At work I have the luxery of expensive server equipment to play with. It's my home projects where I have a budget that is limited. However I am getting closer and closer to what your talking about. An 8gig ram drive would be perfect and the cost of getting that much ram, and the motherboard to hold it, is getting closer to a my budget. Most consumer stuff tops out at 2 or 4 gig for memory at the moment.
It won't be long from now when consumer home built rigs will start to have some serious data center level muscle. Extra memory and faster disk access go a long way to getting there.
I've been waiting for something to get around the hard drive speed bottle neck for a long time. I do a lot of data analysis on huge data sets, mostly financial market data. I end up doing a massive amount of reads and writes to hard drives which slows things down a lot.
My main fear with SSD's is the wearing out of blocks and bits. Typical data sets I work with are about 2 gigabytes. I run scripts against the data to look at various patterns and generate forecasting data. I could read and write that data six or eight hundred times in a day's testing. Well over a terabyte a day. How soon before an SSD craps out on me at that pace?
I would love to have an SSD for the blazing fast access times, but I don't want to have to replace it every six months. I'd pay extra for it, probably 2 to 3 times the traditional hard disk amount. But it has to last a few years at least. The other option of going 64 bit, adding huge amounts of DRAM, and running a RAM disk isn't financially sound at the moment.
I don't know who's going to win either Office battle, but I don't think one player will win both. Cloud apps and "traditional" (offline) apps are just different animals,
I agree completely. Google does not understand the corporate office market like Microsoft does, and Microsoft does not understand the light use web consumer market. For some reason both seem envious of the other companys market and act like they operate the same. It's baffling to watch both GOOG and MSFT act like they can understand the others market.
Becarefull on that assumption. There are a lot of games that do a lot of reads and writes to the disk. The battlefield series is notorious for this. The large high end games also tend to push a lot of stuff to virtual memory as they can be memory hogs.
My point is that Google in this instance is just an IT vendor, providing solutions they believe the marketplace is interested in.
My point is to counter the idea that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Some of the posts here seem to thing this product will eliminate the need for MS Office in every organization. It won't for the reasons I have all ready stated.
I love gmail, the online spreadsheet/document apps. I use them at home for non-business stuff all the time. I would like to see Google improve them. But I see too many posts here thinking that what Google is offering is the equivalent of a full blown sophisticated office suite. Or that Google is setup to compete with an industry specific IT group. They don't. And I doubt Microsoft, IBM, CA, and others are quaking in there boots at this. These firms are probably relieved that Google is taking the home user/really small business segment of the market.
Why is it that you have the Microsoft-centric mindset that a single Office Suite is the best solution to every company's needs?
A never said anything that indicates I have a Microsoft mindset. You need to reread my post. In fact, most of the work I do is in a NON Microsoft enviroment. I was however responding to the posters comments that Google's current offering easily fit's in to any company's IT Structure. That just adjusting the service contract with Google would do the trick. It does not.
I agree with you that it has potential, but not for a long while. The road to being enterprise acceptible is not a short one. They have taken a baby step down that road. I like using Googles spreadsheet, gmail, and word processing apps online for my personal use. But not for a business. And perhaps Google never needs to go there. But again, it should not be confused for a serious business ready solution that some people are touting.
"Why would a company entrust an IT department with all of their corporate emails, and many of their files as well?"
Because the IT staff has been audited and meets regulatory requirements for the industry of the company they are working in. When some people think office software I get the impression they think of some person starting their own business selling hats or flowers.
The majority of office software users are in large firms doing work in regulated industries. Is Google software ISO certified? Is it on the list of acceptable software system for financial industries by your jurisdictions Exchange Commission? What about government work? There are dozens of lists for what venders can and can not run in terms of software if they want to do business with the government. The Department of Defence has an even stricter list.
I mentioned in another post that I work in banking. The stuff we use has to be deemed acceptable by external auditors and regulators. Do you think Google's servers live up to that level of scrutiny?
"Why would your company be responsible for Google's backup procedures? They are being hired as an outside supplier of IT service. If your company needs further assurances of backups, then write it into the contract with Google."
Because the law say so. Particularly when it comes to SOX. I work in banking and there are a thousand laws on where data can and cannot sit or where it can be exposed. "write it into the contract with Google" is not going to cut it with regulators and auditors. This is the first hurdle before we even get to the 90% of features that are missing in google's apps that need to be in an office suite we use.
What Google is doing is cool, but let's not kid ourselves. It's a LONG way away from being enterprise acceptable.
A monopoly such as MSFT will increase profits if they can instead of offering the product at one price for all, discriminates and offer it for a higher price to those who are willing to pay it, and a lower price for those who can't/won't pay the higher price.
That's only true if;
1) consumers can identify the value difference between each version
2) consumers can find any benefit for buying any of the choices
The reality is consumers don't understand or care what the difference is. If it takes more than 60 seconds to describe the difference they will shrug and move on. XP is working just fine for most people, corporate or personal. So why bother.
How can we run out of oil overnight? That makes no sense. Oil wont suddenly dry up worldwide overnight. Did you think aliens will comes and zap it away?
I did not SAY WE WILL. I said IF it did occur to highlight our dependance on oil. NOT as a fact that it will or could happen. It was first discussed by a georgraphy teacher of mine in the 80's as a way to spur discussion on our oil dependance. Clearly that idea was wasted on some one of your intellectual ability.
Your theory that other technologies provide a back fill to our loss of oil is correct only if they can keep pace with the loss of oil energy. If demand ramps up (hello India and China) faster than supply can provide there is going to be some global economic pain. If we plan for it and takes steps now to move slowely away from oil we are in no danger. To say "who cares, let the market deal with it" is inviting the market to punish us for our bad behavour. There is a long history of markets punishing us for not planning ahead.
You have stated a lot of facts in your post, but you need to weight those facts against demand. The demand side of the curve is ramping up much faster. That's due in large part to the developing world's usage going way up. I don't think all the new methods for extraction will keep up. One of two things is certianly going to happen
1) the rise in demand will cause developments in new energy sources making reliance on oil less of an issue. In 100 years we won't need the oil still the ground cause we will all be driving clean powered hover cars.
2) Demand for energy shoots up too fast, while supply (in new extraction and alternative energy) can't keep pace. This causes global economic collapse. Soon we are running around like mad max bashing each other on the head in the thunderdome.
I am more inclinded to think #1 will happen. But if we are wrong, #2 is not going to be pretty. Are you prepared to place that bet?
So what if we run out of oil? I dont see the big deal
You're being a bit simplistic in your thinking on this subject. Oil, unlike frivolous purchases like diamond rings or chewing gum, is a necessary commodity. Without it current modern society could not exist.
I saw a graph once of the Oil & Gas related industries share of the global GDP. It dwarfed all other sections of the GDP. If oil were run out suddenly many of the things you take for granted like heat and electricity would disappear. Anything derived from plastics would soon disappear as well. Think of all the things in stores that are trucked in so you can buy them. You would only be able to buy things made locally. Then think of all the people out of work. Any one who builds cars or works with plastic. Car insurance salesmen, truck drivers, mechanics, oil traders, taxi drivers, parking lot attendants, etc, etc, all become jobless. My guess is 60% of the working population would be without a job.
If oil were to disappear overnight we would all be pathetic little creatures trying to grow something in our back yards just to eat. We would be chopping down tree after tree trying to keep warm. We would all look pretty silly trying to learn to ride a hoarse just to get to work, if there are any jobs left. We are very much addicted to that black gold.
This is something that most fossil fuel lovers AND enviro tree huggers don't understand. We can't just replace all this overnight, and we can't just do nothing until it's too late. We need a constructive way to wean ourselves off this addiction over the long term. Not caring about when we run out does not help matters.
This makes sense for Oracle
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Oracle Linux?
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This makes sense from Oracle's perspective. They want to become a solutions provider, not just a software provider. That's what a lot of enterprise clients want, solutions, not more software to install. When I started as a programmer years ago I never got to see the big picture. Now that I have some experience under my belt and worked with senior managers I can see the bigger picture.
The companies that buy Oracle products want solutions, not new software packages. If Oracle decides to package their own version of linux it would be as part of a package solution. You are no longer buying a database, your buying a data analysis solution. You get a box from Oracle that will do risk analysis, or data warehousing. The database, the OS, app server software, etc, all are just pieces of the solution. Oracle doesn't have a hardware division but the OS would be a step closer to that one package solution.
It is a pain to have to deal with hardware vendors, software vendors, and OS vendors of different stripes. When something goes wrong it's frustrating to see each vendor blame the other for your problem. God knows this happens all the time. By developing an Oracle flavour of linux, they can better provide that solution type package.
I always knew this would happen to Wikipedia. As an all seeing all gathering reference for information it's just not going to work with the public's ability to edit articles. The chief admins will have to keep locking down articles until there are no "unlocked" articles left.
The public Wikipedia assumes that the majority know what the truth is and will correct articles to ensure that's the case. That's a bad assumption. The majority of people don't collectively know the truth. Facts don't change just because a vote decided otherwise.
That is not to say wiki is completely bad. The system used on Wikipedia works well for groups that need documentation provided by several knowledge experts. I have found getting the people who know who a paticular system works together to create documentation is brutal using traditional methods. How great would it be to have a wiki at work that contains technical and user information on systems that people work on every day. Most work places have lousy documentation for there systems and work processes. God knows I have worked at several. The wiki structure would make life a lot easier in these cases. There is far less incentive to manipulate that info for fraudulent purposes.
It's as plain as day that Wikipedia can not work in the long run as the end all be all of all knowledge known to man. There are too many people with agendas who will change articles constantly. For the broad general use, use it as a starting point in any research your doing but don't consider it "the truth".
"Everybody's needs are different, I guess. Most of what I listen to isn't even music, and I get it from a variety of sources. So I save it where I want to, and manage it like any other file. I'm not sure I see your point - you're doing *something* to organize them in iTunes (assuming they're organized at all) - so why is that so superior to managing them in the usual file manager? "
With the use of a smart playlists that I have setup, I don't spend any time organizing my music from the itunes store. Based on genre, play count, artist name and several other classifications, my music is assigned to playlists automatically. None of these lists require updating by me at all. iTunes does this for me based on the conditions I setup initially for each playlist. It's automated organization, something technology should be doing.
If you are looking for a portable storage device, the iPod isn't aimed at that market. It does do file storage well, I use it alot, but it's primary purpose is to organize and let you hear music. If you want file storage get a usb key. If you love portable music and podcasts, iPod and iTunes where designed for that purpose. That's why people pay the premium.
"My Creative Zen nano "just works" too. It uses this arcane file format called "mp3" with no DRM!"
I use to walk around with an mp3 player like the zen and thought it did the job just fine. Then one day I broke down and got an Ipod because;
1) I was sick of buying CD's and ripping them to mp3 format. Or worse yet, using file sharing networks to get crappy copies of songs cause some one can't rip them properly.
2) the selection on file sharing networks and in regular music stores is crappy. I could never find the music I wanted.
3) There was no automation for play lists, tracking of song usage, setting up decent catalogue of my music without hassling with software on my computer.
4) Size matters for me. I have a 20gig Ipod and now that I use it for my music (3000+ songs), podcasts (20 subscriptions), and my portable files (about 4 gig). At the time none of the players came close to 20gig.
With iTunes and my iPod;
1) I have the songs I want, even the hard to find classics made my some one no body knows. Try finding "Spadina Bus" by the "Shuffle Demons" any where other than iTunes and do it in less than 60 seconds (the time it took me to find and buy it on iTunes).
2) What ever I buy is automatically put into my smart playlists. I don't need to do any organizing manually. Even podcasts are updated regularly without my intervention at all for those that I am subscribed to.
3) When I come home I hook up my ipod and everything is synchronized automatically. No magic setups steps or silly work around.
Even the Zen player isn't that smooth. Apple's marketing slogan should be "It just works". I spend zero time maintaining my ipod, unless you count my occasional purchase of new songs. Even that takes five minutes maybe once a month. I use to make fun of Apples products. I use to be a loyal wintel sucker. But Apple knows how to engineer stuff for productive people, not those who like to waste time tinkering with stuff that should just work.
Sure it's got DRM. Sure I pay 99 cents to an almost monopoly. But it's a cheap price to get the music I want that works so simply. These days it seems like Steve Jobs is the only one who wants to make his customers happy.
But feel free to buy a zen or what ever else is out there. Feel free to waste your time fiddling with Windows explorer and copying files. My time is worth money. I pay Apple more for the iPod because it saves me a whole lot of time. THAT's what SanDisk and people such as yourselves will never understand.
I have had arguments before with people from the telcom industry (for simplicity I am lumping cable co's with telephone co's) before in slashdot and other chat groups. What always astonishes me is how blind people in the telcom industry are. It's as if customers everywhere are yelling loudly to the telcos "YOU SUCK!" and their response is "So your monthly bill starts on the 5th and includes a system access fee of....". They are totally immune to the level of hatred customers have for them. For now they have us by the gonads. Who else are we going to get our TV, phone, and internet from? They have thought this way for so long they don't have any other way of thinking. This is why they don't see what's over the horizon, or even care.
As time goes by and wireless becomes more of an option these companies will continue to think the same way. There will be bumps along the way. Telcos will get laws passed and harass any attempts at competition. But competition will find a way, I would bet on wireless providers and wi-fi. When that day comes and customers call up to cancel their service, there will be technicians and VP's alike crying on TV about there jobs disappearing. They did it to themselves so don't pity them. Serious investment in R & D, whether by government or private industry, is necessary to stay competitive in the future. That's just a fact of life.
"On another note about the top ten: I have to completely disagree with the "DVD is an endangered species" noise mentioned for NetFlix. While I'm not a NetFlix subscriber physical media like DVD is certainly nowhere near its endlife. I just don't know what people think is going to replace the physical aspect of DVD media in the near future. I've heard this boy cry wolf before and frankly it's gotten old."
I agree. DVD's will still be around for a while yet. I would love IP TV and downloadable content to come, but it's still an issue of bandwidth and quality. Bit torrents are only fast when something is just released, otherwise I could spend days and weeks trying to get movies and TV episodes. It's faster to walk to the mall and buy it. And if Net nuetrality is killed you can forget getting any quality video content on the internet.
"And I will concede that the world is more complicated than simple widgets these days. The thing is, there is practically no argument that the complication of the world defeats the idea that the free market produces competition."
Your problem is your assuming a free market for broad band. There is no free market for the mass of consumers out there. Is this because of government regulation? No. It's what economists call "barriers to entry". To use your widget analogy, lets say the monopoly company has the sole source of material to make widgets. No one else can make widgets accept that company. Nothing short of armed violent revolt by consumers is going to create a fair market. That's why economists always say government regulations are good in the absence of free markets where there are barriers to entry. This has been described in many other posts here.
"Inconvient service charges and installation times also apply to government functions (yes, it costs money to get your drivers liscence) and to other industries where people visit the house (such as the guy who has to fix the furnace). There is an inherent inability to schedule effectively when it comes to home visits, and it's not just the telco. You're right, it's inconvinient. But it's not unique to telcos.
The kind of behaviour you are describing only occurs in organizations that don't have a lot of competition. How about businesses selling donuts, or Big Mac's, or fresh tomatoes. They don't have service charges at all and make every effort to provide what customers want. If all I want is a donut I can buy the one I want at a reasonable price. They are very sensitive to their customers needs. I like HBO and some of the specialty channels. Can i get these without paying for a host of programs I don't like? Not a chance. And can I get it installed at time that is convenient for me, HA!
Go ahead and think you're a fine normal company. Deny the fact your customers hate you on a per capita basis much higher than any donut shop or supermarket. Do I think you your self are evil, I have no clue. But your a cog in the machine that behaves in an evil (in the Google don't be evil sense, not the your a Nazi sense) manner. The way you guys talk it reminds me of wise guys in the mafia who extort people. When asked why they do it they just say "I'm just trying to make a living, I got mouths to feed".
"And actually, yes, you do have choices: you could either 1. go to a competitor, or 2. don't get any at all. Access to the Internet, Television, or the phone network are not guaranteed freedoms. You do not have a right to any of them."
For #1 there are no real competitors. The market for broadband is known to economists as a restricted market with few sellers and many buyers. Under your logic we could have told everyone 100 years ago that the phone is not a right and the phone company can charge what ever they wanted. What would happen? The market for phones lines would never happen. Restricted only to a select few rich enough to afford them. But we saw the benefits of phone technology for everyone and we didn't let that happen. If we did we would be stuck option #2 you mentioned. A vast world of information is locked out of the average user's hands because your employer wants to restrict access.
Internet access is not as fundamental as water, or food, or human rights to a persons well being. But if you choose to stifle an important utility like the internet for a quick buck you will hurt the entire nation. And the problem will blossom later on when those countries that do promote this utility benefit from it. When Johnny from America can't spell CAT but his Korean counterpart can do calculus you will be very sorry.
"Randomly, as I've noted, many of the things you accuse the telco of also apply to the government. So what can we use to beat the government over the head until it becomes more reasonable?"
They are called elections. They aren't perfect at the moment but believe me voters vent in anger when things get out of hand. Republicans, actually any one currently in office, is crapping bricks because so many people are unhappy with government and will voice their displeasure this fall.
"Firstly, I work for one of those telcos. And I will tell you that we want to give people the best service possible. We are not evil. However, day-to-day operations cost money. Networks don't just run themselves."
As a customer of both the phone company and the cable company I like to say YES YOU ARE EVIL. I know you don't think your not evil, but you are. Everyone I know hates both the cable and phone company. My boss, my coworkers, the secratary, the cop on the corner, the lady I buy a mufin from in the morning. We all hate the company you work for. Why is this?
1) God awful service. Endless automated phone services that ensure you never get the service you want
2) inconvenient service charges and installation times. "Some one will come by your place between Monday at noon and Thursday at 4pm. We can't be more specific than that." thanks, really thanks for kicking me in the rear.
3) Horrible pricing plans that make me buy extra crap I don't want just so I can get at the stuff I do want.
I could go on, and I am sure you will find many people here extremely angry at your employer. So please, don't tell me your not evil. Yes, we very much think you are. But we don't have a lot of choice when it comes to internet, TV, or phone services, do we. We are stuck with it. The only thing we can do is use government regulations to beat you over the head until you come a little closer to providing what we want at a decent price. That and telling the "automated attendent" on the phone to BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS!
If it's a question of bandwidth the why not tier your service to the end users. Put soft caps on how much a customer of DSL or cable downloads in a month. If they go over then charge them extra per gigabyte. But the calbe and phone companies don't want to do that. The would prefer to "triple dip" as I have heard it on PBS news hour. The ISP's want to charge Google and Amazon what they all ready are, charge end users for the connection to the net, and then charge Google and Amazon again for "VIP" access to the consumers.
You are correct that government regulations do lead to less compitition and less consumer choice. However, there is something else in this situation that is causing the problem. Economists call this "barriers to entry". There isn't a lot of compitition because the costs to run wires to every household is really really expensive. So as a consumer your only left with two companies that have wires running into your home, the cable guys, and the telephone guys. This is why regulation is needed, and economists would agree.
If there is no rule telling the cable and telephone companies to behave there is no incentive for them to provide better or expanded service. They have a lock on the market and are willing to make larger profits off a starving market. And squeeze it they will. Do you think the internet market is something we want to starve to death?
The only hope is that wi-fi will free business from having to hook a wire up to every household.
Furthermore, I am not convinced that a bill is necessary to maintain net neutrality. I for one will definitely vote with my dollars: as soon as some ISP keeps me from going to websites, I move to the next one. The only question is if there is enough competition for me to find somewhere else to go.
As it stands now there isn't. Which is why government needs to step in with regulation in the absence of free markets . If we have a free market with many sellers and buyers forgoing regulation would be fine. The market would take care of it. But we don't. At best in most regions you have a duopoly, for many more a monopoly, and for those that live in rural areas it's nothing. The hope that new players can come into the market is pretty limited because behind the scenes any new player will have to buy bandwidth from these same telco's to resell.
I have mentioned before a real possible solution to this is to give the telco's what the want on the condition they loose the "common carrier" status. They treat traffic differently, but if any of their customers downloads child porn or carries out other illegal activities they are held liable for it. For those that stick to net nuetrality, they can keep the "common carrier" status.
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At work I have the luxery of expensive server equipment to play with. It's my home projects where I have a budget that is limited. However I am getting closer and closer to what your talking about. An 8gig ram drive would be perfect and the cost of getting that much ram, and the motherboard to hold it, is getting closer to a my budget. Most consumer stuff tops out at 2 or 4 gig for memory at the moment.
It won't be long from now when consumer home built rigs will start to have some serious data center level muscle. Extra memory and faster disk access go a long way to getting there.
I've been waiting for something to get around the hard drive speed bottle neck for a long time. I do a lot of data analysis on huge data sets, mostly financial market data. I end up doing a massive amount of reads and writes to hard drives which slows things down a lot.
My main fear with SSD's is the wearing out of blocks and bits. Typical data sets I work with are about 2 gigabytes. I run scripts against the data to look at various patterns and generate forecasting data. I could read and write that data six or eight hundred times in a day's testing. Well over a terabyte a day. How soon before an SSD craps out on me at that pace?
I would love to have an SSD for the blazing fast access times, but I don't want to have to replace it every six months. I'd pay extra for it, probably 2 to 3 times the traditional hard disk amount. But it has to last a few years at least. The other option of going 64 bit, adding huge amounts of DRAM, and running a RAM disk isn't financially sound at the moment.
I don't know who's going to win either Office battle, but I don't think one player will win both. Cloud apps and "traditional" (offline) apps are just different animals,
I agree completely. Google does not understand the corporate office market like Microsoft does, and Microsoft does not understand the light use web consumer market. For some reason both seem envious of the other companys market and act like they operate the same. It's baffling to watch both GOOG and MSFT act like they can understand the others market.
Becarefull on that assumption. There are a lot of games that do a lot of reads and writes to the disk. The battlefield series is notorious for this. The large high end games also tend to push a lot of stuff to virtual memory as they can be memory hogs.
My point is that Google in this instance is just an IT vendor, providing solutions they believe the marketplace is interested in.
My point is to counter the idea that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Some of the posts here seem to thing this product will eliminate the need for MS Office in every organization. It won't for the reasons I have all ready stated.
I love gmail, the online spreadsheet/document apps. I use them at home for non-business stuff all the time. I would like to see Google improve them. But I see too many posts here thinking that what Google is offering is the equivalent of a full blown sophisticated office suite. Or that Google is setup to compete with an industry specific IT group. They don't. And I doubt Microsoft, IBM, CA, and others are quaking in there boots at this. These firms are probably relieved that Google is taking the home user/really small business segment of the market.
Why is it that you have the Microsoft-centric mindset that a single Office Suite is the best solution to every company's needs?
A never said anything that indicates I have a Microsoft mindset. You need to reread my post. In fact, most of the work I do is in a NON Microsoft enviroment. I was however responding to the posters comments that Google's current offering easily fit's in to any company's IT Structure. That just adjusting the service contract with Google would do the trick. It does not.
I agree with you that it has potential, but not for a long while. The road to being enterprise acceptible is not a short one. They have taken a baby step down that road. I like using Googles spreadsheet, gmail, and word processing apps online for my personal use. But not for a business. And perhaps Google never needs to go there. But again, it should not be confused for a serious business ready solution that some people are touting.
"Why would a company entrust an IT department with all of their corporate emails, and many of their files as well?"
Because the IT staff has been audited and meets regulatory requirements for the industry of the company they are working in. When some people think office software I get the impression they think of some person starting their own business selling hats or flowers.
The majority of office software users are in large firms doing work in regulated industries. Is Google software ISO certified? Is it on the list of acceptable software system for financial industries by your jurisdictions Exchange Commission? What about government work? There are dozens of lists for what venders can and can not run in terms of software if they want to do business with the government. The Department of Defence has an even stricter list.
I mentioned in another post that I work in banking. The stuff we use has to be deemed acceptable by external auditors and regulators. Do you think Google's servers live up to that level of scrutiny?
"Why would your company be responsible for Google's backup procedures? They are being hired as an outside supplier of IT service. If your company needs further assurances of backups, then write it into the contract with Google."
Because the law say so. Particularly when it comes to SOX. I work in banking and there are a thousand laws on where data can and cannot sit or where it can be exposed. "write it into the contract with Google" is not going to cut it with regulators and auditors. This is the first hurdle before we even get to the 90% of features that are missing in google's apps that need to be in an office suite we use.
What Google is doing is cool, but let's not kid ourselves. It's a LONG way away from being enterprise acceptable.
A monopoly such as MSFT will increase profits if they can instead of offering the product at one price for all, discriminates and offer it for a higher price to those who are willing to pay it, and a lower price for those who can't/won't pay the higher price.
That's only true if;
1) consumers can identify the value difference between each version
2) consumers can find any benefit for buying any of the choices
The reality is consumers don't understand or care what the difference is. If it takes more than 60 seconds to describe the difference they will shrug and move on. XP is working just fine for most people, corporate or personal. So why bother.
How can we run out of oil overnight? That makes no sense. Oil wont suddenly dry up worldwide overnight. Did you think aliens will comes and zap it away?
I did not SAY WE WILL. I said IF it did occur to highlight our dependance on oil. NOT as a fact that it will or could happen. It was first discussed by a georgraphy teacher of mine in the 80's as a way to spur discussion on our oil dependance. Clearly that idea was wasted on some one of your intellectual ability.
Your theory that other technologies provide a back fill to our loss of oil is correct only if they can keep pace with the loss of oil energy. If demand ramps up (hello India and China) faster than supply can provide there is going to be some global economic pain. If we plan for it and takes steps now to move slowely away from oil we are in no danger. To say "who cares, let the market deal with it" is inviting the market to punish us for our bad behavour. There is a long history of markets punishing us for not planning ahead.
You have stated a lot of facts in your post, but you need to weight those facts against demand. The demand side of the curve is ramping up much faster. That's due in large part to the developing world's usage going way up. I don't think all the new methods for extraction will keep up. One of two things is certianly going to happen
1) the rise in demand will cause developments in new energy sources making reliance on oil less of an issue. In 100 years we won't need the oil still the ground cause we will all be driving clean powered hover cars.
2) Demand for energy shoots up too fast, while supply (in new extraction and alternative energy) can't keep pace. This causes global economic collapse. Soon we are running around like mad max bashing each other on the head in the thunderdome.
I am more inclinded to think #1 will happen. But if we are wrong, #2 is not going to be pretty. Are you prepared to place that bet?
So what if we run out of oil? I dont see the big deal
You're being a bit simplistic in your thinking on this subject. Oil, unlike frivolous purchases like diamond rings or chewing gum, is a necessary commodity. Without it current modern society could not exist.
I saw a graph once of the Oil & Gas related industries share of the global GDP. It dwarfed all other sections of the GDP. If oil were run out suddenly many of the things you take for granted like heat and electricity would disappear. Anything derived from plastics would soon disappear as well. Think of all the things in stores that are trucked in so you can buy them. You would only be able to buy things made locally. Then think of all the people out of work. Any one who builds cars or works with plastic. Car insurance salesmen, truck drivers, mechanics, oil traders, taxi drivers, parking lot attendants, etc, etc, all become jobless. My guess is 60% of the working population would be without a job.
If oil were to disappear overnight we would all be pathetic little creatures trying to grow something in our back yards just to eat. We would be chopping down tree after tree trying to keep warm. We would all look pretty silly trying to learn to ride a hoarse just to get to work, if there are any jobs left. We are very much addicted to that black gold.
This is something that most fossil fuel lovers AND enviro tree huggers don't understand. We can't just replace all this overnight, and we can't just do nothing until it's too late. We need a constructive way to wean ourselves off this addiction over the long term. Not caring about when we run out does not help matters.
This makes sense from Oracle's perspective. They want to become a solutions provider, not just a software provider. That's what a lot of enterprise clients want, solutions, not more software to install. When I started as a programmer years ago I never got to see the big picture. Now that I have some experience under my belt and worked with senior managers I can see the bigger picture.
The companies that buy Oracle products want solutions, not new software packages. If Oracle decides to package their own version of linux it would be as part of a package solution. You are no longer buying a database, your buying a data analysis solution. You get a box from Oracle that will do risk analysis, or data warehousing. The database, the OS, app server software, etc, all are just pieces of the solution. Oracle doesn't have a hardware division but the OS would be a step closer to that one package solution.
It is a pain to have to deal with hardware vendors, software vendors, and OS vendors of different stripes. When something goes wrong it's frustrating to see each vendor blame the other for your problem. God knows this happens all the time. By developing an Oracle flavour of linux, they can better provide that solution type package.
Sure, and we will all be driving hovercrafts.
I always knew this would happen to Wikipedia. As an all seeing all gathering reference for information it's just not going to work with the public's ability to edit articles. The chief admins will have to keep locking down articles until there are no "unlocked" articles left.
The public Wikipedia assumes that the majority know what the truth is and will correct articles to ensure that's the case. That's a bad assumption. The majority of people don't collectively know the truth. Facts don't change just because a vote decided otherwise.
That is not to say wiki is completely bad. The system used on Wikipedia works well for groups that need documentation provided by several knowledge experts. I have found getting the people who know who a paticular system works together to create documentation is brutal using traditional methods. How great would it be to have a wiki at work that contains technical and user information on systems that people work on every day. Most work places have lousy documentation for there systems and work processes. God knows I have worked at several. The wiki structure would make life a lot easier in these cases. There is far less incentive to manipulate that info for fraudulent purposes.
It's as plain as day that Wikipedia can not work in the long run as the end all be all of all knowledge known to man. There are too many people with agendas who will change articles constantly. For the broad general use, use it as a starting point in any research your doing but don't consider it "the truth".
"Everybody's needs are different, I guess. Most of what I listen to isn't even music, and I get it from a variety of sources. So I save it where I want to, and manage it like any other file. I'm not sure I see your point - you're doing *something* to organize them in iTunes (assuming they're organized at all) - so why is that so superior to managing them in the usual file manager? "
With the use of a smart playlists that I have setup, I don't spend any time organizing my music from the itunes store. Based on genre, play count, artist name and several other classifications, my music is assigned to playlists automatically. None of these lists require updating by me at all. iTunes does this for me based on the conditions I setup initially for each playlist. It's automated organization, something technology should be doing.
If you are looking for a portable storage device, the iPod isn't aimed at that market. It does do file storage well, I use it alot, but it's primary purpose is to organize and let you hear music. If you want file storage get a usb key. If you love portable music and podcasts, iPod and iTunes where designed for that purpose. That's why people pay the premium.
"My Creative Zen nano "just works" too. It uses
this arcane file format called "mp3" with no DRM!"
I use to walk around with an mp3 player like the zen and thought it did the job just fine. Then one day I broke down and got an Ipod because;
1) I was sick of buying CD's and ripping them to mp3 format. Or worse yet, using file sharing networks to get crappy copies of songs cause some one can't rip them properly.
2) the selection on file sharing networks and in regular music stores is crappy. I could never find the music I wanted.
3) There was no automation for play lists, tracking of song usage, setting up decent catalogue of my music without hassling with software on my computer.
4) Size matters for me. I have a 20gig Ipod and now that I use it for my music (3000+ songs), podcasts (20 subscriptions), and my portable files (about 4 gig). At the time none of the players came close to 20gig.
With iTunes and my iPod;
1) I have the songs I want, even the hard to find classics made my some one no body knows. Try finding "Spadina Bus" by the "Shuffle Demons" any where other than iTunes and do it in less than 60 seconds (the time it took me to find and buy it on iTunes).
2) What ever I buy is automatically put into my smart playlists. I don't need to do any organizing manually. Even podcasts are updated regularly without my intervention at all for those that I am subscribed to.
3) When I come home I hook up my ipod and everything is synchronized automatically. No magic setups steps or silly work around.
Even the Zen player isn't that smooth. Apple's marketing slogan should be "It just works". I spend zero time maintaining my ipod, unless you count my occasional purchase of new songs. Even that takes five minutes maybe once a month. I use to make fun of Apples products. I use to be a loyal wintel sucker. But Apple knows how to engineer stuff for productive people, not those who like to waste time tinkering with stuff that should just work.
Sure it's got DRM. Sure I pay 99 cents to an almost monopoly. But it's a cheap price to get the music I want that works so simply. These days it seems like Steve Jobs is the only one who wants to make his customers happy.
But feel free to buy a zen or what ever else is out there. Feel free to waste your time fiddling with Windows explorer and copying files. My time is worth money. I pay Apple more for the iPod because it saves me a whole lot of time. THAT's what SanDisk and people such as yourselves will never understand.
I have had arguments before with people from the telcom industry (for simplicity I am lumping cable co's with telephone co's) before in slashdot and other chat groups. What always astonishes me is how blind people in the telcom industry are. It's as if customers everywhere are yelling loudly to the telcos "YOU SUCK!" and their response is "So your monthly bill starts on the 5th and includes a system access fee of....". They are totally immune to the level of hatred customers have for them. For now they have us by the gonads. Who else are we going to get our TV, phone, and internet from? They have thought this way for so long they don't have any other way of thinking. This is why they don't see what's over the horizon, or even care.
As time goes by and wireless becomes more of an option these companies will continue to think the same way. There will be bumps along the way. Telcos will get laws passed and harass any attempts at competition. But competition will find a way, I would bet on wireless providers and wi-fi. When that day comes and customers call up to cancel their service, there will be technicians and VP's alike crying on TV about there jobs disappearing. They did it to themselves so don't pity them. Serious investment in R & D, whether by government or private industry, is necessary to stay competitive in the future. That's just a fact of life.
"On another note about the top ten: I have to completely disagree with the "DVD is an endangered species" noise mentioned for NetFlix. While I'm not a NetFlix subscriber physical media like DVD is certainly nowhere near its endlife. I just don't know what people think is going to replace the physical aspect of DVD media in the near future. I've heard this boy cry wolf before and frankly it's gotten old."
I agree. DVD's will still be around for a while yet. I would love IP TV and downloadable content to come, but it's still an issue of bandwidth and quality. Bit torrents are only fast when something is just released, otherwise I could spend days and weeks trying to get movies and TV episodes. It's faster to walk to the mall and buy it. And if Net nuetrality is killed you can forget getting any quality video content on the internet.
"And I will concede that the world is more complicated than simple widgets these days. The thing is, there is practically no argument that the complication of the world defeats the idea that the free market produces competition."
Your problem is your assuming a free market for broad band. There is no free market for the mass of consumers out there. Is this because of government regulation? No. It's what economists call "barriers to entry". To use your widget analogy, lets say the monopoly company has the sole source of material to make widgets. No one else can make widgets accept that company. Nothing short of armed violent revolt by consumers is going to create a fair market. That's why economists always say government regulations are good in the absence of free markets where there are barriers to entry. This has been described in many other posts here.
"Inconvient service charges and installation times also apply to government functions (yes, it costs money to get your drivers liscence) and to other industries where people visit the house (such as the guy who has to fix the furnace). There is an inherent inability to schedule effectively when it comes to home visits, and it's not just the telco. You're right, it's inconvinient. But it's not unique to telcos.
The kind of behaviour you are describing only occurs in organizations that don't have a lot of competition. How about businesses selling donuts, or Big Mac's, or fresh tomatoes. They don't have service charges at all and make every effort to provide what customers want. If all I want is a donut I can buy the one I want at a reasonable price. They are very sensitive to their customers needs. I like HBO and some of the specialty channels. Can i get these without paying for a host of programs I don't like? Not a chance. And can I get it installed at time that is convenient for me, HA!
Go ahead and think you're a fine normal company. Deny the fact your customers hate you on a per capita basis much higher than any donut shop or supermarket. Do I think you your self are evil, I have no clue. But your a cog in the machine that behaves in an evil (in the Google don't be evil sense, not the your a Nazi sense) manner. The way you guys talk it reminds me of wise guys in the mafia who extort people. When asked why they do it they just say "I'm just trying to make a living, I got mouths to feed".
"And actually, yes, you do have choices: you could either 1. go to a competitor, or 2. don't get any at all. Access to the Internet, Television, or the phone network are not guaranteed freedoms. You do not have a right to any of them."
For #1 there are no real competitors. The market for broadband is known to economists as a restricted market with few sellers and many buyers. Under your logic we could have told everyone 100 years ago that the phone is not a right and the phone company can charge what ever they wanted. What would happen? The market for phones lines would never happen. Restricted only to a select few rich enough to afford them. But we saw the benefits of phone technology for everyone and we didn't let that happen. If we did we would be stuck option #2 you mentioned. A vast world of information is locked out of the average user's hands because your employer wants to restrict access.
Internet access is not as fundamental as water, or food, or human rights to a persons well being. But if you choose to stifle an important utility like the internet for a quick buck you will hurt the entire nation. And the problem will blossom later on when those countries that do promote this utility benefit from it. When Johnny from America can't spell CAT but his Korean counterpart can do calculus you will be very sorry.
"Randomly, as I've noted, many of the things you accuse the telco of also apply to the government. So what can we use to beat the government over the head until it becomes more reasonable?"
They are called elections. They aren't perfect at the moment but believe me voters vent in anger when things get out of hand. Republicans, actually any one currently in office, is crapping bricks because so many people are unhappy with government and will voice their displeasure this fall.
"Firstly, I work for one of those telcos. And I will tell you that we want to give people the best service possible. We are not evil. However, day-to-day operations cost money. Networks don't just run themselves."
As a customer of both the phone company and the cable company I like to say YES YOU ARE EVIL. I know you don't think your not evil, but you are. Everyone I know hates both the cable and phone company. My boss, my coworkers, the secratary, the cop on the corner, the lady I buy a mufin from in the morning. We all hate the company you work for. Why is this?
1) God awful service. Endless automated phone services that ensure you never get the service you want
2) inconvenient service charges and installation times. "Some one will come by your place between Monday at noon and Thursday at 4pm. We can't be more specific than that." thanks, really thanks for kicking me in the rear.
3) Horrible pricing plans that make me buy extra crap I don't want just so I can get at the stuff I do want.
I could go on, and I am sure you will find many people here extremely angry at your employer. So please, don't tell me your not evil. Yes, we very much think you are. But we don't have a lot of choice when it comes to internet, TV, or phone services, do we. We are stuck with it. The only thing we can do is use government regulations to beat you over the head until you come a little closer to providing what we want at a decent price. That and telling the "automated attendent" on the phone to BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS!
If it's a question of bandwidth the why not tier your service to the end users. Put soft caps on how much a customer of DSL or cable downloads in a month. If they go over then charge them extra per gigabyte. But the calbe and phone companies don't want to do that. The would prefer to "triple dip" as I have heard it on PBS news hour. The ISP's want to charge Google and Amazon what they all ready are, charge end users for the connection to the net, and then charge Google and Amazon again for "VIP" access to the consumers.
You are correct that government regulations do lead to less compitition and less consumer choice. However, there is something else in this situation that is causing the problem. Economists call this "barriers to entry". There isn't a lot of compitition because the costs to run wires to every household is really really expensive. So as a consumer your only left with two companies that have wires running into your home, the cable guys, and the telephone guys. This is why regulation is needed, and economists would agree.
If there is no rule telling the cable and telephone companies to behave there is no incentive for them to provide better or expanded service. They have a lock on the market and are willing to make larger profits off a starving market. And squeeze it they will. Do you think the internet market is something we want to starve to death?
The only hope is that wi-fi will free business from having to hook a wire up to every household.
Furthermore, I am not convinced that a bill is necessary to maintain net neutrality. I for one will definitely vote with my dollars: as soon as some ISP keeps me from going to websites, I move to the next one. The only question is if there is enough competition for me to find somewhere else to go.
As it stands now there isn't. Which is why government needs to step in with regulation in the absence of free markets . If we have a free market with many sellers and buyers forgoing regulation would be fine. The market would take care of it. But we don't. At best in most regions you have a duopoly, for many more a monopoly, and for those that live in rural areas it's nothing. The hope that new players can come into the market is pretty limited because behind the scenes any new player will have to buy bandwidth from these same telco's to resell.
I have mentioned before a real possible solution to this is to give the telco's what the want on the condition they loose the "common carrier" status. They treat traffic differently, but if any of their customers downloads child porn or carries out other illegal activities they are held liable for it. For those that stick to net nuetrality, they can keep the "common carrier" status.