Apple posted the initial update either late Friday or early Saturday (I'm not sure exactly when). It was pulled by late in the morning Saturday, they posted a warning shortly afterwards, and when I got up this morning there was a fixed installer online to use.
The Classic version (which most Mac owners are still running) was fine, and the bug seems to have only hit people who didn't follow Apple's instructions that said "remove the old one first" and/or had multi-partitioned drives (multiple partitions aren't nearly as common among Mac users as they are among Windows and Linux users).
So Apple made a gross mistake on one hand, but on the other hand they owned up to it quickly, pulled the offending installer, and fixed/reposted it less than 24 hours later. Most Linux vendors respond about as well, Microsoft usually doesn't (though they were very good about pulling, fixing, and notification with their recent RDP fix that knocked people's Terminal Server systems off the network entirely).
The other mitigating factor was that there aren't that many Mac users relative to the installed base who were affected by the bug - but unfortunately the people who were likeliest to be affected (users who are already running 10.1 as their base OS, have multiple partitions, and don't read the instructions thorougly because - after all - "it's a Mac, who needs instructions?") are exactly the kind of Mac "power users" who swarm Apple's servers constantly looking for new stuff and install it the second it's posted.
I run 10.1 on my TiBook 667, and I downloaded the update. But I deleted the old iTunes version beforehand and only have a single 30GB partition, hence the install went fine..
When was the last time _any_ major release of a consumer OS got faster when it was revved up a version?
(I'm not counting MacOS X 10.0.x - 10.1, as the 10.0.x series was basically an early adopter beta version disguised as release)
But any version of Windows ever as far as I can remember, any version of Classic MacOS, even Linux for the most part, though individual packages and subsystems may be sped up as they mature, the overall OS usually gets more and more bloated with time. If you take Windows 2000, optimize it, but then pile on a bunch more cruft on top, of course the overall product will slow down.
Software expands to fill all the available hardware plus approximately 10%. Operating systems are partular offenders (and bloated office suites).
Slackware goes through its slow times (more like lulls), but overall it's a distro that's best suited to server admins and people with a Unix background. Slackware isn't a distro for people who love RPM or apt-get, but if you prefer downloading tarballs and building the app yourself (and the extra control you get by DIY), it's the stuff.
Autoslack was cool, but not essential to the "mission" of Slackware. And perhaps someone will pick it up. I've been using Slack 8 since release, and I prefer hand-building anyways (then again, it's stable enough that all I've done is upgrade kernels and Mozilla so far). If you want it all done for you, you can always use Mandrake or Red Hat, and if you love apt-get, then go ahead and use Debian.
Good point, but if a target market like us isn't adopting them (geeks, with a generally higher than average income, a proclivity towards new, "cool" technologies, and lots of voracious readers), then what hope do e-books have for The Rest Of Us (tm).
I'd agree strongly that we're not necessarily the best example of a target audience for a lot of things, but I think the typical/. reader is right in the e-book bullseye. I know I have a handful of texts on my Palm, but except for the complete H2G2, they're all reference material of some sort or another. When I want to read fiction, I generally go out into the big room with the blue ceiling and visit places where I can look at chunks of dead trees and then bring one or more home with me. Sometimes I don't even have to keep them (when I go to this one place I've heard people call a "library"), which is good when I run out of firewood storage.
As long as you have lots of wire going back to an endpoint, the endpoint is vulnerable. Most CATV systems have the same weakness, too. About the only thing that isn't as vulnerable to a single point of attack is the power grid at the plant level, and that's because of grid interconnection (there were some interesting power grid-related articles in IEEE Spectrum a few months back). But at the local level, a few substations feed large portions of a city - in my city of 40,000 or so a single squirrel took out a large portion of the town earlier this year. And we have our own generating station here, too.
In any tree-shaped network taking out the trunk takes down all the branches. Verizon is just doing what makes (in the pre-9/11 world) good economic sense in not having full redundancy, with multiple paths. What you might see someday in the not-too-distant future is a few areas (like Wall Street) get second switching stations further uptown, but really the best solution for a business that really never thought about the phone network is a dish pointed to a CLEC that isn't in the same CO as the primary circuits from the ILEC.
If Winstar had remained viable they might well be seeing a big demand spike hit about now as corporate DR people realize their potential weakness.
To improve on the classic WIMP interfaces, I immediately would exclude anything that had to be physically connected to the user. That eliminates data gloves as a significant mainstream input device.
Gloves work well technically (at least from what I've seen of them), but are fairly inconvenient to use. I suspect that some basic speech recognition will be mainstream in the not-too-distant future, because processing power is cheap enough to handle simple speech without impacting performance. Maybe eye tracking will be used some as well, but eyes tend to wander.
So I think the biggest trend in interface design over the next few years is going to be a return to simplicity. Fewer clicks, fewer mouse movements, and greater use of predictive interfaces - where the interface guesses what you'll do next based on experience and learning, and has it ready for you just in case. The Mac-style version of the UI (but not necessarily the Mac itself) will probably be the dominant strain overall - Microsoft is converging in that direction now as well as evidenced by the Luna interface in XP. I think mainstream mice return to two buttons (from the currently popular multi-buttoned models), or maybe even one. And mouse gestures will be used more instead of clicking in some cases.
Mice themselves I can see working by gyro rather than by ball or light sensor, which would allow a mouse to be held and moved within 3 dimensions (even if it only tracks in two), rather than skated over a desk in two dimensions. It's potentially a more natural hand motion. Keyboards probably won't change much due to inertia. They haven't really changed in basic layout for over a hundred years.
Of course, I may just be blowing smoke, since my intuition is no better than anyone else's. But the Slashdot crowd is very different from the "mainstream" - we are typically more forgiving of a complex interface and would trade off in favor of power over simplicity. So we may not be the best people to forecast.
I _have_ been doing something to help people who "just want a PC" and don't have the wherewithal to to deal with constant security threats, patches, and attacks:
I'm setting them all up with Macs.
For all the (often justified) grief that Apple gets for their pricing, a low-end iMac is a nice home PC with a lot of functionality, a good software bundle, and MacOS 9.x is all but hack-proof.
When it happened, it was more Onsale (flush with dot-com cash) that purchased the failing Egghead. It really just postponed the inevitable failure.
Onsale's management figured Egghead had the better-known brand name, so the combined companies went ahead under the Egghead name.
That's why the auction pages looked an awful lot like Onsale's...
Whether we like it or not, customer information is a company asset - and when someone purchases a company they buy all the assets available. Including our information.
The web was invented as a research tool that piggybacked off the Internet. Period. Everything else has been a matter of people projecting their own wants and desires onto what they _think_ they see in the web.
Music traders see it as a place to get MP3 files.
Gamers see it as a place to meet other gamers and play online.
Marketers see it as a tool to drive more personalized sales.
Pr0n hounds see it as a place to get lots of free pr0n.
Geeks see it as a community of fellow-travellers, as do other people too.
And so on...
You know what? They're all right - and so are the people not listed here. The important point to all this (and implied by my saying they're all correct) is that the Internet is what you need/want it to be. Period. More people now are using the Internet as a Place To Get Stuff Done, as opposed to a Cool New Thing. So there's less random wandering, and a lot more travel to destination sites. It's where you Get Stuff Done. There's still a lot of cool, random, and strange stuff out there if you either know where to look, or feel like taking the time to look. But fewer people want to do that nowadays - heck, I don't want to do that as much nowadays - even though when I do wander, having high-speed connections at home and work makes it a lot more fun than it was back in the 33.6 dialup days.
The soapboxes are still out there, but just like in reality (you know, the big room with blue ceilings - where you can't readily see the walls), people ignore the folks who shout on the street corners in cyberspace, too.
They don't make 'em like that because very few people want one that ruggedized - therefore you can't sell enough to make the assembly line worth running. It costs a pretty penny to make a machine that tough - and laptops already cost more than desktops to begin with. Panasonic pretty much owns the rugged nighe right now with the ToughBooks, and Dolch (are they still around?) used to make some awesomely tough luggables that could be folded away easily but weren't really laptops (they mainly ran off AC, though I think they did a laptop or two).
Most consumers want a small, light portable computer which pretty much eliminates ruggedness from the design (the current iBook and a few others being partial exceptions to the rule). You make up the difference with padding - ie, a really nice tote that provides the extra protection. It's a good enough compromise for most.
In the desktop PC market, AMD had basically replaced the K6 with Duron, and they'd done the same with the recent mobile Athlon and Duron products for laptops. I suspect they just weren't seeing a lot of demand for the older classes of processor anymore (or at least not enough to justify a fab anymore), and decided to let Intel service the low-end embedded market instead. A year-plus for a transition period isn't too bad, though companies making medical products that use embedded AMD would want more (I believe changes like that have to be certified, and that takes time/money).
Given that AMD has only a fraction of Intel's resources, that's probably a smart move on their part. Spend your money where the opportunity for a return is best. Interestingly, the embedded market can make money (at least a little higher-up) - that's pretty much what's kept PowerPC cranking along all these years. It's popular in cars, printers, and networking equipment, to a much greater degree than Apple buys them. I think Intel still makes i960s, too - for that purpose.
I have three, and each fills a niche (I prefer using laptops to desktops).
First is my work machine. Its a Gateway Solo 9500, with a P3-850, 384MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The screen is a 1280x1024, 15.7" LCD that's huge and spectacular. it has a DVD player, and normally sits in a dock that gives it port replication plus an Ethernet card sitting in a PCI slot, plus two additional Cardbus slots. 56K modem and Firewire built-in, too. I run Windows 2000 Pro on it, and the combination of that hardware plus a version of Windows that doesn't completely suck is real sweet. My only complaint is that when I'm using the trackpad the buttons are a little two hard to click.
The Gateway is way too big to carry around all the time - it's more of a desktop computer that folds up for transportation than a laptop. But that's fine for me because I rarely travel with the system. It fits in a Kensington Saddlebag without any problems.
Next I have an old Dell Inspiron 3200 that I mostly keep at home, but it's handy sometimes. It's got 192MB of RAM, an 8GB drive, a 1024x768 13.3" screen, and a P2-266 processor. I run Slackware 8 on it and it makes a nice portable Unix machine (indispensable for diagnostics and the like). The battery's pretty much cycled down, so if I want to use it a lot I need A/C - it isn't worth it to get a replacement battery for it and I can still get about an hour running Slack (as opposed to about 40 minutes under Windows). It's a "hand-me-down" from work that we no longer use. I gave a couple of them to my employees, too.
Then there's what I use at home - an iBook. I just bought the newest one a couple of days ago (I had one of the original toilet seat-looking models before, and other PowerBooks before that), and I must say - Apple does laptops right. For all the crap their desktops get when it comes to price/performance ratios, their laptops are always competitively priced and are just Made The Right Way. Performance is pretty snappy running MacOS 9, a little poky running OS X (usable, but I'm really looking forward to OS X 10.1), and it's way smaller than any of the other ones with a gorgeous screen and the nicest-feeling keyboard of the lot. If only they had a second trackpad button it'd be damn near the perfect notebook.
Once upon a time, the CPU was a hell of a lot more expensive than it is today. Before Intel had competition (and for a little while after AMD joined the party), their highest-end chip would cost about $800 and change, the next one down would cost around $600, and then the prices would drop off quickly. Back then, it made a lot of sense to buy a chip a rev or two behind the top of the line - the performance wasn't much different and you saved huge bucks.
Nowadays it really doesn't matter that much. Intel chips are still more expensive, but nowhere near what they used to be, and there's only a tiny difference between the top-end Athlon and the next one down - and even the fastest AMD chip is less than $200. It's just so cheap now as to not make a difference anymore on the desktop.
Intel still gets a premium for the Xeon processors, since AMD isn't really competing fully in the MP apace yet, but those will fall, too, over the next year or so as AMD competes in the server market.
So if I'm building a system today, I'd buy the top-end AMD processor and build a nice system around it. But by the time all the parts arrive, there'll be a newer, faster, and cheaper processor out anyway, and I'll just have to cry over it. Such is the way of Moore's Law.
OK - I'll bite... I've met Rob a couple of times over the last few years (most recently at last years' Geek Pride day in Boston), and I've generally found him pleasant and interesting to talk to. We chatted for around a half hour or so in Boston (mainly on mobile technology), and I didn't find him to be objectionable or arrogant at all. He can be a little prickly over/. (he wasn't that way to me, but I've seen evidence of that), but then again, that's "his baby" and it's not unreasonable for him to look at it a little stronger.
That said, I expect he has no recollection of me whatsoever, as I'm merely YATBG (Yet Another Tall Bearded Guy) to most.
Actually, I think AMD systems rock - I recommend them to my friends, and I have two of them at home.
The problem with AMD boxes in a corporate envirnment is consistency. When I buy a box for work, I'm not looking for blazing speed and lowest cost. I want a PC that'll be available in exactly the same config for at least 9-15 months from its date of introduction. There aren't any AMD-based systems being sold by the major manufacturers that meet that criteria - the typical "corporate" system (like the Dell Optiplex, Gateway E-series, etc.) will use a known stable chipset with a long planned lifecycle in the roadmap, Intel processors, and typically an ATI video chipset. When I buy them (in bulk), it's easy for me to use a standard system image to build the PC. Then all we have to do is generate a new NT SID, and set up the user profile. It only takes about a half hour for us to build a new PC as a result, including the time to image the PC.
As for the current P4 systems, the reason we're avoiding them is RDRAM. I have no interest in stocking multiple RAM types, and the performance isn't sufficiently optimized to make it worthwhile. For my purposes, there's nothing wrong with the P3/i815 platform (or BX, for that matter), but BX is gone and i815 will be rapidly phased out once i845/Brookdale is available around the beginning of October. Hotrods don't really benefit us at all (our current main platform is still 440BX/P3-650), but stability does. Brookdale is slated to be around for a couple of years, with the DDR version coming out early next year.
One other advantage of buying the "corporate" class systems is that all the manufacturers who want the business will cheerfully share their product roadmaps with you - including model names/numbers, availability dates, length of product cycles, and pricing. However, it's NDA'd, so I don't get to share, unfortunately. However, I should have i845 sample systems in here during August from a couple of vendors to test.
Rambus RAM is nowadays well under $1/MB (the Chip Merchant, for instance, sells 256MB of PC800 RDRAM for $170) - the only thing that makes it look expensive now is the utter collapse of the DRAM market. About six months ago, that would have been a reasonable price for PC133 SDRAM.
And Rambus has some technical strengths, too, when matched with a chip design like the P4 - the max bandwidth of RDRAM is higher than equivalent (PC133 DDR) SDRAM, though latency is higher. THe problem with Rambus was twofold:
First, the horrible business practices of Rambus, the company.
Secondly, when Rambus finally became available to the PC market (with the i820 chipset), the platform was so underwhelming that Rambus was effectively squashed. That was when the company turned their attention to litigating rather than working to improve the product - and we all have seen examples of companies that lead through legal agtion. They die.
And now that Intel is going to ship Brookdale, they might start selling some P4 chips at last. I know that, at least at my shop, we've held off entirely on PC purchases this year (except for a couple of servers and laptops), in order to wait for a viable P4 platform. I'm sure I'm not the only one - expect Intel's sales numbers to start rising again and some of the top-tier PC vendors to show signs of breaking out of their slumps. I, for one, have about 100 PCs to buy once there's a product worth buying.
AT&T's "native" ISP is @home - generally considered sucky and clueless by most. The AOL/TW ISP is RoadRunner - who runs a very solid ship by comparison, and is, as far as I can tell, the most homenet/geek friendly cable ISP out there.
If the two companies merge their cable operations, AOL would certainly be the driver (I hope - the article was already slashdotted when I clicked it - a new speed record for sure!). If so, then @home would probably get the boot and RoadRunner would be the default ISP - a much better situation for the average broadband customer.
I'll address just a couple of these points that you make (which are perfectly valid ones):
Murky screen: Yes, I've seen the contrast setting and fiddled with it. It's still pretty crummy. However, two counterpoints to that: first off, the Revo/Revo Plus is the entry-level Psion, and competes closest to Palms. And the screen is much crisper on Palms, even the lower-end ones. I know the 5mx has a much nicer screen (with backlighting), but it's also a lot bigger and heavier.
"Just deal with it" doesn't cut it. Hinges can be engineered for a lot less flex pretty easily - I think they sacrificed that in the design for the telescoping back and port covering when folded. The Revo normally costs some serious $ - it shouldn't feel flimsy.
I haven't seen the Linux software for it yet, but I'll go hunt and see how good it is. I do not have a problem with Outlook (or Windows, for that matter - other than the fact that I need to use it at work whatsoever, but that's another story!) - and I might mention that _nothing_ else I own has problems in this regard. The PC doesn't lose track of the Palm, Jornada, or Blackberry. However, the older EPOC Connect software Diamond included didn't work at all (never could find the Revo), and the new (beta, but the best they offer) version from Psion still drops the connection.
As for cost - I realize the Psions are positioned higher up. But that's too small a market. If you want to compete for profits with Palm and Microsoft, you need to have software developers. To have more developers, you need more users (the bulk of them go where the money is). To have more users, you need market share - and to get market share, you need PDA's that appear to the consumer, not just the geek.
And no, I didn't buy it used. I bought it new from Outpost.com, who is dumping the Diamond Mako (a Revo Plus with a different badge) along with Sparco and a few other vendors, since Diamond/Sonicblue is getting out of the Psion business. It was shrinkwrapped and everything.
Obviously, I haven't figured out everything it can do - four days is just enough to scratch the surface. I have downloaded quite a few apps to tinker with and learn, and don't get me wrong. I do consider it a neat device, I like it, and I'm glad I picked it up.
I'm also glad I didn't pay list price for it. Because after four days, it is a cool device, but I can tell readily why Psion has bombed so utterly in the general consumer market. Because when I take off my geek hat and try and look at it like the average person who might go to a Staples or something for a PDA, it does not measure up. People like you and I, however sophisticated we may be, do not make a marketplace.
Oh, I know about and love the SP2 security features - but the RIM sync software and Palm software (as well as the Dataviz fancy Desktop To Go software) don't have this problem. They can just use Outlook directly without dialog boxes.
I can't give Palm too many props in the software area, though - though their desktop software upgrades are free, it took nearly a year after Win2K was released to have a non-beta quality USB driver. That's way too long.
Well, after reading a comment in last week's Psion article about the Diamond Mako (a rebadged Revo Plus) being available at Outpost and a few other places for just $100, I ordered one. What the heck - I have a Palm Vx now and a HP Jornada 520 (the HP was free), and I've had a Newton and a Sharp Wizard in the past, along with a couple of prior Palms. I also have a Blackberry (mostly e-mail, I don't use the PDA functionality on it). I've been looking for a "perfect" PDA since before they were called PDA's, and I'd always wanted to try a Psion but they were too damned expensive.
So after using it for a full weekend +, I can see the usefulness of it to some people but I also can see why Psion's made pretty much zero dent in the consumer PDA market as a whole. I'd played with some other models before, but the Revo Plus is the first one I've owned.
Good points to the Psion:
-When folded, the shell is pretty solid. It's the only plastic PDA I've ever felt comfortable with in a pants pocket (the converse, though, is it's a little tall for shirt pockets).
-The weight is comfortable to carry.
-Battery life is excellent, and there's clear battery life indicators.
-It's pretty quick - switching applications is fast once you get used to the clunky way to do it (or download a nice free task switcher).
-EPOC apps seem to generally be pretty compact. With 16MB of RAM you can cram a lot o stuff into it.
-Licensing Opera: Good Move!
-Like CE, you can browse the palmtop's filesystem when it's docked from your PC. It makes transfers pretty easy.
Unfortunately, it's balanced by things that truly suck:
-The screen (the Revo is non-backlit) can be murky.
-When open, it feels pretty flimsy and flexes in my hand. It's much nicer on a table than in the hand.
- The connectivity software included with the Diamond version is horrid (an older EPOC Connect version). Downloading the current version from Psion (and patching it to the latest fixes) makes it usable, but it still has an alarming habit of disconnecting itself from my Windows laptop with no warning.
-The CopyAnywhere software for Psion/Windows clipboard sharing sucks hard.
-Syncing with Outlook (which I hate, but it is the standard for us) results in Outlook popping up to ask permission to share the e-mail addresses. Outlook thinks PsiWin's a damned macro virus! My Palm and Blackberry don't have this problem - they actually integrate with Outlook well.
-Syncing with my Mac at home - the Palm does it for free (with a free download or software on the disc nowadays, I believe). Buy a Mac, and the software to sync a Palm is already on the hard drive. Psion charges $65 for it, and all it can do is file backups.
-On a related note, all you can easily share from Outlook is the Contacts and Calendar files (which are probably the strongest of the built-in Psion apps, IMO). And the notes from Contacts don't transfer. Also, the Notes section of Outlook doesn't map to anything at all (no conduit), so I had to export to Notepad and copy the.txt file over. Which put it into Psion Word, not their Notepad app. Oh well.
Basically, I like the unit, it's useful, rugged (when closed), has a nice geek factor to it, and I don't regret buying it at all. That said, I think the average consumer would be far better served with a Palm (or maybe CE), and here's why:
-Palms are far cheaper on average. Easier impulse buy.
-A Palm has much more seamless connectivity with the two main desktop platforms out there (Mac and Windows), and it's all included for free with the organizers. Linux support is pretty good, too.
-Palms are smaller, lighter, and more easily pass the shirt pocket test. They also feel more solid when being used. Pocket PC's usually feel like tanks (and excepting the iPaq, are usually built like them) - they're even more rugged than the Psion is.
Airport is ideal for this sort of project - the base stations are relatively inexpensive, and they can be easily configured without a Mac - one fellow wrote a Java-based configurator app. They also work with pretty much any wireless card out there, AFAIK. I also use a Linksys with mine for one of my Wintel boxes.
I took my Airport and added the Lucent range extender antenna (about $60), and simply dremeled my base station to accept the antenna mount. I've been using it for about a year and a half now, and it gives me an effective range of about a quarter mile (it helps that I mounted the whole rig on an outer wall upstairs in my house) when used with my iBook.
To go much farther you either need more power (which may tick off our friends at the FCC) or directional antennas, like Cringely used, with clear line-of-sight. You're subject to all limitations of the 2.4 GHz band, though, and a lot of current cordless phones run in that range - it can mess up 802.11 signals somewhat.
I stick to 900 MHz digital phones partly for that reason.
When VA (and Penguin, and a few other companies) got into the hardware business, there was a small market niche for boxes that were optimized for Linux, and preconfigured/tested appropriately. Once the bigger vendors (with drastically lower costs) stepped into the marketplace and Linux itself became a product that could be sold and installed straight from the box, the niche companies were doomed. When Linux servers become a commodity, then only the vendors with economies of scale will thrive. VA can't play that game.
If there's any market to be had, it's in selling software and services (though probably not enough to justify the insane valuations that were taking place last year). In essence, Andover was onto the right idea for long-term sustained profitability, but VA wasn't. However, since Andover had much shallower pockets at the time, VA bought Andover instead of the other way around. Stock was cheap then. In the long term, VA was fated to be Just Another Box Company, and there's no money in that anymore (maybe a small shop can make money selling custom boxes, but big companies won't buy from a tiny boutique shop - just from the Dells, Compaqs, IBMs, and HPs of the world, cutting off the air supply of a small public company like VA).
As a software/services/portal company they should have a lower cost basis (building, selling, and supporting boxes is expensive) and, more importantly, lower their cash burn a whole lot. After all, there are portals that make money, software vendors that make money (including Open Source software vendors), and services companies that make money. And there is some synergy between all of them (except for maybe ThinkGeek, but ThinkGeek probably doesn't cost a lot to operate and earns them enough street cred to be worth it). So even though VA's insane valuation was based on their being a hardware company, dumping hardware was probably the right move at the right time. Of course, in another year or so we should know for sure.
It used to be fairly common here in the States for gas stations to offer a couple of grades of unleaded, leaded, and diesel. Nowadays (at least in New England, where I live, and a few other places I travel), the typical stations offer 3-4 grades of unleaded and that's it. About 1/4 of stations seem to offer diesel, and I haven't seen leaded gas anywhere in years - it's been about 25 years since the typical new car here used it.
There are a few places that handle the natural gas vehicles that are starting to be used in short-haul trucking and for public transit buses, but not the average consumer station.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple posted the initial update either late Friday or early Saturday (I'm not sure exactly when). It was pulled by late in the morning Saturday, they posted a warning shortly afterwards, and when I got up this morning there was a fixed installer online to use.
The Classic version (which most Mac owners are still running) was fine, and the bug seems to have only hit people who didn't follow Apple's instructions that said "remove the old one first" and/or had multi-partitioned drives (multiple partitions aren't nearly as common among Mac users as they are among Windows and Linux users).
So Apple made a gross mistake on one hand, but on the other hand they owned up to it quickly, pulled the offending installer, and fixed/reposted it less than 24 hours later. Most Linux vendors respond about as well, Microsoft usually doesn't (though they were very good about pulling, fixing, and notification with their recent RDP fix that knocked people's Terminal Server systems off the network entirely).
The other mitigating factor was that there aren't that many Mac users relative to the installed base who were affected by the bug - but unfortunately the people who were likeliest to be affected (users who are already running 10.1 as their base OS, have multiple partitions, and don't read the instructions thorougly because - after all - "it's a Mac, who needs instructions?") are exactly the kind of Mac "power users" who swarm Apple's servers constantly looking for new stuff and install it the second it's posted.
I run 10.1 on my TiBook 667, and I downloaded the update. But I deleted the old iTunes version beforehand and only have a single 30GB partition, hence the install went fine..
When was the last time _any_ major release of a consumer OS got faster when it was revved up a version?
(I'm not counting MacOS X 10.0.x - 10.1, as the 10.0.x series was basically an early adopter beta version disguised as release)
But any version of Windows ever as far as I can remember, any version of Classic MacOS, even Linux for the most part, though individual packages and subsystems may be sped up as they mature, the overall OS usually gets more and more bloated with time. If you take Windows 2000, optimize it, but then pile on a bunch more cruft on top, of course the overall product will slow down.
Software expands to fill all the available hardware plus approximately 10%. Operating systems are partular offenders (and bloated office suites).
Slackware goes through its slow times (more like lulls), but overall it's a distro that's best suited to server admins and people with a Unix background. Slackware isn't a distro for people who love RPM or apt-get, but if you prefer downloading tarballs and building the app yourself (and the extra control you get by DIY), it's the stuff.
Autoslack was cool, but not essential to the "mission" of Slackware. And perhaps someone will pick it up. I've been using Slack 8 since release, and I prefer hand-building anyways (then again, it's stable enough that all I've done is upgrade kernels and Mozilla so far). If you want it all done for you, you can always use Mandrake or Red Hat, and if you love apt-get, then go ahead and use Debian.
Good point, but if a target market like us isn't adopting them (geeks, with a generally higher than average income, a proclivity towards new, "cool" technologies, and lots of voracious readers), then what hope do e-books have for The Rest Of Us (tm).
/. reader is right in the e-book bullseye. I know I have a handful of texts on my Palm, but except for the complete H2G2, they're all reference material of some sort or another. When I want to read fiction, I generally go out into the big room with the blue ceiling and visit places where I can look at chunks of dead trees and then bring one or more home with me. Sometimes I don't even have to keep them (when I go to this one place I've heard people call a "library"), which is good when I run out of firewood storage.
I'd agree strongly that we're not necessarily the best example of a target audience for a lot of things, but I think the typical
As long as you have lots of wire going back to an endpoint, the endpoint is vulnerable. Most CATV systems have the same weakness, too. About the only thing that isn't as vulnerable to a single point of attack is the power grid at the plant level, and that's because of grid interconnection (there were some interesting power grid-related articles in IEEE Spectrum a few months back). But at the local level, a few substations feed large portions of a city - in my city of 40,000 or so a single squirrel took out a large portion of the town earlier this year. And we have our own generating station here, too.
In any tree-shaped network taking out the trunk takes down all the branches. Verizon is just doing what makes (in the pre-9/11 world) good economic sense in not having full redundancy, with multiple paths. What you might see someday in the not-too-distant future is a few areas (like Wall Street) get second switching stations further uptown, but really the best solution for a business that really never thought about the phone network is a dish pointed to a CLEC that isn't in the same CO as the primary circuits from the ILEC.
If Winstar had remained viable they might well be seeing a big demand spike hit about now as corporate DR people realize their potential weakness.
To improve on the classic WIMP interfaces, I immediately would exclude anything that had to be physically connected to the user. That eliminates data gloves as a significant mainstream input device.
Gloves work well technically (at least from what I've seen of them), but are fairly inconvenient to use. I suspect that some basic speech recognition will be mainstream in the not-too-distant future, because processing power is cheap enough to handle simple speech without impacting performance. Maybe eye tracking will be used some as well, but eyes tend to wander.
So I think the biggest trend in interface design over the next few years is going to be a return to simplicity. Fewer clicks, fewer mouse movements, and greater use of predictive interfaces - where the interface guesses what you'll do next based on experience and learning, and has it ready for you just in case. The Mac-style version of the UI (but not necessarily the Mac itself) will probably be the dominant strain overall - Microsoft is converging in that direction now as well as evidenced by the Luna interface in XP. I think mainstream mice return to two buttons (from the currently popular multi-buttoned models), or maybe even one. And mouse gestures will be used more instead of clicking in some cases.
Mice themselves I can see working by gyro rather than by ball or light sensor, which would allow a mouse to be held and moved within 3 dimensions (even if it only tracks in two), rather than skated over a desk in two dimensions. It's potentially a more natural hand motion. Keyboards probably won't change much due to inertia. They haven't really changed in basic layout for over a hundred years.
Of course, I may just be blowing smoke, since my intuition is no better than anyone else's. But the Slashdot crowd is very different from the "mainstream" - we are typically more forgiving of a complex interface and would trade off in favor of power over simplicity. So we may not be the best people to forecast.
I certainly hope that "The Slashdot Effect" is high on the list. It definitely qualifies as a DOS attack for most webservers.
Including theirs.
I _have_ been doing something to help people who "just want a PC" and don't have the wherewithal to to deal with constant security threats, patches, and attacks:
I'm setting them all up with Macs.
For all the (often justified) grief that Apple gets for their pricing, a low-end iMac is a nice home PC with a lot of functionality, a good software bundle, and MacOS 9.x is all but hack-proof.
It solves the home user problem nicely.
When it happened, it was more Onsale (flush with dot-com cash) that purchased the failing Egghead. It really just postponed the inevitable failure.
Onsale's management figured Egghead had the better-known brand name, so the combined companies went ahead under the Egghead name.
That's why the auction pages looked an awful lot like Onsale's...
Whether we like it or not, customer information is a company asset - and when someone purchases a company they buy all the assets available. Including our information.
[drumroll]
It's going to be "GNU/Hewlett Paquard"!
[/drumroll]
The web was invented as a research tool that piggybacked off the Internet. Period. Everything else has been a matter of people projecting their own wants and desires onto what they _think_ they see in the web.
Music traders see it as a place to get MP3 files.
Gamers see it as a place to meet other gamers and play online.
Marketers see it as a tool to drive more personalized sales.
Pr0n hounds see it as a place to get lots of free pr0n.
Geeks see it as a community of fellow-travellers, as do other people too.
And so on...
You know what? They're all right - and so are the people not listed here. The important point to all this (and implied by my saying they're all correct) is that the Internet is what you need/want it to be. Period. More people now are using the Internet as a Place To Get Stuff Done, as opposed to a Cool New Thing. So there's less random wandering, and a lot more travel to destination sites. It's where you Get Stuff Done. There's still a lot of cool, random, and strange stuff out there if you either know where to look, or feel like taking the time to look. But fewer people want to do that nowadays - heck, I don't want to do that as much nowadays - even though when I do wander, having high-speed connections at home and work makes it a lot more fun than it was back in the 33.6 dialup days.
The soapboxes are still out there, but just like in reality (you know, the big room with blue ceilings - where you can't readily see the walls), people ignore the folks who shout on the street corners in cyberspace, too.
They don't make 'em like that because very few people want one that ruggedized - therefore you can't sell enough to make the assembly line worth running. It costs a pretty penny to make a machine that tough - and laptops already cost more than desktops to begin with. Panasonic pretty much owns the rugged nighe right now with the ToughBooks, and Dolch (are they still around?) used to make some awesomely tough luggables that could be folded away easily but weren't really laptops (they mainly ran off AC, though I think they did a laptop or two).
Most consumers want a small, light portable computer which pretty much eliminates ruggedness from the design (the current iBook and a few others being partial exceptions to the rule). You make up the difference with padding - ie, a really nice tote that provides the extra protection. It's a good enough compromise for most.
In the desktop PC market, AMD had basically replaced the K6 with Duron, and they'd done the same with the recent mobile Athlon and Duron products for laptops. I suspect they just weren't seeing a lot of demand for the older classes of processor anymore (or at least not enough to justify a fab anymore), and decided to let Intel service the low-end embedded market instead. A year-plus for a transition period isn't too bad, though companies making medical products that use embedded AMD would want more (I believe changes like that have to be certified, and that takes time/money).
Given that AMD has only a fraction of Intel's resources, that's probably a smart move on their part. Spend your money where the opportunity for a return is best. Interestingly, the embedded market can make money (at least a little higher-up) - that's pretty much what's kept PowerPC cranking along all these years. It's popular in cars, printers, and networking equipment, to a much greater degree than Apple buys them. I think Intel still makes i960s, too - for that purpose.
I have three, and each fills a niche (I prefer using laptops to desktops).
First is my work machine. Its a Gateway Solo 9500, with a P3-850, 384MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The screen is a 1280x1024, 15.7" LCD that's huge and spectacular. it has a DVD player, and normally sits in a dock that gives it port replication plus an Ethernet card sitting in a PCI slot, plus two additional Cardbus slots. 56K modem and Firewire built-in, too. I run Windows 2000 Pro on it, and the combination of that hardware plus a version of Windows that doesn't completely suck is real sweet. My only complaint is that when I'm using the trackpad the buttons are a little two hard to click.
The Gateway is way too big to carry around all the time - it's more of a desktop computer that folds up for transportation than a laptop. But that's fine for me because I rarely travel with the system. It fits in a Kensington Saddlebag without any problems.
Next I have an old Dell Inspiron 3200 that I mostly keep at home, but it's handy sometimes. It's got 192MB of RAM, an 8GB drive, a 1024x768 13.3" screen, and a P2-266 processor. I run Slackware 8 on it and it makes a nice portable Unix machine (indispensable for diagnostics and the like). The battery's pretty much cycled down, so if I want to use it a lot I need A/C - it isn't worth it to get a replacement battery for it and I can still get about an hour running Slack (as opposed to about 40 minutes under Windows). It's a "hand-me-down" from work that we no longer use. I gave a couple of them to my employees, too.
Then there's what I use at home - an iBook. I just bought the newest one a couple of days ago (I had one of the original toilet seat-looking models before, and other PowerBooks before that), and I must say - Apple does laptops right. For all the crap their desktops get when it comes to price/performance ratios, their laptops are always competitively priced and are just Made The Right Way. Performance is pretty snappy running MacOS 9, a little poky running OS X (usable, but I'm really looking forward to OS X 10.1), and it's way smaller than any of the other ones with a gorgeous screen and the nicest-feeling keyboard of the lot. If only they had a second trackpad button it'd be damn near the perfect notebook.
Once upon a time, the CPU was a hell of a lot more expensive than it is today. Before Intel had competition (and for a little while after AMD joined the party), their highest-end chip would cost about $800 and change, the next one down would cost around $600, and then the prices would drop off quickly. Back then, it made a lot of sense to buy a chip a rev or two behind the top of the line - the performance wasn't much different and you saved huge bucks.
Nowadays it really doesn't matter that much. Intel chips are still more expensive, but nowhere near what they used to be, and there's only a tiny difference between the top-end Athlon and the next one down - and even the fastest AMD chip is less than $200. It's just so cheap now as to not make a difference anymore on the desktop.
Intel still gets a premium for the Xeon processors, since AMD isn't really competing fully in the MP apace yet, but those will fall, too, over the next year or so as AMD competes in the server market.
So if I'm building a system today, I'd buy the top-end AMD processor and build a nice system around it. But by the time all the parts arrive, there'll be a newer, faster, and cheaper processor out anyway, and I'll just have to cry over it. Such is the way of Moore's Law.
OK - I'll bite... I've met Rob a couple of times over the last few years (most recently at last years' Geek Pride day in Boston), and I've generally found him pleasant and interesting to talk to. We chatted for around a half hour or so in Boston (mainly on mobile technology), and I didn't find him to be objectionable or arrogant at all. He can be a little prickly over /. (he wasn't that way to me, but I've seen evidence of that), but then again, that's "his baby" and it's not unreasonable for him to look at it a little stronger.
That said, I expect he has no recollection of me whatsoever, as I'm merely YATBG (Yet Another Tall Bearded Guy) to most.
Actually, I think AMD systems rock - I recommend them to my friends, and I have two of them at home.
The problem with AMD boxes in a corporate envirnment is consistency. When I buy a box for work, I'm not looking for blazing speed and lowest cost. I want a PC that'll be available in exactly the same config for at least 9-15 months from its date of introduction. There aren't any AMD-based systems being sold by the major manufacturers that meet that criteria - the typical "corporate" system (like the Dell Optiplex, Gateway E-series, etc.) will use a known stable chipset with a long planned lifecycle in the roadmap, Intel processors, and typically an ATI video chipset. When I buy them (in bulk), it's easy for me to use a standard system image to build the PC. Then all we have to do is generate a new NT SID, and set up the user profile. It only takes about a half hour for us to build a new PC as a result, including the time to image the PC.
As for the current P4 systems, the reason we're avoiding them is RDRAM. I have no interest in stocking multiple RAM types, and the performance isn't sufficiently optimized to make it worthwhile. For my purposes, there's nothing wrong with the P3/i815 platform (or BX, for that matter), but BX is gone and i815 will be rapidly phased out once i845/Brookdale is available around the beginning of October. Hotrods don't really benefit us at all (our current main platform is still 440BX/P3-650), but stability does. Brookdale is slated to be around for a couple of years, with the DDR version coming out early next year.
One other advantage of buying the "corporate" class systems is that all the manufacturers who want the business will cheerfully share their product roadmaps with you - including model names/numbers, availability dates, length of product cycles, and pricing. However, it's NDA'd, so I don't get to share, unfortunately. However, I should have i845 sample systems in here during August from a couple of vendors to test.
- -Josh Turiel
Rambus RAM is nowadays well under $1/MB (the Chip Merchant, for instance, sells 256MB of PC800 RDRAM for $170) - the only thing that makes it look expensive now is the utter collapse of the DRAM market. About six months ago, that would have been a reasonable price for PC133 SDRAM.
And Rambus has some technical strengths, too, when matched with a chip design like the P4 - the max bandwidth of RDRAM is higher than equivalent (PC133 DDR) SDRAM, though latency is higher. THe problem with Rambus was twofold:
First, the horrible business practices of Rambus, the company.
Secondly, when Rambus finally became available to the PC market (with the i820 chipset), the platform was so underwhelming that Rambus was effectively squashed. That was when the company turned their attention to litigating rather than working to improve the product - and we all have seen examples of companies that lead through legal agtion. They die.
And now that Intel is going to ship Brookdale, they might start selling some P4 chips at last. I know that, at least at my shop, we've held off entirely on PC purchases this year (except for a couple of servers and laptops), in order to wait for a viable P4 platform. I'm sure I'm not the only one - expect Intel's sales numbers to start rising again and some of the top-tier PC vendors to show signs of breaking out of their slumps. I, for one, have about 100 PCs to buy once there's a product worth buying.
- -Josh Turiel
AT&T's "native" ISP is @home - generally considered sucky and clueless by most. The AOL/TW ISP is RoadRunner - who runs a very solid ship by comparison, and is, as far as I can tell, the most homenet/geek friendly cable ISP out there.
If the two companies merge their cable operations, AOL would certainly be the driver (I hope - the article was already slashdotted when I clicked it - a new speed record for sure!). If so, then @home would probably get the boot and RoadRunner would be the default ISP - a much better situation for the average broadband customer.
- -Josh Turiel
I'll address just a couple of these points that you make (which are perfectly valid ones):
Murky screen: Yes, I've seen the contrast setting and fiddled with it. It's still pretty crummy. However, two counterpoints to that: first off, the Revo/Revo Plus is the entry-level Psion, and competes closest to Palms. And the screen is much crisper on Palms, even the lower-end ones. I know the 5mx has a much nicer screen (with backlighting), but it's also a lot bigger and heavier.
"Just deal with it" doesn't cut it. Hinges can be engineered for a lot less flex pretty easily - I think they sacrificed that in the design for the telescoping back and port covering when folded. The Revo normally costs some serious $ - it shouldn't feel flimsy.
I haven't seen the Linux software for it yet, but I'll go hunt and see how good it is. I do not have a problem with Outlook (or Windows, for that matter - other than the fact that I need to use it at work whatsoever, but that's another story!) - and I might mention that _nothing_ else I own has problems in this regard. The PC doesn't lose track of the Palm, Jornada, or Blackberry. However, the older EPOC Connect software Diamond included didn't work at all (never could find the Revo), and the new (beta, but the best they offer) version from Psion still drops the connection.
As for cost - I realize the Psions are positioned higher up. But that's too small a market. If you want to compete for profits with Palm and Microsoft, you need to have software developers. To have more developers, you need more users (the bulk of them go where the money is). To have more users, you need market share - and to get market share, you need PDA's that appear to the consumer, not just the geek.
And no, I didn't buy it used. I bought it new from Outpost.com, who is dumping the Diamond Mako (a Revo Plus with a different badge) along with Sparco and a few other vendors, since Diamond/Sonicblue is getting out of the Psion business. It was shrinkwrapped and everything.
Obviously, I haven't figured out everything it can do - four days is just enough to scratch the surface. I have downloaded quite a few apps to tinker with and learn, and don't get me wrong. I do consider it a neat device, I like it, and I'm glad I picked it up.
I'm also glad I didn't pay list price for it. Because after four days, it is a cool device, but I can tell readily why Psion has bombed so utterly in the general consumer market. Because when I take off my geek hat and try and look at it like the average person who might go to a Staples or something for a PDA, it does not measure up. People like you and I, however sophisticated we may be, do not make a marketplace.
- -Josh Turiel
Oh, I know about and love the SP2 security features - but the RIM sync software and Palm software (as well as the Dataviz fancy Desktop To Go software) don't have this problem. They can just use Outlook directly without dialog boxes.
I can't give Palm too many props in the software area, though - though their desktop software upgrades are free, it took nearly a year after Win2K was released to have a non-beta quality USB driver. That's way too long.
- -Josh Turiel
Well, after reading a comment in last week's Psion article about the Diamond Mako (a rebadged Revo Plus) being available at Outpost and a few other places for just $100, I ordered one. What the heck - I have a Palm Vx now and a HP Jornada 520 (the HP was free), and I've had a Newton and a Sharp Wizard in the past, along with a couple of prior Palms. I also have a Blackberry (mostly e-mail, I don't use the PDA functionality on it). I've been looking for a "perfect" PDA since before they were called PDA's, and I'd always wanted to try a Psion but they were too damned expensive.
.txt file over. Which put it into Psion Word, not their Notepad app. Oh well.
So after using it for a full weekend +, I can see the usefulness of it to some people but I also can see why Psion's made pretty much zero dent in the consumer PDA market as a whole. I'd played with some other models before, but the Revo Plus is the first one I've owned.
Good points to the Psion:
-When folded, the shell is pretty solid. It's the only plastic PDA I've ever felt comfortable with in a pants pocket (the converse, though, is it's a little tall for shirt pockets).
-The weight is comfortable to carry.
-Battery life is excellent, and there's clear battery life indicators.
-It's pretty quick - switching applications is fast once you get used to the clunky way to do it (or download a nice free task switcher).
-EPOC apps seem to generally be pretty compact. With 16MB of RAM you can cram a lot o stuff into it.
-Licensing Opera: Good Move!
-Like CE, you can browse the palmtop's filesystem when it's docked from your PC. It makes transfers pretty easy.
Unfortunately, it's balanced by things that truly suck:
-The screen (the Revo is non-backlit) can be murky.
-When open, it feels pretty flimsy and flexes in my hand. It's much nicer on a table than in the hand.
- The connectivity software included with the Diamond version is horrid (an older EPOC Connect version). Downloading the current version from Psion (and patching it to the latest fixes) makes it usable, but it still has an alarming habit of disconnecting itself from my Windows laptop with no warning.
-The CopyAnywhere software for Psion/Windows clipboard sharing sucks hard.
-Syncing with Outlook (which I hate, but it is the standard for us) results in Outlook popping up to ask permission to share the e-mail addresses. Outlook thinks PsiWin's a damned macro virus! My Palm and Blackberry don't have this problem - they actually integrate with Outlook well.
-Syncing with my Mac at home - the Palm does it for free (with a free download or software on the disc nowadays, I believe). Buy a Mac, and the software to sync a Palm is already on the hard drive. Psion charges $65 for it, and all it can do is file backups.
-On a related note, all you can easily share from Outlook is the Contacts and Calendar files (which are probably the strongest of the built-in Psion apps, IMO). And the notes from Contacts don't transfer. Also, the Notes section of Outlook doesn't map to anything at all (no conduit), so I had to export to Notepad and copy the
Basically, I like the unit, it's useful, rugged (when closed), has a nice geek factor to it, and I don't regret buying it at all. That said, I think the average consumer would be far better served with a Palm (or maybe CE), and here's why:
-Palms are far cheaper on average. Easier impulse buy.
-A Palm has much more seamless connectivity with the two main desktop platforms out there (Mac and Windows), and it's all included for free with the organizers. Linux support is pretty good, too.
-Palms are smaller, lighter, and more easily pass the shirt pocket test. They also feel more solid when being used. Pocket PC's usually feel like tanks (and excepting the iPaq, are usually built like them) - they're even more rugged than the Psion is.
Airport is ideal for this sort of project - the base stations are relatively inexpensive, and they can be easily configured without a Mac - one fellow wrote a Java-based configurator app. They also work with pretty much any wireless card out there, AFAIK. I also use a Linksys with mine for one of my Wintel boxes.
I took my Airport and added the Lucent range extender antenna (about $60), and simply dremeled my base station to accept the antenna mount. I've been using it for about a year and a half now, and it gives me an effective range of about a quarter mile (it helps that I mounted the whole rig on an outer wall upstairs in my house) when used with my iBook.
To go much farther you either need more power (which may tick off our friends at the FCC) or directional antennas, like Cringely used, with clear line-of-sight. You're subject to all limitations of the 2.4 GHz band, though, and a lot of current cordless phones run in that range - it can mess up 802.11 signals somewhat.
I stick to 900 MHz digital phones partly for that reason.
- -Josh Turiel
When VA (and Penguin, and a few other companies) got into the hardware business, there was a small market niche for boxes that were optimized for Linux, and preconfigured/tested appropriately. Once the bigger vendors (with drastically lower costs) stepped into the marketplace and Linux itself became a product that could be sold and installed straight from the box, the niche companies were doomed. When Linux servers become a commodity, then only the vendors with economies of scale will thrive. VA can't play that game.
If there's any market to be had, it's in selling software and services (though probably not enough to justify the insane valuations that were taking place last year). In essence, Andover was onto the right idea for long-term sustained profitability, but VA wasn't. However, since Andover had much shallower pockets at the time, VA bought Andover instead of the other way around. Stock was cheap then. In the long term, VA was fated to be Just Another Box Company, and there's no money in that anymore (maybe a small shop can make money selling custom boxes, but big companies won't buy from a tiny boutique shop - just from the Dells, Compaqs, IBMs, and HPs of the world, cutting off the air supply of a small public company like VA).
As a software/services/portal company they should have a lower cost basis (building, selling, and supporting boxes is expensive) and, more importantly, lower their cash burn a whole lot. After all, there are portals that make money, software vendors that make money (including Open Source software vendors), and services companies that make money. And there is some synergy between all of them (except for maybe ThinkGeek, but ThinkGeek probably doesn't cost a lot to operate and earns them enough street cred to be worth it). So even though VA's insane valuation was based on their being a hardware company, dumping hardware was probably the right move at the right time. Of course, in another year or so we should know for sure.
- -Josh Turiel
It used to be fairly common here in the States for gas stations to offer a couple of grades of unleaded, leaded, and diesel. Nowadays (at least in New England, where I live, and a few other places I travel), the typical stations offer 3-4 grades of unleaded and that's it. About 1/4 of stations seem to offer diesel, and I haven't seen leaded gas anywhere in years - it's been about 25 years since the typical new car here used it.
There are a few places that handle the natural gas vehicles that are starting to be used in short-haul trucking and for public transit buses, but not the average consumer station.
- -Josh Turiel