First of all, have you seen the little icon for microsoft related articles? Sure, there's a heavy bias here, but at least it's no secret. Secondly, the article seems to indicate that the behavior of Janet Lawless goes far above and beyond the scope of a "hard sell." In fact, in the excerpts quoted in the article, I don't see the word "sell" anywhere (go ahead, control-f it). And with an obfuscated title like "engagement manager," I doubt the CIO of AWC had any idea he was talking to a member of the sales team (In fact, the article seems to indicate that it was the attorney who caught on first). At least with a car salesman, you know that a) he probably has a quota to fill and b) his salary is dependent on commission from his sales.
Suffice it to say that the difference between the "hard sell" and deliberately misleading and *threatening* behavior is quite substantial. Elaborate sales scheme doesn't even begin to describe it - it's far more analagous to a mafia-esque "protection" scheme. I mean really, how many car salesmen do you know that come out of the woodwork and tell you they believe that your car doesn't meet EPA standards and that you should bring it to the dealership to be "inspected" - so that they can sell you a new one?
You make a valid point, but I would argue that it is not necessarily a wise decision to trust third party developers to get it right.
If you're building a server OS, you can be reasonably certain that your users (read: server admins) will not be installing unverified and untested drivers and software. Now, if you're building a desktop/joe schmoe OS, you can make absolutely no assumptions about the intelligence/education of your users or, for that matter, the people developing hardware and software for your platform.
The best assumption you can make, at least as far as your users are concerned, is that the OS is operating in a very hostile environment (both in terms of the stuff going on inside and what's going on at the lan and wan level). The reason this is the best for your users is because, generally speaking, they like their computer to work consistently (even people with little to no real computer skills these days are becoming increasingly dependent upon their computers), and if, perchance, you're offering this product commercially (gasp!), you probably want your users to pay for that next upgrade. I am by no means advocating the perpetuation of ignorance, but I do know that your average user is not going to blame the faulty driver for that BSOD - i've heard the phrases "F***ing Microsoft!" and "F***ing Windows!" far too many times to believe that.
This looks to me to be a very clever way to sidestep not only bandwidth costs, but the "two-tiered" internet idea that's been kicking around for a while. If Apple can decentralize it's distribution by passing it off to users actually within the Verizon network, for example, Apple wouldn't necessarily have to pay the fiber tax, all the bandwidth used would be internal to the network, and if paying Verizon customers found their bandwidth being throttled, they would certainly have some legal recourse to object - something that Apple and other content providers (Google) don't necessarily have at the moment.
The headline should read: "taking a soldering iron to an snes renders it completely unplayable"... I don't mean to bash too hard, but seriously, clock speed is something you can take as a constant for console video game development. Now, if he could get it to boot linux, and wire an ethernet cable through one of the controller ports, and play two player SNES games over the internet (in emulation), that would be cool.
The problem, however, is that in so-called Middle America (i.e. low density, land-locked suburbia) the "choice" that people there have is work at Walmart, buy at Walmart, or move somewhere else (leaving behind family and friends). I mean, really, in many, many small towns, when Walmart announced they were building a store in the area, the average retail and related salaries dropped by 30% (no, I don't have a link to support that number) simply to stay competitive, and in fact, in many cases that didn't prevent local businesses from going belly up when Walmart came rumbling in. The fact of the matter is that much like the coal mines and steel mills of the early 20th century, Walmart is the financial backbone in many small towns across the country, and they got that way by being incredibly aggressive towards their competition.
My biggest concern is the insidious means by which Walmart have inculcated themselves into the American economy as a whole - what happens if/when Walmart collapses? Most likely, many poor, small towns will become poorer and smaller.
The Era of the Desktop computer will very soon become The Era of the Home Server - desktops won't die, they'll simply become our centralized data storage and home automation servers. As it stands even now, many (tech minded) people run an old desktop as a server, and as the software improves, more people will use (static) machines to stream video and audio to every room in their house, and manage storage, synchronization and backup of multiple small, wireless devices.
The benefit of owning both a desktop and a laptop is that you can have, relatively affordably, a machine with massive storage space and computing power, and several portable devices all capable of sharing data regardless of geographic location (assuming there's a wireless signal). So, while the per capita ownership of "desktop" computers may decline - they will most certainly not disappear, just change form slightly.
More importantly, software is the only example of a product that can be protected by both copyright and patents. That, in and of itself, should be enough to acknowledge that software is necessarily an exception to the rule.
I agree with Graham's assertion that the biggest (but not the only) problem with the patent system as it is now is patent trolls. So, perhaps, acknowledging the oddity of this double protection - we require the double protection - i.e. you may only be granted the patent on a given piece of software if you also can present a functional, copyrighted (by you) example of the software as well.
Last time I was on a transatlantic flight, I flew coach. I didn't even have enough elbow room to use a laptop:-p But yeah, that is a viable market for this product, unfortunately, I give it a year before planes have affordable internet access. I guess the point of my comment is that the internet is only going to get more ubiquitous, and this product is a little too late, and doesn't have much sustainability.
I would imagine that the problem is the fact that the aerosol version aerosolizes the nano particles, whereas the spray pump does not - have you ever observed the cloud of almost-vapor that just sort of hangs in the air when you spray something like Lysol? The same behavior with a substance containing nasty little nanoparticles could potentially be really, really bad for you. Why didn't they think of this? Surely they knew that inhaling billions of silica nanoparticles would be hazardous to your health.
I might have considered this before I bought my Treo 650 - now that I can get internet access on my laptop pretty much anywhere I get cell reception, however, there isn't much of a point. It's a nice idea, and I imagine it was pretty tricky to implement - but the internet has simply become too ubiquitous for this to be a viable product.
Right, because direct competition is so bad for consumers. All this does is removes any excuse people had previously for switching (assuming they were considering it) by giving them everything they want in one package. Given that the boot times on the intel macs are under 30 seconds - people will have no problem switching between windows and mac, and you can be damn sure the people who don't know how to secure windows will be pleased to be able to boot into OS X once their windows install becomes unusable (due to whatever malware).
I'm fairly certain this is a good thing for Apple to be doing - as it will allow people new to Mac OS X to actually compare OS X and XP side by side (on a truly level playing field - same hardware, after all) - I'm also quite certain that in large part OS X will survive the scrutiny, and XP won't.
The kernel of Mac OS X was not written in the seventies, and has in fact been in active development since the late 80's (roughly). It's a descendant of Carnegie Mellon's Mach kernel , which is well designed and was written from the ground up for SMP and preemptive multitasking - two concepts that OS 9 and it's predecessors were more or less totally ignorant of.
What OS 9 managed successfully (most of the time) was the appearance of speed, as the gui was relatively light weight and the frontmost process got most of the CPU. Try running the webstar webserver on OS 9, and a couple of network shared folders, and then see how fast OS 9 is - my OS X box can handle the same load and still be a usable machine - something that was not possible on OS 9.
...a cross or diamond cut shredder - you can pick them up at Staples for 50 bucks, and you can even shred your old credit cards with them (if you get one that can handle it). In the days of garbage picking identity thieves, the shredder is your friend.
Good point - and might I add that our own government developed and released such a game, full of plenty of life-like violence, available for free download, and requiring no parental consent (though there may have been a checkbox that read "check here if you are over the age of 17"). It's the ultimate hypocrisy - violence is bad, video game violence is bad, but as long as you're wearing a uniform, feel free to take all the innocent life you deem necessary, as long as you get a terrorist or two in the process (sorry, a little off-topic, couldn't help myself).
Frankly, I'd like people to shut the hell up about video game violence and wait ten years, by which time we'll be able to collect some real data on the affect of life-like video game violence on real life behavior. I mean, really, homicidal behavior in people of all ages has been around for a hell of a lot longer than video games, hip hop, gangsta rap, or rock and roll have, and unless you can show me a reliable study that links any of those three things with violent behavior, let the parents do the parenting, and let me enjoy my hot coffee mod.
Excellent point. I do think, however, that Mr. Brummel's analogy is apt - in some circumstances. Take, for example, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band (by the Beatles). As an album, it was quite popular (don't have any specific numbers), and yet, not a single song on the album hit the Billboard Chart #1 spot. The reason for that, IMO, is that the album was a complete work - the individual pieces did not make much sense. The same can be said for Dark Side of the Moon (whether or not you play it over the Wizard of Oz).
The problem, however, is that this is not how pop albums are put together. Basically, they take what they consider to be the best songs on the album, and put them within the first five tracks of the cd, and then fill in the blanks with songs that very few people listen to so that they can justify charging full price for the cd. In this case, it makes perfect sense that iTunes drives CD/album sales down (regardless of the worthless statistical data in the article) because there's no reason to buy the cd, which threatens the record company's business model.
Really, my point is that the record industry has no one but itself to blame. If you produce something that people don't actually want to buy, and then package it with something they do want to buy, and then force them to pay extra for the crap they don't want, do you really think that when offered the opportunity not to pay for the crap, they wouldn't take it? I mean, doesn't it piss you off that that winter weather package on your car comes with a racing stripe and chrome rims?
My question is...how exactly would this identify terrorists - who are, presumably, the people that a filter like this would be intended to identify? I can certainly understand that unprecedented financial behavior can, in a very small percentages of cases, indicate illegal behavior (drug dealing, primarily), but how is this within the scope of the jurisdiction of Homeland Security? Don't we have the DEA and IRS for things like that?
It frightens me that the Department of Homeland Security has become the bohemoth it has, and it seems to me that it will, in short order, become the beaurocracy that it was intended to improve upon. Frankly, I hope that will be the case, as the alternatives are frightening; beurocracy was built into the constitution, specifically to limit the powers of the federal government.
An anonymous whistle-blower in the Blair administration, known only as Deep Water, has made public that certain special interest lobbyists representing the bottled water industry are long time contributors to the Blair administration - and have recently funded studies that demonstrate that the so-called recommended daily water intake of 8 glasses a day is in fact short by approximately 264 glasses, or 16 gallons, a number that certain members of parliament see as a striking coincidence to the number mentioned in today's press release.
Further investigation is pending, but a handful of MP's are already calling for Blair's resignation.
You have a point, for every successful open source project out there, there are ten poorly implemented, poorly documented or completely vaporous open source projects as well. But the same is true in the corporate world - the only difference is money. In the open source world, when a projects dies because of lack of interest or poor project management, it stands about an equal chance of being resurrected by a completely different group of people, or completely disappering. In the corporate world, a project has the same options, but the kicker is the money already invested in the project. If a poorly managed, but nevertheless profitable, project begins to fall apart, a company is more likely to throw money at it in the form of people or hardware to keep it alive than to just let it die. Even a poorly managed project can be kept alive with a steady influx of cash. Therefore, truly well managed open source projects should definitely serve as a model for corporate project management. If a project can be kept alive and growing through good management, without the benefit of a cashflow - theoretically, corporate projects could benefit from an application of the same principles.
For those interested in what this article claimed to be about (from the post), might I suggest a few people with a sense of humor, a case of beer, and this.
Yep, as an apple fanboy myself, I'm not big in to applescript. I've used it a couple of times with AppleScript Studio to write, in the space of about 15 minutes, gui apps that do things like randomize a list of names an email addresses to assign secret santas and send out emails with those assignments. It's real use is easy to write, easy to read, easy to edit scripts that someone whose never written a perl script can use and tweak. It is neither efficient nor elegant, but it's not supposed to be - it's just supposed to be easy.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot step 5 - Profit!
First of all, have you seen the little icon for microsoft related articles? Sure, there's a heavy bias here, but at least it's no secret. Secondly, the article seems to indicate that the behavior of Janet Lawless goes far above and beyond the scope of a "hard sell." In fact, in the excerpts quoted in the article, I don't see the word "sell" anywhere (go ahead, control-f it). And with an obfuscated title like "engagement manager," I doubt the CIO of AWC had any idea he was talking to a member of the sales team (In fact, the article seems to indicate that it was the attorney who caught on first). At least with a car salesman, you know that a) he probably has a quota to fill and b) his salary is dependent on commission from his sales.
Suffice it to say that the difference between the "hard sell" and deliberately misleading and *threatening* behavior is quite substantial. Elaborate sales scheme doesn't even begin to describe it - it's far more analagous to a mafia-esque "protection" scheme. I mean really, how many car salesmen do you know that come out of the woodwork and tell you they believe that your car doesn't meet EPA standards and that you should bring it to the dealership to be "inspected" - so that they can sell you a new one?
You make a valid point, but I would argue that it is not necessarily a wise decision to trust third party developers to get it right.
If you're building a server OS, you can be reasonably certain that your users (read: server admins) will not be installing unverified and untested drivers and software. Now, if you're building a desktop/joe schmoe OS, you can make absolutely no assumptions about the intelligence/education of your users or, for that matter, the people developing hardware and software for your platform.
The best assumption you can make, at least as far as your users are concerned, is that the OS is operating in a very hostile environment (both in terms of the stuff going on inside and what's going on at the lan and wan level). The reason this is the best for your users is because, generally speaking, they like their computer to work consistently (even people with little to no real computer skills these days are becoming increasingly dependent upon their computers), and if, perchance, you're offering this product commercially (gasp!), you probably want your users to pay for that next upgrade. I am by no means advocating the perpetuation of ignorance, but I do know that your average user is not going to blame the faulty driver for that BSOD - i've heard the phrases "F***ing Microsoft!" and "F***ing Windows!" far too many times to believe that.
This looks to me to be a very clever way to sidestep not only bandwidth costs, but the "two-tiered" internet idea that's been kicking around for a while. If Apple can decentralize it's distribution by passing it off to users actually within the Verizon network, for example, Apple wouldn't necessarily have to pay the fiber tax, all the bandwidth used would be internal to the network, and if paying Verizon customers found their bandwidth being throttled, they would certainly have some legal recourse to object - something that Apple and other content providers (Google) don't necessarily have at the moment.
The headline should read: "taking a soldering iron to an snes renders it completely unplayable" ... I don't mean to bash too hard, but seriously, clock speed is something you can take as a constant for console video game development. Now, if he could get it to boot linux, and wire an ethernet cable through one of the controller ports, and play two player SNES games over the internet (in emulation), that would be cool.
The problem, however, is that in so-called Middle America (i.e. low density, land-locked suburbia) the "choice" that people there have is work at Walmart, buy at Walmart, or move somewhere else (leaving behind family and friends). I mean, really, in many, many small towns, when Walmart announced they were building a store in the area, the average retail and related salaries dropped by 30% (no, I don't have a link to support that number) simply to stay competitive, and in fact, in many cases that didn't prevent local businesses from going belly up when Walmart came rumbling in. The fact of the matter is that much like the coal mines and steel mills of the early 20th century, Walmart is the financial backbone in many small towns across the country, and they got that way by being incredibly aggressive towards their competition.
My biggest concern is the insidious means by which Walmart have inculcated themselves into the American economy as a whole - what happens if/when Walmart collapses? Most likely, many poor, small towns will become poorer and smaller.
You're welcome, AC.
The Era of the Desktop computer will very soon become The Era of the Home Server - desktops won't die, they'll simply become our centralized data storage and home automation servers. As it stands even now, many (tech minded) people run an old desktop as a server, and as the software improves, more people will use (static) machines to stream video and audio to every room in their house, and manage storage, synchronization and backup of multiple small, wireless devices.
The benefit of owning both a desktop and a laptop is that you can have, relatively affordably, a machine with massive storage space and computing power, and several portable devices all capable of sharing data regardless of geographic location (assuming there's a wireless signal). So, while the per capita ownership of "desktop" computers may decline - they will most certainly not disappear, just change form slightly.
More importantly, software is the only example of a product that can be protected by both copyright and patents. That, in and of itself, should be enough to acknowledge that software is necessarily an exception to the rule.
I agree with Graham's assertion that the biggest (but not the only) problem with the patent system as it is now is patent trolls. So, perhaps, acknowledging the oddity of this double protection - we require the double protection - i.e. you may only be granted the patent on a given piece of software if you also can present a functional, copyrighted (by you) example of the software as well.
Last time I was on a transatlantic flight, I flew coach. I didn't even have enough elbow room to use a laptop :-p But yeah, that is a viable market for this product, unfortunately, I give it a year before planes have affordable internet access. I guess the point of my comment is that the internet is only going to get more ubiquitous, and this product is a little too late, and doesn't have much sustainability.
I would imagine that the problem is the fact that the aerosol version aerosolizes the nano particles, whereas the spray pump does not - have you ever observed the cloud of almost-vapor that just sort of hangs in the air when you spray something like Lysol? The same behavior with a substance containing nasty little nanoparticles could potentially be really, really bad for you. Why didn't they think of this? Surely they knew that inhaling billions of silica nanoparticles would be hazardous to your health.
I might have considered this before I bought my Treo 650 - now that I can get internet access on my laptop pretty much anywhere I get cell reception, however, there isn't much of a point. It's a nice idea, and I imagine it was pretty tricky to implement - but the internet has simply become too ubiquitous for this to be a viable product.
Right, because direct competition is so bad for consumers. All this does is removes any excuse people had previously for switching (assuming they were considering it) by giving them everything they want in one package. Given that the boot times on the intel macs are under 30 seconds - people will have no problem switching between windows and mac, and you can be damn sure the people who don't know how to secure windows will be pleased to be able to boot into OS X once their windows install becomes unusable (due to whatever malware).
I'm fairly certain this is a good thing for Apple to be doing - as it will allow people new to Mac OS X to actually compare OS X and XP side by side (on a truly level playing field - same hardware, after all) - I'm also quite certain that in large part OS X will survive the scrutiny, and XP won't.
...for the quadriplegic's sake, I'll be more interested in seeing the quadriplegic wear the suit and climb the mountain.
This link has quite a bit of information - check it out. -Eric
The kernel of Mac OS X was not written in the seventies, and has in fact been in active development since the late 80's (roughly). It's a descendant of Carnegie Mellon's Mach kernel , which is well designed and was written from the ground up for SMP and preemptive multitasking - two concepts that OS 9 and it's predecessors were more or less totally ignorant of.
What OS 9 managed successfully (most of the time) was the appearance of speed, as the gui was relatively light weight and the frontmost process got most of the CPU. Try running the webstar webserver on OS 9, and a couple of network shared folders, and then see how fast OS 9 is - my OS X box can handle the same load and still be a usable machine - something that was not possible on OS 9.
...a cross or diamond cut shredder - you can pick them up at Staples for 50 bucks, and you can even shred your old credit cards with them (if you get one that can handle it). In the days of garbage picking identity thieves, the shredder is your friend.
Good point - and might I add that our own government developed and released such a game, full of plenty of life-like violence, available for free download, and requiring no parental consent (though there may have been a checkbox that read "check here if you are over the age of 17"). It's the ultimate hypocrisy - violence is bad, video game violence is bad, but as long as you're wearing a uniform, feel free to take all the innocent life you deem necessary, as long as you get a terrorist or two in the process (sorry, a little off-topic, couldn't help myself).
Frankly, I'd like people to shut the hell up about video game violence and wait ten years, by which time we'll be able to collect some real data on the affect of life-like video game violence on real life behavior. I mean, really, homicidal behavior in people of all ages has been around for a hell of a lot longer than video games, hip hop, gangsta rap, or rock and roll have, and unless you can show me a reliable study that links any of those three things with violent behavior, let the parents do the parenting, and let me enjoy my hot coffee mod.
Excellent point. I do think, however, that Mr. Brummel's analogy is apt - in some circumstances. Take, for example, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band (by the Beatles). As an album, it was quite popular (don't have any specific numbers), and yet, not a single song on the album hit the Billboard Chart #1 spot. The reason for that, IMO, is that the album was a complete work - the individual pieces did not make much sense. The same can be said for Dark Side of the Moon (whether or not you play it over the Wizard of Oz).
The problem, however, is that this is not how pop albums are put together. Basically, they take what they consider to be the best songs on the album, and put them within the first five tracks of the cd, and then fill in the blanks with songs that very few people listen to so that they can justify charging full price for the cd. In this case, it makes perfect sense that iTunes drives CD/album sales down (regardless of the worthless statistical data in the article) because there's no reason to buy the cd, which threatens the record company's business model.
Really, my point is that the record industry has no one but itself to blame. If you produce something that people don't actually want to buy, and then package it with something they do want to buy, and then force them to pay extra for the crap they don't want, do you really think that when offered the opportunity not to pay for the crap, they wouldn't take it? I mean, doesn't it piss you off that that winter weather package on your car comes with a racing stripe and chrome rims?
Nukular. I mean, c'mon guys - that's how the *President* says it, and he's got to be right.
-sorry, couldn't help myself
My question is...how exactly would this identify terrorists - who are, presumably, the people that a filter like this would be intended to identify? I can certainly understand that unprecedented financial behavior can, in a very small percentages of cases, indicate illegal behavior (drug dealing, primarily), but how is this within the scope of the jurisdiction of Homeland Security? Don't we have the DEA and IRS for things like that?
It frightens me that the Department of Homeland Security has become the bohemoth it has, and it seems to me that it will, in short order, become the beaurocracy that it was intended to improve upon. Frankly, I hope that will be the case, as the alternatives are frightening; beurocracy was built into the constitution, specifically to limit the powers of the federal government.
An anonymous whistle-blower in the Blair administration, known only as Deep Water, has made public that certain special interest lobbyists representing the bottled water industry are long time contributors to the Blair administration - and have recently funded studies that demonstrate that the so-called recommended daily water intake of 8 glasses a day is in fact short by approximately 264 glasses, or 16 gallons, a number that certain members of parliament see as a striking coincidence to the number mentioned in today's press release.
Further investigation is pending, but a handful of MP's are already calling for Blair's resignation.
You have a point, for every successful open source project out there, there are ten poorly implemented, poorly documented or completely vaporous open source projects as well. But the same is true in the corporate world - the only difference is money. In the open source world, when a projects dies because of lack of interest or poor project management, it stands about an equal chance of being resurrected by a completely different group of people, or completely disappering.
In the corporate world, a project has the same options, but the kicker is the money already invested in the project. If a poorly managed, but nevertheless profitable, project begins to fall apart, a company is more likely to throw money at it in the form of people or hardware to keep it alive than to just let it die. Even a poorly managed project can be kept alive with a steady influx of cash.
Therefore, truly well managed open source projects should definitely serve as a model for corporate project management. If a project can be kept alive and growing through good management, without the benefit of a cashflow - theoretically, corporate projects could benefit from an application of the same principles.
For those interested in what this article claimed to be about (from the post), might I suggest a few people with a sense of humor, a case of beer, and this.
Yep, as an apple fanboy myself, I'm not big in to applescript. I've used it a couple of times with AppleScript Studio to write, in the space of about 15 minutes, gui apps that do things like randomize a list of names an email addresses to assign secret santas and send out emails with those assignments. It's real use is easy to write, easy to read, easy to edit scripts that someone whose never written a perl script can use and tweak. It is neither efficient nor elegant, but it's not supposed to be - it's just supposed to be easy.