Strange, the last thing I heard about Dell is that they were experiancing supply chain problems which where leading to large DOA machines. Still, the problems I am having with Compaq don't make them any better!
Given the choice I would buy a Dell direct from them. If something goes wrong I have one number to call and one comany to deal with.
Okay, I'm biased. I'm 20 and I work as an contractor in the UK. My company is currently in the process of gathering VC to launch it's wireless internet service in the London and surrounding area. I know how hard it can be to get people to listen and respond accordingly to young technologists such as myself. I am always meeting people who can not see past my age and simply dismiss me as some kid who managed to upgrade from Win95 to Win98 all be his self.
It is the management of organisations like the Comdex people who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Patent laws in the US are quite clearly getting out of control. It would appear to me that this centres on the ability of one company to beat other companies to filing a patent on the implimentation of an open standard.
What does '1-Click! actually do? A user enters information about their shipping and billing addresses and credit card number into a form on a website which results in the data being stored in a database. A cookie is then set in the browser which eases the heavy burden of re-entering the data again. Oh my God! This is clearly a ground breaking, technologically superior implimentation of cookies and databases. I have never seen anything like this ever!
Seriously though, the judge does need to tke some technical briefings before makeing a ruleing in this case as it could mean the end of anyone else using cookies if the judgment isn't carefully worded. Argh! I'll have to enter my nickname and password every time I visit/. ! Oh no!
Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.
The Linux search does leave something to be desired though. I personally prefer news groups or in the first instance the MAN pages before I'll go and look on the web. This has been true for all the occassions that I have required Linux info except one - Installation on a Dell Laptop. I can't remember the URL but I found the origional link right here on/. !
I've been holding out for a colour screen Palm and I have managed to resist the temptation to by a WinCE device.
Bluetooth will make me buy one over colour any day. If not the Bluetooth spec exactly at least something like WAP or TCP/IP over IRDA. These features are selling points as far as I am concerned.
This should mean that my Pentium II 233 will last me a little longer.
Any plans for a including them into 'off the shelf' systems? I supose some vendor will at some point but I doubt it will be one of the 'big boys' due to their tie-in's with Intel.
The problems with current digital verification systems is that they rely on the user to provide the security. Passwords, PGP Keys, Signatures, PIN numbers can all be written down, copied, monitored or grapped.
The only way I can see that documents/transactions can certified as being accurate is if the verification takes place in front of you. This is why documents, such as passport applications, require witnesses from professionals.
Don't get me wrong, I am not looking for a situation where retina scans coupled with finger print technology are incorporated into everything under the sun, I just feel that more steps could be taken to ensure the authenticity of digital "signatures".
Perhaps implimentating a central register of "signature" verifiers - such as banks - is the way forward. A user would then digitally sign a web order with their Visa number on it and then the issuing bank - or maybe even the Visa people - would authorise against the signature. Okay, the administration of such a system would be a nightmare but not impossible!
With the current system announced by 3Com, the lack of platforms supported will be it's downfall. But hey, we knew that much anyway......
Image how a shutdown sequence would look with this environment...All the monsters in the room would start to kill themselves in a quiet orderley fashion until a screen comes up says "Level Complete. Kills 32/32 Secret 1/10". Press Enter To Continue" Hang on...NT already does that whole enter to continue thingy...I've changed my mind, that would actually be really anoying!
Cowpland is Corel. Gates is Microsoft. McNealy is Sun. Ellison is Oracle. These world respected organisations would not be where they are today if it wasn't for these "personalities".
At the moment Corel are in no real danger of loosing either top man. But as the article states that in the event of a conviction "...the Board of Directors...will ask Cowpland for his resignation." If Cowpland goes I think it unlikley that Corel will survive. This man is actively the driving force behind Corel even though he occasionly makes a tit of himself. Corels support for Linux may well be the first thing to go in the event of loosing Cowpland as the vultures that are Microsoft and Adobe will eat Corel whole.
Hardware developers and software developers working together for the greater good. It is exactly what Microsoft and Intel have been doing for ages (although not for the greater good)! Is this going to result in Penguins over hardware boxes quoting "Designed for Kernel 2.2.13" or "Yes! It runs with Slackware". I do hope not. I just like to see this sort of cooperation within the industry - it's refreshing.
The computer hardware industry is always striving to supply the users with BBF (Bigger, Better, Faster) hardware. Memory speeds increase, hard disk seek times get lower, 3D refresh rates get higher and network cards are now capable of spewing out more data a second than most people generate in a week!
The BBF factor is a driving force that has been instigated by the consummer. Okay so companies like AMD and Intel don't spend billions of dollars on R&D becuase they are just nice people - they do have a business to run!
I would love to see this sort of computing power available for use within my company but I know that I will have more spare clock cycles than I know what to do with!
I think that the only reason that will stop me from purchasing one of these chips when they come to market will be the limitations on usage caused by the 100Mhz internal bus. Give me a bus that will run at +500Mhz with one of these chips and you've sold them to me. But then I'll want faster hard drive access times and a faster graphics accerator to rendor my images and buy the time I have all these upgrades perfectly tuned and installed I'll do something stupid and install an OS and a few apps an test some beta code and before you know it all the power of my wonderful machine has been wasted due to poor code.
In short what I think I am saying is that the hardware developers should look to work much closer with software vendors in order to ensure that the latest chip has OS and Apps ready optimised in order to maximise on the efforts of both the hardware and software vendors.
I've never had any problem getting support out of them for their high-end server products here in the UK. I've just had bad experiances obtaining desktop support.
I agree with you on the part numbering system though!
IBM have been selling the concept of E-Business being the way forward for a few months now. Are they finally taking their own advice after being thrashed by other manufactures in the online sales market?
Selling online is a good thing but for the forseable it will not be as popular to purchasing offline (is that the correct term?) because of the ability to touch, taste and smell your prospective purchase
Personally I feel that IBM are making a mistake by pulling out of stores - you can't beat the selling power of touch!
I wonder how long support for the Aptiva range is going to be provided by IBM after 1st Jan 2000. IMHO IBM have always been poor in their provision of support services for desktop machines.
I agree with the AC here. I am an IT contractor working in the UK and never a day goes by without me being asked whether or not I'm certified. I have over 5 years experiance of sys admin on various platforms but I have spent the past few years as an NT sys admin. I have been responsible for small 20 users lans up to global, multi-master, 12,000 users installations. But I do not have the MS certification so I get passed over for contract possitions for people with 3 weeks in a bootcamp as their experiance. In fairness it's 50/50. Guys without any knowledge go out and fuck things up for the rest of us and companies put to much faith into resumes and certifications. In an ideal world this would be eliminated by simply giving people through technical tests prior to offering them a job and by asking for references and copies of certificates. Still, until then, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND COME CLEAN IF YOU ARE A FAKE SYS ADMIN. You are not doing anyone any good by fucking things up and putting in "quick n' dirty" fixes. I would much rather turn down a job than be found out as a fraud. Just my £0.02 worth any way.
Here at PC Resource.Net we are in the process of rolling out a wireless radio data network with the sole purpose of supplying fast and cheap internet connections. Having read all of the above comments I feel that I should let you know how we are doing it here. Initially, all connections will be run as fast as the network can run. ie a 128k link will run as fast as a 1mb link until we have enough customers to justify an upgrade of our central router. We then plan the following:-
The faster connections (512k+) will all be managed at router side using the CIR functions with static information.
The slower (64k - 256k)connections will all be managed through bandwidth limiting on our Linux boxes. I am happy to provide any further information as required.
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Strange, the last thing I heard about Dell is that they were experiancing supply chain problems which where leading to large DOA machines. Still, the problems I am having with Compaq don't make them any better!
Given the choice I would buy a Dell direct from them. If something goes wrong I have one number to call and one comany to deal with.
I'm holding out for 1Ghz - until then I will resist the BBF (Bigger Better Faster) factor.
Okay, I'm biased. I'm 20 and I work as an contractor in the UK. My company is currently in the process of gathering VC to launch it's wireless internet service in the London and surrounding area. I know how hard it can be to get people to listen and respond accordingly to young technologists such as myself. I am always meeting people who can not see past my age and simply dismiss me as some kid who managed to upgrade from Win95 to Win98 all be his self.
It is the management of organisations like the Comdex people who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Patent laws in the US are quite clearly getting out of control. It would appear to me that this centres on the ability of one company to beat other companies to filing a patent on the implimentation of an open standard.
/. ! Oh no!
What does '1-Click! actually do? A user enters information about their shipping and billing addresses and credit card number into a form on a website which results in the data being stored in a database. A cookie is then set in the browser which eases the heavy burden of re-entering the data again. Oh my God! This is clearly a ground breaking, technologically superior implimentation of cookies and databases. I have never seen anything like this ever!
Seriously though, the judge does need to tke some technical briefings before makeing a ruleing in this case as it could mean the end of anyone else using cookies if the judgment isn't carefully worded. Argh! I'll have to enter my nickname and password every time I visit
Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.
/. !
The Linux search does leave something to be desired though. I personally prefer news groups or in the first instance the MAN pages before I'll go and look on the web. This has been true for all the occassions that I have required Linux info except one - Installation on a Dell Laptop. I can't remember the URL but I found the origional link right here on
I've been holding out for a colour screen Palm and I have managed to resist the temptation to by a WinCE device.
Bluetooth will make me buy one over colour any day. If not the Bluetooth spec exactly at least something like WAP or TCP/IP over IRDA. These features are selling points as far as I am concerned.
This should mean that my Pentium II 233 will last me a little longer.
Any plans for a including them into 'off the shelf' systems? I supose some vendor will at some point but I doubt it will be one of the 'big boys' due to their tie-in's with Intel.
Is this yet another example of ST leading the way in technology or what?
Sorry, I don't appear to have been making much sense there but I think that you got the general gist of it......:-)
Long days and no coffee make Rob a silly boy.....
The problems with current digital verification systems is that they rely on the user to provide the security. Passwords, PGP Keys, Signatures, PIN numbers can all be written down, copied, monitored or grapped.
The only way I can see that documents/transactions can certified as being accurate is if the verification takes place in front of you. This is why documents, such as passport applications, require witnesses from professionals.
Don't get me wrong, I am not looking for a situation where retina scans coupled with finger print technology are incorporated into everything under the sun, I just feel that more steps could be taken to ensure the authenticity of digital "signatures".
Perhaps implimentating a central register of "signature" verifiers - such as banks - is the way forward. A user would then digitally sign a web order with their Visa number on it and then the issuing bank - or maybe even the Visa people - would authorise against the signature. Okay, the administration of such a system would be a nightmare but not impossible!
With the current system announced by 3Com, the lack of platforms supported will be it's downfall. But hey, we knew that much anyway......
Yes...This is definatly the sort of enviroment that Stephen Speilburg (sp?) would love. Anyway I thought we already talked about this?
Image how a shutdown sequence would look with this environment...All the monsters in the room would start to kill themselves in a quiet orderley fashion until a screen comes up says
"Level Complete. Kills 32/32 Secret 1/10". Press Enter To Continue"
Hang on...NT already does that whole enter to continue thingy...I've changed my mind, that would actually be really anoying!
Cowpland is Corel.
Gates is Microsoft.
McNealy is Sun.
Ellison is Oracle.
These world respected organisations would not be where they are today if it wasn't for these "personalities".
At the moment Corel are in no real danger of loosing either top man. But as the article states that in the event of a conviction "...the Board of Directors...will ask Cowpland for his resignation." If Cowpland goes I think it unlikley that Corel will survive. This man is actively the driving force behind Corel even though he occasionly makes a tit of himself. Corels support for Linux may well be the first thing to go in the event of loosing Cowpland as the vultures that are Microsoft and Adobe will eat Corel whole.
Now this is the sort of support that I was talking about in response to the processor announcement from AMD.
Hardware developers and software developers working together for the greater good. It is exactly what Microsoft and Intel have been doing for ages (although not for the greater good)! Is this going to result in Penguins over hardware boxes quoting "Designed for Kernel 2.2.13" or "Yes! It runs with Slackware". I do hope not. I just like to see this sort of cooperation within the industry - it's refreshing.
The computer hardware industry is always striving to supply the users with BBF (Bigger, Better, Faster) hardware. Memory speeds increase, hard disk seek times get lower, 3D refresh rates get higher and network cards are now capable of spewing out more data a second than most people generate in a week!
The BBF factor is a driving force that has been instigated by the consummer. Okay so companies like AMD and Intel don't spend billions of dollars on R&D becuase they are just nice people - they do have a business to run!
I would love to see this sort of computing power available for use within my company but I know that I will have more spare clock cycles than I know what to do with!
I think that the only reason that will stop me from purchasing one of these chips when they come to market will be the limitations on usage caused by the 100Mhz internal bus. Give me a bus that will run at +500Mhz with one of these chips and you've sold them to me. But then I'll want faster hard drive access times and a faster graphics accerator to rendor my images and buy the time I have all these upgrades perfectly tuned and installed I'll do something stupid and install an OS and a few apps an test some beta code and before you know it all the power of my wonderful machine has been wasted due to poor code.
In short what I think I am saying is that the hardware developers should look to work much closer with software vendors in order to ensure that the latest chip has OS and Apps ready optimised in order to maximise on the efforts of both the hardware and software vendors.
BBF - The driving force behind every industry!
I've never had any problem getting support out of them for their high-end server products here in the UK. I've just had bad experiances obtaining desktop support.
I agree with you on the part numbering system though!
Is this a subtle way of telling us that the Aptiva range of machines aren't Y2K compliant?
IBM have been selling the concept of E-Business being the way forward for a few months now. Are they finally taking their own advice after being thrashed by other manufactures in the online sales market?
Selling online is a good thing but for the forseable it will not be as popular to purchasing offline (is that the correct term?) because of the ability to touch, taste and smell your prospective purchase
Personally I feel that IBM are making a mistake by pulling out of stores - you can't beat the selling power of touch!
I wonder how long support for the Aptiva range is going to be provided by IBM after 1st Jan 2000. IMHO IBM have always been poor in their provision of support services for desktop machines.
Linus Torvalds supplier of Open Source operating systems to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Now that's a great signature file!
I agree with the AC here.
I am an IT contractor working in the UK and never a day goes by without me being asked whether or not I'm certified.
I have over 5 years experiance of sys admin on various platforms but I have spent the past few years as an NT sys admin. I have been responsible for small 20 users lans up to global, multi-master, 12,000 users installations. But I do not have the MS certification so I get passed over for contract possitions for people with 3 weeks in a bootcamp as their experiance.
In fairness it's 50/50. Guys without any knowledge go out and fuck things up for the rest of us and companies put to much faith into resumes and certifications.
In an ideal world this would be eliminated by simply giving people through technical tests prior to offering them a job and by asking for references and copies of certificates.
Still, until then, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND COME CLEAN IF YOU ARE A FAKE SYS ADMIN. You are not doing anyone any good by fucking things up and putting in "quick n' dirty" fixes. I would much rather turn down a job than be found out as a fraud.
Just my £0.02 worth any way.
Having read all of the above comments I feel that I should let you know how we are doing it here.
Initially, all connections will be run as fast as the network can run. ie a 128k link will run as fast as a 1mb link until we have enough customers to justify an upgrade of our central router.
We then plan the following:-
The faster connections (512k+) will all be managed at router side using the CIR functions with static information.
The slower (64k - 256k)connections will all be managed through bandwidth limiting on our Linux boxes.
I am happy to provide any further information as required.