The above post definitely has this one right. Patent it, that way somebody else can't steal the idea and claim they invented it and make YOUR profit from it. That being done, you can easily distribute it freely to the masses for common use, or sell shareware, or whatever. If it's really as good as you claim, you shouldn't have problems selling $10 or whatever shareware licenses. Also, if it's that good, corporations would be climbing all over you for access to it. You could charge a very reasonable fee for its use, even allow yourself to be hired as a security consultant/whatever, and make your profit from it.
I realize it's an up-front cost for patenting, but look at the alternative: someone stealing/adapting your invention and making the money that YOU could've had. Don't let that happen to you. And if it's really that good, there are services out there that will help you patent inventions, although I will admit to not being entirely familiar with them having never patented something myself.
The secret of HEAT is that ALL of the interface with the database is done through standard SQL calls. At a place I used to work at, one of our programmers hated the interface so much he created from scratch in about a week a new web interface for it. Everything we wanted on it, nothing we didn't. All it depends on is a preconfigured database (i.e. existing HEAT installation) and a good knowledge of programming:)
Firewire and USB can replace that and more. IDE and SCSI could also go away and be replaced by a Firewire or USB 2.0 bus.
Not a chance. They're still not fast enough, robust enough, and have low enough latency and processor usage to replace the internal buses. They were designed as external buses and belong there. If you want to replace IDE and/or SCSI, I would point to Serial ATA, which should be out somewhere around a year from now, which was designed from the ground up to do just what you're interested in.
It's WD, I submitted the article with a different title and it got edited...to the wrong company LOL! I laughed so hard I almost wet myself when I read it...
The drive will be bundled with a Promise controller, says right on the site.
Re:There's a special boot loader, er disk overlay
on
Finding BIOS Upgrades?
·
· Score: 2
Ok, first let me state that I WORK for WD tech support, hence I'm probably the most qualified person to answer this question, also there will be stuff in here that's my opinion and not the one of the company.
Now, having said that, let me address the issue of EZ-BIOS. I don't know where you heard that we don't reccommend it, but from what I've seen on other posts here a lot of people are basing the descriptions of it on OLD versions of our software (and therefore of EZ-BIOS). We haven't used OnTrack for our software for several years now. What we DO reccommend is not using EZ-BIOS on a system that doesn't need it...that makes sense, doesn't it? Linux with kernel version 2.2 or above (I believe, or is it 2.0? Anyway if you're still running 2.0 or below I would HIGHLY reccommend upgrading), Win2k or Win XP don't need BIOS support, so we tell people don't use it with those OS'es. In cases like that, we just have them set it up in the BIOS as type User, 1023 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors, and mode of Normal (or LBA Mode disabled). This sets the drive up as about 528 MB and allows the BIOS to boot to the drive, load up the kernel/ntldr, and continue on its merry way. Again, we do NOT reccommend EZ-BIOS for use on systems like this because it's not needed.
On the other hand, anybody with Win9x and a system with a BIOS limit (8.4 or 32 GB limit most often) are probably going to be best off using it. In the over 1 year I've been working here, I think we've had ONE single call with a computer where EZ-BIOS wouldn't work on the system. Now there are other circumstances where EZ-BIOS may have a conflict with another piece of software on the computer. Most software that writes to the boot track or tries to control the boot process is not going to work with it; common culprits include Roxio GoBack, System Commander, and Partition Magic (which writes its own info in the partition tables and basically makes the partitions unreadable by anything else).
LOL couldn't have said it better myself. Personally, I've always had the impression that the judge in
And Eternity
was Piers writing about himself sort of. There was one exchange that particularly stuck in my mind: What are panties for other than dirty old men's delight?";) Only other thing I've been able to think of is that they're great for dirty young men's delight...:)~
I agree that he may be somewhat old school and isn't as crazy liberal as the FemiNazis and other similar wacko groups. However, I don't think anybody could accuse him of being closed-minded, and in that respect he is far and away more open and liberal than many of the activist groups, who reject as invalid any point of view except their own. That probably WAS helped by his nontraditional education in the wild 60's.
Well for one thing, OpenOffice.org isn't a company, it's an open source project. If you want to order a CD of it with tech support and everything like that, you want to look at Star Office 6.0 from Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice.org is the free version, Star Office is the pay version, where you get support and a manual, etc.
It's pretty obvious you've never dealt with getting semi-literate (not computer literate, just literate) office workers to leave their PC's on every night, without fail. Coming from a background of large corporate help desk/desktop support/admin, I can personally attest that it's one of the hardest battles you'll ever end up fighting. You REALLY do not want to depend on the users for anything in the backup process. If you do, they'll invariably fail to do something (leave system on, etc.) and your butt will be held over the flame til it's nice & toasty brown.
Give them a network drive letter, or, as has been said on this thread many times, change My Documents to a server location. One of the simplest things to do, made even simpler if you already have network logon and roaming profiles. As has also been said on here many times, you have to impress on them the importance of saving their data to the proper location and not on various files on their HD, because then we're right back to the single point of failure. Tell them over and over that anything not on the server/in that directory will not be backed up and if anything happens to it, it will be GONE and so will their job probably. I realize it sounds unduly harsh but as a veteran of many situations where HD crashed/deleted file and needs it back desperately, I can tell you that you CAN'T be too harsh. Getting people a bit grumbly at you is one thing, having them scream at you because the data is lost is another.
You already have to have their blessing every time you start up - after all, what is the Activation Code? If you don't enter it, you get shut down after a 30 day trial period, basically. And you have to get a new activation code every time you make 3 or more hardware changes. Another little tiny baby step and they can just change the "3 or more major hardware changes" to "1 year since install date" or something like that.
And they're already doing this anyway. If you've read their latest round of corporate licenses, you pay per seat per year. You don't own the software, you own a yearly license to USE the software. Now there are other perks that come with this, i.e. you get a shoebox size package that contains cd's of every MS product ever made (not including Bob...we checked) and you get new products shipped to you every time they come out, complete with the license to use them. But the point is, you HAVE to upgrade, even if you don't need to. You're tied to that yearly fee, and yes they DO check up on you.
I don't believe so because internet explorer IS the interface. The IE DLL's are doing double duty as also core O/S files. It's similar to what would happen if you took the Mozilla shared libraries and built them into the base kernel. Yes, Mozilla will run faster and it will boot up when you start the machine and make it look pretty (it would also probably replace window managers and X). However, you would then be totally unable to uninstall Mozilla because it's now intermingled with the kernel code.
They're scared because the continuing trial has been going very badly for them. If you follow the daily coverage, just about every day one of their witnesses ended up making a fool of themselves in one way or another. The gov't lawyers on the case have been effective enough in getting information that at one point MS had to cut almost 1/3 of their witnesses to avoid even more debacles.
They still swear they did nothing wrong and still continue to file motions to get the case dismissed summarily, but they're also obviously aware that the case is going not in their favor at the moment. Now I'm not saying the gov't lawyers have been angelic either, they've gotten caught with their share of knuckle slaps by the judge also. But from the perspective I see from the daily coverage, MS is keenly aware that they've been made fools of repeatedly and many of their key witnesses have been discredited. They probably view this as a way to try and stave off more penalties by appearing to have a change of heart (in the face of stiffer penalties, of course) just long enough to get the trial done with.
I'd beg to differ on this particular point. While living in the Boston area, I worked on the support desk for a financial company in downtown Boston. Our manager there was probably the best one I've ever had...and she didn't know computers hardly at ALL. The thing that set her apart from every other manager I've worked with was that she KNEW this and was fully willing to admit it. She was there to take care of the management/political pieces of it, attend meetings, talk to the bigwigs, etc. She basically let us do our jobs the way we knew they needed to be done, and if she needed to know the correct technical stuff or input for new equipment or whatever, she took one of us along to that part of the meeting. When we had a problem we couldn't solve we talked to our developers 1 building over or called the company who made it.
This was probably my favorite job of all time, because we DIDN'T have a technically-savvy manager. Strange I know, but we on the help desk knew our stuff and knew how to get it done. When something was broke, we fixed it. If we didn't have the part, we told our manager what it was, part number and everything, and she got it for us in a few days (faster if critical). We kept the things going so the company bigwigs were happy, and she kept the company bigwigs and everybody else who wanted to hassle us out of our hair so we could DO our jobs correctly.
TB coming back has, in several studies, been linked to the overuse of strong antibiotics and, strangely enough, the spread of public spitting. Several noted authorities (sorry no references on hand) have agreed that public spitting is one of the most likely vectors for spreading disease. I will try to provide references later, I don't have the material with me right now.
Woo, way to go Cmdr, congrats, you'll gradually forget you had any willpower to make decisions of your own...but don't fret, there are other benifits that make up for the loss of volition:)
spillproof, shockproof, greaseproof, and washable wireless keyboard that comes with it
This is actually a lot MORE than you want, since it also does cd's, dvd's, TV, remote camera monitor, the net, and is really designed to BE in a kitchen, unlike a regular old box that would not be happy near the greasy stove.
You must've seen one of the early devices that was based on WindRiver's VxWare (I believe), which had WR's own custom browser with it. The current model is based on WinCE.NET, probably comes witn IE, and is (very funny) not compatible with MSN or AOL. It probably has no disk and my guess is, with something like that, there's a good chance it's not running on Intel hardware anyway so you of course wouldn't be able to run your ISP's downloaded software.
The thing I was extremely impressed with was the design behind the thing - CD/DVD/TV/camera monitor/web/email, indestructible keyboard and remote, flip-up monitor that flips up with the screen facing up so as to protect it...they may come from a consumer electronics background, but the design of the device reflects it in that it's actually USEFUL in the environment it's designed to be in. Also see above post, the AC has some good points:)
Actually, I posted the article to highlight the great design, especially of the under the cupboard unit. I will agree, it's very overpriced, but I think the design is spectacular. Also I think you're a bit off on it being dependent on M$'s future home networking technologies. It says that it's compatible with almost any dialup/broadband ISP that doesn't require the downloading of software. Note that this does NOT include MSN, which they specifically state the device isn't compatible with. I just love the design and wish we had more devices on the market with this much forethought behind them.
Well your idea would be great, except for one big flaw: This isn't aimed at you, or me for that matter. This is aimed at the USERS out there, the mom & dad with kids who need something they can plug and go. I didn't send in the article thinking a lot of slashdot ppl would buy it. It IS overpriced and basically non upgradeable. But the people who would buy this won't be TOO concerned about the price, will want something easy to use, designed well, and with a large number of uses, all of which criteria this supplies. They're NOT going to go out and buy a 1u server, put a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. with it. Some/.'ers might, and that's good for them, but then you still wouldn't have TV tuner, camera monitor, indestructible keyboard, remote control, flip-up monitor, and if it's running Linux difficult to get DVD software.
What I posted the article for was to show that some companies seem to be getting the idea that if you're going to produce an appliance, it had better be useful, look good, be able to withstand appliance-type conditions, have a LOT of function, and be designed well to fit into an average home. It's definitely overpriced, as I said before, but for everything it does and the design that's obviously gone into it, I think it's a superb product and I wish we would see more devices on the market with this much forethought into them.
Umm...not sure this would be acceptable - I'm not clear on the status of email in the courtroom. I think it would end up being personal testimony from the people you sent it to rather than material evidence in the form of email. I still hold that the most reliable poor man's copyright is just print it, mail it certified, and don't open it. Then you have the post office cancellation stamp and the thingy certifying when and to who it was delivered, which is usable as legal evidence in court.
Slashdot Mirror
The above post definitely has this one right. Patent it, that way somebody else can't steal the idea and claim they invented it and make YOUR profit from it. That being done, you can easily distribute it freely to the masses for common use, or sell shareware, or whatever. If it's really as good as you claim, you shouldn't have problems selling $10 or whatever shareware licenses. Also, if it's that good, corporations would be climbing all over you for access to it. You could charge a very reasonable fee for its use, even allow yourself to be hired as a security consultant/whatever, and make your profit from it.
I realize it's an up-front cost for patenting, but look at the alternative: someone stealing/adapting your invention and making the money that YOU could've had. Don't let that happen to you. And if it's really that good, there are services out there that will help you patent inventions, although I will admit to not being entirely familiar with them having never patented something myself.
The secret of HEAT is that ALL of the interface with the database is done through standard SQL calls. At a place I used to work at, one of our programmers hated the interface so much he created from scratch in about a week a new web interface for it. Everything we wanted on it, nothing we didn't. All it depends on is a preconfigured database (i.e. existing HEAT installation) and a good knowledge of programming :)
*shrug* ok so I'm tired AND behind, I don't need your help to look like a fool I do a good enough job on my own ;)
I have but one thing to say...
LMAO!!
Personally I prefer Stacker, I just so love getting unmountable partition messages every 3 months ;)
Read the press release, WD's releasing FDB drives now also. Also Maxtor's FDB drives I believe are all 5400 RPM whereas the new WD's will be 7200 RPM.
The press release is June 25, but the drives just SHIPPED today, THAT'S the news.
It's WD, I submitted the article with a different title and it got edited...to the wrong company LOL! I laughed so hard I almost wet myself when I read it...
The drive will be bundled with a Promise controller, says right on the site.
Ok, first let me state that I WORK for WD tech support, hence I'm probably the most qualified person to answer this question, also there will be stuff in here that's my opinion and not the one of the company .
Now, having said that, let me address the issue of EZ-BIOS. I don't know where you heard that we don't reccommend it, but from what I've seen on other posts here a lot of people are basing the descriptions of it on OLD versions of our software (and therefore of EZ-BIOS). We haven't used OnTrack for our software for several years now. What we DO reccommend is not using EZ-BIOS on a system that doesn't need it...that makes sense, doesn't it? Linux with kernel version 2.2 or above (I believe, or is it 2.0? Anyway if you're still running 2.0 or below I would HIGHLY reccommend upgrading), Win2k or Win XP don't need BIOS support, so we tell people don't use it with those OS'es. In cases like that, we just have them set it up in the BIOS as type User, 1023 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors, and mode of Normal (or LBA Mode disabled). This sets the drive up as about 528 MB and allows the BIOS to boot to the drive, load up the kernel/ntldr, and continue on its merry way. Again, we do NOT reccommend EZ-BIOS for use on systems like this because it's not needed.
On the other hand, anybody with Win9x and a system with a BIOS limit (8.4 or 32 GB limit most often) are probably going to be best off using it. In the over 1 year I've been working here, I think we've had ONE single call with a computer where EZ-BIOS wouldn't work on the system. Now there are other circumstances where EZ-BIOS may have a conflict with another piece of software on the computer. Most software that writes to the boot track or tries to control the boot process is not going to work with it; common culprits include Roxio GoBack, System Commander, and Partition Magic (which writes its own info in the partition tables and basically makes the partitions unreadable by anything else).
- And Eternity
was Piers writing about himself sort of. There was one exchange that particularly stuck in my mind: What are panties for other than dirty old men's delight?"I agree that he may be somewhat old school and isn't as crazy liberal as the FemiNazis and other similar wacko groups. However, I don't think anybody could accuse him of being closed-minded, and in that respect he is far and away more open and liberal than many of the activist groups, who reject as invalid any point of view except their own. That probably WAS helped by his nontraditional education in the wild 60's.
Well for one thing, OpenOffice.org isn't a company, it's an open source project. If you want to order a CD of it with tech support and everything like that, you want to look at Star Office 6.0 from Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice.org is the free version, Star Office is the pay version, where you get support and a manual, etc.
:)
See the difference?
It's pretty obvious you've never dealt with getting semi-literate (not computer literate, just literate) office workers to leave their PC's on every night, without fail. Coming from a background of large corporate help desk/desktop support/admin, I can personally attest that it's one of the hardest battles you'll ever end up fighting. You REALLY do not want to depend on the users for anything in the backup process. If you do, they'll invariably fail to do something (leave system on, etc.) and your butt will be held over the flame til it's nice & toasty brown.
Give them a network drive letter, or, as has been said on this thread many times, change My Documents to a server location. One of the simplest things to do, made even simpler if you already have network logon and roaming profiles. As has also been said on here many times, you have to impress on them the importance of saving their data to the proper location and not on various files on their HD, because then we're right back to the single point of failure. Tell them over and over that anything not on the server/in that directory will not be backed up and if anything happens to it, it will be GONE and so will their job probably. I realize it sounds unduly harsh but as a veteran of many situations where HD crashed/deleted file and needs it back desperately, I can tell you that you CAN'T be too harsh. Getting people a bit grumbly at you is one thing, having them scream at you because the data is lost is another.
You already have to have their blessing every time you start up - after all, what is the Activation Code? If you don't enter it, you get shut down after a 30 day trial period, basically. And you have to get a new activation code every time you make 3 or more hardware changes. Another little tiny baby step and they can just change the "3 or more major hardware changes" to "1 year since install date" or something like that.
And they're already doing this anyway. If you've read their latest round of corporate licenses, you pay per seat per year. You don't own the software, you own a yearly license to USE the software. Now there are other perks that come with this, i.e. you get a shoebox size package that contains cd's of every MS product ever made (not including Bob...we checked) and you get new products shipped to you every time they come out, complete with the license to use them. But the point is, you HAVE to upgrade, even if you don't need to. You're tied to that yearly fee, and yes they DO check up on you.
I don't believe so because internet explorer IS the interface. The IE DLL's are doing double duty as also core O/S files. It's similar to what would happen if you took the Mozilla shared libraries and built them into the base kernel. Yes, Mozilla will run faster and it will boot up when you start the machine and make it look pretty (it would also probably replace window managers and X). However, you would then be totally unable to uninstall Mozilla because it's now intermingled with the kernel code.
They're scared because the continuing trial has been going very badly for them. If you follow the daily coverage, just about every day one of their witnesses ended up making a fool of themselves in one way or another. The gov't lawyers on the case have been effective enough in getting information that at one point MS had to cut almost 1/3 of their witnesses to avoid even more debacles.
They still swear they did nothing wrong and still continue to file motions to get the case dismissed summarily, but they're also obviously aware that the case is going not in their favor at the moment. Now I'm not saying the gov't lawyers have been angelic either, they've gotten caught with their share of knuckle slaps by the judge also. But from the perspective I see from the daily coverage, MS is keenly aware that they've been made fools of repeatedly and many of their key witnesses have been discredited. They probably view this as a way to try and stave off more penalties by appearing to have a change of heart (in the face of stiffer penalties, of course) just long enough to get the trial done with.
I'd beg to differ on this particular point. While living in the Boston area, I worked on the support desk for a financial company in downtown Boston. Our manager there was probably the best one I've ever had...and she didn't know computers hardly at ALL. The thing that set her apart from every other manager I've worked with was that she KNEW this and was fully willing to admit it. She was there to take care of the management/political pieces of it, attend meetings, talk to the bigwigs, etc. She basically let us do our jobs the way we knew they needed to be done, and if she needed to know the correct technical stuff or input for new equipment or whatever, she took one of us along to that part of the meeting. When we had a problem we couldn't solve we talked to our developers 1 building over or called the company who made it.
This was probably my favorite job of all time, because we DIDN'T have a technically-savvy manager. Strange I know, but we on the help desk knew our stuff and knew how to get it done. When something was broke, we fixed it. If we didn't have the part, we told our manager what it was, part number and everything, and she got it for us in a few days (faster if critical). We kept the things going so the company bigwigs were happy, and she kept the company bigwigs and everybody else who wanted to hassle us out of our hair so we could DO our jobs correctly.
TB coming back has, in several studies, been linked to the overuse of strong antibiotics and, strangely enough, the spread of public spitting. Several noted authorities (sorry no references on hand) have agreed that public spitting is one of the most likely vectors for spreading disease. I will try to provide references later, I don't have the material with me right now.
Woo, way to go Cmdr, congrats, you'll gradually forget you had any willpower to make decisions of your own...but don't fret, there are other benifits that make up for the loss of volition :)
Welcome to our ranks!
This is actually a lot MORE than you want, since it also does cd's, dvd's, TV, remote camera monitor, the net, and is really designed to BE in a kitchen, unlike a regular old box that would not be happy near the greasy stove.
You must've seen one of the early devices that was based on WindRiver's VxWare (I believe), which had WR's own custom browser with it. The current model is based on WinCE.NET, probably comes witn IE, and is (very funny) not compatible with MSN or AOL. It probably has no disk and my guess is, with something like that, there's a good chance it's not running on Intel hardware anyway so you of course wouldn't be able to run your ISP's downloaded software.
:)
The thing I was extremely impressed with was the design behind the thing - CD/DVD/TV/camera monitor/web/email, indestructible keyboard and remote, flip-up monitor that flips up with the screen facing up so as to protect it...they may come from a consumer electronics background, but the design of the device reflects it in that it's actually USEFUL in the environment it's designed to be in. Also see above post, the AC has some good points
Actually, I posted the article to highlight the great design, especially of the under the cupboard unit. I will agree, it's very overpriced, but I think the design is spectacular. Also I think you're a bit off on it being dependent on M$'s future home networking technologies. It says that it's compatible with almost any dialup/broadband ISP that doesn't require the downloading of software. Note that this does NOT include MSN, which they specifically state the device isn't compatible with. I just love the design and wish we had more devices on the market with this much forethought behind them.
Well your idea would be great, except for one big flaw: This isn't aimed at you, or me for that matter. This is aimed at the USERS out there, the mom & dad with kids who need something they can plug and go. I didn't send in the article thinking a lot of slashdot ppl would buy it. It IS overpriced and basically non upgradeable. But the people who would buy this won't be TOO concerned about the price, will want something easy to use, designed well, and with a large number of uses, all of which criteria this supplies. They're NOT going to go out and buy a 1u server, put a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. with it. Some /.'ers might, and that's good for them, but then you still wouldn't have TV tuner, camera monitor, indestructible keyboard, remote control, flip-up monitor, and if it's running Linux difficult to get DVD software.
What I posted the article for was to show that some companies seem to be getting the idea that if you're going to produce an appliance, it had better be useful, look good, be able to withstand appliance-type conditions, have a LOT of function, and be designed well to fit into an average home. It's definitely overpriced, as I said before, but for everything it does and the design that's obviously gone into it, I think it's a superb product and I wish we would see more devices on the market with this much forethought into them.
Umm...not sure this would be acceptable - I'm not clear on the status of email in the courtroom. I think it would end up being personal testimony from the people you sent it to rather than material evidence in the form of email. I still hold that the most reliable poor man's copyright is just print it, mail it certified, and don't open it. Then you have the post office cancellation stamp and the thingy certifying when and to who it was delivered, which is usable as legal evidence in court.