I was hoping for something that had a little arm that move hot steel over a board.
Instead it is looks like some kung-fu fighting dummy and it only irons shirts - they don't mention different sizes.
I think of a lot of ways spending 1700 hours than having something that just irons shirts. How much does a decent ironing service in the States cost these days? 1 or 2 dollars a shirt?
I know of a couple Indian database guys that have moved back. They were over here in Britain earning poor money and struggling with British Immigration.
They had a lot of pressure from their parents and family to return and the availability of jobs finally convinced them.
In addition, to the higher standard of living in Indian, they had the opportunity to buy a house (impossible in Britain on their wages) and a family. One of the fellows had an arranged marriage waiting for him when he returned.
These fellows are not software sweat-shop or call-center detritus. They are gifted database developers who left Britain to return to India. They were a real asset to the company.
This country made it difficult for them to stay and the change in Indian economy made it easy for them to return.
Helpdesk is Liberum - Some people may say that it is a project that is alive and kicking. I think that a year with no updates for an open source project means it is pretty close to abandoned.
Works a treat though. Web interface, client updates, complete call tracking, very easy to customise, email interface. Best thing for what we do. It does not want to control my hardware audit (which is done separately) it simply tracks calls. Does what it says on the tin.
Two apps that have saved my butt - both open source.
VNC - stunning application with a couple variants. Either use the full function Ultra on the LAN or deploy the lightweight Tight to remotes.
Helpdesk is Liberum - Some people may say that it is a project that is alive and kicking. I think that a year with no updates for an open source project means it is pretty close to abandoned.
Works a treat though. Web interface, client updates, complete call tracking, very easy to customise, email interface. Best thing for what we do. It does not want to control my hardware audit (which is done separately) it simply tracks calls. Does what it says on the tin.
I am tired of proprietary software being held as the be all and end all.
I have been let down by more software development houses than I want to remember.
Despite the fact that you pay them thousands of pounds a year, they don't tell you that your management console will not be able to rollout the latest anti-virus update until it breaks. That is what I am paying for.
Or the latest patch of a Major OS will systematically kill every single Network Card authentication signature in the registry. That is what I am paying for.
How about being lied to by sales department that tell you that this software will work with the systems you have in place. They don't check with their technical department and wait till our purchase is complete and when I try to install I find out the bad news. It seems that it crashes your server and has consistently done so for the past month on all other servers of your type that it has been rolled out on. That is what I am paying for. Thank you very much
If you look at it over the past 8 years, I have had more success with every single open source product I have rolled out than the multitude of proprietary software that I have deployed over the years.
So don't give me this will open source live up to the trends set by proprietary code. For me they have already surpassed the quality of proprietary code.
I have been using an abandoned project for the past 15 years. It is a bulletproof little disc app that was abandoned by its creator and distributed as freeware.
In addition, I have based our entire helpdesk on an abandoned project which is the best, most stable, platform independent helpdesk app out there. It has a huge user base and large number of forums for help and support. But no one currently developing code for it.
Are either of these apps useless because they are abandoned?
Nope.
Abandoned software does not mean it is has no use, simply that it may be limited in future plans. But if it works now and does the job, why not use it?
Best thing for golfers these days is the incredibly expensive (but nice) Suunto G9. Roughly 800 bucks for a watch . . hem hem sorry - Wristop Computer.
Uses GPS to work out where you are and then calculates how far you are hitting the ball. Supposely there are a number of popular golf courses available for download so you can tell hole distance etc.
Must make sense for people who play this silly game. .
This would be perfect for real estate agents who need to combine their pda's and electronic distance measurers but it seems a little imprecise and lightweight for real survey work.
The title of top survey data collector is still the HP-48GX.
When we ran survey we would try to grab the tripod with the HP-48 bracketed on it. This little data collector would make our lives easier, reduce the overall time for the survey and increase the time in the pub. All very good things.
HP-48GX - Good data bucket and a good deal cheaper than the grand that Topcon and such want for their Data Collection handhelds.
Re:Hopefully they change things at Dell
on
Dell's New Linux Blog
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If your running an enterprise what in the name of are you running Inspiron's for?
Easy. Unapproved purchases by the marketing department that had to be integrated.
Inspirons are cheap, nasty and non-standard. They can have up to four different NIC's in them, three different makes of video card and the list goes on.
It has made imaging a nightmare and taught the idiots in marketing a lesson. The average turn-around for laptop image is a day - for the boys in marketing it is four days. Now they are looking at getting rid of them despite them being a couple months old. This time they came to me for standard kit specs. At least they are learning.
That is why I was looking at Suse and YAST2 for deployment. Unfortunately, the video bios problem killed it.
Re:Hopefully they change things at Dell
on
Dell's New Linux Blog
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That is, until MS decides to nip Linux in the bud and add a clause to the contract that no company which resells Windows OEM may support or contribute to Linux.
I know that they did this before with other Hardware Suppliers.
I am wondering why the Anti-Trust people did not look at this aspect of Microsoft activities rather than the link between IE and the OS.
What is the answer to this? I would be deploying Linux on Windows licensed kit since the OS expense is already part of the budget. Also I would not like to have the Software Nazi's show and audit us with more desktops than Microsoft OS Licenses.
The reason for deploying Linux on the desktop is not for price reasons but stability and lowering support load. Therefore, the Microsoft licenses will be bought, but it woiuld still be good to have hardware support for the Linux OS on Dell desktops.
Hopefully they change things at Dell
on
Dell's New Linux Blog
·
· Score: 4, Informative
This looks promising for those who have tried to deploy Linux on Dell Kit.
The lack of official support for linux on the Dell Desktop and Laptop Hardware has been one of the biggest impediments to rolling out a Linux User Machine in our enterprise.
While many of the development machines and older kit are fully integrated with the Linux OS, the new and less expensive kit is a complete pain to get to work.
One example is the Inspiron 1100 which has a massive problem with the video BIOS and Linux and takes a lot of work to get it right.
If Dell makes moves in the direction of support linux in the desktop, it can only help sales.
I would definitely make Linux Desktop Support a part of a purchasing decision.
Your large, failing corporation probably didn't have forty billion or so dollars in the bank...that kind of cushion does tend to buy a corporation some breathing room.
No, they probably did not. But they were a world leaders in the software that they produced. We had a world wide network of Servers and Offices I had to keep on top of and they seemed unstoppable.
The scary thing is that the signs of death were all around us and we did not see it. The kid writing the copy probably thought he was being honest.
We did not have forty billion or whatever resources Microsoft has, but the market shifted underneath us and the company became redundant to its customers. They tried to change their distribution model (remember Application Subscriptions?) and competitiors came and ate them alive.
Sound Familiar?
I am sure that Microsoft is looking at Linux thorugh "IBM" Coloured glasses. They have seen how fast a company can get its customer base wiped out and end up on the rocks.
I am sure that before the last Giant Reptile slipped into extinction it made a loud noise as well.
The only people who will believe this are the Microsofties and their sales team.
I used to work for a large corporation that was failing. It was being taken apart and broken up by the banks and its creditors. Every week we had the same press releases.
"Business is better than ever" or Profits are Up over last year".
We had those till the last guy in the press release department was finally canned.
The main story is not whether or not the latest single from Fame Idol is being bought off the shelves. It is about the continued mention of CD's as the medium we should be concerned about.
The Real Story is the Music Industry completely dropping the ball on the delivery of digital music formats. When Napster raised its head and "threatened" CD Sales, the industry should have studied and copied it.
Instead they tried to shut it down and failed miserably. The current tactics are just the tail-end of a poorly implemented policy that has simply highlighted the availability of online peer-to-peer media to people that normally would not engage in these activities.
There are online music sellers now but if the Music Industry had acted earlier when peer-to-peer had first come into prominence, we would not be talking about CD's at all. Compact Discs would be the same as Cassette Tapes and Vinyl Records. They would only be sold to those who had not adopted the new digital technology or those who like to hang onto older formats (like reel-to-reel machines).
By now instant access to entire music catalogues could have been made available online (not just the latest hits) and the price would have dropped to a reasonable amount, due to true competition in the marketplace. Independent artists would be setting up their own operations based on similar business models. It would have been similar to independent record pressing, where it would be servers holding and distributing the collections rather than an industrial process.
Any mention of CD sales at this time is just another reminder of how much they messed it all up.
I assume that spam is one of the last places where people believe that an ad driven business model will survive.
In most other forms of media, it seems that advertising has had its day. Television is no longer able to subject us to ads and is threatened, Radio ads in internet radio are able to be skipped. So we only have to deal with the advertisements that arrive in our inbox.
There are a variety of ways of dealing with this detritus, the easiest one is make it a social stigma to admit to buying anything from spam.
Have any enlargements or pharmaceuticals ever been sold using this method? Has anyone ever received one of these messages and replied and then eagerly waited for their postie to drop by with their delivery of "Hot Teens"?
Turn Spam purchasing into the Venereal Disease of the new century and it will cost these folks more to send the messages than is returned in sales.
Legislation is pointless in an area where geography is no longer a method of control.
Yeah, the Mac Portable sucked, and it certainly wasn't a high point for Apple, but I consider it to be more like the MacTV - an experimental model that didn't pan out and should have been killed before reaching customers
It was also the first Mac Portable machine and was introduced when there were several reasonable Windows Laptops about. The lack of power, size of the screen and the weight had the Mac Press shrugging their shoulders in resignation, certain that Apple would not produce a credible laptop. They believe that this was due to the highly competitive marketplace of the Windows laptop, not being present for Apple. Of course, they had missed that it was Windows Laptops that Apple aimed at with their second attempt at a Portable computer.
Again, the problems with the batteries on the 5300 series were certainly bad for Apple
The 5300 was the only Powerbook available at the time and the product line was a bit thin. Several models had been tried and it was looking like Apple Powerbooks were running to the end of their evolutionary timeline. That changed with the next set of PowerBook models, but considering that the majority of Apple revenue at that time was from the PowerBook line, any threat to that set of products was another opportunity to call for the "death of Apple".
I fail to see, though, how customers (like myself) were "left in the lurch".
My comments were not about customers who were left in the lurch, rather it was the licensed ocmpanies that were alienated, or as Steve Kahng and Joel Kocher from PowerComputing stated the allegedly repeated attacks from the "hand that fed them".
But I also think that some customers did feel stranded by Apple. PowerComputing customers were maybe one the of the better treated license buyers. I know several Umax and Pios systems purchasers who only received support for the OS that was on the machine and then no support beyond that. Apple washed their hands of the people had had bought licensed products and it left several first-time Apple purchasers with a bad taste in their mouth.
More importantly, it was a critical time for Apple. They had assumed that they could produce Macintosh systems better than anyone and then suddenly PowerComputing was putting out higher performance machines than they were. They had lost the hardware edge and were unable to survive on operating system sales alone. They pulled the licenses and paid out millions to these companies. At the time the media were stating the "death of Apple" again due to the lack of competition for Apple Hardware. This again proved to be false.
When I was writing up my thesis at home, I was going through 4 to 5 pots a day. I eventually decided to stop and was not prepared for the consequences.
You will get some serious headaches, which I guess is already happening, but also be prepared for muscle cramps.
The headaches can be taken care of using regular painkillers. Use whatever you can - Ibuprofen, paracetemol, aspirin etc. For the muscle cramps use calcium and selenium.
Coming off caffiene usually only takes a day or two, then you need to deal with the social pressures that got you drinking so much of the stuff in the first place.
I know that it is good to have competition in the Computer Industry, but basic stuff like this should be sorted out by the industry and not by consumers.
This is not BetaMax vs VHS, the media is basically the same, this is simply a format fight.
Writable DVD's are the current new media for data storage and the manufacturers cannot figure where we will be in a year's time? This does not bode well for the long term stability for DVD data storage and needs to be sorted sooner rather than later.
Rise: PowerBooks introduced - Apple, a latecomer to the world of laptop computers takes it by storm and becomes #1 in portable computers
You forgot the fall after the first powerbook. The first one was incredibly heavy and considered only for users who had to have a Mac machine with a portable screen. It was thought at that time by the Mac Media that Apple could never develop a reasonable portable machine. The next one proved them wrong.
Also there was the flaming Apple laptop, when they used the new batteries which tended to catch fire. It nearly killed the powerbook line.
Finally I just remembered the hardware licensing wars. This was when Power Computing and such started to produce Macintosh Hardware under license from Apple. Apple eventually pulled it back but the stranded purchasers of those machines and the companies left in the lurch were not happy. That was a critical time for Apple and Steve Jobs decision to retain hardware development and manufacture was the right one.
Apple has been here before. The history of the Apple is one of dramatic rise and crushing fall. They seem to do this more than your average corporation. This is so common that the "Death of Apple" has been one of the most-overused bylines in the computing press.
I would like them to continue but they need to stay on the edge and that is a very risky place to be.
I am just glad that they are currently on the safe side of the edge. Too often in the past, it has looked like they were about to disappear forever.
This seems similar to the large research indexes that I used to find books and articles on certain subjects.
They were not as detailed as this or as comprehensive but if this actually gets going, it will be an incredible aid to researchers. Currently, only about a small percentage of the information I use is on the web. Most of it is in libraries and research collections and is difficult to access.
This will provide information on which books and papers (if periodicals are included) I need to start getting a hold of for my research.
Slashdot Mirror
The Linux Link Tech Show
LUGRadio - from the Wolverhamptojn LUG - loads of interesting stuff
And finally SLUGRadio - Linux guys based in Scotland getting together, drinking and talking about mainly Linux.
Instead it is looks like some kung-fu fighting dummy and it only irons shirts - they don't mention different sizes.
I think of a lot of ways spending 1700 hours than having something that just irons shirts. How much does a decent ironing service in the States cost these days? 1 or 2 dollars a shirt?
They had a lot of pressure from their parents and family to return and the availability of jobs finally convinced them.
In addition, to the higher standard of living in Indian, they had the opportunity to buy a house (impossible in Britain on their wages) and a family. One of the fellows had an arranged marriage waiting for him when he returned.
These fellows are not software sweat-shop or call-center detritus. They are gifted database developers who left Britain to return to India. They were a real asset to the company.
This country made it difficult for them to stay and the change in Indian economy made it easy for them to return.
Works a treat though. Web interface, client updates, complete call tracking, very easy to customise, email interface. Best thing for what we do. It does not want to control my hardware audit (which is done separately) it simply tracks calls. Does what it says on the tin.
VNC - stunning application with a couple variants. Either use the full function Ultra on the LAN or deploy the lightweight Tight to remotes.
Helpdesk is Liberum - Some people may say that it is a project that is alive and kicking. I think that a year with no updates for an open source project means it is pretty close to abandoned.
Works a treat though. Web interface, client updates, complete call tracking, very easy to customise, email interface. Best thing for what we do. It does not want to control my hardware audit (which is done separately) it simply tracks calls. Does what it says on the tin.
I have been let down by more software development houses than I want to remember.
Despite the fact that you pay them thousands of pounds a year, they don't tell you that your management console will not be able to rollout the latest anti-virus update until it breaks. That is what I am paying for.
Or the latest patch of a Major OS will systematically kill every single Network Card authentication signature in the registry. That is what I am paying for.
How about being lied to by sales department that tell you that this software will work with the systems you have in place. They don't check with their technical department and wait till our purchase is complete and when I try to install I find out the bad news. It seems that it crashes your server and has consistently done so for the past month on all other servers of your type that it has been rolled out on. That is what I am paying for. Thank you very much
If you look at it over the past 8 years, I have had more success with every single open source product I have rolled out than the multitude of proprietary software that I have deployed over the years.
So don't give me this will open source live up to the trends set by proprietary code. For me they have already surpassed the quality of proprietary code.
In addition, I have based our entire helpdesk on an abandoned project which is the best, most stable, platform independent helpdesk app out there. It has a huge user base and large number of forums for help and support. But no one currently developing code for it.
Are either of these apps useless because they are abandoned?
Nope.
Abandoned software does not mean it is has no use, simply that it may be limited in future plans. But if it works now and does the job, why not use it?
Uses GPS to work out where you are and then calculates how far you are hitting the ball. Supposely there are a number of popular golf courses available for download so you can tell hole distance etc.
Must make sense for people who play this silly game. .
The title of top survey data collector is still the HP-48GX.
When we ran survey we would try to grab the tripod with the HP-48 bracketed on it. This little data collector would make our lives easier, reduce the overall time for the survey and increase the time in the pub. All very good things.
HP-48GX - Good data bucket and a good deal cheaper than the grand that Topcon and such want for their Data Collection handhelds.
Easy. Unapproved purchases by the marketing department that had to be integrated.
Inspirons are cheap, nasty and non-standard. They can have up to four different NIC's in them, three different makes of video card and the list goes on. It has made imaging a nightmare and taught the idiots in marketing a lesson. The average turn-around for laptop image is a day - for the boys in marketing it is four days. Now they are looking at getting rid of them despite them being a couple months old. This time they came to me for standard kit specs. At least they are learning.
That is why I was looking at Suse and YAST2 for deployment. Unfortunately, the video bios problem killed it.
I am wondering why the Anti-Trust people did not look at this aspect of Microsoft activities rather than the link between IE and the OS.
What is the answer to this? I would be deploying Linux on Windows licensed kit since the OS expense is already part of the budget. Also I would not like to have the Software Nazi's show and audit us with more desktops than Microsoft OS Licenses.
The reason for deploying Linux on the desktop is not for price reasons but stability and lowering support load. Therefore, the Microsoft licenses will be bought, but it woiuld still be good to have hardware support for the Linux OS on Dell desktops.
The lack of official support for linux on the Dell Desktop and Laptop Hardware has been one of the biggest impediments to rolling out a Linux User Machine in our enterprise.
While many of the development machines and older kit are fully integrated with the Linux OS, the new and less expensive kit is a complete pain to get to work.
One example is the Inspiron 1100 which has a massive problem with the video BIOS and Linux and takes a lot of work to get it right.
If Dell makes moves in the direction of support linux in the desktop, it can only help sales. I would definitely make Linux Desktop Support a part of a purchasing decision.
- Allow people to music music and make a buck.
- Don't tie artists into involuntary servititude contracts
In the end it killed Factory and the Hacienda, but at least they made some very good, and important, music before it died.
No, they probably did not. But they were a world leaders in the software that they produced. We had a world wide network of Servers and Offices I had to keep on top of and they seemed unstoppable.
The scary thing is that the signs of death were all around us and we did not see it. The kid writing the copy probably thought he was being honest.
We did not have forty billion or whatever resources Microsoft has, but the market shifted underneath us and the company became redundant to its customers. They tried to change their distribution model (remember Application Subscriptions?) and competitiors came and ate them alive.
Sound Familiar?
I am sure that Microsoft is looking at Linux thorugh "IBM" Coloured glasses. They have seen how fast a company can get its customer base wiped out and end up on the rocks.
The only people who will believe this are the Microsofties and their sales team.
I used to work for a large corporation that was failing. It was being taken apart and broken up by the banks and its creditors. Every week we had the same press releases.
"Business is better than ever" or Profits are Up over last year".
We had those till the last guy in the press release department was finally canned.
It does not make them sound better, only scared.
The Real Story is the Music Industry completely dropping the ball on the delivery of digital music formats. When Napster raised its head and "threatened" CD Sales, the industry should have studied and copied it.
Instead they tried to shut it down and failed miserably. The current tactics are just the tail-end of a poorly implemented policy that has simply highlighted the availability of online peer-to-peer media to people that normally would not engage in these activities.
There are online music sellers now but if the Music Industry had acted earlier when peer-to-peer had first come into prominence, we would not be talking about CD's at all. Compact Discs would be the same as Cassette Tapes and Vinyl Records. They would only be sold to those who had not adopted the new digital technology or those who like to hang onto older formats (like reel-to-reel machines).
By now instant access to entire music catalogues could have been made available online (not just the latest hits) and the price would have dropped to a reasonable amount, due to true competition in the marketplace. Independent artists would be setting up their own operations based on similar business models. It would have been similar to independent record pressing, where it would be servers holding and distributing the collections rather than an industrial process.
Any mention of CD sales at this time is just another reminder of how much they messed it all up.
In most other forms of media, it seems that advertising has had its day. Television is no longer able to subject us to ads and is threatened, Radio ads in internet radio are able to be skipped. So we only have to deal with the advertisements that arrive in our inbox.
There are a variety of ways of dealing with this detritus, the easiest one is make it a social stigma to admit to buying anything from spam.
Have any enlargements or pharmaceuticals ever been sold using this method? Has anyone ever received one of these messages and replied and then eagerly waited for their postie to drop by with their delivery of "Hot Teens"?
Turn Spam purchasing into the Venereal Disease of the new century and it will cost these folks more to send the messages than is returned in sales.
Legislation is pointless in an area where geography is no longer a method of control.
It was also the first Mac Portable machine and was introduced when there were several reasonable Windows Laptops about. The lack of power, size of the screen and the weight had the Mac Press shrugging their shoulders in resignation, certain that Apple would not produce a credible laptop. They believe that this was due to the highly competitive marketplace of the Windows laptop, not being present for Apple. Of course, they had missed that it was Windows Laptops that Apple aimed at with their second attempt at a Portable computer.
Again, the problems with the batteries on the 5300 series were certainly bad for Apple
The 5300 was the only Powerbook available at the time and the product line was a bit thin. Several models had been tried and it was looking like Apple Powerbooks were running to the end of their evolutionary timeline. That changed with the next set of PowerBook models, but considering that the majority of Apple revenue at that time was from the PowerBook line, any threat to that set of products was another opportunity to call for the "death of Apple".
I fail to see, though, how customers (like myself) were "left in the lurch".
My comments were not about customers who were left in the lurch, rather it was the licensed ocmpanies that were alienated, or as Steve Kahng and Joel Kocher from PowerComputing stated the allegedly repeated attacks from the "hand that fed them".
But I also think that some customers did feel stranded by Apple. PowerComputing customers were maybe one the of the better treated license buyers. I know several Umax and Pios systems purchasers who only received support for the OS that was on the machine and then no support beyond that. Apple washed their hands of the people had had bought licensed products and it left several first-time Apple purchasers with a bad taste in their mouth.
More importantly, it was a critical time for Apple. They had assumed that they could produce Macintosh systems better than anyone and then suddenly PowerComputing was putting out higher performance machines than they were. They had lost the hardware edge and were unable to survive on operating system sales alone. They pulled the licenses and paid out millions to these companies. At the time the media were stating the "death of Apple" again due to the lack of competition for Apple Hardware. This again proved to be false.
You will get some serious headaches, which I guess is already happening, but also be prepared for muscle cramps.
The headaches can be taken care of using regular painkillers. Use whatever you can - Ibuprofen, paracetemol, aspirin etc. For the muscle cramps use calcium and selenium.
Coming off caffiene usually only takes a day or two, then you need to deal with the social pressures that got you drinking so much of the stuff in the first place.
This is not BetaMax vs VHS, the media is basically the same, this is simply a format fight.
Writable DVD's are the current new media for data storage and the manufacturers cannot figure where we will be in a year's time? This does not bode well for the long term stability for DVD data storage and needs to be sorted sooner rather than later.
You forgot the fall after the first powerbook. The first one was incredibly heavy and considered only for users who had to have a Mac machine with a portable screen. It was thought at that time by the Mac Media that Apple could never develop a reasonable portable machine. The next one proved them wrong.
Also there was the flaming Apple laptop, when they used the new batteries which tended to catch fire. It nearly killed the powerbook line.
Finally I just remembered the hardware licensing wars. This was when Power Computing and such started to produce Macintosh Hardware under license from Apple. Apple eventually pulled it back but the stranded purchasers of those machines and the companies left in the lurch were not happy. That was a critical time for Apple and Steve Jobs decision to retain hardware development and manufacture was the right one.
You remembered several I had forgotten.
Also included in that are the projects that were thrown away. One prime example is the Newton.
Isn't an iPaq and Palm just an advanced Newton?
All Mac Users know that if things had been different that they could have lived in an Apple world - and it would have been a better one.
I would like them to continue but they need to stay on the edge and that is a very risky place to be.
I am just glad that they are currently on the safe side of the edge. Too often in the past, it has looked like they were about to disappear forever.
They were not as detailed as this or as comprehensive but if this actually gets going, it will be an incredible aid to researchers. Currently, only about a small percentage of the information I use is on the web. Most of it is in libraries and research collections and is difficult to access.
This will provide information on which books and papers (if periodicals are included) I need to start getting a hold of for my research.
Man, students these days have it easy!
Somehow I don't think the lasting impression I want to leave for future visitors to this planet is Susan from Accounts "Friday Funny".