I know that this flies in the open source/free software philosophy, but Dell should choose one distribution and stick with it. That way, they can set up specific Dell support groups. They can have a bunch of consumers who have bought the machines as free support in the groups. It will work.
Why? Because unlike say Apple who could have this work, the system will be much more open. Apple's system should work because people are locked into hardware and software, but everything is closed so it's tough if, for example, iTunes 7.1 keeps the hardware mounted volume controls from working, to get a fix. Everyone just has to wait for Apple to put out 7.1.1. With Dell and (my choice) Ubuntu, the system is open.
I'm hoping that it doesn't mean what I think it means. It's often used as a disparaging term for a Jew. I have a lovely wife and two beautiful girls who are Jewish. I would hope that this is a mistake and not a concerted effort to slur.
I don't know anyone who has lost faith in Firefox or switched back to anything else. It's still a great browser and seems to be getting better. There will always be problems with software. The thing that's interesting here is that all of Firefox's good aspects and bad aspects are out in the open. That's what makes it work.
That system is already in place. It's called a loan. You get a loan, buy the equipment, and pay it back at flat rate (probably at least). Yeah, New York State has an incentive program for this too and with the tax credits available, it's pretty reasonable. My wife and I are considering the idea as we need a new roof and would like to combine the installation of both so as to minimize the effect on either one. Solar is a good idea, but for the homeowner of a not-so-new house like mine, it is not the first step toward energy efficiency or independence. Begin with the old furnace, insulation, windows and doors, and sealing all the leaks. But then, yeah, get some solar cells going especially if your power company will buy back the excess.
There was an article earlier about Google Apps. Seems to me that eventually (and it may not take long) most users are going to be able to get by with Google's free apps. Why then pay as you go when you can have free?
One of the reasons I dropped WordPerfect and steered clear of Office was that it WAS pay as you go. Each time there was an upgrade I was a sucker and kept buying the new version. I switched to OpenOffice so that upgrades didn't cost money and now use Google Docs. I can't imagine needing to go back to proprietary software for my needs and it seems like the free services are becoming more powerful and covering a wider range of needs. So I doubt that I would ever pay as I go for software simply because I don't need to go farther than free.
Their function is to seek consenus, bring us all up to speed, get everyone reading from the same page, allocate division of labour etc. But of course, the first reason for having any meeting is to make the person calling the meeting feel or seem important.
At least, that's how it works in my school system.
Cool. Thanks for taking the criticism the way it was intended. As for the Mac being a toy computer, that's part of the reason I want to get one. The other is that the keyboards on the MacBooks are so good for typing and that's most of what I do.
Our entire school dropped Office for OpenOffice and haven't missed a beat. The students like that the program gets upgraded regularly. The staff likes that it works. The business folks like the price.
Right now we're switching most of the kids school work to Google Docs because it's just so much easier to have access to the files everywhere.
Here's the thing though: this works for us. The problem that I'm having with your comments is that you seem to know the ONE TRUE WAY that is right for all people. I'm typing on the last PC I'll ever buy. My next computers will be Macs. Why? I like them. They work. And the whole software issue is becoming moot with all the services online. So I'm saying, ease up there, Skippy. You've got your way, other people have their ways.
I agree. It's just like IBM said about the PC, that it wouldn't make a lot of money, that it didn't matter what operating system they used, and if that little company wanted to license the OS instead of selling it outright, what's the big deal.
And if that isn't enough proof, it's like those audiophiles said about the LP record. It sounds SO MUCH better than compact discs and it's not like people will ever put music on their computers.
I also remember someone saying that the iron horse would never outrun the real horse...
This may have happened, but the whole thing sounds like a load of crap. It's the sort of thing that usually arrives in my email inbox with "FWD" appended to it.
If I burn a DRM tune to a cd, then pop the cd into a computer and have it read back into iTunes, will it still have the DRM restrictions? My guess is that it wouldn't. If anyone can explain, I would appreciate it.
Also, assuming the DRM is removed, what are the downsides to doing this other than using a cd?
But if Apple and Microsoft are saying this and there is pressure exerted by these companies on the record companies to free their music, how could that be a bad thing for consumer of music?
If music was priced fairly, I would buy. In fact, I've often wished that there was a CONTRIBUTE link on the home page of each of my favorite musicians' sites. I would gladly download the music over my connection, burn it to my own cd if I want, and load it onto my mp3 player at my own expense if I knew that the money went to the artists more than to the record companies which, one hopes, have outlived their usefulness.
Our school moved to OO.o a couple years ago at my urging once I saw that we were running one of the other teacher's copy of Office on fifteen computers. So we put OO.o on there and that worked without a problem and everyone has been happy.
But now, we're switching over to Google Docs for most of our word processing.
I mention that because the question was "it is time to consider OpenOffice." In business, it is certainly time. But for us at our school, it's past time and we're moving online. The services there are only getting better and I imagine that there will be a time very soon when people will wonder why anyone other than publishers would bother having a copy of office software on everyone's desk.
I don't see why there won't be syndicated columnists when folks like me still spend a portion of every day visiting sites with paid columnists. Predicting the death of the syndicated columnist is like predicting the death of the newspaper. Yeah, it will likely happen someday. But it's a while off and will happen slowly enough that no one will care. The trend will just change.
I read it Sunday and also submitted it to/. The thing about it is that the author gets both the spy agency and the technology. I heard a comment on the radio the other day that I can't quite remember but it said that terrorism is just a technology problem waiting to be solved and the best way to do it is to open source it and have a million eyeballs on the thing.
Anything would be better than the annoyance of having to be at an airport for two hours, ditch most carry-on items, and submit to ridiculous searches and checks.
I was about to write a positive comment about the review and found this as the first comment. I disagree with the premise that a review has to have a good point or two listed in it. I found that the review had me thinking about all sorts of things other than just the basics of the Zune. I've read those a hundred times already, starting long before the thing saw the light of day. This review was focused not on the Zune device but on the Zune environment and in that regard it got to all the points it needed to make.
Do I think that the review was a shill for the iPod? No. Instead, the author promoted the way of thinking used by the iPod designers and the other successful makers of digital players. The point wasn't to tell you all about how to play songs on the Zune or any of that stuff, it was to say that the method of design, the planning of the product, and the theory behind all of this is deeply flawed.
I see in my morning newspaper, sales for the Zune. I have yet to hear one of my friends thinking about buying one. It's not because they are all addicted to the iPod, several have other types of players. But not one of them is looking for a player that gives them less control over their music. Mostly we talk about how we wish that we could easily move music between players, use wireless devices, receive radio on the iPod without an add-on, and the like. In short, we talk about ways it could be better. It seems to me and to this reviewer that Microsoft worked diligently to find ways to make the player less convenient and more locked up.
I'll say no thanks to that design model and thank you to the reviewer for succinctly getting at an idea that I had thought of but not been able to articulate.
1. It's worth fifty crashes just to have a spell check in the browser. Suddenly I'm spelling things correctly and that can't be a bad thing.
2. It's likely that there will be a 2.0.1 or something by Wednesday or so (soon, at least) whereas if this were from a closed source company, the wait would be much longer.
And a third thought just for the hell of it:
3. It's fun to be out on the edge. If I was doing this for business, I would likely stay with 1.5 as my workhorse and just play with 2.0. That's what I would do with ANY new software.
Vote Democratic on Tuesday, Nov 7. Checks and Balances turn out to be a good thing after all.
The biggest concern I have as an American is that the checks and balances simply are not working and the administration just keeps demanding that we trust them. We won't torture--wink, wink. We won't tap your phone-line--nod, nod. And so on.
My brother and I were just talking about how for the first time in a long time the midterm elections are of paramount importance. With three branches of government sufficiently controlled by the administration's party, we are going down the drain. If we take the House and maybe (oh please, oh please) the Senate, we have the chance to do something that matters: nothing.
That sounds odd I know. But the real goal of putting the Congress in Democratic hands is to keep the administration from doing more of the same. Nothing would be preferable to the damage being done at the moment.
I'm the first to admit that I don't understand all that goes into it. I was just saying that, from a user's perspective, Firefox is quicker and easier to install. It's not a statement about the programming. It's about the experience.
I downloaded IE7 on one of my school's computers. It took a little while to download, took a long time to install, required a reboot of the computer, and I've used it twice so far. To be fair, I wasn't an IE user before IE7 and don't have a lot of interest in using it now. I downloaded it out of curiosity.
I downloaded Firefox 2.0 on two machines at home and eighteen machines at work. It downloaded very quickly, installed even faster, and did not require a reboot. It also installed over my old version, asked if I wanted to check for updates to extensions, and moved all my bookmarks over. (IE7 might have done this too, but I didn't check.)
All in all, Firefox is easier, has a cleaner layout, and just plain works. Way to go Firefox. What a great program.
I know that online office apps are nowhere near as functional as Office/OpenOffice/WordPerfect, but that doesn't matter much to me. I'm a teacher and just today switched all of my students to Google Docs (we all have Gmail accounts because the school system doesn't need to pay for the same service). We were using OpenOffice (because it's free and students could legally install it from the discs I provided), but Google Docs is easier, cheaper for us, and does what we need it to do.
Are there features missing? You bet there are. But with Firefox 2.0 we now have real-time spellchecking, and I imagine that the features are going to grow as we go. For now, it does nearly everything that we need to do and if we don't, we can just shift to OpenOffice for that task and then move back to Google Docs for the rest of it.
What I'm saying is that, for us, in our school, MS Office is unnecessary. We can't be the only ones.
Doesn't that signal a problem for a company that makes tremendous amounts of money on the product?
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I know that this flies in the open source/free software philosophy, but Dell should choose one distribution and stick with it. That way, they can set up specific Dell support groups. They can have a bunch of consumers who have bought the machines as free support in the groups. It will work.
Why? Because unlike say Apple who could have this work, the system will be much more open. Apple's system should work because people are locked into hardware and software, but everything is closed so it's tough if, for example, iTunes 7.1 keeps the hardware mounted volume controls from working, to get a fix. Everyone just has to wait for Apple to put out 7.1.1. With Dell and (my choice) Ubuntu, the system is open.
It could work. It could work very well.
I'm hoping that it doesn't mean what I think it means. It's often used as a disparaging term for a Jew. I have a lovely wife and two beautiful girls who are Jewish. I would hope that this is a mistake and not a concerted effort to slur.
I don't know anyone who has lost faith in Firefox or switched back to anything else. It's still a great browser and seems to be getting better. There will always be problems with software. The thing that's interesting here is that all of Firefox's good aspects and bad aspects are out in the open. That's what makes it work.
You can bet there were many meetings scheduled and sat through before this idea was finalized. Yeesh.
There was an article earlier about Google Apps. Seems to me that eventually (and it may not take long) most users are going to be able to get by with Google's free apps. Why then pay as you go when you can have free?
One of the reasons I dropped WordPerfect and steered clear of Office was that it WAS pay as you go. Each time there was an upgrade I was a sucker and kept buying the new version. I switched to OpenOffice so that upgrades didn't cost money and now use Google Docs. I can't imagine needing to go back to proprietary software for my needs and it seems like the free services are becoming more powerful and covering a wider range of needs. So I doubt that I would ever pay as I go for software simply because I don't need to go farther than free.
At least, that's how it works in my school system.
Cool. Thanks for taking the criticism the way it was intended. As for the Mac being a toy computer, that's part of the reason I want to get one. The other is that the keyboards on the MacBooks are so good for typing and that's most of what I do.
Our entire school dropped Office for OpenOffice and haven't missed a beat. The students like that the program gets upgraded regularly. The staff likes that it works. The business folks like the price.
Right now we're switching most of the kids school work to Google Docs because it's just so much easier to have access to the files everywhere.
Here's the thing though: this works for us. The problem that I'm having with your comments is that you seem to know the ONE TRUE WAY that is right for all people. I'm typing on the last PC I'll ever buy. My next computers will be Macs. Why? I like them. They work. And the whole software issue is becoming moot with all the services online. So I'm saying, ease up there, Skippy. You've got your way, other people have their ways.
I've been taking really, really good vitamins.
I agree. It's just like IBM said about the PC, that it wouldn't make a lot of money, that it didn't matter what operating system they used, and if that little company wanted to license the OS instead of selling it outright, what's the big deal.
And if that isn't enough proof, it's like those audiophiles said about the LP record. It sounds SO MUCH better than compact discs and it's not like people will ever put music on their computers.
I also remember someone saying that the iron horse would never outrun the real horse...
Duh.
This may have happened, but the whole thing sounds like a load of crap. It's the sort of thing that usually arrives in my email inbox with "FWD" appended to it.
Seriously, has this been sourced?
Cool. Thank you.
I'm curious about something:
If I burn a DRM tune to a cd, then pop the cd into a computer and have it read back into iTunes, will it still have the DRM restrictions? My guess is that it wouldn't. If anyone can explain, I would appreciate it.
Also, assuming the DRM is removed, what are the downsides to doing this other than using a cd?
There are problems with the approach you suggest. Jobs explains them in the essay.
But if Apple and Microsoft are saying this and there is pressure exerted by these companies on the record companies to free their music, how could that be a bad thing for consumer of music?
If music was priced fairly, I would buy. In fact, I've often wished that there was a CONTRIBUTE link on the home page of each of my favorite musicians' sites. I would gladly download the music over my connection, burn it to my own cd if I want, and load it onto my mp3 player at my own expense if I knew that the money went to the artists more than to the record companies which, one hopes, have outlived their usefulness.
Our school moved to OO.o a couple years ago at my urging once I saw that we were running one of the other teacher's copy of Office on fifteen computers. So we put OO.o on there and that worked without a problem and everyone has been happy.
But now, we're switching over to Google Docs for most of our word processing.
I mention that because the question was "it is time to consider OpenOffice." In business, it is certainly time. But for us at our school, it's past time and we're moving online. The services there are only getting better and I imagine that there will be a time very soon when people will wonder why anyone other than publishers would bother having a copy of office software on everyone's desk.
I don't see why there won't be syndicated columnists when folks like me still spend a portion of every day visiting sites with paid columnists. Predicting the death of the syndicated columnist is like predicting the death of the newspaper. Yeah, it will likely happen someday. But it's a while off and will happen slowly enough that no one will care. The trend will just change.
I read it Sunday and also submitted it to /. The thing about it is that the author gets both the spy agency and the technology. I heard a comment on the radio the other day that I can't quite remember but it said that terrorism is just a technology problem waiting to be solved and the best way to do it is to open source it and have a million eyeballs on the thing.
Anything would be better than the annoyance of having to be at an airport for two hours, ditch most carry-on items, and submit to ridiculous searches and checks.
I was about to write a positive comment about the review and found this as the first comment. I disagree with the premise that a review has to have a good point or two listed in it. I found that the review had me thinking about all sorts of things other than just the basics of the Zune. I've read those a hundred times already, starting long before the thing saw the light of day. This review was focused not on the Zune device but on the Zune environment and in that regard it got to all the points it needed to make.
Do I think that the review was a shill for the iPod? No. Instead, the author promoted the way of thinking used by the iPod designers and the other successful makers of digital players. The point wasn't to tell you all about how to play songs on the Zune or any of that stuff, it was to say that the method of design, the planning of the product, and the theory behind all of this is deeply flawed.
I see in my morning newspaper, sales for the Zune. I have yet to hear one of my friends thinking about buying one. It's not because they are all addicted to the iPod, several have other types of players. But not one of them is looking for a player that gives them less control over their music. Mostly we talk about how we wish that we could easily move music between players, use wireless devices, receive radio on the iPod without an add-on, and the like. In short, we talk about ways it could be better. It seems to me and to this reviewer that Microsoft worked diligently to find ways to make the player less convenient and more locked up.
I'll say no thanks to that design model and thank you to the reviewer for succinctly getting at an idea that I had thought of but not been able to articulate.
1. It's worth fifty crashes just to have a spell check in the browser. Suddenly I'm spelling things correctly and that can't be a bad thing.
2. It's likely that there will be a 2.0.1 or something by Wednesday or so (soon, at least) whereas if this were from a closed source company, the wait would be much longer.
And a third thought just for the hell of it:
3. It's fun to be out on the edge. If I was doing this for business, I would likely stay with 1.5 as my workhorse and just play with 2.0. That's what I would do with ANY new software.
Vote Democratic on Tuesday, Nov 7. Checks and Balances turn out to be a good thing after all.
The biggest concern I have as an American is that the checks and balances simply are not working and the administration just keeps demanding that we trust them. We won't torture--wink, wink. We won't tap your phone-line--nod, nod. And so on.
My brother and I were just talking about how for the first time in a long time the midterm elections are of paramount importance. With three branches of government sufficiently controlled by the administration's party, we are going down the drain. If we take the House and maybe (oh please, oh please) the Senate, we have the chance to do something that matters: nothing.
That sounds odd I know. But the real goal of putting the Congress in Democratic hands is to keep the administration from doing more of the same. Nothing would be preferable to the damage being done at the moment.
I'm the first to admit that I don't understand all that goes into it. I was just saying that, from a user's perspective, Firefox is quicker and easier to install. It's not a statement about the programming. It's about the experience.
I downloaded IE7 on one of my school's computers. It took a little while to download, took a long time to install, required a reboot of the computer, and I've used it twice so far. To be fair, I wasn't an IE user before IE7 and don't have a lot of interest in using it now. I downloaded it out of curiosity.
I downloaded Firefox 2.0 on two machines at home and eighteen machines at work. It downloaded very quickly, installed even faster, and did not require a reboot. It also installed over my old version, asked if I wanted to check for updates to extensions, and moved all my bookmarks over. (IE7 might have done this too, but I didn't check.)
All in all, Firefox is easier, has a cleaner layout, and just plain works. Way to go Firefox. What a great program.
I know that online office apps are nowhere near as functional as Office/OpenOffice/WordPerfect, but that doesn't matter much to me. I'm a teacher and just today switched all of my students to Google Docs (we all have Gmail accounts because the school system doesn't need to pay for the same service). We were using OpenOffice (because it's free and students could legally install it from the discs I provided), but Google Docs is easier, cheaper for us, and does what we need it to do.
Are there features missing? You bet there are. But with Firefox 2.0 we now have real-time spellchecking, and I imagine that the features are going to grow as we go. For now, it does nearly everything that we need to do and if we don't, we can just shift to OpenOffice for that task and then move back to Google Docs for the rest of it.
What I'm saying is that, for us, in our school, MS Office is unnecessary. We can't be the only ones.
Doesn't that signal a problem for a company that makes tremendous amounts of money on the product?