1400. I have never found the original text, and don't have the reference to the AI book handy.
The problem is not what is included in the package, but what the motivation for the inclusion was.
Netscape was huge--they were selling web servers and browsers, threatening MS. There was talk that we could do away with a typical "os" and do everything via web browser (shared apps, etc.)
So, MS comes out with IIS which is bundled with NT (or a free add on), bundles IE for free, has proprietary extensions--forces one of their competitors out of the market by including something for free with its MONOPOLY operating system. It is illegal to ABUSE your monopoly--as was the case with MS vs. Netscape, and countless others.
There are multiple instances of abuse stemming from MS "bundling" products for free that competitors were offering for a fee, outright lies (DRDOS), manufactured incompatibilities etc. These are abuses, and thus, action was taken.
No one is asking "do you want a browser with that OS?" They are saying, is MS allowed to put companies out of business by illegally exerting market control b/c it happens to have a monopoly?
Slashdot Mirror
Check out Joel on Software blog. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html He has a nice series of articles on designing his new office space for programmers. Much of it is not relevant to your exact situation, but you will find some good ideas (desks that can be lifted into a standing position for instance.)
I have always theorized that the biggest deterrent to CD sales was the trend of stores letting people listen to the CDs before they purchased them. The music industry / bands used to be able to write one or two good songs, and fill the remainder of the CD with crap. One would ask themselves, is it really worth $17 for the two songs I liked? I grew up buying 45s at the corner drug store for a couple of bucks. Nothing much has changed except now that I can buy many of the same tunes via the web.
I would love to see paypal links showing up on musicians' websites so I could email some money directly to an artist whose music I had come across in some non-traditional way and decided to keep. So far, the closest I have come (from "mainstream musicians") is the Radiohead experiment. I guess with the traditional distribution model (that we are still utilizing, only we have removed the bike ride to the store), there are too many fingers in the pie to allow for such a sensible situation.
A Novel Datacenter Concept
Project Blackbox packages compute, storage, and network infrastructure capabilities into scalable, modular units outfitted with state-of-the-art cooling, monitoring, and power distribution systems. Customers will be able to order a variety of standard and custom configurations of systems, storage, networking, and software. Housed in a standard 20-foot shipping container for maximum flexibility, Project Blackbox will be easily transported using common shipping methods. Simple hookups for water, AC power, and networking will enable customers to quickly deploy Project Blackbox upon delivery.
I see Ann Coulter has a talking action figure doll that spouts "Coulterisms."
Unfortunately, I could find no such doll for Chomsky.
"There's a point here to be made about government secrecy, actually: government secrecy is not for security reasons, overwhelmingly--it's just to prevent the population here from knowing what's going on. I mean, a lot of secret internal documents get declassified after thirty years or so, and if you look over the entire long record of them, there's virtually nothing in there that ever had any security-related concern...The main purpose of secrecy is just to make sure that the general population here doesn't know what's going on."
Understanding Power
The Indispensable Chomsky
2002 by Noam Chomsky, Peter Rounds Mitchell, and John Schoeffel
Page 10
ISBN: 1-56584-703-2
Interesting info in that book too as to why this poster would even post this type comment.
I agree that there has been a shift to expecting to hear an album before it is purchased, and I think this has been the downfall of the music industry. It is not the ability to download an album for free that is hurting them, but the ability to hear an album for free.
I remember a time when you couldn't listen to a CD before you purchased it. You heard a song on the radio, liked it, and figured the rest of the CD would have the same quality, style etc. So, you would go to the store and buy the album.
When you lucked out, you got a "good" album and found a great band. When you got f*cked, you ended up with a "bad" album, and the song you heard on the radio would stand out. The rest would seem like filler. You would know not to purchase an album by that artist again--but only after you had made that initial purchase.
Now, anyone can walk into a CD store and listen to an album (or download the tracks) before they make the decision to buy it. I know countless times I have decided not to buy an album I would previously have bought upon learning, during my sample listen, that the CD was 11 crappy tracks with one track I liked.
The Domino server will run on Linux--so you might get a intimidating product in Notes, but you get your trusty old friend on the server side.
With no server licensing issues.
I don't like web based email, calendars etc. It is too time consuming to move email to new folders, move folders, create folders, select categories etc.
I prefer a real client, with spell checking on the fly and no waiting for page reloads.
Also, I don't know how well you can get webmail type applications to interface with your local apps --for instance the File Send To Mail feature that works with Word and WordPerfect in Windows with whatever back end you have in place.
Your quote:
Meffert [city tech officer] who has been working for weeks on the Microsoft deal, recommended the contract cancellation after saying the job could be done for less than $100,000 [emphasis added]
I think you read this wrong. This was not about the MS deal, but about a different, 1.5 million dollar contract that he suggested New Orleans cancel. From how I read the article, it seems like Meffert is all for it.
It does seem like this is a good opportunity for Red Hat, or IBM, or some other company to propose their own "gift" (way of doing things), so New Orleans might have a choice of technologies.
As it is now, they are choosing between an "imminent meltdown", and all new technology.
My Favorite, which I think explains so much in computers:
"...is that the automatic computer is our first large-scale digital device" and consequently "it has, unavoidably, the uncomfortable property that the smallest possible perturbations--i.e. changes in a single bit--can have the most drastic consequences."
That was quoted by an author who was writing a book on Designing Artificial Intelligence, and is sited as Dijkstra, 1989, p. 1400. I have never found the original text, and don't have the reference to the AI book handy.
The problem is not what is included in the package, but what the motivation for the inclusion was.
Netscape was huge--they were selling web servers and browsers, threatening MS. There was talk that we could do away with a typical "os" and do everything via web browser (shared apps, etc.)
So, MS comes out with IIS which is bundled with NT (or a free add on), bundles IE for free, has proprietary extensions--forces one of their competitors out of the market by including something for free with its MONOPOLY operating system. It is illegal to ABUSE your monopoly--as was the case with MS vs. Netscape, and countless others.
There are multiple instances of abuse stemming from MS "bundling" products for free that competitors were offering for a fee, outright lies (DRDOS), manufactured incompatibilities etc. These are abuses, and thus, action was taken.
No one is asking "do you want a browser with that OS?" They are saying, is MS allowed to put companies out of business by illegally exerting market control b/c it happens to have a monopoly?
Post "things aren't going our way/we are getting left behind" realization-Pre-emptive strike.