In Canada, Telus (formerly ClearNet) charges Cdn$0.10 per incoming message (although apparently messages sent from other mobile phones as opposed to from email are now free). It used to be Cdn$0.50 per message, with no freebies. So it's going in the right direction, but it is still excessively expensive (IMO).
Personally, though, I'm not sure how useful it is - the only messages I ever received via text messaging were unsolicited.
It's unlikely that the number of spam being received actually dropped. You are still receiving the same volume of spam (and likely more based on trends), just not forwarding them on to your users (and ultimately still using bandwidth and resources in order to receive and remove junk).
That said, $1500 bucks for such primitive filtering sounds a bit steep to me. It's been said that spam filtering is the next anti-virus industry and I'm starting to understand why...
In general, content filtering is problematic because of false positives (which is unacceptable in a business context). So content filtering should be used very sparingly. Same with domain name / IP blacklisting.
I personally like white-lists, however, they do have their downsides. One spammer trick being used a great deal nowadays is to spoof addresses so that they appear to be generated internally and thus getting around most filters. Also, as white-lists become more popular, spammers are going to look for ways to abuse these. I would think a white list based on keywords is just begging to be abused.
Another thing spammers are starting to do is encrypt their messages, since many systems decrypt after the spam filter is run.
This brings me to a big area that your expensive spam filter appears to lack (based on your description) - bogus header filtering and email address filtering. Since a significant portion of spam these days can be trapped by eliminating strange email addresses (eg 6 consonents in a row, telltale tracking numbers...) and checking that the headers are valid - I would think that this omission is very significant.
Omissions and false positives aside, I would question why anyone would spend $1500 on spam filtering when there are pretty good (free) alternatives out there...
Experts-exchange is the largest technical expertise community online. Active for several years, you receive question points when you sign up for an account, and on a daily basis. You can then use these question points to ask technical questions about hardware, software and Internet related technologies. Experts compete for "expert points" based on the number of question points you allot to your question. The level of knowledge is high, and you can usually get an answer to your question within days, if not hours.
Askme.com is a more general question and answer community. Ranging from "Dear Abby" advice to legal advice to home improvements. There was a big stink a couple of years ago where one of the "lawyers" turned out to be a teenager who learned everything he knew from TV, so take the credentials of the advisors with a grain of salt. Actually, that goes for all these kinds of sites.
Exp.com is a consultant community. If you have a particular technical requirement, you can post this requirement to exp.com and receive bids from professional consultants. The bids range from no charge to normal consulting rates. One advantage to using this service is that you can get a whole range of quotes all in one place, giving you a good sense of how much you should be charged for a particular service. Experts in the Exp.com community are generally rated once they have completed a few contracts, so you can also get a sense of what other clients think of that particular contractor.
Smallbusiness.com is another question and answer type site, with a bit more emphasis on general article writing. It's fairly comprehensive, and maintained by other small business owners from all over the place (although it does have a US-centric focus). Another good small business resource center is your local entrepreneurship center (For example, mine is www.entrepreneurship.com)
I also like Google (obligatory comment) - but I tend to use it to find resource sites, which I in turn use to find out more information.
For instance, two more specific sites that I use a great deal are javascript.internet.com (tons of how to Javascripts that usually give me a pointer in the right direction) and sqlteam.com, a SQL related advice site.
Someone else suggested the library. That's a good idea! Your local librarian will generally have a list of resources (not just books anymore either) and places to go to find out more!
What's wrong with www.allrecipes.com (my favorite, and one of the biggest recipe sites)? You can contribute, their most popular stuff is available in "cookbook" form, and you can copy (and pass along) any recipe.
There are a ton of recipes (way more than many equivalent sites) and you can find things based on the ingredients you have on hand (+ remove pesky ingredients that you can't eat). They even have an extensive special diet section. And, most importantly, you can save the recipes that work out to your "recipe box" (which is available for free) - something I find essential, since roughly half of the recipes I try out don't work the way I was hoping - and I won't make again. Then again, this statistic is also dropping with this site, because I can go and read the ratings and reviews - which give me a pretty good idea of what other people thought...
One thing about recipes is that there is no "closed source" equivalent exactly (once you get the recipe that is). While many inventors like to get the credit, I've NEVER heard of a cookbook that disallowed free sharing and modification of the recipe, and there's nothing to stop you from just renaming it... Actually, cook books are probably the original "open source" product.
So why re-invent the wheel? Just think what could be accomplished if we didn't keep doing the same projects over and over and over and over...
"They can not say 'We will provide you cable modem service for $40 a month for 1 year, and we can change any terms of this contract.'
Sure they can (and do!). And your options then become: "accept the terms of the agreement" (usually occurs if you continue to use the service within x period of time after being notified of the changes), or "quit using the service". Neither of which are particularly palatable.
And hey, there are definitely other small ISPs in my area - and they all either resell the service offered by the bigger guys, or cost $400+/month and are on the verge of bankruptcy.
And in my case, I have to put up with the price going up on average 5-10%/ year because there are very few alternatives due to location.
The alternatives are: -Dialup (too slow, requirement for second line means comparable price) -Satellite (requires dialup in addition) -Wireless (has Cdn$400 installation fee, which doesn't make sense given I'm not planning to live in this location long enough to recoup the cost)
Other suggestions are welcome of course, but we've done fairly extensive research...
And many (if not most) contracts have a clause stating that they are allowed to change the terms of the contract at any time...
I'd doubt if a legal challenge would get very far, especially if you couldn't prove that your use of Kazaa was completely 100% legal (ie not for illegally trading copyrighted material)
I've found it easier to get off postal junk mail lists than email lists (I get roughly 100 messages a day). Snail mail costs the sender money, rather than the recipient. Thus, the senders care a little more about the recipients. If you have a "real" mailbox, you can put a no flyers sign out, which reduces the junk too. Return to sender anything that's junk and has an actual address - it's an easy way to get off lists. And then don't sign up for catalogues if you don't want them....
When I was in grade nine, I did a science fair project on the relative efficiencies between a QWERTY and DVORAK keyboard. We measured the distance between each key, and came up with the amount of work required to press each key depending on age/gender (in those days keyboard manufacturers weren't publishing their "springyness" stats yet). Then we took various pieces of text (eg entire works of Shakespeare, various essays and stories, various common phrases that use all the letters in the alphabet such as the quick brown fox etc) and ran it through an analysis program we'd written for the purpose.
It was pretty neat. Dvorak was the hands down winner for plain old English, but Qwerty was *much* better for Inuktitut (lots of k's and q's). We also looked at french, german and spanish samples, but I don't really remember how things stacked up (it was a while ago). I think Dvorak was very slightly better for most, although it depended on what you were typing.
Based on this project, I switched keyboard layouts. And then I found I couldn't touch type in Qwerty anymore. Apparently this is not unique - most people have difficulty remembering more than one or two keyboard layouts. So I would think that a layout that would change depending on what you were doing would be a nightmare.
Really, what would be ideal is to measure how much work it is for you personally to use each finger and get a sampling of your personal typing patterns, and then just go from there. As the original poster commented - the ideal keyboard may not be the most efficient, since you have to take into account how easy it is to work with. And I would think that how easy it is to work with includes how easy it is to remember:)
Given that I listed the fact that Micro$oft makes windows as a con...
Personally, I think that Microsoft's business tactics stink. Or, put another way, their corporate values don't mesh with my personal values. Ergo, I don't and would likely never work for Microsoft. But I still use their software, because the alternatives are not yet good enough substitutes.
As someone who doesn't care what the OS *is*, as long as it runs my programs and doesn't crash, I find the above list of cons somewhat odd. I've never had a BoS since upgrading to W2K. My computer has frozen exactly once in the last two years. I've turned off the machine three times (other than rebooting for installation of things like service packs) - once when going on vacation, twice when moving the machine. I've never had my registry become "unstable".
My XP machines are at least as stable, although as development machines they take considerably more abuse and thus do have the odd program crash. The OS itself, however, does not.
On the other hand, our linux box used to freeze all the time. We finally converted it to WinXP, and since then (3 months) it's been fine. Trying to find documentation to figure out what the heck was wrong with the Linux configuration took substantial amounts of time. It was a painful and annoying experience. No, we haven't given up on Linux altogether, but we did make sure that Linux only runs on our non-essential computers.
Perhaps the problem is merely that our expertise is on the Windows, rather than Linux side. And that's fair enough. But if that's the case, getting up to speed on Linux has so far taken us much more effort for much less result than we ever expended on Windows.
Obviously my list of pros and cons would look somewhat different:
Win 2k+ Pros -Very stable -All my applications work -No learning curve (I'm already familiar with it) -UI is much more refined -Response time is faster (this really surprises me, because I was always under the impression that Linux was supposed to be way faster and have much lower hardware requirements as a result - but whenever I've used a Linux machine - it chugs regardless of the hardware)
Cons -Produced by Microsoft -Market leader - thus target for script kiddies
Frankly, I can live with the cons, much more easily than the cons for Linux so far. That said, don't mark me down as a pro-Windows anti-Linux type.
Because intellectually, I think Linux sounds way better. And all things being equal, I would use Linux. The problem is - no matter how loudly you tell me Linux is not only comparable to Windows but better - that doesn't make it true.
"If cars were not as deadly as they are, people would learn how to drive them the same way they learn Word."
Most people "learn" to drive by taking the minimum legally required course. If it wasn't legally required, most people would in fact learn as they learn Word (trial and error). Few would even bother with reading the manual (eg the rules of the road).
Don't believe me? Ask your oldest living relative to describe their driving lessons and subsequent test.
My grandfather did not take driving lessons per say, and his test consisted of driving 500 m down the road. Forward.(~1930s in Ontario, Canada). No parking. No vision check.
Given that computers are becoming part of many pieces of 'dangerous' equipment (not to mention work environments), I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the future computer classes became mandatory (actually, many schools these days have it in the curriculum...). And although I think it would be dumb, I don't think a requirement for a license to operate computers is as unlikely as many think.
Finally, although I personally had no difficulty learning how to use the mouse - I recall the struggles my aunt, my mother and my mother-in-law had with it. It took years. And hours of tutorials. So I don't think the mouse example is a good one.
That said, in order for something to be usable, it ought to be intuitive for those members of the population who are non-techies. By this I mean those who couldn't care less if it's called 'Linux' or 'Windows' - they care about writing an email to their extended family, or getting that obscure artist who wants to share his or her CD (right ) off the net. And honestly, I think too many people responsible for designing applications such as Kazaa are only interested in making an application that they themselves will find useful. All the design is done from the perspective of someone with more knowledge about computers in general (and the application specifically) than the users.
And that's why studies like the one referenced above are important - not because they'll teach the users to be more careful (users shouldn't HAVE to worry about such things), but because they make suggestions to the DESIGNERS and DEVELOPPERS on how the users are actually using and perceiving their use of the application.
I had one of the original Palm 1000s (which I later upgraded to be the equivalent of a professional for the extra memory), and then later a Palm 5000 (also upgraded), and now a Palm IIIc.
I use my Palm extensively, to the point of actually wearing through 3 pieces of tape that I placed over the graffitti area to protect it. (I used it as a notetaking device all the way through university, including math and engineering classes). I had it on 8 hours a day, taking notes.
My first Palm still works, although I felt its graffitti recognition started to get less accurate (and I wanted new software...) so I sold it to a friend (who still uses it). The case also cracked (this was a well known problem) and the battery cover often came off.
My second Palm became obsolete when I won the colour one in a contest, so I gave it to my aunt who is a doctor (and she still uses it extensively as well). It was still in pretty good shape, although I had a sticky button problem due to too many games of Pacman. The graffiti recognition on this model was still fine.
My colour Palm is pretty good, although the battery doesn't last anything like as long as the first two (only about 3.5 hours of continuous use). However, it's also doing a lot more, so I don't mind, and I'll admit that my continuous use these days tends to be games more than just using the memo editor. I'm also out of university, so battery life doesn't matter to me as much anymore... And it's pretty sturdy. It also doesn't seem to have the disintegrating case problem of the other two. On the negative side though, it (and many of the other newer Palms and Handsprings that I've tried out) is a LOT more sluggish in its responses - and that is a very bad thing for graffiti accuracy. I have to be much more precise in my writing, and can't go as fast because it doesn't seem to respond as well as the older models.
All this to say that I've so far been quite impressed with how well the Palms have lasted under the kind of abuse I've thrown at them. I've dropped them (luckily no screen damage) and left them outside accidentally in the winter - this is a pain, because the display freezes (and is useless until it warms up), without any problems.
Yes, there were the odd problems (sticky buttons, the graffiti area crapping out and the case cracking are the big ones that cropped up in newsgroup discussions), but I never personally encountered them in such degree that the Palm wasn't useful, and some of the problems were avoidable or fixable. (Eg glue for the case, protecting the graffiti area with tape, not pounding the buttons...) And I did notice that the gentler people are with them, the better they last - one friend had no end of issues with graffiti because he was pressing extremely hard on the screen, and his buttons stuck all the time. He sold it, and the next person had no trouble at all with it, because they had a much lighter touch!
Actually, I'm pretty impressed with the fact that the Palm 1000 is still living a useful life more than five years later... Given this kind of history, I think it's a little unfair to say that all Palms are "shoddily built".
I do think that the software is becoming a little less reliable (in particular the general sluggishness of the OS).
You could always hire a friendly Canadian, since $40 US to us is like $1,000,000 Cdn:)
The time differences / cultural differences aren't as big a factor between US and Canada either...
Kidding aside, in terms of conducting business "off-shore" so to speak, we've always found that:
it's much easier to talk about to do (and thus requires careful planning!)
being onsite for the initial stages and possibly final stages increases the likelyhood of success by a huge factor
if there is anyone on site who is not convinced that the off-site programmer will be able to do their part, the project is likely doomed to failure (the onsite person often makes life more difficult for the offsite team, whether purposefully or inadvertently - by failing to provide adequate/timely info or by looking for "ammunition" to prove that the experiment isn't working etc). Attitude does make a difference!
All those involved must be able to communicate well via email! If you need to talk to someone to resolve a particular problem, you'd be better suited to bringing in someone for the duration of the project.
First of all: It's all about growth of profit, not whether profit exists - and unfortunately - that's the way the market/society works... (and this is true whether you "have disdain" or not)
Secondly - "Internet companies suck, period." Where does this come from? It's kind of a throw away comment that you don't bother to backup or even explain. Are you saying that companies that label themselves as "dot-com" suck? Or that companies that sell intangibles (such as software) suck? Or something completely different? What's that got to do with HP exactly??? I could go off on a big rant about generalizations here, but I'll try to restrain myself.
Finally: "You make a printer you sell a printer and you have yourself a profit. Guarn-friggin-teed." A) Just because you make a physical product doesn't mean that you will be able to sell it, or that you will make a profit. It's quite possible that the costs of creating that product + healthy product are higher than what other vendors can sell it for or worse, what people are willing to pay for it. There's the whole concept of economies of scale thrown in here too. It's a useful idea to know about, even if you don't agree because many business decisions are taken in order to achieve it.
B) You should know that printers are sometimes called to be the "razor blades" of the hardware business. The profit is made on the ink, not the printer.
But then, what do I know. I'm not a business major.
We use AMD (Athlon) processors exclusively without any problems whatsoever. They are absolutely rock solid. Yes, they do run slightly hotter, but our server room is adequately airconditionned. I personally wouldn't be comfortable running any computers (no matter what their CPU) in an inadequately cooled (and coolable) room.
The cost of extra electricity did not make a difference to our bottom line when we switched, but the price/performance ratio of Intel vs AMD sure did.
In terms of reliability and compatibility, much of the "feeling" in the business world has more to do with historical truths and marketing. It doesn't take into account the changed landscape in the chip market.
Intel's definitely been around longer and as a result has a longer and better history. It's only been relatively recently (last few years) that AMD has really begun to do anything other than follow the leader.
However, our experience with clients and our own environment suggests that Intel chips are now significantly *less* reliable than the AMD equivalents.
Just looking at RECENT history, this anecdotal information could be anticipated. How come? Because Intel is no longer hands-down the industry's technology leader. In fact, Intel keeps pushing out ever greater clock enhancements faster than they really want to in order to keep ahead/up with AMD. (See http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001120/ for some historical background) I don't know about you, but frankly CPU recalls make me nervous for a mission critical application.
My site is written in.rtf (www.phibian.com), and.doc will follow in due course. Of course, the site also uses a nifty web-server add-on that converts the files (as well as.pdf files, any ODBC accessible databases, text, html, etc) on the fly to a browser-viewable format.
And I post my email address all over the place - for a business, it's important that people can contact you... However, I rarely get spam; we have a good spam filter... (and yes, false positives are also extremely rare)
The way it works: We have a list of phrases that we consider to be spam-matches (you know: "this is not spam"... ). If the sender is not on the allowed sender list (currently my email contact list) and there are spam matches, then the email is not delivered. Instead, it is dumped to a cache, and the subject/sender/date are added to the log file.
A designated employee reads through the log roughly once a day - determining from the subject if it is a valid spam message or not. And then the messages are deleted (or rarely, bounced back to the person they were intended for, and the filter adjusted to avoid that type of false positive...).
The important part is the "allowed through" concept, as this way I could still receive breast cancer newsletters if I wanted to (often cited as the drawback for email filters, for some reason...)
I agree. For instance, Dutch Blitz (and other card games, particularly partner-based ones) are about getting the "highest" score, but lots of times we don't even bother -- because it's not the scoring part that matters/ that is fun.
It's the playing part...
Why should I subscribe?
If I were paying for the nytimes paper edition, they would *need* to know certain information in order to deliver the paper and charge me for it. Even if the paper were free, I'd still *need* to give them sufficient info to allow delivery.
Similarly, if I was receiving an electronic version of the nytimes (whether free or not), they would *need* my email address in order to deliver the email.
But: they don't *need* any information at all in order to provide the website version to me (aside from the stuff that goes on in the background, which I think they are perfectly welcome to, as long as they cannot link that aggregate data to individuals)
I resent having to provide them with extra information that they don't need, for major inconvenience to me, and for limited benefit to them (which they ARE entitled to, as content providers who are trying to make some money off their labors).
Inconveniences: why should I have to remember some other password, and why should I have to spend the time registering?
Worse, the use of registration forces the user to give up privacy. If you get the paper version, the marketing department of the paper can't target your junk mail based on the fact that you spent slightly longer reading article A vs Article B, and thus must be passionately interested in reading more articles like article A, or worse yet, wish to purchase the latest related products. But I digress.
Mainly, I don't wish to subscribe to nytimes, because the only context in which I read it is the occasional time where it is a) quoted in Slashdot, and b) also looks interesting. I've never read anything so compelling that I've said "Gee, I should get an account and go to the site every day.."
When computer equipment is involved in a criminal investigation, it is always seized. And in Canada anyway, if that computer is on a network, the cops can legally seize all of the computers on the network too.
When I learned that (from one of the two guys responsible for "computer crime" in Ottawa Carleton (and yes, that includes theft)) I pointed out to the guy that taken to extremes, he could confiscate the entire Internet... (or at least the Canadian part).
I asked why they wouldn't just take the hard drive or something - his response: "it's more efficient to take the entire system". And then he followed up the conversation with a chilling example of this business guy whose entire network of computers was seized for some reason or another and it turned out he was innocent. So, they returned the stuff (a year later) - but by that time it was too late - he'd had to declare bankrupcy as he couldn't replace the entire network, and still make his lease payments on the original stuff.
I thought this concept was really outrageous. But it's completely legal. The cop did say that in order to get the paperwork to be able to seize the computers, they have to jump through a lot of hoops (which I happen to believe).
But it still sucks that if I turn a blind eye to my roommates illegal shinanigans (even if you don't agree that it *ought* to be illegal, it still *is*..) then I'm risking any equipment I have that is on the same network...
Gaming can certainly be considered a sport. Get that adrenaline pumping, heart rate up (okay at least blood pressure...) Even the injury rate is higher at a serious gaming level than many sports...
Too many people are going to university because it is the "right" thing to do, because they need to "have a reason" to acquire skills, and ultimately, to get the paper.
They wish to be taught, rather than learn - which is not in keeping with the original purpose of university - which really started with a bunch of smart guys trying to bounce ideas off each other and promote thinking among their eager followers.
It's a bit cynical, but my personal opinion is that many people go to university these days because they need the extra 4 or so years in order to grow up.
And did you know that in Canada (don't know the stats for the US, but they are similar), there are more people who are functionally illiterate than ever graduate from University?
While it is true that a degree is a requirement for certain fields (I want my neurologists to have the degree, thanks...) and it is also true that degrees create opportunities for job seekers trying to get a foot in the door - practical experience, ability and who you know (networking) in your field are more important to a long term career.
And - for the record - I had no troubles in university - so I'm not just trying to justify dropping out. I just think there are way too many people who go to university for the wrong reasons, who end up just wanting to "get through" - and then ended up in my classes...
Furthermore, once the work environment has settled down (ie no sweat shops, blatently unhealthy work conditions that shorten lifespan etc) unions seem to lose their purpose to a certain extent, and start trying to justify their existence.
They promote an unhealthy "Us against Them" kind of mentality - and particularly in cases where union employees are employed full time by an external union organization - don't care about the company at all (which, after all, has to continue in order to pay all those employees...).
In fact, in many cases, outside employees approach every issue from a more philosophical perspective - it's all more academic than anything. This ends up being not very helpful and creating situations like the endless high school teacher strikes here in Ontario.
"A few years ago, knowing just a few html tags and tricks could probably have gotten you a job as a full-fledged Web designer, or at least Web coder. As things get more complicated and Web sites more dynamic, the tools you need to create that all-singing, all-dancing user-interactive content have gotten more complex than carets and single letter tags"
Has anyone else noticed that the field is becoming fragmented? Just as graphic design for the web is really starting to take off in colleges and universities, the scripting required to get a complex web site up and running is starting to resemble bonafide programming - and is beyond either the technical or interest comfort zone of many graphic design folks.
And many content providers have long had nothing to do with the actual design but don't want anything more technical stuff like sticking it on the web site - be it adding to some database or actually modifying the HTML.
More and more, I see web design having three parts to it - the content - the gui - and the programming to put it altogether.
My experience has been that people with little HTML expertise (especially dynamic-type web stuff) still have no trouble finding jobs. Not everyone has to implement their web site ideas - there is room for pure design. Unfortunately, if you then have to work with someone without the ability to implement their ideas, some of those ideas are going to be real *fun* to implement...
'Bars' and 'Dance Clubs' have to pay money for the right to play music.
Restaurants etc do too. If they don't, they are technically violating copyright law. There was a big stink in Ottawa (Canada) about 6 months ago about this very issue where the rates were about to be raised to a point where many small restaurants wouldn't be able to afford it. I don't remember the details off hand, but I believe that many switched to radio instead (?)
Anyway, public performance of musical works is incredibly regulated. Ever wonder why all those restaurant chains (Buffalo Charlie's, Perkins, Dennys etc) come up with annoying and campy birthday chants instead of singing the traditional "Happy Birthday"? It's not just because most of the chanters can't sing (okay, cheap shot). It's because it's actually illegal to sing "Happy Birthday" in a for-profit situation, or in a gathering of more than 25 people, without paying the appropriate (and not cheap) royalties to the Warner Bros.
Slashdot Mirror
In Canada, Telus (formerly ClearNet) charges Cdn$0.10 per incoming message (although apparently messages sent from other mobile phones as opposed to from email are now free). It used to be Cdn$0.50 per message, with no freebies. So it's going in the right direction, but it is still excessively expensive (IMO).
Personally, though, I'm not sure how useful it is - the only messages I ever received via text messaging were unsolicited.
It's unlikely that the number of spam being received actually dropped. You are still receiving the same volume of spam (and likely more based on trends), just not forwarding them on to your users (and ultimately still using bandwidth and resources in order to receive and remove junk).
That said, $1500 bucks for such primitive filtering sounds a bit steep to me. It's been said that spam filtering is the next anti-virus industry and I'm starting to understand why...
In general, content filtering is problematic because of false positives (which is unacceptable in a business context). So content filtering should be used very sparingly. Same with domain name / IP blacklisting.
I personally like white-lists, however, they do have their downsides. One spammer trick being used a great deal nowadays is to spoof addresses so that they appear to be generated internally and thus getting around most filters. Also, as white-lists become more popular, spammers are going to look for ways to abuse these. I would think a white list based on keywords is just begging to be abused.
Another thing spammers are starting to do is encrypt their messages, since many systems decrypt after the spam filter is run.
This brings me to a big area that your expensive spam filter appears to lack (based on your description) - bogus header filtering and email address filtering. Since a significant portion of spam these days can be trapped by eliminating strange email addresses (eg 6 consonents in a row, telltale tracking numbers...) and checking that the headers are valid - I would think that this omission is very significant.
Omissions and false positives aside, I would question why anyone would spend $1500 on spam filtering when there are pretty good (free) alternatives out there...
-www.experts-exchange.comx p.com
-www.askme.com
-www.e
-www.smallbusiness.com
Experts-exchange is the largest technical expertise community online. Active for several years, you receive question points when you sign up for an account, and on a daily basis. You can then use these question points to ask technical questions about hardware, software and Internet related technologies. Experts compete for "expert points" based on the number of question points you allot to your question. The level of knowledge is high, and you can usually get an answer to your question within days, if not hours.
Askme.com is a more general question and answer community. Ranging from "Dear Abby" advice to legal advice to home improvements. There was a big stink a couple of years ago where one of the "lawyers" turned out to be a teenager who learned everything he knew from TV, so take the credentials of the advisors with a grain of salt. Actually, that goes for all these kinds of sites.
Exp.com is a consultant community. If you have a particular technical requirement, you can post this requirement to exp.com and receive bids from professional consultants. The bids range from no charge to normal consulting rates. One advantage to using this service is that you can get a whole range of quotes all in one place, giving you a good sense of how much you should be charged for a particular service. Experts in the Exp.com community are generally rated once they have completed a few contracts, so you can also get a sense of what other clients think of that particular contractor.
Smallbusiness.com is another question and answer type site, with a bit more emphasis on general article writing. It's fairly comprehensive, and maintained by other small business owners from all over the place (although it does have a US-centric focus). Another good small business resource center is your local entrepreneurship center (For example, mine is www.entrepreneurship.com)
I also like Google (obligatory comment) - but I tend to use it to find resource sites, which I in turn use to find out more information.
For instance, two more specific sites that I use a great deal are javascript.internet.com (tons of how to Javascripts that usually give me a pointer in the right direction) and sqlteam.com, a SQL related advice site.
Someone else suggested the library. That's a good idea! Your local librarian will generally have a list of resources (not just books anymore either) and places to go to find out more!
That was my first thought too.
What's wrong with www.allrecipes.com (my favorite, and one of the biggest recipe sites)? You can contribute, their most popular stuff is available in "cookbook" form, and you can copy (and pass along) any recipe.
There are a ton of recipes (way more than many equivalent sites) and you can find things based on the ingredients you have on hand (+ remove pesky ingredients that you can't eat). They even have an extensive special diet section. And, most importantly, you can save the recipes that work out to your "recipe box" (which is available for free) - something I find essential, since roughly half of the recipes I try out don't work the way I was hoping - and I won't make again. Then again, this statistic is also dropping with this site, because I can go and read the ratings and reviews - which give me a pretty good idea of what other people thought...
One thing about recipes is that there is no "closed source" equivalent exactly (once you get the recipe that is). While many inventors like to get the credit, I've NEVER heard of a cookbook that disallowed free sharing and modification of the recipe, and there's nothing to stop you from just renaming it... Actually, cook books are probably the original "open source" product.
So why re-invent the wheel? Just think what could be accomplished if we didn't keep doing the same projects over and over and over and over...
"They can not say 'We will provide you cable modem service for $40 a month for 1 year, and we can change any terms of this contract.'
Sure they can (and do!). And your options then become: "accept the terms of the agreement" (usually occurs if you continue to use the service within x period of time after being notified of the changes), or "quit using the service". Neither of which are particularly palatable.
And hey, there are definitely other small ISPs in my area - and they all either resell the service offered by the bigger guys, or cost $400+/month and are on the verge of bankruptcy.
And in my case, I have to put up with the price going up on average 5-10%/ year because there are very few alternatives due to location.
The alternatives are:
-Dialup (too slow, requirement for second line means comparable price)
-Satellite (requires dialup in addition)
-Wireless (has Cdn$400 installation fee, which doesn't make sense given I'm not planning to live in this location long enough to recoup the cost)
Other suggestions are welcome of course, but we've done fairly extensive research...
And many (if not most) contracts have a clause stating that they are allowed to change the terms of the contract at any time...
I'd doubt if a legal challenge would get very far, especially if you couldn't prove that your use of Kazaa was completely 100% legal (ie not for illegally trading copyrighted material)
I've found it easier to get off postal junk mail lists than email lists (I get roughly 100 messages a day). Snail mail costs the sender money, rather than the recipient. Thus, the senders care a little more about the recipients. If you have a "real" mailbox, you can put a no flyers sign out, which reduces the junk too. Return to sender anything that's junk and has an actual address - it's an easy way to get off lists. And then don't sign up for catalogues if you don't want them....
When I was in grade nine, I did a science fair project on the relative efficiencies between a QWERTY and DVORAK keyboard. We measured the distance between each key, and came up with the amount of work required to press each key depending on age/gender (in those days keyboard manufacturers weren't publishing their "springyness" stats yet). Then we took various pieces of text (eg entire works of Shakespeare, various essays and stories, various common phrases that use all the letters in the alphabet such as the quick brown fox etc) and ran it through an analysis program we'd written for the purpose.
:)
It was pretty neat. Dvorak was the hands down winner for plain old English, but Qwerty was *much* better for Inuktitut (lots of k's and q's). We also looked at french, german and spanish samples, but I don't really remember how things stacked up (it was a while ago). I think Dvorak was very slightly better for most, although it depended on what you were typing.
Based on this project, I switched keyboard layouts. And then I found I couldn't touch type in Qwerty anymore. Apparently this is not unique - most people have difficulty remembering more than one or two keyboard layouts. So I would think that a layout that would change depending on what you were doing would be a nightmare.
Really, what would be ideal is to measure how much work it is for you personally to use each finger and get a sampling of your personal typing patterns, and then just go from there. As the original poster commented - the ideal keyboard may not be the most efficient, since you have to take into account how easy it is to work with. And I would think that how easy it is to work with includes how easy it is to remember
Given that I listed the fact that Micro$oft makes windows as a con...
Personally, I think that Microsoft's business tactics stink. Or, put another way, their corporate values don't mesh with my personal values. Ergo, I don't and would likely never work for Microsoft. But I still use their software, because the alternatives are not yet good enough substitutes.
As someone who doesn't care what the OS *is*, as long as it runs my programs and doesn't crash, I find the above list of cons somewhat odd. I've never had a BoS since upgrading to W2K. My computer has frozen exactly once in the last two years. I've turned off the machine three times (other than rebooting for installation of things like service packs) - once when going on vacation, twice when moving the machine. I've never had my registry become "unstable".
My XP machines are at least as stable, although as development machines they take considerably more abuse and thus do have the odd program crash. The OS itself, however, does not.
On the other hand, our linux box used to freeze all the time. We finally converted it to WinXP, and since then (3 months) it's been fine. Trying to find documentation to figure out what the heck was wrong with the Linux configuration took substantial amounts of time. It was a painful and annoying experience. No, we haven't given up on Linux altogether, but we did make sure that Linux only runs on our non-essential computers.
Perhaps the problem is merely that our expertise is on the Windows, rather than Linux side. And that's fair enough. But if that's the case, getting up to speed on Linux has so far taken us much more effort for much less result than we ever expended on Windows.
Obviously my list of pros and cons would look somewhat different:
Win 2k+
Pros
-Very stable
-All my applications work
-No learning curve (I'm already familiar with it)
-UI is much more refined
-Response time is faster (this really surprises me, because I was always under the impression that Linux was supposed to be way faster and have much lower hardware requirements as a result - but whenever I've used a Linux machine - it chugs regardless of the hardware)
Cons
-Produced by Microsoft
-Market leader - thus target for script kiddies
Frankly, I can live with the cons, much more easily than the cons for Linux so far. That said, don't mark me down as a pro-Windows anti-Linux type.
Because intellectually, I think Linux sounds way better. And all things being equal, I would use Linux. The problem is - no matter how loudly you tell me Linux is not only comparable to Windows but better - that doesn't make it true.
Yet, anyway.
"If cars were not as deadly as they are, people would learn how to drive them the same way they learn Word."
Most people "learn" to drive by taking the minimum legally required course. If it wasn't legally required, most people would in fact learn as they learn Word (trial and error). Few would even bother with reading the manual (eg the rules of the road).
Don't believe me? Ask your oldest living relative to describe their driving lessons and subsequent test.
My grandfather did not take driving lessons per say, and his test consisted of driving 500 m down the road. Forward.(~1930s in Ontario, Canada). No parking. No vision check.
Given that computers are becoming part of many pieces of 'dangerous' equipment (not to mention work environments), I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the future computer classes became mandatory (actually, many schools these days have it in the curriculum...). And although I think it would be dumb, I don't think a requirement for a license to operate computers
is as unlikely as many think.
Finally, although I personally had no difficulty learning how to use the mouse - I recall the struggles my aunt, my mother and my mother-in-law had with it. It took years. And hours of tutorials. So I don't think the mouse example is a good one.
That said, in order for something to be usable, it ought to be intuitive for those members of the population who are non-techies. By this I mean those who couldn't care less if it's called 'Linux' or 'Windows' - they care about writing an email to their extended family, or getting that obscure artist who wants to share his or her CD (right ) off the net. And honestly, I think too many people responsible for designing applications such as Kazaa are only interested in making an application that they themselves will find useful. All the design is done from the perspective of someone with more knowledge about computers in general (and the application specifically) than the users.
And that's why studies like the one referenced above are important - not because they'll teach the users to be more careful (users shouldn't HAVE to worry about such things), but because they make suggestions to the DESIGNERS and DEVELOPPERS on how the users are actually using and perceiving their use of the application.
I had one of the original Palm 1000s (which I later upgraded to be the equivalent of a professional for the extra memory), and then later a Palm 5000 (also upgraded), and now a Palm IIIc.
I use my Palm extensively, to the point of actually wearing through 3 pieces of tape that I placed over the graffitti area to protect it. (I used it as a notetaking device all the way through university, including math and engineering classes). I had it on 8 hours a day, taking notes.
My first Palm still works, although I felt its graffitti recognition started to get less accurate (and I wanted new software...) so I sold it to a friend (who still uses it). The case also cracked (this was a well known problem) and the battery cover often came off.
My second Palm became obsolete when I won the colour one in a contest, so I gave it to my aunt who is a doctor (and she still uses it extensively as well). It was still in pretty good shape, although I had a sticky button problem due to too many games of Pacman. The graffiti recognition on this model was still fine.
My colour Palm is pretty good, although the battery doesn't last anything like as long as the first two (only about 3.5 hours of continuous use). However, it's also doing a lot more, so I don't mind, and I'll admit that my continuous use these days tends to be games more than just using the memo editor. I'm also out of university, so battery life doesn't matter to me as much anymore... And it's pretty sturdy. It also doesn't seem to have the disintegrating case problem of the other two. On the negative side though, it (and many of the other newer Palms and Handsprings that I've tried out) is a LOT more sluggish in its responses - and that is a very bad thing for graffiti accuracy. I have to be much more precise in my writing, and can't go as fast because it doesn't seem to respond as well as the older models.
All this to say that I've so far been quite impressed with how well the Palms have lasted under the kind of abuse I've thrown at them. I've dropped them (luckily no screen damage) and left them outside accidentally in the winter - this is a pain, because the display freezes (and is useless until it warms up), without any problems.
Yes, there were the odd problems (sticky buttons, the graffiti area crapping out and the case cracking are the big ones that cropped up in newsgroup discussions), but I never personally encountered them in such degree that the Palm wasn't useful, and some of the problems were avoidable or fixable. (Eg glue for the case, protecting the graffiti area with tape, not pounding the buttons...) And I did notice that the gentler people are with them, the better they last - one friend had no end of issues with graffiti because he was pressing extremely hard on the screen, and his buttons stuck all the time. He sold it, and the next person had no trouble at all with it, because they had a much lighter touch!
Actually, I'm pretty impressed with the fact that the Palm 1000 is still living a useful life more than five years later... Given this kind of history, I think it's a little unfair to say that all Palms are "shoddily built".
I do think that the software is becoming a little less reliable (in particular the general sluggishness of the OS).
Anyway, my two cents.
The time differences / cultural differences aren't as big a factor between US and Canada either...
Kidding aside, in terms of conducting business "off-shore" so to speak, we've always found that:
First of all: It's all about growth of profit, not whether profit exists - and unfortunately - that's the way the market/society works... (and this is true whether you "have disdain" or not)
Secondly - "Internet companies suck, period." Where does this come from? It's kind of a throw away comment that you don't bother to backup or even explain. Are you saying that companies that label themselves as "dot-com" suck? Or that companies that sell intangibles (such as software) suck? Or something completely different? What's that got to do with HP exactly??? I could go off on a big rant about generalizations here, but I'll try to restrain myself.
Finally: "You make a printer you sell a printer and you have yourself a profit. Guarn-friggin-teed."
A) Just because you make a physical product doesn't mean that you will be able to sell it, or that you will make a profit. It's quite possible that the costs of creating that product + healthy product are higher than what other vendors can sell it for or worse, what people are willing to pay for it. There's the whole concept of economies of scale thrown in here too. It's a useful idea to know about, even if you don't agree because many business decisions are taken in order to achieve it.
B) You should know that printers are sometimes called to be the "razor blades" of the hardware business. The profit is made on the ink, not the printer.
But then, what do I know. I'm not a business major.
We use AMD (Athlon) processors exclusively without any problems whatsoever. They are absolutely rock solid. Yes, they do run slightly hotter, but our server room is adequately airconditionned. I personally wouldn't be comfortable running any computers (no matter what their CPU) in an inadequately cooled (and coolable) room.
The cost of extra electricity did not make a difference to our bottom line when we switched, but the price/performance ratio of Intel vs AMD sure did.
In terms of reliability and compatibility, much of the "feeling" in the business world has more to do with historical truths and marketing. It doesn't take into account the changed landscape in the chip market.
Intel's definitely been around longer and as a result has a longer and better history. It's only been relatively recently (last few years) that AMD has really begun to do anything other than follow the leader.
However, our experience with clients and our own environment suggests that Intel chips are now significantly *less* reliable than the AMD equivalents.
Just looking at RECENT history, this anecdotal information could be anticipated. How come? Because Intel is no longer hands-down the industry's technology leader. In fact, Intel keeps pushing out ever greater clock enhancements faster than they really want to in order to keep ahead/up with AMD. (See http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001120/ for some historical background) I don't know about you, but frankly CPU recalls make me nervous for a mission critical application.
My site is written in .rtf (www.phibian.com), and .doc will follow in due course. Of course, the site also uses a nifty web-server add-on that converts the files (as well as .pdf files, any ODBC accessible databases, text, html, etc) on the fly to a browser-viewable format.
And I post my email address all over the place - for a business, it's important that people can contact you... However, I rarely get spam; we have a good spam filter... (and yes, false positives are also extremely rare)
The way it works: We have a list of phrases that we consider to be spam-matches (you know: "this is not spam"... ). If the sender is not on the allowed sender list (currently my email contact list) and there are spam matches, then the email is not delivered. Instead, it is dumped to a cache, and the subject/sender/date are added to the log file.
A designated employee reads through the log roughly once a day - determining from the subject if it is a valid spam message or not. And then the messages are deleted (or rarely, bounced back to the person they were intended for, and the filter adjusted to avoid that type of false positive...).
The important part is the "allowed through" concept, as this way I could still receive breast cancer newsletters if I wanted to (often cited as the drawback for email filters, for some reason...)
I agree. For instance, Dutch Blitz (and other card games, particularly partner-based ones) are about getting the "highest" score, but lots of times we don't even bother -- because it's not the scoring part that matters/ that is fun. It's the playing part...
Why should I subscribe? If I were paying for the nytimes paper edition, they would *need* to know certain information in order to deliver the paper and charge me for it. Even if the paper were free, I'd still *need* to give them sufficient info to allow delivery. Similarly, if I was receiving an electronic version of the nytimes (whether free or not), they would *need* my email address in order to deliver the email. But: they don't *need* any information at all in order to provide the website version to me (aside from the stuff that goes on in the background, which I think they are perfectly welcome to, as long as they cannot link that aggregate data to individuals) I resent having to provide them with extra information that they don't need, for major inconvenience to me, and for limited benefit to them (which they ARE entitled to, as content providers who are trying to make some money off their labors). Inconveniences: why should I have to remember some other password, and why should I have to spend the time registering? Worse, the use of registration forces the user to give up privacy. If you get the paper version, the marketing department of the paper can't target your junk mail based on the fact that you spent slightly longer reading article A vs Article B, and thus must be passionately interested in reading more articles like article A, or worse yet, wish to purchase the latest related products. But I digress. Mainly, I don't wish to subscribe to nytimes, because the only context in which I read it is the occasional time where it is a) quoted in Slashdot, and b) also looks interesting. I've never read anything so compelling that I've said "Gee, I should get an account and go to the site every day.."
When computer equipment is involved in a criminal investigation, it is always seized. And in Canada anyway, if that computer is on a network, the cops can legally seize all of the computers on the network too.
When I learned that (from one of the two guys responsible for "computer crime" in Ottawa Carleton (and yes, that includes theft)) I pointed out to the guy that taken to extremes, he could confiscate the entire Internet... (or at least the Canadian part).
I asked why they wouldn't just take the hard drive or something - his response: "it's more efficient to take the entire system". And then he followed up the conversation with a chilling example of this business guy whose entire network of computers was seized for some reason or another and it turned out he was innocent. So, they returned the stuff (a year later) - but by that time it was too late - he'd had to declare bankrupcy as he couldn't replace the entire network, and still make his lease payments on the original stuff.
I thought this concept was really outrageous. But it's completely legal. The cop did say that in order to get the paperwork to be able to seize the computers, they have to jump through a lot of hoops (which I happen to believe).
But it still sucks that if I turn a blind eye to my roommates illegal shinanigans (even if you don't agree that it *ought* to be illegal, it still *is*..) then I'm risking any equipment I have that is on the same network...
"Why do we want to try to rehash the same ideas in the context of the search engine? " Because there is a demand for it. Reference: www.askjeeves.com.
Gaming can certainly be considered a sport. Get that adrenaline pumping, heart rate up (okay at least blood pressure...) Even the injury rate is higher at a serious gaming level than many sports...
It weren't about no piece of paper...
Too many people are going to university because it is the "right" thing to do, because they need to "have a reason" to acquire skills, and ultimately, to get the paper.
They wish to be taught, rather than learn - which is not in keeping with the original purpose of university - which really started with a bunch of smart guys trying to bounce ideas off each other and promote thinking among their eager followers.
It's a bit cynical, but my personal opinion is that many people go to university these days because they need the extra 4 or so years in order to grow up.
And did you know that in Canada (don't know the stats for the US, but they are similar), there are more people who are functionally illiterate than ever graduate from University?
While it is true that a degree is a requirement for certain fields (I want my neurologists to have the degree, thanks...) and it is also true that degrees create opportunities for job seekers trying to get a foot in the door - practical experience, ability and who you know (networking) in your field are more important to a long term career.
And - for the record - I had no troubles in university - so I'm not just trying to justify dropping out. I just think there are way too many people who go to university for the wrong reasons, who end up just wanting to "get through" - and then ended up in my classes...
Furthermore, once the work environment has settled down (ie no sweat shops, blatently unhealthy work conditions that shorten lifespan etc) unions seem to lose their purpose to a certain extent, and start trying to justify their existence.
They promote an unhealthy "Us against Them" kind of mentality - and particularly in cases where union employees are employed full time by an external union organization - don't care about the company at all (which, after all, has to continue in order to pay all those employees...).
In fact, in many cases, outside employees approach every issue from a more philosophical perspective - it's all more academic than anything. This ends up being not very helpful and creating situations like the endless high school teacher strikes here in Ontario.
"A few years ago, knowing just a few html tags and tricks could probably have gotten you a job as a full-fledged Web designer, or at least Web coder. As things get more complicated and Web sites more dynamic, the tools you need to create that all-singing, all-dancing user-interactive content have gotten more complex than carets and single letter tags"
Has anyone else noticed that the field is becoming fragmented? Just as graphic design for the web is really starting to take off in colleges and universities, the scripting required to get a complex web site up and running is starting to resemble bonafide programming - and is beyond either the technical or interest comfort zone of many graphic design folks.
And many content providers have long had nothing to do with the actual design but don't want anything more technical stuff like sticking it on the web site - be it adding to some database or actually modifying the HTML.
More and more, I see web design having three parts to it - the content - the gui - and the programming to put it altogether.
My experience has been that people with little HTML expertise (especially dynamic-type web stuff) still have no trouble finding jobs. Not everyone has to implement their web site ideas - there is room for pure design. Unfortunately, if you then have to work with someone without the ability to implement their ideas, some of those ideas are going to be real *fun* to implement...
'Bars' and 'Dance Clubs' have to pay money for the right to play music.
Restaurants etc do too. If they don't, they are technically violating copyright law. There was a big stink in Ottawa (Canada) about 6 months ago about this very issue where the rates were about to be raised to a point where many small restaurants wouldn't be able to afford it. I don't remember the details off hand, but I believe that many switched to radio instead (?)
Anyway, public performance of musical works is incredibly regulated. Ever wonder why all those restaurant chains (Buffalo Charlie's, Perkins, Dennys etc) come up with annoying and campy birthday chants instead of singing the traditional "Happy Birthday"? It's not just because most of the chanters can't sing (okay, cheap shot). It's because it's actually illegal to sing "Happy Birthday" in a for-profit situation, or in a gathering of more than 25 people, without paying the appropriate (and not cheap) royalties to the Warner Bros.