Just to clarify, the poster's AirPort was "...out of warranty since day two" as a result of his cutting holes in it. Plugging in external antennas has been a popular AirPort hack with some New Zealander's getting several-mile ranges (not possible under the US's FCC regulations.)
Had the airport been intact Apple would have presumably replaced it (it's not cost-effective to repair them) free of charge under the one year warranty.
Unfortunately due to (reportedly) poor electrical design the device's lifetime appears to be only slightly greater then one year. How convenient for Apple. I'd always suspected this of my kitchen appliances but generally Apple's equipment (except for their old 9" monitors & Mac SE power supplies) has been notably high quality.
Electrical/design defects aside the Apple Airports really are a fabulous bit of engineering. For a few hundred bucks they act as a really nifty DHCP/NAT server. One doesn't even need a Mac to configure these suckers as their OS manufacturer has a Java one out. Surreally enough the AirPorts are x86-based, which is strange considering the strength of PPC in embedded devices.
In somewhat related new the Orinoco/WaveLAN 802.11 cards have now dropped in price to ~US$150 for Silver, ~US$170 for Gold (128 bit encryption.) Furthermore reports are out that the next generation of these devices will shrink down to two or so discrete chips meaning even smaller/more efficient devices.
Now if only more manufacturers would start embedding antennas in their devices.
First of all you ask who I am. I'm a Contract IS Manager, I specialize in going into screwed-up places and fixing them. Generally when I come into an IS Department a couple things have happened (these are going to sound familiar):
There's been a breakdown in communication. IS is on one track, management is on another, the general staff may be on a third.
IS is oftentimes overworked / underpaid / has no time to recover from one crisis before lurching into another / feels they have no support from Sr. Management / starved for resources-training-staff-whatever / subject to unreasonable demands.
On the other side IS oftentimes perceived as chaotic / unresponsive / a source of problems / often times their cure is worse then the cause / prima-donna whiners / poor customer-service.
My job is to then come in, get folks talking, get folks talking constructively, get folks listening, get folks listening productively, identify communications problems and fix/work-around them, set policies, get folks to commit to those policies, get Sr. Management to commit to supporting IS, get IS to support the business needs, get everyone to be responsive to the users, ensure that SR. Management makes adequate resources available to IS, ensure that IS is and respects that it is accountable for it's needs and responses, drum in to Sr. Management that if they want "world-class" (or whatever buzzword they're using) IS then they have to support it properly, drum in to IS that while critical to the business there are other priorities and yes things will not be perfect but folks have to work together and finally to bring peace to the world/get rid of the nasty fluorescent lighting.
How's that for a run-on sentence?
So yes, I've seen lots of bad situations and may have some insight into yours.
Am I shocked by some of your responses: Yes. It's my job to build places that run well - yours is a great example of one gone bad. I just rarely hear someone quite so explicitly detail their problems while making it clear how unrealistic they've become.
I'm not going to go through paragraph by paragraph how I disagree with some of your positions or with what you've done, there's no point to that and besides, I'm not getting paid. I'm not there, I've only heard one side of the situation and really, how could it matter?
My advice? Get out.
Seriously, you're not helping yourself or anyone else by staying. Don't go the martyr/loyalty route: They'd dump you in an attosecond if it made business sense, you do the same.
Get the place in order. Document everything. Don't put it in files where other IS folks *should* find them, put the material in a single marked directory and printed out in a binder.
Start looking for a new position and explain to your employer that you feel the time has come to move on, you're committed to making this a smooth transition both out of respect for them and your professional pride.
Bring with you to the meeting your binder and explain that you've begun documenting systems & procedures and will need a series of regular meetings to ensure that the materials are clear and appropriate (this is to both remind your employer that cutting you loose today would be unwise and to demonstrate your integrity in how you're handling it.)
DO NOT attempt to justify your actions, lay blame where it is due, point out the causes that brought you to this point, etc. You're now in effect interviewing for your next job; these folks don't mean anything to you beyond a good recommendation, a fine record to show your next employer and your own dignity. Attempting to change things now would just sabotage your own graceful exit and besides, probably wouldn't have much effect anyhow.
The reality is you're angry, bitter, and burnt-out. They could send your for a month on an all-expanse paid vacation to a tropical paradise, give you a corner office and a staff of a half dozen, the truth is you're at the point when you walk in the door you're gonna grit your teeth and when you meet with folks you're going to have bitter memories.
Get out, start fresh somewhere else, expand your horizons. After a month somewhere else you'll be amazed you stayed in your old place as long as you did.
I know is sounds rash, my telling a stinger to quit their job but re-read your posting; you know you have to get out of there. The best thing you can do for yourself is escape the place, the best thing you can do for them is make way for someone else to fight the battles, highlight the problems, sink or swim.
I used to work for an early email vendor (at one time they were #4) Their trick was to do no advertising, everything was via card decks, trade-shows, direct-mail, etc.
A potential customer would call or write or whatever in and we'd ship them out a free 30-trial of our software. It was on a single floppy and ran only on Novell Netware servers. The plus was that was then the corporate LAN standard and this product installed in 5 minutes, creating the address books, rewriting login-scripts, configuring accounts, everthing.
Once it was installed it defaulted to EVERYONE getting an account and the client, and it really did work quite well. Of course once it had been running for 30 days it deactivated itself for everyone but the Administrator, thus causing the users to demand en masse our be purchased and turned back on.
Our tricky part was getting the universally overworked Server Administor to install the darn thing. Sure they'd order the free trial but if it sat buried in their Inbox it didn't do any good.
The solution: Unstackable packaging.
We shipped out the kits in 8.5"x11" boxes that were wedge-shaped, nothing could sit on top of them without sliding off. Thus our brightly colored box was always on the top of any pile reminding folks to install it.
Between the packaging & our "courtesy follow-up calls" offering to walk the potential customer through the install (and yes they were real support-folks, not scripted drones) made for an incredible success rate. For something that we internally called "the worlds cheesiest email" (a play on our slogan "the worlds easiest email") it made a mint and built a corporation.
It may not have been the most "kewl" packaging but it worked magnificently and succeeded at selling the product.
Gimp already runs under MacOS X. However Gimp is dependant on X Windows for it's display and this doesn't ship with MacOS X. Instead Apple developed their own Display-PDF based "Quartz" graphics engine and then built their "Aqua" GUI on top of this.
X-Free86 has been ported to Apple's Darwin & MacOS X but it doesn't run under Quartz/Aqua. Thus under MacOS X one must shut them down and run X-Free 86 on it's own; not most Mac users first choice since they then can't use any native GUI applications.
Tenon does have a commercial X Windows server for MacOS X that runs under Quartz/Aqua. Indeed it already runs Gimp just fine. "Xtools" is still in extended beta but it's expected to be final when MacOS X finally ships. This is the sort of thing most Mac users are likely to be most interested in - X windows as a peer and not a separate environment.
99.99% of inventions never see the light of day. Of the remaining 0.01% few are ever applied in the timeframe their inventor first imagines.
Go through the back issues of any periodical and you'll find predictions of all sorts of things; few pan out.
The most useful skills one can develop are the most timeless: The ability to learn. The ability to communicate. The ability to reason. The ability to empathize.
These are the skills that will serve you well in any future scenario be it post-holocaust desert or a nano/quantum paradise.
In the meantime just focus on the mid-term and let the blue-sky folks keep plugging away.
-- Michael
I want my silver body-suit! I want my personal jet-pack! I don't care that they make me look like a flying baked-potato!"
This is your freakin' BOSS! Heck, he's now part-owner of the company!
Of course this person needs copies of every password and every account if only for the day you're not there (fired / quit / hit by a bus.)
Sure they may screw up. Sure they may break things. You explain to them what's wrong and try to work it out. If they can't keep their fingers out of things then yeah, mebbe you should move on.
In the meantime so what it the place is full of 133MHz boxes with 1GB HDs and Win95a: Do they get the job done? Would 150 spankin new 750MHz boxes with 20BG HDs and Win2K be worth the extra money right now?
Can the company even afford the new boxes and the licenses and the rollout costs? Will it be cheaper then keeping what they've got in place for another year?
Next what were you doing putting a *nix box in this environment without having some backups trained? There was a problem and your boss tried to fix it using the tools he knew. Yeah they were wrong, the question is does this technology belong there in the first place?
Again we run into the fired / quit / hit by a bus problem. Sounds like without you they're screwed. Frankly that's a stupid position to put any company in and for that alone your employer should consider replacing you (and themselves too.)
They need Windows skills - they've got 150 boxes of it and run the company on it. Then there's the one *nix box. Sure it required less cash investment up-front but it's odd-ball-out and apparently only one hostile employee knows how to run it.
Most folks would replace that with some other Win-type box & solution to use the skills & technologies in-house. Then they'd get you to spend the next few weeks documenting the hell out of everything, including all passwords & accounts. Next bring a third party in to audit the place and come up to speed on your systems. Finally train someone else as the Jr.-Admin in case you're gone & to ease any future transitions.
Frankly with your attitude you're not long for this place. If you don't quit it sounds like you'll soon be fired. You sound burnt out and hostile as well as overly-posessive of the companies assets. It's likely your boss was just doing all of this to prepare for the day your key-card no longer works.
I didn't list LOTS of things. Bournelli drives. Opticals. Flopticals. Tape. Micro-tape. VCR-adapters. Drive-bay. Sandisks. Memory Sticks. Paper printouts & readers.
There've been many many alternatives. The IBM uDrives, (orig. 340 MB and the new 1 GB+) are simply one example.
The point is that none of them supplanted the floppy except for mebbe the CD Drive. CD's are standard equipment on all PCs, most BIOSs support booting from the CD, and CD-R/Ws are *almost* a standard item.
Unless it's markedly better I don't see any new technology supplanting CD. DVD perhaps when it comes down in price, or solid-state when it becomes both cheaper & more standardized but that's it.
As to your drinking - get some help. It's pathetic you drink & read/.
OK folks - the world is bigger then your own backyard. It doesn't matter if you, your school, your company, etc. use Zip disks the question is are they standard equipment on new computers as is the lowly 3.5" floppy.
No.
Yes there are places that Zips are common.
Printing is one of them. Of course before Zips were popular in printing Bournelli's were also popular as were optical drives - hardly good measures of wide-spread or long-lasting success.
Some schools went for them in a big way. They provided a way for students to transport files without the commitment and administration of a dedicated file server & remote access.
Business also bought into them to some degree, generally for off-line storage of marginal material. As they also came as a built-in on a number of Dell & other's business models they got into the workplace.
However in recent years built-in Zips have been largely supplanted by built-in CD-R/Ws. More reliable, cheaper media, stabler media, much more portable (more folks have a CD in their PC then a Zip.) Much of the Zip market is now replacement, folks with large libraries of Zip disks replacing older drives.
As time as gone on Zips have shown their problems. The "Click of Death". Disks that can be read on some drives but no others, buggy drivers, drives that wear out quickly.
I think anyone looking at today's market would agree that Zips are no longer a major product.
Did they succeed as a product? Yes - they became a brand name, sold lots, made some profit. However did they succeed as to replacing the floppy (the topic at hand) - no.
Indeed floppies themselves are becoming less & less a standard item. While Apple's iMac may have been the first to dispense with them they simply acted on what the rest of use know - floppies are going away.
How many times does a year does a generic person use their floppy drive? In a networked environment how hard would it be to get along without one? I've had to train folks on how to use their floppy drives because they've NEVER had to use one. These aren't newbies - they're folks used to working in networked large-file environments. I haven't seen any software on a floppy in years. Indeed aside from the occasional boot-disk or Mavica-picture I haven't stored anything on a floppy myself in years.
Zips had a good run but it's over. CD-RW, DVD-RW, solid-state, indeed with 80GB/7200RPM HDs selling for under US$200 external HD's are even a contender.
Is it so they can perform audits independent of the System Administrators? This presumes that the SysAdmins et al are covering up something. Unfortunately the same twisty logic makes a full-access Security Officer also a candidate for cover-ups.
Stalemate.
Or is it for quick response? "Lock that sucker out *now*!"
If this is the case then there needs to be some sort of hotline set up where an on-duty/on-call SysAdmin is always reachable and is always able to respond quickly. This should satisfy the need-for-speed without compromising overall security.
Or is there a reason to expect a large number of IS folks will be disappearing very soon? If that's the case then yes, the Security Officers may need to be able to lock many or all of you out of your (former) systems.
In my past experience we've had a number of solutions. Security Officers were generally given access to any limited-rights "account creation/activation/suspension" accounts we had. This sort of thing is only available on some OS's in some configurations but it did solve a number of problems.
I've also had emergency-strategies in place where anyone could call for a lockout. This was usually done via a call to the IS Help Desk where they would hand-run it to the appropriate SysAdmin (empowered to barge into meetings etc.) I've also had a backup strategy where an innocuous all-building PA message could be made to move a car with an unlikely-state's license plate. Upon hearing this every SysAdmin was to report in.
Of course to expedite quick-response/quick-decision-making in off-hours the Security Office had access to our shift-coverage schedules, a quick-check responsibility-list and the departmental home-phone list.
Aside from all of this bringing in outside folks to audit our systems was done irregularly, as was using new-hires as ad-hoc auditors before giving them extensive contact with their peers. Furthermore the folks assisting Security Officer in security audits were rotated randomly so there less possibility of collusion or diversion.
Honestly there are no good answers to the questions you poise. Any answers have to lie with why your company is *really* doing this and which eggs they wish to place in which baskets.
Ten years ago I could get a PC with a 2MB floppy on it. Later it became a 4 MB floppy drive. Then the vendors realized: Customers didn't care.
Floppies were popular 'cause they were ubiquitious - classic fax-machine effect. Without that they were just a pricy non-standard piece of equipment.
To succed they had to be cheap, rugged, and LOTS of folks had to have one.
Along came those crappy Zip-drives with 100 MB and they nearly made it 'cause they were relatively cheap and became almost ubiquitious. Iomega was smart and went for broad distribution over profits trying to become a standard but eventually their quality-control problems, competition, and internal problems overwhelmed them. Now their Zip drives have been passed by. They've tried variations - 200 MB Zips and 40 MB "Clicks" but the train has left the station.
Then the former folks from Syquest (the ones who pioneered much of the technology used in Zips but who lost out to Iomega in the consumer arena) came back with Castlewood and it's impressive Orb technology. 2 GB and fast with reasonably priced media but they don't have enough distribution to achieve broad penetration and without that they're just a niche product.
Also recently there was the SuperDisk - able to read a generic 1.44 3.5" floppy plus it's own 100 MB ones. Neat trick but with a standard floppy drive US$7, a USB version $40 for the iMac folks, and a known-quantity Zip for US$75 what was the point of shelling out US$200?
So now we've got another floppy contender. It's coming into a tough market.
CD-R/W offers 660 MB in a fairly standard format and at speeds up to 12x. Quality media is US$1-US$2, market penetration is high and there are even versions on digital cameras and other consumer devices now.
The DVD-R/CD-RW drives have just been introduced ofering high-speed play, reasonably fast recording, access to lots of devices and of course lots of storage.
On the other end we've got solid-state media expanding in density with 32 MB & 64 MB becoming popular at reasonable price points.
We've even started seeing USB-connected solid-state memory (see yesterday's/.) shipping for ~US$50 for 8 MB, surely larger is to follow.
What are the odds of another floppy-drive format making it?
Well, pretty slim. There are faster, and there are more capacity, and there are smaller form-factor, and there are more stable. With this new one excelling at none of these and only being so-so at all of them it seems destined for the also-ran list. It offers nothing that can't be gotten cheaper / more standard / more reliable / faster/etc. elsewhere.
And the X-ray files, etc? There are already estsblished file-formats in medicine, ones that most records systems can import & export to (I used to work in a Hospital's IS department.)
XML is a lovely thing but let it get a bit more established before we go dropping the existing standards. I don't know of many systems that accept XML right now.
Limited to USB 1.0's slow speed 'cause most of the competition is considerably faster and it's safe to presume that >8 MB is in the offing.
Presumably soon we'll see if USB 2.0 really works or if FireWire/1394/iLink really is the future but in the meantime USB 1.0 is slow for a memory device.
Frankly this beats the pants off of all the PCMCIA/PC-Card formats (and sounds a lot less annoying then Sony's DOA "Memory Stick".)
USB at this point is well nigh universal, lots of us would love to carry a few MB of stable material (hey, bring along your own plug-in encryption) and floppies are just too delicate. If this thing is robust enough to take the random static of hanging off my key-ring it'd be great.
Potential Advantages:
Nearly universal hardware support.
Potentially widespread OS support (most USB implementations ship with some standard device-types, if this can mount as a supported file system then it's already out there.)
Security. Damn good security. Nothing holding my records directly connected to anything connected oto a general-access network.
The courtesy of using these online devices for keeping both myself and the medical staff appraised of any scheduling issues.
Assurences that there are "sanity checks" in the system (human) making sure that a keybounce doesn't turn my trivial prescription or medical procedure into a danger ("20" becomes "200".)
Copies of all medical and financial records duplicated off-site under an escrow agreement should there be a disaster or the clinic fail financially.
All records be in a format such that they can be identified and used in the future. I don't want my medical history locked in some inscrutable Whizbang-2000beta.97a format.
None of this automation used as an excuse not to focus in me, the patient, what I have to say and being sure all my needs are being met. Presumably this equipment is all intended first & foremost to provide good quality of service efficiently and not to simply accelerate patients to the point that they become a blur.
Competent people hired and trained to maintain and operate the systems. I don't ever want to hear "I can't because the computer's down" or "I can't do that because the computer won't let me" unless there's a VERY good reason.
Secure email between myself and my care provider. I don't need a phone call letting me know the test results are in, a properly secured and authenticated email will do fine containing either the results and an explanation or should the implications be dire or complex a meeting request.
Quantum (the hard drive folks, just finished digesting Maxtor) have now developed a kit for manufacturers to build their own TiVo-type products. Also Linux based it's the Quantum QuickView. License it, pop it in your labeled box and you've got yourself a product. Guts supplied by the same folks that supply TiVo & formerly Replay. Before you write them they're only licensing it to big manufacturers and I believe it's a reference implentation, not at all a finished product.
I expect next Xmas there will be a lot of these in the stores.
Lots of good comments involving previous such experiments and some of the implementation dangers by folks who generally know what they're talking about.
Er - first of all MY power supply & costs are pretty much set for the next few years (HydroQuebec.) We're not seeing any rate-changes, just lots of profit selling down south (Y'know, the same contract that was y'all were trying to illegally break a few years ago.)
That said (and it's sometimes important to remind folks that the world does extend beyond SillyValley) I still don't see this being a big concern. Yes electricity costs are big, but service, reliability and standardization are still more important to most Sr. IS folks and they'll continue to be so even with double or treble electrical costs. There's a buttload of technology and skills based on those x86 boxes and they're not about to start getting swapped out for the power bill.
Even as folks do start specing out their next technology refresh I don't know that Transmeta's power-savings are all that big a sales point.
Overall their technology is still, er, not established. Supply seems single-sourced and they've no track record. Great promise but that means most folks might buy one to evaluate, hold off on any big committments for a year or two. Besides, many of us already have multi-year contracts in place.
On the other hand if we were to consider moving to a lower-power chip alternative PowerPC chips are out there, they're also comparatively low power, relatively cheap and are a well known, well established design. If anyone is going to reap any windfall out of high electrical prices and servers it's PPC. I'd expect to be seeing a possible future spike (note "future possible" - your BS about there all being one is just that: BS) with them before Transmeta reaps much from their power-savings.
One of the side effects of California's recent electricity problems has been a spike in demand for low-power devices, specifically Transmeta-based servers...
On what planet?
I don't know of any CIO's sending out panicked staffers scouring for "low power servers - Transmeta if you can get 'em!"
Electrical consumption is a concern for cooling and supply and such but as far as I've seen everyone takes the power-bill as a part of doing business. Turning off the lights is a good thing but nobody is getting ready to rebuild their server bays with with new equpment full of low-power chips. We've all got too many concerns to go jumping hardware platforms over this.
Sell me a bunch of Transmeta products on price / performance / support / versatility / reliability / etc. but power savings? That's just not that big a deal to us.
I suppose the first question has to be WHY are you doing this? Is it 'cause there's not already an ISP in your part of the woods or they're too expansive or what? By "community" do you mean your small part of the world or a bunch like-minded individuals?
This is important cause it different goals have different answers. If you're looking to start a small business then that's one sort of model. If you're just looking to provide a local service to a bunch of folks then a different set of criteria come into play. If you've need for a certain degree of control then there's another set of critera.
Small Business: In many places the time for big opportunity has passed. The 'big boys' can underprice/over-advertise you unless there's some sort of unusual conditions. These days most new small ISPs just go the reseller route and do the whole virtual thing. There's less capitol required up front and unless you're *really* technically & business savvy you're a lot better off.
Online Community: If you're doing this to build some sort of online comunity then supplying it all soups to nuts seems a bit excessive. Most BBS's have morphed into online communities; there's few people trying to re-walk that route. Instead of having folks dial up into your service let them use whatever other ISP they've got and concentrate your efforts on making a decent online place. If you really want to brand it then cut a deal with an ISP for a labelled service.
Control: OK, so you want/need privacy for yourself and those you trust. Could be a government-unfriendly group, could be a bunch of folks trading mail they don't want their spouses getting ahold of. This would be a good reason for handling everything yourselves as much as possible. To do a good job is going to require a LOT of knowledge, getting advice on/. isn't going to begin to help you in the ways you'll need. My advice would be to hook up with others of your ilk and see if there's any vetted geek willing to help you.
Good luck. Running a small bbs/isp is no picnic. You've got to stay on top of the phone company, your upstream provider, the hardware, the software, security, backups, billing, disaster-plans, marketing, customer service, policies, etc.
As elaborate as the underlying software and systems might be it's all going to a video-buffer for presentation. Unless there's some technique I'm not aware of (and that's entirely likely) it's seems to me that this would be an exploitable chokepoint.
Grab whatever's in there and you've got a copy of what the user sees. Reprocess it and you've got the content a screen at a time. Get a trojan house onto the less-secured sode of the machine and you've got a window onto the more-secured side.
Similar to how the US bugged Xerox machines (and yes they were Xerox-brand) in the Washington Soviet Embasssy - put a mirror inside and simply dupicate-duplicated everything.
Is there any technique (that just-folks know) to encrypt/otherwise secure what's in a videocard yet still have it perform properly?
I find myself constanttly taking notes. Meetings, phone calls, random thoughts, bits from conversations, etc. Generally they end up on the computer - it'd be nice to not need a pad around for an intermediary.
Truth be told I keep a small text editor handy on my GUI desktop and pop things into it all of the time; copy-n-paste them out to more appropriate places when I have the chance.
Apple's Lisa UI (and don't anyone whinge on about the Xerox Star - I've used it, they're nothing alike and everyone involved agrees Apple had already come up with a GUI and what they ended up with was still quite different) was based on the idea of a person in a busy office constantly being interupted, switching tasks, etc. That's pretty realisitic and it seems only reasonable that an OS/GUI do everything it can to accomodate this. The ability to begin free-form entering text seems reasonable, as does the OS/GUI attempting to respond intelligently.
Tell me, if you HAD this wouldn't it seem a convenience?
Actually if you read other Raskin material (the article is *really* poorly written, I wouldn't be surprised if Raskin isn't furious at the lousy job done by the author) you'll find it makes a bit more sense.
Actually there's no good reason why if I pointed my mouse at a bit of unused screen real estate and started typing the OS shouldn't begin capturing it into a buffer. It wouldn't be hard for the OS to ask after I stopped typing a line or two if this was intended as a document or a folder or other choices appropriate in the context. If I continued typing the OS could after a paragraph or two safely morph my buffer into a word-processing document.
This sort of trivial note-taking is common to all of us, it would make sense for an OS to support it. It doesn't take a lot in the way of an expert system/rudimentary AI to respond fairly accurately to many of the actions we now do explicitly.
That's pretty much Raskin's point usually - machines that work for us, not us working for them. He feels we shouldn't be required to learn elaborate methodologies to perform simple tasks even if they become second nature after awhile and are completely logical (in retrospect.) We shouldn't have to learn so much about how our computers work just to get them to work.
Long ago an OS only supplied the basic functions for running the computer. The interface was usually a command line. To use a device attached to the computer often each program had to supply it's own device drivers.
This was why in the early PC world WordPerfect was such a hit: The program came on 1 or 2 floppies & the device-drivers (mostly printer) came on another 7 or 8.
Eventually MacOS & Windows came out with the idea of universal drivers in the OS. No longer would each program need to supply it's own video or printer drivers, rather the OS would get installed with a driver for the device and everything would go through it. This was as much a reason MacOS & Windows succeeded so well as their GUI's.
Later this expanded to typefaces and cross-application clipboards and inter-application communications and built-in scripting and system-supplied text-edit boxes and graphics widgets and a host of other services. Indeed today's OS's are about half of the application.
The dividing line between application and OS has grown very fuzzy indeed.
Starting in the mid-80's there were a series of projects to help further break down this distinction. Next had their object-oriented operating system, Apple/IBM/Novell had their OpenDoc component-architecture, Aple even did something of the like in their Newton OS, now in Linux there's Bonobo and it's cousins.
Lots of users I know consider their computers to be Email/Word Processors/Web Browsers - they don't use or care about anything else. It could be green cheeese for all their overt interaction with the OS.
So this leaves us with the question: When does the OS's GUI begin to dissolve into the applications? Will it? Will it completely? Is this a "good thing"? Or will there always be a clear distinction?
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Had the airport been intact Apple would have presumably replaced it (it's not cost-effective to repair them) free of charge under the one year warranty.
Unfortunately due to (reportedly) poor electrical design the device's lifetime appears to be only slightly greater then one year. How convenient for Apple. I'd always suspected this of my kitchen appliances but generally Apple's equipment (except for their old 9" monitors & Mac SE power supplies) has been notably high quality.
Electrical/design defects aside the Apple Airports really are a fabulous bit of engineering. For a few hundred bucks they act as a really nifty DHCP/NAT server. One doesn't even need a Mac to configure these suckers as their OS manufacturer has a Java one out. Surreally enough the AirPorts are x86-based, which is strange considering the strength of PPC in embedded devices.
In somewhat related new the Orinoco/WaveLAN 802.11 cards have now dropped in price to ~US$150 for Silver, ~US$170 for Gold (128 bit encryption.) Furthermore reports are out that the next generation of these devices will shrink down to two or so discrete chips meaning even smaller/more efficient devices.
Now if only more manufacturers would start embedding antennas in their devices.
There's been a breakdown in communication. IS is on one track, management is on another, the general staff may be on a third.
IS is oftentimes overworked / underpaid / has no time to recover from one crisis before lurching into another / feels they have no support from Sr. Management / starved for resources-training-staff-whatever / subject to unreasonable demands.
On the other side IS oftentimes perceived as chaotic / unresponsive / a source of problems / often times their cure is worse then the cause / prima-donna whiners / poor customer-service.
My job is to then come in, get folks talking, get folks talking constructively, get folks listening, get folks listening productively, identify communications problems and fix/work-around them, set policies, get folks to commit to those policies, get Sr. Management to commit to supporting IS, get IS to support the business needs, get everyone to be responsive to the users, ensure that SR. Management makes adequate resources available to IS, ensure that IS is and respects that it is accountable for it's needs and responses, drum in to Sr. Management that if they want "world-class" (or whatever buzzword they're using) IS then they have to support it properly, drum in to IS that while critical to the business there are other priorities and yes things will not be perfect but folks have to work together and finally to bring peace to the world/get rid of the nasty fluorescent lighting.
How's that for a run-on sentence?
So yes, I've seen lots of bad situations and may have some insight into yours.
Am I shocked by some of your responses: Yes. It's my job to build places that run well - yours is a great example of one gone bad. I just rarely hear someone quite so explicitly detail their problems while making it clear how unrealistic they've become.
I'm not going to go through paragraph by paragraph how I disagree with some of your positions or with what you've done, there's no point to that and besides, I'm not getting paid. I'm not there, I've only heard one side of the situation and really, how could it matter?
My advice? Get out.
Seriously, you're not helping yourself or anyone else by staying. Don't go the martyr/loyalty route: They'd dump you in an attosecond if it made business sense, you do the same.
Get the place in order. Document everything. Don't put it in files where other IS folks *should* find them, put the material in a single marked directory and printed out in a binder.
Start looking for a new position and explain to your employer that you feel the time has come to move on, you're committed to making this a smooth transition both out of respect for them and your professional pride.
Bring with you to the meeting your binder and explain that you've begun documenting systems & procedures and will need a series of regular meetings to ensure that the materials are clear and appropriate (this is to both remind your employer that cutting you loose today would be unwise and to demonstrate your integrity in how you're handling it.)
DO NOT attempt to justify your actions, lay blame where it is due, point out the causes that brought you to this point, etc. You're now in effect interviewing for your next job; these folks don't mean anything to you beyond a good recommendation, a fine record to show your next employer and your own dignity. Attempting to change things now would just sabotage your own graceful exit and besides, probably wouldn't have much effect anyhow.
The reality is you're angry, bitter, and burnt-out. They could send your for a month on an all-expanse paid vacation to a tropical paradise, give you a corner office and a staff of a half dozen, the truth is you're at the point when you walk in the door you're gonna grit your teeth and when you meet with folks you're going to have bitter memories.
Get out, start fresh somewhere else, expand your horizons. After a month somewhere else you'll be amazed you stayed in your old place as long as you did.
I know is sounds rash, my telling a stinger to quit their job but re-read your posting; you know you have to get out of there. The best thing you can do for yourself is escape the place, the best thing you can do for them is make way for someone else to fight the battles, highlight the problems, sink or swim.
Save yourself.
Good luck.
A potential customer would call or write or whatever in and we'd ship them out a free 30-trial of our software. It was on a single floppy and ran only on Novell Netware servers. The plus was that was then the corporate LAN standard and this product installed in 5 minutes, creating the address books, rewriting login-scripts, configuring accounts, everthing.
Once it was installed it defaulted to EVERYONE getting an account and the client, and it really did work quite well. Of course once it had been running for 30 days it deactivated itself for everyone but the Administrator, thus causing the users to demand en masse our be purchased and turned back on.
Our tricky part was getting the universally overworked Server Administor to install the darn thing. Sure they'd order the free trial but if it sat buried in their Inbox it didn't do any good.
The solution: Unstackable packaging.
We shipped out the kits in 8.5"x11" boxes that were wedge-shaped, nothing could sit on top of them without sliding off. Thus our brightly colored box was always on the top of any pile reminding folks to install it.
Between the packaging & our "courtesy follow-up calls" offering to walk the potential customer through the install (and yes they were real support-folks, not scripted drones) made for an incredible success rate. For something that we internally called "the worlds cheesiest email" (a play on our slogan "the worlds easiest email") it made a mint and built a corporation.
It may not have been the most "kewl" packaging but it worked magnificently and succeeded at selling the product.
Gimp already runs under MacOS X. However Gimp is dependant on X Windows for it's display and this doesn't ship with MacOS X. Instead Apple developed their own Display-PDF based "Quartz" graphics engine and then built their "Aqua" GUI on top of this.
X-Free86 has been ported to Apple's Darwin & MacOS X but it doesn't run under Quartz/Aqua. Thus under MacOS X one must shut them down and run X-Free 86 on it's own; not most Mac users first choice since they then can't use any native GUI applications.
Tenon does have a commercial X Windows server for MacOS X that runs under Quartz/Aqua. Indeed it already runs Gimp just fine. "Xtools" is still in extended beta but it's expected to be final when MacOS X finally ships. This is the sort of thing most Mac users are likely to be most interested in - X windows as a peer and not a separate environment.
99.99% of inventions never see the light of day. Of the remaining 0.01% few are ever applied in the timeframe their inventor first imagines.
Go through the back issues of any periodical and you'll find predictions of all sorts of things; few pan out.
The most useful skills one can develop are the most timeless: The ability to learn. The ability to communicate. The ability to reason. The ability to empathize.
These are the skills that will serve you well in any future scenario be it post-holocaust desert or a nano/quantum paradise.
In the meantime just focus on the mid-term and let the blue-sky folks keep plugging away.
-- Michael
I want my silver body-suit! I want my personal jet-pack! I don't care that they make me look like a flying baked-potato!"
Of course this person needs copies of every password and every account if only for the day you're not there (fired / quit / hit by a bus.)
Sure they may screw up. Sure they may break things. You explain to them what's wrong and try to work it out. If they can't keep their fingers out of things then yeah, mebbe you should move on.
In the meantime so what it the place is full of 133MHz boxes with 1GB HDs and Win95a: Do they get the job done? Would 150 spankin new 750MHz boxes with 20BG HDs and Win2K be worth the extra money right now?
Can the company even afford the new boxes and the licenses and the rollout costs? Will it be cheaper then keeping what they've got in place for another year?
Next what were you doing putting a *nix box in this environment without having some backups trained? There was a problem and your boss tried to fix it using the tools he knew. Yeah they were wrong, the question is does this technology belong there in the first place?
Again we run into the fired / quit / hit by a bus problem. Sounds like without you they're screwed. Frankly that's a stupid position to put any company in and for that alone your employer should consider replacing you (and themselves too.)
They need Windows skills - they've got 150 boxes of it and run the company on it. Then there's the one *nix box. Sure it required less cash investment up-front but it's odd-ball-out and apparently only one hostile employee knows how to run it.
Most folks would replace that with some other Win-type box & solution to use the skills & technologies in-house. Then they'd get you to spend the next few weeks documenting the hell out of everything, including all passwords & accounts. Next bring a third party in to audit the place and come up to speed on your systems. Finally train someone else as the Jr.-Admin in case you're gone & to ease any future transitions.
Frankly with your attitude you're not long for this place. If you don't quit it sounds like you'll soon be fired. You sound burnt out and hostile as well as overly-posessive of the companies assets. It's likely your boss was just doing all of this to prepare for the day your key-card no longer works.
There've been many many alternatives. The IBM uDrives, (orig. 340 MB and the new 1 GB+) are simply one example.
The point is that none of them supplanted the floppy except for mebbe the CD Drive. CD's are standard equipment on all PCs, most BIOSs support booting from the CD, and CD-R/Ws are *almost* a standard item.
Unless it's markedly better I don't see any new technology supplanting CD. DVD perhaps when it comes down in price, or solid-state when it becomes both cheaper & more standardized but that's it.
As to your drinking - get some help. It's pathetic you drink & read /.
No.
Yes there are places that Zips are common.
Printing is one of them. Of course before Zips were popular in printing Bournelli's were also popular as were optical drives - hardly good measures of wide-spread or long-lasting success.
Some schools went for them in a big way. They provided a way for students to transport files without the commitment and administration of a dedicated file server & remote access.
Business also bought into them to some degree, generally for off-line storage of marginal material. As they also came as a built-in on a number of Dell & other's business models they got into the workplace.
However in recent years built-in Zips have been largely supplanted by built-in CD-R/Ws. More reliable, cheaper media, stabler media, much more portable (more folks have a CD in their PC then a Zip.) Much of the Zip market is now replacement, folks with large libraries of Zip disks replacing older drives.
As time as gone on Zips have shown their problems. The "Click of Death". Disks that can be read on some drives but no others, buggy drivers, drives that wear out quickly.
I think anyone looking at today's market would agree that Zips are no longer a major product.
Did they succeed as a product? Yes - they became a brand name, sold lots, made some profit. However did they succeed as to replacing the floppy (the topic at hand) - no.
Indeed floppies themselves are becoming less & less a standard item. While Apple's iMac may have been the first to dispense with them they simply acted on what the rest of use know - floppies are going away.
How many times does a year does a generic person use their floppy drive? In a networked environment how hard would it be to get along without one? I've had to train folks on how to use their floppy drives because they've NEVER had to use one. These aren't newbies - they're folks used to working in networked large-file environments. I haven't seen any software on a floppy in years. Indeed aside from the occasional boot-disk or Mavica-picture I haven't stored anything on a floppy myself in years.
Zips had a good run but it's over. CD-RW, DVD-RW, solid-state, indeed with 80GB/7200RPM HDs selling for under US$200 external HD's are even a contender.
Is it so they can perform audits independent of the System Administrators? This presumes that the SysAdmins et al are covering up something. Unfortunately the same twisty logic makes a full-access Security Officer also a candidate for cover-ups.
Stalemate.
Or is it for quick response? "Lock that sucker out *now*!"
If this is the case then there needs to be some sort of hotline set up where an on-duty/on-call SysAdmin is always reachable and is always able to respond quickly. This should satisfy the need-for-speed without compromising overall security.
Or is there a reason to expect a large number of IS folks will be disappearing very soon? If that's the case then yes, the Security Officers may need to be able to lock many or all of you out of your (former) systems.
In my past experience we've had a number of solutions. Security Officers were generally given access to any limited-rights "account creation/activation/suspension" accounts we had. This sort of thing is only available on some OS's in some configurations but it did solve a number of problems.
I've also had emergency-strategies in place where anyone could call for a lockout. This was usually done via a call to the IS Help Desk where they would hand-run it to the appropriate SysAdmin (empowered to barge into meetings etc.) I've also had a backup strategy where an innocuous all-building PA message could be made to move a car with an unlikely-state's license plate. Upon hearing this every SysAdmin was to report in.
Of course to expedite quick-response/quick-decision-making in off-hours the Security Office had access to our shift-coverage schedules, a quick-check responsibility-list and the departmental home-phone list.
Aside from all of this bringing in outside folks to audit our systems was done irregularly, as was using new-hires as ad-hoc auditors before giving them extensive contact with their peers. Furthermore the folks assisting Security Officer in security audits were rotated randomly so there less possibility of collusion or diversion.
Honestly there are no good answers to the questions you poise. Any answers have to lie with why your company is *really* doing this and which eggs they wish to place in which baskets.
Floppies were popular 'cause they were ubiquitious - classic fax-machine effect. Without that they were just a pricy non-standard piece of equipment.
To succed they had to be cheap, rugged, and LOTS of folks had to have one.
Along came those crappy Zip-drives with 100 MB and they nearly made it 'cause they were relatively cheap and became almost ubiquitious. Iomega was smart and went for broad distribution over profits trying to become a standard but eventually their quality-control problems, competition, and internal problems overwhelmed them. Now their Zip drives have been passed by. They've tried variations - 200 MB Zips and 40 MB "Clicks" but the train has left the station.
Then the former folks from Syquest (the ones who pioneered much of the technology used in Zips but who lost out to Iomega in the consumer arena) came back with Castlewood and it's impressive Orb technology. 2 GB and fast with reasonably priced media but they don't have enough distribution to achieve broad penetration and without that they're just a niche product.
Also recently there was the SuperDisk - able to read a generic 1.44 3.5" floppy plus it's own 100 MB ones. Neat trick but with a standard floppy drive US$7, a USB version $40 for the iMac folks, and a known-quantity Zip for US$75 what was the point of shelling out US$200?
So now we've got another floppy contender. It's coming into a tough market.
CD-R/W offers 660 MB in a fairly standard format and at speeds up to 12x. Quality media is US$1-US$2, market penetration is high and there are even versions on digital cameras and other consumer devices now.
The DVD-R/CD-RW drives have just been introduced ofering high-speed play, reasonably fast recording, access to lots of devices and of course lots of storage.
On the other end we've got solid-state media expanding in density with 32 MB & 64 MB becoming popular at reasonable price points.
We've even started seeing USB-connected solid-state memory (see yesterday's /.) shipping for ~US$50 for 8 MB, surely larger is to follow.
What are the odds of another floppy-drive format making it?
Well, pretty slim. There are faster, and there are more capacity, and there are smaller form-factor, and there are more stable. With this new one excelling at none of these and only being so-so at all of them it seems destined for the also-ran list. It offers nothing that can't be gotten cheaper / more standard / more reliable / faster /etc. elsewhere.
Sorry.
XML is a lovely thing but let it get a bit more established before we go dropping the existing standards. I don't know of many systems that accept XML right now.
Presumably soon we'll see if USB 2.0 really works or if FireWire/1394/iLink really is the future but in the meantime USB 1.0 is slow for a memory device.
USB at this point is well nigh universal, lots of us would love to carry a few MB of stable material (hey, bring along your own plug-in encryption) and floppies are just too delicate. If this thing is robust enough to take the random static of hanging off my key-ring it'd be great.
Potential Advantages:
- Nearly universal hardware support.
- Potentially widespread OS support (most USB implementations ship with some standard device-types, if this can mount as a supported file system then it's already out there.)
- Reasonably sized media.
- Big-name supplier.
Potential DisadvantagesI expect next Xmas there will be a lot of these in the stores.
I think it would be appropriate to also link to the responses already generated on Risks:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.23.html#subj14
Lots of good comments involving previous such experiments and some of the implementation dangers by folks who generally know what they're talking about.
That said (and it's sometimes important to remind folks that the world does extend beyond SillyValley) I still don't see this being a big concern. Yes electricity costs are big, but service, reliability and standardization are still more important to most Sr. IS folks and they'll continue to be so even with double or treble electrical costs. There's a buttload of technology and skills based on those x86 boxes and they're not about to start getting swapped out for the power bill.
Even as folks do start specing out their next technology refresh I don't know that Transmeta's power-savings are all that big a sales point. Overall their technology is still, er, not established. Supply seems single-sourced and they've no track record. Great promise but that means most folks might buy one to evaluate, hold off on any big committments for a year or two. Besides, many of us already have multi-year contracts in place.
On the other hand if we were to consider moving to a lower-power chip alternative PowerPC chips are out there, they're also comparatively low power, relatively cheap and are a well known, well established design. If anyone is going to reap any windfall out of high electrical prices and servers it's PPC. I'd expect to be seeing a possible future spike (note "future possible" - your BS about there all being one is just that: BS) with them before Transmeta reaps much from their power-savings.
On what planet?
I don't know of any CIO's sending out panicked staffers scouring for "low power servers - Transmeta if you can get 'em!"
Electrical consumption is a concern for cooling and supply and such but as far as I've seen everyone takes the power-bill as a part of doing business. Turning off the lights is a good thing but nobody is getting ready to rebuild their server bays with with new equpment full of low-power chips. We've all got too many concerns to go jumping hardware platforms over this.
Sell me a bunch of Transmeta products on price / performance / support / versatility / reliability / etc. but power savings? That's just not that big a deal to us.
This is important cause it different goals have different answers. If you're looking to start a small business then that's one sort of model. If you're just looking to provide a local service to a bunch of folks then a different set of criteria come into play. If you've need for a certain degree of control then there's another set of critera.
Good luck. Running a small bbs/isp is no picnic. You've got to stay on top of the phone company, your upstream provider, the hardware, the software, security, backups, billing, disaster-plans, marketing, customer service, policies, etc.
Thank you.
Grab whatever's in there and you've got a copy of what the user sees. Reprocess it and you've got the content a screen at a time. Get a trojan house onto the less-secured sode of the machine and you've got a window onto the more-secured side.
Similar to how the US bugged Xerox machines (and yes they were Xerox-brand) in the Washington Soviet Embasssy - put a mirror inside and simply dupicate-duplicated everything.
Is there any technique (that just-folks know) to encrypt/otherwise secure what's in a videocard yet still have it perform properly?
Truth be told I keep a small text editor handy on my GUI desktop and pop things into it all of the time; copy-n-paste them out to more appropriate places when I have the chance.
Apple's Lisa UI (and don't anyone whinge on about the Xerox Star - I've used it, they're nothing alike and everyone involved agrees Apple had already come up with a GUI and what they ended up with was still quite different) was based on the idea of a person in a busy office constantly being interupted, switching tasks, etc. That's pretty realisitic and it seems only reasonable that an OS/GUI do everything it can to accomodate this. The ability to begin free-form entering text seems reasonable, as does the OS/GUI attempting to respond intelligently.
Tell me, if you HAD this wouldn't it seem a convenience?
Actually there's no good reason why if I pointed my mouse at a bit of unused screen real estate and started typing the OS shouldn't begin capturing it into a buffer. It wouldn't be hard for the OS to ask after I stopped typing a line or two if this was intended as a document or a folder or other choices appropriate in the context. If I continued typing the OS could after a paragraph or two safely morph my buffer into a word-processing document.
This sort of trivial note-taking is common to all of us, it would make sense for an OS to support it. It doesn't take a lot in the way of an expert system/rudimentary AI to respond fairly accurately to many of the actions we now do explicitly.
That's pretty much Raskin's point usually - machines that work for us, not us working for them. He feels we shouldn't be required to learn elaborate methodologies to perform simple tasks even if they become second nature after awhile and are completely logical (in retrospect.) We shouldn't have to learn so much about how our computers work just to get them to work.
Actually I was there. Just as importantly I worked in a computer museum and did this stuff all day.
What I wrote about refers primarily to PC OS evolution (& thus primarily Win & lesser extent Mac) but it's accurate as far as it's relevant.
Got a point or just a snipe?
This was why in the early PC world WordPerfect was such a hit: The program came on 1 or 2 floppies & the device-drivers (mostly printer) came on another 7 or 8.
Eventually MacOS & Windows came out with the idea of universal drivers in the OS. No longer would each program need to supply it's own video or printer drivers, rather the OS would get installed with a driver for the device and everything would go through it. This was as much a reason MacOS & Windows succeeded so well as their GUI's.
Later this expanded to typefaces and cross-application clipboards and inter-application communications and built-in scripting and system-supplied text-edit boxes and graphics widgets and a host of other services. Indeed today's OS's are about half of the application.
The dividing line between application and OS has grown very fuzzy indeed.
Starting in the mid-80's there were a series of projects to help further break down this distinction. Next had their object-oriented operating system, Apple/IBM/Novell had their OpenDoc component-architecture, Aple even did something of the like in their Newton OS, now in Linux there's Bonobo and it's cousins.
Lots of users I know consider their computers to be Email/Word Processors/Web Browsers - they don't use or care about anything else. It could be green cheeese for all their overt interaction with the OS.
So this leaves us with the question: When does the OS's GUI begin to dissolve into the applications? Will it? Will it completely? Is this a "good thing"? Or will there always be a clear distinction?