I've seen this sort of problem before in bigger organizations before - many branch offices run like their own companies, have their own data center (a bunch of servers in a cube).
Granted its a bigger problem in public institutions mainly because good technicians who know how to setup top level IT services like centralized email services and the authentication/directory systems tied to them are working at places that pay better.
Having worked for the State of Oregon - its quite common here, but getting better (because there are a lot of really qualified IT people who can use work, and are willing to work at lower wages the State pays).
Fixing this doesn't mean "disruptive, startup like development" - it demands someone centralize authentication and identity (that would be the hard part really), cleanup namespace collisions that are inevitable with merging 21 email servers, setting up aliases and mail routing so stuff doesn't get bounced from deprecated domains, and migrating all that mail to a new cluster of machines. There - I made a plan for some enterprising new project manager for the department of agriculture.
Think about this - there is far more food, and goods made than there are people - yet we still have people dieing of hunger (even in the USA) - one could easily argue that capitalism is at best a poor way of distributing products.
Why Android tablets haven't taken off is beyond me. I got one the other day for $380 (Asus Transformer) and in 15 minutes after opening the box it was synced with all my Google docs/email/calendaring - even wifi hotspot setups (which apparently are synced to Google from my phone?). No - my docs aren't on the device - they are stored on cloud servers and instantly available. I can download them to the device for offline use as well pretty easily as well.
I got my GF an Ipad 2 and spent most of the afternoon setting up accounts by hand - and now she can read her Google docs via the web browser, but it certainly wasn't as easy to setup - and your right - it seems outside of itunes putting files on it is painful.
It probably matters on the circumstance - my Droid X has been dropped hard 3 times and still has a mostly perfect screen (its not cracked). The body of the phone is all scratched up though.
I'd have to agree to this. I bought Sims 3 for my GF the other day - and it never showed up as install-able. So I contact customer service - 3 hours later (not kidding) we were no further along in solving this problem - I asked for my money back and they refunded it.
I told him that if I had pirated the game that it would been installed and working by now - he didn't seem to care probably because he was an outsourced drone in India (or whatever the nations favorite 3rd world country to profit on is this year).
To anyone from EA who reads this - the bar should be this - the game should be easier to install than downloading an ISO from Pirate Bay and applying several shady homemade patches before it is offered for sale online.
Ironically Microsoft beat Apple on fixing this. Also oddly enough since Windows uses a OS wide certificate store after they did update the certificates IE 6 actually isn't vulnerable to this anymore.
Internet Explorer... 6.... do I have to explain that?:P
While he is a troll, having worked in support (at a University in Oregon) with Apple users they do often say the following repeatedly:
"Mac's don't get viruses" "My Mac is secure"
Why do they do this? Its what the employees at the Apple store say (seriously - ask any sales person about viruses, root certs or exploits - the answer always is "nope - we don't get those")! None of them have any idea what a trusted root certificate authority is, or why being compromised is such a big problem.
Before you let it fall apart - consider this. A good chunk of postal employees are veterans of foreign wars. Do you think you are doing those guys a service? Plenty of them probably couldn't get work anywhere else.
That is why HP didn't have the stomach to go head to head with Apple and Android because the CEO isn't really an HP kind of guy so making HP into his kind of company. Same thing with Elop. And that is why Apple's stock has gone up over 11,000% since Steve Jobs came back. Passion! Jobs didn't come from another company and isn't going to another company.
...which begs the question: Why can't the patent office employ a few people who are skilled in the art of software?
It's the same reason that the people doing tech support aren't skilled software engineers - yes it would be helpful if the guy answering the phone knew the minute details of the application you needed help with...
Anyone smart enough to write a computer program is doing that - they aren't sitting there for 20-30 dollars an hour reviewing patents.
This is similar to the reason my real-life friend quit - the dungeons were too hard for the reward level offered - and he was a hardcore player (had a Starcaller title for instance).
Having two types of gear, PvP and PvE just made the game annoying at the end. I got sick of Blizzard messing the things, fumbling through patches with nerfs and buffs seemingly in all the worse places. One just dreaded new patch notes. Who was going to get fucked, and who was their flavor of the month? They never got the chinese gold farmers under control either, that was one annoying factor.
WoW has always had two sets of gear (one for PVE and the other for PVP) - not sure what you are talking about there.
The class balance issue - that is just the nature of the beast for any MMO. I don't think there is any such thing as perfectly balanced classes in an online game. Even Eve Online they buff and nerf items/ships.
I've had more Macintosh computers than most people and I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive. The evolution of the brand is kinda funny. There was a time when the word "Macintosh" was printed on the bezel, then they Apple re-branded the entire line as Mac.
What is a Mac? I don't even know anymore - the only difference between them these days is the software and proprietary code to lock people out from running that software on identical Dell/HP/Lenovo etc hardware.
I don't blame me though - I spend 30% of my paycheck on deductions (notice I didn't say taxes) this includes taxes, health care benefits etc - I actually pay more in "taxes" than people in most Scandinavian countries who are constantly held up by the right as being "taxed to death" - I honestly rather have their situation.
I'm living on the margin as it is - I can't afford to be taxed more.
Slashdot Mirror
Free doesn't mean its not licensed.
Major failure of society - not at all unlike what the Romans, Germans and Japanese went through.
I've seen this sort of problem before in bigger organizations before - many branch offices run like their own companies, have their own data center (a bunch of servers in a cube).
Granted its a bigger problem in public institutions mainly because good technicians who know how to setup top level IT services like centralized email services and the authentication/directory systems tied to them are working at places that pay better.
Having worked for the State of Oregon - its quite common here, but getting better (because there are a lot of really qualified IT people who can use work, and are willing to work at lower wages the State pays).
Fixing this doesn't mean "disruptive, startup like development" - it demands someone centralize authentication and identity (that would be the hard part really), cleanup namespace collisions that are inevitable with merging 21 email servers, setting up aliases and mail routing so stuff doesn't get bounced from deprecated domains, and migrating all that mail to a new cluster of machines. There - I made a plan for some enterprising new project manager for the department of agriculture.
So you have a profitable company that has been around for 11+ years doing what?
This might be the most horrible post I've ever seen on here...
Actually if you have the original PSD file you can uncrop an image.
Think about this - there is far more food, and goods made than there are people - yet we still have people dieing of hunger (even in the USA) - one could easily argue that capitalism is at best a poor way of distributing products.
My Droid X has real buttons - the home button is broken from over use.
Give me soft buttons any day :).
Explain the N97 then.
Why Android tablets haven't taken off is beyond me. I got one the other day for $380 (Asus Transformer) and in 15 minutes after opening the box it was synced with all my Google docs/email/calendaring - even wifi hotspot setups (which apparently are synced to Google from my phone?). No - my docs aren't on the device - they are stored on cloud servers and instantly available. I can download them to the device for offline use as well pretty easily as well.
I got my GF an Ipad 2 and spent most of the afternoon setting up accounts by hand - and now she can read her Google docs via the web browser, but it certainly wasn't as easy to setup - and your right - it seems outside of itunes putting files on it is painful.
It probably matters on the circumstance - my Droid X has been dropped hard 3 times and still has a mostly perfect screen (its not cracked). The body of the phone is all scratched up though.
I'd have to agree to this. I bought Sims 3 for my GF the other day - and it never showed up as install-able. So I contact customer service - 3 hours later (not kidding) we were no further along in solving this problem - I asked for my money back and they refunded it.
I told him that if I had pirated the game that it would been installed and working by now - he didn't seem to care probably because he was an outsourced drone in India (or whatever the nations favorite 3rd world country to profit on is this year).
To anyone from EA who reads this - the bar should be this - the game should be easier to install than downloading an ISO from Pirate Bay and applying several shady homemade patches before it is offered for sale online.
Ironically Microsoft beat Apple on fixing this. Also oddly enough since Windows uses a OS wide certificate store after they did update the certificates IE 6 actually isn't vulnerable to this anymore.
While he is a troll, having worked in support (at a University in Oregon) with Apple users they do often say the following repeatedly:
"Mac's don't get viruses"
"My Mac is secure"
Why do they do this? Its what the employees at the Apple store say (seriously - ask any sales person about viruses, root certs or exploits - the answer always is "nope - we don't get those")! None of them have any idea what a trusted root certificate authority is, or why being compromised is such a big problem.
Before you let it fall apart - consider this. A good chunk of postal employees are veterans of foreign wars. Do you think you are doing those guys a service? Plenty of them probably couldn't get work anywhere else.
Actually... he came from NextStep...
It's the same reason that the people doing tech support aren't skilled software engineers - yes it would be helpful if the guy answering the phone knew the minute details of the application you needed help with...
Anyone smart enough to write a computer program is doing that - they aren't sitting there for 20-30 dollars an hour reviewing patents.
Check this out:
http://jobview.usajobs.gov/GetJob.aspx?JobID=101034973&JobTitle=Patent+Examiner+(Computer+Science)&q=CP-2011-0013&rad_units=miles&brd=3876&pp=25&sort=rv%2C-dtex&jbf574=CM56&jbf785=&vw=b&re=134&FedEmp=N&FedPub=Y&caller=basic.aspx&ss=0&AVSDM=2011-07-19+19%3A09%3A00
I'm pretty sure any skilled computer scientist could get work for more money.
My GF did on a long trip somewhere. Helped pass the time :).
This is similar to the reason my real-life friend quit - the dungeons were too hard for the reward level offered - and he was a hardcore player (had a Starcaller title for instance).
WoW has always had two sets of gear (one for PVE and the other for PVP) - not sure what you are talking about there.
The class balance issue - that is just the nature of the beast for any MMO. I don't think there is any such thing as perfectly balanced classes in an online game. Even Eve Online they buff and nerf items/ships.
What is the difference?
Simple - I have an el-cheapo Nokia I use :).
Also - if you know you are going to travel a lot there are CDMA phones that support both CDMA and GSM.
I've had more Macintosh computers than most people and I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive. The evolution of the brand is kinda funny. There was a time when the word "Macintosh" was printed on the bezel, then they Apple re-branded the entire line as Mac.
What is a Mac? I don't even know anymore - the only difference between them these days is the software and proprietary code to lock people out from running that software on identical Dell/HP/Lenovo etc hardware.
Keep reading - the economy really didn't improve until NRA projects started and WW2 put people back to work on a massive scale.
I don't blame me though - I spend 30% of my paycheck on deductions (notice I didn't say taxes) this includes taxes, health care benefits etc - I actually pay more in "taxes" than people in most Scandinavian countries who are constantly held up by the right as being "taxed to death" - I honestly rather have their situation.
I'm living on the margin as it is - I can't afford to be taxed more.