I was a major skeptic for a long time, but since I switched to a Blackberry 7280 (small screen, color, blue casing) last month, I've never been happier.
The Blackberry doesn't have the wealth of apps that Palm OS can offer, but what it does do, it does VERY well. Getting email pushed to the device is a great feature. It also does SMS texting (for you Europeans out there...you know you're addicted). The cell phone quality is just as good as any Nokia cell phone I've had in the past.
All this, plus Outlook sync'ing basically means my phone and my calendar/contacts/memos/todo and email all travel with me anywhere.
The built in web browser is surprisingly good on the color model. And you're not limited to sites built for handhelds, nor is the handheld figuring out the display - the server fetches the page and formats it for your device before delivering it to you...it is fast, and the layout on most sites is very good.
Anyway, I've been a long time Blackberry skeptic (I've had every model they've offered up to now - it's a work thing), but with this device, they've really nailed the functionality, form factor trade off.
Oh, and the battery lasts about 10 days on a single charge with heavy use.
I never fail to be amazed at how often companies try to copy Apple's design only to produce a product that looks similar but is noticably uglier.
It's like on Charles in Charge where one of the sisters was noticeably hotter than the other one, and yet in one episode the ugly sister won a beauty contest just to show that there's more to a person than looks but that didn't change the fact that everybody still would rather jump the hotter sister.
I'd like to see a distributed computing app that can be used to both do the work (like the current ones do), AND optionally have the ability to submit a task.
This way you could have a world wide supercomputer that everybody would have a chance to employ.
Very few people would probably use it, but it would be very interesting to see the ways in which different people put it to use.
What amazes me is that these guys went to the trouble of doing a source release for some of the classes in order to comply with the GPL. This means that all the time spent on incorporating iTerm and doing a source release took place without anybody actually reading the GPL. They understood enough about the GPL to know that you have to release stuff if you use it, but didn't read it in any detail.
Amazing considering they were launching a product that included a signifcant component of GPL'd code.
I think the fact that they did a source release likely means it was an honest mistake. That being said, if they chose to remove iTerm from it rather than opening the rest of the source, I think they should at the very least make some form of monetary concession toward the authors of iTerm, whose stolen code may have accounted for actual sales of Path Finder.
Is this the guy who made a name for himself yelling about the sky falling at Y2K? As I recall, the sky didn't fall at all. I'm sure he'd like credit for that.
I guess he can't find another "crisis" so he's decided we have too much stuff.
I like AT&T's idea, but suggest that all ISPs go one further: when a customer registers an SMTP server with them, the ISP should be required to check it to see whether it is an open relay at least once a day. If it finds that it is, it should automatically shut it down.
By requiring organizations to apply for opening SMTP from their ISP, and requiring ISPs to test these hosts to see if they're open relays, I think a lot of the spam problem could be eliminated.
And this could be enforced across international borders by ARIN, ICANN or IANA. Whichever body gives out IP addresses to ISPs could require them to implement this practice and pull their IP ranges if they fail to comply.
Ok, I tried buying a song from my tiBook, mainly because I wanted to see if I could convert from WMA to MP3 and put it on my iPod. As a Canadian Apple user I'm a little pissed at ITMS for not being available here.
When I tried to create an account and proceed to enter my credit card info, I got the following message:
Sorry, Puretracks only supports the following OS's: Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP and IE 5+
It was on an.aspx page. I expect the payment part uses some active-x control that will limit you to those OSs or x86/Linux running IE in Wine. I assume they do OS detection from the browser ID.
Bummer.
What's up with people making new web services in this fashion? I mean, how much harder is it to select technology that will work on all platforms and do your development from there?
SGI admitting to having contributed some System V code to the Linux kernel brings to mind a question I've had for years: what are the chances that in a big closed source project (like Windows for example), that some developer hasn't used some open source code at one point or another? How do you protect against this?
Is there a process to audit big companies code? MS threatens me with audits to check my license compliance, can I audit them to check that no open source code is in their products?
And for that matter, which license would win? If GPL'd code was found in a product like Windows, would Microsoft be forced to open source the entire thing?
Just out of interest, how many Slashdotters do CTRL+ALT+DEL with one hand? I had to force myself to use one hand to begin with, but it has become an entirely fluid motion now.
(for those of you who've never tried it) All with the rigth hand: Thumb on the ALT Ring finger on CTRL Middle finger on DEL
NASA would like to have the Orbital Space Plane flying by 2008. John Junkins thinks it's possible.
"If we can go from the drawing board to the Moon in 10 years, we can do this in five years," he said.
I'm glad to see someone getting aggressive on the topic of a time frame. AFAIK, the ISS won't last forever, so as long as we have problems getting people and things up and back from it, it is going to waste.
It seems to me that NASA has been farting around for decades. It's an embarrasment that in 2003 we don't have a multitude of different vehicles available for all sorts of specialized space missions. NASAs mandate ought to be the development and maintenance of a large fleet of spacefaring vehicles. Systems need to be developed so that a launch can happen anytime of any day so that the problem of how and when to get up there becomes a matter of deciding when your cargo is ready.
And if you don't want NASA do it themselves, then this stuff should all be outsourced to the big Aerospace players.
As someone who will have to upgrade my PC to place HL2 and Doom3, I welcome the delays. The longer Id and Valve wait, the more power I can get for my money.
The app that has improved my usability on Mac OSX has been LaunchBar by far. If I want an app, web page or whatever, I whack CMD+SPACE and start typing the name of what I want. It does command completion. So, for example, to get Slashdot, I hit CMD+SPACE, S, Enter. On the Mac, it won't launch an app more than once, so if I want an app that is already open, I can use LaunchBar to switch to it. Eg: Mail: if it is already open but hidden, minimized or on a different desktop, CMD+SPACE, MAI, Enter will bring it up. This is incredibly intuitive and fast for someone who can type. It beats the pants off any taskbar or GUI solution. I'm amazed it hasn't been ported to Linux (or maybe it has?).
You gotta love Ars. The first few paragraphs describe in layman's terms why Windows and the Mac have consistent GUIs and why Linux does not. I hope the main drivers of Linux desktop adoption (the Gnomes, KDEs & Red Hats of the world) pay very close attention to the implications of this message. It's been said many times, but warrants repeating again: Linux desktop adoption is suffering from a lack of consistency across applications.
Red Hat has proven with blue curve that you can skin gnome and kde to look relatively consistent. That provides the 'single desktop' in a decent enough fashion for the moment.
I know it's been said many times before, but I think the bigger barrier is dumb ass app names in Linux. Sit down a Windows user and they'll be able to launch apps etc with out much trouble. Even if the menus look and feel a bit differenent to what they're used to. The bigger problem is that they wont know what to run.
How are they supposed to decode all the archane app names? OpenOffice.org is a word processor? Emacs is a text editor? vi? gKrellem? galeon? konqueror? xchat? gtop?
They'll run screaming!
Sure, somebody will say that Excel isn't intuitive, Safari doesn't say anything about the Internet etc. Fine, I don't disagree. But to be fair, you can afford to be more obscure if you're already famous.
If Linux wants to compete, it needs a distro that changes the names of all these apps to be descriptive.
1) Don't underestimate elasticity of demand. By this I mean, don't charge too little. People get a sense of security when they pay more for a service. A computer is like your body: when you get sick, do you go to the discount teenage doctor? No, you got to a professional and pay the money, because it is important to you. Make sure you charge your customers throught the nose, even if you know the job isn't very hard. They don't know that.
2) Charge for travel time. Don't even think about leaving the house if you're not getting paid. Don't give into the temptation to give freebies to keep your customers happy. Make it clear from the begining that they're paying you a minimum $100 every time they pick up the phone and ask you to help them out - even if they have fixed their own problem by the time you arrive. This breeds respect. They won't feel they can exploit you.
3) Invoice immediately. This probably should be rule #1. Send out the invoice the same day you do the job. It'll keep you well organized and your customers will appreciate remembering what you did for them when they pay your bill. Also, it keeps you liquid.
4) As mentioned on this thread, get them to sign a disclaimer before you begin.
5) Target small/medium businesses. Private customers are the worst. Don't go near them if you can avoid it. They're a lot of trouble.
5.a) Target branch offices of larger corporations that have their HQs elsewhere. The IT manager in another city will appreciate having a smart person he can call to fix his remote office. He's often under the gun to get things fixed and will probably give you steady business.
6) Don't be afraid to drop customers who don't pay promptly. If they call and haven't paid their bill, tell them to call when they have. Period. A business is in business to make money. If you wanted to waste time, you'd read Slashdot.
7) Find other small partners. You can't be an expert in everything and people will ask you to do a whole range of things. If you're a systems guy, team up with a web developer, an app developer, and a small hardware reseller. Refer business to them. Get them to do the same.
8) Be prompt, courteous and polite. Your word is bond. If you commit to something, you have to do it. Servicing your customer is very important. Simply don't agree to something if you don't think you can or want to do it.
I think one of the most annoying thing about GNU/Linux projects is all the damn jargon you have to get through. How can the uninitiated be expected to know that vi, emacs and pico are text editors? That tar does archiving? The list goes on and on. Those KDE guys insist on using dumbass "k"nicknames for every app but at least they're somewhat descriptive. What the GNU/Linux world needs is a new naming system based on common sense instead of inside jokes.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a major skeptic for a long time, but since I switched to a Blackberry 7280 (small screen, color, blue casing) last month, I've never been happier.
The Blackberry doesn't have the wealth of apps that Palm OS can offer, but what it does do, it does VERY well. Getting email pushed to the device is a great feature. It also does SMS texting (for you Europeans out there...you know you're addicted). The cell phone quality is just as good as any Nokia cell phone I've had in the past.
All this, plus Outlook sync'ing basically means my phone and my calendar/contacts/memos/todo and email all travel with me anywhere.
The built in web browser is surprisingly good on the color model. And you're not limited to sites built for handhelds, nor is the handheld figuring out the display - the server fetches the page and formats it for your device before delivering it to you...it is fast, and the layout on most sites is very good.
Anyway, I've been a long time Blackberry skeptic (I've had every model they've offered up to now - it's a work thing), but with this device, they've really nailed the functionality, form factor trade off.
Oh, and the battery lasts about 10 days on a single charge with heavy use.
Try CocoaMySQL if you're looking for an OS X GUI. It's great.
Get it here.
I never fail to be amazed at how often companies try to copy Apple's design only to produce a product that looks similar but is noticably uglier.
It's like on Charles in Charge where one of the sisters was noticeably hotter than the other one, and yet in one episode the ugly sister won a beauty contest just to show that there's more to a person than looks but that didn't change the fact that everybody still would rather jump the hotter sister.
I'd like to see a distributed computing app that can be used to both do the work (like the current ones do), AND optionally have the ability to submit a task. This way you could have a world wide supercomputer that everybody would have a chance to employ. Very few people would probably use it, but it would be very interesting to see the ways in which different people put it to use.
I've found the whole notion of undersea cables fascinating ever since I read Neal Stephenson's Mother Earth Motherboard
What amazes me is that these guys went to the trouble of doing a source release for some of the classes in order to comply with the GPL. This means that all the time spent on incorporating iTerm and doing a source release took place without anybody actually reading the GPL. They understood enough about the GPL to know that you have to release stuff if you use it, but didn't read it in any detail.
Amazing considering they were launching a product that included a signifcant component of GPL'd code.
I think the fact that they did a source release likely means it was an honest mistake. That being said, if they chose to remove iTerm from it rather than opening the rest of the source, I think they should at the very least make some form of monetary concession toward the authors of iTerm, whose stolen code may have accounted for actual sales of Path Finder.
Is this the guy who made a name for himself yelling about the sky falling at Y2K? As I recall, the sky didn't fall at all. I'm sure he'd like credit for that.
I guess he can't find another "crisis" so he's decided we have too much stuff.
There are a bunch of pics of this new vehicle available:
Here
Here, and
Here.
Personally, I think it's got nothin' on the V.A.M.P.!
I like AT&T's idea, but suggest that all ISPs go one further: when a customer registers an SMTP server with them, the ISP should be required to check it to see whether it is an open relay at least once a day. If it finds that it is, it should automatically shut it down.
By requiring organizations to apply for opening SMTP from their ISP, and requiring ISPs to test these hosts to see if they're open relays, I think a lot of the spam problem could be eliminated.
And this could be enforced across international borders by ARIN, ICANN or IANA. Whichever body gives out IP addresses to ISPs could require them to implement this practice and pull their IP ranges if they fail to comply.
Yo Mamas are so ugly that when they look at each other they both turn to stone!
Yo Mamas are so fat that when they have a threesome everybody thinks is a foursome!
Ba dum dum!
Ok, I tried buying a song from my tiBook, mainly because I wanted to see if I could convert from WMA to MP3 and put it on my iPod. As a Canadian Apple user I'm a little pissed at ITMS for not being available here.
.aspx page. I expect the payment part uses some active-x control that will limit you to those OSs or x86/Linux running IE in Wine. I assume they do OS detection from the browser ID.
When I tried to create an account and proceed to enter my credit card info, I got the following message:
Sorry, Puretracks only supports the following OS's: Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP and IE 5+
It was on an
Bummer.
What's up with people making new web services in this fashion? I mean, how much harder is it to select technology that will work on all platforms and do your development from there?
China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit.
That's nice and all, but isn't the tricky part bringing them back?
Let's see what happens in 21 hours.
An implanted device had allowed the monkey to control the game using only her thought.
That's nice and all, but wouldn't it be more useful to build a device that lets us control monkeys with our thoughts!
After the apocalypse, when apes rule the planet, we'd be glad for such technology.
I hear a lot of people called in sick AFTER seeing Episodes I and II because they felt sick!
SGI admitting to having contributed some System V code to the Linux kernel brings to mind a question I've had for years: what are the chances that in a big closed source project (like Windows for example), that some developer hasn't used some open source code at one point or another? How do you protect against this?
Is there a process to audit big companies code? MS threatens me with audits to check my license compliance, can I audit them to check that no open source code is in their products?
And for that matter, which license would win? If GPL'd code was found in a product like Windows, would Microsoft be forced to open source the entire thing?
Really? Are you sure you've tried it my way?
I have a natural keyboard too and your way is a stretch.
To clarify my way:
Thumb=ALT
Ring finger (the one to the left of your pinky)=CTRL
Middle finger (the one you show people to say "F&*! You")=DEL
It's like playing a chord on a piano.
FWIW, I most things under discussion in this forum are worthless!
Just out of interest, how many Slashdotters do CTRL+ALT+DEL with one hand? I had to force myself to use one hand to begin with, but it has become an entirely fluid motion now.
(for those of you who've never tried it)
All with the rigth hand:
Thumb on the ALT
Ring finger on CTRL
Middle finger on DEL
NASA would like to have the Orbital Space Plane flying by 2008. John Junkins thinks it's possible.
"If we can go from the drawing board to the Moon in 10 years, we can do this in five years," he said.
I'm glad to see someone getting aggressive on the topic of a time frame. AFAIK, the ISS won't last forever, so as long as we have problems getting people and things up and back from it, it is going to waste.
It seems to me that NASA has been farting around for decades. It's an embarrasment that in 2003 we don't have a multitude of different vehicles available for all sorts of specialized space missions. NASAs mandate ought to be the development and maintenance of a large fleet of spacefaring vehicles. Systems need to be developed so that a launch can happen anytime of any day so that the problem of how and when to get up there becomes a matter of deciding when your cargo is ready.
And if you don't want NASA do it themselves, then this stuff should all be outsourced to the big Aerospace players.
As someone who will have to upgrade my PC to place HL2 and Doom3, I welcome the delays. The longer Id and Valve wait, the more power I can get for my money.
Take you time guys.
The app that has improved my usability on Mac OSX has been LaunchBar by far. If I want an app, web page or whatever, I whack CMD+SPACE and start typing the name of what I want. It does command completion. So, for example, to get Slashdot, I hit CMD+SPACE, S, Enter. On the Mac, it won't launch an app more than once, so if I want an app that is already open, I can use LaunchBar to switch to it. Eg: Mail: if it is already open but hidden, minimized or on a different desktop, CMD+SPACE, MAI, Enter will bring it up. This is incredibly intuitive and fast for someone who can type. It beats the pants off any taskbar or GUI solution. I'm amazed it hasn't been ported to Linux (or maybe it has?).
You gotta love Ars. The first few paragraphs describe in layman's terms why Windows and the Mac have consistent GUIs and why Linux does not. I hope the main drivers of Linux desktop adoption (the Gnomes, KDEs & Red Hats of the world) pay very close attention to the implications of this message. It's been said many times, but warrants repeating again: Linux desktop adoption is suffering from a lack of consistency across applications.
Red Hat has proven with blue curve that you can skin gnome and kde to look relatively consistent. That provides the 'single desktop' in a decent enough fashion for the moment.
I know it's been said many times before, but I think the bigger barrier is dumb ass app names in Linux. Sit down a Windows user and they'll be able to launch apps etc with out much trouble. Even if the menus look and feel a bit differenent to what they're used to. The bigger problem is that they wont know what to run.
How are they supposed to decode all the archane app names? OpenOffice.org is a word processor? Emacs is a text editor? vi? gKrellem? galeon? konqueror? xchat? gtop?
They'll run screaming!
Sure, somebody will say that Excel isn't intuitive, Safari doesn't say anything about the Internet etc. Fine, I don't disagree. But to be fair, you can afford to be more obscure if you're already famous.
If Linux wants to compete, it needs a distro that changes the names of all these apps to be descriptive.
1) Don't underestimate elasticity of demand. By this I mean, don't charge too little. People get a sense of security when they pay more for a service. A computer is like your body: when you get sick, do you go to the discount teenage doctor? No, you got to a professional and pay the money, because it is important to you. Make sure you charge your customers throught the nose, even if you know the job isn't very hard. They don't know that.
2) Charge for travel time. Don't even think about leaving the house if you're not getting paid. Don't give into the temptation to give freebies to keep your customers happy. Make it clear from the begining that they're paying you a minimum $100 every time they pick up the phone and ask you to help them out - even if they have fixed their own problem by the time you arrive. This breeds respect. They won't feel they can exploit you.
3) Invoice immediately. This probably should be rule #1. Send out the invoice the same day you do the job. It'll keep you well organized and your customers will appreciate remembering what you did for them when they pay your bill. Also, it keeps you liquid.
4) As mentioned on this thread, get them to sign a disclaimer before you begin.
5) Target small/medium businesses. Private customers are the worst. Don't go near them if you can avoid it. They're a lot of trouble.
5.a) Target branch offices of larger corporations that have their HQs elsewhere. The IT manager in another city will appreciate having a smart person he can call to fix his remote office. He's often under the gun to get things fixed and will probably give you steady business.
6) Don't be afraid to drop customers who don't pay promptly. If they call and haven't paid their bill, tell them to call when they have. Period. A business is in business to make money. If you wanted to waste time, you'd read Slashdot.
7) Find other small partners. You can't be an expert in everything and people will ask you to do a whole range of things. If you're a systems guy, team up with a web developer, an app developer, and a small hardware reseller. Refer business to them. Get them to do the same.
8) Be prompt, courteous and polite. Your word is bond. If you commit to something, you have to do it. Servicing your customer is very important. Simply don't agree to something if you don't think you can or want to do it.
Perhaps instead of "boxers or briefs," our next presidential candidate will have to answer "POP3 or IMAP?
Considering some of the candidates, perhaps a more appropriate question would be "spit or swallow?"
I think one of the most annoying thing about GNU/Linux projects is all the damn jargon you have to get through. How can the uninitiated be expected to know that vi, emacs and pico are text editors? That tar does archiving? The list goes on and on. Those KDE guys insist on using dumbass "k"nicknames for every app but at least they're somewhat descriptive. What the GNU/Linux world needs is a new naming system based on common sense instead of inside jokes.