Well, you can always wait until you get a new cellphone and get one tht you can "sync" with your desktop system.
Several phones can connect to a desktop machine to import/export phone numbers and contacts.
Make mention of that when shopping for a new phone, so the feedback makes it up the chain.
Do you have a GSM phone? It so, you can pop out the card and get a reader real cheap to read/program the card including the phone numbers stored on it.
Each device needs to be able to access what you store transparantly to make things easy. What can a Palm read as an address book?
My first suggestion would be set up your own server -- something cheap, because you won't need a lot of horsepower. Then, install OpenLDAP and use that for storing everything. This is what LDAP is for.
LDAP can be also tunneled thru SSL for devices that support it.
I'm in the middle of installing LDAP services for a big telco who is using it to store the roaming profiles of their new 3G wireless service users. Authentication is thru a RADIUS server tied into the LDAP server. (No, open source software is NOT used, but it could be on your part.)
Ransom Love, the once head of Caldera, claimed he was stepping down from Caldera to head up UL.
However, he has since disappeared from the scene. UL claims he never worked for them and has hired someone from "outside" for the position he was after.
While heading Caldera, now the SCO Group, he had a great deal of input on the direction of UL.
Maybe, with his non-involvement, this can get sorted out properly.
UL also stated they will be using SuSE as a base distro and YAST2 as the installer, with contributions from the others adding on.
Also, both RedHat and Mandrake are set to release new versions any day now. And RedHat's Advanced Server is selling better than expected, with a reported 8,000 units sold so far.
Actually, you probably have RJ-11 jacks on the outside of your building. There are test jacks on the phone box that you can use from the outside.
Yes, it is the responsibility of the company to secure their assets against thieves.
HOWEVER, if I hop out of my car and leave it running in a public parking lot, NO ONE has the right to hop in and take it for a joy ride. That is a crime, pure and simple and unrelated to the use of gas, wear & tear and whether or not they got it back before I needed it again.
Listening to their music is passive. Using someone else's network consumes resources and possibly denies those resources to the company paying for it.
Corporate Internet connections are frequently bandwidth metered or bandwidth limited. "Burstable" connections are where the price increases as usage increases. Your usage increases bandwidt and thus has the potential for increasing their cost.
I'm aware of the 3-5 year cycle in replacing hardware.
Software does not follow suit.
What would be the price for swapping/maintaining all the software on a 3 year cycle? Assuming they stick to MS Office, is there a "cross-platform" upgrade? Will they have to buy it AGAIN?
* * *
The other problem is perception. Most corporate types don't see the iMac as an office computer. It is a cute, candy-colored home unit. G4 towers are office units. Yes, it is overkill and the iMac would be a wonderful unit but the perception is still there.
Besides, the price of the Dell w/MONITOR is close to the iMac. Most companies don't rotate monitors out as fast as PCs -- they stay until they die.
5-7% Desktop marketshare. Servers and corporate workstation, other than art, is smaller.
While we're talking about desktops, not servers, the numbers still mean something when your talking about total equipment manufactured.
* * *
OS X would also require a total new SOFTWARE investment -- which most people DON'T do.
* * *
I'm not bashing OS X, nor seeing Apple as a competitor. I'm just pointing out that sticking to PPC only is Apple's major ball-and-chain for widespread adoption of OS X.
However, OS X on Intel would make a significant dent on Apple's $$ machine -- as I think it would really hamper Mac sales.
SHOULD everyone drive middle-class, economy cars? No. Do most people? Yes. There are by far more Accords, Tauruses, Corollas and Sentras than BMWs, Lexus and Mercedes vehicles. BMW may not care, but they will never dominate Ford or Toyota or Nissan in raw unit sales.
The argument was about OS X becoming widespread, or being promoted as a viable office alternative. YES, it is a killer implementation. However, for it to become widespread enough to threaten Microsoft, it MUST run on Intel.
The fact is, for a business to install OS X they must trash most of their existing hardware, and that just isn't going to happen.
There are over dozen companies making chipsets and/or motherboards for Intel/AMD. How many for PPC? 3? 4? Even if it is 10, the quantity made doesn't even come close to all the x86 stuff.
Purchase prices means a LOT when a company is talking 50, 100 or 5,000 machines. When a PC will do the same thing for $500 - $1,000 less than the Mac, no accountant is going to approve $2.5 - $5.0 million *more* on the basis of OS X.
MacOS doesn't run on cheap, available-everywhere, commodity, x86 hardware.
Until it does, Apple will remain a niche. Period. The End.
Hell, even SUN is getting in on the game!
There are 100x the number of Intel-type machines out there than PPC-based. OS X would require a total new hardware investment, Linux does not.
Re:Looks good... but where's the Windows support?
on
Lindows 2.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The point is to stop using MS Office, as well as MS Windows.
For a large number of businesses, StarOffice or OpenOffice will handle what they need. Are they perfect? No, especially in converting documents with Macros.
Moving to a Linux desktop is a COST and CONTROL issue. Linux/OpenOffice for 10,000 desktops costs $0 -- or maybe $79 if you want to buy a disk and save the download time. A knowledgable admin can then create a custom "Kickstart" for the install, and image the drives using "dd" -- saving money on Norton Ghost in the process.
A bit of effort on the part of company admins, coders and you can save a LOT of cash on licenses. Not to mention the $$ involved with keeping the licenses current, on file and in compliance.
But, you're right in the SOME Windows support should be offered. Maybe a partnership with the CrossOver or WineX people so people who *NEED* a Windows app have an option.
Traditional voice is compressed as well -- VoIP doesn't add signigicantly to this. There is no real compression benefit here.
Latency is more than just congestion. It is also affected by the number of 'hops' to go thru, the size of the routing table, any necessary reroutes, etc.
VoIP is not a magic bullet for networks, it is a buzzword. It also DOES help them consolidate equipment.
Much of the traditional digital cellular traffic is switched thru an ATM fabric. The ATM units are drastically underutilized by this and adding an OC-12 card and separating out the data would be trivial.
Indirectly. It allows for the company to use the same basic equipment for both data and voice traffic. Instead of buying Lucent for Cell/ATM/DSL, Alcatel for DSL, Cisco for enterprise data, they can then route much of it over the same equipment -- Lucent or Cisco. (Okay, maybe Nortel.)
It allows them to integrate equipment much better.
On the other hand, the data and voice people are two completely different breeds. Two different budgets, management software, thought patterns, etc. This is going to make life chaotic for quite some time.
True, however if the network is lightly loaded, IP introduces negligable latency and jitter. VOIP is already being used for long-distance telephone calls.
True, but no phone network is lightly loaded, except at 2:00 a.m. or so. The phone companies have oversubscription down to a fine art.
The VoIP compression kicks in on the backbone transit, as opposed to the actual endpoint allowing more data to be multiplexed in. Yes, silence supression, comfort noise and single/full-duplex play a big part.
Actually, many of the phone networks are doing the VoIP modulation at either end, then using ATM switches in between. So, in essence, there is still a circuit. However, MPLS is starting to be a big buzzword and companies are starting to deploy it as opposed to Frame Relay and ATM. Still, ATM is king when it comes to these types of applications. Real QoS, real ToS, can't be beat.
Voice uses circuits for a reason -- latency and jitter *must* be controlled or the conversation goes to hell.
There has to be more to wireless VoIP than simply 3G+ data -- it must be able to control the timing of the arrival of packets.
No, you can't buffer it. Voice conversations are realtime interactive. Fat packet sizes don't help, either. There is a limit to how long you can spend processing the data into and out of a packet before you screw up the timing.
They have a LONG way to go before this will be realistic.
Yes, it is easier with non-software since it was a matter of "function or not".
The specific instance I was thinking of was when I worked in the automotive electronics industry. I've also seen this in a couple other manufacturing industries but would have to dig for the exact regulations.
If you manufacture and sell a physical product, like a car or computer, you are legally responsible to provide support and repair/replacement for 7 years after discontinuation.
In the U.S., anyway.
And it isn't quite a 5 year old product -- almost. It actually shipped in late November 1997 *AND* with a major flaw -- it couldn't export Word 95 format correctly, even though it claimed it could. It only did RTF. They fixed that in February 1998.
That used to be illegal in the U.S., too. The specific case was when Alice Cooper released the album "Million Dollar Baby" and he was sitting in a pile of $100 bills. They made him pull the album cover in the U.S.
Since then, they've gotten a bit more relaxed. It depends on the quality of the image, and if you try and use it, etc.
I wasn't implying others didn't have strong Constitutions, just that only the U.S. had the whole enchilada.
Freedom to drink at any age doesn't strike me as earth-shattering. Not being able to consume alcohol in public until you reach 21 is hardly revolution-inspiring.
Freedom for gays varies from country to country, and in the U.S. from State to State. Several U.S. States are quite accepting and others are moving along.
Universally available quality healthcare and education. Universally available quality education IS available in the U.S. No, each school is not the same, nor do the receive the same funding. However, environment and parent participation are both larger factors than $$ in education quality. (Yes, I have 3 kids in U.S. schools.) We aren't #1 in the world in schools, but we aren't on bottom, either.
As far as healthcare -- it isn't legal for a hospital in the U.S. to turn away an emergency patient for lack of funds or insurance. Our healthcare is THE best in the world. Where do people fly to when they need top notch care? The Mayo Clinic, Shriner's Burn Hospitals, Johns Hopkins. Does everyone get equal treatment and equal access to ALL services? Nope. Some treatments cost more than others and that is a fact of life.
Healthcare may be "free" in Canada, France, Sweden and others but you pay thru nose in taxes for it. We choose not to. You also have longer waits for non-emergency services. I can schedule a non-emergency procedure and get in for almost anything in hours to days.
And for the record, I lived for 5 years in Europe (Spain) in the mid 1980s. I've also been back for business several times since -- three times this year alone. I really like Europe, but you can keep Socialism -- it isn't worth the cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone please mirror some of the content of the post here. You'd think Blizzard would know a little about handling large spikes in traffic.
Well, you can always wait until you get a new cellphone and get one tht you can "sync" with your desktop system.
Several phones can connect to a desktop machine to import/export phone numbers and contacts.
Make mention of that when shopping for a new phone, so the feedback makes it up the chain.
Do you have a GSM phone? It so, you can pop out the card and get a reader real cheap to read/program the card including the phone numbers stored on it.
Each device needs to be able to access what you store transparantly to make things easy. What can a Palm read as an address book?
My first suggestion would be set up your own server -- something cheap, because you won't need a lot of horsepower. Then, install OpenLDAP and use that for storing everything. This is what LDAP is for.
LDAP can be also tunneled thru SSL for devices that support it.
I'm in the middle of installing LDAP services for a big telco who is using it to store the roaming profiles of their new 3G wireless service users. Authentication is thru a RADIUS server tied into the LDAP server. (No, open source software is NOT used, but it could be on your part.)
Ransom Love, the once head of Caldera, claimed he was stepping down from Caldera to head up UL.
However, he has since disappeared from the scene. UL claims he never worked for them and has hired someone from "outside" for the position he was after.
While heading Caldera, now the SCO Group, he had a great deal of input on the direction of UL.
Maybe, with his non-involvement, this can get sorted out properly.
UL also stated they will be using SuSE as a base distro and YAST2 as the installer, with contributions from the others adding on.
Also, both RedHat and Mandrake are set to release new versions any day now. And RedHat's Advanced Server is selling better than expected, with a reported 8,000 units sold so far.
Sorry. I was thinking of the mid-80s court ruling about satellite reception. Specifially HBO sued someone, or they sued HBO.
It is relevant in that it deals with broadcast signals and "unauthorized" reception. It also deals with encryption/decryption of those signals.
I should have made that more clear.
It they're unencrypted, yes. If you have to bypass a security mechanism, like encryption or scrambling then it is illegal.
I believe that is how the ruling worked.
So, yes. If those morons don't lock their wireless networks you could probably legally get away with sniffing but not sending.
Actually, you probably have RJ-11 jacks on the outside of your building. There are test jacks on the phone box that you can use from the outside.
Yes, it is the responsibility of the company to secure their assets against thieves.
HOWEVER, if I hop out of my car and leave it running in a public parking lot, NO ONE has the right to hop in and take it for a joy ride. That is a crime, pure and simple and unrelated to the use of gas, wear & tear and whether or not they got it back before I needed it again.
Listening to their music is passive. Using someone else's network consumes resources and possibly denies those resources to the company paying for it.
Corporate Internet connections are frequently bandwidth metered or bandwidth limited. "Burstable" connections are where the price increases as usage increases. Your usage increases bandwidt and thus has the potential for increasing their cost.
I'm aware of the 3-5 year cycle in replacing hardware.
Software does not follow suit.
What would be the price for swapping/maintaining all the software on a 3 year cycle? Assuming they stick to MS Office, is there a "cross-platform" upgrade? Will they have to buy it AGAIN?
* * *
The other problem is perception. Most corporate types don't see the iMac as an office computer. It is a cute, candy-colored home unit. G4 towers are office units. Yes, it is overkill and the iMac would be a wonderful unit but the perception is still there.
Besides, the price of the Dell w/MONITOR is close to the iMac. Most companies don't rotate monitors out as fast as PCs -- they stay until they die.
5-7% Desktop marketshare. Servers and corporate workstation, other than art, is smaller.
While we're talking about desktops, not servers, the numbers still mean something when your talking about total equipment manufactured.
* * *
OS X would also require a total new SOFTWARE investment -- which most people DON'T do.
* * *
I'm not bashing OS X, nor seeing Apple as a competitor. I'm just pointing out that sticking to PPC only is Apple's major ball-and-chain for widespread adoption of OS X.
However, OS X on Intel would make a significant dent on Apple's $$ machine -- as I think it would really hamper Mac sales.
SHOULD everyone drive middle-class, economy cars? No. Do most people? Yes. There are by far more Accords, Tauruses, Corollas and Sentras than BMWs, Lexus and Mercedes vehicles. BMW may not care, but they will never dominate Ford or Toyota or Nissan in raw unit sales.
The argument was about OS X becoming widespread, or being promoted as a viable office alternative. YES, it is a killer implementation. However, for it to become widespread enough to threaten Microsoft, it MUST run on Intel.
The fact is, for a business to install OS X they must trash most of their existing hardware, and that just isn't going to happen.
There are over dozen companies making chipsets and/or motherboards for Intel/AMD. How many for PPC? 3? 4? Even if it is 10, the quantity made doesn't even come close to all the x86 stuff.
Purchase prices means a LOT when a company is talking 50, 100 or 5,000 machines. When a PC will do the same thing for $500 - $1,000 less than the Mac, no accountant is going to approve $2.5 - $5.0 million *more* on the basis of OS X.
MacOS doesn't run on cheap, available-everywhere, commodity, x86 hardware.
Until it does, Apple will remain a niche. Period. The End.
Hell, even SUN is getting in on the game!
There are 100x the number of Intel-type machines out there than PPC-based. OS X would require a total new hardware investment, Linux does not.
The point is to stop using MS Office, as well as MS Windows.
For a large number of businesses, StarOffice or OpenOffice will handle what they need. Are they perfect? No, especially in converting documents with Macros.
Moving to a Linux desktop is a COST and CONTROL issue. Linux/OpenOffice for 10,000 desktops costs $0 -- or maybe $79 if you want to buy a disk and save the download time. A knowledgable admin can then create a custom "Kickstart" for the install, and image the drives using "dd" -- saving money on Norton Ghost in the process.
A bit of effort on the part of company admins, coders and you can save a LOT of cash on licenses. Not to mention the $$ involved with keeping the licenses current, on file and in compliance.
But, you're right in the SOME Windows support should be offered. Maybe a partnership with the CrossOver or WineX people so people who *NEED* a Windows app have an option.
Ummmm...
How are you going to get a banner ad in when I check my e-mail via a wireless handheld?
How about using the wireless link to stream a video/audio clip? What about P2P access?
You are making two big assumptions:
1. People are going to browse the web.
2. People are using a screen big enough to see an ad.
It would really piss me off if your banner ads wiped out 60% of my PDA real estate.
Local ads is a good idea that may work, but you're missing a lot of details.
Traditional voice is compressed as well -- VoIP doesn't add signigicantly to this. There is no real compression benefit here.
Latency is more than just congestion. It is also affected by the number of 'hops' to go thru, the size of the routing table, any necessary reroutes, etc.
VoIP is not a magic bullet for networks, it is a buzzword. It also DOES help them consolidate equipment.
Much of the traditional digital cellular traffic is switched thru an ATM fabric. The ATM units are drastically underutilized by this and adding an OC-12 card and separating out the data would be trivial.
Indirectly. It allows for the company to use the same basic equipment for both data and voice traffic. Instead of buying Lucent for Cell/ATM/DSL, Alcatel for DSL, Cisco for enterprise data, they can then route much of it over the same equipment -- Lucent or Cisco. (Okay, maybe Nortel.)
It allows them to integrate equipment much better.
On the other hand, the data and voice people are two completely different breeds. Two different budgets, management software, thought patterns, etc. This is going to make life chaotic for quite some time.
True, however if the network is lightly loaded, IP introduces negligable latency and jitter. VOIP is already being used for long-distance telephone calls.
True, but no phone network is lightly loaded, except at 2:00 a.m. or so. The phone companies have oversubscription down to a fine art.
The VoIP compression kicks in on the backbone transit, as opposed to the actual endpoint allowing more data to be multiplexed in. Yes, silence supression, comfort noise and single/full-duplex play a big part.
Actually, many of the phone networks are doing the VoIP modulation at either end, then using ATM switches in between. So, in essence, there is still a circuit. However, MPLS is starting to be a big buzzword and companies are starting to deploy it as opposed to Frame Relay and ATM. Still, ATM is king when it comes to these types of applications. Real QoS, real ToS, can't be beat.
Voice uses circuits for a reason -- latency and jitter *must* be controlled or the conversation goes to hell.
There has to be more to wireless VoIP than simply 3G+ data -- it must be able to control the timing of the arrival of packets.
No, you can't buffer it. Voice conversations are realtime interactive. Fat packet sizes don't help, either. There is a limit to how long you can spend processing the data into and out of a packet before you screw up the timing.
They have a LONG way to go before this will be realistic.
Some schmuck from Warner Bros. must've been smoking something when watching the final scene in The Matrix.
Neo zooms off into the sky with the coat flapping like a cape and the lightbulb goes off. Hey! He looks just like Superman!
Say... there's an idea!
NOT!
AllTel is rolling this out starting in November. Tampa, FL will be their first market. Target date for turn on is Nov. 1.
They don't want to screw with things, just an IP address via 3G1X. I believe it will be 64-128 Kbps, but would have to double-check.
They eventually plan to move it to all their coverage areas.
Yes, it is easier with non-software since it was a matter of "function or not".
The specific instance I was thinking of was when I worked in the automotive electronics industry. I've also seen this in a couple other manufacturing industries but would have to dig for the exact regulations.
If you manufacture and sell a physical product, like a car or computer, you are legally responsible to provide support and repair/replacement for 7 years after discontinuation.
In the U.S., anyway.
And it isn't quite a 5 year old product -- almost. It actually shipped in late November 1997 *AND* with a major flaw -- it couldn't export Word 95 format correctly, even though it claimed it could. It only did RTF. They fixed that in February 1998.
Not unless he tried to use the passport. Kids still make "passports" in elementary school as projects.
That used to be illegal in the U.S., too. The specific case was when Alice Cooper released the album "Million Dollar Baby" and he was sitting in a pile of $100 bills. They made him pull the album cover in the U.S.
Since then, they've gotten a bit more relaxed. It depends on the quality of the image, and if you try and use it, etc.
I wasn't implying others didn't have strong Constitutions, just that only the U.S. had the whole enchilada.
Freedom to drink at any age doesn't strike me as earth-shattering. Not being able to consume alcohol in public until you reach 21 is hardly revolution-inspiring.
Freedom for gays varies from country to country, and in the U.S. from State to State. Several U.S. States are quite accepting and others are moving along.
Universally available quality healthcare and education. Universally available quality education IS available in the U.S. No, each school is not the same, nor do the receive the same funding. However, environment and parent participation are both larger factors than $$ in education quality. (Yes, I have 3 kids in U.S. schools.) We aren't #1 in the world in schools, but we aren't on bottom, either.
As far as healthcare -- it isn't legal for a hospital in the U.S. to turn away an emergency patient for lack of funds or insurance. Our healthcare is THE best in the world. Where do people fly to when they need top notch care? The Mayo Clinic, Shriner's Burn Hospitals, Johns Hopkins. Does everyone get equal treatment and equal access to ALL services? Nope. Some treatments cost more than others and that is a fact of life.
Healthcare may be "free" in Canada, France, Sweden and others but you pay thru nose in taxes for it. We choose not to. You also have longer waits for non-emergency services. I can schedule a non-emergency procedure and get in for almost anything in hours to days.
And for the record, I lived for 5 years in Europe (Spain) in the mid 1980s. I've also been back for business several times since -- three times this year alone. I really like Europe, but you can keep Socialism -- it isn't worth the cost.