I understand where you are coming from. I used to run IT at a company, and had to make many of these "awful" decisions. Being given a budget of $10k to upgrade computers for 30 people, and a server -- there's not a whole lot you can do.
It is very hard to upgrade a platform in a company, I'm not saying it isn't. Also, as IT you are required to inherit all the problems of everyone at the company when it comes to using a computer.
I do, however, feel it is the job of IT to pitch as hard as they can to management. They should explain how outdated IE6 really is. How many mainstream sites have already dropped support. If there is a legacy application that requires IE6 to run, it probably isn't being maintained well.
It should be the job of IT, if it makes sense, to push for these types of changes.
It was wrong of me to say IT is lazy if you still have IE6, I should have said the company doesn't have it's head on straight.
If you have 30 employees, and their computers slow them down by approximately 10%. Every week (assuming an average 50k salary each) this is costing the company about $3k every week in productivity (given quite a few assumptions).
At a very minimum, why can't employees use an alternate browser? If it is such a problem to get, lets say Chrome, on company computers -- maybe there's a way to fix that (besides installing the Chrome Frame in IE6).
While it may be easier to continue to support IE6 / XP, I feel any company still looking to use IE6 as a primary browser should take a second look. That shouldn't necessarily be at IT, but whatever restriction isn't allowing a company to upgrade to free software almost 10 years later.
As a web developer, I hate supporting IE6. It lacks so many things that make the web a better place today (poor CSS support, no PNGs -- yes there are fixes).
I've found it depends on your target demographic. If you are looking at business people, IE6 is still in the ballgame. Offices are still lagging behind in their conversion to modern browsers. This is probably because the IT staff just doesn't care.
In talking with user groups, I've heard people say (frequently) that they prefer Firefox or Chrome at home, but at work aren't allowed to install those browsers -- so they are forced to use IE6 during work hours.
Google is making a great move right here -- at least the theoretical move (and if they're not, hopefully they're reading these articles).
What is everyone saying right now? Virtually across the board -- applications via a web browser are the next thing. Essentially making desktop computers thin clients if you follow the current trend. Example applications? Gmail, maps.google, any map site, the theoretical google / open office solution, microsofts Office live, and the hottest area in web development currently - AJAX.
The current elegant and simple implementations probably aren't that way because they are cool (although they definitely are). Gmail opened google onto the world as a fast text based engine, where processing and data resided server side and a client only requested a very small percentage of their X GB of storage at a time.
maps.google took the "web application" another step, with streaming multimedia, and was vastly successful. Sitting on maps.google sometimes you still have a slight lag downloading the surrounding image tileset.
Imagine this trend projected over the course of the next X years, we're looking at the greatest business model, subscription based, distributed over the web, applications when you need them where you need them.
Now, how does this generate profit? With the projected path of google, they will essentially be the intermediary of all global knowledge and communications. Whether you look at it as good or bad, google is trying to become the world broker of information.
The interesting part, at what cost? Traditionally this is free to us -- I mean, google is nice right?
Think broadcast television, why would people provide content free to the viewers? Advertising. Google will know more about what we see, how we see it, and why we see it than we will even probably know. This will shoot google beyond any and all of the advertising venues currently available.
One key google technology that I think we have overlooked, but shows an amazing future capability, was the speech seearch engine a few years back. Remember calling the number, saying something, and getting the results on your screen? That disappeared -- but now look at where google can advertise.
Print -- the web is the future of "print", video -- now supported by an amazingly powerful network, perhaps googleTV types of things, audio -- they won't stop with skype going the way of ebay -- imagine paying for a phone call with a targeted advertisement at the end of a conversation based on what you just talked bout, communications . . the sky is the limit.
THe question is will they fall to "the dark side"..
CmdrTaco raises an interesting question, on the flip side, what about the other way around?
I play WoW, and about 4 or 5 of the people I regularly interacted with in my circles, gave their accounts to a friend. The character is the same, same gear, same level, but the relationship SHOULD start over, right?
I find myself much more willing to let the person in raids, parties, even talk to them about who they "used to be".
On a more abstract level -- we obviously pick our own UIDs for people. It would be interesting to look at various games and environments to see what that unique ID is. Once I've chatted with people in voice chat on WoW I tend to use their voice, independent of their name. Beforehand -- I use their name and sometimes the way they type.
In "real life" do we establish these connections depending on the environment in which people meet? In long distance relationships is it the voice? How about by email chat, are you more connected emotionally to the email address than the name?
I can't think of one really good point to this, other than that you can use the mouse at all points.
My wireless mouse has a battery, that needs to be charged for about 20 min. every 2 weeks at maximum (I normally go for about 3-4 weeks depending on use, and I use heavily to begin with).
This type of mouse will save me while playing those games that I can't take a 20 min. break from, and I have forgotten to dock my mouse for over two weeks.
I guess this is more of the "I can do it" technologies not "I should do it".
Obviously putting the most powerful components on the market doesn't require the most intelligence.
However, most of the better pieces of equipment out there put together form a nice launching point for the top of the line gaming computers.
For the most part the better equipment is more expensive. Companies such as Alienware, if I remember correctly, know so much about the high end equipment they use that they have written advanced drivers and utilities to help the customer get the last x% out of their systems.
This is where the knowledge and advanced support comes into account.
I agree with you fully, the most difficult system is a mid range system that is required for say "video editing, and basic office tasks" but has a tight budget. When you have to swap out the processor for faster ram, or perhaps decide that the power supply at 300W can suffice as opposed to the 450 originally planned, is when building computers becomes a challenge.
Just yesterday I priced out a very high end gaming machine for $3k (the CPU alone, no monitor / keyboard / mouse etc -- sweet p4 3.4 EE / 2 GB corsair / 2x200GB SATA Raid 0 / heatsink etc. / sweet case / 550 Power / ATI x800 256MB)
That $3k computer worth of parts can only be made possible by knowledge of the system and optimized for performance by mastery of hardware tweaking and overclocking.
The $400 machines for sale on Dell take relatively little knowledge to put together. The expensive machiens by vendors such as Alienware include much more knowledge about the interworkings and optimizations of the individual parts.
Since duplicating this knowledge is free, that is where the profit to be made is.
The only problem I would have with this is the people who will be wasting their money buying these high end gaming machines when they only need the mid range Dell machines.
That no matter how good/bad the encryption mechanism is, people can't break it.
If I published software that "encrypted" an audio stream by reversing the bits, and someone figured it out or wrote software to get rid of my "encryption" scheme, then I could just start a legal battle against all those who try to publish against me?
This is a wild, unpredictable, capitalistic world, not a pre-school.
A few years ago walking around Boston I started seeing this strange symbol on some buildings (graffiti).
There were no words associated with it, or antyhing. I thought it was either: A) Extremely intelligent statement on societies inability to learn anything about something that cannot accurately be represented and researched in text. or B) Just a random symbol.
I still haven't found out what it meant, but a tool like this would have been very useful.
The question isn't WHY would someone choose WMA, it's IF they would.
For my personal mp3 player, I would choose WMA because of the file sizes possible (if I could do WMA my IPOD would hold about 30000 songs) with relatively decent playback for riding public transportation.
Telling someone if they want choice, and saying "Then you should use [compression scheme]" is just as bad as microsoft's new portables only allowing WMA.
Just as most of us are offended by Microsoft's "strong arming" of competition by not providing support, this is Apple doing the same exact thing.
We are just as bad as microsoft if we don't support enabling this technology.
In defense of the technology, I've used it quite a bit. I used to own a Creative Nomad II MG portable MP3 player with 128MB of ram. Without the use of WMA support, it could fit about 40-60 songs. With the use of WMA it could then fit about 120-140 songs.
I had stored all of my music as MP3 and when syncing up with my device I would transfer them and store them on my device as WMA. It dramatically increased the number of songs I coudl store on my device.
In a loud street environment the slight difference between WMA and MP3 (not so slight in a nice environment) didn't make a difference.
Ultimately the end user should have the CHOICE to use whatever he wants. That choice should not be made for him.
If I remember correctly there was talk that although it was done in a "single" shot, there was some splicing right before the end. I think it was near where the window lowers or something.
The developers didn't mess up not accounting for such a large battle. It's most likely minimally difficult for them to make an object invincible.
The point, in MMOG especially, is that having something possible, but very difficult actually serves a role beyond him just being there. In this case it united an entire server.
Making games realistic whereas nothing is invincible makes them better (in my opinion).
If I had it my way, as a character, I could destroy whatever it is I wanted. Obviously this holds true, everyone wants to be strong. I'm talking about everything being possible, just someone has to gather the means to do it.
Imagine if a group of X amount of players was able to actually destroy a town in everquest by bashing at it for a day? That would be an amazing news item, and be something that SoE should use to propel the story on each server.
There's a new worm out there that exploits a security hole still in Windows 2k/XP from when it was released.
It has the capability to shut down applications, goes right through anti-virus software (even the latest patches!!!), and gives total control of the victim computer to the creator of the worm.
An attempt by the powers that be to shut down it's source of updates was thwarted by various government agencies and the worm itself.
Unfortunately there is no patch to get rid of the W32.MS.AutoUpdateRequired worm.
Or you can just assume the individual is capable of overlaying the images on one another.
The image has "phantom" edges hanging off of both sides, but is just as effective.
I had written a drawing program for this on my old TI-82 (remember those stereograms about 5-6 years ago?). The basis was a screen made up in 2 sections, the left [x] pixels, and the right [x] pixels, divided in half.
If we can get a user to "adjust" his eyes appropriately this generates a truly 3d image (since both eyes are looking at opposite copies of the image).
In my implementation I used the "stereogram" noise as a background that was mirrored across the center of the screen (and flipped horizontally).
Worked great, you could see true 3d images if you crossed your eyes enough, and the screen didn't look funny (with 2 images) if you didn't.
But this really isn't effective if you're trying to see anything more detailed than a floating square or circle:)
You can have your IP address added to the list of acceptable IP addresses only if you are 150 years of age or older, and can balance 15 apples on your forhead.
Enter IP Address:
Add Me
Because those "not allowed unless... for backup purposes only" seem to work so well.
We probably relatively easily count the approximate number of toothpicks in a pile very well (using sight only).
It is much more complex for a computer to determine if the pile contains "lots" or "very few" toothpicks in so much as that value is very context specific.
I fully agree with the above post.
This is very similiar to the corporate structure. A CEO cannot be bothered with the details of each branch of his operation (does he want to know when Jane Doe calls in sick?). He is made more effective by paying attention to only the larger goals.
I think this study is giving us a realization of the fact that the brain can actually process this type of information very well, but it isn't normally exposed.
A more interesting extension of this study would be to have an individual "count toothpicks" and at the same time comprehend the amount of toothpicks he has just counted.
As cruel as this might seem, what about asking the individual drawing the cat about the cat. The first "stick" figure cat may have been sitting on a ktichen floor asking for food, whereas the "detailed" figure could have just been a cat (or to extend it, a "bitwise" copy of an image).
Slashdot Mirror
I understand where you are coming from. I used to run IT at a company, and had to make many of these "awful" decisions. Being given a budget of $10k to upgrade computers for 30 people, and a server -- there's not a whole lot you can do.
It is very hard to upgrade a platform in a company, I'm not saying it isn't. Also, as IT you are required to inherit all the problems of everyone at the company when it comes to using a computer.
I do, however, feel it is the job of IT to pitch as hard as they can to management. They should explain how outdated IE6 really is. How many mainstream sites have already dropped support. If there is a legacy application that requires IE6 to run, it probably isn't being maintained well.
It should be the job of IT, if it makes sense, to push for these types of changes.
It was wrong of me to say IT is lazy if you still have IE6, I should have said the company doesn't have it's head on straight.
If you have 30 employees, and their computers slow them down by approximately 10%. Every week (assuming an average 50k salary each) this is costing the company about $3k every week in productivity (given quite a few assumptions).
At a very minimum, why can't employees use an alternate browser? If it is such a problem to get, lets say Chrome, on company computers -- maybe there's a way to fix that (besides installing the Chrome Frame in IE6).
While it may be easier to continue to support IE6 / XP, I feel any company still looking to use IE6 as a primary browser should take a second look. That shouldn't necessarily be at IT, but whatever restriction isn't allowing a company to upgrade to free software almost 10 years later.
As a web developer, I hate supporting IE6. It lacks so many things that make the web a better place today (poor CSS support, no PNGs -- yes there are fixes).
I've found it depends on your target demographic. If you are looking at business people, IE6 is still in the ballgame. Offices are still lagging behind in their conversion to modern browsers. This is probably because the IT staff just doesn't care.
In talking with user groups, I've heard people say (frequently) that they prefer Firefox or Chrome at home, but at work aren't allowed to install those browsers -- so they are forced to use IE6 during work hours.
Google is making a great move right here -- at least the theoretical move (and if they're not, hopefully they're reading these articles).
What is everyone saying right now? Virtually across the board -- applications via a web browser are the next thing. Essentially making desktop computers thin clients if you follow the current trend. Example applications? Gmail, maps.google, any map site, the theoretical google / open office solution, microsofts Office live, and the hottest area in web development currently - AJAX.
The current elegant and simple implementations probably aren't that way because they are cool (although they definitely are). Gmail opened google onto the world as a fast text based engine, where processing and data resided server side and a client only requested a very small percentage of their X GB of storage at a time.
maps.google took the "web application" another step, with streaming multimedia, and was vastly successful. Sitting on maps.google sometimes you still have a slight lag downloading the surrounding image tileset.
Imagine this trend projected over the course of the next X years, we're looking at the greatest business model, subscription based, distributed over the web, applications when you need them where you need them.
Now, how does this generate profit? With the projected path of google, they will essentially be the intermediary of all global knowledge and communications. Whether you look at it as good or bad, google is trying to become the world broker of information.
The interesting part, at what cost? Traditionally this is free to us -- I mean, google is nice right?
Think broadcast television, why would people provide content free to the viewers? Advertising. Google will know more about what we see, how we see it, and why we see it than we will even probably know. This will shoot google beyond any and all of the advertising venues currently available.
One key google technology that I think we have overlooked, but shows an amazing future capability, was the speech seearch engine a few years back. Remember calling the number, saying something, and getting the results on your screen? That disappeared -- but now look at where google can advertise.
Print -- the web is the future of "print", video -- now supported by an amazingly powerful network, perhaps googleTV types of things, audio -- they won't stop with skype going the way of ebay -- imagine paying for a phone call with a targeted advertisement at the end of a conversation based on what you just talked bout, communications . . the sky is the limit.
THe question is will they fall to "the dark side"..
CmdrTaco raises an interesting question, on the flip side, what about the other way around?
I play WoW, and about 4 or 5 of the people I regularly interacted with in my circles, gave their accounts to a friend. The character is the same, same gear, same level, but the relationship SHOULD start over, right?
I find myself much more willing to let the person in raids, parties, even talk to them about who they "used to be".
On a more abstract level -- we obviously pick our own UIDs for people. It would be interesting to look at various games and environments to see what that unique ID is. Once I've chatted with people in voice chat on WoW I tend to use their voice, independent of their name. Beforehand -- I use their name and sometimes the way they type.
In "real life" do we establish these connections depending on the environment in which people meet? In long distance relationships is it the voice? How about by email chat, are you more connected emotionally to the email address than the name?
Just some interesting ideas...
My friend had the bright idea that he wanted to organize all the files on his computer.
..
Normal people just organize their documents according to "work", or "personal".
His approach was to organize files by their extensions.
This was a Windows 95 machine. The C: drive (after "optimization") resembled:
C:>dir
.
bin
dll
doc
exe
ini
xls
etc...
He made folders on his C drive corresponding to the file extensions, and had gone through every file he could move (including C:\windows).
You can bet, it didn't reboot after that!
Save the planet, prevent global warming, Pollute!
I can't think of one really good point to this, other than that you can use the mouse at all points.
My wireless mouse has a battery, that needs to be charged for about 20 min. every 2 weeks at maximum (I normally go for about 3-4 weeks depending on use, and I use heavily to begin with).
This type of mouse will save me while playing those games that I can't take a 20 min. break from, and I have forgotten to dock my mouse for over two weeks.
I guess this is more of the "I can do it" technologies not "I should do it".
I hear people have already downloaded the full Half Life 2 game!
(before anyone gets too excited, this is in reference to the Steam distribution model)
Exactly
Obviously putting the most powerful components on the market doesn't require the most intelligence.
However, most of the better pieces of equipment out there put together form a nice launching point for the top of the line gaming computers.
For the most part the better equipment is more expensive. Companies such as Alienware, if I remember correctly, know so much about the high end equipment they use that they have written advanced drivers and utilities to help the customer get the last x% out of their systems.
This is where the knowledge and advanced support comes into account.
I agree with you fully, the most difficult system is a mid range system that is required for say "video editing, and basic office tasks" but has a tight budget. When you have to swap out the processor for faster ram, or perhaps decide that the power supply at 300W can suffice as opposed to the 450 originally planned, is when building computers becomes a challenge.
Just yesterday I priced out a very high end gaming machine for $3k (the CPU alone, no monitor / keyboard / mouse etc -- sweet p4 3.4 EE / 2 GB corsair / 2x200GB SATA Raid 0 / heatsink etc. / sweet case / 550 Power / ATI x800 256MB)
That $3k computer worth of parts can only be made possible by knowledge of the system and optimized for performance by mastery of hardware tweaking and overclocking.
The $400 machines for sale on Dell take relatively little knowledge to put together. The expensive machiens by vendors such as Alienware include much more knowledge about the interworkings and optimizations of the individual parts.
Since duplicating this knowledge is free, that is where the profit to be made is.
The only problem I would have with this is the people who will be wasting their money buying these high end gaming machines when they only need the mid range Dell machines.
That no matter how good/bad the encryption mechanism is, people can't break it.
If I published software that "encrypted" an audio stream by reversing the bits, and someone figured it out or wrote software to get rid of my "encryption" scheme, then I could just start a legal battle against all those who try to publish against me?
This is a wild, unpredictable, capitalistic world, not a pre-school.
A few years ago walking around Boston I started seeing this strange symbol on some buildings (graffiti).
There were no words associated with it, or antyhing. I thought it was either: A) Extremely intelligent statement on societies inability to learn anything about something that cannot accurately be represented and researched in text. or B) Just a random symbol.
I still haven't found out what it meant, but a tool like this would have been very useful.
This would truly have been interesting if they were placed in the microwave at random (not in a stack, but rotated in every which way).
If they all burned in the same place after that, then there is something to take a look at.
You don't get anything for free.
When my friends ask me if I'm "online", I love to respond "Yes".
They then ask why it doesn't I'm on, I explain that online ISN'T JUST AOL.
Most likely a blank stare ensues.
I agree, Microsoft is much worse than apple.
Apple hardly does this to anyone.
The question isn't WHY would someone choose WMA, it's IF they would.
For my personal mp3 player, I would choose WMA because of the file sizes possible (if I could do WMA my IPOD would hold about 30000 songs) with relatively decent playback for riding public transportation.
Telling someone if they want choice, and saying "Then you should use [compression scheme]" is just as bad as microsoft's new portables only allowing WMA.
Just as most of us are offended by Microsoft's "strong arming" of competition by not providing support, this is Apple doing the same exact thing.
We are just as bad as microsoft if we don't support enabling this technology.
In defense of the technology, I've used it quite a bit. I used to own a Creative Nomad II MG portable MP3 player with 128MB of ram. Without the use of WMA support, it could fit about 40-60 songs. With the use of WMA it could then fit about 120-140 songs.
I had stored all of my music as MP3 and when syncing up with my device I would transfer them and store them on my device as WMA. It dramatically increased the number of songs I coudl store on my device.
In a loud street environment the slight difference between WMA and MP3 (not so slight in a nice environment) didn't make a difference.
Ultimately the end user should have the CHOICE to use whatever he wants. That choice should not be made for him.
If I remember correctly there was talk that although it was done in a "single" shot, there was some splicing right before the end. I think it was near where the window lowers or something.
Can anyone confirm or deny?
The developers didn't mess up not accounting for such a large battle. It's most likely minimally difficult for them to make an object invincible.
The point, in MMOG especially, is that having something possible, but very difficult actually serves a role beyond him just being there. In this case it united an entire server.
Making games realistic whereas nothing is invincible makes them better (in my opinion).
If I had it my way, as a character, I could destroy whatever it is I wanted. Obviously this holds true, everyone wants to be strong. I'm talking about everything being possible, just someone has to gather the means to do it.
Imagine if a group of X amount of players was able to actually destroy a town in everquest by bashing at it for a day? That would be an amazing news item, and be something that SoE should use to propel the story on each server.
Good stuff, congrats!
I thought it was extremely easy to "break" the apple DRM.
Personally within 15 min. of downloading a song, I had an MP3 file, full quality, of the download.
Not that I intend to necessarily illegally share it, but the iTunes files don't play on my secondary mp3 player (IPOD of course, being my primary).
There's a new worm out there that exploits a security hole still in Windows 2k/XP from when it was released.
It has the capability to shut down applications, goes right through anti-virus software (even the latest patches!!!), and gives total control of the victim computer to the creator of the worm.
An attempt by the powers that be to shut down it's source of updates was thwarted by various government agencies and the worm itself.
Unfortunately there is no patch to get rid of the W32.MS.AutoUpdateRequired worm.
Or you can just assume the individual is capable of overlaying the images on one another.
:)
The image has "phantom" edges hanging off of both sides, but is just as effective.
I had written a drawing program for this on my old TI-82 (remember those stereograms about 5-6 years ago?). The basis was a screen made up in 2 sections, the left [x] pixels, and the right [x] pixels, divided in half.
If we can get a user to "adjust" his eyes appropriately this generates a truly 3d image (since both eyes are looking at opposite copies of the image).
In my implementation I used the "stereogram" noise as a background that was mirrored across the center of the screen (and flipped horizontally).
Worked great, you could see true 3d images if you crossed your eyes enough, and the screen didn't look funny (with 2 images) if you didn't.
But this really isn't effective if you're trying to see anything more detailed than a floating square or circle
Ban all IPs.
... for backup purposes only" seem to work so well.
Make a website with the following:
You can have your IP address added to the list of acceptable IP addresses only if you are 150 years of age or older, and can balance 15 apples on your forhead.
Enter IP Address:
Add Me
Because those "not allowed unless
Take for example what we can do with computers:
We probably relatively easily count the approximate number of toothpicks in a pile very well (using sight only).
It is much more complex for a computer to determine if the pile contains "lots" or "very few" toothpicks in so much as that value is very context specific.
I fully agree with the above post.
This is very similiar to the corporate structure. A CEO cannot be bothered with the details of each branch of his operation (does he want to know when Jane Doe calls in sick?). He is made more effective by paying attention to only the larger goals.
I think this study is giving us a realization of the fact that the brain can actually process this type of information very well, but it isn't normally exposed.
A more interesting extension of this study would be to have an individual "count toothpicks" and at the same time comprehend the amount of toothpicks he has just counted.
As cruel as this might seem, what about asking the individual drawing the cat about the cat. The first "stick" figure cat may have been sitting on a ktichen floor asking for food, whereas the "detailed" figure could have just been a cat (or to extend it, a "bitwise" copy of an image).
I'd err on the side of evolution in this case.
Any decent sysadmin should AT LEAST be checking slashdot every few hours :)
When he sees his system up in the headlines, he may get off his warcraft game and get to paying attention.