It amazes me how, after all of the publicity, people continue to be absolutely ignorant about security. That extends to not applying important patches and to opening infected messages.
Just about every day our filters catch copies of SIRCAM and Hybris that some ignoramous somewhere in the world foolishly opened.
It's not a good reflection on human intelligence. And I don't mean this to be a rant; but really the media is full of information about this. Every responsible I.S. person I know spends considerable effort trying to educate their users. It's common sense and common knowledge that worms and viruses are out there. For some reason none of this sinks in and foolish users will get a bizzare message from a total stranger with an unknown attachement "asking for your advice" and plunge in and open it.
Maybe the Admin doesn't know every service running on all of his servers (I admit that I don't) but they should know how to quickly find out. As soon as word of Code Red came out, we checked our servers and identified any that were running IIS without our realization. We either removed IIS from those servers or promptly applied the patch. It's a simple process and an important part of being an Admin -- securing your systems. Apparently it's beyond a lot of people.
Convenience really is a factor. Even though I'm a strong advocate of technology and the eBook concept I do find myself printing articles out occasionally and reading them from the paper.
Why? Because I can stick the paper in my pocket, I can scribble on it, I can read it in an elevator, I don't have the change the batteries...
I can do a lot of that with my HP Jornada too, but it's just not as convenient and it's just not as easy on the eyes to try and read a lengthy document (or annotate it) on the little screen.
Forcing home users to pay the same price as businesses is sheer madness. I know that I certainly cant afford to pay for colocation.
I don't see where home users are paying the same as businesses. I can guarantee you that at my office we pay at least 8 times what I pay at home for Internet service; NOT including what we pay for website hosting.
What I decide to do with that connection is up to me, if it means running my own web and mail, and even to go as far as (hypothetically) running my own business' website.
I also don't see this happening very often. Your packets, under the scenario we're discussing, might get lower priority but they'll still go through. If you want higher priority you have the same option everbody else (including the businesses) does. Otherwise you can still host your own mail server web server (on most services) - I know many users who do.
People absolutely do want to make money and I don't blame them for that. In many cases that money making on the back end is what helps to keep the price down on the front end. Same reason you can watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" (or whatever) for free.
Again, just being the devil's advocate here -- I absolutely support users who buy bandwidth being able to host their own servers if they want to and hope to see increasing competition in the market so that users have more choices and aren't necessarily stuck with one provider and that provider's agenda.
...but according to NASA while it might have been a couple of meters across, and 30 metric tons, when it entered the atmosphere, it certainly was nowhere near that when it impacted the group -- if it even did.
Preliminary reports from the cornfield seem to indicate little or no evidence of an actual impact; which would seem to indicate that whatever it was burned up before it reached the ground (as they usually do).
Indeed, and even if you can write on enough distributions how do you keep up with the versions? RedHat is currently up to version 7.0...err...7.01....errr...7.10....err...7.11
ARGH! I can't even finish this post before a new version is out!
Most computer books are started months before the product even ships. It's not unreasonable to have at least 6 months from starting to write until the book is on the shelf. At least. If you start writing today, Red Hat will be on version 9.52 before your book sees the inside of a Borders.
Tough enough keeping up with the Microsoft products that are always late and widely spaced. Linux is powerful, timely information on it is going to be Net-based by necessity. Good reference books still have a place, though.
While I actually agree with you, I can see the cable provider's viewpoint on this: they're a business and want to make money. If Chevy or Disney or whomever pays them to prioritize their packets then that's what the ISP is going to do. Especially if it subsidizes the service such that they can provide it to you at a reduced price. (not that they necessarily will, of course)
We can complain about that, but really our alternative is to take our business elsewhere. Indeed, they may be the only high speed Internet choice we have in that neighborhood but...since when is high-speed Internet a right? [ducking]
It's like saying I should be able to watch any movie I want to at the movie theaters down the road -- even if they aren't showing the film I want, I should be able to bring them a tape and have them play it on their big screens. It's their screens and they'll show whatever movies they think people want to see -- regardless of what you as an individual want to see. Your alternative is to stay home and watch it on cable or rent a video -- and suffer with the smaller screen size, lack of fancy sound system and microwave popcorn.
Just as with cable modem, if you don't like their service your alternative is to get another ISP -- which might be a 56K dialup, but at least you don't have to watch whatever film the cable modem ISP wants to show you, to mix the metaphor.
The trick, in an open market, is convincing another provider that your viewpoint is right and commercially viable -- that enough subscribers would join their service (and pay for it!) to make it worth their while. If Verizon thought they'd make enough money they'd extend DSL to your neighborhood. (and mine)
That said, I don't care for the cable provider pushing their own content at me at the expense of the content I want to get to. Fortunately that hasn't been a big problem for me yet. Yet.
Despite the move to "digital" and paper-less (which doesn't seem to produce less paper, oddly) we still find ourselves often scrapping for desk space. Our current standard of 15" and 17" CRTs requires quite a bit of space; especially in terms of the depth of the units -- in some cases our people have little or not choice in where to put their monitor because they have cabinets or other furniture in the way. A flat/thin screen means many valuable inches of saved space for us.
Needless to say I'm curious to see these hit our local VARs and at what prices.
At the risk of being a mere "Me too!" post I have to agree with the previous poster. Nothing very earthshattering in this story.
Basically he's saying that it's o.k. to hide a your valuables as long as you lock the door too. True enough, but I'm not sure it required x pages of commentary to explain.
Our version of "Security through obscurity" involves keeping our internal network separate from our web server. People can hack our webserver all they want to -- it's not even in the same physical building or on the same network (physically or logically) as our internal LAN. Maybe they'll deface our website, but we can restore that quickly enough and it's mostly brochureware anyhow so no big whoop.
We're such a "low interest" target that most real hackers wouldn't waste their time with us. Nobody's going to boast about hacking our site. The script kiddies can't do any real damage -- as above the website is easily restored and of no real consequence to our daily operations.
Naturally we have the usual complement of firewalls, passwords, encryption and IDS to keep our important stuff safe.
Security through obscurity is fine; as long as you're not relying only upon the obscurity to provide your security. I just summed up his entire article in one sentence.
I guess they could, but who wants to watch them make paperweights on TV?:)
The challenge the show has is to continually come up with interesting challenges that people will want to watch. Nobody'd tune in to watch the 7th episode of two teams building skateboards.
It may also be that the teams in the second show had already seen the first show and decided to learn from their successes/mistakes. Copying a successful design is often better than chancing it on a brand new one.
Just another possibility...
I actually suspect that the aforementioned set of experts is a bigger influence on the choice of machine.
I guess I'm a "Yank" but I have to agree. I liked Robert Llewelyn (sp?) better than George Grey (sp?) who took his spot on the U.S. version of the show.
Cathy, of course, is bright and lovely. A treat.
p-Coach-
No argument they do have to stock the junkyard a bit, but that's not the point. The show isn't a scavenger hunt; it's about coming up with a useful design that can be built "from scratch" within a single day and with reasonable parts -- i.e. nobody's getting a fusion reactor.
The show is about the science and mechanical engineering and competing designs. Hopefully the audience learns why hovercraft hover and the contestants can come up with machines that actually work. (by the way, sometimes they work VERY little; remember the "torpedo" speedboat that flipped and sank in the second turn of the first lap?)
The producers could force the contestants to only use stuff from an unstocked junkyard, but the chances of them ever (much less in 10 hours) coming up with a serviceable machine that does much of interest is pretty slim.
There's only so many times you can build "a car". If you want to do skyrockets you have to have some kind of usable rocket propulsion; which you're not going to find in the average junkyard.
I'm sure that more often than not the teams are given off camera time after they call time but before the trials, and they only present the successful trials.
While I'm sure that they do give them some extra off-camera time where necessary, the fact is that they DO show unsuccessful trials.
The speedboat competetion had one boat flipping over and sinking on the first lap. The other team finished the race unopposed.
The hovercraft competetion featured one hovercraft hitting ground and fatally (for the craft, not the driver) ripping the skirts. Again, the other team finished unopposed.
The underwater salvage episode featured one team that failed to get their Mini out of the water and, in fact, they had to give up and just watch the other team finish.
While I'm sure we're not seeing everything that goes on, it's still true that not all of the machines work.
We have them here in limited quantities but every time they turn them on it causes MORE traffic because all of the idio^h^h^h^h other drivers have to slow down to read them.
A few months ago they put a test pattern up on one of them and you wouldn't believe the wall of brake lights that greeted you as you approached. "It just says TEST-TEST-TEST-TEST you illiterate [bleep]s!"
A nice idea, the message signs, but ultimately too difficult for most drivers.
On a related note, I'm lobbying for the Department of Transportation to give people photos of tow trucks along with their drivers licenses...apparently most of my fellow motorists have never seen one.
e-mail and paging isn't the same as over-the-air TV because the average person doesn't broadcast over-the-air TV.
Putting the burden on broadcasters there clearly limits the costs to those seeking the commercial benefit.
Charging spammers who send e-mail and pages is one thing, how do we differentiate between spammers sending mail and average folks sending mail? In fact, there are a lot more average folks than spammers so unless that could be figured out charging for e-mail sent would seem to punish the average user even more than the spammer and cost more than the current system does.
I like being able to dash off a quick e-mail message to my grandmother without having to worry about how many fractions of a cent it might cost me.
Several of our local grocery chains issue shopper cards and one of them has figured out that they don't need your name and address.
All they're really doing is tracking patterns -- whether or not people who buy orange juice are also going to buy vodka -- so they can use those patterns for stocking, marketing and store layout. To that end it doesn't matter what your name or fax number is.
All they need to know is that shoppper #12345 buys diapers and beer every Saturday night. If that's a trend with multiple shoppers they might try putting a particular brand of beer they're trying to push on an endcap of the diapers aisle.
They might also learn that they sell far more tortillas on Thursdays than any other day of the week so from a stocking standpoint they need to be sure they have a healthy supply on those days.
By using a multiple location database they can also learn more about the "migratory" patterns of their shoppers -- maybe they buy certain products at one store during weekdays and different products from a different store on weekends or evenings. (Probably indicates that they work in the area of the weekday store and live near the other store; and that they buy certain products while they're at work, and other products for home)
At any rate, the person's personal information isn't necessary for this kind of tracking and shoppers are probably MUCH more willing to use the club cards if they know that they didn't have to give any personal information to get one.
It is really a shame that Adobe moved so quickly to legal action. One gets the impression that if they'd simply contacted this fellow directly they could have resolved the matter before $2,000 in legal bills had been rung up.
I empathize with the attorneys and understand that they do need to get paid for their time. I lay the blame for this at Adobe's feet, however, for calling in a surgeon before simply rinsing the wound and applying a band-aid.
Lesson: Try communicating with the offending party directly before calling in the expensive legal help.
While it's true that the computer is just a tool, the computer is a tool with the talent of other people built into it.
If I could somehow buy a brush that was preprogrammed with Renoir's brush strokes and I pointed it at the canvas and told it to paint a picture of a tree, am I an artist?
That's not to imply that computer artists are doing that, but the fact remains that they can. The computer can draw circles and squares, you might be selecting clip art from pre-made libraries, you could even have the computer place random lines on the page until you see something you like.
I'm reluctant to term it a fine art when it's so difficult to tell what was produced by the artist and what was produced by the tool.
It's not the same. I may have funds in multiple banks. The bank has multiple branches. I have cash in my wallet that'll last me for a day or three; I can write checks, use my Visa card and the funds are federally insured.
If the service provider hosting my apps and data goes out of business, however, or if a forklift operator inadvertently rips out the lines for my DSL line at the office or if some script kiddies decides to DDOS the service provider then my business is effectively closed. We have no applications and no data. No thanks.
Much rather be able to control my own data center. Be able to verify that every server and every hub is power protected, that last night's backup worked and that another copy of the backup is safely tucked in a safe deposit box offsite.
If Microsoft is still in business tomorrow or not is of little concern to me (aside from the 50 shares of stock I own) because my data and applications are safely tucked away on my servers and my hard drives in my data center. Fast, reliable, paid for.
No subscription fees to pay every month. No worrying about whether or not the provider du jour will still be in business next month. No explaining to users why the new system (at ~1.4Mbps) is so much slower than the old system was.
Today if my Internet connection goes down, we lost some useful research capabilities, we lose our Internet e-mail, and our secretaries can't listen to KEWL FM from Minnesota on Internet radio. But my business gets done.
The thing I didn't like about network computing and the thing I don't like about application service providers and the thing I won't like about.NET or other plans for centralized computing is...
...I don't want vendors deciding who will host the customer's (MY) data. I want to host my data. And my applications. I don't want to be wholly dependant upon the bandwidth provided by an outside vendor just to access my basic applications and data.
Currently our enterprise provides applications and data to our users via a 100Mbit, switched, LAN with all of our cabling and physical plant under our direct control. No ISP can provide me with that kind of bandwidth on a cost-effective basis. If a switch goes down we know about it and can repair/replace it immediately. If it's too congested we can upgrade it when we're ready to -- we don't have to beg our provider and wait for them to call us back.
I am very uneasy about allowing other organizations to completely control access to the data and applications we depend upon for our business. What happens when they goof up the billing and cut us off for 3 days because they think we didn't pay the bill? What happens when they misallocate our IP address and we get dropped off the network? I won't leave our company at the mercy of somebody else's clerical error any more than absolutely necessary.
No. We'll keep our essential applications and data in-house. Thanks anyhow.
We have some older folks who work in our office and we've had to train them on using the systems. One limitation we hadn't anticipated is that in addition to being awkward with the mouse; some of them are arthritic and just holding a mouse for a prolonged period is painful - to say nothing of clicking.
Our solution was to mix in instruction in keyboard shortcuts. It may be faster to mouse, but remember that beginners (especially seniors) are going to be constantly trying to catch up with the computer anyhow -- they aren't likely (at least not at first) to be multitasking and needing that extra speed.
The tip that has been the most successful has been that anytime you would need to double-click, you can single-click on that item, then press [ENTER] to get the same result. Folks who would gamely try to double-click over and over without success have no difficulty clicking once then pressing [ENTER].
Beyond that we've simplified their interface as much as possible - maximized windows by default, turned off unneccessary toolbars and menus so they had fewer distractions, set the fonts to be slightly larger and the screen resolution/contrast to be as easy as possible for them to see.
We enabled sounds, but we reset the sounds to be simple and distinctive, and to only use a few of them, so that they aren't confused by the pecular chirping frog, but instead have learned that this sound is an error, that sound means they have new mail and that sound means they've successfully clicked or whatnot.
After a while the seniors get more comfortable and, for the ones who are physically able, more adept with the mouse. Initially it's best to make it as simple and friendly as possible for them and don't make them rely entirely upon the "newfangled mouse-thingy".
You can get a Toyota Prius, which never needs to be recharged and runs on electric and gasoline and starts at just under $20,000.
Honda's Insight hybrid coupe uses a similar technology and also does not need to be recharged. It's just a bit over $20,000 though it hasn't gotten very good reviews. Honda is promising an Accord-like hybrid in 2002 that may be better.
Ford is readying a hybrid version of their Ford Escape SUV; they expect to price it in the mid-upper $20,000s. For more info see http://www.hybridford.com.
Hybrids have become a practical solution today. They don't have to be recharged because they run on gas and electric -- relying on electric around town, and gas when you need highway speeds -- and the gas engine, plus the braking power, recharges the batteries automatically.
As for parts and repair; since the cars are from Toyota, Honda and Ford I don't think you'd have any trouble getting them fixed or finding parts; there's usually a dealer nearby.
I can't speak to the practicality of GM's hydrogen fuel cells, but today's Gas/Electric hybrids are an intriguing technology that is well within the reach of most of the car-buying public.
A few years ago I started to experience wrist and hand pain that I associated with CTS. A programmer friend who had fought that battle some months before suggested that I get a pair of phone books and place them on the desk in front of my keyboard; resting my forearms on them as I typed. It was surprisingly comfortable and within a week or two my pain was gone and has not returned.
Cheaper than surgery or custom keyboards.
Your mileage may vary.
-Coach-
Slashdot Mirror
Just about every day our filters catch copies of SIRCAM and Hybris that some ignoramous somewhere in the world foolishly opened.
It's not a good reflection on human intelligence. And I don't mean this to be a rant; but really the media is full of information about this. Every responsible I.S. person I know spends considerable effort trying to educate their users. It's common sense and common knowledge that worms and viruses are out there. For some reason none of this sinks in and foolish users will get a bizzare message from a total stranger with an unknown attachement "asking for your advice" and plunge in and open it.
Maybe the Admin doesn't know every service running on all of his servers (I admit that I don't) but they should know how to quickly find out. As soon as word of Code Red came out, we checked our servers and identified any that were running IIS without our realization. We either removed IIS from those servers or promptly applied the patch. It's a simple process and an important part of being an Admin -- securing your systems. Apparently it's beyond a lot of people.
It's sad. Darwin would be disappointed.
-Coach-
Why? Because I can stick the paper in my pocket, I can scribble on it, I can read it in an elevator, I don't have the change the batteries...
I can do a lot of that with my HP Jornada too, but it's just not as convenient and it's just not as easy on the eyes to try and read a lengthy document (or annotate it) on the little screen.
-Coach-
-Coach-
I don't see where home users are paying the same as businesses. I can guarantee you that at my office we pay at least 8 times what I pay at home for Internet service; NOT including what we pay for website hosting. What I decide to do with that connection is up to me, if it means running my own web and mail, and even to go as far as (hypothetically) running my own business' website.
I also don't see this happening very often. Your packets, under the scenario we're discussing, might get lower priority but they'll still go through. If you want higher priority you have the same option everbody else (including the businesses) does. Otherwise you can still host your own mail server web server (on most services) - I know many users who do.
People absolutely do want to make money and I don't blame them for that. In many cases that money making on the back end is what helps to keep the price down on the front end. Same reason you can watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" (or whatever) for free.
Again, just being the devil's advocate here -- I absolutely support users who buy bandwidth being able to host their own servers if they want to and hope to see increasing competition in the market so that users have more choices and aren't necessarily stuck with one provider and that provider's agenda.
-Coach-
Preliminary reports from the cornfield seem to indicate little or no evidence of an actual impact; which would seem to indicate that whatever it was burned up before it reached the ground (as they usually do).
-Coach-
ARGH! I can't even finish this post before a new version is out!
Most computer books are started months before the product even ships. It's not unreasonable to have at least 6 months from starting to write until the book is on the shelf. At least. If you start writing today, Red Hat will be on version 9.52 before your book sees the inside of a Borders.
Tough enough keeping up with the Microsoft products that are always late and widely spaced. Linux is powerful, timely information on it is going to be Net-based by necessity. Good reference books still have a place, though.
-Coach-
We can complain about that, but really our alternative is to take our business elsewhere. Indeed, they may be the only high speed Internet choice we have in that neighborhood but...since when is high-speed Internet a right? [ducking]
It's like saying I should be able to watch any movie I want to at the movie theaters down the road -- even if they aren't showing the film I want, I should be able to bring them a tape and have them play it on their big screens. It's their screens and they'll show whatever movies they think people want to see -- regardless of what you as an individual want to see. Your alternative is to stay home and watch it on cable or rent a video -- and suffer with the smaller screen size, lack of fancy sound system and microwave popcorn.
Just as with cable modem, if you don't like their service your alternative is to get another ISP -- which might be a 56K dialup, but at least you don't have to watch whatever film the cable modem ISP wants to show you, to mix the metaphor.
The trick, in an open market, is convincing another provider that your viewpoint is right and commercially viable -- that enough subscribers would join their service (and pay for it!) to make it worth their while. If Verizon thought they'd make enough money they'd extend DSL to your neighborhood. (and mine)
That said, I don't care for the cable provider pushing their own content at me at the expense of the content I want to get to. Fortunately that hasn't been a big problem for me yet. Yet.
-Coach-
Needless to say I'm curious to see these hit our local VARs and at what prices.
-Coach-
Basically he's saying that it's o.k. to hide a your valuables as long as you lock the door too. True enough, but I'm not sure it required x pages of commentary to explain.
Our version of "Security through obscurity" involves keeping our internal network separate from our web server. People can hack our webserver all they want to -- it's not even in the same physical building or on the same network (physically or logically) as our internal LAN. Maybe they'll deface our website, but we can restore that quickly enough and it's mostly brochureware anyhow so no big whoop.
We're such a "low interest" target that most real hackers wouldn't waste their time with us. Nobody's going to boast about hacking our site. The script kiddies can't do any real damage -- as above the website is easily restored and of no real consequence to our daily operations.
Naturally we have the usual complement of firewalls, passwords, encryption and IDS to keep our important stuff safe.
Security through obscurity is fine; as long as you're not relying only upon the obscurity to provide your security. I just summed up his entire article in one sentence.
-Coach-
The challenge the show has is to continually come up with interesting challenges that people will want to watch. Nobody'd tune in to watch the 7th episode of two teams building skateboards.
-Coach-
Just another possibility...
I actually suspect that the aforementioned set of experts is a bigger influence on the choice of machine.
-Coach-
Cathy, of course, is bright and lovely. A treat. p-Coach-
Coach
The show is about the science and mechanical engineering and competing designs. Hopefully the audience learns why hovercraft hover and the contestants can come up with machines that actually work. (by the way, sometimes they work VERY little; remember the "torpedo" speedboat that flipped and sank in the second turn of the first lap?)
The producers could force the contestants to only use stuff from an unstocked junkyard, but the chances of them ever (much less in 10 hours) coming up with a serviceable machine that does much of interest is pretty slim.
There's only so many times you can build "a car". If you want to do skyrockets you have to have some kind of usable rocket propulsion; which you're not going to find in the average junkyard.
-Coach-
While I'm sure that they do give them some extra off-camera time where necessary, the fact is that they DO show unsuccessful trials.
While I'm sure we're not seeing everything that goes on, it's still true that not all of the machines work.
-Coach-
A few months ago they put a test pattern up on one of them and you wouldn't believe the wall of brake lights that greeted you as you approached. "It just says TEST-TEST-TEST-TEST you illiterate [bleep]s!"
A nice idea, the message signs, but ultimately too difficult for most drivers.
On a related note, I'm lobbying for the Department of Transportation to give people photos of tow trucks along with their drivers licenses...apparently most of my fellow motorists have never seen one.
[/rant]
-Coach-
Putting the burden on broadcasters there clearly limits the costs to those seeking the commercial benefit.
Charging spammers who send e-mail and pages is one thing, how do we differentiate between spammers sending mail and average folks sending mail? In fact, there are a lot more average folks than spammers so unless that could be figured out charging for e-mail sent would seem to punish the average user even more than the spammer and cost more than the current system does.
I like being able to dash off a quick e-mail message to my grandmother without having to worry about how many fractions of a cent it might cost me.
-Coach-
All they're really doing is tracking patterns -- whether or not people who buy orange juice are also going to buy vodka -- so they can use those patterns for stocking, marketing and store layout. To that end it doesn't matter what your name or fax number is.
All they need to know is that shoppper #12345 buys diapers and beer every Saturday night. If that's a trend with multiple shoppers they might try putting a particular brand of beer they're trying to push on an endcap of the diapers aisle.
They might also learn that they sell far more tortillas on Thursdays than any other day of the week so from a stocking standpoint they need to be sure they have a healthy supply on those days.
By using a multiple location database they can also learn more about the "migratory" patterns of their shoppers -- maybe they buy certain products at one store during weekdays and different products from a different store on weekends or evenings. (Probably indicates that they work in the area of the weekday store and live near the other store; and that they buy certain products while they're at work, and other products for home)
At any rate, the person's personal information isn't necessary for this kind of tracking and shoppers are probably MUCH more willing to use the club cards if they know that they didn't have to give any personal information to get one.
-Coach-
I empathize with the attorneys and understand that they do need to get paid for their time. I lay the blame for this at Adobe's feet, however, for calling in a surgeon before simply rinsing the wound and applying a band-aid.
Lesson: Try communicating with the offending party directly before calling in the expensive legal help.
-Coach-
If I could somehow buy a brush that was preprogrammed with Renoir's brush strokes and I pointed it at the canvas and told it to paint a picture of a tree, am I an artist?
That's not to imply that computer artists are doing that, but the fact remains that they can. The computer can draw circles and squares, you might be selecting clip art from pre-made libraries, you could even have the computer place random lines on the page until you see something you like.
I'm reluctant to term it a fine art when it's so difficult to tell what was produced by the artist and what was produced by the tool.
-Coach-
If the service provider hosting my apps and data goes out of business, however, or if a forklift operator inadvertently rips out the lines for my DSL line at the office or if some script kiddies decides to DDOS the service provider then my business is effectively closed. We have no applications and no data. No thanks.
Much rather be able to control my own data center. Be able to verify that every server and every hub is power protected, that last night's backup worked and that another copy of the backup is safely tucked in a safe deposit box offsite.
If Microsoft is still in business tomorrow or not is of little concern to me (aside from the 50 shares of stock I own) because my data and applications are safely tucked away on my servers and my hard drives in my data center. Fast, reliable, paid for.
No subscription fees to pay every month. No worrying about whether or not the provider du jour will still be in business next month. No explaining to users why the new system (at ~1.4Mbps) is so much slower than the old system was.
Today if my Internet connection goes down, we lost some useful research capabilities, we lose our Internet e-mail, and our secretaries can't listen to KEWL FM from Minnesota on Internet radio. But my business gets done.
-Coach-
...I don't want vendors deciding who will host the customer's (MY) data. I want to host my data. And my applications. I don't want to be wholly dependant upon the bandwidth provided by an outside vendor just to access my basic applications and data.
Currently our enterprise provides applications and data to our users via a 100Mbit, switched, LAN with all of our cabling and physical plant under our direct control. No ISP can provide me with that kind of bandwidth on a cost-effective basis. If a switch goes down we know about it and can repair/replace it immediately. If it's too congested we can upgrade it when we're ready to -- we don't have to beg our provider and wait for them to call us back.
I am very uneasy about allowing other organizations to completely control access to the data and applications we depend upon for our business. What happens when they goof up the billing and cut us off for 3 days because they think we didn't pay the bill? What happens when they misallocate our IP address and we get dropped off the network? I won't leave our company at the mercy of somebody else's clerical error any more than absolutely necessary.
No. We'll keep our essential applications and data in-house. Thanks anyhow.
-Coach-
Our solution was to mix in instruction in keyboard shortcuts. It may be faster to mouse, but remember that beginners (especially seniors) are going to be constantly trying to catch up with the computer anyhow -- they aren't likely (at least not at first) to be multitasking and needing that extra speed.
The tip that has been the most successful has been that anytime you would need to double-click, you can single-click on that item, then press [ENTER] to get the same result. Folks who would gamely try to double-click over and over without success have no difficulty clicking once then pressing [ENTER].
Beyond that we've simplified their interface as much as possible - maximized windows by default, turned off unneccessary toolbars and menus so they had fewer distractions, set the fonts to be slightly larger and the screen resolution/contrast to be as easy as possible for them to see.
We enabled sounds, but we reset the sounds to be simple and distinctive, and to only use a few of them, so that they aren't confused by the pecular chirping frog, but instead have learned that this sound is an error, that sound means they have new mail and that sound means they've successfully clicked or whatnot.
After a while the seniors get more comfortable and, for the ones who are physically able, more adept with the mouse. Initially it's best to make it as simple and friendly as possible for them and don't make them rely entirely upon the "newfangled mouse-thingy".
Best of luck!
-Coach-
You can get a Toyota Prius, which never needs to be recharged and runs on electric and gasoline and starts at just under $20,000.
Honda's Insight hybrid coupe uses a similar technology and also does not need to be recharged. It's just a bit over $20,000 though it hasn't gotten very good reviews. Honda is promising an Accord-like hybrid in 2002 that may be better.
Ford is readying a hybrid version of their Ford Escape SUV; they expect to price it in the mid-upper $20,000s. For more info see http://www.hybridford.com.
Hybrids have become a practical solution today. They don't have to be recharged because they run on gas and electric -- relying on electric around town, and gas when you need highway speeds -- and the gas engine, plus the braking power, recharges the batteries automatically.
As for parts and repair; since the cars are from Toyota, Honda and Ford I don't think you'd have any trouble getting them fixed or finding parts; there's usually a dealer nearby.
I can't speak to the practicality of GM's hydrogen fuel cells, but today's Gas/Electric hybrids are an intriguing technology that is well within the reach of most of the car-buying public.
-Coach-
A few years ago I started to experience wrist and hand pain that I associated with CTS. A programmer friend who had fought that battle some months before suggested that I get a pair of phone books and place them on the desk in front of my keyboard; resting my forearms on them as I typed. It was surprisingly comfortable and within a week or two my pain was gone and has not returned. Cheaper than surgery or custom keyboards. Your mileage may vary. -Coach-