Being a big OS/2 advocate at the time (really) I was overjoyed by the ad. Microsoft never formally refuted the ad, and we all know how successful OS/2 would go on to be in the marketplace.
Yeah once in a while I still get calls with people using 95 and the last OS/2 machine I saw actually in use at a real business was back in 92.
Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
Seriously if I can pass this off as a PDA in the office I will buy one:).
IBM doesn't just run call centers for their tech support on their own products. They used to do all the helpdesk support for Nortel a long time ago for instance (note: I only know this because while working at Stream for a totally different contract a customer incisted I stay on the line while they call their help desk involving a printer problem with the product I did support)
I work in tech support - its true people don't care about it until it really starts to fuck up their computer then they call me where they pay 120$/hr to fix it.
They seem to be running a pirated copy already. From netcraft > "http://www.sco.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 26-Nov-2004 17:56:09 GMT "
Intuition just says that if I click this x then the window will close. Or if I drag this file into this folder it will move it there. Or if I grab the title bar I can drag this window somewhere. If I click this button it will activate some feature etc. In general you could sit an intuitive user down at a Mac, Windows, Linux or even something like an Amiga and with little instruction be able to fly around the UI with ease.
You definately infered it. Microsoft does say its easy, but nowhere in any of their whitepapers do they actively encourage deploying things without testing.
Are you saying that Linux is so much easier that it would have prevented me from rolling out a patch that was made for Yggdrasil Linux back in the early 90's over a network running Redhat 7? It doesn't care - it will let me do anything I like because there is no one true standard for deploying patches on linux over a network (I can think of 3-4 methods alone).
In my experience when you try to run XP patches on any other OS other than XP it complains - my guess is someone scripted it in such a way that it ignored all the safeguards so the user wouldn't know if there were problems.
If you incist on patching 60,000 machines at a time you test, retest, test again, and then deploy on a small subset of public machines and then go for it - no matter what OS you are running. 60,000 machines is a lot of machines to fix no matter what so it only makes sense you would make 100% sure that it would work on most peoples machines to keep support calls to an absolute minimum - that should be the #1 goal no matter what you're implimenting on any software package/os.
Now imagine that had been, say, a Linux deployment... Who could EDS have called then?
This is actually a really good question. One thing I've found in Linux support is much of the software (the new software raid as an example) isn't clearly documented and when you do run into serious problems beyond a few simple things to try people generally seem clueless - even very experienced people. I blame a lot of this on constantly moving support targets (the day you document one issue, and its solution there have been 2-3 more kernels/patches with either a fix or a new issue). Plus there's no clear support message - who do I call - who can I blaim when everything blows up? Are the answers I get consistent (ie one support group will say/setup the system one way, and another a different way).
"the drives seem totally wiped - why that would happen after taking the raid offline and back online is beyond me" was quite literally the answer I got when I did have some serious problems with a 4 drive software raid setup.
Actually I might add that its worse than Tenebrae Quake - that looks really awsome and is a major update to the texture and lighting engine in the game. Sure its the same models but the maps are amazing.
I fired HL source up and I had to double check I didn't run the old exe for the game - for all intents and purposes (except water) it looks no different than the original half-life. Same models, same textures, same weapons. Textures don't even use shaders or bump maps - seriously it looks no different.
I've worked in the software industry for years, on the technical support side of things no less (although I've never supported any games). Customers like yourself always scream and shout at me about really obvious bugs and ask how we could miss such obvious problems - its almost like they think we never tested it. Valve did beta test it, they even sent it out to be reviewed at least a month before it was released and none of the reviewers complained about the problem. In my experience the problem with the sound really only starts happening after about 2 hours of play - so I can see how this could have been missed.
I think things like this are just a fact of software development. At least there's some parent organization here that can fix it relatively quickly and deliver the patch over the steam network like they have in the past.
Yes buy how much of this is because of poor public planning.
It works on so many levels even. For instance it would make sense to live close to where you work, however because developers are allowed to build wherever they want it never works out this way. And there not even trying right? In Portland Oregon where I live (where they do have effective planning) its not to uncommon to see an office building out in the middle of nowhere (along the lines of being convient to transportation of any kind).
Or public transit. Around the world - even in the big cities - the USA has an anemic transit system. Like you said its inconvient, not cost effect, and not speedy. In other countries - like Japan for instance where huge amounts of money have been spent building the network have really paid off too the point where if you drive through town to work it will take you longer.
Transfers are rarely efficent and always late too. If you could for instance walk a few blocks, hop on a train that avoided all traffic and un-necessary delays (like the traffic news here - and I've been a victim of this - everyone is slowing down to look at some poor guy who got pulled over) it probably would save time.
Definately one up for steam. I didn't use any disks - I had it preloaded months ago, and when it came on it literally took less than 5 minutes and I was up and playing.
I think they already have - ever see a modern day vacuum tube used in the PA stage of a RF amplifier? Aluminum and ceramic tetrodes, cooling fins - casually looking at it you probably wouldn't even know it was a tube.
I speak as someone who has actually worked in the software industry doing customer service and technical support for well over 5 years and I can tell you the amount of casual "piracy" (that is where people who normally wouldn't copy programs like warez groups do hand programs off to their friends) is really skyrocketing. This probably has something to do with everyone and their sister buying a computer. I had a friend who worked at Adobe customer service and he thought it was funny that a good half all his calls were from customers using stolen serial numbers calling in for help when their black listed serial number quit working after installing a patch, or people seeking activation for programs like Photoshop aftering buying them from ibackup or similar scam sites. Instead of these people accepting facts, they usually get irate and use all manner of rational to get support or a free program. I've dealt with similar people as well and I honestly believe they don't know they are thieves.
In fact its probably a casual "pirate" who edited the wav files for Windows Media Player help.
I admit this whole unlocking thing is kind of bad news when the company decides to turn it off - I was a victim of this when Sega turned off the PSO1 servers. However - just for one moment - assume you are working for a software company who sells products to pay wages, fund research and development and just make money. What would you honestly do to curb this trend?
I think the fact there are no pre-release copies of HL2 floating around the warez community speaks volumes to the effectiveness of their system. This really is unheard of prior to hl2. I think one good solution is to have some bit of sunset code that unlocks the program at the click of a mouse after the product has been abdoned would be a good idea and it would downplay a lot of the criticism I've seen on this topic.
I used to support adobe apps for a living - I know for a fact Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign and Framemaker containg information similar to this (usually only the user profile name though).
Slashdot Mirror
Being a big OS/2 advocate at the time (really) I was overjoyed by the ad. Microsoft never formally refuted the ad, and we all know how successful OS/2 would go on to be in the marketplace.
Yeah once in a while I still get calls with people using 95 and the last OS/2 machine I saw actually in use at a real business was back in 92.
Or buy a PocketPC as they can do this easily - even if there is no default association for the data.
Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
:).
Seriously if I can pass this off as a PDA in the office I will buy one
Actually IBM has a lot of call centers in both countries - do a search on google and you'll find plenty of articles like this one > http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33346.html.
IBM doesn't just run call centers for their tech support on their own products. They used to do all the helpdesk support for Nortel a long time ago for instance (note: I only know this because while working at Stream for a totally different contract a customer incisted I stay on the line while they call their help desk involving a printer problem with the product I did support)
I work in tech support - its true people don't care about it until it really starts to fuck up their computer then they call me where they pay 120$/hr to fix it.
The internet will give you what you want:
Yeah - free pr0n!
Meesa needs money!
You mean like this? http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_10757,00.html?red ir=CPB062
You can actually encode divx and xvid movies *right now* with surround sound - you just have to use a different codec.
They seem to be running a pirated copy already. From netcraft > "http://www.sco.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 26-Nov-2004 17:56:09 GMT "
Intuition just says that if I click this x then the window will close. Or if I drag this file into this folder it will move it there. Or if I grab the title bar I can drag this window somewhere. If I click this button it will activate some feature etc. In general you could sit an intuitive user down at a Mac, Windows, Linux or even something like an Amiga and with little instruction be able to fly around the UI with ease.
You definately infered it. Microsoft does say its easy, but nowhere in any of their whitepapers do they actively encourage deploying things without testing.
Ease of use has nothing to do with this issue.
Are you saying that Linux is so much easier that it would have prevented me from rolling out a patch that was made for Yggdrasil Linux back in the early 90's over a network running Redhat 7? It doesn't care - it will let me do anything I like because there is no one true standard for deploying patches on linux over a network (I can think of 3-4 methods alone).
In my experience when you try to run XP patches on any other OS other than XP it complains - my guess is someone scripted it in such a way that it ignored all the safeguards so the user wouldn't know if there were problems.
If you incist on patching 60,000 machines at a time you test, retest, test again, and then deploy on a small subset of public machines and then go for it - no matter what OS you are running. 60,000 machines is a lot of machines to fix no matter what so it only makes sense you would make 100% sure that it would work on most peoples machines to keep support calls to an absolute minimum - that should be the #1 goal no matter what you're implimenting on any software package/os.
Now imagine that had been, say, a Linux deployment... Who could EDS have called then?
This is actually a really good question. One thing I've found in Linux support is much of the software (the new software raid as an example) isn't clearly documented and when you do run into serious problems beyond a few simple things to try people generally seem clueless - even very experienced people. I blame a lot of this on constantly moving support targets (the day you document one issue, and its solution there have been 2-3 more kernels/patches with either a fix or a new issue). Plus there's no clear support message - who do I call - who can I blaim when everything blows up? Are the answers I get consistent (ie one support group will say/setup the system one way, and another a different way).
"the drives seem totally wiped - why that would happen after taking the raid offline and back online is beyond me" was quite literally the answer I got when I did have some serious problems with a 4 drive software raid setup.
Actually I might add that its worse than Tenebrae Quake - that looks really awsome and is a major update to the texture and lighting engine in the game. Sure its the same models but the maps are amazing.
I fired HL source up and I had to double check I didn't run the old exe for the game - for all intents and purposes (except water) it looks no different than the original half-life. Same models, same textures, same weapons. Textures don't even use shaders or bump maps - seriously it looks no different.
Yeah but that still doesn't let me browse porn sites on company time.
I've worked in the software industry for years, on the technical support side of things no less (although I've never supported any games). Customers like yourself always scream and shout at me about really obvious bugs and ask how we could miss such obvious problems - its almost like they think we never tested it. Valve did beta test it, they even sent it out to be reviewed at least a month before it was released and none of the reviewers complained about the problem. In my experience the problem with the sound really only starts happening after about 2 hours of play - so I can see how this could have been missed.
I think things like this are just a fact of software development. At least there's some parent organization here that can fix it relatively quickly and deliver the patch over the steam network like they have in the past.
Yes buy how much of this is because of poor public planning.
It works on so many levels even. For instance it would make sense to live close to where you work, however because developers are allowed to build wherever they want it never works out this way. And there not even trying right? In Portland Oregon where I live (where they do have effective planning) its not to uncommon to see an office building out in the middle of nowhere (along the lines of being convient to transportation of any kind).
Or public transit. Around the world - even in the big cities - the USA has an anemic transit system. Like you said its inconvient, not cost effect, and not speedy. In other countries - like Japan for instance where huge amounts of money have been spent building the network have really paid off too the point where if you drive through town to work it will take you longer.
Transfers are rarely efficent and always late too. If you could for instance walk a few blocks, hop on a train that avoided all traffic and un-necessary delays (like the traffic news here - and I've been a victim of this - everyone is slowing down to look at some poor guy who got pulled over) it probably would save time.
Definately one up for steam. I didn't use any disks - I had it preloaded months ago, and when it came on it literally took less than 5 minutes and I was up and playing.
HL2 is like electronic crack - you have to play it. I for one am glad I bought it and when I get off work I'll take my medicine.
Anyhow - name a game vendor that doesn't use some non invasive form of copy protection these days.
I think they already have - ever see a modern day vacuum tube used in the PA stage of a RF amplifier? Aluminum and ceramic tetrodes, cooling fins - casually looking at it you probably wouldn't even know it was a tube.
Here's a 15000 watt 4CX15000 show me a transistor that can do that.
I speak as someone who has actually worked in the software industry doing customer service and technical support for well over 5 years and I can tell you the amount of casual "piracy" (that is where people who normally wouldn't copy programs like warez groups do hand programs off to their friends) is really skyrocketing. This probably has something to do with everyone and their sister buying a computer. I had a friend who worked at Adobe customer service and he thought it was funny that a good half all his calls were from customers using stolen serial numbers calling in for help when their black listed serial number quit working after installing a patch, or people seeking activation for programs like Photoshop aftering buying them from ibackup or similar scam sites. Instead of these people accepting facts, they usually get irate and use all manner of rational to get support or a free program. I've dealt with similar people as well and I honestly believe they don't know they are thieves.
In fact its probably a casual "pirate" who edited the wav files for Windows Media Player help.
I admit this whole unlocking thing is kind of bad news when the company decides to turn it off - I was a victim of this when Sega turned off the PSO1 servers. However - just for one moment - assume you are working for a software company who sells products to pay wages, fund research and development and just make money. What would you honestly do to curb this trend?
I think the fact there are no pre-release copies of HL2 floating around the warez community speaks volumes to the effectiveness of their system. This really is unheard of prior to hl2. I think one good solution is to have some bit of sunset code that unlocks the program at the click of a mouse after the product has been abdoned would be a good idea and it would downplay a lot of the criticism I've seen on this topic.
I used to support adobe apps for a living - I know for a fact Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign and Framemaker containg information similar to this (usually only the user profile name though).
No actually they were working on a content rating system (for filtering web pages) and they wanted googles ratings on certian keywords.
And got banned from using google. Seriously.