Most of the comments I've seen have to do with quality, reliability, and costs... I'd say that much of this depends on location. It is my perception that mobile phone technology is still significantly further developed in Europe than in North America.
My company decided last year to go completely mobile (drop the PBX in favour of a software switchboard + mobile phone). I think we've had problems with the service in the office once, where the provider had to reboot one of their masts. We still had a signal from a farther mast, though. It's way cheaper and much more flexible.
Also last year, we consolidated our home installations so all of the landlines were replaced with VoIP. No problems here either (and it's a sales unit, so the users aren't particularly savvy). The provider there has made a great package of DSL + VoIP that just works.
Maybe the required infrastructure development just hasn't happened in the US yet?
They're all government-run, so it's not like consumers get to decide how, when or if they will be represented.
That's assuming a malfunctioning democracy... Ultimately the government has a responsibility to the voters to represent their issues appropriately. And that is in fact what is happening in the places where there is increased pressure on DRM.
The media also has a part to play in this... Here in Denmark a number of consumer-oriented tv programs have popped up over the last few years, that expose dodgy business practices, corruption, etc. This has great success in either forcing the companies to back down or the government to start an inquiry and possibly change their policies.
This is really a strategy that has no use for general purpose computing until such a point where speed increases are irrelevant. As it is now, a reasonable upgrade cycle is still 3 years or so, and how many systems fail in that time frame?
If we get to the point where we have all the power we need for a long period (10 years or so), and sure, making ultra-reliable components becomes an issue.
And FWIW, I've had to flash my Nokia 9300 three times in a year and a half and I've seen studies that have estimated that about 50% of all cell phones are manufactured with some minor defect that causes problems later on. Wrist watches and calculators, sure, but the cell phone industry is still pretty immature, IMHO.
If the plan is to launch these things using electromagnetic launchers, then I guess you'll need a shitload of electricity to do this... How is this energy going to be produced in a way that doesn't increase global warming substantially anyway? If the answer is a whole bunch of nuke plants, wouldn't opening said plants allow global warming to be reduced dramatically by closing fossil plants, making electric cars more economical, etc.?
2000 was a vast improvement over 95/98/ME and people who experienced it did not want to go back
You're still comparing home OSes to business OSes. 2000 was a vast improvement over NT 4, while it may or may not have been a vast improvement over 95/98/ME. For me, I couldn't run half of the games I wanted to play under 2000, so I dual-booted until XP came out, at which point I could run everything I wanted under one OS. So if I were an average home user, I would never have considered 2000.
I'm pretty sure that my Thinkpad T42 volume keys work before the OS loads... It's probably not completely hardware, but at least it works without having any drivers installed in Windows.
Make sure you have the "Automatically refresh the inbox" option checked, as well as the pop-up... If your template is designed properly, the refresh should automatically move focus to the new mail.
I'd say that 95% of the gripes with Notes can be fixed with intelligent template design... Unfortunately many companies run it only for mail and probably don't even have any Notes developers, so it is doomed to failure.
I'm surprised to read that the market is struggling in the US, because it's clearly booming here. I know two guys at the office who have just bought media center boxes, and they're advertised all over the place. Maybe it's a cultural issue, not a technical one?
What I would really like to see is an easy method of running multiple terminals off of a home desktop machine... With the new virtualization technology built into modern processors, this shouldn't be a very difficult technical achievement. Vista will presumably allow much better graphics processor multitasking, and they already have terminal server technology. So why not load up a machine with 8 cores and let us run multiple terminals off of it?
What you say is probably a pretty fair generalization, but what is stopping the employees from quitting and starting fresh? They might have some contractual obligations to fulfill, but still... I'd choose to sell out, serve my time, and get back to doing what I enjoyed doing.
It's pretty interesting how things have developed for Apple... It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
The next version of Notes is giong to be a complete redesign, and completely Java-based, if I understand things correctly. Besides including a version of OpenOffice, hopefully it'll help for interoperability with other apps as well.
Well, where I work, ordinary users don't have admin priveledges on their Windows machines. Admin priveledges are only given to IT workers and people who need to run an application that doesn't play nicely with user-level access (mostly legacy apps).
The procedure for installing standard software is this: 1. User gets permission from their manager to install the software and sends the request to local IT support. 2. IT support adds the user to the application group in Active Directory. 3. Systems Management Server alerts the user's SMS client that the application is available to be installed. 4. User installs the application (SMS takes care of elevating the priviledges, etc.)
All the software packages are unattended and tested on all of our standard hardware setups. We've never had any complaints on this point.
If there's something non-standard to install, then we make a manual installation, either by going to them or running through VNC. All of our machines are installed with a VNC server so that they can just start that when they need help. Run the installation under an admin account and you're done.
Really, running with limited access isn't as bad as it once was. Most modern applications run fine in user space, or can be packaged so that they do so. It's not the nightmare you make it out to be.
Does anything in my statement imply that it doesn't apply to IBM? The bottom line is still that the company isn't doing enough internal development to make the Notes experience a good one.
That's not a double negative, because the negatives act upon different verbs. Just because there are two negatives in a sentence doesn't mean that there is a double negative.
I can also assure you that our users have never had any problems complaining about things that don't behave as they expect. But that's a matter of office culture. In our organization, employees are encouraged to contribute their opinions, even if they may conflict with their manager's. That goes far beyond IT.
Our users "like" Notes because they understand it... When applications are developed properly, some of Notes' excellent features, like search for example, are able to shine.
If you're in a company with 27,000 employees, and you don't know anyone who doesn't despise Notes, then your company desperately needs som new Notes developers.
I started developing for Notes only about 2 years ago, so I came in with the same predisposed notions as is the norm around here. But when I truly came to understand what Notes is, my opinion changed quickly.
Notes isn't a mail client. It's a platform for database applications, which can be developed by anyone. If you don't like something in the default mail template, you are free to change it, as everything is open!
Sure, you can quibble about features in the client itself, but competent developers can get around that. Notes applications can be excellent if the developers of them are competent, and collaboration between applications in Notes is ridiculously easy.
Furthermore, IBM is now starting to push Notes hard, and focussing on bringing more open source ideas into it, as this announcement indicates. The most recent server release is a huge improvement over the last, both in performance and stability. Notes now has a future, where a few years back it wasn't clear whether future releases would have fewer and fewer new features.
Add that to the fact that the main alternative for most companies is Microsoft, and Notes is a winner...
If it really is the original version of the film, it'll be a bit of a bittersweet experience, because I doubt they'll spend all that much money on remastering it... The DVD re-release looks really really great, so if you can look beyond the edits, it's still a joy to watch. Will the original version look like shit in comparison?
Anyway, this solidifies the fact that money trumps any artistic principles Lucas has/had, as if there were any doubt...
The thing I like the most about where Intel is going is that they really seem to be taking the time to do it right. They have been doing exactly the opposite for the past couple of years... Prescott was released with many good ideas that were just never put together in a way that gave a good final product. Then the Intel dual core chips were just two single core chips pasted together, not even sharing the cache... again, it just seemed like a "let's just get it out the door" solution.
Video cards are even worse, with the shorter dev cycles. How many times have we seen a manufacturer put out a video card that is essentially the same as their last model, but with a ridiculous overclock and cooling solution. It's not innovation, and spending the time to develop properly would put us as a technological society further ahead a year from now.
But Intel's really taken their time with this, and hopefully they will have gotten their 65 nm yield issues worked out by the time they want to ramp up production. Hopefully AMD will follow suit and give us some great innovation in 2007!
I've tried to do some digging up of launch prices for games in the Atari/NES era, but came up empty. I seem to recall them being high enough to likely be well over $60 adjusted for inflation. Is gaming really more expensive now than it was 15 years ago?
If you've got multiple partitions, try installing a maintenance OS on an extra partition. If you've still got a license for Windows 2000, just install it on the other partition, it should go smoothly and give you a nice boot menu when you're done.
The main advantage of doing this is that you'll have full access to your XP installation without having any system files blocked. What I did was take a fresh install of XP (with all of my base drivers and applications installed) and make a copy of the Windows, Program Files, and Documents and Settings directories. Now, if I feel that my XP installation is getting bloated to the point where I can't fix it anymore, I can "reinstall" XP by booting into my maintenance partition and replacing those directories. As long as you are booted into another partition when you do it, Windows is completely oblivious to the fact that you've just replaced your primary OS.
Having a maintenance partition is also advantageous when defragmenting your primary partition, since no system files will be locked. It's also handy if you suspect you've been infected with a rootkit, since that seems to be a trendy topic at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the comments I've seen have to do with quality, reliability, and costs... I'd say that much of this depends on location. It is my perception that mobile phone technology is still significantly further developed in Europe than in North America.
My company decided last year to go completely mobile (drop the PBX in favour of a software switchboard + mobile phone). I think we've had problems with the service in the office once, where the provider had to reboot one of their masts. We still had a signal from a farther mast, though. It's way cheaper and much more flexible.
Also last year, we consolidated our home installations so all of the landlines were replaced with VoIP. No problems here either (and it's a sales unit, so the users aren't particularly savvy). The provider there has made a great package of DSL + VoIP that just works.
Maybe the required infrastructure development just hasn't happened in the US yet?
They're all government-run, so it's not like consumers get to decide how, when or if they will be represented.
That's assuming a malfunctioning democracy... Ultimately the government has a responsibility to the voters to represent their issues appropriately. And that is in fact what is happening in the places where there is increased pressure on DRM.
The media also has a part to play in this... Here in Denmark a number of consumer-oriented tv programs have popped up over the last few years, that expose dodgy business practices, corruption, etc. This has great success in either forcing the companies to back down or the government to start an inquiry and possibly change their policies.
I'm disappointed... a whole page browsing at +3, and no "In soviet russia, road tunnels you!" to be found. Is /. losing its edge?
This is really a strategy that has no use for general purpose computing until such a point where speed increases are irrelevant. As it is now, a reasonable upgrade cycle is still 3 years or so, and how many systems fail in that time frame?
If we get to the point where we have all the power we need for a long period (10 years or so), and sure, making ultra-reliable components becomes an issue.
And FWIW, I've had to flash my Nokia 9300 three times in a year and a half and I've seen studies that have estimated that about 50% of all cell phones are manufactured with some minor defect that causes problems later on. Wrist watches and calculators, sure, but the cell phone industry is still pretty immature, IMHO.
If the plan is to launch these things using electromagnetic launchers, then I guess you'll need a shitload of electricity to do this... How is this energy going to be produced in a way that doesn't increase global warming substantially anyway? If the answer is a whole bunch of nuke plants, wouldn't opening said plants allow global warming to be reduced dramatically by closing fossil plants, making electric cars more economical, etc.?
Lock the door.
Apparently, those who drink alcohol and socialize make more money on average.
Funny, I would have worded it differently:
Those who make more money on average drink alcohol and socialize more.
2000 was a vast improvement over 95/98/ME and people who experienced it did not want to go back
You're still comparing home OSes to business OSes. 2000 was a vast improvement over NT 4, while it may or may not have been a vast improvement over 95/98/ME. For me, I couldn't run half of the games I wanted to play under 2000, so I dual-booted until XP came out, at which point I could run everything I wanted under one OS. So if I were an average home user, I would never have considered 2000.
I think it's great that AMD is more in demand, but will they have the manufacturing capacity to keep their customers supplied?
I'm pretty sure that my Thinkpad T42 volume keys work before the OS loads... It's probably not completely hardware, but at least it works without having any drivers installed in Windows.
Mine does...
Make sure you have the "Automatically refresh the inbox" option checked, as well as the pop-up... If your template is designed properly, the refresh should automatically move focus to the new mail.
I'd say that 95% of the gripes with Notes can be fixed with intelligent template design... Unfortunately many companies run it only for mail and probably don't even have any Notes developers, so it is doomed to failure.
I'm surprised to read that the market is struggling in the US, because it's clearly booming here. I know two guys at the office who have just bought media center boxes, and they're advertised all over the place. Maybe it's a cultural issue, not a technical one?
What I would really like to see is an easy method of running multiple terminals off of a home desktop machine... With the new virtualization technology built into modern processors, this shouldn't be a very difficult technical achievement. Vista will presumably allow much better graphics processor multitasking, and they already have terminal server technology. So why not load up a machine with 8 cores and let us run multiple terminals off of it?
What you say is probably a pretty fair generalization, but what is stopping the employees from quitting and starting fresh? They might have some contractual obligations to fulfill, but still... I'd choose to sell out, serve my time, and get back to doing what I enjoyed doing.
It's pretty interesting how things have developed for Apple... It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
IBM to Adopt ODF for Lotus Notes
The next version of Notes is giong to be a complete redesign, and completely Java-based, if I understand things correctly. Besides including a version of OpenOffice, hopefully it'll help for interoperability with other apps as well.
Well, where I work, ordinary users don't have admin priveledges on their Windows machines. Admin priveledges are only given to IT workers and people who need to run an application that doesn't play nicely with user-level access (mostly legacy apps).
The procedure for installing standard software is this:
1. User gets permission from their manager to install the software and sends the request to local IT support.
2. IT support adds the user to the application group in Active Directory.
3. Systems Management Server alerts the user's SMS client that the application is available to be installed.
4. User installs the application (SMS takes care of elevating the priviledges, etc.)
All the software packages are unattended and tested on all of our standard hardware setups. We've never had any complaints on this point.
If there's something non-standard to install, then we make a manual installation, either by going to them or running through VNC. All of our machines are installed with a VNC server so that they can just start that when they need help. Run the installation under an admin account and you're done.
Really, running with limited access isn't as bad as it once was. Most modern applications run fine in user space, or can be packaged so that they do so. It's not the nightmare you make it out to be.
Does anything in my statement imply that it doesn't apply to IBM? The bottom line is still that the company isn't doing enough internal development to make the Notes experience a good one.
That's not a double negative, because the negatives act upon different verbs. Just because there are two negatives in a sentence doesn't mean that there is a double negative.
I can also assure you that our users have never had any problems complaining about things that don't behave as they expect. But that's a matter of office culture. In our organization, employees are encouraged to contribute their opinions, even if they may conflict with their manager's. That goes far beyond IT.
Our users "like" Notes because they understand it... When applications are developed properly, some of Notes' excellent features, like search for example, are able to shine.
If you're in a company with 27,000 employees, and you don't know anyone who doesn't despise Notes, then your company desperately needs som new Notes developers.
I started developing for Notes only about 2 years ago, so I came in with the same predisposed notions as is the norm around here. But when I truly came to understand what Notes is, my opinion changed quickly.
Notes isn't a mail client. It's a platform for database applications, which can be developed by anyone. If you don't like something in the default mail template, you are free to change it, as everything is open!
Sure, you can quibble about features in the client itself, but competent developers can get around that. Notes applications can be excellent if the developers of them are competent, and collaboration between applications in Notes is ridiculously easy.
Furthermore, IBM is now starting to push Notes hard, and focussing on bringing more open source ideas into it, as this announcement indicates. The most recent server release is a huge improvement over the last, both in performance and stability. Notes now has a future, where a few years back it wasn't clear whether future releases would have fewer and fewer new features.
Add that to the fact that the main alternative for most companies is Microsoft, and Notes is a winner...
If it really is the original version of the film, it'll be a bit of a bittersweet experience, because I doubt they'll spend all that much money on remastering it... The DVD re-release looks really really great, so if you can look beyond the edits, it's still a joy to watch. Will the original version look like shit in comparison?
Anyway, this solidifies the fact that money trumps any artistic principles Lucas has/had, as if there were any doubt...
The thing I like the most about where Intel is going is that they really seem to be taking the time to do it right. They have been doing exactly the opposite for the past couple of years... Prescott was released with many good ideas that were just never put together in a way that gave a good final product. Then the Intel dual core chips were just two single core chips pasted together, not even sharing the cache... again, it just seemed like a "let's just get it out the door" solution.
Video cards are even worse, with the shorter dev cycles. How many times have we seen a manufacturer put out a video card that is essentially the same as their last model, but with a ridiculous overclock and cooling solution. It's not innovation, and spending the time to develop properly would put us as a technological society further ahead a year from now.
But Intel's really taken their time with this, and hopefully they will have gotten their 65 nm yield issues worked out by the time they want to ramp up production. Hopefully AMD will follow suit and give us some great innovation in 2007!
You're assuming that the editors read the stories before they post them.
I've tried to do some digging up of launch prices for games in the Atari/NES era, but came up empty. I seem to recall them being high enough to likely be well over $60 adjusted for inflation. Is gaming really more expensive now than it was 15 years ago?
If you've got multiple partitions, try installing a maintenance OS on an extra partition. If you've still got a license for Windows 2000, just install it on the other partition, it should go smoothly and give you a nice boot menu when you're done.
The main advantage of doing this is that you'll have full access to your XP installation without having any system files blocked. What I did was take a fresh install of XP (with all of my base drivers and applications installed) and make a copy of the Windows, Program Files, and Documents and Settings directories. Now, if I feel that my XP installation is getting bloated to the point where I can't fix it anymore, I can "reinstall" XP by booting into my maintenance partition and replacing those directories. As long as you are booted into another partition when you do it, Windows is completely oblivious to the fact that you've just replaced your primary OS.
Having a maintenance partition is also advantageous when defragmenting your primary partition, since no system files will be locked. It's also handy if you suspect you've been infected with a rootkit, since that seems to be a trendy topic at the moment.