New iPods offer additional features over the original version. With the exception of the lit screen that was introduced with the SP, there's no added benefit to the new GBAs.
It's not so much choice as Nintendo trying to milk little kids (or more appropriately their parents) for money by making the same old product look "new and shiny" but charge more money for it. The SP pissed a lot of people off because they felt it was what the GBA should have been at initial release. It's a cheap trick to keep turning now new versions of the same hardware with incrimental improvements in design. Hell, this time it's not even a better design really, it's just smaller... because the SP wasn't already pocket-sized.
Throwing a new case on the same hardware, or additional color shells isn't providing real choice, especially when you charge "new product" prices for the next shell design.
Because it's Nintendo, people want to defend it out of some sense of nostalgia. Microsoft gets blasted every time they put out a new version of Word because most here look at it and think it's just an incrimental improvement over the last version and shouldn't cost so much for so little in return. Sony got hammered a bit over the smaller PS1 and PS2 consoles too.
Nintendo is surrounded by some mythical shroud of warm fuzzy feelings for a lot of people. This magic shield gets people to look past the poor business decisions or the cheap marketing tactics they use because of some odd feeling of duty many of us feel just because we had an NES when we were a kid.
Starting with the Nintendo64, Nintendo has been losing ground steadily. They were king of the roost for so long, they just don't know how to deal with competition. They're also overdoing it with the GameBoy Advance... they're trying to squeeze blood from a stone there. Yes it's a great handheld, I love my SP and the games available, but it's getting annoying how they try and rebrand the damn thing every 6 or so months. I can't comment much on the DS since I don't have one.
Right now a lot of the speculation is based on pure hardware specs, which the Revolution is sorely lacking in. Face the facts, success of a console in this upcoming generation is going to be based largely in part on how good the games look.
Yeah, the first party games for Nintendo consoles rock. I love Mario and Zelda... but third party titles tend to be rather lacking. Nintendo has lost most of its old classic titles to other consoles (yes, I know Final Fantasy returned to the Cube... sorta...) Mario and Zelda do not a successful console make. The game library is the second key part to a console, and that's another area Nintendo keeps losing ground in.
I root for Nintendo all the time, they've been the "underdog" for a while now, and I want to see them make a comeback if only for nostalgia value, but they have shown they lack the business and market saavy to effectively compete against the likes of Sony or Microsoft.
Nintendo needs to do a LOT of work to leverage their classic library like they have for the GBA. That's where their strength in product lies now, not really in anything too recent.
Their other advantage is because they are so much below the other two in hardware specs, they can undercut them on price by a significant margin. With the other two coming out in the $400-$500 range, a $150 console could really shake things up.
I use the term revolutionary because that's how Nintendo tries to present all of its products, even when they aren't typically revolutionary at all. Hell, they even went so far as to name their new console that. While the other consoles aren't really revolutionary, they represent a massive jump from the current line in terms of technology specs and visual capability. They're poised to leapfrog the capabilities of a PC again (for a time at least).
... that's exactly the same as the original GBA, which is the same as the GBA SP, which is the same as the GBA SP with the "retro" color scheme.
It's obvious Nintendo is in some trouble now since instead of coming out with really great new products, they're releasing a console that can't hope to compete against the XBox and PS3 (the GC sorta held its own because of the game selection at times), and yet another rehash of their latest Game Boy model. There's NOTHING exciting about the GBA Mini. It plays the same games I can already play... and now it's definitely too small for my hands.
I don't think they can afford to have the underpowered console yet again. Especially considering how wide the gap is this time around. I am a fan of Nintendo from the NES days, so I'll get the revolution eventually, but I don't have much hope for Nintendo succeeding in the US Market on this generation.
Controversy over news is what Slashdot lives on. Most of their stories are either meant to generate a good flame war, or are so biased in one direction or another it's not even funny.
If the average/. Story, or the average reader commenting on said stories limited themselves to rational, intelligent stuff, this site wouldn't exist. We have our OSS zealots, our Mac zealots, our "If MS mentions it, it's evil!" zealots, our "I want to have Google's love child" zealots etc... We're not interested in fair and balanced news reporting here, we're interested in stories that reenforce our existing view points
People like Dvorak are reviled by the/. community, but he has a lot more in common with this place than most people want to admit.
I don't think/. has valid ground to call others out over issues of journalistic integrity, since it's ignored here completely if it serves the current fad or attitude.
He's getting his butt kicked by Apple in the MP3 market. No way is he going to admit they're better or that they're winning. He does that and a dozen MS MP3 player engineers jump off a bridge.
Yeah, the iPod will fade. Just like every other piece of technology. Windows 3.1 didn't last forever, neither will the iPod. It's at the top of its game right now and really has nowhere to go but down... also we're approaching a point where everyone who would be inclined to own one, does. Standard distribution graph for technology dispersion fits pretty well.
One thing to remember is that the iPod wasn't the first to the market in terms of players. It was fairly late to the game really. What Apple did was wait to see if this new tech was going to stick, then they waited for the right hardware to come along, then they took it and did some brilliant engineering and marketing work and gave us the iPod. There's nothing revolutionary about it. What Apple does now is wait to see what the Next Big Thing ends up being, watches the market for a while and then turns out a device that is extremely well engineered.
So while MS is pushing SmartPhones that crash a lot since they're working out the bugs in the hardware and software, Apple will be sitting in the background, watching others make mistakes and learning from them, and in a few years put out an iPhone (or something) that doesn't necessarily do everything the other phones do, but does a few key things extremely well.
Everyone wants cheap stuff. No one wants to pay through the nose for a hamburger, a bar of soap, a piece of software, health insurance, phone service etc...
What so few people seem to understand is that each and every area of business you deal with in your day-to-day life requires an IT infrastructure of some sort. Yes, even Burger King needs it. Many companies have unique needs that others don't, so they have to develop their own systems and tools on their own. This costs money.
Now, most people here are employed (or were employed) doing coding, networks, web pages or whatever. We all also know what our salary expectations are. We see ourselves as a valuble resource to a company providing expert services and as such deserve a correspondingly higher pay rate. We think we deserve good money. Whether we do or not is another issue that's beyond the scope of my point.
So all these companies have to hire and maintain a fairly sizable IT staff. Coders, network guys, helpdesk monkeys etc... We expect fairly high salaries. So the cost to these companies to run what is pretty much a support layer to their business gets pretty high.
Where do high running costs go? To the product prices. How many here would be willing to spend $10 for a burger? How many would double what they pay for health insurance? Would you be willing to see a jump in average prices? Then you'd want a higher salary to maintain your own margin over cost. The whole thing starts to spiral out of control.
It's the same problem people have with WalMart. We want high-paying jobs with good benefits to stay here, we want everyone to be paid a better wage, but we don't want to pay one cent more at the store, the pump or at a restaurant.
I'm aware of all of this. And I love E, it would be my WM of choice if it had kept pace with tech advances. I'm really looking forward to E17 too, but I applied to college, went to college, graduated and got a full time job in the time since it was announced.
My point (aside from a joke) was that it's not really reasonable comparing a current technology with something that could still be years away from release.
I was playing on the whole bit about how E takes years and years and years to develop and release a new version. It is the WM world equivalent of DNF, something that is long promised to blow the doors off of its arena, but takes forever to materialize.
Yes, when a WM with such excellent eye candy arrives, 10.4 won't be so appealing since there will be competiton. However, by the time we see E17 released we'll have moved on to 10.7 probably. Yeah, it'll blow a several year old version of OS X away. Much like WinXP blows Win95 away in terms of usability and visual goodies.
You're comparing something that is out today with something that may not be out for years yet, it's not a fair comparison and my DNF analogy holds up in that regard.
Did you just honestly use Enlightenment.17 in an argument? Isn't that like saying "Game X sure is great, but hell, Duke Nukem Forever will blow it away" ?
Because Dell and Gateway don't release very interesting products. Though I do believe they listed Dell when they launched the XPS line a while back.
Apple does cool things, so a lot of people are interested in hearing what they do even if it's only moderately cool. Dell does average stuff all the time, they don't push the envelope in any way shape or form so they don't get much attention.
MS and Intel get news coverage when they release new products btw. Longhorn, 64 bit processor benchmarks etc... They get coverage. They *create* stuff. Dell doesn't create, it just repackages.
Creators and innovators are interesting, parts assemblers generally aren't.
Ethics? BULLSHIT. It's called smart business practices. Why spend tons of money recreating the wheel? Not everyone has to subscribe to some selfless utopian view that simply isn't practical most of the time.
You're obviously an upstanding, proud member of the F/OSS world, posting as an AC and all.
Typical zealot, head shoved so far up your ass you'd need a dentist to get it out.
Before you can sell it as a replacement to Office, you have to do a few things:
1. Ensure compatability with Micosoft Office documents. I mean go nuts on this. Get every excel, powerpoint and word document you can from students and teachers. Load them up in OO and mark down any differences that exist. Also mark down where one product loads and performs faster than another. You'll want to do this with a few hundred files per Office program to make sure you have convincing numbers.
2. Find a few teachers to volunteer using OOo instead of MS Office for a 2 month period, have them keep a journal of their impressions. Do NOT let the computer course teachers do this, they're not representative of the larger population
3. Take a single computer lab in the district, probably in a High School and replace MS Office with OOo and observe reactions for a few weeks, randomly ask students questions. At the end of the test period, have teachers who used the lab survey their classes for feedback. Do not do this test near the end of the school year when everyone's going crazy on finals and projects.
The only way to sell any product is to have good solid data to backup your reasoning. Simply saying it's cheaper doesn't cut it. Notepad is cheaper than MS Word, but it's not a suitable replacement. The people making buying decisions haven't a clue that anything exists besides MS Office, so you'll have to present it to them in ways that make sense to them.
Most importantly, do NOT doctor the results from your study to fit some ideological preference. It may very well come out that OOo is NOT the right tool for the job. If you lie and convince them it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, you'll be exposed as a fraud pretty quickly... and what will they do when they find they suddenly have OOo on every PC and it doesn't do what they expected it to? They'll chew your ass out and fire you.
What's good for the/. people is not necessarily good for Little Susie who has to write her report on America's Founding Fathers.
MASH had run its course. The show lasted longer than the war it was based on. I think its best when shows go out while they're still on top, instead of dragging down into a mire of crap for a few seasons. My memories of MASH are very fond because of this.
Our Platform: WinXP Sp 1 on all desktop and laptop machines Our Network: Token Ring over Type 1 wiring Number of Machines: Roughly 20,000 machines company-wide (in multiple cities)
Imagine pushing out Sp 2 to all of those machines. Even if we do it in phases it's going to bring the network to its knees. A simple worm took us offline a few weeks back. It took forever to download SP 2 onto my home machines over a considerably faster connection than I have here at work too.
Now, also consider we're still using a LOT of legacy apps, we're still connecting into old old old mainframes and databases. A good chunk of our business relies still on that old stuff (though we are migrating off of it... slowly). What happens if SP 2 renders those apps useless? We're screwed.
It took us over 2 years to migrate from 98 and 2k on the desktops to XP... we JUST finished that project recently. SP2 is going to kill us if we can't find a way to keep it off.
Has anyone here been to a University in the past several years? Everything from Art to Business to IT Programs at Univs now have their own "Intro to Computing" classes that they force just about everyone to take because they're under the assumption that most students haven't used a computer before.
Now, I'm not talking classes about how to build web pages, or how to effectively utilize Google, I'm talking about "Ok, now class... this is a... mouse!" and there aren't ways currently to profeciency test out of them. I had to sit through my intro to computing class because attendance was required, and while I was there I kept myself busy tinkering with my linux server in my dorm room. The professor caught me once and asked what I was doing... I answered and they had NO clue what I was saying. I wonder who needs an intro class more.
A test like this, while ridiculous to those of us used to technology, is needed right now at the College level. They don't believe that students come to college now with basic computer skills, and the only thing that will convince them are test scores that prove this point. In the immediate future, at least these tests could allow those of us who know where the power switch is to skip those sorts of classes that are just a waste of our time.
But the difference comes up when you have to weigh what is "better" versus what is "practical". Yes, it is better for all code to be completely open. But it isn't practical for companies to do so in all cases. It wouldn't be practical for Microsoft to completely open up Windows because doing so would lose them sales on the desktop almost completely. Even the few linux companies who make money make it almost entirely from the high-end market through support contracts.
Apple also wouldn't stand well to open up OSX completely since it could then be rebuilt for the x86 architecture and could then destroy their hardware sales.
In some cases even closed-source turns out "better" as you have less of a chance of encountering the "too many cooks" problem we see on large OSS projects.
The open source ideaology is dependent on the situation an individual coder or company is in. It is too easy to say one way is superior to another.
I love OSS, I use it whenever I can and whenever it's practical. My view on technology and software is to use what suits my needs. I am a gamer so Windows suits my desktop OS needs. I have a powerbook so OSX suits my mobile OS needs. I have a server at home too so Linux (Slackware) suits my server OS needs. I don't intend to alter my behaviors based on license ideaology, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that others expect me or anyone else to.
So I can take a GPLd piece of software, figure out how the innards work, then use that knowledge to create something that does the same things, and not release it under the GPL? I can close OSS and then make it propreitary?
When I say "use" in my original comment, I mean how it is taken and reimplemented. This sort of "use" is what the GPL protects. If you extend a GPLd product, you have part of your process dictated to you, you have to give back modified parts of the original code (though you can keep the extended completely new pieces to yourself) Even that though many feel violates the spirit of the GPL. So the GPL does determine use in that respect, as does any license for proprietary software. You can dictate how it can or can not be extended or reimplemented as you see fit.
And wasn't there an article the other day about how the GPL 3 may extend to GPL code used in-house at companies and not distributed?
People are letting their rabid devotion to the F/OSS religion blind them to issues of practicality and personal choice. People were mad when BK was first adopted because it wasn't "Free". Linus gets it, he's all about using the best tool for the job, be it Free or otherwise.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is). As the owner of that product, he is allowed to set the conditions for use. Just like the GPL sets conditions for anyone using software under that license. It's his to do with as he pleases.
It's the blind devotion to making all software "free" that hurts OSS the most. The biggest spokesmen for this movement are some of the craziest out there, and that drives away a lot of people from jumping on board for fear that they will become a target in the tech industry if they decide to not embrace the ideaology. No one should feel pressured or obligated to make their code "free" In fact many here have an odd sense of freedom, as in it must be the sort of freedom they expect, and you should have no choice but to practice their brand of it.
If I code something, it's mine. I can say how it is distributed and the terms of its use. That is my right. If I want to make it free that is also my right. I will also use the best tools available to me to make it, be them free or proprietary. This is the realistic approach to things. It leaves the freedom with the person writing software as well as those who use software. I get to choose what software I use, and I get to choose how my own software is used and distributed. Don't like my personal choice of license? Don't use it.
I wonder if AOL will treat its VoIP subscribers like they do normal AOL users when they want to cancel their account.
About 3 years ago I loaded up an AOL free trial CD just for shits and giggles, and to see how much it had changed since I last used it (1.0). Well, I found the experience disappointing (as I expected though) and at the end of the trial went to cancel.
What happened at that point was a 30min conversation where the sales rep practically begged me to keep the service. He offered me 6 months free and told me that if I make this same call every 5-6 months I could end up not paying for the service ever again. I think I said "No, just cancel the damn account, I DO NOT LIKE THE SERVICE" about two dozen times. Finally, defeated, the rep canceled the account. That was the most painful phone convo I've ever had.
I'm wondering if I can pull the free-forever scheme with their VoIP service. Think they'll be desperate enough for subscribers to it?
Whenever I hear a date spoken, it's usually said like this "April 7th, 2005" Even many people who live abroad say it like that. Why isn't it then logical to write a date out in the same order it is spoke?
I don't think I've ever heard someone say todays date is "2005, April 7th"
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New iPods offer additional features over the original version. With the exception of the lit screen that was introduced with the SP, there's no added benefit to the new GBAs.
It's not so much choice as Nintendo trying to milk little kids (or more appropriately their parents) for money by making the same old product look "new and shiny" but charge more money for it. The SP pissed a lot of people off because they felt it was what the GBA should have been at initial release. It's a cheap trick to keep turning now new versions of the same hardware with incrimental improvements in design. Hell, this time it's not even a better design really, it's just smaller... because the SP wasn't already pocket-sized.
Throwing a new case on the same hardware, or additional color shells isn't providing real choice, especially when you charge "new product" prices for the next shell design.
Because it's Nintendo, people want to defend it out of some sense of nostalgia. Microsoft gets blasted every time they put out a new version of Word because most here look at it and think it's just an incrimental improvement over the last version and shouldn't cost so much for so little in return. Sony got hammered a bit over the smaller PS1 and PS2 consoles too.
Nintendo is surrounded by some mythical shroud of warm fuzzy feelings for a lot of people. This magic shield gets people to look past the poor business decisions or the cheap marketing tactics they use because of some odd feeling of duty many of us feel just because we had an NES when we were a kid.
Starting with the Nintendo64, Nintendo has been losing ground steadily. They were king of the roost for so long, they just don't know how to deal with competition. They're also overdoing it with the GameBoy Advance... they're trying to squeeze blood from a stone there. Yes it's a great handheld, I love my SP and the games available, but it's getting annoying how they try and rebrand the damn thing every 6 or so months. I can't comment much on the DS since I don't have one.
Right now a lot of the speculation is based on pure hardware specs, which the Revolution is sorely lacking in. Face the facts, success of a console in this upcoming generation is going to be based largely in part on how good the games look.
Yeah, the first party games for Nintendo consoles rock. I love Mario and Zelda... but third party titles tend to be rather lacking. Nintendo has lost most of its old classic titles to other consoles (yes, I know Final Fantasy returned to the Cube... sorta...) Mario and Zelda do not a successful console make. The game library is the second key part to a console, and that's another area Nintendo keeps losing ground in.
I root for Nintendo all the time, they've been the "underdog" for a while now, and I want to see them make a comeback if only for nostalgia value, but they have shown they lack the business and market saavy to effectively compete against the likes of Sony or Microsoft.
Nintendo needs to do a LOT of work to leverage their classic library like they have for the GBA. That's where their strength in product lies now, not really in anything too recent.
Their other advantage is because they are so much below the other two in hardware specs, they can undercut them on price by a significant margin. With the other two coming out in the $400-$500 range, a $150 console could really shake things up.
I use the term revolutionary because that's how Nintendo tries to present all of its products, even when they aren't typically revolutionary at all. Hell, they even went so far as to name their new console that. While the other consoles aren't really revolutionary, they represent a massive jump from the current line in terms of technology specs and visual capability. They're poised to leapfrog the capabilities of a PC again (for a time at least).
... that's exactly the same as the original GBA, which is the same as the GBA SP, which is the same as the GBA SP with the "retro" color scheme.
It's obvious Nintendo is in some trouble now since instead of coming out with really great new products, they're releasing a console that can't hope to compete against the XBox and PS3 (the GC sorta held its own because of the game selection at times), and yet another rehash of their latest Game Boy model. There's NOTHING exciting about the GBA Mini. It plays the same games I can already play... and now it's definitely too small for my hands.
I don't think they can afford to have the underpowered console yet again. Especially considering how wide the gap is this time around. I am a fan of Nintendo from the NES days, so I'll get the revolution eventually, but I don't have much hope for Nintendo succeeding in the US Market on this generation.
Controversy over news is what Slashdot lives on. Most of their stories are either meant to generate a good flame war, or are so biased in one direction or another it's not even funny.
/. Story, or the average reader commenting on said stories limited themselves to rational, intelligent stuff, this site wouldn't exist. We have our OSS zealots, our Mac zealots, our "If MS mentions it, it's evil!" zealots, our "I want to have Google's love child" zealots etc... We're not interested in fair and balanced news reporting here, we're interested in stories that reenforce our existing view points
/. community, but he has a lot more in common with this place than most people want to admit.
/. has valid ground to call others out over issues of journalistic integrity, since it's ignored here completely if it serves the current fad or attitude.
If the average
People like Dvorak are reviled by the
I don't think
Sometimes it's hard to tell if people are trying to be funny, or are just dense :)
1984 is the book.
He's getting his butt kicked by Apple in the MP3 market. No way is he going to admit they're better or that they're winning. He does that and a dozen MS MP3 player engineers jump off a bridge.
Yeah, the iPod will fade. Just like every other piece of technology. Windows 3.1 didn't last forever, neither will the iPod. It's at the top of its game right now and really has nowhere to go but down... also we're approaching a point where everyone who would be inclined to own one, does. Standard distribution graph for technology dispersion fits pretty well.
One thing to remember is that the iPod wasn't the first to the market in terms of players. It was fairly late to the game really. What Apple did was wait to see if this new tech was going to stick, then they waited for the right hardware to come along, then they took it and did some brilliant engineering and marketing work and gave us the iPod. There's nothing revolutionary about it. What Apple does now is wait to see what the Next Big Thing ends up being, watches the market for a while and then turns out a device that is extremely well engineered.
So while MS is pushing SmartPhones that crash a lot since they're working out the bugs in the hardware and software, Apple will be sitting in the background, watching others make mistakes and learning from them, and in a few years put out an iPhone (or something) that doesn't necessarily do everything the other phones do, but does a few key things extremely well.
Everyone wants cheap stuff. No one wants to pay through the nose for a hamburger, a bar of soap, a piece of software, health insurance, phone service etc...
What so few people seem to understand is that each and every area of business you deal with in your day-to-day life requires an IT infrastructure of some sort. Yes, even Burger King needs it. Many companies have unique needs that others don't, so they have to develop their own systems and tools on their own. This costs money.
Now, most people here are employed (or were employed) doing coding, networks, web pages or whatever. We all also know what our salary expectations are. We see ourselves as a valuble resource to a company providing expert services and as such deserve a correspondingly higher pay rate. We think we deserve good money. Whether we do or not is another issue that's beyond the scope of my point.
So all these companies have to hire and maintain a fairly sizable IT staff. Coders, network guys, helpdesk monkeys etc... We expect fairly high salaries. So the cost to these companies to run what is pretty much a support layer to their business gets pretty high.
Where do high running costs go? To the product prices. How many here would be willing to spend $10 for a burger? How many would double what they pay for health insurance? Would you be willing to see a jump in average prices? Then you'd want a higher salary to maintain your own margin over cost. The whole thing starts to spiral out of control.
It's the same problem people have with WalMart. We want high-paying jobs with good benefits to stay here, we want everyone to be paid a better wage, but we don't want to pay one cent more at the store, the pump or at a restaurant.
We can't have our cake and eat it too.
I'm aware of all of this. And I love E, it would be my WM of choice if it had kept pace with tech advances. I'm really looking forward to E17 too, but I applied to college, went to college, graduated and got a full time job in the time since it was announced.
My point (aside from a joke) was that it's not really reasonable comparing a current technology with something that could still be years away from release.
It was a joke... ya know, humor.
:)
I was playing on the whole bit about how E takes years and years and years to develop and release a new version. It is the WM world equivalent of DNF, something that is long promised to blow the doors off of its arena, but takes forever to materialize.
Yes, when a WM with such excellent eye candy arrives, 10.4 won't be so appealing since there will be competiton. However, by the time we see E17 released we'll have moved on to 10.7 probably. Yeah, it'll blow a several year old version of OS X away. Much like WinXP blows Win95 away in terms of usability and visual goodies.
You're comparing something that is out today with something that may not be out for years yet, it's not a fair comparison and my DNF analogy holds up in that regard.
Plus, it was a joke... laugh
Did you just honestly use Enlightenment .17 in an argument? Isn't that like saying "Game X sure is great, but hell, Duke Nukem Forever will blow it away" ?
Nothing really, but it's because they create new stuff that even their pedestrian stuff becomes news.
Because Dell and Gateway don't release very interesting products. Though I do believe they listed Dell when they launched the XPS line a while back.
Apple does cool things, so a lot of people are interested in hearing what they do even if it's only moderately cool. Dell does average stuff all the time, they don't push the envelope in any way shape or form so they don't get much attention.
MS and Intel get news coverage when they release new products btw. Longhorn, 64 bit processor benchmarks etc... They get coverage. They *create* stuff. Dell doesn't create, it just repackages.
Creators and innovators are interesting, parts assemblers generally aren't.
Ethics? BULLSHIT. It's called smart business practices. Why spend tons of money recreating the wheel? Not everyone has to subscribe to some selfless utopian view that simply isn't practical most of the time.
You're obviously an upstanding, proud member of the F/OSS world, posting as an AC and all.
Typical zealot, head shoved so far up your ass you'd need a dentist to get it out.
Before you can sell it as a replacement to Office, you have to do a few things:
/. people is not necessarily good for Little Susie who has to write her report on America's Founding Fathers.
1. Ensure compatability with Micosoft Office documents. I mean go nuts on this. Get every excel, powerpoint and word document you can from students and teachers. Load them up in OO and mark down any differences that exist. Also mark down where one product loads and performs faster than another. You'll want to do this with a few hundred files per Office program to make sure you have convincing numbers.
2. Find a few teachers to volunteer using OOo instead of MS Office for a 2 month period, have them keep a journal of their impressions. Do NOT let the computer course teachers do this, they're not representative of the larger population
3. Take a single computer lab in the district, probably in a High School and replace MS Office with OOo and observe reactions for a few weeks, randomly ask students questions. At the end of the test period, have teachers who used the lab survey their classes for feedback. Do not do this test near the end of the school year when everyone's going crazy on finals and projects.
The only way to sell any product is to have good solid data to backup your reasoning. Simply saying it's cheaper doesn't cut it. Notepad is cheaper than MS Word, but it's not a suitable replacement. The people making buying decisions haven't a clue that anything exists besides MS Office, so you'll have to present it to them in ways that make sense to them.
Most importantly, do NOT doctor the results from your study to fit some ideological preference. It may very well come out that OOo is NOT the right tool for the job. If you lie and convince them it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, you'll be exposed as a fraud pretty quickly... and what will they do when they find they suddenly have OOo on every PC and it doesn't do what they expected it to? They'll chew your ass out and fire you.
What's good for the
MASH had run its course. The show lasted longer than the war it was based on. I think its best when shows go out while they're still on top, instead of dragging down into a mire of crap for a few seasons. My memories of MASH are very fond because of this.
Our Platform: WinXP Sp 1 on all desktop and laptop machines
Our Network: Token Ring over Type 1 wiring
Number of Machines: Roughly 20,000 machines company-wide (in multiple cities)
Imagine pushing out Sp 2 to all of those machines. Even if we do it in phases it's going to bring the network to its knees. A simple worm took us offline a few weeks back. It took forever to download SP 2 onto my home machines over a considerably faster connection than I have here at work too.
Now, also consider we're still using a LOT of legacy apps, we're still connecting into old old old mainframes and databases. A good chunk of our business relies still on that old stuff (though we are migrating off of it... slowly). What happens if SP 2 renders those apps useless? We're screwed.
It took us over 2 years to migrate from 98 and 2k on the desktops to XP... we JUST finished that project recently. SP2 is going to kill us if we can't find a way to keep it off.
Has anyone here been to a University in the past several years? Everything from Art to Business to IT Programs at Univs now have their own "Intro to Computing" classes that they force just about everyone to take because they're under the assumption that most students haven't used a computer before.
Now, I'm not talking classes about how to build web pages, or how to effectively utilize Google, I'm talking about "Ok, now class... this is a... mouse!" and there aren't ways currently to profeciency test out of them. I had to sit through my intro to computing class because attendance was required, and while I was there I kept myself busy tinkering with my linux server in my dorm room. The professor caught me once and asked what I was doing... I answered and they had NO clue what I was saying. I wonder who needs an intro class more.
A test like this, while ridiculous to those of us used to technology, is needed right now at the College level. They don't believe that students come to college now with basic computer skills, and the only thing that will convince them are test scores that prove this point. In the immediate future, at least these tests could allow those of us who know where the power switch is to skip those sorts of classes that are just a waste of our time.
But the difference comes up when you have to weigh what is "better" versus what is "practical". Yes, it is better for all code to be completely open. But it isn't practical for companies to do so in all cases. It wouldn't be practical for Microsoft to completely open up Windows because doing so would lose them sales on the desktop almost completely. Even the few linux companies who make money make it almost entirely from the high-end market through support contracts.
Apple also wouldn't stand well to open up OSX completely since it could then be rebuilt for the x86 architecture and could then destroy their hardware sales.
In some cases even closed-source turns out "better" as you have less of a chance of encountering the "too many cooks" problem we see on large OSS projects.
The open source ideaology is dependent on the situation an individual coder or company is in. It is too easy to say one way is superior to another.
I love OSS, I use it whenever I can and whenever it's practical. My view on technology and software is to use what suits my needs. I am a gamer so Windows suits my desktop OS needs. I have a powerbook so OSX suits my mobile OS needs. I have a server at home too so Linux (Slackware) suits my server OS needs. I don't intend to alter my behaviors based on license ideaology, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that others expect me or anyone else to.
I find it sad, and a confirmation of my point, that any disagreement with the pure OSS ideaology is labeled as flamebait.
So I can take a GPLd piece of software, figure out how the innards work, then use that knowledge to create something that does the same things, and not release it under the GPL? I can close OSS and then make it propreitary?
When I say "use" in my original comment, I mean how it is taken and reimplemented. This sort of "use" is what the GPL protects. If you extend a GPLd product, you have part of your process dictated to you, you have to give back modified parts of the original code (though you can keep the extended completely new pieces to yourself) Even that though many feel violates the spirit of the GPL. So the GPL does determine use in that respect, as does any license for proprietary software. You can dictate how it can or can not be extended or reimplemented as you see fit.
And wasn't there an article the other day about how the GPL 3 may extend to GPL code used in-house at companies and not distributed?
People are letting their rabid devotion to the F/OSS religion blind them to issues of practicality and personal choice. People were mad when BK was first adopted because it wasn't "Free". Linus gets it, he's all about using the best tool for the job, be it Free or otherwise.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is). As the owner of that product, he is allowed to set the conditions for use. Just like the GPL sets conditions for anyone using software under that license. It's his to do with as he pleases.
It's the blind devotion to making all software "free" that hurts OSS the most. The biggest spokesmen for this movement are some of the craziest out there, and that drives away a lot of people from jumping on board for fear that they will become a target in the tech industry if they decide to not embrace the ideaology. No one should feel pressured or obligated to make their code "free" In fact many here have an odd sense of freedom, as in it must be the sort of freedom they expect, and you should have no choice but to practice their brand of it.
If I code something, it's mine. I can say how it is distributed and the terms of its use. That is my right. If I want to make it free that is also my right. I will also use the best tools available to me to make it, be them free or proprietary. This is the realistic approach to things. It leaves the freedom with the person writing software as well as those who use software. I get to choose what software I use, and I get to choose how my own software is used and distributed. Don't like my personal choice of license? Don't use it.
What about Soap Operas? Not much singing in them either. I think it more refers to the drama aspect.
Today's troll education moment brought to you by the letter "L" for Loser. Remember kids, only losers troll.
I wonder if AOL will treat its VoIP subscribers like they do normal AOL users when they want to cancel their account.
About 3 years ago I loaded up an AOL free trial CD just for shits and giggles, and to see how much it had changed since I last used it (1.0). Well, I found the experience disappointing (as I expected though) and at the end of the trial went to cancel.
What happened at that point was a 30min conversation where the sales rep practically begged me to keep the service. He offered me 6 months free and told me that if I make this same call every 5-6 months I could end up not paying for the service ever again. I think I said "No, just cancel the damn account, I DO NOT LIKE THE SERVICE" about two dozen times. Finally, defeated, the rep canceled the account. That was the most painful phone convo I've ever had.
I'm wondering if I can pull the free-forever scheme with their VoIP service. Think they'll be desperate enough for subscribers to it?
Whenever I hear a date spoken, it's usually said like this "April 7th, 2005" Even many people who live abroad say it like that. Why isn't it then logical to write a date out in the same order it is spoke?
I don't think I've ever heard someone say todays date is "2005, April 7th"