1. There are not a billion Chinese on the Internet! Most Chinese that are on the net are from Hong Kong! China is trying to crack down on Hong Kong's freedom and has been threatening business people and doing things like having a Chinese Naval show of force in Hong Kong harbor. There are other Chinese people on the Internet but it's nowhere near a billion!
2. Any site that doesn't play ball with China will have their IP address blocked by the government firewalls. Lest we forget who the real bad guys are! Let me remind you! It's the Communists!
3. Better to have some access to the Chinese rather then no access to information.
4. Reporters without Borders expose' http://www.narconews.com/letterwithoutborders1.htm l
USB / Firewire Devices / Cell Phones with Cameras / etc. etc.
- USB pen drives can quickly and easily store data without a trace and they are small enough to hide just about anywhere. A spammer was arrested in Ireland in a Internet cafe and the man tried to swallow the USB key drive. It contained all the spammer's software and mailing lists.
A PC in a corporate office could be booted up using a USB key drive and literally used to run hacker tools. (well same could be done with a CD-R but that's beside the point). It's faster and easier to slip a USB device into an office situation unless you are going to be frisked and metal detected or body cavity searched.
Hackers have been slipping XBoxes, Sega Dreamcast, etc. into an office and jacking it into the ethernet to perform network analysis and packet sniffing.
- Firewire devices like the iPod have tremendous storage abilities. It truly is a portable hard disk that masquerades as a personal music device. There was an article a while back where the author witnessed a kid waltz into CompUSA with an iPod and the kid jacked it into a PowerMac and stole a complete copy of Office X from the floor model!
- Phones with mini-digital cameras can be used like a 007 James Bond mini camera. A police officer was fired for taking a photo of a naked body in the city morgue with his camera phone.
As technology gets better and better and the costs drop, the spy toys of yesteryear are now in the hands of joe blow.
True corporate espionage is going on every day. These tools make it easier an easier to steal data. Security folks who see the threat and take measures against it are enlightened. However, all security measures can be bypassed one way or another.
I am not even sure if there is a way to restrict USB/Firewire drives from working on a PC as long as it's running Windows. Seriously doubt many companies have thought about these issues.
I do know my company had the opportunity to give everyone a CD burner on their computers. This would have been ideal for user backups. But they sighted security as the reason why they did not.
Apple is really very good at interface design and making things that just plain work. I've used every computer since the early 80's and Apples stuff continues to amaze me.
The iPod was the first to place the new Digital Hub into the mainstream retail market. Supporting Windows helps this greatly. I just blew my friends mind with iTunes the other day. He's currently ripping hundreds of CD's on his Dell using iTunes so he can RIP/MIX/BURN his own discs. He'll probably get an iPod mini later on. The Dell came with a variety of Windows music software. WMP, MusicMatch, Dell Jukebox, etc. He never used any of it at all. Once iTunes was installed it's an explosion of usage! His next computer will probably be a Mac as well. He and his wife were deeply impressed by what they could do with iTunes and will undoubtedly look into Apple's systems when the Dell reaches EOL.
There was an interview with Steve Jobs recently when Apple released the Airport Express device where you can stream from a MAC/PC to any stereo in the house. It includes a wireless access point, ethernet, and a USB hub to control a remote printer. The device is only $129. The audio is both analog and Optical Digital. The question posed to Jobs was "What about a remote control?" The response was a stare then a slight smile and no comment.
I bet that Apple is working on a fantastic remote. In fact, the rumors of a PDA may actually be a touch screen universal remote control instead. Imagine a small thin remote control with a touch screen and it will house a lithium Ion rechargeable battery and have a small docking station to recharge it. A full color screen. Pre-programmed control codes for 10,000 devices along with a learning mode. Connect it to a Mac/PC and custom program the button layouts. Control iTunes remotely over the 802.11 network. Stream iMovies to your TV, etc. It's all part of the digital hub concept and Apple could blow everyone's mind. If you don't think that Apple is thinking about this stuff, think again. The concept of a digital hub was and is pretty original and it will take time to work out all the ideas that will follow. Apple spends a huge amount of money on R&D and they do a fantastic job.
I say they should consider buying TiVo and taking it to the next level or build their own TiVo like device. Tie the subscription into.Mac. The new Codec for HD transmission at a greatly reduced bandwidth could mean streaming of video in the home network. Think iTunes concepts being taken to Movies and TV shows.
I've seen a few Apple Dealers and frankly, they are out of their league in regard to competing with the Apple store(s).
I purchased my first Apple in an Apple store after having first visited two Apple Dealers. I was amazed that unlike Gateway Country stores or even the dealers I didn't have to place an order and wait for delivery I could actually walk out of the store with product in hand!
Apple's store fronts are stocked with just about every product. (minus very new products that haven't shipped yet) Their sales people are knowledgable and helpful. The store layout is excellent, you can actually find what you are looking for.
The Apple Dealers are going the way of the DoDo and they are lashing out in frustration. The only way they can survive is to offer additional services that Apple doesn't offer. i.e. custom development, onsite service, etc. They need to build niche markets and pursue them. This means they will need to do more then simply buy and resell Apple products.
The Apple Dealers have been dwindling for years and the whole reason Apple started opening the stores was to create market visibility in the nations shopping malls. The death of the x86 Clone Mom & Pop shops is now befalling the Apple Dealers.
The Dealers may have been responsible for 50% of the Apple sales in the past but that is going to move to the Apple store fronts. Apple is expanding in many ways and the dealer base is simply not large enough to handle to increase.
Some ideas for Apple Dealers: - Work with Graphics, PrintShops, and Sign makers. - Create a POS (point of sale system) - Create inventory systems - Physical Asset management systems - Etc, Etc. bring the Mac into new ventures.
One does not really need to know C++ nor Java as Objective-C is really ANSI C + Smalltalk extensions. Obj-C on it's own is really rather simple. It's much easier and some may argue more powerful then Java or C++.
What this book does is introduce you to the Cocoa API and the Apple Dev Tools XCode & Interface Builder. The first edition was a blast and I plan on picking up the second edition in the near future.
If you are coming from a C++ background and you like it, you should study Carbon and not Cocoa at first. You can call Cocoa objects from Carbon and visa versa though. New projects should probably be written in Cocoa. Older projects written in C++ can be ported to Carbon easily. C programs can be ported to Cocoa and Java programs should probably stay Java or be ported to the WebObjects frameworks if it's a web based solution. You can write Java apps using the Cocoa API but it then becomes locked into the OS X platform as the Cocoa API (for Java) is not available on other platforms (maybe GNUStep but it's not all the way there yet) Note, you can run Tomcat and JBoss on OS X!
The NeXTStep / OpenStep / Cocoa API is rather advanced and can take some getting used to... i.e. you will have a rather steep learning curve to absorb it all and understand the best practices. This book is a great introduction and will get one up to speed quickly.
I found Interface Builder to be the most difficult part of the development process. This was because I had to unlearn all the preconceived crap in my head that I learned from other GUI interface tools. It turns out IB is much more advanced then anything I've ever used before because it builds live objects and not just GUI code. It then archives these objects into NIB files which are automatically unarchived by a Cocoa application. You literally build objects graphically and then interconnect them to each other and your Obj-C classes and instances. WebObjects does the same thing but with Java. It's a really slick development tool and once you start to understand it, the light turns on and you can see the possibilities.
Total newbies should probably pick up the "Programming in Objective-C" by Stephen Kochan. This book covers just the underlying Obj-C language and the Core Foundation (NeXStep/OpenStep/GNUStep/Cocoa) API. Programming in Objective-C does not cover the GUI portion of Cocoa programming. I just finished it and it managed to bootstrap my understanding quite a bit.
Yeah Probation-class pool! That would work nicely.
All they need to do is implement some monitoring tools to watch for excessive email traffic and if they see that then automatically dump the user into a restricted ip address pool where everything is blocked in and out except for a single Comcast web page and the ability to reach Windows Update along with Symantec and McAfee anti-virus sites.
The single Comcast page which would be the only page the user would be able to get to (except for anti-virus and Windows update sites) would explain that their computer may have been hijacked that they need to remove the trojans and clean their computer before they can rejoin the rest of Comcast's user base.
Universities implemented this when schools re-opened in the middle of several Worm wars. They would connect to the network and get immediately blocked until they were virus scanned and proven to be clean.
The difference being that the University just blocked everyone by only allowing known MAC addresses on the network at first. Comcast would have to flag people differently by monitoring for excessive email traffic.
Take if from someone whose been in IT for a long long time. User's are so sick of passwords they completely hate that they have to keep multiple passwords and then they hate it when the passwords expire.
The password police are constantly tightening the password rules. It used to be 90 days till a password expired. Now it's 60 days. It used to be 6 characters now it's 8 characters. You used to be able to re-use an old password, now you end up having to wait until it's 15 passwords old before you can re-use it. All passwords must contain 8 characters and include at least one number. You cannot set a password that is too similar to the old one. Many words have been outright banned from use as a password.
As an IT person with access to a lot of things, I have 28 different passwords just for work alone! There's about 8 mainframe ones, 4 PeopleSoft ones, 2 Windows Domain, etc., etc., etc. I actually set up an encrypted file on a USB pen drive that I unlock and reference when I need to see my password list. I have a couple of Mac's at home and I love the KeyChain solution!
The average user has about 5-10 passwords they have to worry about. User's write them down, come up with elaborate rotation schemes, etc. Mostly they just call the Help Desk repeatedly because they lock themselves out in the process of changing their password.
I am all for a smart-card or USB keychain along with a single sign-on system to everything. It would cut 600 calls to the help desk every month and it would make thousands of employee's very very happy.
Fact is HP is the printer manufacturer industry leader. The reason for this is the large networkable and reliable printers. There is also a huge repair infrastructure fit around the HP printers. i.e. 3rd party repair groups who can come out and clean and repair our printers.
I am sitting in a building with about a 1,000 different HP LaserJet and Color LaserJet printers. Still have some 4SI's in service. They run every day and rarely break down. It may seem like there are breakdowns but it's mostly print jams or maintenance kits that need replacing. They are truly work-horses.
In another part of the company (smaller location but higher print demand) we installed some new Xerox highend printers because of the sheer volume that the users need.
Frankly, the article is mostly about retail inkjet printers and not big corporate lasers. Inkjet printers suck for any 'real' printing needs. You spend far more in ink then you do in the printers. I've done cost comparisons and we would be replacing the inkjet printer frequently and changing the ink even more frequently. The costs go through the roof.
Some users can get a desktop inkjet printer or all in one printer (managers and others with confidential information to print) but most users are told to use the big printers and get off their ass to retreive their print jobs.
Dell printers are not in the same class as HP printers and they don't scale to an enterprises needs.
Not flamebait at all. I too own Apple systems, PC systems (WinXP & Linux) and even a Sun SPARC workstation. I also own a series 1 TiVo and a series 2 TiVo that I hacked to expand the storage space.
I can clearly agree with this argument TiVo Rocks! It's every bit as elegant and easy to use as an Apple computer yet very powerful at the same time.
The Linux alternatives are rapidly coming up to speed in capabilities and already have more features but they are not as elegant as a TiVo and I doubt they ever will be. Not unless some user interface expert decides to contribute. Most Linux hackers are not very good at making quality user interfaces.
TiVo is like Apple and even Google. They make really great tech but they also wrap it up with an easy and graceful user interface. The TiVo remote and the Sony branded TiVo remote are fantastic. The menus are easy to navigate and it's rather intuitive once you grasp the basics.
The pictures were obtained from thememoryhole.org and were mixed up in an Internet snafu.
From the Drudge Report:
WASHINGTON POST, REUTERS, CNN, AP RUN PHOTOS OF SPACE SHUTTLE COFFINS -- AS IRAQ WAR DEAD!... AFTER INTERNET MIX-UP: Russ Kick of thememoryhole.org filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting 'all photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.'
But Kick appears to have assumed all the photos given to him were of the WAR ON TERROR/IRAQ dead!
On Thursday NASA claimed more than 70 photos featured in Kick's war dead -- were photos of Space Shuttle Columbia's crew! The shuttle blew up on 2/1/03.
'An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts,' NASA said.
CNN aired space shuttle coffins as Iraq dead from thememoryhole.org. The Washington Post printed a shuttle dead photo on page A10. [The paper is planning a correction on Saturday, sources tell DRUDGE.] Reuters is also distributing a photo of the Columbia crew remains. AP has a screen grab of the first page of photos - all of which are of Columbia crew remains. AP titles the image as 'A page from the Memory Hole.org's homepage shows photographs of American war dead arriving at Dover Air Force, the nation's largest military mortuary, Thursday, April 22, 2004'... It is not clear if other media outlets are currently featuring space shuttle coffins in their rotations...
Re:We're talking about Samba and Linux here...
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Samba 3 By Example
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yeah with a single point of failure on two binary files! I have no idea how many registries I've had to repair, replace, or just end up reloading Windows to fix but it's up in the 6 figure range!
MS needs to freaking put in some better backup and auto-recover features for the registry! It's far to vital to rely on a Sysadmin backing it up on a regular basis. There needs to be a multi-layered backup going back several days. Sure you can do a system restore but it's not rock solid enough and scares the hell out of most people. Go-Back was and is much more reliable and easier to understand then the first generation Microsoft System Restore feature. The registry should be backed up after every single successful reboot and one should have at least 4-5 choices to roll it back to if there is a problem. You should be able to do this at boot time when the registry has an issue being read or written to. A dialog should popup and ask if you wish to switch the current registry files to the backed up ones.
Linux scatters INI like configuration files in a variety of locations and the format varies. But at least if your Samba.conf file gets hosed, it won't blow out everything else along with it. Say it's truly corrupted, you can at least edit the sucker with vi / emacs and fix the glitch. With a binary registry file you're fucked.
Apple's got it right with their XML.plist files and the Property List editor to read and edit them. You can edit them with any text editor as well. In addition there are full command line tools that are vastly superior to the Windows command line tools. It's easy to write Cocoa/Carbon apps that use a.plist file to store default settings and preferences. Most apps if they follow the recommendation will have the ability to regenerate an applications.plist file if it's deleted. Before Apple came out with Journaled HFS+, there were many file corruption issues (all fixable with a permissions check and running a disk util). The new Journaled HFS+ is pretty darn solid, I haven't had a corrupted file ever since the journaling was added in Jaguar (it was there in Jaguar but you had to turn it on via a system hack in Panther it's on by default via the Disk Utility).
We deployed several offices with VoIP in a large enterprise environment. Some offices have more bandwidth then others. The one's with the least bandwidth have more issues with VoIP.
Most problems have to do with initial setup and configuration of the phones. i.e. programming of voice mail, features, etc. The next problem is setting up the routing and networking. Then out of the blue problems with dropped calls, voice mail issues and no incoming calls.
The hardware is only part of the problem. You have a lot of choices to make.
1. Quality phones and PBX gear that's stable and reliable. 2. Bandwidth, enough to handle the load of normal data and VoIP. 3. Quality tech's to set it up the right way. Network engineers to ensure the quality of the data circuits. 4. Quality provider with stable systems. This includes the Internet pipeline / leased line. You need to keep this circuit up and running during business hours. If the network is unstable and computers are disconnected frequently, then you can expect the phones to go with it.
There are advantages to having your data and phones on different systems. The big advantages to VoIP come when you already have circuits in place and you are connecting multiple offices from across the country (or world). This way you can save money on inter-office calls and long distance calls (depending on the provider). Workers can setup VoIP at home and connect it to their Cable modem along with a VPN connection. This makes a lot of sense both technically and financially.
The initial cost of VoIP hardware is justified when you need to service it.
Actually, this works quite well for me. There is a Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X available at http://microsoft.com/mac - other products - Remote Desktop Connection for Mac.
It comes down to what you use more often, the Mac or the Linux box. If the Mac is your main workstation then you should have no problems if you run WinXP Pro on the PC and use the Remote Desktop client for the Mac.
My main workstation is a Dual PowerMac G5 w/Dual Apple 17" Studio displays. Secondary machine is a PowerBook G4. I also have a Sun Blade 100 and 3 Linux boxes as well. Then there is the fiance's Sony Vaio desktop. I use RDC to connect to the WinXP Pro box. I simply ssh into the Linux and Sun boxes or forward X11 windows.
You will need WinXP Pro as the Home version does not include Remote Desktop abilities.
Used to be Sun was the biggest baddest Unix platform, chosen by those who needed real power and scalability. Customers paid a premium in hardware and software as well support contracts.
Now that Linux is making huge progress on it's Enterprise abilities there are several event horizons rapidly approaching.
1. x86 hardware is getting cheaper all the time. Sun hardware is still very much overpriced.
2. IBM's PowerPC Power4/Power5 & Power 970 chips are about to go mainstream. You will be able to buy multi-processor Power4/5 racks running Linux and supported by IBM. All IBM needs to do is start selling these monster CPU's to third party OEM's and the price will drop. Virginia Tech's PowerMacG5 super cluster is evidence of the coming storm. It's scored very high and has the highest ROI achieved in it's class. Switching it over to 1U XServeG5's will reduce it's physical footprint thereby reducing cooling and location space. Apple won't be the only PowerPC dealer. Linux runs very well on Power chips. IBM will assist in further kernel optimizations.
3. What's going on with Intel? AMD and IBM appear to be mopping the floor with them lately. Looks like they need to go back to the drawing board and start over with a new core outside of Itanium.
The more I think about it, the more I realize Sun is doomed. They may never be at the top again unless they get very competitive very fast. I work for a huge corporation that has quite a bit of Sun hardware and I can tell you most of the hardware is out of date and near obsolete. We are still running Solaris 2.6 in production, that was released in 1997! Why didn't we upgrade? Because we can run Linux a heck of a lot cheaper then Solaris and we can upgrade the hardware without killing our budgets.
Just get a freaking iPod! Why the heck would you want to waste your schools bandwidth or drive space with MP3's? Another thing, it would open the school up to problems with the RIAA who is already going after students and some of the schools themselves. I am sure you would catch holy hell if a SysAdmin found your MP3 collection on the schools server!
Companies are paranoid about this sort of thing and most block MP3 files with their proxy servers and are already scanning drives looking for MP3's on employee machines.
The iPod will handle everything self contained in a portable form. 40GB's if you get the biggest iPod.
Most people could carry their entire music collection on a single iPod. Even if you can't fit it all on the iPod, you can at least load a huge amount. More then you could possibly listen to in a single day.
If you want to connect it to speakers, there are small kits for that or you just plug it into PC speakers. Heck, you can even broadcast a signal with an iPod accessory to other's with FM Walkmans to listen to the music if you wish to use headphones.
iTunes will stream the playlists to another iTunes computer on the same subnet. Gasp, you could even use the Windows version of iTunes if you must. There are ways around the subnet thing. Streaming from a home computer to the campus will probably suck up huge amounts of bandwidth on both ends. If you have a cable modem at home, prepare to be slapped for exceeding a bandwidth cap. Also you might attract the attention of a network sysadmin on campus when they notice the bandwidth spike.
As far as development goes, nothing beats an Apple laptop with the developer tools and few other things thrown in. C/C++, ObjC, Java, Tomcat, JBOSS, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, Emacs, ViM, CVS, etc., etc. Plus you can get Microsoft Office X which is completely compatible with Office XP. You can even get Virtual PC along with Office X to run other Windows based software if you must.
Yeah but I remember what Java applets were like before MS decided to start mucking it up. In fact, we have some Applets still in production use and frankly they suck!
The big problem is performance, early Java was slow. It takes forever to download the applet and execute it.
Having the interface in HTML forms with some client side JavaScript to help with data validation and GUI polish and it's many times more efficient then an Applet.
Sure you have to redraw the client all the time. But it still quicker then Java Applets were.
Now, newer Java is much faster, the hardware is much faster, but bandwidth is the same. The real solution is backend services in Java running on a Application server. The client should be a full blown application that is downloaded once rather then each time with an Applet. Write some code to check for the latest version but stop downloading the Applet every time the user goes to the site.
For the same exact reason that SPAM is still working for the Spammers. Somebody somewhere is actually stupid enough to buy stuff after being Spammed!
So why wouldn't a company be stupid enough to pay for a worthless license?
I see stupid spending all the time. We have bought millions of dollars of site licenses and then never used them! They really didn't need a site license but they bought it anyway. Then they killed the project later on and the software just sits there collecting dust.
Hell, if they would just do a serious spending audit for the last several years, they could find enough money to avoid outsourcing IT!
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! No wonder Microsloth fears the guy in a garage somewhere! They know some lone engineer could out do them easily and it all comes down to the company culture and red tape.
As I see it, and I have removed over a million pieces of spyware from my customer's computers...
The trouble with spyware is:
1. It's damn sneaky. No indication other then a license agreement that no one reads because it's all legalease and effectively gibberish to the average person.
2. Some spyware is loading onto computers via popup advertisements that are using obvious MSIE flaws to allow it to install. Most of the spyware changes your homepage to their search page which also happens to re-install their software. This means they are using virus/trojan techniques to invade your system.
3. Most spyware will re-install or auto update itself if you try to remove it and miss a portion. Some spyware appears to team up with other spyware packages that reload each other.
4. Several spyware companies actually advertise anti-spyware software that just loads more spyware onto a system.
5. The security in Windows is horrible. Looks like we might have to resort to a signing method for all approved software and allow only company approved signatures to install. I don't think Windows fully allows this for everything. I know they do it for drivers but it should be available for all software.
Spyware is begining to be a real problem in enterprise environments, we locked down our WinXP computers pretty tight and yet the spyware still manages to get installed. It takes hours to remove spyware from a user's machine. In some cases, when Ad-Aware and SpyBot both failed to remove a package, we ended up having to rebuild the OS and restore the user's data.
Windows is so very broken that I don't think it can ever be fixed. No law will make a difference, companies will just move off shore and then still deliver the spyware goods.
The only sure fire way I see Windows getting repaired is if Microsoft bites the bullet and stops development on Longhorn and then literally starts over. They should make a FreeBSD base and build the Windows API into the system. This will ensure multiple user abilities and more importantly, security. Of course this will break all old software that requires drive letters and other things that will have changed but it's becoming necessary. The holy grail for MS is backwards compatibility and it's also a curse they will never give up.
I know, Apple did the same thing with OS X. It's a custom Mach kernel with a FreeBSD foundation. They build a backwards compatible Classic environment as well as a porting environment called Carbon in addition to the NeXTStep Cocoa NS API. The security is there and you are prompted to install software whenever an application tries to install. If it installs in your user home directory structure, you may not be prompted, but at least you will be able to rebuild the user account and migrate your data.
Microsoft needs to follow suit. Of course they should do it their own way but they really need to focus on security as well as separating the OS from the Applications and System wide software from individual user software as well as user settings from system settings. The trouble is Windows has always had a hard time isolating things because of the backwards compatibility issues. WinXP moved the user profiles to Documents and Settings but it needs to be better isolated across everything everywhere. All the security issues come down to a serious flaw in design which directly stems from the Win3.x and the strong desire to keep old software running on new systems. Windows systems are wide open out of the box. Most good Unix distributions are closed out of the box. i.e. in Unix you need to turn things on. In Windows you need to turn things off. This makes a heck of a lot harder to lock down.
It's more important to have an option of buying a box without any operating system pre-loaded and offer a discount to do so. i.e.
- Windows XP Home - Windows XP Pro - Linux (RedHat Whatever) - None -- THIS IS WHAT WE NEED!!!
I doubt many average computer users would know what to do with Linux if they got it. I also doubt many of those who want it want it preloaded with whatever distribution you decide to load.
Offer some REAL modems that don't require software to run. i.e. a modem with an actual chip that does the work!
The only reason WinModems are successful is because they work (on Windows) and they cost slightly less. This is no big deal for a few machines, but it really adds up when you sell hundreds of thousands as DELL does monthly.
With broadband, modems are becoming more and more obsolete anyway. Sure there are many who still use them but not nearly as many as there once were. I personally haven't used a modem in years... I honestly haven't needed to.
What is really driving Broadband among those who would not have used it before is VPN and companies who are allowing their employee's to VPN into the network. I would say that most of the corporate users who don't have a computer at home except for their work laptop, are actually buying cable and DSL connections just so they can work at home.
It was just rolled out where I work recently, and there have been hundreds of users all getting signed up for broadband services. More and more they hear by word of mouth from coworkers on how great it is and they call us to get it setup. Most of them don't own a personal computer, they use only their work computer. Those that do own computers have very old computers. Few have up-to-date computers and few have broadband but tell them they can work at home just about as fast as it is in the office (faster for some WAN users) and they buy it on the spot!
Add wireless into the mix, i.e. they can work on a comfortable couch without wires and keep a broadband connection to work going and they freak out and want to do it right away!
Corporate America will soon be accelerating Work At Home as soon as the numbers of employee's able to do it reaches critical mass. They can save a fortune on office space. Heck, I could be doing my job from home if they would just get me a VoIP phone that connects to the company PBX.
Sounds like it would be worth simply buying a new remote from TiVo rather then go through this time consuming process! Sorry but $35 is a small price compared to an hour or two of fiddling and polishing a remote's internals.
Yeah, I'm a geek but I am not going through this process unless it would cost a $100 otherwise!
I am pretty positive that Mercedes and Cadallac already have this technology. It's just not filtered down to the masses yet.
i.e. Collision warning when backing up in a parking lot so you don't hit a pole or shopping cart, etc. Collision avoidance when changing lanes. Also a neat feature on the Mercedes that will maintain the distance from the car in front of you to avoid an accident. Either in cruise control or not, it will automatically break and lower engine power when you get too close to the car in front. It will also automatically speed up.
It's out there already, it's just too damn expensive to have it in anything but an ultra luxury car. Granted, rich little old ladies really need this stuff!
Check out http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/2218521/detai l.html
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They wait till the last paragraph to tell you *** Quote: "There is a catch. Tier Buy Through doesn't apply to Digital cable, which offers more channels and at higher prices. If you have digital, you still have to buy packages. So take a look at what you are paying, and what you are getting, because you can always downgrade your package to fit your needs."
The Screaming Meanie 110 with a kick. 120 decible alarm. 3 settings; lo, med, high. Timer and alarm clock features. Homing signal can be heard up to one mile in an emergency.
You could probably find them for sale in Truck Stops. They are loud as hell and sure to wake anyone but a deaf person up!
Truckers frequently take naps for an hour or so and need something to wake them up as their body wants to sleep a lot longer. They also need to be on time.
Slashdot Mirror
1. There are not a billion Chinese on the Internet! Most Chinese that are on the net are from Hong Kong! China is trying to crack down on Hong Kong's freedom and has been threatening business people and doing things like having a Chinese Naval show of force in Hong Kong harbor. There are other Chinese people on the Internet but it's nowhere near a billion!
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2. Any site that doesn't play ball with China will have their IP address blocked by the government firewalls. Lest we forget who the real bad guys are! Let me remind you! It's the Communists!
3. Better to have some access to the Chinese rather then no access to information.
4. Reporters without Borders expose' http://www.narconews.com/letterwithoutborders1.ht
USB / Firewire Devices / Cell Phones with Cameras / etc. etc.
- USB pen drives can quickly and easily store data without a trace and they are small enough to hide just about anywhere. A spammer was arrested in Ireland in a Internet cafe and the man tried to swallow the USB key drive. It contained all the spammer's software and mailing lists.
A PC in a corporate office could be booted up using a USB key drive and literally used to run hacker tools. (well same could be done with a CD-R but that's beside the point). It's faster and easier to slip a USB device into an office situation unless you are going to be frisked and metal detected or body cavity searched.
Hackers have been slipping XBoxes, Sega Dreamcast, etc. into an office and jacking it into the ethernet to perform network analysis and packet sniffing.
- Firewire devices like the iPod have tremendous storage abilities. It truly is a portable hard disk that masquerades as a personal music device. There was an article a while back where the author witnessed a kid waltz into CompUSA with an iPod and the kid jacked it into a PowerMac and stole a complete copy of Office X from the floor model!
- Phones with mini-digital cameras can be used like a 007 James Bond mini camera. A police officer was fired for taking a photo of a naked body in the city morgue with his camera phone.
As technology gets better and better and the costs drop, the spy toys of yesteryear are now in the hands of joe blow.
True corporate espionage is going on every day. These tools make it easier an easier to steal data. Security folks who see the threat and take measures against it are enlightened. However, all security measures can be bypassed one way or another.
I am not even sure if there is a way to restrict USB/Firewire drives from working on a PC as long as it's running Windows. Seriously doubt many companies have thought about these issues.
I do know my company had the opportunity to give everyone a CD burner on their computers. This would have been ideal for user backups. But they sighted security as the reason why they did not.
Apple is really very good at interface design and making things that just plain work. I've used every computer since the early 80's and Apples stuff continues to amaze me.
.Mac. The new Codec for HD transmission at a greatly reduced bandwidth could mean streaming of video in the home network. Think iTunes concepts being taken to Movies and TV shows.
The iPod was the first to place the new Digital Hub into the mainstream retail market. Supporting Windows helps this greatly. I just blew my friends mind with iTunes the other day. He's currently ripping hundreds of CD's on his Dell using iTunes so he can RIP/MIX/BURN his own discs. He'll probably get an iPod mini later on. The Dell came with a variety of Windows music software. WMP, MusicMatch, Dell Jukebox, etc. He never used any of it at all. Once iTunes was installed it's an explosion of usage! His next computer will probably be a Mac as well. He and his wife were deeply impressed by what they could do with iTunes and will undoubtedly look into Apple's systems when the Dell reaches EOL.
There was an interview with Steve Jobs recently when Apple released the Airport Express device where you can stream from a MAC/PC to any stereo in the house. It includes a wireless access point, ethernet, and a USB hub to control a remote printer. The device is only $129. The audio is both analog and Optical Digital. The question posed to Jobs was "What about a remote control?" The response was a stare then a slight smile and no comment.
I bet that Apple is working on a fantastic remote. In fact, the rumors of a PDA may actually be a touch screen universal remote control instead. Imagine a small thin remote control with a touch screen and it will house a lithium Ion rechargeable battery and have a small docking station to recharge it. A full color screen. Pre-programmed control codes for 10,000 devices along with a learning mode. Connect it to a Mac/PC and custom program the button layouts. Control iTunes remotely over the 802.11 network. Stream iMovies to your TV, etc. It's all part of the digital hub concept and Apple could blow everyone's mind. If you don't think that Apple is thinking about this stuff, think again. The concept of a digital hub was and is pretty original and it will take time to work out all the ideas that will follow. Apple spends a huge amount of money on R&D and they do a fantastic job.
I say they should consider buying TiVo and taking it to the next level or build their own TiVo like device. Tie the subscription into
I've seen a few Apple Dealers and frankly, they are out of their league in regard to competing with the Apple store(s).
I purchased my first Apple in an Apple store after having first visited two Apple Dealers. I was amazed that unlike Gateway Country stores or even the dealers I didn't have to place an order and wait for delivery I could actually walk out of the store with product in hand!
Apple's store fronts are stocked with just about every product. (minus very new products that haven't shipped yet) Their sales people are knowledgable and helpful. The store layout is excellent, you can actually find what you are looking for.
The Apple Dealers are going the way of the DoDo and they are lashing out in frustration. The only way they can survive is to offer additional services that Apple doesn't offer. i.e. custom development, onsite service, etc. They need to build niche markets and pursue them. This means they will need to do more then simply buy and resell Apple products.
The Apple Dealers have been dwindling for years and the whole reason Apple started opening the stores was to create market visibility in the nations shopping malls. The death of the x86 Clone Mom & Pop shops is now befalling the Apple Dealers.
The Dealers may have been responsible for 50% of the Apple sales in the past but that is going to move to the Apple store fronts. Apple is expanding in many ways and the dealer base is simply not large enough to handle to increase.
Some ideas for Apple Dealers:
- Work with Graphics, PrintShops, and Sign makers.
- Create a POS (point of sale system)
- Create inventory systems
- Physical Asset management systems
- Etc, Etc. bring the Mac into new ventures.
One does not really need to know C++ nor Java as Objective-C is really ANSI C + Smalltalk extensions. Obj-C on it's own is really rather simple. It's much easier and some may argue more powerful then Java or C++.
What this book does is introduce you to the Cocoa API and the Apple Dev Tools XCode & Interface Builder. The first edition was a blast and I plan on picking up the second edition in the near future.
If you are coming from a C++ background and you like it, you should study Carbon and not Cocoa at first. You can call Cocoa objects from Carbon and visa versa though. New projects should probably be written in Cocoa. Older projects written in C++ can be ported to Carbon easily. C programs can be ported to Cocoa and Java programs should probably stay Java or be ported to the WebObjects frameworks if it's a web based solution. You can write Java apps using the Cocoa API but it then becomes locked into the OS X platform as the Cocoa API (for Java) is not available on other platforms (maybe GNUStep but it's not all the way there yet) Note, you can run Tomcat and JBoss on OS X!
The NeXTStep / OpenStep / Cocoa API is rather advanced and can take some getting used to... i.e. you will have a rather steep learning curve to absorb it all and understand the best practices. This book is a great introduction and will get one up to speed quickly.
I found Interface Builder to be the most difficult part of the development process. This was because I had to unlearn all the preconceived crap in my head that I learned from other GUI interface tools. It turns out IB is much more advanced then anything I've ever used before because it builds live objects and not just GUI code. It then archives these objects into NIB files which are automatically unarchived by a Cocoa application. You literally build objects graphically and then interconnect them to each other and your Obj-C classes and instances. WebObjects does the same thing but with Java. It's a really slick development tool and once you start to understand it, the light turns on and you can see the possibilities.
Total newbies should probably pick up the "Programming in Objective-C" by Stephen Kochan. This book covers just the underlying Obj-C language and the Core Foundation (NeXStep/OpenStep/GNUStep/Cocoa) API. Programming in Objective-C does not cover the GUI portion of Cocoa programming. I just finished it and it managed to bootstrap my understanding quite a bit.
Yeah Probation-class pool! That would work nicely.
All they need to do is implement some monitoring tools to watch for excessive email traffic and if they see that then automatically dump the user into a restricted ip address pool where everything is blocked in and out except for a single Comcast web page and the ability to reach Windows Update along with Symantec and McAfee anti-virus sites.
The single Comcast page which would be the only page the user would be able to get to (except for anti-virus and Windows update sites) would explain that their computer may have been hijacked that they need to remove the trojans and clean their computer before they can rejoin the rest of Comcast's user base.
Universities implemented this when schools re-opened in the middle of several Worm wars. They would connect to the network and get immediately blocked until they were virus scanned and proven to be clean.
The difference being that the University just blocked everyone by only allowing known MAC addresses on the network at first. Comcast would have to flag people differently by monitoring for excessive email traffic.
Take if from someone whose been in IT for a long long time. User's are so sick of passwords they completely hate that they have to keep multiple passwords and then they hate it when the passwords expire.
The password police are constantly tightening the password rules. It used to be 90 days till a password expired. Now it's 60 days. It used to be 6 characters now it's 8 characters. You used to be able to re-use an old password, now you end up having to wait until it's 15 passwords old before you can re-use it. All passwords must contain 8 characters and include at least one number. You cannot set a password that is too similar to the old one. Many words have been outright banned from use as a password.
As an IT person with access to a lot of things, I have 28 different passwords just for work alone! There's about 8 mainframe ones, 4 PeopleSoft ones, 2 Windows Domain, etc., etc., etc. I actually set up an encrypted file on a USB pen drive that I unlock and reference when I need to see my password list. I have a couple of Mac's at home and I love the KeyChain solution!
The average user has about 5-10 passwords they have to worry about. User's write them down, come up with elaborate rotation schemes, etc. Mostly they just call the Help Desk repeatedly because they lock themselves out in the process of changing their password.
I am all for a smart-card or USB keychain along with a single sign-on system to everything. It would cut 600 calls to the help desk every month and it would make thousands of employee's very very happy.
Fact is HP is the printer manufacturer industry leader. The reason for this is the large networkable and reliable printers. There is also a huge repair infrastructure fit around the HP printers. i.e. 3rd party repair groups who can come out and clean and repair our printers.
I am sitting in a building with about a 1,000 different HP LaserJet and Color LaserJet printers. Still have some 4SI's in service. They run every day and rarely break down. It may seem like there are breakdowns but it's mostly print jams or maintenance kits that need replacing. They are truly work-horses.
In another part of the company (smaller location but higher print demand) we installed some new Xerox highend printers because of the sheer volume that the users need.
Frankly, the article is mostly about retail inkjet printers and not big corporate lasers. Inkjet printers suck for any 'real' printing needs. You spend far more in ink then you do in the printers. I've done cost comparisons and we would be replacing the inkjet printer frequently and changing the ink even more frequently. The costs go through the roof.
Some users can get a desktop inkjet printer or all in one printer (managers and others with confidential information to print) but most users are told to use the big printers and get off their ass to retreive their print jobs.
Dell printers are not in the same class as HP printers and they don't scale to an enterprises needs.
Not flamebait at all. I too own Apple systems, PC systems (WinXP & Linux) and even a Sun SPARC workstation. I also own a series 1 TiVo and a series 2 TiVo that I hacked to expand the storage space.
I can clearly agree with this argument TiVo Rocks! It's every bit as elegant and easy to use as an Apple computer yet very powerful at the same time.
The Linux alternatives are rapidly coming up to speed in capabilities and already have more features but they are not as elegant as a TiVo and I doubt they ever will be. Not unless some user interface expert decides to contribute. Most Linux hackers are not very good at making quality user interfaces.
TiVo is like Apple and even Google. They make really great tech but they also wrap it up with an easy and graceful user interface. The TiVo remote and the Sony branded TiVo remote are fantastic. The menus are easy to navigate and it's rather intuitive once you grasp the basics.
Turns out those pictures of flag drapped coffins may have actually been the shuttle crew and not Soldiers who died in Iraq!
4 7
... AFTER INTERNET MIX-UP: Russ Kick of thememoryhole.org filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting 'all photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.'
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=9
The pictures were obtained from thememoryhole.org and were mixed up in an Internet snafu.
From the Drudge Report:
WASHINGTON POST, REUTERS, CNN, AP RUN PHOTOS OF SPACE SHUTTLE COFFINS -- AS IRAQ WAR DEAD!
But Kick appears to have assumed all the photos given to him were of the WAR ON TERROR/IRAQ dead!
On Thursday NASA claimed more than 70 photos featured in Kick's war dead -- were photos of Space Shuttle Columbia's crew! The shuttle blew up on 2/1/03.
'An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts,' NASA said.
CNN aired space shuttle coffins as Iraq dead from thememoryhole.org. The Washington Post printed a shuttle dead photo on page A10. [The paper is planning a correction on Saturday, sources tell DRUDGE.] Reuters is also distributing a photo of the Columbia crew remains. AP has a screen grab of the first page of photos - all of which are of Columbia crew remains. AP titles the image as 'A page from the Memory Hole.org's homepage shows photographs of American war dead arriving at Dover Air Force, the nation's largest military mortuary, Thursday, April 22, 2004'... It is not clear if other media outlets are currently featuring space shuttle coffins in their rotations...
Yeah with a single point of failure on two binary files! I have no idea how many registries I've had to repair, replace, or just end up reloading Windows to fix but it's up in the 6 figure range!
.plist files and the Property List editor to read and edit them. You can edit them with any text editor as well. In addition there are full command line tools that are vastly superior to the Windows command line tools. It's easy to write Cocoa/Carbon apps that use a .plist file to store default settings and preferences. Most apps if they follow the recommendation will have the ability to regenerate an applications .plist file if it's deleted. Before Apple came out with Journaled HFS+, there were many file corruption issues (all fixable with a permissions check and running a disk util). The new Journaled HFS+ is pretty darn solid, I haven't had a corrupted file ever since the journaling was added in Jaguar (it was there in Jaguar but you had to turn it on via a system hack in Panther it's on by default via the Disk Utility).
MS needs to freaking put in some better backup and auto-recover features for the registry! It's far to vital to rely on a Sysadmin backing it up on a regular basis. There needs to be a multi-layered backup going back several days. Sure you can do a system restore but it's not rock solid enough and scares the hell out of most people. Go-Back was and is much more reliable and easier to understand then the first generation Microsoft System Restore feature. The registry should be backed up after every single successful reboot and one should have at least 4-5 choices to roll it back to if there is a problem. You should be able to do this at boot time when the registry has an issue being read or written to. A dialog should popup and ask if you wish to switch the current registry files to the backed up ones.
Linux scatters INI like configuration files in a variety of locations and the format varies. But at least if your Samba.conf file gets hosed, it won't blow out everything else along with it. Say it's truly corrupted, you can at least edit the sucker with vi / emacs and fix the glitch. With a binary registry file you're fucked.
Apple's got it right with their XML
Here goes...
We deployed several offices with VoIP in a large enterprise environment. Some offices have more bandwidth then others. The one's with the least bandwidth have more issues with VoIP.
Most problems have to do with initial setup and configuration of the phones. i.e. programming of voice mail, features, etc. The next problem is setting up the routing and networking. Then out of the blue problems with dropped calls, voice mail issues and no incoming calls.
The hardware is only part of the problem. You have a lot of choices to make.
1. Quality phones and PBX gear that's stable and reliable.
2. Bandwidth, enough to handle the load of normal data and VoIP.
3. Quality tech's to set it up the right way. Network engineers to ensure the quality of the data circuits.
4. Quality provider with stable systems. This includes the Internet pipeline / leased line. You need to keep this circuit up and running during business hours. If the network is unstable and computers are disconnected frequently, then you can expect the phones to go with it.
There are advantages to having your data and phones on different systems. The big advantages to VoIP come when you already have circuits in place and you are connecting multiple offices from across the country (or world). This way you can save money on inter-office calls and long distance calls (depending on the provider). Workers can setup VoIP at home and connect it to their Cable modem along with a VPN connection. This makes a lot of sense both technically and financially.
The initial cost of VoIP hardware is justified when you need to service it.
Actually, this works quite well for me. There is a Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X available at http://microsoft.com/mac - other products - Remote Desktop Connection for Mac.
It comes down to what you use more often, the Mac or the Linux box. If the Mac is your main workstation then you should have no problems if you run WinXP Pro on the PC and use the Remote Desktop client for the Mac.
My main workstation is a Dual PowerMac G5 w/Dual Apple 17" Studio displays. Secondary machine is a PowerBook G4. I also have a Sun Blade 100 and 3 Linux boxes as well. Then there is the fiance's Sony Vaio desktop. I use RDC to connect to the WinXP Pro box. I simply ssh into the Linux and Sun boxes or forward X11 windows.
You will need WinXP Pro as the Home version does not include Remote Desktop abilities.
Used to be Sun was the biggest baddest Unix platform, chosen by those who needed real power and scalability. Customers paid a premium in hardware and software as well support contracts.
Now that Linux is making huge progress on it's Enterprise abilities there are several event horizons rapidly approaching.
1. x86 hardware is getting cheaper all the time. Sun hardware is still very much overpriced.
2. IBM's PowerPC Power4/Power5 & Power 970 chips are about to go mainstream. You will be able to buy multi-processor Power4/5 racks running Linux and supported by IBM. All IBM needs to do is start selling these monster CPU's to third party OEM's and the price will drop. Virginia Tech's PowerMacG5 super cluster is evidence of the coming storm. It's scored very high and has the highest ROI achieved in it's class. Switching it over to 1U XServeG5's will reduce it's physical footprint thereby reducing cooling and location space. Apple won't be the only PowerPC dealer. Linux runs very well on Power chips. IBM will assist in further kernel optimizations.
3. What's going on with Intel? AMD and IBM appear to be mopping the floor with them lately. Looks like they need to go back to the drawing board and start over with a new core outside of Itanium.
The more I think about it, the more I realize Sun is doomed. They may never be at the top again unless they get very competitive very fast. I work for a huge corporation that has quite a bit of Sun hardware and I can tell you most of the hardware is out of date and near obsolete. We are still running Solaris 2.6 in production, that was released in 1997! Why didn't we upgrade? Because we can run Linux a heck of a lot cheaper then Solaris and we can upgrade the hardware without killing our budgets.
"And you are not stuck with the typical iTMS low-quality 128Kbit"
AAC 128 is not low-quality, it's far superior to MP3 128. It's more like 192 mp3.
Just get a freaking iPod! Why the heck would you want to waste your schools bandwidth or drive space with MP3's? Another thing, it would open the school up to problems with the RIAA who is already going after students and some of the schools themselves. I am sure you would catch holy hell if a SysAdmin found your MP3 collection on the schools server!
Companies are paranoid about this sort of thing and most block MP3 files with their proxy servers and are already scanning drives looking for MP3's on employee machines.
The iPod will handle everything self contained in a portable form. 40GB's if you get the biggest iPod.
Most people could carry their entire music collection on a single iPod. Even if you can't fit it all on the iPod, you can at least load a huge amount. More then you could possibly listen to in a single day.
If you want to connect it to speakers, there are small kits for that or you just plug it into PC speakers. Heck, you can even broadcast a signal with an iPod accessory to other's with FM Walkmans to listen to the music if you wish to use headphones.
iTunes will stream the playlists to another iTunes computer on the same subnet. Gasp, you could even use the Windows version of iTunes if you must. There are ways around the subnet thing. Streaming from a home computer to the campus will probably suck up huge amounts of bandwidth on both ends. If you have a cable modem at home, prepare to be slapped for exceeding a bandwidth cap. Also you might attract the attention of a network sysadmin on campus when they notice the bandwidth spike.
As far as development goes, nothing beats an Apple laptop with the developer tools and few other things thrown in. C/C++, ObjC, Java, Tomcat, JBOSS, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, Emacs, ViM, CVS, etc., etc. Plus you can get Microsoft Office X which is completely compatible with Office XP. You can even get Virtual PC along with Office X to run other Windows based software if you must.
Yeah but I remember what Java applets were like before MS decided to start mucking it up. In fact, we have some Applets still in production use and frankly they suck!
The big problem is performance, early Java was slow. It takes forever to download the applet and execute it.
Having the interface in HTML forms with some client side JavaScript to help with data validation and GUI polish and it's many times more efficient then an Applet.
Sure you have to redraw the client all the time. But it still quicker then Java Applets were.
Now, newer Java is much faster, the hardware is much faster, but bandwidth is the same. The real solution is backend services in Java running on a Application server. The client should be a full blown application that is downloaded once rather then each time with an Applet. Write some code to check for the latest version but stop downloading the Applet every time the user goes to the site.
For the same exact reason that SPAM is still working for the Spammers. Somebody somewhere is actually stupid enough to buy stuff after being Spammed!
So why wouldn't a company be stupid enough to pay for a worthless license?
I see stupid spending all the time. We have bought millions of dollars of site licenses and then never used them! They really didn't need a site license but they bought it anyway. Then they killed the project later on and the software just sits there collecting dust.
Hell, if they would just do a serious spending audit for the last several years, they could find enough money to avoid outsourcing IT!
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! No wonder Microsloth fears the guy in a garage somewhere! They know some lone engineer could out do them easily and it all comes down to the company culture and red tape.
As I see it, and I have removed over a million pieces of spyware from my customer's computers...
The trouble with spyware is:
1. It's damn sneaky. No indication other then a license agreement that no one reads because it's all legalease and effectively gibberish to the average person.
2. Some spyware is loading onto computers via popup advertisements that are using obvious MSIE flaws to allow it to install. Most of the spyware changes your homepage to their search page which also happens to re-install their software. This means they are using virus/trojan techniques to invade your system.
3. Most spyware will re-install or auto update itself if you try to remove it and miss a portion. Some spyware appears to team up with other spyware packages that reload each other.
4. Several spyware companies actually advertise anti-spyware software that just loads more spyware onto a system.
5. The security in Windows is horrible. Looks like we might have to resort to a signing method for all approved software and allow only company approved signatures to install. I don't think Windows fully allows this for everything. I know they do it for drivers but it should be available for all software.
Spyware is begining to be a real problem in enterprise environments, we locked down our WinXP computers pretty tight and yet the spyware still manages to get installed. It takes hours to remove spyware from a user's machine. In some cases, when Ad-Aware and SpyBot both failed to remove a package, we ended up having to rebuild the OS and restore the user's data.
Windows is so very broken that I don't think it can ever be fixed. No law will make a difference, companies will just move off shore and then still deliver the spyware goods.
The only sure fire way I see Windows getting repaired is if Microsoft bites the bullet and stops development on Longhorn and then literally starts over. They should make a FreeBSD base and build the Windows API into the system. This will ensure multiple user abilities and more importantly, security. Of course this will break all old software that requires drive letters and other things that will have changed but it's becoming necessary. The holy grail for MS is backwards compatibility and it's also a curse they will never give up.
I know, Apple did the same thing with OS X. It's a custom Mach kernel with a FreeBSD foundation. They build a backwards compatible Classic environment as well as a porting environment called Carbon in addition to the NeXTStep Cocoa NS API. The security is there and you are prompted to install software whenever an application tries to install. If it installs in your user home directory structure, you may not be prompted, but at least you will be able to rebuild the user account and migrate your data.
Microsoft needs to follow suit. Of course they should do it their own way but they really need to focus on security as well as separating the OS from the Applications and System wide software from individual user software as well as user settings from system settings. The trouble is Windows has always had a hard time isolating things because of the backwards compatibility issues. WinXP moved the user profiles to Documents and Settings but it needs to be better isolated across everything everywhere. All the security issues come down to a serious flaw in design which directly stems from the Win3.x and the strong desire to keep old software running on new systems. Windows systems are wide open out of the box. Most good Unix distributions are closed out of the box. i.e. in Unix you need to turn things on. In Windows you need to turn things off. This makes a heck of a lot harder to lock down.
It's more important to have an option of buying a box without any operating system pre-loaded and offer a discount to do so. i.e.
- Windows XP Home
- Windows XP Pro
- Linux (RedHat Whatever)
- None -- THIS IS WHAT WE NEED!!!
I doubt many average computer users would know what to do with Linux if they got it. I also doubt many of those who want it want it preloaded with whatever distribution you decide to load.
Offer some REAL modems that don't require software to run. i.e. a modem with an actual chip that does the work!
The only reason WinModems are successful is because they work (on Windows) and they cost slightly less. This is no big deal for a few machines, but it really adds up when you sell hundreds of thousands as DELL does monthly.
With broadband, modems are becoming more and more obsolete anyway. Sure there are many who still use them but not nearly as many as there once were. I personally haven't used a modem in years... I honestly haven't needed to.
What is really driving Broadband among those who would not have used it before is VPN and companies who are allowing their employee's to VPN into the network. I would say that most of the corporate users who don't have a computer at home except for their work laptop, are actually buying cable and DSL connections just so they can work at home.
It was just rolled out where I work recently, and there have been hundreds of users all getting signed up for broadband services. More and more they hear by word of mouth from coworkers on how great it is and they call us to get it setup. Most of them don't own a personal computer, they use only their work computer. Those that do own computers have very old computers. Few have up-to-date computers and few have broadband but tell them they can work at home just about as fast as it is in the office (faster for some WAN users) and they buy it on the spot!
Add wireless into the mix, i.e. they can work on a comfortable couch without wires and keep a broadband connection to work going and they freak out and want to do it right away!
Corporate America will soon be accelerating Work At Home as soon as the numbers of employee's able to do it reaches critical mass. They can save a fortune on office space. Heck, I could be doing my job from home if they would just get me a VoIP phone that connects to the company PBX.
Sounds like it would be worth simply buying a new remote from TiVo rather then go through this time consuming process! Sorry but $35 is a small price compared to an hour or two of fiddling and polishing a remote's internals.
Yeah, I'm a geek but I am not going through this process unless it would cost a $100 otherwise!
I am pretty positive that Mercedes and Cadallac already have this technology. It's just not filtered down to the masses yet.
i.e. Collision warning when backing up in a parking lot so you don't hit a pole or shopping cart, etc. Collision avoidance when changing lanes. Also a neat feature on the Mercedes that will maintain the distance from the car in front of you to avoid an accident. Either in cruise control or not, it will automatically break and lower engine power when you get too close to the car in front. It will also automatically speed up.
It's out there already, it's just too damn expensive to have it in anything but an ultra luxury car. Granted, rich little old ladies really need this stuff!
Check out http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/2218521/detai l.html
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They wait till the last paragraph to tell you
***
Quote: "There is a catch. Tier Buy Through doesn't apply to Digital cable, which offers more channels and at higher prices. If you have digital, you still have to buy packages. So take a look at what you are paying, and what you are getting, because you can always downgrade your package to fit your needs."
The Screaming Meanie 110 with a kick. 120 decible alarm. 3 settings; lo, med, high. Timer and alarm clock features. Homing signal can be heard up to one mile in an emergency.
r e/ tz-220.html
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/pacificcornetta-sto
You could probably find them for sale in Truck Stops. They are loud as hell and sure to wake anyone but a deaf person up!
Truckers frequently take naps for an hour or so and need something to wake them up as their body wants to sleep a lot longer. They also need to be on time.
http://www.nu2.nu/
Of course his bandwidth has just been exceeded... Slashdot effect! Also he just came out with a WinXP Boot CD and it's rather popular.