Decide as if the computer will be stolen while at college.
Even while at a goody-two-shoes university, I knew people whose laptop disappeared during a bathroom break. Computers, bicycles, calculators, you name it, all get stolen at disturbing rates on college campuses.
A used computer might be a good bet. For example, you could be adventurous and get a computer that is useless to the average retarded criminal (e.g., an old HP-UX workstation with a 75lb monitor...though moving should be a consideration, too:)
Just a friendly reminder to try your local national public radio stations.
I hate to break it to you, but ClearChannel just bought all the NPR affiliates. They are all going to be country music stations, to complete the hostile takeover of the U.S.A. by real men who wear tight jeans.
Like I said in my other reply above, if legibility is the problem, there are typewriters and hand-held label printers that solve that problem super-cheaply.
For basic record-keeping, Pocket PCs and Windows are just way overboard in complexity and cost. The main driving force behind such systems in hospitals is probably a manager who caught the buzz-word bug of the day and had a budget to expend.
Now you may argue that you might be able to even further reduce the risks by using a hardened OS and special hardware, but at what cost?
Perhaps I am wrong, but embedded systems companies do this affordably every day. They typically do it with reduced kernels and light-weight GUIs and utility APIs. They can even start with a well-tested base, such as the Linux kernel or one of the other well-regarded embedded kernels, cut out the flab, and have a really small code base with much lower risk of software faults. Debugging is also much much easier due to the transparancy of the system at all levels. (BTW, debugging is the most expensive part of most software life cycles, in practice, and can make or break projects over the long-term).
The only real advantage to Windows is that hospitals and medical companies can hire cheap dime-a-dozen college grads and contractors with weak credentials to do general development work. This is a very large risk in itself due to the highly inconsistent quality of the work, liability clauses in software contracts, and high personnel turnover.
Also, Windows falls out of support after several years. Are hospitals really willing to turn over their systems so regularly? Using Open Source software, for example, would guarantee that the whole software stack can be maintained and extended until there is a pressing and necessary requirement to upgrade. A single company like Microsoft should not be in a position to have so much influence over important medical systems. If a closed system is necessary, at least choose IBM, who, for a healthy fee, will support something indefinitely.
Even further, choosing Windows and Pocket PCs is, by definition, expensive relative to simpler systems. The hardware requirements are tremendous. Pocket PCs are fragile and will get broken. Software crashes are expensive from a support perspective. In short, the staff will get entrenched in a daily routine of dealing with Windows and Pocket PCs--it can even distract them from their original duties.
Regardless, if the issue were simply legible prescriptions, my suggestion is to give the doctor a typewriter. $100 and brain-dead easy to maintain. If it breaks, get a new one at OfficeMax. Even the receptionist can do that.
My conclusion is that Pocket PCs and Windows in hospitals is probably the brain child of an excited buzz-word monkey who controls the budget. System complexity is ignored, and the resulting unreliability of the system becomes it's own burden to the hospital's budget and the morale of the staff.
And Microsoft already has deep roots in the medical industry.
This worries me tremendously.
How long until something deep within the hastily-written and poorly-tested tens of millions of lines of code in Windows burbs, and a patient gets injured or dies.
When will people realize that Windows is the least appropriate operating system for medical and military applications, where lives are literally on the line.
Seeing Microsoft products in these applications makes me sick.
Re:info from the conference call
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
SCO owns all of UNIX, all versions, all updates, all source and all derivative works.
They don't own the UNIX trademark. It would be funny if The Open Group revoked SCO's right to it.
Also, SCO would have to put up a pretty solid argument to claim ownership of BSD-derived UNIX. How long has the Berkeley-sanctioned BSD licensing scheme been around? Over a decade, now? Why didn't SCO make a fuss about 386BSD or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or FreeBSD, or Mac OS X?
A poster above brought up another good point: What about those old versions of UNIX released as Open Source a while back by Caldera?
Additionally, there are other POSIX systems that SCO can't touch, limiting SCO's future benefits of their kiddie rants. For example, GNU.
Re:SCO Call is Closed - At Least to Novell Employe
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
they said SCO had asked that Novell employees not be added to the call.
Hmmm...what about Novell employees who happen to be SCO shareholders?
Suppose we had digital rights management for cars.
1) Use the appropriate word "restrictions" instead of "rights", please.
2) DRM for cars isn't necessarily bad, I agree, but only if the DRM is completely local to the car and surrounding cars. There should be only enough software to prevent speeding, tailgating, etc. Anything that transmits a car's position, for example, to a central authority is totally unacceptable. Perhaps transmitting that information upon detecting a crash might be acceptable, but full-time transmission is simply not an option.
The grandparent poster may have been thinking about Slate, which is owned by Microsoft and is fundamentally biased (just like CNN is biased by AOL/TW, NBC is biased by MS, newspapers and radio are biased by their conglomerate owners, etc.).
Religions do the same as the cults except they reinforce positives.
Please, define "positive". Many things many people think are positive, I think are negative, and many things many people thing are negative, I think are positive. Simply, religion is human culture and not one thing more.
With all the FUD and name-calling among SCO, IBM, Novell, Microsoft, etc. etc., I am realizing more and more the foresight of the FSF in establishing its requirements for copyright paperwork when submitting code (link to FSF docs).
It is important to realize that even if the Linux kernel itself is somehow victimized, the GNU tools and the GNU/HURD should be untouched. The BSDs, Mac OS X, and Solaris should fair very well, too, if only because their legal problems are already dealt with. However, I really think SCO's claims against Linux are a long shot (of galactic proportion, unless, of course, they planted the code maliciously), so my hope is that SCO is the only true casualty once all this is over.
So, when sarcasm fails, the fault lies with those dumb enough to say such things and really mean it, not with the reader who didn't "get it".
Hence a need for the occasional markup tags. They make it unambiguous, so neither the writer/speaker nor the reader/listener can be faulted.
Sarcasm from a total stranger doesn't work if the sarcastic comment is the first thing you've ever read by that person, or remember reading by that person.
I agree. The only people who don't think I'm wierd are my family, because they know that I'm wierd. Whenever I try to make a pun or joke in front of people who don't know me well, they don't know what to think of what I say (they usually continue as if I had said nothing).
Not to offend anyone, but I've never really gotten the whole obsession with Ender's game.
Readers become obsessed with the characters Orson Scott Card writes. He does write science fiction and fantasy, but they are really stories about families, children growing up, compassion, antagonism. Readers become obsessed with Ender's relationship with his sister, for example, or Ender's innocence and what really happens at the end of Ender's Game. Card's other novels, such as Worms or The Folk of the Fringe, share these qualities.
Just thinking about Ender and his sister, again, brings up a small swell in my chest. Very good stuff, I must say.
I've gotten bitten by this before. Using sarcasm on Slashdot without using appropriate sarcasm markup tags can be dangerous. Slashdot readers range in density from fluffy air to depleted uranium, with the distribution weighted heavily to either extreme.
Now I realise that you have a gun-toting monkey for a president...
Please, don't offend the monkey! He's sensitive, you know.
Sounds like a great idea, if only to reduce the amount of clutter for your home entertainment center.
Agreed, but Sony needs to follow a few simple rules to make sure consumers will really eat it up:
1) The unit has to be fully functional without a network connection to the Internet. I keep my DirecTV unit unplugged from the telephone, for example, simply because I do not trust DirecTV any further than needed for basic service and monthly billing. The Internet connection for the PS3 should be only for value-added things like network gameplay, web surfing, e-mail, movie downloads, etc.
2) Copy protection controls should be no heavier than they are now. The market is pretty comfortable with proprietary game discs, but pushing things too far (e.g., Palladium) will only alienate consumers. In no case, should the Internet connection be used for digital restrictions management without explicit opt-in.
Like many people, I don't like my property, such as my PC, DirecTV unit, or PlayStation, transmitting data back to their makers. If the manufacturer wants to learn about me, that's what optional registration cards and surveys are for. Manufacturers should have to work hard to gather marketing data. It helps keep them honest and humble, which is very important in maintaining the health of free markets.
Even though Sony might be the good guys today, they are only a hop, skip, and a jump from becoming another Microsoft.
The articles state that the PSX would probably come out in the US in 2004. Given that the next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2004-2005, it seems strange that they would spend extra money on a redesign of the PS2 instead of putting their resources into the PS3.
Doesn't the Japan market tend to lead the U.S. market--but not always in predictable ways? Don't forget the Japan is a large country, where Sony can sell the PSX to them only. The U.S. doesn't have to get every toy. The article is really just speculation.
The PSX could be a test in the Japanese market to see how a more capable game console would sell. Don't be suprised if the U.S. doesn't see anything until the PS3, complete with the "Cell" stuff, 320GB hard drive, DVD-RW, monitor output, etc. etc.
Imagine a PS3 with a Linux distribution, OpenOffice.org, and Mozilla. Given that games are no longer an issue (it's a PlayStation, duh), Sony would have a compelling no-Microsoft utility PC in its product line-up. PlayStations could even become inexpensive "thin clients" along the lines of X Terminals or Sun Rays. As long as the Linux isn't tainted (god help us, GPL), the PS3 would literally be disposable at only a few hundred dollars. It would even have point-of-sale applications. Not necessarily a bad day at Sony's marketing department. Not bad at all.
Bill Gates is successful because he is a good businessman.
No, he is a very smart and cunning business man.
He knows how to work the system for all it's worth.
Agreed.
This means they have to compete on a (somewhat) level playing-field.
Yes, because phone customers couldn't care less what brand of OS kernel runs on what is, essentially, a black box. Cell phones are appliances that come with advertised features for an advertised price. Buying a cell phone and a calling plan is more similar to buying a washing machine than it is to buying a PC.
However, if Microsoft can change the rules by, perhaps, infecting the communications protocols used by cell phones, then all bets are off for a healthy cell phone market. I'm just glad that this scenario is so unlikely.
I realized that I was assuming this was astro turfing. It didn't even occur to me that it could be a real account of somebody enjoying using something.
Well, even if it isn't astroturfing, realize that he/she had the phone only 24 hours. It often takes a few days or even a few weeks before the novelty-aspect of a new toy wears off and reality, good or bad, sets in.
For example, for me, the novelty of Windows XP wore off in a matter of minutes. Red Hat 7.X with GNOME took about me a few hours. For some reason I have yet to tire of OpenBSD and Solaris--but, that is just how I am. For the SmartPhone customer above, we should ask him/her/it/they again in two weeks and, then, two months and see if the enthusiasm stands. That'll be a much better measure of the quality of the phone and its software.
My trust in people has dropped yet another notch.
When it comes to salespeople and marketing people, my trust has bottomed out at a big fat zero. As a consumer, I have just had to accept the fact that there are more lies than truths out there, and each large purchase takes hours or, sometimes, days to sort it all out.
I estimate that the public's general ability to make informed decisions is dropping, however. The surging number of credit cards, extended warranty scams, and instant loan scams out there mean that more and more people are strapped for money and are looking for ways to sustain a fantasy lifestyle. There is a culture forming in the U.S. where it is perfectly okay to spend other people's money on luxury items (cell phones, junk cars with nice shiny wheels, jewelry, expensive stereo equipment, video games, computers, etc. etc.). I wouldn't be suprised if, one day, the population falls into a slave state, where the creditors are the elite class providing for the commoner's additiction to superfluous toys.
And the market size represented by all the PCs at all the governments in the world is not, I believe, big enough to make Microsoft lose more than a minute or two of sleep at night.
In most countries, the government is, ironically, the largest employer. I would be that there are tens of millions of computers in service of the U.S. government. This might be enought to get MS' attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Decide as if the computer will be stolen while at college.
Even while at a goody-two-shoes university, I knew people whose laptop disappeared during a bathroom break. Computers, bicycles, calculators, you name it, all get stolen at disturbing rates on college campuses.
A used computer might be a good bet. For example, you could be adventurous and get a computer that is useless to the average retarded criminal (e.g., an old HP-UX workstation with a 75lb monitor...though moving should be a consideration, too:)
Just a friendly reminder to try your local national public radio stations.
I hate to break it to you, but ClearChannel just bought all the NPR affiliates. They are all going to be country music stations, to complete the hostile takeover of the U.S.A. by real men who wear tight jeans.
Unless there's a ZIP code in Wyoming with only one person...I don't see any rights being trampled, here.
Do you think paper is better?
Like I said in my other reply above, if legibility is the problem, there are typewriters and hand-held label printers that solve that problem super-cheaply.
For basic record-keeping, Pocket PCs and Windows are just way overboard in complexity and cost. The main driving force behind such systems in hospitals is probably a manager who caught the buzz-word bug of the day and had a budget to expend.
Now you may argue that you might be able to even further reduce the risks by using a hardened OS and special hardware, but at what cost?
Perhaps I am wrong, but embedded systems companies do this affordably every day. They typically do it with reduced kernels and light-weight GUIs and utility APIs. They can even start with a well-tested base, such as the Linux kernel or one of the other well-regarded embedded kernels, cut out the flab, and have a really small code base with much lower risk of software faults. Debugging is also much much easier due to the transparancy of the system at all levels. (BTW, debugging is the most expensive part of most software life cycles, in practice, and can make or break projects over the long-term).
The only real advantage to Windows is that hospitals and medical companies can hire cheap dime-a-dozen college grads and contractors with weak credentials to do general development work. This is a very large risk in itself due to the highly inconsistent quality of the work, liability clauses in software contracts, and high personnel turnover.
Also, Windows falls out of support after several years. Are hospitals really willing to turn over their systems so regularly? Using Open Source software, for example, would guarantee that the whole software stack can be maintained and extended until there is a pressing and necessary requirement to upgrade. A single company like Microsoft should not be in a position to have so much influence over important medical systems. If a closed system is necessary, at least choose IBM, who, for a healthy fee, will support something indefinitely.
Even further, choosing Windows and Pocket PCs is, by definition, expensive relative to simpler systems. The hardware requirements are tremendous. Pocket PCs are fragile and will get broken. Software crashes are expensive from a support perspective. In short, the staff will get entrenched in a daily routine of dealing with Windows and Pocket PCs--it can even distract them from their original duties.
Regardless, if the issue were simply legible prescriptions, my suggestion is to give the doctor a typewriter. $100 and brain-dead easy to maintain. If it breaks, get a new one at OfficeMax. Even the receptionist can do that.
My conclusion is that Pocket PCs and Windows in hospitals is probably the brain child of an excited buzz-word monkey who controls the budget. System complexity is ignored, and the resulting unreliability of the system becomes it's own burden to the hospital's budget and the morale of the staff.
And Microsoft already has deep roots in the medical industry.
This worries me tremendously.
How long until something deep within the hastily-written and poorly-tested tens of millions of lines of code in Windows burbs, and a patient gets injured or dies.
When will people realize that Windows is the least appropriate operating system for medical and military applications, where lives are literally on the line.
Seeing Microsoft products in these applications makes me sick.
SCO owns all of UNIX, all versions, all updates, all source and all derivative works.
They don't own the UNIX trademark. It would be funny if The Open Group revoked SCO's right to it.
Also, SCO would have to put up a pretty solid argument to claim ownership of BSD-derived UNIX. How long has the Berkeley-sanctioned BSD licensing scheme been around? Over a decade, now? Why didn't SCO make a fuss about 386BSD or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or FreeBSD, or Mac OS X?
A poster above brought up another good point: What about those old versions of UNIX released as Open Source a while back by Caldera?
Additionally, there are other POSIX systems that SCO can't touch, limiting SCO's future benefits of their kiddie rants. For example, GNU.
they said SCO had asked that Novell employees not be added to the call.
Hmmm...what about Novell employees who happen to be SCO shareholders?
Suppose we had digital rights management for cars.
1) Use the appropriate word "restrictions" instead of "rights", please.
2) DRM for cars isn't necessarily bad, I agree, but only if the DRM is completely local to the car and surrounding cars. There should be only enough software to prevent speeding, tailgating, etc. Anything that transmits a car's position, for example, to a central authority is totally unacceptable. Perhaps transmitting that information upon detecting a crash might be acceptable, but full-time transmission is simply not an option.
The grandparent poster may have been thinking about Slate, which is owned by Microsoft and is fundamentally biased (just like CNN is biased by AOL/TW, NBC is biased by MS, newspapers and radio are biased by their conglomerate owners, etc.).
Religions do the same as the cults except they reinforce positives.
Please, define "positive". Many things many people think are positive, I think are negative, and many things many people thing are negative, I think are positive. Simply, religion is human culture and not one thing more.
With all the FUD and name-calling among SCO, IBM, Novell, Microsoft, etc. etc., I am realizing more and more the foresight of the FSF in establishing its requirements for copyright paperwork when submitting code (link to FSF docs).
It is important to realize that even if the Linux kernel itself is somehow victimized, the GNU tools and the GNU/HURD should be untouched. The BSDs, Mac OS X, and Solaris should fair very well, too, if only because their legal problems are already dealt with. However, I really think SCO's claims against Linux are a long shot (of galactic proportion, unless, of course, they planted the code maliciously), so my hope is that SCO is the only true casualty once all this is over.
So, when sarcasm fails, the fault lies with those dumb enough to say such things and really mean it,
not with the reader who didn't "get it".
Hence a need for the occasional markup tags. They make it unambiguous, so neither the writer/speaker nor the reader/listener can be faulted.
Sarcasm from a total stranger doesn't work if the sarcastic comment is the first thing you've ever read by that person, or remember reading by that person.
I agree. The only people who don't think I'm wierd are my family, because they know that I'm wierd. Whenever I try to make a pun or joke in front of people who don't know me well, they don't know what to think of what I say (they usually continue as if I had said nothing).
Unix was SCO's main business, it's hard to imagine this will do them any good if they really intend to continue doing this.
After all this, they will become a consulting company, where they will use their expertise to help other suicidal companies go out with a bang.
Not to offend anyone, but I've never really gotten the whole obsession with Ender's game.
Readers become obsessed with the characters Orson Scott Card writes. He does write science fiction and fantasy, but they are really stories about families, children growing up, compassion, antagonism. Readers become obsessed with Ender's relationship with his sister, for example, or Ender's innocence and what really happens at the end of Ender's Game. Card's other novels, such as Worms or The Folk of the Fringe, share these qualities.
Just thinking about Ender and his sister, again, brings up a small swell in my chest. Very good stuff, I must say.
...I'm using something called S-A-R-C-A-S-M.
I've gotten bitten by this before. Using sarcasm on Slashdot without using appropriate sarcasm markup tags can be dangerous. Slashdot readers range in density from fluffy air to depleted uranium, with the distribution weighted heavily to either extreme.
Now I realise that you have a gun-toting monkey for a president...
Please, don't offend the monkey! He's sensitive, you know.
You can if you freeze it!
Touché
Sounds like a great idea, if only to reduce the amount of clutter for your home entertainment center.
Agreed, but Sony needs to follow a few simple rules to make sure consumers will really eat it up:
1) The unit has to be fully functional without a network connection to the Internet. I keep my DirecTV unit unplugged from the telephone, for example, simply because I do not trust DirecTV any further than needed for basic service and monthly billing. The Internet connection for the PS3 should be only for value-added things like network gameplay, web surfing, e-mail, movie downloads, etc.
2) Copy protection controls should be no heavier than they are now. The market is pretty comfortable with proprietary game discs, but pushing things too far (e.g., Palladium) will only alienate consumers. In no case, should the Internet connection be used for digital restrictions management without explicit opt-in.
Like many people, I don't like my property, such as my PC, DirecTV unit, or PlayStation, transmitting data back to their makers. If the manufacturer wants to learn about me, that's what optional registration cards and surveys are for. Manufacturers should have to work hard to gather marketing data. It helps keep them honest and humble, which is very important in maintaining the health of free markets.
Even though Sony might be the good guys today, they are only a hop, skip, and a jump from becoming another Microsoft.
The articles state that the PSX would probably come out in the US in 2004. Given that the next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2004-2005, it seems strange that they would spend extra money on a redesign of the PS2 instead of putting their resources into the PS3.
Doesn't the Japan market tend to lead the U.S. market--but not always in predictable ways? Don't forget the Japan is a large country, where Sony can sell the PSX to them only. The U.S. doesn't have to get every toy. The article is really just speculation.
The PSX could be a test in the Japanese market to see how a more capable game console would sell. Don't be suprised if the U.S. doesn't see anything until the PS3, complete with the "Cell" stuff, 320GB hard drive, DVD-RW, monitor output, etc. etc.
Imagine a PS3 with a Linux distribution, OpenOffice.org, and Mozilla. Given that games are no longer an issue (it's a PlayStation, duh), Sony would have a compelling no-Microsoft utility PC in its product line-up. PlayStations could even become inexpensive "thin clients" along the lines of X Terminals or Sun Rays. As long as the Linux isn't tainted (god help us, GPL), the PS3 would literally be disposable at only a few hundred dollars. It would even have point-of-sale applications. Not necessarily a bad day at Sony's marketing department. Not bad at all.
Fox news tells it like it is, you just don't want to hear it.
Just like Real TV, Cops, America's Funniest Home Videos, and any other sensationalist base-brained testicle-pumping crap TV show out there.
Face it, Fox News sucks.
Don't forget an old favorite: You can't polish a turd!
Bill Gates is successful because he is a good businessman.
No, he is a very smart and cunning business man.
He knows how to work the system for all it's worth.
Agreed.
This means they have to compete on a (somewhat) level playing-field.
Yes, because phone customers couldn't care less what brand of OS kernel runs on what is, essentially, a black box. Cell phones are appliances that come with advertised features for an advertised price. Buying a cell phone and a calling plan is more similar to buying a washing machine than it is to buying a PC.
However, if Microsoft can change the rules by, perhaps, infecting the communications protocols used by cell phones, then all bets are off for a healthy cell phone market. I'm just glad that this scenario is so unlikely.
...VisualFoobar doesn't make it much easier.
What a perfect name for the next release of the Microsoft development suite. However, I would like to suggest the proper spelling: VisualFUBAR.
It has a nice ring to it.
I realized that I was assuming this was astro turfing. It didn't even occur to me that it could be a real account of somebody enjoying using something.
Well, even if it isn't astroturfing, realize that he/she had the phone only 24 hours. It often takes a few days or even a few weeks before the novelty-aspect of a new toy wears off and reality, good or bad, sets in.
For example, for me, the novelty of Windows XP wore off in a matter of minutes. Red Hat 7.X with GNOME took about me a few hours. For some reason I have yet to tire of OpenBSD and Solaris--but, that is just how I am. For the SmartPhone customer above, we should ask him/her/it/they again in two weeks and, then, two months and see if the enthusiasm stands. That'll be a much better measure of the quality of the phone and its software.
My trust in people has dropped yet another notch.
When it comes to salespeople and marketing people, my trust has bottomed out at a big fat zero. As a consumer, I have just had to accept the fact that there are more lies than truths out there, and each large purchase takes hours or, sometimes, days to sort it all out.
I estimate that the public's general ability to make informed decisions is dropping, however. The surging number of credit cards, extended warranty scams, and instant loan scams out there mean that more and more people are strapped for money and are looking for ways to sustain a fantasy lifestyle. There is a culture forming in the U.S. where it is perfectly okay to spend other people's money on luxury items (cell phones, junk cars with nice shiny wheels, jewelry, expensive stereo equipment, video games, computers, etc. etc.). I wouldn't be suprised if, one day, the population falls into a slave state, where the creditors are the elite class providing for the commoner's additiction to superfluous toys.
And the market size represented by all the PCs at all the governments in the world is not, I believe, big enough to make Microsoft lose more than a minute or two of sleep at night.
In most countries, the government is, ironically, the largest employer. I would be that there are tens of millions of computers in service of the U.S. government. This might be enought to get MS' attention.