Having seen what a weak point MS Outlook can be for the security of my clients, having an option to replace Outlook with something that doesn't carry the inherent risks of Outlook while providing them the same funcitonality as Outlook (calendaring being the big one) is really making me consider convincing them to switch.
...before anybody goes on to tell me how great iCal, GoogleCal or Sunbird is, just like to point out that my clients like many others don't see replacing one app with two as a good reason to switch. Plus, forgoing the option to process meeting invitations with one click would never be seen as an improvement.
OTOH, seeing how impossible it is to wean clients off of IE, Outlook, Acrobat Reader, etc. Evolution needs to be even better than advertised.
Many, many companies out there ask for the source code because their long term plan is to do everything "in house" and cut you, the creator of the source code, completely out... It has happened to me twice in the past five years.
In the big picture, in-house development is going to cost alot more than outsource for projects of larger scale. A customer expecting to walk away with the source code probably has designs on finding ways for all their in-house development to get paid for and the best way to do that is to turn around and become your competitor... not the only way, but the best way.
I apologize ahead of time for sounding troll-ish, but this is yet another story about "people might get a Mac-- this time for sure!".
It's boring as shit.
Clearly whatever the Mac has up to now has only been compelling enough to make some people switch-- when are you going to get off your butts and make a compelling reason for the average guy to switch (read: Killer App).
Sort of what the first post was saying, but instead of porting source code you have already, try duplicating stuff that you see around already. Browse through a magazine or tucows.com and you'll notice some software ad that make you think: "I could do that" or "How would I do that?".
This is a really handy soft skill because so many employers are going to tell you what they want without being able to provide anything technical-- learning to analyze features from the outside-in will help develop the mental tools you'll need to deal with the non-technical types and that can really pay off.
"The customer is always right". If the customer says it's defective, then it's defective and an exchange or return should be offered immediately. This "absurdity" you speak of happens at every department store, hardware store and car dealership in the civilized world:P
You're right, they did relent after several weeks and several thousand forum postings. The lack of customer service was that pause between the release and the acknowledgement of the problem. Good customer service would have been to accept returns from day one and state the problem afterwards.
So when Apple initially refused to acknowledge that their new iPod Nanos would scratch easily, where exactly was good customer service being practised?
...And its been nine years of technical people telling users not to use Outlook to read email. Even users who know better can't stop a trojan horse when the email is formatted properly. Just imagine if MS had arrived not invented ActiveScripting. Ugh, I cringe at the thought that we turned a text-based medium into something so harmful.
From the outside, that does sound right, however, having had to learn how to put together websites that had to pass ADA (American Diabilities Act) and w3c-Level 1 compliance for accessibility I can really say that the basic steps for this kind of compliance actually make your web pages better organized, and easier to use for all.
On the other hand, going down a path popular in the XHTML camp, where you put all your content in DIV tags organized in a logical sequence then use CSS to position everything (see http://www.zengarden.com/), not only will you have a document that is parse-able by a screenreader but that same document is going to be indexed more thoroughly and faster by search engine robots.
The most positive aspect of this is its just an education issue, if you learn how to do the right treatment to your web pages it takes little time to learn and once you're ove the learning curb it takes no extra time over doing it the sloppy way.
I agree with you 100%... My comment about exploitations were things like the lag-fragging, there was a time in EVE when users could launch enough drones that anyone entering the same star system would suffer from severe lag, so you'd pop out of a jump and you couldn't defend yourself.
Eventually the EVE developers fixed that problem, but there were others and it always seems like when you needed the best response time you'd always be incapable of responding due to lag. I quit EVE almost 2 years ago, so many of their lag issues are probably fixed now, but I've moved on.
I really really liked EVE, I started playing it about 3 months after beta. Fairly regular game updates, an extremely large playing area with vast stretches of solar systems to explore that really added an element of mystery to it all. I enjoyed it so much it's the yardstick by which I measure all MMOGs.
The only downside to it was the proliferation of griefers on the system, who would attack when you were at your most vulnerable state, often exploiting the flaws in the software leaving you feeling freshly fucked, but not in a good way. I left it when PvP was too big an obstacle to play the game the way I wanted to.
That being said, if I ever find a game of the same scale and ambition again, I could easily part with $15-$20 a month to join in, as long as the griefing was under control.
It all worked so well until the day after the office Christmas party and the photocopy machines were churning out image after image of "cracks" and fissures in the Earth's surface.
...This program is designed to provide better schooling to children and therefore give them the opportunity to earn a living while not have to turn to prostitution or sweatshop labor.
Thanks for the extra info, the brief time I spent with a WinFX beta last summer didn't make it all that clear. I still feel I was somewhat right, but "Troll"? Ouch... I'll just skip contributing altogether next time.
Not quite right, WinFX can work in tandem with.Net but it is actually an application of XML, used to define working applications and interfaces, pretty much exactly the same way that Mozilla has XUL.
Duh, my bad. I picked up this anectdotally, through The Corporation. They devote about 10-15 minutes on Monsanto and their litigious pursuits over their IP protection.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a documentary that analyzes the behavior and nature of today's corporations, quite long at 3 hours (but it's split into 6 pieces as it was originally a doc series for public TV), but a decent rental choice for a Sunday afternoon.
1) Actually, they do it to put some IP in their seeds, and then prevent farmers to reuse their seeds the next year.
2)That's their product. Farmers don't need to buy it.
I agree with you, however, Monsanto has been suing farmers who have not planted Monstano's Canola seeds yet the farmer's crops get cross-pollinated from a neighbouring Monsanto Canola field. Farmers call it 'Nature', Monstanto calls it 'Theft'.
A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit
Again, I see your point, but given my point above, is it really a good thing to be pursuing our profits to the point where it harms others? Where's the cooperation in that?
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Having seen what a weak point MS Outlook can be for the security of my clients, having an option to replace Outlook with something that doesn't carry the inherent risks of Outlook while providing them the same funcitonality as Outlook (calendaring being the big one) is really making me consider convincing them to switch.
...before anybody goes on to tell me how great iCal, GoogleCal or Sunbird is, just like to point out that my clients like many others don't see replacing one app with two as a good reason to switch. Plus, forgoing the option to process meeting invitations with one click would never be seen as an improvement.
OTOH, seeing how impossible it is to wean clients off of IE, Outlook, Acrobat Reader, etc. Evolution needs to be even better than advertised.
Umm, NO.
Many, many companies out there ask for the source code because their long term plan is to do everything "in house" and cut you, the creator of the source code, completely out... It has happened to me twice in the past five years.
In the big picture, in-house development is going to cost alot more than outsource for projects of larger scale. A customer expecting to walk away with the source code probably has designs on finding ways for all their in-house development to get paid for and the best way to do that is to turn around and become your competitor... not the only way, but the best way.
You're exactly right... Let's compress them until they are unrecognizable from their original image.
...File this one under "If I can hear it, I can record it."
Actually, if Word is the only thing you use, it isn't nearly as bad as you make it. And who is using InDesign to post to their blog?
I tried to drink while playing videogames but it was too hard to hold my beer AND the controller.
It's boring as shit.
Clearly whatever the Mac has up to now has only been compelling enough to make some people switch-- when are you going to get off your butts and make a compelling reason for the average guy to switch (read: Killer App).
This is a really handy soft skill because so many employers are going to tell you what they want without being able to provide anything technical-- learning to analyze features from the outside-in will help develop the mental tools you'll need to deal with the non-technical types and that can really pay off.
I'm not sure I've picked up on your thread... Perhaps I could wrench it out of you.
For those of you having difficulty with the above emoticons, take note they can be read in either of 2 ways:
OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE less-than-three less-than-three less-than-three!!!
-- Which means on a scale of 10, this site only rates a "3"
OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE conical-penis-with-balls, conical-penis-with-balls, conical-penis-with-balls
-- Which makes no sense whasoever, must be some kind of April fool's joke.
"The customer is always right". If the customer says it's defective, then it's defective and an exchange or return should be offered immediately. This "absurdity" you speak of happens at every department store, hardware store and car dealership in the civilized world :P
Sheesh. I'm ready to pack it in on the whole thing. Let's call it "F"-mail instead.
You're right, they did relent after several weeks and several thousand forum postings. The lack of customer service was that pause between the release and the acknowledgement of the problem. Good customer service would have been to accept returns from day one and state the problem afterwards.
So when Apple initially refused to acknowledge that their new iPod Nanos would scratch easily, where exactly was good customer service being practised?
...And its been nine years of technical people telling users not to use Outlook to read email. Even users who know better can't stop a trojan horse when the email is formatted properly. Just imagine if MS had arrived not invented ActiveScripting. Ugh, I cringe at the thought that we turned a text-based medium into something so harmful.
On the other hand, going down a path popular in the XHTML camp, where you put all your content in DIV tags organized in a logical sequence then use CSS to position everything (see http://www.zengarden.com/), not only will you have a document that is parse-able by a screenreader but that same document is going to be indexed more thoroughly and faster by search engine robots.
The most positive aspect of this is its just an education issue, if you learn how to do the right treatment to your web pages it takes little time to learn and once you're ove the learning curb it takes no extra time over doing it the sloppy way.
But the homeless need the wireless access so they can download email to their laptops, you insensitive clod!
Eventually the EVE developers fixed that problem, but there were others and it always seems like when you needed the best response time you'd always be incapable of responding due to lag. I quit EVE almost 2 years ago, so many of their lag issues are probably fixed now, but I've moved on.
The only downside to it was the proliferation of griefers on the system, who would attack when you were at your most vulnerable state, often exploiting the flaws in the software leaving you feeling freshly fucked, but not in a good way. I left it when PvP was too big an obstacle to play the game the way I wanted to.
That being said, if I ever find a game of the same scale and ambition again, I could easily part with $15-$20 a month to join in, as long as the griefing was under control.
It all worked so well until the day after the office Christmas party and the photocopy machines were churning out image after image of "cracks" and fissures in the Earth's surface.
I think you're right and I would add to that:
...This program is designed to provide better schooling to children and therefore give them the opportunity to earn a living while not have to turn to prostitution or sweatshop labor.
Thanks for the extra info, the brief time I spent with a WinFX beta last summer didn't make it all that clear. I still feel I was somewhat right, but "Troll"? Ouch... I'll just skip contributing altogether next time.
Not quite right, WinFX can work in tandem with .Net but it is actually an application of XML, used to define working applications and interfaces, pretty much exactly the same way that Mozilla has XUL.
Duh, my bad. I picked up this anectdotally, through The Corporation. They devote about 10-15 minutes on Monsanto and their litigious pursuits over their IP protection.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a documentary that analyzes the behavior and nature of today's corporations, quite long at 3 hours (but it's split into 6 pieces as it was originally a doc series for public TV), but a decent rental choice for a Sunday afternoon.
1) Actually, they do it to put some IP in their seeds, and then prevent farmers to reuse their seeds the next year.
2)That's their product. Farmers don't need to buy it.
I agree with you, however, Monsanto has been suing farmers who have not planted Monstano's Canola seeds yet the farmer's crops get cross-pollinated from a neighbouring Monsanto Canola field. Farmers call it 'Nature', Monstanto calls it 'Theft'.
A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit
Again, I see your point, but given my point above, is it really a good thing to be pursuing our profits to the point where it harms others? Where's the cooperation in that?