You're right, I don't really support what I have said here with any facts, but rather speak from my personal experience. I don't think I am unreasonable if I say that, in their current incarnation, frames and tabs in web and file browsing are not needed nor desired by the vast majority of users. Most people just want to get things done, and they want it to be simple. I don't think anyone has it right yet, and I do like what I see elsewhere. I use Macs and Linux boxes almost exclusively, but I am not yet happy with any interface I have seen. I do like using KDE, but I think that every time I open a new window, it seems like I have to spend time setting it up for the current task. And I still can't really understand the appeal of tabbed web browsing. Every major GUI in current use has some sort of active task listing that is more or less built in, so screen clutter is essentially a moot point. We have all trained ourselves that to make what we are looking at go away, we click the close box. I just love having more than one close box in a window. Oops! I just killed the email I was typing because I was done trolling Slashdot in the other tab. Sure many like it, but for as many that like it, I am willing to bet at least twice as many web users don't even know what tabbed browsing is. We simply cannot base what is good and bad design on what the minority wants. KDE and Firebird work great for advanced users who like to have things exactly set up in a certain way, but the majority, I feel, could care less. I respect your opinions, but please respect mine by not attacking my lack of facts with your own lack of facts.
I'm in danger of going off-topic here, but I have to say that it's better to do some basic things that most everyone needs fairly well than to do many things in a mediocre fashion. Windows graphical FTP is pretty bad, but it makes it easier for the average user who doesn't care about permissions on a download server.
The Windows user interface may not be perfect, but I frankly think that it is in many ways better than most if not all open source GUIs. This is not saying that there never will be a better open source GUI. This is also not saying that there are many flaws in the Windows GUI. I'm just saying that Microsoft has, in fact, invested considerible time, effort, and money (more or less) in making a decent, adequately consistent user interface. I have been amazed by developments over the last few years as far as with KDE and Gnome interfaces, but they still leave much to be desired. Most of what is missing is not just in how a window border looks or how many buttons are present, but actual functionality. Perhaps the one thing Windows does much better than Linux is graphical file management. Windows/Internet Explorer provides a reasonable interface to manage files, get previews, sort, find, etc. KDE and Gnome both try to provide these same services, but they are for the most part half baked. I know that a lot of people are working hard on this stuff, and it gets better everyday, but let's not just call open source GUI better than Microsoft GUI without actually thinking about it. It's fine to be loyal to something, but don't make claims unless they can be backed.
I am currently a college student, and I am inclined to agree that a CS degree is a good thing to have if you want to work in that industry. I've often heard that while more qualifications, such as a masters degree, can make you more attractive for some positions, they can also make you much less attractive. I believe that this is because it is assumed that you will expect more money for your position, or something like that. I think it would be interesting to see how many people with a Master's of CS are out of work versus those who have a "lesser" degree. Ultimately, I really don't think there is any particular standard requirement across the field. I hear a lot from recent grads here, and it seems that some places just want certs, some places just want a CS degree, some places just require any bachelor's degree and a demonstrated proficiency at what you do, and some require some combination of these. I currently have an internship with a database consulting firm. I was pretty lucky to land it, and I was only able to do so because I was working for one of their employees who sold her company to them. They are willing to pay to train me, but won't bring me on full time until I complete my bachelor's degree. On the flip side, they have someone working for them who is almost complete with a Master's of CS who is perhaps not the most qualified. This person does know their stuff, but they are not so good with databases. My employers seem inclined only to keep them around because they are willing to do the "bitch work." The thing with the database field, however, is that most learning in this field requires hands on work. I think IT is the same, as most colleges that do have CS programs do not directly teach much IT nor database courses. By having this internship, and through my personal experience with computers, I will learn infinitely more about small-to-medium business IT and database development than I will through my college education.
I hope that was trying to be funny, as any set of kids walkie-talkies will work just as well and probably on the same frequency for much less. It sounds like they already have some crappy setup with similar quality, however, so this is a moot point anyway.
I agree that computers would be foolish. I saw the need to explain what you would need to do, however, as it shows that it can be done but would be challenging and not the best method. Granted, there are many approaches to this problem, and each has downsides. Nextel would possibly work for some, but many theaters are good examples of Faraday cages and monthly costs are unreasonable for anything off-Broadway. Ultimately, there is no reason that standard business class radios, such as those made by Motorola, wouldn't be the best solution here. You can get fancy with those and program different channels and so on (or something like that), so that interference shouldn't be a concern. I've pulled security jobs with McDonald's at large venues with many groups using the same kind of radios and we never have had any interference. These might be expensive initially, but they are durable and there are no recurring costs other than ocassional battery replacement. Plus, with those you can get the cool secret service looking earpieces.
I think most who replied to this post are missing the point. I'm pretty sure that nuggetman was talking about having computers located at 2 or so base stations throughout the theater (such as in the booth, costume room, etc.) and having wireless headsets connected to those computers. This would allow only a short range from the computers, probably at most like with a cordless phone, but is a decent idea as it would likely lead to better sound quality than the typically lousy radios that school theaters use. I picked up a "VoIP" cordless phone made by AT&T a few years ago at Best Buy. It cost about $50 and the VoIP feature was simply standard 1/8" audio input and output jacks, allowing compatibility with most anything. I'm sure these could still be found somewhere, and would work fairly well in this application. The only problem is that without difficult configuration, you would be limited to one user per computer most likely, and users would have to remain within range of their base station for it to work (i.e. there is no roaming). This would actually work well for most members of the crew, as they normally don't have to go too far, but there are plenty of scenarios where this wouldn't work. With some computer expertise, however, you could probably install a multi-base system with at least 10 users for about a grand.
Then again, I could be misinterpreting this. I really don't think that there are any actual headsets that run over wireless ethernet, and if there are they would be prohibitively expensive.
WalMart thrives because they are the epitome of US capitalism at work. Laws are created to protect large corporations and allow them to balloon out of control. RFID tags are just another way that they can improve their efficiency. You cannot really fault them for what they are doing, because they are doing just what they think they are supposed to do. And if their RFID effort begins and ends in the warehouse, then they are to be commended. If, however, it moves to the retail front, it needs to be regulated, because we all know that corporate America cannot regulate itself.
That is a very good point. Your thoughts about governments in relation to space travel certainly match most governments' current ways of thinking. It seems that because of the rapid development of technology, no one is particularly concerned with long term solutions. Instead, there is this frantic dash to get things done, because apparently we cannot be satisfied with where we are at. I'm not saying that we should be content with the state of the world (or technology, for that matter), but everything tends to be hectic for the wrong reasons. Why not stop throwing poorly built spacecraft and satellites into space? Can't we pause and take time to develop safe nuclear power for any space application? I have already seen examples of proposed probes that use nuclear power, and do so relatively cheaply. If a space telescope had a halfway decent power facility then we would not have to worry about sending repair vehicles. It should then be capable of repairing itself. I'll stop my random rant here, but I think these are things to consider if they haven't been already.
But if I have two mice, assuredly they will reproduce. The last thing I need is hybrid mice running around on my desk. God forbid some should be cordless.
Apparently it is enough because many of these chips only have 512k and that is how it is going to be with the majority of the new Athlon 64s sold in the future, I suspect. There is a lot of information available at Anandtech, as mentioned previously on Slashdot.
When the first story about the 64 bit desktop machine from eMachines broke, I looked on their website and it was noticeably absent from the products section. It is still not there and neither is this new laptop. I'm guessing I'm just stupid and missed where it said that they're only selling these models through Best Buy or something like that. It just makes me wonder about the quality if they won't even show them on their website. I'm having trouble coming up with a similar occurrence anywhere else. For a company that does all sales through retail outlets such as Best Buy and Circuit City, it seems odd that they would not mention their flagship products on their own site. I don't think this is a conspiracy, I just can't understand the reasoning here. I have an email out to them seeking some sort of answer, but hopefully someone here will have some insight.
Impossible. Unless the power button simply toggles the user interface, if the phone's transceiver is shut down there is no way it can be tracked. Basically, the person to person tracking only gives you a location based on whatever tower you are currently using. This means terrible accuracy, especially in crowded cities. Triangulation and all that jazz is possible, but not necessarily likely/easy. Either way, none of this requires anything being transmitted from the phones. There are no homing signals or anything like that.
Talk of smart cards brings up another aspect to this: this system would be much more expensive to develop and maintain than our current system. Distributing smart cards and building, setting up, maintaining, and collecting kiosks would be extremely expensive (in local government terms), especially in the short term. Our current governments are not really looking for returns on investment many years down the road, and by the time the system may actually make sense financially, it will be time to upgrade and the cycle starts again. This is mainly speculation on my part, but from my experience with a county election department, the simplest things cost local governments a lot.
Why can't we just keep all the kiosks offline and then sync with the central database in a closed network or by CD at the end of election day? Sure, this requires votes being tagged with a voter ID, but if you simply use some sort of unique identifier, perhaps along the lines of a hash key, anonymity can be protected. There is no reason that the system should need to know any actual information about any particular voter. Therefore, someone can go and cast as many votes as they like all day (though this is obviously illegal) but only their first vote would be counted.
This system is essentially just as susceptible to violations of voter privacy as current systems, since there is no practical way to absolutely guarantee privacy with any of the current systems (as far as I know). I do agree that there are still issues with this system, but I do not agree that it is impossible. Voter registration could give voters a unique ID that is not used anywhere else but for one election. The real problem with this system is more overhead overall.
Not to bring in conspiracy theories, but why would politicians want to make it that much easier for people to vote? That means they have to work that much harder to make sure people are voting for them.
I believe that we will see more development along these lines, and there is potential for some sort of system to be used in the future. Based on voting related events in the past decade and the current state of computer security, however, I wouldn't expect anything like this any time soon.
I agree. My experience with PeopleSoft products has been nothing but awful. I understand that they get the job done, and I don't really know what the end user experience is like, but what I do know is that supporting them is terrible. Half of any PeopleSoft install must be done by hand, including insane things like editing environment variables in NT. Sure this can be done by a batch file, but why not make a real installer? Granted, all my experience with PeopleSoft was when I worked with a government agency recently, but let's just say that the products are just terrible. Not to mention they tend to depend on Oracle anyway, so this takeover actually makes sense.
Sun has basically been stumbling around blindly in recent years. Yes, they brought us Java, which is nice in some ways. Really, though, Java is more of a curse. It has such a huge following which is sadly increasing. This is bad because it is now becoming the standard language being taught in schools everywhere. Yes, a lot of good things are written in Java, but you don't write an OS in Java. You don't write games that will actually sell in Java. And you really don't write something you to run fast in Java. Frankly, I wish Java never came around. It took all that was right about C++ and broke it, though at the same time it did make C++ syntax into an easier language. All I really have to say is that we should be really leary of Java right now. Sun will collapse. There is little to prevent that. And when it does, don't count on Java being released to the general public. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if Microsoft buys Sun just to kill Java. OK, enough of my aimless ranting. Have a wonderful Sunday, or Monday if it is for you already.
In most cases, ISPs limit the bandwidth provided to each customer. Therefore, it does not matter whether I have one computer directly connected to their network or if I have 200 sitting behind a NAT router device. Either way, I can use the same amount of bandwidth and the same single IP address. Beside the fact that it would be difficult to regulate use of routers, it is also foolish and unnecessary. This applies especially to home users, since ISPs and phone companies are not exactly leaping to provide multiple connections to one home, and it is hardly justifiable from any viewpoint to pay double for (usually) two computers that get little to moderate use.
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more on the point of not infringing on anyone's rights. As it is, companies have to warn consumers of potentially offensive content, so it's not that much more to ask them to warn about copy-protection schemes. Similar to energy efficieny labels on appliances or vehicles, you get a rough idea of what your "mileage" will be with the product.
Whoa, whoa! Hold on a second, did you just say that Windows 98 had substantially more functionality over Windows 95? The only thing that you couldn't get in a release of Windows 95 that you could in Windows 98 was the gradient in the window title bar. Granted, the USB support in 95 was almost always horrible but 98 was a pointless upgrade that achieved less than the typical NT 4 service pack. Why Microsoft had consumers pay for this worthless upgrade when they could have charged businesses for worthwhile upgrades to NT 4 is a mystery, but that's how it works I guess.
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Thanks for providing such a good response to my reply. I was doing the same things I was trying to fault you for. Thanks for being cool about that.
You're right, I don't really support what I have said here with any facts, but rather speak from my personal experience. I don't think I am unreasonable if I say that, in their current incarnation, frames and tabs in web and file browsing are not needed nor desired by the vast majority of users. Most people just want to get things done, and they want it to be simple. I don't think anyone has it right yet, and I do like what I see elsewhere. I use Macs and Linux boxes almost exclusively, but I am not yet happy with any interface I have seen. I do like using KDE, but I think that every time I open a new window, it seems like I have to spend time setting it up for the current task. And I still can't really understand the appeal of tabbed web browsing. Every major GUI in current use has some sort of active task listing that is more or less built in, so screen clutter is essentially a moot point. We have all trained ourselves that to make what we are looking at go away, we click the close box. I just love having more than one close box in a window. Oops! I just killed the email I was typing because I was done trolling Slashdot in the other tab. Sure many like it, but for as many that like it, I am willing to bet at least twice as many web users don't even know what tabbed browsing is. We simply cannot base what is good and bad design on what the minority wants. KDE and Firebird work great for advanced users who like to have things exactly set up in a certain way, but the majority, I feel, could care less. I respect your opinions, but please respect mine by not attacking my lack of facts with your own lack of facts.
I'm in danger of going off-topic here, but I have to say that it's better to do some basic things that most everyone needs fairly well than to do many things in a mediocre fashion. Windows graphical FTP is pretty bad, but it makes it easier for the average user who doesn't care about permissions on a download server.
The Windows user interface may not be perfect, but I frankly think that it is in many ways better than most if not all open source GUIs. This is not saying that there never will be a better open source GUI. This is also not saying that there are many flaws in the Windows GUI. I'm just saying that Microsoft has, in fact, invested considerible time, effort, and money (more or less) in making a decent, adequately consistent user interface. I have been amazed by developments over the last few years as far as with KDE and Gnome interfaces, but they still leave much to be desired. Most of what is missing is not just in how a window border looks or how many buttons are present, but actual functionality. Perhaps the one thing Windows does much better than Linux is graphical file management. Windows/Internet Explorer provides a reasonable interface to manage files, get previews, sort, find, etc. KDE and Gnome both try to provide these same services, but they are for the most part half baked. I know that a lot of people are working hard on this stuff, and it gets better everyday, but let's not just call open source GUI better than Microsoft GUI without actually thinking about it. It's fine to be loyal to something, but don't make claims unless they can be backed.
I am currently a college student, and I am inclined to agree that a CS degree is a good thing to have if you want to work in that industry. I've often heard that while more qualifications, such as a masters degree, can make you more attractive for some positions, they can also make you much less attractive. I believe that this is because it is assumed that you will expect more money for your position, or something like that. I think it would be interesting to see how many people with a Master's of CS are out of work versus those who have a "lesser" degree. Ultimately, I really don't think there is any particular standard requirement across the field. I hear a lot from recent grads here, and it seems that some places just want certs, some places just want a CS degree, some places just require any bachelor's degree and a demonstrated proficiency at what you do, and some require some combination of these. I currently have an internship with a database consulting firm. I was pretty lucky to land it, and I was only able to do so because I was working for one of their employees who sold her company to them. They are willing to pay to train me, but won't bring me on full time until I complete my bachelor's degree. On the flip side, they have someone working for them who is almost complete with a Master's of CS who is perhaps not the most qualified. This person does know their stuff, but they are not so good with databases. My employers seem inclined only to keep them around because they are willing to do the "bitch work." The thing with the database field, however, is that most learning in this field requires hands on work. I think IT is the same, as most colleges that do have CS programs do not directly teach much IT nor database courses. By having this internship, and through my personal experience with computers, I will learn infinitely more about small-to-medium business IT and database development than I will through my college education.
I hope that was trying to be funny, as any set of kids walkie-talkies will work just as well and probably on the same frequency for much less. It sounds like they already have some crappy setup with similar quality, however, so this is a moot point anyway.
I agree that computers would be foolish. I saw the need to explain what you would need to do, however, as it shows that it can be done but would be challenging and not the best method. Granted, there are many approaches to this problem, and each has downsides. Nextel would possibly work for some, but many theaters are good examples of Faraday cages and monthly costs are unreasonable for anything off-Broadway. Ultimately, there is no reason that standard business class radios, such as those made by Motorola, wouldn't be the best solution here. You can get fancy with those and program different channels and so on (or something like that), so that interference shouldn't be a concern. I've pulled security jobs with McDonald's at large venues with many groups using the same kind of radios and we never have had any interference. These might be expensive initially, but they are durable and there are no recurring costs other than ocassional battery replacement. Plus, with those you can get the cool secret service looking earpieces.
I think most who replied to this post are missing the point. I'm pretty sure that nuggetman was talking about having computers located at 2 or so base stations throughout the theater (such as in the booth, costume room, etc.) and having wireless headsets connected to those computers. This would allow only a short range from the computers, probably at most like with a cordless phone, but is a decent idea as it would likely lead to better sound quality than the typically lousy radios that school theaters use. I picked up a "VoIP" cordless phone made by AT&T a few years ago at Best Buy. It cost about $50 and the VoIP feature was simply standard 1/8" audio input and output jacks, allowing compatibility with most anything. I'm sure these could still be found somewhere, and would work fairly well in this application. The only problem is that without difficult configuration, you would be limited to one user per computer most likely, and users would have to remain within range of their base station for it to work (i.e. there is no roaming). This would actually work well for most members of the crew, as they normally don't have to go too far, but there are plenty of scenarios where this wouldn't work. With some computer expertise, however, you could probably install a multi-base system with at least 10 users for about a grand.
Then again, I could be misinterpreting this. I really don't think that there are any actual headsets that run over wireless ethernet, and if there are they would be prohibitively expensive.
Either way, I wish you luck with your show!
WalMart thrives because they are the epitome of US capitalism at work. Laws are created to protect large corporations and allow them to balloon out of control. RFID tags are just another way that they can improve their efficiency. You cannot really fault them for what they are doing, because they are doing just what they think they are supposed to do. And if their RFID effort begins and ends in the warehouse, then they are to be commended. If, however, it moves to the retail front, it needs to be regulated, because we all know that corporate America cannot regulate itself.
I was thinking more like a free Nachos Bel Grande, considering the enormous waste.
That is a very good point. Your thoughts about governments in relation to space travel certainly match most governments' current ways of thinking. It seems that because of the rapid development of technology, no one is particularly concerned with long term solutions. Instead, there is this frantic dash to get things done, because apparently we cannot be satisfied with where we are at. I'm not saying that we should be content with the state of the world (or technology, for that matter), but everything tends to be hectic for the wrong reasons. Why not stop throwing poorly built spacecraft and satellites into space? Can't we pause and take time to develop safe nuclear power for any space application? I have already seen examples of proposed probes that use nuclear power, and do so relatively cheaply. If a space telescope had a halfway decent power facility then we would not have to worry about sending repair vehicles. It should then be capable of repairing itself. I'll stop my random rant here, but I think these are things to consider if they haven't been already.
But if I have two mice, assuredly they will reproduce. The last thing I need is hybrid mice running around on my desk. God forbid some should be cordless.
Oh, I'm sure it will be effected like a son of a gun!
What search box?
Apparently it is enough because many of these chips only have 512k and that is how it is going to be with the majority of the new Athlon 64s sold in the future, I suspect. There is a lot of information available at Anandtech, as mentioned previously on Slashdot.
When the first story about the 64 bit desktop machine from eMachines broke, I looked on their website and it was noticeably absent from the products section. It is still not there and neither is this new laptop. I'm guessing I'm just stupid and missed where it said that they're only selling these models through Best Buy or something like that. It just makes me wonder about the quality if they won't even show them on their website. I'm having trouble coming up with a similar occurrence anywhere else. For a company that does all sales through retail outlets such as Best Buy and Circuit City, it seems odd that they would not mention their flagship products on their own site. I don't think this is a conspiracy, I just can't understand the reasoning here. I have an email out to them seeking some sort of answer, but hopefully someone here will have some insight.
Impossible. Unless the power button simply toggles the user interface, if the phone's transceiver is shut down there is no way it can be tracked. Basically, the person to person tracking only gives you a location based on whatever tower you are currently using. This means terrible accuracy, especially in crowded cities. Triangulation and all that jazz is possible, but not necessarily likely/easy. Either way, none of this requires anything being transmitted from the phones. There are no homing signals or anything like that.
Talk of smart cards brings up another aspect to this: this system would be much more expensive to develop and maintain than our current system. Distributing smart cards and building, setting up, maintaining, and collecting kiosks would be extremely expensive (in local government terms), especially in the short term. Our current governments are not really looking for returns on investment many years down the road, and by the time the system may actually make sense financially, it will be time to upgrade and the cycle starts again. This is mainly speculation on my part, but from my experience with a county election department, the simplest things cost local governments a lot.
This system is essentially just as susceptible to violations of voter privacy as current systems, since there is no practical way to absolutely guarantee privacy with any of the current systems (as far as I know). I do agree that there are still issues with this system, but I do not agree that it is impossible. Voter registration could give voters a unique ID that is not used anywhere else but for one election. The real problem with this system is more overhead overall.
Not to bring in conspiracy theories, but why would politicians want to make it that much easier for people to vote? That means they have to work that much harder to make sure people are voting for them.
I believe that we will see more development along these lines, and there is potential for some sort of system to be used in the future. Based on voting related events in the past decade and the current state of computer security, however, I wouldn't expect anything like this any time soon.
I agree. My experience with PeopleSoft products has been nothing but awful. I understand that they get the job done, and I don't really know what the end user experience is like, but what I do know is that supporting them is terrible. Half of any PeopleSoft install must be done by hand, including insane things like editing environment variables in NT. Sure this can be done by a batch file, but why not make a real installer? Granted, all my experience with PeopleSoft was when I worked with a government agency recently, but let's just say that the products are just terrible. Not to mention they tend to depend on Oracle anyway, so this takeover actually makes sense.
Sun has basically been stumbling around blindly in recent years. Yes, they brought us Java, which is nice in some ways. Really, though, Java is more of a curse. It has such a huge following which is sadly increasing. This is bad because it is now becoming the standard language being taught in schools everywhere. Yes, a lot of good things are written in Java, but you don't write an OS in Java. You don't write games that will actually sell in Java. And you really don't write something you to run fast in Java. Frankly, I wish Java never came around. It took all that was right about C++ and broke it, though at the same time it did make C++ syntax into an easier language. All I really have to say is that we should be really leary of Java right now. Sun will collapse. There is little to prevent that. And when it does, don't count on Java being released to the general public. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if Microsoft buys Sun just to kill Java. OK, enough of my aimless ranting. Have a wonderful Sunday, or Monday if it is for you already.
In most cases, ISPs limit the bandwidth provided to each customer. Therefore, it does not matter whether I have one computer directly connected to their network or if I have 200 sitting behind a NAT router device. Either way, I can use the same amount of bandwidth and the same single IP address. Beside the fact that it would be difficult to regulate use of routers, it is also foolish and unnecessary. This applies especially to home users, since ISPs and phone companies are not exactly leaping to provide multiple connections to one home, and it is hardly justifiable from any viewpoint to pay double for (usually) two computers that get little to moderate use.
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more on the point of not infringing on anyone's rights. As it is, companies have to warn consumers of potentially offensive content, so it's not that much more to ask them to warn about copy-protection schemes. Similar to energy efficieny labels on appliances or vehicles, you get a rough idea of what your "mileage" will be with the product.
In Soviet RUSSIA flying cars are actually honeypots without wheels.
Whoa, whoa! Hold on a second, did you just say that Windows 98 had substantially more functionality over Windows 95? The only thing that you couldn't get in a release of Windows 95 that you could in Windows 98 was the gradient in the window title bar. Granted, the USB support in 95 was almost always horrible but 98 was a pointless upgrade that achieved less than the typical NT 4 service pack. Why Microsoft had consumers pay for this worthless upgrade when they could have charged businesses for worthwhile upgrades to NT 4 is a mystery, but that's how it works I guess.