Are you supposed to know what sex someone is by looking at their grave marker if you didn't know them?
See, that's kind of my point here.
Anything much beyond what's on the grave marker itself is feature creep.
Sure, maybe they want to know when the first woman was buried there... If it was any other cemetery on the planet, how would you do that? You'd have to dig through historic records - birth certificates, death certificates, etc. It isn't like that'll be clearly labeled on each tombstone. And if you want to make sure they were a soldier, instead of a dependent? You'll need to check military records as well. And if you want to know where or why they died? Or how they served their country? Or what they did with themselves before or after service? That's not going to be on the tombstone either.
Sure, it might be nice to have all this stuff available quickly and easily because Arlington is of historic importance... But is it genuinely necessary? Do they actually have all that information available quickly and easily right now?
Or is this more an issue of "it's a computer, it should know all that!"
If what you want is to modernize Arlington's records, then I'm sure there's plenty of off-the-shelf software available that will do very nearly everything you need it to.
If you want to create some kind of historic database of anything even remotely interesting about anyone even remotely related to somebody buried in Arlington - you aren't looking at just modernizing Arlington's records anymore. You're looking at a sophisticated system that'll have to reference all sorts of random information that's currently scattered all over the place. The kind of system that causes people on here to turn pale and start muttering about Big Brother.
Does your off-the-shelf package scale to to a cemetery of that size?
If that was absolutely the only option available (which it isn't) I'm sure it could be made to. Say the cap is at 10,000 plots... Just create a new cemetery file every 10,000 plots. Certainly not idea... But if you were at all logical in your naming of the individual files it'd likely be easier to find information than digging through the mountain of paper they must have now.
Arlington has extraordinary historical significance. The data base needs to be more than a bare list of names and dates.
Why?
What more information is contained in their records now?
What more information could you want from a cemetery database?
Joe Smith - Plot 117A - Interred on 6/25/2010 - pretty much covers everything the cemetery cares about, doesn't it? More information such as their birth date, date of death, years of service, etc. is probably not the cemetery's problem.
If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.
I agree with this... Which is why I like Google News... But I don't know why they'd include Apple and Microsoft in the poll. What do either of those companies have to do with news media?
It was weird... We've had earthquakes up here before, but they're usually shorter, more violent, more obvious. This was kind of an easy, rythmic shaking.
At first I didn't understand what was going on. Though maybe I wasn't feeling good, maybe I was having a dizzy spell or something. I just felt kind of off-kilter, like I was swaying around or something.
Then I noticed that everything was swaying around.
I'm sure other people could add plenty to this list.
I think a big part of it is that the standard Windows PC isn't as relevant as it used to be.
You can get a DVD player or a television that can stream Netflix and Pandora, or play videos from YouTube.
You can get your email on your iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry, or whatever else.
Just about everything can play MP3s now.
There are plenty of different ways to edit text on a computer... Various free products and alternatives, web-based services, etc.
You've got an assortment of pseudo-computers out there... Netbooks, iPads, sophisticated/open smartphones...
Tons of gaming happens on consoles of various types.
You've got digital cameras that can upload directly to Flickr, and print straight to a printer.
The fact of the matter is that you just plain do not need a PC running Windows to do a lot of stuff these days.
To a large degree you don't even need a genuine PC/laptop/workstation to do this stuff. And if you really do need to sit down in front of something with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor - it probably doesn't need to be running Windows.
I could perhaps understand this if you had one computer at home that you use for ultra-important tasks, but I really can't think of anyone with this limitation.
At the time I had this Performa running At Ease, we owned exactly two computers. One was a Mac, and one was a PC. And the only reason we had the PC was because we'd found a working one at a garage sale. This was years ago, before everybody and their dog had a personal computer. At the time, it was unheard-of to have two computers in a household.
Anyone whose life or livelihood is that dependent on a working computer at home has one dedicated to this ultra-important task and one (or more) for the kids and others to screw around with - it isn't like kids that are likely to screw up your system are really going to need the latest and greatest hardware.
I'm not necessarily talking about IT professionals. Plenty of folks have just a single computer in the household. If that one computer gets hosed, they're all out of luck. It won't be life-threatening... But there'll be no email, facebook, whatever. And most folks aren't able to do their own repairs, so it'll take a trip to the shop to get it fixed. Definitely an inconvenience.
I never understood this point of view. Why wouldn't you want the system wide open and available for your kids to tinker with?
I've already mentioned that we had the two systems - one of which was an old Tandy PC.
The kids were restricted to only using the Mac (and At Ease) after they killed the PC. My son saw all these white papers on the C: drive that couldn't be opened with anything, so he deleted them to make room. All those white papers ended in things like.DLL and.SYS Had to reload the whole system from disk. Lots and lots of disks. Was not fun.
How are they going to learn anything if you keep them confined to this walled garden?
Most people aren't terribly concerned with their kids learning how to tinker with a computer. They have a computer that they use for Internet/email/facebook/whatever... And the kids may be allowed to use it... But they sure as hell don't want the kids taking the thing apart to see how it works.
What would it have been like for our generation if our Commodores or Apple IIs or whatnot didn't let us do anything but run those idiotic learning games that schools tried to force on us? I sure as hell wouldn't have developed an appreciation for or interest in computers while being confined to a few "permitted" applications with no access to the underpinnings of the system.
At school that is precisely what I had available. We were only allowed to run a few, specific programs. The computer lab was locked when not in use, and the disks were kept in another locked cabinet. You basically weren't allowed to have any fun.
At home, my mother had an Epson PC of some sort, running some flavor of DOS. I was not allowed to use it. That machine cost multiple thousands of dollars and was exclusively for her work. Nobody touched it but her.
When I decided I wanted to learn how computers worked myself, I saved up my money for the better part of a year and bought a used Mac SE/30 from a repair shop. I tinkered with that thing to my heart's content. Had all sorts of fun with Hypercard.
The point being - it is not unreasonable for the parent in the household not to want their children to destroy their computer. And if the kids are that curious, they can get their own computer to play with.
And what's with all the love for Sunshine? The premise sounded like another typical, tedious, scientifically illiterate Hollywood movie all the way down to the secret killer, crew getting picked off one by one, and impossibly large plot holes. How was it not awful?
Sounded like? Did you actually watch the movie, or are you just going with the IMDB/Wikipedia summary?
Sunshine was actually very good until the last 1/4 or so. The ship was believable, even if the premise (kick-starting the sun) was not. The movie (at least the first 3/4) revolved more around the stresses involved in such a mission.
It wasn't until the very end that the axe murderer showed up and things got silly.
Maybe not the best thing I've ever seen... But it certainly wasn't awful. And it was pretty good in comparison to most of the stuff labeled as "sci-fi" these days.
I had a Macintosh Performa 6300 that was being used as a shared family computer back then. At Ease allowed me to set up a relatively safe and secure way to share that computer with our kids, without giving them access to absolutely everything.
A missing detail is a "huge fail"? Uh oh, someone's lost their sense of scale meter!
I dunno. Seems to me that a smartphone should let you dial pretty much anything that looks like a phone number from pretty much anywhere. It's just text, right? Add some ability to select it and automatically copy/paste the digits into the dialing interface. Doesn't seem that hard to me.
The alternative is to make people manually copy & paste those digits into the dialing interface, or write them out and dial them in manually - both of which seem more awkward than they should be.
Especially when it is the location field of a meeting. I'll frequently schedule conference calls on my calendar, and put the phone number in the location field.
Shouldn't (mass) junk be filtered at the server level (especially in an enterprise setting)? Even in personal email, I rely on my provider to do most of the heavy lifting of SPAM removal for me.
Agreed.
Sure, some of it is going to get through... But it shouldn't be enough that managing junk mail should be a major feature on a smartphone.
If you've got that much junk mail coming through to your phone, you need to look at how it is (or isn't) being filtered at the server.
You're right about everything, but missed the key issue: adoption. It's not an issue with other protocols but it is with Wave. Extensions or notifications or any of that stuff isn't enough. Unless email integration (and for that matter IM integration) is native to wave people won't make the transition.
They would if it was compelling enough.
I don't think the core problem with wave is that it is a new protocol or that it doesn't integrate with existing protocols. I think the core problem is that it doesn't really add functionality that folks are looking for.
It may very well be incredibly useful for some folks... But I don't think it does anything that the vast majority of people need.
Forwarding an email you've received to a wave email account to turn it into a collaborative discussion.
I don't think I'd call that "integration" any more than I'd call it "integration" when Facebook sends me an email to let me know somebody sent me a message.
Still, it would be handy.
Although you could probably do something similar with copy & paste.
Having a nice offline rich editor when no Wave desktop client exists is nice, too (Yes, I know Google Gears exists for that).
Why can't you have a rich desktop client?
I realize that there aren't any right now... But that isn't really a failing of the protocol, is it?
Being able to set up mobile devices or programmatic scripts to be able to create waves would be simpler if an already-understood protocol could be used. Think of email-to-txt gateways as another example of why this is helpful.
So, what, we shouldn't develop new protocols because nobody understands them yet?
I understand that it would be handy to be able to route waves to simpler devices. I understand your reference to email-to-txt gateways. I get it.
But I don't see what this really has to do with email integration. And I don't really see what it has to do with the wave protocol itself.
I signed on and no-one else was on, and I couldn't think what to do with it, so it must be a really silly idea right?
Meh.
It might be useful.
I tried it out for a while. Tried to use it to communicate with some friends and family members. Didn't find it terribly useful myself. But I was really trying to use it more like chat and/or email. We weren't really collaborating.
Maybe it would be more useful if we were trying to accomplish something, instead of just chatting?
I can already send any data through email, so what exactly makes Wave worth my time?
Real-time collaboration.
Wave isn't intended to have you compose a message and send it off. And then somebody else reads the message later and replies to you. It isn't intended for a thread-like conversation.
The idea is to have multiple people contributing to a discussion more-or-less simultaneously.
Kind of like if you were to cross email with AIM, Microsoft Word, and WebEx.
Why would wave integrate with email? Or, rather, in what way do you think it should?
IRC doesn't integrate with email. AIM doesn't integrate with email. HTTP doesn't integrate with email. BitTorrent doesn't integrate with email.
Wave is a new protocol. It isn't really supposed to replace email. It's supposed to be a different way to communicate and collaborate. Somewhere between Microsoft Word and WebEx.
However, there are plenty of fresh customers to take the place of those that leave. It seems like there are just too many people now to attempt the 'vote with your wallet' strategy. Because there are so many damn customers now, you're never going to get enough people to stop consuming that product to make a difference.
Unfortunately, I think you're right.
I constantly see the suggestion on here that folks vote with their wallets... But I just don't think it's possible to make much of an impact that way anymore.
All snarking aside - this is a case of CSRs forgetting who they work for. They work for Verizon - NOT the customer. They have to keep "what is best for Verizon" in mind when dealing with customers.
They work for Verizon... Which makes its money off its customers... Lose the customers, lose the money, lose the job. It's that simple. Ultimately, the customers are the ones providing your paycheck.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. I took pride in my job and went out of my way to make sure that the customer left happy. This meant that I would often ignore our product of the month - a game or device that we were supposed to push on people whether they wanted it or not. I would, instead, recommend products that people would actually enjoy.
I had a number of customers who came back to the shop repeatedly specifically because of my service. They would come back and ask me specifically if there was something new available that I thought they'd like - because I actually considered their preferences and past purchases rather than telling them to buy whatever our home office was selling.
This resulted in many repeat sales for Electronics Boutique, even though I wasn't doing what the home office thought was best.
By contrast, my manager was one hell of a salesman. He could convince anyone to buy anything. We had a couple come in looking for a PS2 for their kid for Christmas. He convinced them that the Xbox was a far better system (and it just so happened to be the product of the month). They bought the Xbox.
After Christmas they came back in to return the Xbox, because it wasn't what their kid wanted. It didn't play the games that their kid already owned. It didn't play the games that their kid wanted. They were quite annoyed at my manager for ignoring their desires and selling them the wrong product. They wanted to know why he ignored the fact that they had Playstation games they wanted to play. They wanted to know why he didn't tell them that the games they wanted were Playstation exclusives.
They didn't buy a PS2 from us. They just returned the Xbox. They then went across the hall and bought a PS2 from our competition - even though we had them in-stock for the same price.
I don't know if they ever came back and bought anything else from us... But that was at least one sale that was lost because my manager did what the home office thought was best.
What is best for the customer is, ultimately, what is best for Verizon - whether Verizon realizes that or not.
Shaft your customers enough and they'll switch to a different company.
and what sign does facebook hold to the world? "we're a backwards shithole, filled with idiots who will insult your religion just because they know nothing makes you more mad."
kill them all.
Facebook?
I dunno... Something like "people will willingly share any information you ask for as long as they can play crappy flash games with their friends" I'd imagine.
Or are you referring to the whole Draw Muhammad thing? Because that wasn't really Facebook-sponsored. It did have a presence on Facebook... But it was started elsewhere and spread just about everywhere.
And while I'll agree that it's kind of dickish to intentionally piss someone off just for the hell of it... I don't think it is OK to impose your religious beliefs on someone else who does not share them. Nor do I think it is OK to execute somebody for making fun of your religion.
So, what kind of sign does the whole Draw Muhammad thing hold to the world? Maybe something like "we value freedom of speech and aren't going to let some religious fundamentalists shut us up."
The same reason I feel silly making fart jokes, watching Saturday morning kid's cartoons, and playing with matchbox cars (do they even have those anymore), etc. Because I'm a grown up. There are games that are targeted at kids and games that are targeted at adults. And Nintendo have strongly favored (not exclusively, but strongly) the former. They're great for social party games too, I suppose, but I don't have many parties either.
Fun is fun.
Regardless of what kind of themes are present or how the graphics look, a fun game is a fun game.
Maybe you never had a lot of fun with Mario Kart - fair enough.
But if you're telling me that you're not going to play Mario Kart just because it features Mario and looks too childish, then you're just being silly.
But even giving them 6 years, we should already be hearing about a next-gen 360.
That's what is really surprising me...
Seems to me that we used to start hearing rumblings about the next big thing about 3 or 4 years into a console. I haven't heard anything at all about a successor to any of these machines.
One could argue that we've hit some kind of peak and it we don't need a new console because current hardware is good enough... But that just doesn't seem to be true. As the OP pointed out, games are starting to exceed the storage capacity of the 360's DVD drive. The PS3 just started shipping HDMI-ready... And both consoles are trying to bolt-on motion control features...
Seems like a fairly solid argument could be made for rolling out a new box sometime soon.
It got to the point a few years ago where I just ignored anything that had the name of my town. Why? Because I found a 'news article' that said the writer was from my town. This confused the hell out of me, because it was extremely unlikely. Then I realized the 'article' was just a fake and was really an advertisement.
Yup.
These days I assume that anything that looks too personal must be garbage. I live in a small town... Unless I'm reading the local paper, I'm not going to see references to anything that local. If I do, it must be some kind of geo-targeted advertising.
Interesting how the hooks they use to try to get your attention have instead become keywords that signify that I can safely ignore something.
Because some Slashdot geek types want everything for free. They get mad at companies who advertise unlimited service, but who then yell at heavy users. They say "They should just state what the cap is!".
What's so unreasonable about that? If you advertise a service as "unlimited" when there is, in fact, a limit - that seems a little deceptive.
They then get mad at companies who have caps on their service, claiming that the caps are unfair.
So there's no such thing as an unfair cap?
More or less they want to be able to use tons of bandwidth, and not have to pay for it.
I don't have a problem paying for my bandwidth. I have a problem paying unreasonable amounts for my bandwidth and receiving horrible support and service, simply because my ISP has a local monopoly and doesn't feel like upgrading anything.
When people have complained about the "unreasonably low" cap of 250GB on cable modems I've suggested business class cable. That's why I do. No restrictions, I get static IPs, etc. Costs more, but it is worth it and I have as much bandwidth as I like. No, too expensive they say.
Right now I have a 5 Mbps / 512 Kbps connection for roughly $70/month. That's a residential connection. I don't know if there's a cap on how much I can use in a month, nobody has ever told me. In reality, I'm lucky if I get 3 Mbps on the average day. The connection drops fairly frequently.
I can switch to a business connection for over $150/month. That's their cheapest business connection. It's only 1.5 Mbps / 1.5 Mbps. While it might be nice, I really don't need that much upstream bandwidth. I'd really prefer more downstream bandwidth. But all their business connections are symmetric... So if I want more downstream, I have to pay something like $300/month. But that doesn't actually garontee I'll get anything better than the ~3 Mbps and crappy connectivity that I have now. And I sure as hell don't want to pay that much for that kind of crappy connection just to get rid of a cap.
They just want to complain.
If I got reasonable service for the money I pay, I wouldn't have anything to complain about.
As it is, I pay more than I want to for less bandwidth than I would like to have. I get horrible connectivity. The technical support is awful. And I put up with all of this because the alternative is to switch to dial-up (even crappier speed) or satellite (higher price, less bandwidth).
Slashdot Mirror
Are you supposed to know what sex someone is by looking at their grave marker if you didn't know them?
See, that's kind of my point here.
Anything much beyond what's on the grave marker itself is feature creep.
Sure, maybe they want to know when the first woman was buried there... If it was any other cemetery on the planet, how would you do that? You'd have to dig through historic records - birth certificates, death certificates, etc. It isn't like that'll be clearly labeled on each tombstone. And if you want to make sure they were a soldier, instead of a dependent? You'll need to check military records as well. And if you want to know where or why they died? Or how they served their country? Or what they did with themselves before or after service? That's not going to be on the tombstone either.
Sure, it might be nice to have all this stuff available quickly and easily because Arlington is of historic importance... But is it genuinely necessary? Do they actually have all that information available quickly and easily right now?
Or is this more an issue of "it's a computer, it should know all that!"
If what you want is to modernize Arlington's records, then I'm sure there's plenty of off-the-shelf software available that will do very nearly everything you need it to.
If you want to create some kind of historic database of anything even remotely interesting about anyone even remotely related to somebody buried in Arlington - you aren't looking at just modernizing Arlington's records anymore. You're looking at a sophisticated system that'll have to reference all sorts of random information that's currently scattered all over the place. The kind of system that causes people on here to turn pale and start muttering about Big Brother.
Does your off-the-shelf package scale to to a cemetery of that size?
If that was absolutely the only option available (which it isn't) I'm sure it could be made to. Say the cap is at 10,000 plots... Just create a new cemetery file every 10,000 plots. Certainly not idea... But if you were at all logical in your naming of the individual files it'd likely be easier to find information than digging through the mountain of paper they must have now.
Arlington has extraordinary historical significance. The data base needs to be more than a bare list of names and dates.
Why?
What more information is contained in their records now?
What more information could you want from a cemetery database?
Joe Smith - Plot 117A - Interred on 6/25/2010 - pretty much covers everything the cemetery cares about, doesn't it? More information such as their birth date, date of death, years of service, etc. is probably not the cemetery's problem.
If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.
I agree with this... Which is why I like Google News... But I don't know why they'd include Apple and Microsoft in the poll. What do either of those companies have to do with news media?
It was weird... We've had earthquakes up here before, but they're usually shorter, more violent, more obvious. This was kind of an easy, rythmic shaking.
At first I didn't understand what was going on. Though maybe I wasn't feeling good, maybe I was having a dizzy spell or something. I just felt kind of off-kilter, like I was swaying around or something.
Then I noticed that everything was swaying around.
Felt it here in upstate New York. Very pronounced.
I'm sure other people could add plenty to this list.
I think a big part of it is that the standard Windows PC isn't as relevant as it used to be.
You can get a DVD player or a television that can stream Netflix and Pandora, or play videos from YouTube.
You can get your email on your iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry, or whatever else.
Just about everything can play MP3s now.
There are plenty of different ways to edit text on a computer... Various free products and alternatives, web-based services, etc.
You've got an assortment of pseudo-computers out there... Netbooks, iPads, sophisticated/open smartphones...
Tons of gaming happens on consoles of various types.
You've got digital cameras that can upload directly to Flickr, and print straight to a printer.
The fact of the matter is that you just plain do not need a PC running Windows to do a lot of stuff these days.
To a large degree you don't even need a genuine PC/laptop/workstation to do this stuff. And if you really do need to sit down in front of something with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor - it probably doesn't need to be running Windows.
I could perhaps understand this if you had one computer at home that you use for ultra-important tasks, but I really can't think of anyone with this limitation.
At the time I had this Performa running At Ease, we owned exactly two computers. One was a Mac, and one was a PC. And the only reason we had the PC was because we'd found a working one at a garage sale. This was years ago, before everybody and their dog had a personal computer. At the time, it was unheard-of to have two computers in a household.
Anyone whose life or livelihood is that dependent on a working computer at home has one dedicated to this ultra-important task and one (or more) for the kids and others to screw around with - it isn't like kids that are likely to screw up your system are really going to need the latest and greatest hardware.
I'm not necessarily talking about IT professionals. Plenty of folks have just a single computer in the household. If that one computer gets hosed, they're all out of luck. It won't be life-threatening... But there'll be no email, facebook, whatever. And most folks aren't able to do their own repairs, so it'll take a trip to the shop to get it fixed. Definitely an inconvenience.
I never understood this point of view. Why wouldn't you want the system wide open and available for your kids to tinker with?
I've already mentioned that we had the two systems - one of which was an old Tandy PC.
The kids were restricted to only using the Mac (and At Ease) after they killed the PC. My son saw all these white papers on the C: drive that couldn't be opened with anything, so he deleted them to make room. All those white papers ended in things like .DLL and .SYS Had to reload the whole system from disk. Lots and lots of disks. Was not fun.
How are they going to learn anything if you keep them confined to this walled garden?
Most people aren't terribly concerned with their kids learning how to tinker with a computer. They have a computer that they use for Internet/email/facebook/whatever... And the kids may be allowed to use it... But they sure as hell don't want the kids taking the thing apart to see how it works.
What would it have been like for our generation if our Commodores or Apple IIs or whatnot didn't let us do anything but run those idiotic learning games that schools tried to force on us? I sure as hell wouldn't have developed an appreciation for or interest in computers while being confined to a few "permitted" applications with no access to the underpinnings of the system.
At school that is precisely what I had available. We were only allowed to run a few, specific programs. The computer lab was locked when not in use, and the disks were kept in another locked cabinet. You basically weren't allowed to have any fun.
At home, my mother had an Epson PC of some sort, running some flavor of DOS. I was not allowed to use it. That machine cost multiple thousands of dollars and was exclusively for her work. Nobody touched it but her.
When I decided I wanted to learn how computers worked myself, I saved up my money for the better part of a year and bought a used Mac SE/30 from a repair shop. I tinkered with that thing to my heart's content. Had all sorts of fun with Hypercard.
The point being - it is not unreasonable for the parent in the household not to want their children to destroy their computer. And if the kids are that curious, they can get their own computer to play with.
And what's with all the love for Sunshine? The premise sounded like another typical, tedious, scientifically illiterate Hollywood movie all the way down to the secret killer, crew getting picked off one by one, and impossibly large plot holes. How was it not awful?
Sounded like? Did you actually watch the movie, or are you just going with the IMDB/Wikipedia summary?
Sunshine was actually very good until the last 1/4 or so. The ship was believable, even if the premise (kick-starting the sun) was not. The movie (at least the first 3/4) revolved more around the stresses involved in such a mission.
It wasn't until the very end that the axe murderer showed up and things got silly.
Maybe not the best thing I've ever seen... But it certainly wasn't awful. And it was pretty good in comparison to most of the stuff labeled as "sci-fi" these days.
If I were Apple I'd make a desktop iOS a user option like the current Parental Controls.
Apple tried this before; it was called At Ease.
And it genuinely kicked ass at the time.
I had a Macintosh Performa 6300 that was being used as a shared family computer back then. At Ease allowed me to set up a relatively safe and secure way to share that computer with our kids, without giving them access to absolutely everything.
A missing detail is a "huge fail"? Uh oh, someone's lost their sense of scale meter!
I dunno. Seems to me that a smartphone should let you dial pretty much anything that looks like a phone number from pretty much anywhere. It's just text, right? Add some ability to select it and automatically copy/paste the digits into the dialing interface. Doesn't seem that hard to me.
The alternative is to make people manually copy & paste those digits into the dialing interface, or write them out and dial them in manually - both of which seem more awkward than they should be.
Especially when it is the location field of a meeting. I'll frequently schedule conference calls on my calendar, and put the phone number in the location field.
Shouldn't (mass) junk be filtered at the server level (especially in an enterprise setting)?
Even in personal email, I rely on my provider to do most of the heavy lifting of SPAM removal for me.
Agreed.
Sure, some of it is going to get through... But it shouldn't be enough that managing junk mail should be a major feature on a smartphone.
If you've got that much junk mail coming through to your phone, you need to look at how it is (or isn't) being filtered at the server.
Real-time collaboration.
yeah, like chat.
Chat... With graphics... And multiple people typing simultaneously... And relatively slow refreshes through a web UI...
Did you know there are chat programs out there that send every keystroke? Turns out it's pretty annoying. It shows how bad of a speller I am.
I agree that it is annoying, though not really because I'm a bad speller. I just don't like to wait for someone to finish typing.
You're right about everything, but missed the key issue: adoption. It's not an issue with other protocols but it is with Wave. Extensions or notifications or any of that stuff isn't enough. Unless email integration (and for that matter IM integration) is native to wave people won't make the transition.
They would if it was compelling enough.
I don't think the core problem with wave is that it is a new protocol or that it doesn't integrate with existing protocols. I think the core problem is that it doesn't really add functionality that folks are looking for.
It may very well be incredibly useful for some folks... But I don't think it does anything that the vast majority of people need.
Forwarding an email you've received to a wave email account to turn it into a collaborative discussion.
I don't think I'd call that "integration" any more than I'd call it "integration" when Facebook sends me an email to let me know somebody sent me a message.
Still, it would be handy.
Although you could probably do something similar with copy & paste.
Having a nice offline rich editor when no Wave desktop client exists is nice, too (Yes, I know Google Gears exists for that).
Why can't you have a rich desktop client?
I realize that there aren't any right now... But that isn't really a failing of the protocol, is it?
Being able to set up mobile devices or programmatic scripts to be able to create waves would be simpler if an already-understood protocol could be used. Think of email-to-txt gateways as another example of why this is helpful.
So, what, we shouldn't develop new protocols because nobody understands them yet?
I understand that it would be handy to be able to route waves to simpler devices. I understand your reference to email-to-txt gateways. I get it.
But I don't see what this really has to do with email integration. And I don't really see what it has to do with the wave protocol itself.
I signed on and no-one else was on, and I couldn't think what to do with it, so it must be a really silly idea right?
Meh.
It might be useful.
I tried it out for a while. Tried to use it to communicate with some friends and family members. Didn't find it terribly useful myself. But I was really trying to use it more like chat and/or email. We weren't really collaborating.
Maybe it would be more useful if we were trying to accomplish something, instead of just chatting?
I can already send any data through email, so what exactly makes Wave worth my time?
Real-time collaboration.
Wave isn't intended to have you compose a message and send it off. And then somebody else reads the message later and replies to you. It isn't intended for a thread-like conversation.
The idea is to have multiple people contributing to a discussion more-or-less simultaneously.
Kind of like if you were to cross email with AIM, Microsoft Word, and WebEx.
No email integration == no future for wave.
Why would wave integrate with email? Or, rather, in what way do you think it should?
IRC doesn't integrate with email. AIM doesn't integrate with email. HTTP doesn't integrate with email. BitTorrent doesn't integrate with email.
Wave is a new protocol. It isn't really supposed to replace email. It's supposed to be a different way to communicate and collaborate. Somewhere between Microsoft Word and WebEx.
However, there are plenty of fresh customers to take the place of those that leave. It seems like there are just too many people now to attempt the 'vote with your wallet' strategy. Because there are so many damn customers now, you're never going to get enough people to stop consuming that product to make a difference.
Unfortunately, I think you're right.
I constantly see the suggestion on here that folks vote with their wallets... But I just don't think it's possible to make much of an impact that way anymore.
All snarking aside - this is a case of CSRs forgetting who they work for. They work for Verizon - NOT the customer. They have to keep "what is best for Verizon" in mind when dealing with customers.
They work for Verizon... Which makes its money off its customers... Lose the customers, lose the money, lose the job. It's that simple. Ultimately, the customers are the ones providing your paycheck.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. I took pride in my job and went out of my way to make sure that the customer left happy. This meant that I would often ignore our product of the month - a game or device that we were supposed to push on people whether they wanted it or not. I would, instead, recommend products that people would actually enjoy.
I had a number of customers who came back to the shop repeatedly specifically because of my service. They would come back and ask me specifically if there was something new available that I thought they'd like - because I actually considered their preferences and past purchases rather than telling them to buy whatever our home office was selling.
This resulted in many repeat sales for Electronics Boutique, even though I wasn't doing what the home office thought was best.
By contrast, my manager was one hell of a salesman. He could convince anyone to buy anything. We had a couple come in looking for a PS2 for their kid for Christmas. He convinced them that the Xbox was a far better system (and it just so happened to be the product of the month). They bought the Xbox.
After Christmas they came back in to return the Xbox, because it wasn't what their kid wanted. It didn't play the games that their kid already owned. It didn't play the games that their kid wanted. They were quite annoyed at my manager for ignoring their desires and selling them the wrong product. They wanted to know why he ignored the fact that they had Playstation games they wanted to play. They wanted to know why he didn't tell them that the games they wanted were Playstation exclusives.
They didn't buy a PS2 from us. They just returned the Xbox. They then went across the hall and bought a PS2 from our competition - even though we had them in-stock for the same price.
I don't know if they ever came back and bought anything else from us... But that was at least one sale that was lost because my manager did what the home office thought was best.
What is best for the customer is, ultimately, what is best for Verizon - whether Verizon realizes that or not.
Shaft your customers enough and they'll switch to a different company.
and what sign does facebook hold to the world?
"we're a backwards shithole, filled with idiots who will insult your religion just because they know nothing makes you more mad."
kill them all.
Facebook?
I dunno... Something like "people will willingly share any information you ask for as long as they can play crappy flash games with their friends" I'd imagine.
Or are you referring to the whole Draw Muhammad thing? Because that wasn't really Facebook-sponsored. It did have a presence on Facebook... But it was started elsewhere and spread just about everywhere.
And while I'll agree that it's kind of dickish to intentionally piss someone off just for the hell of it... I don't think it is OK to impose your religious beliefs on someone else who does not share them. Nor do I think it is OK to execute somebody for making fun of your religion.
So, what kind of sign does the whole Draw Muhammad thing hold to the world? Maybe something like "we value freedom of speech and aren't going to let some religious fundamentalists shut us up."
The same reason I feel silly making fart jokes, watching Saturday morning kid's cartoons, and playing with matchbox cars (do they even have those anymore), etc. Because I'm a grown up. There are games that are targeted at kids and games that are targeted at adults. And Nintendo have strongly favored (not exclusively, but strongly) the former. They're great for social party games too, I suppose, but I don't have many parties either.
Fun is fun.
Regardless of what kind of themes are present or how the graphics look, a fun game is a fun game.
Maybe you never had a lot of fun with Mario Kart - fair enough.
But if you're telling me that you're not going to play Mario Kart just because it features Mario and looks too childish, then you're just being silly.
Nobody cares what you play.
No, the PS3 has always had an HDMI port, they just didn't ship it with an HDMI cable.
So... It's now shipping HDMI-ready?
But even giving them 6 years, we should already be hearing about a next-gen 360.
That's what is really surprising me...
Seems to me that we used to start hearing rumblings about the next big thing about 3 or 4 years into a console. I haven't heard anything at all about a successor to any of these machines.
One could argue that we've hit some kind of peak and it we don't need a new console because current hardware is good enough... But that just doesn't seem to be true. As the OP pointed out, games are starting to exceed the storage capacity of the 360's DVD drive. The PS3 just started shipping HDMI-ready... And both consoles are trying to bolt-on motion control features...
Seems like a fairly solid argument could be made for rolling out a new box sometime soon.
It got to the point a few years ago where I just ignored anything that had the name of my town. Why? Because I found a 'news article' that said the writer was from my town. This confused the hell out of me, because it was extremely unlikely. Then I realized the 'article' was just a fake and was really an advertisement.
Yup.
These days I assume that anything that looks too personal must be garbage. I live in a small town... Unless I'm reading the local paper, I'm not going to see references to anything that local. If I do, it must be some kind of geo-targeted advertising.
Interesting how the hooks they use to try to get your attention have instead become keywords that signify that I can safely ignore something.
Because some Slashdot geek types want everything for free. They get mad at companies who advertise unlimited service, but who then yell at heavy users. They say "They should just state what the cap is!".
What's so unreasonable about that? If you advertise a service as "unlimited" when there is, in fact, a limit - that seems a little deceptive.
They then get mad at companies who have caps on their service, claiming that the caps are unfair.
So there's no such thing as an unfair cap?
More or less they want to be able to use tons of bandwidth, and not have to pay for it.
I don't have a problem paying for my bandwidth. I have a problem paying unreasonable amounts for my bandwidth and receiving horrible support and service, simply because my ISP has a local monopoly and doesn't feel like upgrading anything.
When people have complained about the "unreasonably low" cap of 250GB on cable modems I've suggested business class cable. That's why I do. No restrictions, I get static IPs, etc. Costs more, but it is worth it and I have as much bandwidth as I like. No, too expensive they say.
Right now I have a 5 Mbps / 512 Kbps connection for roughly $70/month. That's a residential connection. I don't know if there's a cap on how much I can use in a month, nobody has ever told me. In reality, I'm lucky if I get 3 Mbps on the average day. The connection drops fairly frequently.
I can switch to a business connection for over $150/month. That's their cheapest business connection. It's only 1.5 Mbps / 1.5 Mbps. While it might be nice, I really don't need that much upstream bandwidth. I'd really prefer more downstream bandwidth. But all their business connections are symmetric... So if I want more downstream, I have to pay something like $300/month. But that doesn't actually garontee I'll get anything better than the ~3 Mbps and crappy connectivity that I have now. And I sure as hell don't want to pay that much for that kind of crappy connection just to get rid of a cap.
They just want to complain.
If I got reasonable service for the money I pay, I wouldn't have anything to complain about.
As it is, I pay more than I want to for less bandwidth than I would like to have. I get horrible connectivity. The technical support is awful. And I put up with all of this because the alternative is to switch to dial-up (even crappier speed) or satellite (higher price, less bandwidth).
Yeah, I'm going to keep complaining.