guess business people won't take jesus seriously now.
please disregard the son of god, he's lying. there is no salvation, it's just some ponytailed-sandal-wearing-freak, waxing poetically.
instead, listen to the religious leaders who are appropriately dressed. only those who have a clean presentation can provide the truth. and don't forget, you get what you pay for. so it should be expensive too.
Peter Quinn, are you smoking crack again? what makes you think the "ponytails and sandals set" is cramping linux adoption? maybe if you wouldn't wear such hideousties, people might start believing you...
take a look at a bell labs publicity photo of UNIX inventors dennis ritchie and ken thompson working at a pdp-11 console(a paper console at that!)... if the room they were working in wasn't so cold, they'd probably be wearing sandals! and shorts! and drinking lot's of yoohoo!!!
shhh... they were in the process of growing their ponytails when they took this photo, but don't tell peter, or he will call unix a frivolous operating system.
in all seriousness mr. quinn, i think you need to wake up. suits and ties and "appropriate dress" isn't going to make a difference in linux adoption. linux and open source technology will/will not be adopted for a variety of reasons: existing technology, legacy systems, budget, skill set, vendors, etc. dress code is probably not even a blip on the radar of consideration.
just a thought, but maybe if you had a ponytail, you might have made more headway with your open document initiative... government people would have looked at you and thought "hmmm, ponytail, sandals, tech-talk... he must know what he's talking about!"
i'm actully glad to see the question asked, i'd like to see some of the other options...
i was researching this a couple weeks ago, and have decided to give osticket community version a try.
i've used wreq in the past and recommend it, and will also check out RT, it is we documented and even has an oreilly book! both of these are heavy perl based, where as osticket is more php/mysql based. make sure to check out the community version, the commercial version is a little stale... in any event my requirement was a web interface with both help desk and user interfaces, and the ability to email submitted tickets to submitter as well as help desk, and perform searches.
i've worked in a very mixed environ for the last 12 years(advertising/pre-press/graphic arts) and have had to support many different OS's and versions at the same time (win 95-2003, mac os9-10.x, sol 2.51-10, irix 6.5.x, aix 4.3.3-5, linux 2.4-2.6). having many different os's makes for some really interesting compatability issues... sometimes the sysadmin in place this are homegrown, possibly from the production environment, or was shifted into IT for political reasons or punishment. i've never come in as the sysadmin's sysadmin, but i have been a working manager with several sysadmin reporting to me... in any event once i size them up, i treat them one of two ways:
1) if their sysadmin-fu is GOOD, i tell them that i'm going to leave them alone if they keep me in the loop with daily/weekly sitreps, good/bad/indifferent. i also let them know that i will get involved only when requested by said sysadmin, and i will interfere only in emergencies (as defined at my discretion or that of management). i also let it be known that i will play interference on their behalf with other corporate entities, but in turn they need to come thru on their end. i'm the new sheriff in town.
2) if their lack skillz, i'll find out why... apathy, wrong department, stoopid, etc. i'll try to either encourage building a skill set(hard/software, helpdesk, pc, mac, unix, install, scripting, etc), or eliminate the position and find someone else. and i make it clear that those are the choices. oh, and that i'm the new sheriff in town. the good ones will rise, the bad ones will hang themselves.
i don't know what your official role or title is, but it almost sounds either managerial or as a mentor. in any case you'll meet resistance with some folks and false acceptance(while they are sizing you up) by others. treat everyone equally, and resist the temptation of forming alliances too quickly.
find an area that this current crew has a big void (trouble ticket, escalation path, response time, purchasing criteria, customer relations, etc) and implement a real improvement, not just a bureaucratic step. you might also consider asking everyone to train you on how they do their job, as if you're a trainee. this will give you a chance to see how they operate and assess their true skills as well as offer some tips or pointers. consider also sharing some of the IT load by being a working manager. whomever hired you thinks they know your qualifications, show it to your crew.
open your requirements to include other platforms. i've tackled this problem several times in the last five years for different employers. it seems like it's a holy grail when i speak with others that have similar needs, even with folks who have already deployed commercial groupware products. being too narrow to the mac will bite you in the ass later. at the very least consider a system that is both mac and pc compliant.
consider an all web deployment, one that does not require specific software on the client side but will work with a variety of client apps. php and mysql based systems seem the most flexible.
by moving organic waste material from the cloaca to a water filled waste evacuation unit via a group of circularly organized muscles! now anyone who decides to take a shit on the toilet will need to get a right of use license from me. MWHAHAHAHA!
if you have one, who paid for it? you or an employer? if you want the training, take care of it yourself, and get the tax credit at the end of the year. don't let an employer hold it over you(i paid for your training/i'm going to pay for your training)...
in the past, i've heard of employers reimbursing technical training on a sliding scale based on grades(if available), and that withholding the reimbursement for up to 12 months, so as to not pay for training, and have a freshly trained employee go work for someone else.
unless you are a bank, or work for one, and are required to use a dial up connection and a goofy RSA secureID authenticator, i'd tell your "friend" (if you can call him that) to pull his head out of his ass and realize that security thru obscurity is a joke, and order your high speed connection. the dialup argument for security is even starting to crumble for banks and other institutions that traditionally need a higher level of security... VPNs, securid authenticators, non-trivial passwords, access policies, etc are what's really needed in those arenas.
as far as your "friend" is concerned, perhaps he'll tell you that you should use floppies to transfer files ala sneakernet, because of it's security value...
be a real friend and tell mr. obscurity-security to wake up, and that his advise is off the mark. the DOD considers the only real secure computer is one that is not hooked up to a network and one that doesn't communicate with other computers...
by the way, i'm just playing about your "friend"... no offense, just an easy taget;-)
on the whole i agree with CT. personally i think that a post/submission should range 25-50 words, just enough to whet the appetite or decide to pass to the next story, but not too much that reading the whole submission is a pain. spelling isn't important when getting the message across, but if it hinders the comprehension, you should correct or change the language for better understanding(i think this should only apply to submissions, not to comments). and since CT is the editor-in-chief (so to speak) i think taking license to trim extraneous cruft from submissions, or adding a comment is fair play, after all,slashdot is malda's frankenstein.
if spelling is a big issue, has the slashdot team considered building spell checking into the submission and/or comment engine? this might actually make the spelling bee nazi's STFU.
lastly, it might actually be interesting to open up the submission pipeline to subscribers, so we can see what might be coming around the bend, so to speak. i don't mean any kind of story voting like digg, but more of a function so that posters won't feel burned that someone else stole their scoop. just my 2 cents...
kodak came out with a panoramic camera called the cirkut, and images were captured by moving the lense with respect to the film plane, essentially a shutter slit that was constantly exposing a new supply of film. because the shutter was a travelling slit, one could capture some bizzare images if the subject was in motion.
combine this with some really wild slit/film configurations, and you can get some interesting images... check out what andrew davidhazy is doing with moving slit photography, especially some of this stuff. he even has some articles discussing scanner derived camera backs here and here
i think your intensions are good, but your paving your own personal road to hell, or at least torment. at the end of the day your reading audience will end up being those who really know(or want to know), and your book will end up being really lame. your mom might read your book because she's your mom, but she probably wishes that someone would just "program" a simple, easy to use computer... and she probably doesn't want to waste her time reading about computers.
put it this way, how much does your mom know about automobiles(mechanics, engine displacement, suspension, electrical harness, etc) and how does this information improve her use of a car? how about a TV, or a gas stove, or any other consumer product? most of these object have built in instructions, semantics, to help the user learn how to use the product. computers and software have a long way to go before semantics gets encorporated as much as they have for many consumer products.
benchmarks are such bullshit. that's like saying you can determine the performance of any car by just looking at the tachometer and speedometer while driving on a race track... i say show us the real world tests, man!
i suspect that performance in areas such as gaussian blur and other filtered transformations in photoshop will show that the g-5 dual core is as spritely as the intel dual core, if not more so... and quartz composer would be another area that the g-5 dually would compete well.
i'm not nay-saying the core-duo, i'm just being cautiously optimistic, and i suspect that the g-5 proc will be in apple products for a while, even after the transition... why not maintain OS code for both processors, apple has been doing it for years now, and if their major software partners are committing to UB, then having a few ppc options trickling for a couple more years will be tolerated...
every one needs a backup solution, and we'll be witnessing 1TB+ needs in the home. maxtor made the one touch button backup(retrospect) drive solutions popular, but the one touch button solutions will eventually have a diminishing point of return as drive sizes get larger. if you can roll up your sleeves and roll your own, i think a 2 raid system is the way to go...
2 raids on a single system: primary raid built for performance, secondary for backup and redundancy. primary raid = raid 0, 2x250gb sata secondary raid = raid 5 3x250gb pata most modern mobo's come with both ata/ide and sata, or if necessary add the extra host cards to run the additional drives. hardware raids are preferred over software, for performance and allowing i/o functions to be offloadede to a dedicated controller. software for back up to the secondary raid? how about good ol' tar or even tarpipe?
tape drives are great if you can afford it. unfortunately i can't afford an LTO2/3 drive(and please no references to refurbished drives! refurbished tape drives are as dependable as retreads). the tape drives which are affordable are either too slow or not capable of handling the capacity needed(or requiring spanned tapes)
get a 1 or 2 u rack mount case, a couple samsung 250gb drives, mini-itx mobo, openBSD, and roll your own. i started out in '98 using linux for my personal home server(redhat>suse>debian>redhat>fedora>openbsd), and without a doubt openbsd has been the most stable and the least problematic... i've been using it for the last 18 months, and the only reason for rebooting was when i experienced an extended power outage, when i moved, and when i added a new hard drive (because of a noisy case fan). http://www.doink.org/geeklog/public_html/article.p hp?story=20051212224355152
BIG TIP!!! get a frackin' UPS! i'm currently using an ancient APC smart 2200, but i've had fewer flakey problemsthe last three years i've been running with a UPS, and i think alot of it is just having clean power... of course my sysadmin chops might have gotten better as well, but i'm pretty sure clean power goes a loooonnnng way.
finally, as far as file sharing is concerned, i prefer netatalk cause i'm a long time mac user(as is my wife) and i've been a sysadmin in the graphic arts for a long time. netatal 2.0.x works very nicely on openbsd. but you should run whatever file sharing (netatalk, smb, nfs) is most conducive to your client OS.
i can't tell you which backup/archive is gonna be the best for you... if i could run legato networker on bsd cheaply, i would. i'm leaning towards bru for the time being, but i'd like to explore amanda some more.
good luck.
incompatible handwriting tech, plus no repairs...
on
iBook Converts to iTablet
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
the lack of inkwell compatability kind of defeats the whole purpose of getting a tablet mac in the first place... use another vendor for handwriting recognition, sure, but not as slick as inkwell for sure. plus extra cost.
but the bigger complaint would be that they will not repair any tablet, after they void the warranty for you. at the very least they should offer a limited warranty and repair policy. without any, they pool of prospective buyers is gonna narrow dramatically.
and you'd think after spending all that time figuring out how to make this work(which they haven't actually done it yet, not until you buy one, then they'll figure it out) they would have designed a better stylus holder. it looks more like an after thought.
so in the end, what you really end up paying for is someone elses laptop case mod experiment. that you had to bid on thru ebay.
and the slashdot crowd is doing it's best to figure out exactly what you want... (these half duplex conversations require creative license to figure out what the real question is) well, here's my 2 cents...
hardware and OS, i've had the best experience with sun, especially if you have both sunspectrum and sunsolve. hands done, excellent response time, even if you have the silver or bronze level(4 or 8 hour) response.
OS itself, once again sun, i've also recently been impressed with redhat. i was calling on behave of a client, and the person answering the phone was the tech i worked with, no dilly-dicking around with traffickers trying to figure out who to directo your call too. not bad.
commodity hardware(x86 equipment) i'd say dell, then gateway. once you've set up a business account and done a little business, you get your company advocate, and it's actually nice to be able to talk to someone who has a record of all the shit you bought from them. their desktop/servers are BTO, but replacement parts which are RMA'ed usually ship next day.
for random components and parts, microcenter. i'm sure tiger and frye's are comparable. it's nice to be able to walk in, scan the shelves, and pick up the part you need (HD, optical, memory, mobo, etc), and if they don't have the part you were looking for, it's easy to check out what your alternatives are.
keep basic spare parts on your shelf (HD, optical, memory, power supply, usb hubs and cables) and have a decent toolkit and a bin of itty bitty spare pieces (jumpers, standoffs)...
lastly keep a few online vendors handy, with credit card or corporate accounts available for bigger ticket items. i usually rotate between CDW, newegg, and pc/mac mall. when i absolutely need a part sometimes i'll order from a couple vendors and either keep one on the shelf as a spare, or return the extra via RMA. if you are a regular, most of these outfits won't mind(regular means more than a couple hondo a year...) if you use CDW, they often have a supply depot in major metro areas, so you might even be able to messenger/will call your parts.
last shop i worked at we had 1 spare pc, 1 spare inkjet printer, 1 spare laser printer, 1 spare mac, multiple spare monitors, a couple spare switches, 1 spare cell phone, in addition to the spare components and parts. the pc and mac had a base os install and apps suite. if we had a machine that took more than an hour to repair, we'd drop the spare in it's place and promise to return the fixed machine the next day. i also always standardized on specific brand components, i.e. seagate HD's , kingston memory, sony monitors, etc, so when swapping out components became easier to maintain.
uh, you need to figure out how to write so that what you write isn't misread so easily... Sony VAIO N505VE: power connection killed by my son... you put the power connection BEFORE your son, so it looks like your son is the recipient of the action... perhaps you could have phased this as: Sony VAIO N505VE: my son destroyed the power connection... please apologize to all of us who thought your son and daughter were killed by laptop power connections. and fer christ sake keep the rugrats AWAY from the laptops!;-)
i've been working with computers for almost 20 years, and the thing that really affects your work dramatically is everything that surround the computer: the futniture. bad furniture=repetative stress disorder and other maladies, like fucking up your eyes and getting neck and back aches.
1) make sure you have a good chair which supports you ass/spine/thighs properly, so it doesn't cause undo stress on your body. if you have the cash, the aeron chair is an excellent choice, other herman miller or steel case task chairs are also good choices. avoid the ikea/office max/office depot $99 entry level task chairs... these'll fuck you up. look for chairs that have quality tilting/tension/lifting mechanisms, arm rests, and good lumbar support. most quality task chairs can be found in the $250-500. you're spending as much time in your chair as you do working at your desk. consider it a human interface as important as a keyboard, mouse or monitor. personally i'm using the old skool eames aluminum group executive chair. i've never been a fan of the balans chairs, but i got a programmer friend who swears by it, claims it improved his posture, cause it forces your to sit up right...
2) if you don't have a good desk, get one. IMHO desks are a little easier than chairs sine it doesn't necessarily require you to actually try it out to figure if it works for you. height of the working surface should be between 36-42" from the floor, keyboard shelf/drawer and other accoutraments are personal preference. If you don't have a desk, are are looking into sreplacing your existing one, consider some of the task stuff from ikea, or if you got extra cash, go with the anthro cart stuff. the ikea stuff is cheap, but it actually has a good range of customability. i like the jerker series from ikea with the upper shelf and the swinging side tables. I've got one of these now, and at one time i had two 21" monitors, two 15" monitors (on the swing out side surfaces), a shuttle XPC, sun classic, quadra 700, G5 and a laptop all on the same desk.
3) a quality display with fast a refresh, and proper viewing angle. if your working 8-12 hours in front of this stuff, don't torture your eyes or you neck! the best viewing angle for a display is as close to perpendicular to the center of the screen. iyou might consider hooking up an external display to your laptop, and run the laptop closed, using the external display as the primary monitor. LCD displays have come down in price enough. i replaced my 21" tube for 19" viewsonic vx910, which I ended up getting for $100 under retail because of rebates. it's bright, it has good contrast, the refresh is fast(not great for gaming, but great for real work), and it has both dvi and vga, so i can actually use it as a poorman's KVM.
4) ambient lighting. shutting down all the lights and bathing in the glow of the monitor might be cool if your a teenager, but your eyes will eventually suffer from lack of exercise. ambient lighting helps reduce the extreme contrast between the light coming from the monitor and no light coming from around the monitor. having ambient lighting will allow your eyes to focus on things around your work space when your eyes need some variety. try a desklamp directed towards the wall/floor/ceiling. quartz halogen is preferred because it has the widest spectrum, then standard incandecent next, and flourescent are a last(poor) choice because of the discontinuous spectrum.
5) try using the software on your system to cycle backgroud pictures for you on a regular cycle(new image every 20-30 minutes) you might also try working in a teminal program which allows you to alter background image/color/transparency, and have it set randomly for you, like e-term. also consider a typeface which is easy on the eyes. serif typeface tend to be easier on the eyes for long term reading, san serif can become annoying real fast when reading small type for an extended time. i prefer using courier or another monospaced typeface, it's also easier to recognize number/letter pairs that are ver
jason on the whole is a pretty smart guy, and was instrumental in helping sell the dream of virtual reality. it's too bad too, because personally i don't think it was so much the lack of real world virtual reality applications that ended up tanking the whole VR scene (although technology and implmentation were way behind concept), it was that somehow goggled-and-gloved-freaky-white-guy-with-dreadlock s jason lanier became the poster child of VR. that image of jason with the glove and the goggles propped on his head must have made more than one corporate VC type question what the hell he was doing with their money. if evan's and sutherland were the posterkids for VR in the 80's and 90's the way jason was, VR/VRML might not have tanked...
it's kinda important to make the distinction between inventor and innovator. gabor is credited as being the one of the first to invent holography, leith for having innovated the use of a laser and later the off-axis technique.
not making this distinction is like creditiing henry ford for the invention of the automobile.
dude, small world is right! no bromine gas, nastiest stuff i used was mercuric chloride for bleach when creating master plates. typically i had contact more mundane chemicals(pyrogallic acid, suphric acid with potassium dichormates and permanganates being the nastiest stuff at that time, remember pryo A+B and bleach? and the holographers' permanently stained fingers?) for silver processes with HeNe and pulse ruby work. it was only when i started working for a commercial lab making photo-resist plates for embossed holography that i came into some really nasty stuff. other than the chemistry, the biggest dangers i was exposed to was cutting myself while cutting glass in the dark and burning myself with high powered lasers... i got out of holography about the time agfa was announcing that it would cease production of the 8E75 30x40 cm glass plates and we started snapping up boxes of the stuff like it was candy. never did like working with film...
back in 80's i was an art student learning holography and had attended an international symposium on holography at lake forest college hosted by dr. tung jeong(TJ) in the summer 1985. this was THE conference to attend, and as a youngblood attendee, i had the chance to meet and rub shoulders with all the holographic greats: yuri denisyuk, emmett leith, steve benton, nick philips, graham saxby, just to name a few. it was literally a whos who of holography, all in attendace. with worldwide attendance numbering less than 400 attendees, it was possible to hook up with the pro's in the industry easily. sadly holography as i learned and practiced it has mostly turned into a dead art, following the footsteps of the fox-talbot tintypes... the process was lengthy, difficult, expensive, with many detractions, and the chemical process neccesary for development was often highly caustic and toxic... i'll aways have a spot in my heart for holography.
leith and upatniek are attributed to having discovered/invented the off axis hologram utilizing a reference beam. with a slight variation steve benton would discovered/invented the rainbow hologram(also known as the benton hologram), which is the most common place hologram that we see on credit cards, tickets, and other flat printed materials.
the best way to pitch it is to telll your corporate decision making panel that it can be branded and named what ever they like... it seems like an uphill battle, but i bet you half the panel have names that people make fun of(privately, of course). if you or your panel can't get past the names, you need to look elsewhere.
i've never, never, ever had a bad experience with kingston when it came to getting warranty replacement memory. i've heard so many first hand stories of other sysadmin and engineers who have had only good things to say about kingston, that for any server build/upgrade, kingston has been the only brand i've spec'ed. i've heard good things about crucial from my brothers in arms, but i personally have not used them...
back in the day when 64 and 128 mb upgrades were in the four figure costs, you didn't want to hang your dick on some johnny-cheap ram, you bought kingston. and when systems acted flakey and you had to peel all you components out of the box and systematically replace/swap pieces out, you were always able to count on the engineers at kingston to help swap and even test memory modules to help you determine if it was their goods, or someone elses.
not to put too fine a point on the question, but how much memory are you talking about, and what did it cost you? it may not help take the sting out of a bad situation, but you've had the memory for over a year, maybe you can just take your lumps on this one and never buy from those guys again, regardless of whether their under new management.
if your ass is really sore about getting them to share the burden, why don't you talk to the real nice. get a sales rep on the line, possibly a product manager, and explain without emotion or profanity what your situation is, and explain that: 1) you are losing a customer 2) i will never buy from you again 3) i will tell all my associates my bad experience with your company/product 4) i will always offer my comments on online forums if the discussion is regarding memory and my experience(epinion, amazon, blah blah blah)
if you still don't get any sympathy or response, thank whomever you spoke with for their time, but make sure to get the name, address and phone number of the person you are speaking with, and browser the website for all email addresses and send every address an email complaint. in you written complaint, explain that you've been given the run around and list times/events/names. make a copy of the email, and send a copy both to your local better business bureau as well as the one where the vendor is running it's business.
no one likes bad press; bad word of mouth has a tendancy to spread geometrically (remember girls with a bad reputation? they prolly only gave out hj...) if you take your time to compose you complaint in a way that your grandmother would understand, and phrase things carefully so that you are neither liable or slanderous, you'll probably get some kind of response in your favor.
Slashdot Mirror
guess business people won't take jesus seriously now.
please disregard the son of god, he's lying.
there is no salvation, it's just some ponytailed-sandal-wearing-freak, waxing poetically.
instead, listen to the religious leaders who are appropriately dressed. only those who have a clean presentation can provide the truth. and don't forget, you get what you pay for. so it should be expensive too.
Peter Quinn, are you smoking crack again?
what makes you think the "ponytails and sandals set" is cramping linux adoption?
maybe if you wouldn't wear such hideous ties, people might start believing you...
take a look at a bell labs publicity photo of UNIX inventors dennis ritchie and ken thompson working at a pdp-11 console(a paper console at that!)... if the room they were working in wasn't so cold, they'd probably be wearing sandals! and shorts! and drinking lot's of yoohoo!!!
shhh... they were in the process of growing their ponytails when they took this photo, but don't tell peter, or he will call unix a frivolous operating system.
in all seriousness mr. quinn, i think you need to wake up. suits and ties and "appropriate dress" isn't going to make a difference in linux adoption. linux and open source technology will/will not be adopted for a variety of reasons: existing technology, legacy systems, budget, skill set, vendors, etc. dress code is probably not even a blip on the radar of consideration.
just a thought, but maybe if you had a ponytail, you might have made more headway with your open document initiative... government people would have looked at you and thought "hmmm, ponytail, sandals, tech-talk... he must know what he's talking about!"
i'm actully glad to see the question asked, i'd like to see some of the other options...
i was researching this a couple weeks ago, and have decided to give osticket community version a try.
i've used wreq in the past and recommend it, and will also check out RT, it is we documented and even has an oreilly book! both of these are heavy perl based, where as osticket is more php/mysql based. make sure to check out the community version, the commercial version is a little stale... in any event my requirement was a web interface with both help desk and user interfaces, and the ability to email submitted tickets to submitter as well as help desk, and perform searches.
i've worked in a very mixed environ for the last 12 years(advertising/pre-press/graphic arts) and have had to support many different OS's and versions at the same time (win 95-2003, mac os9-10.x, sol 2.51-10, irix 6.5.x, aix 4.3.3-5, linux 2.4-2.6). having many different os's makes for some really interesting compatability issues... sometimes the sysadmin in place this are homegrown, possibly from the production environment, or was shifted into IT for political reasons or punishment. i've never come in as the sysadmin's sysadmin, but i have been a working manager with several sysadmin reporting to me... in any event once i size them up, i treat them one of two ways:
1) if their sysadmin-fu is GOOD, i tell them that i'm going to leave them alone if they keep me in the loop with daily/weekly sitreps, good/bad/indifferent. i also let them know that i will get involved only when requested by said sysadmin, and i will interfere only in emergencies (as defined at my discretion or that of management). i also let it be known that i will play interference on their behalf with other corporate entities, but in turn they need to come thru on their end. i'm the new sheriff in town.
2) if their lack skillz, i'll find out why... apathy, wrong department, stoopid, etc. i'll try to either encourage building a skill set(hard/software, helpdesk, pc, mac, unix, install, scripting, etc), or eliminate the position and find someone else. and i make it clear that those are the choices. oh, and that i'm the new sheriff in town. the good ones will rise, the bad ones will hang themselves.
i don't know what your official role or title is, but it almost sounds either managerial or as a mentor. in any case you'll meet resistance with some folks and false acceptance(while they are sizing you up) by others. treat everyone equally, and resist the temptation of forming alliances too quickly.
find an area that this current crew has a big void (trouble ticket, escalation path, response time, purchasing criteria, customer relations, etc) and implement a real improvement, not just a bureaucratic step. you might also consider asking everyone to train you on how they do their job, as if you're a trainee. this will give you a chance to see how they operate and assess their true skills as well as offer some tips or pointers. consider also sharing some of the IT load by being a working manager. whomever hired you thinks they know your qualifications, show it to your crew.
open your requirements to include other platforms. i've tackled this problem several times in the last five years for different employers. it seems like it's a holy grail when i speak with others that have similar needs, even with folks who have already deployed commercial groupware products. being too narrow to the mac will bite you in the ass later. at the very least consider a system that is both mac and pc compliant.
consider an all web deployment, one that does not require specific software on the client side but will work with a variety of client apps. php and mysql based systems seem the most flexible.
take a look at phpgroupware, geeklog, and joomla.
by moving organic waste material from the cloaca to a water filled waste evacuation unit via a group of circularly organized muscles! now anyone who decides to take a shit on the toilet will need to get a right of use license from me. MWHAHAHAHA!
if you have one, who paid for it?
you or an employer?
if you want the training, take care of it yourself, and get the tax credit at the end of the year. don't let an employer hold it over you(i paid for your training/i'm going to pay for your training)...
in the past, i've heard of employers reimbursing technical training on a sliding scale based on grades(if available), and that withholding the reimbursement for up to 12 months, so as to not pay for training, and have a freshly trained employee go work for someone else.
unless you are a bank, or work for one, and are required to use a dial up connection and a goofy RSA secureID authenticator, i'd tell your "friend" (if you can call him that) to pull his head out of his ass and realize that security thru obscurity is a joke, and order your high speed connection. the dialup argument for security is even starting to crumble for banks and other institutions that traditionally need a higher level of security... VPNs, securid authenticators, non-trivial passwords, access policies, etc are what's really needed in those arenas.
;-)
as far as your "friend" is concerned, perhaps he'll tell you that you should use floppies to transfer files ala sneakernet, because of it's security value...
be a real friend and tell mr. obscurity-security to wake up, and that his advise is off the mark. the DOD considers the only real secure computer is one that is not hooked up to a network and one that doesn't communicate with other computers...
by the way, i'm just playing about your "friend"... no offense, just an easy taget
on the whole i agree with CT. personally i think that a post/submission should range 25-50 words, just enough to whet the appetite or decide to pass to the next story, but not too much that reading the whole submission is a pain. spelling isn't important when getting the message across, but if it hinders the comprehension, you should correct or change the language for better understanding(i think this should only apply to submissions, not to comments). and since CT is the editor-in-chief (so to speak) i think taking license to trim extraneous cruft from submissions, or adding a comment is fair play, after all ,slashdot is malda's frankenstein.
if spelling is a big issue, has the slashdot team considered building spell checking into the submission and/or comment engine? this might actually make the spelling bee nazi's STFU.
lastly, it might actually be interesting to open up the submission pipeline to subscribers, so we can see what might be coming around the bend, so to speak. i don't mean any kind of story voting like digg, but more of a function so that posters won't feel burned that someone else stole their scoop. just my 2 cents...
combine this with some really wild slit/film configurations, and you can get some interesting images... check out what andrew davidhazy is doing with moving slit photography, especially some of this stuff. he even has some articles discussing scanner derived camera backs here and here
i think your intensions are good, but your paving your own personal road to hell, or at least torment. at the end of the day your reading audience will end up being those who really know(or want to know), and your book will end up being really lame. your mom might read your book because she's your mom, but she probably wishes that someone would just "program" a simple, easy to use computer... and she probably doesn't want to waste her time reading about computers.
put it this way, how much does your mom know about automobiles(mechanics, engine displacement, suspension, electrical harness, etc) and how does this information improve her use of a car? how about a TV, or a gas stove, or any other consumer product? most of these object have built in instructions, semantics, to help the user learn how to use the product. computers and software have a long way to go before semantics gets encorporated as much as they have for many consumer products.
benchmarks are such bullshit. that's like saying you can determine the performance of any car by just looking at the tachometer and speedometer while driving on a race track... i say show us the real world tests, man!
i suspect that performance in areas such as gaussian blur and other filtered transformations in photoshop will show that the g-5 dual core is as spritely as the intel dual core, if not more so... and quartz composer would be another area that the g-5 dually would compete well.
i'm not nay-saying the core-duo, i'm just being cautiously optimistic, and i suspect that the g-5 proc will be in apple products for a while, even after the transition... why not maintain OS code for both processors, apple has been doing it for years now, and if their major software partners are committing to UB, then having a few ppc options trickling for a couple more years will be tolerated...
every one needs a backup solution, and we'll be witnessing 1TB+ needs in the home. maxtor made the one touch button backup(retrospect) drive solutions popular, but the one touch button solutions will eventually have a diminishing point of return as drive sizes get larger. if you can roll up your sleeves and roll your own, i think a 2 raid system is the way to go...
2 raids on a single system: primary raid built for performance, secondary for backup and redundancy.
primary raid = raid 0, 2x250gb sata
secondary raid = raid 5 3x250gb pata
most modern mobo's come with both ata/ide and sata, or if necessary add the extra host cards to run the additional drives.
hardware raids are preferred over software, for performance and allowing i/o functions to be offloadede to a dedicated controller.
software for back up to the secondary raid? how about good ol' tar or even tarpipe?
tape drives are great if you can afford it. unfortunately i can't afford an LTO2/3 drive(and please no references to refurbished drives! refurbished tape drives are as dependable as retreads). the tape drives which are affordable are either too slow or not capable of handling the capacity needed(or requiring spanned tapes)
get a 1 or 2 u rack mount case, a couple samsung 250gb drives, mini-itx mobo, openBSD, and roll your own. i started out in '98 using linux for my personal home server(redhat>suse>debian>redhat>fedora>openbsd), and without a doubt openbsd has been the most stable and the least problematic... i've been using it for the last 18 months, and the only reason for rebooting was when i experienced an extended power outage, when i moved, and when i added a new hard drive (because of a noisy case fan). http://www.doink.org/geeklog/public_html/article.p hp?story=20051212224355152
BIG TIP!!! get a frackin' UPS! i'm currently using an ancient APC smart 2200, but i've had fewer flakey problemsthe last three years i've been running with a UPS, and i think alot of it is just having clean power... of course my sysadmin chops might have gotten better as well, but i'm pretty sure clean power goes a loooonnnng way.
finally, as far as file sharing is concerned, i prefer netatalk cause i'm a long time mac user(as is my wife) and i've been a sysadmin in the graphic arts for a long time. netatal 2.0.x works very nicely on openbsd. but you should run whatever file sharing (netatalk, smb, nfs) is most conducive to your client OS.
i can't tell you which backup/archive is gonna be the best for you... if i could run legato networker on bsd cheaply, i would. i'm leaning towards bru for the time being, but i'd like to explore amanda some more.
good luck.
the lack of inkwell compatability kind of defeats the whole purpose of getting a tablet mac in the first place... use another vendor for handwriting recognition, sure, but not as slick as inkwell for sure. plus extra cost.
but the bigger complaint would be that they will not repair any tablet, after they void the warranty for you. at the very least they should offer a limited warranty and repair policy. without any, they pool of prospective buyers is gonna narrow dramatically.
and you'd think after spending all that time figuring out how to make this work(which they haven't actually done it yet, not until you buy one, then they'll figure it out) they would have designed a better stylus holder. it looks more like an after thought.
so in the end, what you really end up paying for is someone elses laptop case mod experiment.
that you had to bid on thru ebay.
pass.
and the slashdot crowd is doing it's best to figure out exactly what you want... (these half duplex conversations require creative license to figure out what the real question is) well, here's my 2 cents...
hardware and OS, i've had the best experience with sun, especially if you have both sunspectrum and sunsolve. hands done, excellent response time, even if you have the silver or bronze level(4 or 8 hour) response.
OS itself, once again sun, i've also recently been impressed with redhat. i was calling on behave of a client, and the person answering the phone was the tech i worked with, no dilly-dicking around with traffickers trying to figure out who to directo your call too. not bad.
commodity hardware(x86 equipment) i'd say dell, then gateway. once you've set up a business account and done a little business, you get your company advocate, and it's actually nice to be able to talk to someone who has a record of all the shit you bought from them. their desktop/servers are BTO, but replacement parts which are RMA'ed usually ship next day.
for random components and parts, microcenter. i'm sure tiger and frye's are comparable. it's nice to be able to walk in, scan the shelves, and pick up the part you need (HD, optical, memory, mobo, etc), and if they don't have the part you were looking for, it's easy to check out what your alternatives are.
keep basic spare parts on your shelf (HD, optical, memory, power supply, usb hubs and cables) and have a decent toolkit and a bin of itty bitty spare pieces (jumpers, standoffs)...
lastly keep a few online vendors handy, with credit card or corporate accounts available for bigger ticket items.
i usually rotate between CDW, newegg, and pc/mac mall. when i absolutely need a part sometimes i'll order from a couple vendors and either keep one on the shelf as a spare, or return the extra via RMA. if you are a regular, most of these outfits won't mind(regular means more than a couple hondo a year...) if you use CDW, they often have a supply depot in major metro areas, so you might even be able to messenger/will call your parts.
last shop i worked at we had 1 spare pc, 1 spare inkjet printer, 1 spare laser printer, 1 spare mac, multiple spare monitors, a couple spare switches, 1 spare cell phone, in addition to the spare components and parts. the pc and mac had a base os install and apps suite. if we had a machine that took more than an hour to repair, we'd drop the spare in it's place and promise to return the fixed machine the next day. i also always standardized on specific brand components, i.e. seagate HD's , kingston memory, sony monitors, etc, so when swapping out components became easier to maintain.
good luck with your seach for a new vendor...
uh, you need to figure out how to write so that what you write isn't misread so easily... ;-)
Sony VAIO N505VE: power connection killed by my son...
you put the power connection BEFORE your son, so it looks like your son is the recipient of the action...
perhaps you could have phased this as:
Sony VAIO N505VE: my son destroyed the power connection...
please apologize to all of us who thought your son and daughter were killed by laptop power connections.
and fer christ sake keep the rugrats AWAY from the laptops!
i've been working with computers for almost 20 years, and the thing that really affects your work dramatically is everything that surround the computer: the futniture. bad furniture=repetative stress disorder and other maladies, like fucking up your eyes and getting neck and back aches.
1) make sure you have a good chair which supports you ass/spine/thighs properly, so it doesn't cause undo stress on your body. if you have the cash, the aeron chair is an excellent choice, other herman miller or steel case task chairs are also good choices. avoid the ikea/office max/office depot $99 entry level task chairs... these'll fuck you up. look for chairs that have quality tilting/tension/lifting mechanisms, arm rests, and good lumbar support. most quality task chairs can be found in the $250-500. you're spending as much time in your chair as you do working at your desk. consider it a human interface as important as a keyboard, mouse or monitor. personally i'm using the old skool eames aluminum group executive chair. i've never been a fan of the balans chairs, but i got a programmer friend who swears by it, claims it improved his posture, cause it forces your to sit up right...
2) if you don't have a good desk, get one. IMHO desks are a little easier than chairs sine it doesn't necessarily require you to actually try it out to figure if it works for you. height of the working surface should be between 36-42" from the floor, keyboard shelf/drawer and other accoutraments are personal preference. If you don't have a desk, are are looking into sreplacing your existing one, consider some of the task stuff from ikea, or if you got extra cash, go with the anthro cart stuff. the ikea stuff is cheap, but it actually has a good range of customability. i like the jerker series from ikea with the upper shelf and the swinging side tables. I've got one of these now, and at one time i had two 21" monitors, two 15" monitors (on the swing out side surfaces), a shuttle XPC, sun classic, quadra 700, G5 and a laptop all on the same desk.
3) a quality display with fast a refresh, and proper viewing angle. if your working 8-12 hours in front of this stuff, don't torture your eyes or you neck! the best viewing angle for a display is as close to perpendicular to the center of the screen. iyou might consider hooking up an external display to your laptop, and run the laptop closed, using the external display as the primary monitor. LCD displays have come down in price enough. i replaced my 21" tube for 19" viewsonic vx910, which I ended up getting for $100 under retail because of rebates. it's bright, it has good contrast, the refresh is fast(not great for gaming, but great for real work), and it has both dvi and vga, so i can actually use it as a poorman's KVM.
4) ambient lighting. shutting down all the lights and bathing in the glow of the monitor might be cool if your a teenager, but your eyes will eventually suffer from lack of exercise. ambient lighting helps reduce the extreme contrast between the light coming from the monitor and no light coming from around the monitor. having ambient lighting will allow your eyes to focus on things around your work space when your eyes need some variety. try a desklamp directed towards the wall/floor/ceiling. quartz halogen is preferred because it has the widest spectrum, then standard incandecent next, and flourescent are a last(poor) choice because of the discontinuous spectrum.
5) try using the software on your system to cycle backgroud pictures for you on a regular cycle(new image every 20-30 minutes) you might also try working in a teminal program which allows you to alter background image/color/transparency, and have it set randomly for you, like e-term. also consider a typeface which is easy on the eyes. serif typeface tend to be easier on the eyes for long term reading, san serif can become annoying real fast when reading small type for an extended time. i prefer using courier or another monospaced typeface, it's also easier to recognize number/letter pairs that are ver
jason on the whole is a pretty smart guy, and was instrumental in helping sell the dream of virtual reality. it's too bad too, because personally i don't think it was so much the lack of real world virtual reality applications that ended up tanking the whole VR scene (although technology and implmentation were way behind concept), it was that somehow goggled-and-gloved-freaky-white-guy-with-dreadlock s jason lanier became the poster child of VR. that image of jason with the glove and the goggles propped on his head must have made more than one corporate VC type question what the hell he was doing with their money. if evan's and sutherland were the posterkids for VR in the 80's and 90's the way jason was, VR/VRML might not have tanked...
it's kinda important to make the distinction between inventor and innovator.
gabor is credited as being the one of the first to invent holography, leith for having innovated the use of a laser and later the off-axis technique.
not making this distinction is like creditiing henry ford for the invention of the automobile.
dude, small world is right! no bromine gas, nastiest stuff i used was mercuric chloride for bleach when creating master plates. typically i had contact more mundane chemicals(pyrogallic acid, suphric acid with potassium dichormates and permanganates being the nastiest stuff at that time, remember pryo A+B and bleach? and the holographers' permanently stained fingers?) for silver processes with HeNe and pulse ruby work. it was only when i started working for a commercial lab making photo-resist plates for embossed holography that i came into some really nasty stuff. other than the chemistry, the biggest dangers i was exposed to was cutting myself while cutting glass in the dark and burning myself with high powered lasers... i got out of holography about the time agfa was announcing that it would cease production of the 8E75 30x40 cm glass plates and we started snapping up boxes of the stuff like it was candy. never did like working with film...
back in 80's i was an art student learning holography and had attended an international symposium on holography at lake forest college hosted by dr. tung jeong(TJ) in the summer 1985. this was THE conference to attend, and as a youngblood attendee, i had the chance to meet and rub shoulders with all the holographic greats: yuri denisyuk, emmett leith, steve benton, nick philips, graham saxby, just to name a few. it was literally a whos who of holography, all in attendace. with worldwide attendance numbering less than 400 attendees, it was possible to hook up with the pro's in the industry easily. sadly holography as i learned and practiced it has mostly turned into a dead art, following the footsteps of the fox-talbot tintypes... the process was lengthy, difficult, expensive, with many detractions, and the chemical process neccesary for development was often highly caustic and toxic... i'll aways have a spot in my heart for holography.
t _leith_steve_benton.htm
leith and upatniek are attributed to having discovered/invented the off axis hologram utilizing a reference beam. with a slight variation steve benton would discovered/invented the rainbow hologram(also known as the benton hologram), which is the most common place hologram that we see on credit cards, tickets, and other flat printed materials.
thanks for the innovation dr. leith.
here's a picture of leith and benton from mark diamond's holoroid project from that conference...
http://www.diamondimages.com/HOLOROIDS/pages/emme
the best way to pitch it is to telll your corporate decision making panel that it can be branded and named what ever they like... it seems like an uphill battle, but i bet you half the panel have names that people make fun of(privately, of course). if you or your panel can't get past the names, you need to look elsewhere.
i've never, never, ever had a bad experience with kingston when it came to getting warranty replacement memory. i've heard so many first hand stories of other sysadmin and engineers who have had only good things to say about kingston, that for any server build/upgrade, kingston has been the only brand i've spec'ed. i've heard good things about crucial from my brothers in arms, but i personally have not used them...
back in the day when 64 and 128 mb upgrades were in the four figure costs, you didn't want to hang your dick on some johnny-cheap ram, you bought kingston. and when systems acted flakey and you had to peel all you components out of the box and systematically replace/swap pieces out, you were always able to count on the engineers at kingston to help swap and even test memory modules to help you determine if it was their goods, or someone elses.
not to put too fine a point on the question, but how much memory are you talking about, and what did it cost you?
it may not help take the sting out of a bad situation, but you've had the memory for over a year, maybe you can just take your lumps on this one and never buy from those guys again, regardless of whether their under new management.
if your ass is really sore about getting them to share the burden, why don't you talk to the real nice. get a sales rep on the line, possibly a product manager, and explain without emotion or profanity what your situation is, and explain that:
1) you are losing a customer
2) i will never buy from you again
3) i will tell all my associates my bad experience with your company/product
4) i will always offer my comments on online forums if the discussion is regarding memory and my experience(epinion, amazon, blah blah blah)
if you still don't get any sympathy or response, thank whomever you spoke with for their time, but make sure to get the name, address and phone number of the person you are speaking with, and browser the website for all email addresses and send every address an email complaint. in you written complaint, explain that you've been given the run around and list times/events/names. make a copy of the email, and send a copy both to your local better business bureau as well as the one where the vendor is running it's business.
no one likes bad press; bad word of mouth has a tendancy to spread geometrically (remember girls with a bad reputation? they prolly only gave out hj...) if you take your time to compose you complaint in a way that your grandmother would understand, and phrase things carefully so that you are neither liable or slanderous, you'll probably get some kind of response in your favor.
here's mine http://www.flickr.com/photos/21241962@N00/58680025 /