Depending on what your idea of "cheap" is, these aren't unreasonably priced.
The smaller models might work for home use. Unfortunately, features on the low-end models are ala-carte - so CDP to CDP syncing/off-site backup needs to be purchased separately.
As pay-for-tv companies start to see their video revenues decline, be ready for the severe data caps that will follow.
Cable and Telcos will fight to the death to keep from becoming dumb pipe providers, and thanks to our lack of net neutrality laws, or any sort of real competition in data services, they might succeed.
We've got roughly 300 Mac clients on our network, and we are 90% windows in the server room. Samba in Mac OS has been broken since Leopard. Accessing SMB shares has either been unreliable or very slow and DFS support was non-existent until 10.7.
I would argue that Apple's efforts in Windows compatibility have been half-hearted - and that's why IT departments cringe when a handful of Mac users want their machines to be integrated into a network that they do not own or maintain....and then they complain when the results are less than optimal.
Apple's management tools have always been a bit half-assed as well. Remote Desktop Administrator is OK, but their patch deployment server stinks, and Open Directory doesn't really compare with the power and flexibility of Active Directory. 3rd party tools can help make this better though.
So I'm not accused of being a Mac hater - ALL of my personal machines are Macs, and I love Mac OS. I simply wish that Apple put more time and effort into making admins happy, not just end-users.
-ted
(Also killing XServe was a STUPID thing to do. Now I am forced to choose between a MacMini with an external disk array, or a Mac PRO turned on its side - both options SUCK in different ways.)
Let's be clear - Facebook's customers are different from their "users". Just because you have a Facebook login and page, does not make you one of their "customers".
If you aren't paying for the service, you aren't a customer. At best, you are an asset or a product.
Here in the US, I run an open access point on a DMZ with some traffic and speed restrictions. I run it for the convenience of my friends and guests. I'm no attorney, but we still prosecute the people who commit crimes, not the owners of the stuff used to commit the crime.
Why is it my responsibility to police the activity of others "trespassing" on my property? If a criminal is running through my back yard is it my responsibility to tackle him or shoot him? If a bad guy steals my car and uses it to rob a bank, or run someone over, am I responsible for the consequences?
Any reasonable person would say the perpetrator of the crime is responsible for the consequences of committing that crime.
By leaving my property, my access point, open for the convenience of others, what crime have I committed? I say none. Any other law holding ME responsible for the crimes of OTHERS is unjust.
I want to jump through my TV and strangle every CEO that says our country (USA) is falling behind in engineering and science, and that colleges must produce more engineers and scientists.
What CEOs want is an oversupply of engineers and scientists, that way you can work them to death 80 hours a week for $40,000 a year, and throw them away when you are done with them.
Mike Rowe says that we are also lacking skilled tradesman in this country. I have a hard time believing that with 9% unemployment, housing market in the toilet and new construction levels also in the toilet that none of those 9% would learn a trade in one of these short-handed fields.
The reality is that we have a shortage of people with skills that are willing to work FOR SLAVE WAGES. Employers can not expect to get highly skilled workers in exchange for near minimum wages.
There is one RELIABLE way to get more of something - pay for it. Start raising wages in short-handed fields, and in less than 10 years, you will have a glut of people in that field. You don't even need to go back in history that far for proof - just look a the dot com boom in the early 90s. This programmer "shortage" is a result of that employment bubble.
For once, Wall Street called this one correctly. Lots of analysts predicted that all handset vendors that do not control their entire platform like Apple does, run the risk of a bad user experience.
Apple and RIM have control over the entire product - hardware, operating system, and even application approval and distribution. This results in a controlled, predictable, end user experience - and that's what their user base wants.
Let's be honest. Lots of Android customers on Verizon were only Android customers because they wanted a modern smartphone, and couldn't get an iPhone without switching to AT&T.
I'm certain some of those customers are thrilled with the "openness" of the Android platform, but I'll bet most don't care. They just want a widget that works with a minimum of fuss.
I predict many of these "types" will switch to iPhone eventually.
I have an open access point in a DMZ on my network at home. I've only allowed ports 80, 443, and 53 on the traffic on that access point and bandwidth limited that traffic to 128k/sec. I've found it's just enough to be useful for guests, and restricted enough to prevent permanent use.
Having to buy a "support contract" for bug-fixes is bullshit. Cisco needs to separate their releases into two groups - bug fixes and new features.
Buy a contract and you get the new features, and hardware support. Forgo the contract and all you get is bug-fixes.
Let's not forget, if the product shipped with flaws, the manufacturer is obligated to fix them. We would accept no less from any other industry, and in some cases, warranty support is required by law.
Sure, DVDs are cheaper and good enough, but there is one reason I don't really buy Blu-Ray discs: The Apple ecosystem.
I've got a whole bunch of mac stuff - none of it has a blu-ray drive built in. Ripping DVD movies to my iTunes server for playback on my iPods and Apple TVs is easy. When you have kids, it's a nice thing to not have to chase down discs when the kids want to watch something.
What would blu-ray get me? I'd have to buy more expensive discs, an external drive - and for what? I'd still compress the movies so they would fit on my server.
The really crazy thing is I own two Samsung blu-ray players - and I only use them for Netflix and Pandora.
-ted
Some anecdotal evidence here
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
·
· Score: 2
I was on statins for about a year and a half after unsuccessfully trying to better my numbers with a "low-cholesterol low-saturated fat" diet. My doctor chalked up my numbers to genes and sent me on my way with a script.
The statins made me feel terrible (back pains, low energy, heart palpitations, general fogginess and difficulty concentrating) so I gave them up. I was a bit worried about the heart palpitations, so I had a cardiac workup done - everything checked out OK.
After reading a bunch of stuff linking sugars to high cholesterol, I decided to try a low-sugar/carb diet (Mediterranean diet). It worked amazingly well. My total cholesterol dropped from 260 before statins to 175. I was around 200 on the statins. Ratios are good as well.
The other nice side-effect of cutting out sugars - I'm 20 pounds lighter now.
Dedicated appliances that do few things and do them well will ALWAYS have a place in a consumer's life.
Television, text-messaging, toasters..etc all are things that can be done by a more integrated or more capable device, yet these items continue to thrive in the marketplace. Consumers time and again choose convenience over functionality.
Tablets let you do your "online thing" quickly and painlessly - no boot times and the apps are small and get right to the point.
Microsoft's problem is that they want to make EVERYTHING like a desktop computer. When all you have is a hammer - everything looks like a nail.
We've noticed quite a few quality problems lately coming from Apple. Here are some of the recents:
Verizon iPhone 4 bluetooth - essentially worthless. Frequent disconnects, difficulty pairing devices, poor call audio quality. MacBook Air - touchpad and external mouse - many times unresponsive, or does not respond to click input. MacBook Pro - crashing under heavy load. Apple TV 2 - occasionally HDMI black screen condition - reportedly fixed in most recent update.
Our school buys a ton of Apple products, and we've always had our share of bugs, but recently it seems that Apple is pushing things out the door half-baked.
As hosted services become more and more popular, sysadmins have less interest in spending the time to diagnose and solve a problem - this goes for Windows, Mac OS and Linux/Unix. When a fix is needed RIGHT NOW - the quickest way back up sometimes is a re-image.
When I was a small business IT consultant, I asked clients if they wanted to spend $125 per hour for me to diagnose and fix their system - with the understanding that it could take many hours to research and solve the problem - or if they wanted to spend ONE hour re-imaging the system to a known good point.
Almost everyone chose the "fix it now in under an hour" solution.
I don't see this as a return to frugality - I see this as a warning shot for the industry.
Innovation in the electronics and technology industry is stagnating. What really separates a high-def TV, smart phone, or computer from one of 5 years ago?
Consumers seem to think not much.
As much as I love my new Verizon iPhone - it's not really leaps and bounds better than my old 3GS I gave to my wife. My company switched to Verizon, so I was forced to "upgrade". If I was paying for it, I wouldn't have made the switch.
I think TV manufacturers saw this trend coming a couple of years ago, so they scrambled to put 3D in to every TV they could hoping it would spur another round of upgrades - and most of the world said meh...
The low-hanging fruit is gone - the tech world will need to really think creatively to create the next round of stuff that people find useful.
After spending many hours and days trying to diagnose mail delivery problems, I just threw my hands up and put my mailserver behind postini. Since Postini has been delivering our mail, we've had no delivery problems.
I have better things to do than spend all of my time convincing a blacklist provider that I'm not a spammer.
Has someone actually figured out how to get high (data carrying) frequencies past the transformers?
If not, the power companies will still need to run fiber our to the transformer anyway - and if you are doing that, why not go all the way and install a passive optical network terminal and run fiber right from there to the premise?
I suspect powerline data will be one of those things that is always 5 years away.
I've noticed something wonderful about the whole "app" phenomenon, something I haven't seen in a decade of working in IT.
Lightweight apps. Apps that get right to the point, and don't require lots of time to install and configure. After spending an hour installing Adobe's Master Collection and another half hour patching it, I say the desktop app revolution can't come soon enough.
Yes, I realize that "fat apps" will not be replaced anytime soon by "thin apps", but it could force people to really decide if the fat app is worth the headache and expense.
Finally, I understand the financial needs of developers - but the app store should allow devs to get more eyeballs on their product, and make distribution of their product easier. Sure the margins may be smaller, but the volume will probably make up for it.
Many of my friends that have moved to Mac OS have noticed that Microsoft products on that platform do not have any activation or WGA restrictions. One of my friends specifically went to Mac due to the ease of finding and using pirated software. The lack of any sort of system level activation scheme has given people yet another reason to switch to Mac OS.
Microsoft's software stopped getting more useful around the Windows 2000/XP - Office 97-2000 days. Ever since then it has been paint jobs and activation nonsense. Users are starting to see that the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on what your idea of "cheap" is, these aren't unreasonably priced.
The smaller models might work for home use. Unfortunately, features on the low-end models are ala-carte - so CDP to CDP syncing/off-site backup needs to be purchased separately.
They support Windows/Mac OS/Linux.
-ted
As pay-for-tv companies start to see their video revenues decline, be ready for the severe data caps that will follow.
Cable and Telcos will fight to the death to keep from becoming dumb pipe providers, and thanks to our lack of net neutrality laws, or any sort of real competition in data services, they might succeed.
-ted
Do you really want 10 racks of servers with high-speed fans spinning away in your basement?
I've only got a few bits of gear in a small rack in my basement, and I can hear it on a quiet day.
-ted
We've got roughly 300 Mac clients on our network, and we are 90% windows in the server room. Samba in Mac OS has been broken since Leopard. Accessing SMB shares has either been unreliable or very slow and DFS support was non-existent until 10.7.
I would argue that Apple's efforts in Windows compatibility have been half-hearted - and that's why IT departments cringe when a handful of Mac users want their machines to be integrated into a network that they do not own or maintain....and then they complain when the results are less than optimal.
Apple's management tools have always been a bit half-assed as well. Remote Desktop Administrator is OK, but their patch deployment server stinks, and Open Directory doesn't really compare with the power and flexibility of Active Directory. 3rd party tools can help make this better though.
So I'm not accused of being a Mac hater - ALL of my personal machines are Macs, and I love Mac OS. I simply wish that Apple put more time and effort into making admins happy, not just end-users.
-ted
(Also killing XServe was a STUPID thing to do. Now I am forced to choose between a MacMini with an external disk array, or a Mac PRO turned on its side - both options SUCK in different ways.)
Let's be clear - Facebook's customers are different from their "users". Just because you have a Facebook login and page, does not make you one of their "customers".
If you aren't paying for the service, you aren't a customer. At best, you are an asset or a product.
-ted
Here in the US, I run an open access point on a DMZ with some traffic and speed restrictions. I run it for the convenience of my friends and guests. I'm no attorney, but we still prosecute the people who commit crimes, not the owners of the stuff used to commit the crime.
Why is it my responsibility to police the activity of others "trespassing" on my property? If a criminal is running through my back yard is it my responsibility to tackle him or shoot him? If a bad guy steals my car and uses it to rob a bank, or run someone over, am I responsible for the consequences?
Any reasonable person would say the perpetrator of the crime is responsible for the consequences of committing that crime.
By leaving my property, my access point, open for the convenience of others, what crime have I committed? I say none. Any other law holding ME responsible for the crimes of OTHERS is unjust.
-ted
The damn thing even says "3G" on the signal meter. How can anyone with a functional nervous system confuse the actual letters "3G" for "4G"?
Are people really this stupid?
-ted
I want to jump through my TV and strangle every CEO that says our country (USA) is falling behind in engineering and science, and that colleges must produce more engineers and scientists.
What CEOs want is an oversupply of engineers and scientists, that way you can work them to death 80 hours a week for $40,000 a year, and throw them away when you are done with them.
Mike Rowe says that we are also lacking skilled tradesman in this country. I have a hard time believing that with 9% unemployment, housing market in the toilet and new construction levels also in the toilet that none of those 9% would learn a trade in one of these short-handed fields.
The reality is that we have a shortage of people with skills that are willing to work FOR SLAVE WAGES. Employers can not expect to get highly skilled workers in exchange for near minimum wages.
There is one RELIABLE way to get more of something - pay for it. Start raising wages in short-handed fields, and in less than 10 years, you will have a glut of people in that field. You don't even need to go back in history that far for proof - just look a the dot com boom in the early 90s. This programmer "shortage" is a result of that employment bubble.
-ted
You can't control the user experience.
For once, Wall Street called this one correctly. Lots of analysts predicted that all handset vendors that do not control their entire platform like Apple does, run the risk of a bad user experience.
Apple and RIM have control over the entire product - hardware, operating system, and even application approval and distribution. This results in a controlled, predictable, end user experience - and that's what their user base wants.
Let's be honest. Lots of Android customers on Verizon were only Android customers because they wanted a modern smartphone, and couldn't get an iPhone without switching to AT&T.
I'm certain some of those customers are thrilled with the "openness" of the Android platform, but I'll bet most don't care. They just want a widget that works with a minimum of fuss.
I predict many of these "types" will switch to iPhone eventually.
-ted
Pharmaceutical companies are already giving away iPads to doctors.
Sorry, scratch that. Pharmaceutical companies are distributing their product literature on iPads.
-ted
I have an open access point in a DMZ on my network at home. I've only allowed ports 80, 443, and 53 on the traffic on that access point and bandwidth limited that traffic to 128k/sec. I've found it's just enough to be useful for guests, and restricted enough to prevent permanent use.
-ted
Pension and health-care benefits. Good luck hiring a teacher without incurring those expenses.
-ted
Having to buy a "support contract" for bug-fixes is bullshit. Cisco needs to separate their releases into two groups - bug fixes and new features.
Buy a contract and you get the new features, and hardware support. Forgo the contract and all you get is bug-fixes.
Let's not forget, if the product shipped with flaws, the manufacturer is obligated to fix them. We would accept no less from any other industry, and in some cases, warranty support is required by law.
-ted
Sure, DVDs are cheaper and good enough, but there is one reason I don't really buy Blu-Ray discs: The Apple ecosystem.
I've got a whole bunch of mac stuff - none of it has a blu-ray drive built in. Ripping DVD movies to my iTunes server for playback on my iPods and Apple TVs is easy. When you have kids, it's a nice thing to not have to chase down discs when the kids want to watch something.
What would blu-ray get me? I'd have to buy more expensive discs, an external drive - and for what? I'd still compress the movies so they would fit on my server.
The really crazy thing is I own two Samsung blu-ray players - and I only use them for Netflix and Pandora.
-ted
I was on statins for about a year and a half after unsuccessfully trying to better my numbers with a "low-cholesterol low-saturated fat" diet. My doctor chalked up my numbers to genes and sent me on my way with a script.
The statins made me feel terrible (back pains, low energy, heart palpitations, general fogginess and difficulty concentrating) so I gave them up. I was a bit worried about the heart palpitations, so I had a cardiac workup done - everything checked out OK.
After reading a bunch of stuff linking sugars to high cholesterol, I decided to try a low-sugar/carb diet (Mediterranean diet). It worked amazingly well. My total cholesterol dropped from 260 before statins to 175. I was around 200 on the statins. Ratios are good as well.
The other nice side-effect of cutting out sugars - I'm 20 pounds lighter now.
-ted
Dedicated appliances that do few things and do them well will ALWAYS have a place in a consumer's life.
Television, text-messaging, toasters..etc all are things that can be done by a more integrated or more capable device, yet these items continue to thrive in the marketplace. Consumers time and again choose convenience over functionality.
Tablets let you do your "online thing" quickly and painlessly - no boot times and the apps are small and get right to the point.
Microsoft's problem is that they want to make EVERYTHING like a desktop computer. When all you have is a hammer - everything looks like a nail.
-ted
We've noticed quite a few quality problems lately coming from Apple. Here are some of the recents:
Verizon iPhone 4 bluetooth - essentially worthless. Frequent disconnects, difficulty pairing devices, poor call audio quality.
MacBook Air - touchpad and external mouse - many times unresponsive, or does not respond to click input.
MacBook Pro - crashing under heavy load.
Apple TV 2 - occasionally HDMI black screen condition - reportedly fixed in most recent update.
Our school buys a ton of Apple products, and we've always had our share of bugs, but recently it seems that Apple is pushing things out the door half-baked.
-ted
As hosted services become more and more popular, sysadmins have less interest in spending the time to diagnose and solve a problem - this goes for Windows, Mac OS and Linux/Unix. When a fix is needed RIGHT NOW - the quickest way back up sometimes is a re-image.
When I was a small business IT consultant, I asked clients if they wanted to spend $125 per hour for me to diagnose and fix their system - with the understanding that it could take many hours to research and solve the problem - or if they wanted to spend ONE hour re-imaging the system to a known good point.
Almost everyone chose the "fix it now in under an hour" solution.
-ted
I don't see this as a return to frugality - I see this as a warning shot for the industry.
Innovation in the electronics and technology industry is stagnating. What really separates a high-def TV, smart phone, or computer from one of 5 years ago?
Consumers seem to think not much.
As much as I love my new Verizon iPhone - it's not really leaps and bounds better than my old 3GS I gave to my wife. My company switched to Verizon, so I was forced to "upgrade". If I was paying for it, I wouldn't have made the switch.
I think TV manufacturers saw this trend coming a couple of years ago, so they scrambled to put 3D in to every TV they could hoping it would spur another round of upgrades - and most of the world said meh...
The low-hanging fruit is gone - the tech world will need to really think creatively to create the next round of stuff that people find useful.
-ted
After spending many hours and days trying to diagnose mail delivery problems, I just threw my hands up and put my mailserver behind postini. Since Postini has been delivering our mail, we've had no delivery problems.
I have better things to do than spend all of my time convincing a blacklist provider that I'm not a spammer.
-ted
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704803604576078131322160002.html
I recently heard on NPR that the postal service no longer requires exact addresses when sending out bulk mail.
Businesses like this since they no longer need to maintain or buy address lists, and now can "blanket" an area with bulk mail.
I assume the postal service also likes this since it increases their mail volumes.
-ted
Has someone actually figured out how to get high (data carrying) frequencies past the transformers?
If not, the power companies will still need to run fiber our to the transformer anyway - and if you are doing that, why not go all the way and install a passive optical network terminal and run fiber right from there to the premise?
I suspect powerline data will be one of those things that is always 5 years away.
-ted
I've noticed something wonderful about the whole "app" phenomenon, something I haven't seen in a decade of working in IT.
Lightweight apps. Apps that get right to the point, and don't require lots of time to install and configure. After spending an hour installing Adobe's Master Collection and another half hour patching it, I say the desktop app revolution can't come soon enough.
Yes, I realize that "fat apps" will not be replaced anytime soon by "thin apps", but it could force people to really decide if the fat app is worth the headache and expense.
Finally, I understand the financial needs of developers - but the app store should allow devs to get more eyeballs on their product, and make distribution of their product easier. Sure the margins may be smaller, but the volume will probably make up for it.
-ted
Many of my friends that have moved to Mac OS have noticed that Microsoft products on that platform do not have any activation or WGA restrictions. One of my friends specifically went to Mac due to the ease of finding and using pirated software. The lack of any sort of system level activation scheme has given people yet another reason to switch to Mac OS.
Microsoft's software stopped getting more useful around the Windows 2000/XP - Office 97-2000 days. Ever since then it has been paint jobs and activation nonsense. Users are starting to see that the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.
-ted