Re:What stops these from replacing laptops?
on
Handtop Roundup
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Based on what I have been reading about the increased popularity of laptops, many people are buying them as desktop replacements. You get the power of a desktop, with the relative portability of a laptop. As nice as the Transmeta CPUs are for low power/long battery life, I wouldn't consider 1GHz as a replacement for an AMD64 3200 CPU.
I don't consider some of the ne 17" laptops really portable, but if you need to get power and screen real estate on the road, they aren't a bad choice.
If you use Symantec for antivirus, just mount the admin shares and scan them after hours. Not as good as realtime, but most of the major virus vectors aren't running on these controllers (IE and LookOut), so it is arguable whether real time scanning is necessary. I have even had a major customer test their Symantec software on the NT based controllers, and they were able to run it with no problems. We offered to assist them because of the number of machines they had, in spite of Canon's recommendations. We will be testing the XPe devices sometime this summer.
Or use McAfee on just these devices. I have customers with large networks who have done just that for these devices, and have had little additional admin work in the implemenataion.
I say use a firewall because I run into many customers who don't. I wasn't implying that it is a perfect solution, but for many of the remote exploits, it is a great "speedbump".
I don't know if the lack of SUS or Auto Updates on the Canon controllers is due to an inherent lack of support of these features in XPe, or a decision on the part of EFI (the actual mfr of these RIPs). I do know, however, that stock MS patches won't work on these devices anyway. The controller software is closely married to the OS and using unmodified patches will kill the RIP and require a software reinstall. EFI has to provide custom patches, which they are now doing on a regular basis. Your dealer should be keeping you up to date with these - meaning send a service tech with the CD when the updates are made available.
You have other options. Splash on a Mac might be the best option for you, although still produced by EFI. Or stick with the older RIPs that run an embedded *NIX
You are absolutely right, you have to make the best decision for your organization. If the XPe devices aren't the best, don't use them. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the options for keeping up to date and secure. I made no assumptions about your knowledge, and no assumptions about the information you may have received from the local dealer.
I don't know if you mean Cannon or Canon. If you do mean the EFI based RIPs for Canon ColorPASS controllers, you can run McAfee VirusScan 7.0 on their XPe based controllers.
As for security updates, EFI has just started a program for keeping more up to date with Hotfixes and Service Packs. Just today I got an update from Canon with information on a forthcoming CD bundle with the latest patches for their entire Windows based product line. Granted, they will be a little behind because they have to do a full test suite to make sure their software functions with the patch or a modified version thereof. Your printers should be bedhind a firewall with all external access blocked to protect from the majority of these baddies, if possible.
Contact your local servicing Canon dealer for additional information on the anti-virus and security update issues.
That is actually a great idea, and something we have talked about. We just got started on home schoooling, so this would fit into the curriculum very well.
Unfortunately, with a single income, we would have to save on the order of several thousand dollars a year to make a difference. So as an academic challenge it is great, but the real impact wouldn't be so grand.
BTW, I don't want to make it sound like I am an absentee father. I make time in my schedule to be with my family. I have just seen many instances where frugality becomes an end in an of itself. It consumes the lives of a few people I know. Like the guy on Ripleys Believe it or not, who took ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and reused floss to save a few cents. That level of frugality scares me.
Because mommy and daddy decided mommy can stay home and take good care of you and not ship you off to the child warehouse to be neglected.
And before you assume I live a lavish lifestyle, I need to tell you I live in a mobile home, in a virtually rural area, and make less than 50k a year. I make time in my schedule to be with my children. It isn't as much as I would like, but at least my children don't have to ask a childcare worker why both mommy and daddy work so much.
My wife and I decided to make it go on one income. I work and consult, frequently putting in 60 hour weeks. But my children have a consistent parental presence, a caring atmosphere, and no silver platter.
My oldest frequently asks why daddy works so much. It has been a great opportunity to teach her about work ethic and priorities. We are doing the best we can to train our children to be very different from the modern, stereotypical brat. I'll let you know how it worked out in about 15 years.
You are absolutely right. It really does depend on where you are in life, and current income levels. Trust me, I don't make $35-$50 an hour either. I do bill more than that for consulting projects, though. My net on those hours is probably close to that range.
Like my last sentence said, when I was a college student, I was more frugal. Now, if I need something, I will spend a few minutes comparing prices, and make a purchasing decision. OTOH, if it is a want, I will frequently hold off and do some casual research here and there before buying.
In most circumstances, I would definitely agree with you. I am all for cutting your standard of living to spend more time on the important things. In my case, though, my wife and I made a decision to live on one income. She stays home and homeschools, while I work and take some consulting projects on the side to supplement. We have sacrificed some material gain to achieve a goal very important to us - raising our children. Almost like the 1950's with a little 2004 chaos thrown in for good measure:)
One thing I have found about frugality - it can be penny wise and pound foolish.
If I spend 2 hours comparing deals, checking competitors, and surfing sites to track down $50 savings on a gadget, did I gain anything? I could have spent that 2 hours with my family, working on consulting gigs, and doing other household chores. It is called the opportunity cost of time in economics. It didn't cost $0.00 to track down that $50 - there was a cost.
I guess it depends on where you are in life. As a college student, I clipped coupons, and comparison shopped to get the best deal. Now with 2 jobs, and 3 kids, I think a few bucks here and there is worth a little more time with my family.
At the end of the day, the end user should be able to see what he/she wants to read and view.
Pop-up ads are an annoyance, and I am grateful for the tools that allow me to kill them. However, I understand the need for content providers to make money, at least enough to cover costs, and maybe even make a little profit. The end user doesn't have any inherent or legal right to view content the way they want to. Whenever we use the resources of another, we pay a fee of some sort.
Ads have become the fee for resource utilization on the web. Readers do have the right to let content providers know they are unhappy about the ads, and stop patronizing those sites. Then, ads will die the death of the market, and new revenue streams will have to be built.
If content providers don't get money somehow, the content will disappear.
I don't understand what everyone is pissing and moaning about here. All of the derogatory remarks about people who would rather not see explicit sexuality, or listen to profanity are uncalled for. This is a device a private citizen will purchase to use at home in private. It is not being forced on you, it is not technology mandated by the government to censor your viewing.
If you want to see these movies uncensored, then don't by this product. For all the free market pontificating done on/., I am amazed to see the anti religion zealots complaining about what the see as a lame product. If there really is no demand, and it is a bad idea, nobody will buy it and it will disappear.
Outside of the country is important because these companies were birthed in this country. These companies weren't built in a vacuum. They don't exist just because they have a good product, or they beat out a competitor.
No, these companies exist today because of a pro-business environment in this country. Our tax dollars provided TIFs for them to build and grow. Our laws allowed them to exist in a relatively free economy. Their wealth is a direct product of the American political and economic system. Globalism undercuts the advantages we have in this country.
Eventually, we will have shell corps here, with only high level white collar employees. All of the jobs below upper and maybe middle management will be in other countries, because it is cheaper. Let these companies move to India, or China, or South Africa. I guarantee you the political and economic environments would not allow such successful ventures to exist. If they would, why haven't these countries created their own large corporations, and competed on a level playing field with the US?
You wouldn't be paying just $5 a month for that one channel, though. If we go a la carte, there will be a minimum "infrastructure" fee to pay for the cost of delivering the one channel, plus $5 for the channel. They at least have to cover the cost of delivery, which, of course, can be any number they pull out of their asses.
So you will pay $35 for that one channel instead of $50 for 80 channels.
I think one of the issues you are missing is that it is the specific free trade system of the United States that has allowed these companies to fluorish. You have to ask yourself why so much industry, technology, and manufacturing started, and grew from the good ole USA. What was different here compared to the rest of the world? Economic policy, political freedom, work ethic, free trade, etc.
I think bitterness comes from the fact that these corporations were suckled in this country, and now want to shun the very people, and places that made their existence possible.
I an willing to adapt. I am willing to work as hard as needed (I work 2 jobs right now). But I am not willing to let some corporation give the benefits obtained in this country to the people and governments of another. If India, China, and other competing countries have the best corporate environments, let the corporations pay back all the welfare they have recevied from us and move on. The reality is only the labor is cheaper. Oveall, the business environment is superior here.
The nice thing about the www is you don't have to see it if you don't want to. Don't do a google search on cannibalism or necrophilia if you don't want to see it. Don't click on links to sites you might find objectionable.
If someone is online actively seeking out this material, then they are already inclined to the activity. Same with any sort of underground material such as kiddie porn, snuff etc. Looking at this stuff online isn't the cause, it is a symptom of the problem.
On the "responsibility" side, who is going to define that in a relatively free society. Today, you and your cohorts may define what is responible, acceptable content. Tomorrow, maybe someone else is wielding the scepter, and your views are considered "irresponsible". I don't want to silence others, because the knife cuts both ways. I may be the one cut in the future.
I manage a small callcenter (5 people) who take calls for support on products we sell. This is a little different because we aren't the manufacturer, or an outsourced arm of the manufacturer. We are the endpoint of the distribution channel.
Our goals are reduced visits by field engineers who typically bill $$$$ to be onsite to solve what is frequently a simple problem. Our calls aren't timed, and we do pretty much whatever it takes to solve the problem. Today, we talked a customer thru configuring Zone Alarm correctly so they can use our product. Sure it took over half an hour, most of our calls do. But the important point is that the customer was happy when we were done.
I have been here 4 years now, and don't have the absolute gut level hatred of my job that I hear from many support people. I am posting this because I want you to know that not all support centers are awful dens of customer dissatisfaction. Some of us do actually do our jobs.
Imagine broadband providers requiring you to have one of these to access their service. You don't pay for it up front, they just charge you $5/month to have it, like they do with modems now. Cartridges are provided dirt cheap. Then broadband providers sell access to their customers to spammers, who pay a little bit per message to get to the broadband customers with enhanced stinky email. Providers start raking in big bucks. You become another commodity they can sell to increase profits.
We know the whole system
1. Hook customers on your service
2. Sell them out for advertising
3. Profit
My last name used to be Swisher, and there are those urinal pads all over the place around here, but they say Sanitized by Swisher. So when I pissed in the urinal, it got cleaner.
--Top That:)
That is the way it used to be done with monospaced fonts on an old IBM Selectric. Modern typefaces handle the spacing around periods for you. One space is plenty. Two spaces after a period can leave unsightly rivers of white space running down your pages.
Read The Mac is not a Typwriter by Robin Williams for more info about this and other fascinating electronic type issues.
This is not an urban legend. Older Canon CLCs would black out anything with a patterened green background. I had an engineering customer who wanted copies of maps with a patterned green, and we couldn't use the Canons for that reason.
Newer CLCs use something akin to steganography to embed the serial number of the copier in the image. A Kinko's franchise had all of its copiers confiscated a while back because a customer used the self serve CLC to counterfeit. The feds tracked the machine down by this embedded number.
I have never run into a machine that locks itself up when it sees currency being printed or copied. I have a number of Canon machines available at work to test, and a few contacts at Canon. I will try to find out if this is really the case.
So, you're saying that because you use the technology, it is not a flop? I think a technology needs more than a couple of niche users who enjoy hacking any tech toy they can get their hands on to be successful.
Successful would be defined as sold millions, made billions, still in business producing their product today. Maybe bought out, but the concept is still around.
By that definition, or just about any other, PCjr and Audrey are flops. Cool ideas, fun to hack on, but commercially failures.
A co-worker of mine was making an appointment to get his wisdom teeth pulled, and was told he would have to pay $250 up front. The next day he asked the simple question "What is the $250 for?". He was told that they don't file paperwork in advance, so the insurance company penalizes them $250.
The oral surgeon's office was charging this guy for their own laziness. That takes some cajones muy grandes my friend.
to bash "fundamentalist Christians"? If anyone made these same sorts of remarks about Buddhists lighting themselves on fire because of their beliefs, they certainly wouldn't be modded as +1 funny.
I know there are certain assumptions made about people branded with that title, but understand that there are PhD's in EE, CompSci, and other disciplines who are fundamentalists.
Do you even know what it means to be fundamentalist? Or do you just look at the nutcases and make assumptions about everyone under that label. You know, like "Boy that (race) guy sure went nuts. You really have to watch out for those (race) people".
It is politically, and ethically, incorrect to do this with race, it ought to be just as incorrect to do it with any religion.
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Based on what I have been reading about the increased popularity of laptops, many people are buying them as desktop replacements. You get the power of a desktop, with the relative portability of a laptop. As nice as the Transmeta CPUs are for low power/long battery life, I wouldn't consider 1GHz as a replacement for an AMD64 3200 CPU.
I don't consider some of the ne 17" laptops really portable, but if you need to get power and screen real estate on the road, they aren't a bad choice.If you use Symantec for antivirus, just mount the admin shares and scan them after hours. Not as good as realtime, but most of the major virus vectors aren't running on these controllers (IE and LookOut), so it is arguable whether real time scanning is necessary. I have even had a major customer test their Symantec software on the NT based controllers, and they were able to run it with no problems. We offered to assist them because of the number of machines they had, in spite of Canon's recommendations. We will be testing the XPe devices sometime this summer.
Or use McAfee on just these devices. I have customers with large networks who have done just that for these devices, and have had little additional admin work in the implemenataion.
I say use a firewall because I run into many customers who don't. I wasn't implying that it is a perfect solution, but for many of the remote exploits, it is a great "speedbump".
I don't know if the lack of SUS or Auto Updates on the Canon controllers is due to an inherent lack of support of these features in XPe, or a decision on the part of EFI (the actual mfr of these RIPs). I do know, however, that stock MS patches won't work on these devices anyway. The controller software is closely married to the OS and using unmodified patches will kill the RIP and require a software reinstall. EFI has to provide custom patches, which they are now doing on a regular basis. Your dealer should be keeping you up to date with these - meaning send a service tech with the CD when the updates are made available.
You have other options. Splash on a Mac might be the best option for you, although still produced by EFI. Or stick with the older RIPs that run an embedded *NIX
You are absolutely right, you have to make the best decision for your organization. If the XPe devices aren't the best, don't use them. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the options for keeping up to date and secure. I made no assumptions about your knowledge, and no assumptions about the information you may have received from the local dealer.
I don't know if you mean Cannon or Canon. If you do mean the EFI based RIPs for Canon ColorPASS controllers, you can run McAfee VirusScan 7.0 on their XPe based controllers.
;)
As for security updates, EFI has just started a program for keeping more up to date with Hotfixes and Service Packs. Just today I got an update from Canon with information on a forthcoming CD bundle with the latest patches for their entire Windows based product line. Granted, they will be a little behind because they have to do a full test suite to make sure their software functions with the patch or a modified version thereof. Your printers should be bedhind a firewall with all external access blocked to protect from the majority of these baddies, if possible.
Contact your local servicing Canon dealer for additional information on the anti-virus and security update issues.
Yes, I do work as an analyst for a Canon dealer
That is actually a great idea, and something we have talked about. We just got started on home schoooling, so this would fit into the curriculum very well.
Unfortunately, with a single income, we would have to save on the order of several thousand dollars a year to make a difference. So as an academic challenge it is great, but the real impact wouldn't be so grand.
BTW, I don't want to make it sound like I am an absentee father. I make time in my schedule to be with my family. I have just seen many instances where frugality becomes an end in an of itself. It consumes the lives of a few people I know. Like the guy on Ripleys Believe it or not, who took ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and reused floss to save a few cents. That level of frugality scares me.
Because mommy and daddy decided mommy can stay home and take good care of you and not ship you off to the child warehouse to be neglected.
And before you assume I live a lavish lifestyle, I need to tell you I live in a mobile home, in a virtually rural area, and make less than 50k a year. I make time in my schedule to be with my children. It isn't as much as I would like, but at least my children don't have to ask a childcare worker why both mommy and daddy work so much.
My wife and I decided to make it go on one income. I work and consult, frequently putting in 60 hour weeks. But my children have a consistent parental presence, a caring atmosphere, and no silver platter.
My oldest frequently asks why daddy works so much. It has been a great opportunity to teach her about work ethic and priorities. We are doing the best we can to train our children to be very different from the modern, stereotypical brat. I'll let you know how it worked out in about 15 years.
You are absolutely right. It really does depend on where you are in life, and current income levels. Trust me, I don't make $35-$50 an hour either. I do bill more than that for consulting projects, though. My net on those hours is probably close to that range.
Like my last sentence said, when I was a college student, I was more frugal. Now, if I need something, I will spend a few minutes comparing prices, and make a purchasing decision. OTOH, if it is a want, I will frequently hold off and do some casual research here and there before buying.
In most circumstances, I would definitely agree with you. I am all for cutting your standard of living to spend more time on the important things. In my case, though, my wife and I made a decision to live on one income. She stays home and homeschools, while I work and take some consulting projects on the side to supplement. We have sacrificed some material gain to achieve a goal very important to us - raising our children. Almost like the 1950's with a little 2004 chaos thrown in for good measure :)
One thing I have found about frugality - it can be penny wise and pound foolish.
If I spend 2 hours comparing deals, checking competitors, and surfing sites to track down $50 savings on a gadget, did I gain anything? I could have spent that 2 hours with my family, working on consulting gigs, and doing other household chores. It is called the opportunity cost of time in economics. It didn't cost $0.00 to track down that $50 - there was a cost.
I guess it depends on where you are in life. As a college student, I clipped coupons, and comparison shopped to get the best deal. Now with 2 jobs, and 3 kids, I think a few bucks here and there is worth a little more time with my family.
Ironically, your comment is posted on a public forum paid for with ad revenue. Point made.
Pop-up ads are an annoyance, and I am grateful for the tools that allow me to kill them. However, I understand the need for content providers to make money, at least enough to cover costs, and maybe even make a little profit. The end user doesn't have any inherent or legal right to view content the way they want to. Whenever we use the resources of another, we pay a fee of some sort.
Ads have become the fee for resource utilization on the web. Readers do have the right to let content providers know they are unhappy about the ads, and stop patronizing those sites. Then, ads will die the death of the market, and new revenue streams will have to be built.
If content providers don't get money somehow, the content will disappear.
I don't understand what everyone is pissing and moaning about here. All of the derogatory remarks about people who would rather not see explicit sexuality, or listen to profanity are uncalled for. This is a device a private citizen will purchase to use at home in private. It is not being forced on you, it is not technology mandated by the government to censor your viewing.
/., I am amazed to see the anti religion zealots complaining about what the see as a lame product. If there really is no demand, and it is a bad idea, nobody will buy it and it will disappear.
If you want to see these movies uncensored, then don't by this product. For all the free market pontificating done on
Outside of the country is important because these companies were birthed in this country. These companies weren't built in a vacuum. They don't exist just because they have a good product, or they beat out a competitor.
No, these companies exist today because of a pro-business environment in this country. Our tax dollars provided TIFs for them to build and grow. Our laws allowed them to exist in a relatively free economy. Their wealth is a direct product of the American political and economic system. Globalism undercuts the advantages we have in this country.
Eventually, we will have shell corps here, with only high level white collar employees. All of the jobs below upper and maybe middle management will be in other countries, because it is cheaper. Let these companies move to India, or China, or South Africa. I guarantee you the political and economic environments would not allow such successful ventures to exist. If they would, why haven't these countries created their own large corporations, and competed on a level playing field with the US?
You wouldn't be paying just $5 a month for that one channel, though. If we go a la carte, there will be a minimum "infrastructure" fee to pay for the cost of delivering the one channel, plus $5 for the channel. They at least have to cover the cost of delivery, which, of course, can be any number they pull out of their asses.
So you will pay $35 for that one channel instead of $50 for 80 channels.
I think one of the issues you are missing is that it is the specific free trade system of the United States that has allowed these companies to fluorish. You have to ask yourself why so much industry, technology, and manufacturing started, and grew from the good ole USA. What was different here compared to the rest of the world? Economic policy, political freedom, work ethic, free trade, etc.
I think bitterness comes from the fact that these corporations were suckled in this country, and now want to shun the very people, and places that made their existence possible.
I an willing to adapt. I am willing to work as hard as needed (I work 2 jobs right now). But I am not willing to let some corporation give the benefits obtained in this country to the people and governments of another. If India, China, and other competing countries have the best corporate environments, let the corporations pay back all the welfare they have recevied from us and move on. The reality is only the labor is cheaper. Oveall, the business environment is superior here.
The nice thing about the www is you don't have to see it if you don't want to. Don't do a google search on cannibalism or necrophilia if you don't want to see it. Don't click on links to sites you might find objectionable.
If someone is online actively seeking out this material, then they are already inclined to the activity. Same with any sort of underground material such as kiddie porn, snuff etc. Looking at this stuff online isn't the cause, it is a symptom of the problem.
On the "responsibility" side, who is going to define that in a relatively free society. Today, you and your cohorts may define what is responible, acceptable content. Tomorrow, maybe someone else is wielding the scepter, and your views are considered "irresponsible". I don't want to silence others, because the knife cuts both ways. I may be the one cut in the future.
I manage a small callcenter (5 people) who take calls for support on products we sell. This is a little different because we aren't the manufacturer, or an outsourced arm of the manufacturer. We are the endpoint of the distribution channel.
Our goals are reduced visits by field engineers who typically bill $$$$ to be onsite to solve what is frequently a simple problem. Our calls aren't timed, and we do pretty much whatever it takes to solve the problem. Today, we talked a customer thru configuring Zone Alarm correctly so they can use our product. Sure it took over half an hour, most of our calls do. But the important point is that the customer was happy when we were done.
I have been here 4 years now, and don't have the absolute gut level hatred of my job that I hear from many support people. I am posting this because I want you to know that not all support centers are awful dens of customer dissatisfaction. Some of us do actually do our jobs.
Imagine broadband providers requiring you to have one of these to access their service. You don't pay for it up front, they just charge you $5/month to have it, like they do with modems now. Cartridges are provided dirt cheap. Then broadband providers sell access to their customers to spammers, who pay a little bit per message to get to the broadband customers with enhanced stinky email. Providers start raking in big bucks. You become another commodity they can sell to increase profits.
We know the whole system
1. Hook customers on your service
2. Sell them out for advertising
3. Profit
My last name used to be Swisher, and there are those urinal pads all over the place around here, but they say Sanitized by Swisher. So when I pissed in the urinal, it got cleaner. --Top That :)
That is the way it used to be done with monospaced fonts on an old IBM Selectric. Modern typefaces handle the spacing around periods for you. One space is plenty. Two spaces after a period can leave unsightly rivers of white space running down your pages.
Read The Mac is not a Typwriter by Robin Williams for more info about this and other fascinating electronic type issues.
What make/model of printer do you have? I am pretty sure I can help you get started. --monkey
This is not an urban legend. Older Canon CLCs would black out anything with a patterened green background. I had an engineering customer who wanted copies of maps with a patterned green, and we couldn't use the Canons for that reason.
Newer CLCs use something akin to steganography to embed the serial number of the copier in the image. A Kinko's franchise had all of its copiers confiscated a while back because a customer used the self serve CLC to counterfeit. The feds tracked the machine down by this embedded number.
I have never run into a machine that locks itself up when it sees currency being printed or copied. I have a number of Canon machines available at work to test, and a few contacts at Canon. I will try to find out if this is really the case.
So, you're saying that because you use the technology, it is not a flop? I think a technology needs more than a couple of niche users who enjoy hacking any tech toy they can get their hands on to be successful.
Successful would be defined as sold millions, made billions, still in business producing their product today. Maybe bought out, but the concept is still around.
By that definition, or just about any other, PCjr and Audrey are flops. Cool ideas, fun to hack on, but commercially failures.
A co-worker of mine was making an appointment to get his wisdom teeth pulled, and was told he would have to pay $250 up front. The next day he asked the simple question "What is the $250 for?". He was told that they don't file paperwork in advance, so the insurance company penalizes them $250.
The oral surgeon's office was charging this guy for their own laziness. That takes some cajones muy grandes my friend.
to bash "fundamentalist Christians"? If anyone made these same sorts of remarks about Buddhists lighting themselves on fire because of their beliefs, they certainly wouldn't be modded as +1 funny.
I know there are certain assumptions made about people branded with that title, but understand that there are PhD's in EE, CompSci, and other disciplines who are fundamentalists.
Do you even know what it means to be fundamentalist? Or do you just look at the nutcases and make assumptions about everyone under that label. You know, like "Boy that (race) guy sure went nuts. You really have to watch out for those (race) people".
It is politically, and ethically, incorrect to do this with race, it ought to be just as incorrect to do it with any religion.