I actually live close to a Lowes in a small midwestern town. They are employing people there who actually KNOW STUFF. Really! There are people there who have abandoned the lean midwest rural plumbing and construction trade for more steady income. For instance, the plumbing department guy actually used to be a plumber, likes plumbing and helping people DIY, but is sick of doing it for a living. Now, a Lowes in a large urban area won't be like that. The plumbers and construction guys make more money doing it in TRW, and a Lowes there will be stuck with the typical inexperienced people.
I already use gmail, and now google calendar I would have a few documents I am working on in a doc program like "writely". I effectively have all my favorite websites grouped together using google personalized homepage. I could save some files, etc, in a Gdrive.
I would be able to access some documents, files, information and my email and calendar - either from work, home, friends house, laptop in the lazy boy, on the road, windows, linux, mac, wherever, whenever, however. Nothing to lose if the computer crashes, nothing to forget, nothing to reinstall, NOTHING TO BUY, no contacts to lose, real handy.
Even my PARENTS and my INLAWS have high speed internet, and the both are in the STICKS. So, doing things 100% online is very feasible now, and definitely in the future.
Have I drank the google coolaid? Well, maybe... but it tastes alright so far and the IDEA is great.
Eh. By "putting out products that are hardly better than the last version" I think he's referring to MS office, which you gotta admit hasn't changed much (for 90% of the users, IMO) since office 97.
IIRC for a while there Dell was slinging workstations with RDRAM. That sucked. My company at the time had a contract with Dell, and I needed a new workstation for Finite Element Analysis. I was hosed, I needed something with a lot of memory, and RDRAM was WAY out of line. It was something like $6000 just for the ram! The paperwork never went through, in fact the IT department practically laughed at it when the requisition went past their desk.
I worked with a guy who bought a dell laptop - a fairly nice one, about 5 months ago or something.
When it came in it had a dent in the case near the keyboard, as if it had been squished with the lid open and something pressed up on the case from the inside, creating a small bulge.
We were all pretty tech savvy, and knew "that probably isn't a good sign" even though it did seem to work fine. He made up his mind that he was going to immediately call and get it replaced for free - and have them throw in a printer for his trouble.
Well, he got a replacement laptop and a (ultra cheap) printer, within 2 or 3 days, and all it took was about 3 hours on hold with india. He got it sent to him and he sent back the defective one in the new box. (this he also demanded)
He was fairly polite, but firm, and did not take no for an answer. He quickly demanded to speak to a supervisor when the cannon fodder he connected to was deemed useless for anything but a script.
"You can be the smartest consultant in the world, but if you GIVE advice to a company they won't listen to you, no matter how useful the information is. If you charge them $100k for the information, they'll take the advice no matter if it's good or not."
Ubuntu, as a rule, doesn't include any non-free or non-open content either - so it's a fair comparison to the non-subscriber mandriva, correct?
and there is no subscriber option in ubuntu... So the no-proprietary-content and free ubuntu does what you would have to pay to do using mandriva. And we're talking about wifi, which is notoriously hard to make work in most linux distros. That makes you go hmmmm.
Ubuntu breezy, the current one out, is amazing. If someone installs it, follows the step-by-step instructions to run the Automatix, there is NO reason to use windows over Ubuntu.
There is, honestly, only ONE thing that windows (apple?) has over linux, and that is good video editing packages. There are a few "decent" ones, but I'm talking final cut, vegas, premiere level stuff and higher.
Ubuntu installs easy and works with everything I threw at it.
Another reason, along with Vista, is Dell. I recall in a previous/. article, that Dell likes Ubuntu... I'm sure they will be looking HARD at dapper. Breezy is so good there is no reason to hurry with so much to gain.
Besides the obviousness that eventually EVERYTHING will be on google (office apps, email, calendar, favorites, etc) think of it this way - How long will it be until the majority of people will access their email/calendar/etc from anywhere, using THE SAME computer? Either a cellphone or PDA or palmtop or some kind of system embedded in their coat?
Yeah, I wouldn't really want to do much from a kiosk at the airport, but...
Why can't they just give the option to purchase a computer without any OS on it? "Linux Ready" or some such marketing tagline. Microsoft owns them that much?
I understand not wanting to support different linux OS's, in fact I think that is a big problem in the commercial linux application area. I recently looked at purchasing MainActor for linux, and the RPM -> Alien -> Ubuntu install worked, but some menus were broken and it would segfault in one area. The.deb -> dpkg -> Ubuntu way had all the menu's working but would segfault in a different (and more critical) area. With so many linux distros, and all being a little different, it's WAY more of an undertaking vs ONE option - windoze is windoze.
In my own personal experience, and in the comments so far here, there is a real opportunity for a good, easy to implement, and inexpensive email solution.
Yeah, there's lotus notes, exchange servers, "give them all a gmail account for personal email" "send the link, not the file" etc.
All good options, but more of a workaround IMO. Exchange Server Email IS a lot like a file system to the user, in a way - you have public folders, private folders, a "tree" view. So we are ALL inclined to store vast quantities of information on there.
I think there would be room for a good corporate solution from a new, startup dotcom that provides a solid IT-friendly email management infrastructure that lets users do what they WANT to do. Share vast quantities of information in a messaging based way. Scalable. FAST. Easy to backup. Easily searchable
Think outside the box, guys. There is no reason that email has to be like it used to be, because it isn't.
"Honestly, the worst Mac malware I've seen so far had a Symantec sticker on the box."
Mcafee is just as bad. Norton products move in and provide lots of bloat, slowdowns and the random, annoying crash. McAfee products, from my experience, grind the system to a halt.
"Then don't buy a CD. The price will only be as high as the market will bear."
Yeah, but tell it to the teeny boppers and such, they have nothing BUT disposable income, and you can't resist the latest hot album that everyone just hasta have. That's 90%+ of the whole RIAA's market.
1) the latin tango ringtone that I've found only annoying people put on their phones. I'm so scarred by it (or the people I've known to have it), every time I hear it go off I cringe.
2) The people who've discovered how to "make your own" ringtone by recording a personal message and setting it to be a ringtone. Apparently, it requires you to place the phone next to a very loud AM radio playing some form of popular rock music, hit record, and then setting the ring volume to MAX.
I have a friend who set a ringtone for any of the Guys to be the dukes of hazzard theme, and for his wife to be Pretty Woman. It's ok, I think, because he KNOWS it's cheesy. I hope...
No, it's not just a company. Google is an institution, it's a legend, it's a VERB, it's on every web browser I use throughout the day. Not because I have to have it there, but because it's that good. All my email is on Gmail. It's a non-local, pervasive idea that has meshed with the online psyche of the world. That, AND a company - LOL.
Reminds me of my college days. Back in the mid 90's a rich kid and his roomate lived off campus, and the rich kid had A CD BURNER. Back when it was a 1x and cost a whole lot of money. Well, they got into "piracy" and such.
Which means, they would make copies of music cd's for a price, compile CD's of several games on it (back when you could fit 20+ games on 1 CD) and CD's full of pr0n, CD's of applications, etc, all for markup, maybe $10 when a blank cost $2.
The non-rich kid roomate got really paranoid that they would be busted by the CIA or the campus cops or something. Looking back on it now, it's pretty funny. I had him burn a CD backup of my 520 meg HD, it was my first CD-r, probably still have it around here somewhere.
A roomate of mine, when we lived ON campus, set up a FTP server on his computer and posted the login to a WAREZ newsgroup. He arranged a "download as much as you upload" warez FTP site. He operated his site for a couple of weeks until his friend, who worked in the computer center, informed him that the-powers-that-be are well aware of his operation and he'd better retire ASAP. Still makes me chuckle.
-Do Memorex even make USB drives, or do they simply buy them in from Asian and stick their badge on them?-
Well, I've got one right here. Quite small, 1GB, fairly inexpensive, got it from BBUY...
Hope it's real!
True, he's definitely screwed in some form or another, but all spammers are weasels. Watch him disappear to some foreign country and start sending more penile enhancement emails.
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I actually live close to a Lowes in a small midwestern town. They are employing people there who actually KNOW STUFF. Really! There are people there who have abandoned the lean midwest rural plumbing and construction trade for more steady income. For instance, the plumbing department guy actually used to be a plumber, likes plumbing and helping people DIY, but is sick of doing it for a living. Now, a Lowes in a large urban area won't be like that. The plumbers and construction guys make more money doing it in TRW, and a Lowes there will be stuck with the typical inexperienced people.
What I would do with it -
I already use gmail, and now google calendar
I would have a few documents I am working on in a doc program like "writely".
I effectively have all my favorite websites grouped together using google personalized homepage.
I could save some files, etc, in a Gdrive.
I would be able to access some documents, files, information and my email and calendar - either from work, home, friends house, laptop in the lazy boy, on the road, windows, linux, mac, wherever, whenever, however. Nothing to lose if the computer crashes, nothing to forget, nothing to reinstall, NOTHING TO BUY, no contacts to lose, real handy.
Even my PARENTS and my INLAWS have high speed internet, and the both are in the STICKS. So, doing things 100% online is very feasible now, and definitely in the future.
Have I drank the google coolaid? Well, maybe... but it tastes alright so far and the IDEA is great.
Eh. By "putting out products that are hardly better than the last version" I think he's referring to MS office, which you gotta admit hasn't changed much (for 90% of the users, IMO) since office 97.
"And is probably making at least $200 K a year. {sigh}"
For 200k per year I think I could do that...
IIRC for a while there Dell was slinging workstations with RDRAM. That sucked. My company at the time had a contract with Dell, and I needed a new workstation for Finite Element Analysis. I was hosed, I needed something with a lot of memory, and RDRAM was WAY out of line. It was something like $6000 just for the ram! The paperwork never went through, in fact the IT department practically laughed at it when the requisition went past their desk.
I worked with a guy who bought a dell laptop - a fairly nice one, about 5 months ago or something.
When it came in it had a dent in the case near the keyboard, as if it had been squished with the lid open and something pressed up on the case from the inside, creating a small bulge.
We were all pretty tech savvy, and knew "that probably isn't a good sign" even though it did seem to work fine. He made up his mind that he was going to immediately call and get it replaced for free - and have them throw in a printer for his trouble.
Well, he got a replacement laptop and a (ultra cheap) printer, within 2 or 3 days, and all it took was about 3 hours on hold with india. He got it sent to him and he sent back the defective one in the new box. (this he also demanded)
He was fairly polite, but firm, and did not take no for an answer. He quickly demanded to speak to a supervisor when the cannon fodder he connected to was deemed useless for anything but a script.
Reminds me of something a wise friend once said -
"You can be the smartest consultant in the world, but if you GIVE advice to a company they won't listen to you, no matter how useful the information is. If you charge them $100k for the information, they'll take the advice no matter if it's good or not."
That sorta reminds me of "escape velocity", the old Mac game. Very simple yet extremely addictive, deep, humorous, open ended.
"I wouldn't really trust Honda to build my Ferrari..."
I'm sure Honda would build a very efficient, reliable and long lasting Ferrari that gets real good gas mileage...
Ubuntu, as a rule, doesn't include any non-free or non-open content either - so it's a fair comparison to the non-subscriber mandriva, correct?
and there is no subscriber option in ubuntu... So the no-proprietary-content and free ubuntu does what you would have to pay to do using mandriva. And we're talking about wifi, which is notoriously hard to make work in most linux distros. That makes you go hmmmm.
I agree 100%.
/. article, that Dell likes Ubuntu... I'm sure they will be looking HARD at dapper. Breezy is so good there is no reason to hurry with so much to gain.
Ubuntu breezy, the current one out, is amazing. If someone installs it, follows the step-by-step instructions to run the Automatix, there is NO reason to use windows over Ubuntu.
There is, honestly, only ONE thing that windows (apple?) has over linux, and that is good video editing packages. There are a few "decent" ones, but I'm talking final cut, vegas, premiere level stuff and higher.
Ubuntu installs easy and works with everything I threw at it.
Another reason, along with Vista, is Dell. I recall in a previous
Besides the obviousness that eventually EVERYTHING will be on google (office apps, email, calendar, favorites, etc) think of it this way - How long will it be until the majority of people will access their email/calendar/etc from anywhere, using THE SAME computer? Either a cellphone or PDA or palmtop or some kind of system embedded in their coat?
...
Yeah, I wouldn't really want to do much from a kiosk at the airport, but
Why can't they just give the option to purchase a computer without any OS on it? "Linux Ready" or some such marketing tagline. Microsoft owns them that much?
.deb -> dpkg -> Ubuntu way had all the menu's working but would segfault in a different (and more critical) area. With so many linux distros, and all being a little different, it's WAY more of an undertaking vs ONE option - windoze is windoze.
I understand not wanting to support different linux OS's, in fact I think that is a big problem in the commercial linux application area. I recently looked at purchasing MainActor for linux, and the RPM -> Alien -> Ubuntu install worked, but some menus were broken and it would segfault in one area. The
Had a Gateway M500 laptop. It was limited edition, but it had a 6 pin and 4 pin firewire, both.
In my own personal experience, and in the comments so far here, there is a real opportunity for a good, easy to implement, and inexpensive email solution.
Yeah, there's lotus notes, exchange servers, "give them all a gmail account for personal email" "send the link, not the file" etc.
All good options, but more of a workaround IMO. Exchange Server Email IS a lot like a file system to the user, in a way - you have public folders, private folders, a "tree" view. So we are ALL inclined to store vast quantities of information on there.
I think there would be room for a good corporate solution from a new, startup dotcom that provides a solid IT-friendly email management infrastructure that lets users do what they WANT to do. Share vast quantities of information in a messaging based way. Scalable. FAST. Easy to backup. Easily searchable
Think outside the box, guys. There is no reason that email has to be like it used to be, because it isn't.
"they were not the same as putting out a clean jar and collecting the rain as it fell." This is, of course, because there are no bacteria in the air?
"Honestly, the worst Mac malware I've seen so far had a Symantec sticker on the box."
Mcafee is just as bad. Norton products move in and provide lots of bloat, slowdowns and the random, annoying crash. McAfee products, from my experience, grind the system to a halt.
"Then don't buy a CD. The price will only be as high as the market will bear."
Yeah, but tell it to the teeny boppers and such, they have nothing BUT disposable income, and you can't resist the latest hot album that everyone just hasta have. That's 90%+ of the whole RIAA's market.
The two most horrid ring tones are:
1) the latin tango ringtone that I've found only annoying people put on their phones. I'm so scarred by it (or the people I've known to have it), every time I hear it go off I cringe.
2) The people who've discovered how to "make your own" ringtone by recording a personal message and setting it to be a ringtone. Apparently, it requires you to place the phone next to a very loud AM radio playing some form of popular rock music, hit record, and then setting the ring volume to MAX.
I have a friend who set a ringtone for any of the Guys to be the dukes of hazzard theme, and for his wife to be Pretty Woman. It's ok, I think, because he KNOWS it's cheesy. I hope...
That's Emporer Amado to you, mister.
Either that was during the dot-com boom or you walk on water.
No, it's not just a company. Google is an institution, it's a legend, it's a VERB, it's on every web browser I use throughout the day. Not because I have to have it there, but because it's that good. All my email is on Gmail. It's a non-local, pervasive idea that has meshed with the online psyche of the world. That, AND a company - LOL.
International Piracy Syndicate...
Reminds me of my college days. Back in the mid 90's a rich kid and his roomate lived off campus, and the rich kid had A CD BURNER. Back when it was a 1x and cost a whole lot of money. Well, they got into "piracy" and such.
Which means, they would make copies of music cd's for a price, compile CD's of several games on it (back when you could fit 20+ games on 1 CD) and CD's full of pr0n, CD's of applications, etc, all for markup, maybe $10 when a blank cost $2.
The non-rich kid roomate got really paranoid that they would be busted by the CIA or the campus cops or something. Looking back on it now, it's pretty funny. I had him burn a CD backup of my 520 meg HD, it was my first CD-r, probably still have it around here somewhere.
A roomate of mine, when we lived ON campus, set up a FTP server on his computer and posted the login to a WAREZ newsgroup. He arranged a "download as much as you upload" warez FTP site. He operated his site for a couple of weeks until his friend, who worked in the computer center, informed him that the-powers-that-be are well aware of his operation and he'd better retire ASAP. Still makes me chuckle.
-Do Memorex even make USB drives, or do they simply buy them in from Asian and stick their badge on them?- Well, I've got one right here. Quite small, 1GB, fairly inexpensive, got it from BBUY... Hope it's real!
True, he's definitely screwed in some form or another, but all spammers are weasels. Watch him disappear to some foreign country and start sending more penile enhancement emails.