American Express (AmEx) did something similar in the Boston area. However, they thought it through first. An organization that wanted to participate had to submit a proposal on what they would do with the money and description of the organization's misson. AmEx selected about 40 (all worthwhile) organizations to vote on. AmEx got a reasonable selection of charities to participate--some of the really large ones, and a few highly specialized. The organizations used their participation to encourage their members to vote and become engaged to the organiztion goals.
I think every organization that was selected got some funding (perhaps at the $1000 level) so there weren't hard feeling from the losers.
I did a lot of work on 370/VM and it was really a brilliant operation system... vastly ahead of its time... it created true virtual machines, with their own virtual hardware and even console/control panel. Within each VM you could run whatever (IBM or non-IBM) operating system you wanted...including another copy of VM to create more VMs... to about 10 levels deep. The implementation was flawless... and each VM was completely isolated. Othere OS have just started to catch up... but most (all?) current OSs don't virtualize the hardware as well.
Back in the hayday of IBM... the system were well documented and incredibly reliable.
Testing is a job. Asking the public to do the internal development testing doesn't work if you want to earn a living selling software (or the software ecosystem). I haven't seem many nightly builds of the Mac OS, or lots of other for sale software.
If you need to have larger fonts or display... you're not cool enough to use a Mac. Actually, I had this problem with my mother--the default DPI on the all-in-one macs is quite high and there isn't any easy scaling software. I don't think there is a high-contrast color scheme on the mac either. One of the reason Windows is "bloated" is that it need to support a huge variety of monitors and color schemes. Most of the icons come in small, medium and large -- and in a variety of color schemes.
Actually I've found VZ customer service incredibly pleasant -- the hold times until you speak to a rep are rather long; but once you get a rep, it's clear they aren't measured by how fast they get you off the phone. The reps seam pleasant and remarkably well trained. (On the other hand, almost all of the VZ phones use the exact same interface so the training is easier.) I've found it relatively easy to make plan and service changes with verizon. I don't think I'd ever get a SBC (now called AT&T) phone.
Product is three to five years away and will be for the next twenty. (The answer is the same for fusion enery, except fusion is 5 to 10 years away and will be for the next twenty. Flying cars: 5 to 8 years. Specify your technology here...)
Dvorak complains in his rank that "Somewhere along the line, Microsoft apparently decided that it only wants to deal with those amenable suckers who will give it a pass on everything". This has been the apple strategy for years, any new hack who doesn't write glowing reviews (or even has the slightest criticism) is cut off from Apple. The hacks, like Mossberg, who praise every apple-touched product are showered with special treatment--including preview samples and preferred access.
When Apple does this it's called brilliant marketing (you better call it that if you're a hack who wants your calls returned), when Microsoft does it, it's unfair competition.
I think it changed recently, but the QT light that is installed by default/required pretty closely qualifies as shovelware on the mac. Everytime you used it, a really annoying "would you like to upgrade" window came up. Haven't used a mac in awhile, but I believe omni outliner trial was installed by default.
On the PC, QT definitely qualifies as shovelware (and is close to malware). -- Why does it need to start at boot/log in and sit in the system tray? It's almost impossilble to turn off or make behave.
Of course apple wouldn't do anything to spoil the aesthetics of the machine... unless it got in the way of a buck or two. Apple, the company who forced downloaded (until they got caught) safari as part of a "required" update, littered itunes with forced (until they got caught) ads for the itunes store and makes it nearly impossible to install the OS (or first boot) a mac without buying.mac.
Come on, ad supported operating systems are just around the corner. Just google it.
Is anyone else confused by the triple negative in this sentence? "And he wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't hire those who don't code in their spare time." Perhaps he should pick a book on writing or grammar of the English sort in his spare time. I'm not sure I would hire someone who can't write a simple declarative sentence. Programming languages come and go, but the ability to clearly articulate an idea is forever.
I don't know whether it makes me a fanboy or a criminal, but I just finished lunch which included a McIntosh apple. (One of my favorites, this time of year in the Northeast.) Several varieties of the McIntosh are protected by patents, and I'm sure the origin of McIntosh and apples (with a lower case) predate Apple computer. I vaguely remember something about apples (untradedmarked) being mentioned in the bible.
It seems to me that some Apple Corp. trademark attorney has a case against the fruit growers and the authors of the "adam & story".
Actually I was talking about the corporate/small biz environment. At work there is no reason for 99% of the users to need devices with unsigned drivers or programs that require admin right. If there is the odd case or so of a researcher, lab, etc that needs those things, give it to him or her---their machine will not be a stable and might crash more. Just a trade off..
It's just the annoyance factor... not only has your machine just crashed, but now you have to wait -- what seems like a long time -- for it to reboot. Because desktops are rarely rebooted, the the restarts generally occur when someone is watching (no one cares how long the reboot takes at 3 AM after the updates are downloaded).
That said, our Windows XP machines almost never crash--probably over a year between an unexpected reboot (most are from software installs.) If you want to keep your XP (Mac, Linux) desktop machines stable, don't install crap drivers and don't run as administrator. Almost all the problems come from bad drivers (just say no to unsigned drivers) or mis-use of admin rights.
Two more differences.... Microsoft chases the corporate market much more aggressively -- and has an OS and marketing strategy tuned to those market's needs (centralized control, scalability). And Microsoft has a broader product line (besides a scalable, supported server) they have a significant game business--both hardware and software. The retail locations will be able to push XBox and MS Studio Games--something that Apple really can't offer.
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers). The commercial alernatives invest in easy-to-use (watered down) configuration utilities that make it easy to set up. Contrast apache (perhaps the best of the FOSS) with IIS. Apache is in many ways a much better program, but the configuration is via a really obscure configuration file--and if you do something wrong you've broken it. ISS has a slick UI with nice dropdowns and checkboxes. MS spent as much effort on the UI as they did on the actual product. This is very different than FOSS.
Secondly, the documentation is typically better on commercial software than FOSS (there are some expections, mostly badly documented commercial software rather than well documented FOSS). Again, writers, proofreaders and editors want to get paid for their work.
I the long run there are probably only a score or so of free software applilications that are substainable. With the exception of these star applications (apache, linux, etc.) the real reason for using FOSS is that it's free. For example, if both MS Office and OO were both free, which would people choose? If they were both $99 (the home/student price of Office) which would they choose. Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
Yesterdays top news in/. was how wonderful and easy-to-use the Apple web site was. If you can't find the answer, including full documentation on the site, you don't need to worry your pretty little haad about it. We're Apple, marketing (and really clever naming) rules.
See below for marketing jargon speak:
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) in Mac OS X Snow Leopard addresses this pressing need. It's a set of first-of-their-kind technologies that makes it much easier for developers to squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems. With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they're running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you'll start noticing significant improvements in performance.
They are only going to get the hobbyist/enthusast users--unlikely to get any data from big corporate installs. What‘s the benefit of installing this software?
Also sounds like spyware to me.
MS gets similar data through its monitoring in Office & other applications.
It's harder for companies with a broad product line and wide audience to control web consistency. Companies that have a huge range of markets or products--managed by different product/regional groups--frequently have a problem presenting a unified look to their web site
Consider the case of GE--the website for consumer appliances should be very different than that of jet engines and that of financial services -- all GE products.
Apple has the advantage of a very limited product line; a mini desktop, a pro desktop and a couple of laptops, a phone, a couple of applications, an OS and a music player. Their target audience is 98% consumers.
This is a much simplier case than Microsoft which sell a product range from an OS, search, hardware, games, low-end serves, high-end servers, a wide range of applications (from consumer to heavy-duty data centers). It's target market is primarily businesses, but ranges from micro business to enterprise, but also includes a significant consumer audience.
It's too bad the reviewer didn't consider content or target audiences.
An $11 million infrastructure/research project doesn't strike me as excessive. Assuming about $1 million of parts, equpment and travel, that leave $10 million for salaries. A fully allocated (or loaded in the accounting sense) employee is probably about $300k/year (salary, overhead, space) which means the project employed about 33 people for one year. Some of those were probably engineers, tech writers, while others administrators. A small team at cisco, IBM, apple or other non-government firm would probably cost about the same and produce equivalent results.
There might be a bit more overhead for DOD projects if it needed security requirements. Security adds to the cost and means that the project can't be off-shored to cheaper employees.
It's offered really cheaply on a bunch of Dells. The program calls home and reports its IP address when activated after being stolen. I doubt if the police are going to do anything with the report of an IP address on a stolen used computer that might be worth $1000 (probably less). All the cops are going to tell you to do is a) use a cable lock in the future b) don't leave the machine in your (car, house, office, etc.) in plain sight and c) call your insurance company. In most cities, cops don't even investigate stolen cars. The original lojack for cars (identifier beacons) might have been useful in a couple of cases, but lojact for computers is almost a complete waste of money. Better off investing in a) a cable lock, b) computer cover and c) insurance.
Unlikly to happen if you go with the paid option. Big companies like MS, Apple, Oracle, etc. have (or should have) various checks in place so a single employee can't take the source with them.
The network argument was core to protecting the old Ma Bell (former/real AT&T) for many years. They used the same argument that unapproved equipment could damage the network. Now the new AT&T (and Apple) is trying the same argument about "danger" to infrastructure. Although there many have been some technical reasons for both arguments, it's really about profit.
I hope the software/hardware on the towers and switching systems is robust enough to handle rouge events. Even if there aren't jail broken phones, a motivated hacker (with some significant RF engineering background) could whip up a device that could crash the network. THe argument for closed devices is all about profit.
Slashdot Mirror
American Express (AmEx) did something similar in the Boston area. However, they thought it through first. An organization that wanted to participate had to submit a proposal on what they would do with the money and description of the organization's misson. AmEx selected about 40 (all worthwhile) organizations to vote on. AmEx got a reasonable selection of charities to participate--some of the really large ones, and a few highly specialized. The organizations used their participation to encourage their members to vote and become engaged to the organiztion goals.
I think every organization that was selected got some funding (perhaps at the $1000 level) so there weren't hard feeling from the losers.
Goes to show you that Chase != American Express.
I did a lot of work on 370/VM and it was really a brilliant operation system... vastly ahead of its time... it created true virtual machines, with their own virtual hardware and even console/control panel. Within each VM you could run whatever (IBM or non-IBM) operating system you wanted...including another copy of VM to create more VMs... to about 10 levels deep. The implementation was flawless... and each VM was completely isolated. Othere OS have just started to catch up... but most (all?) current OSs don't virtualize the hardware as well.
Back in the hayday of IBM... the system were well documented and incredibly reliable.
I grew to love JCL... alas CICS always sucked.
Testing is a job. Asking the public to do the internal development testing doesn't work if you want to earn a living selling software (or the software ecosystem). I haven't seem many nightly builds of the Mac OS, or lots of other for sale software.
If you need to have larger fonts or display... you're not cool enough to use a Mac. Actually, I had this problem with my mother--the default DPI on the all-in-one macs is quite high and there isn't any easy scaling software. I don't think there is a high-contrast color scheme on the mac either. One of the reason Windows is "bloated" is that it need to support a huge variety of monitors and color schemes. Most of the icons come in small, medium and large -- and in a variety of color schemes.
Actually I've found VZ customer service incredibly pleasant -- the hold times until you speak to a rep are rather long; but once you get a rep, it's clear they aren't measured by how fast they get you off the phone. The reps seam pleasant and remarkably well trained. (On the other hand, almost all of the VZ phones use the exact same interface so the training is easier.) I've found it relatively easy to make plan and service changes with verizon. I don't think I'd ever get a SBC (now called AT&T) phone.
Product is three to five years away and will be for the next twenty. (The answer is the same for fusion enery, except fusion is 5 to 10 years away and will be for the next twenty. Flying cars: 5 to 8 years. Specify your technology here...)
Dvorak complains in his rank that "Somewhere along the line, Microsoft apparently decided that it only wants to deal with those amenable suckers who will give it a pass on everything". This has been the apple strategy for years, any new hack who doesn't write glowing reviews (or even has the slightest criticism) is cut off from Apple. The hacks, like Mossberg, who praise every apple-touched product are showered with special treatment--including preview samples and preferred access.
When Apple does this it's called brilliant marketing (you better call it that if you're a hack who wants your calls returned), when Microsoft does it, it's unfair competition.
Dvorak...why should MS give you special access?
I think it changed recently, but the QT light that is installed by default/required pretty closely qualifies as shovelware on the mac. Everytime you used it, a really annoying "would you like to upgrade" window came up. Haven't used a mac in awhile, but I believe omni outliner trial was installed by default.
On the PC, QT definitely qualifies as shovelware (and is close to malware). -- Why does it need to start at boot/log in and sit in the system tray? It's almost impossilble to turn off or make behave.
Of course apple wouldn't do anything to spoil the aesthetics of the machine... unless it got in the way of a buck or two. Apple, the company who forced downloaded (until they got caught) safari as part of a "required" update, littered itunes with forced (until they got caught) ads for the itunes store and makes it nearly impossible to install the OS (or first boot) a mac without buying .mac.
Come on, ad supported operating systems are just around the corner. Just google it.
Is anyone else confused by the triple negative in this sentence? "And he wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't hire those who don't code in their spare time." Perhaps he should pick a book on writing or grammar of the English sort in his spare time. I'm not sure I would hire someone who can't write a simple declarative sentence. Programming languages come and go, but the ability to clearly articulate an idea is forever.
I don't know whether it makes me a fanboy or a criminal, but I just finished lunch which included a McIntosh apple. (One of my favorites, this time of year in the Northeast.) Several varieties of the McIntosh are protected by patents, and I'm sure the origin of McIntosh and apples (with a lower case) predate Apple computer. I vaguely remember something about apples (untradedmarked) being mentioned in the bible.
It seems to me that some Apple Corp. trademark attorney has a case against the fruit growers and the authors of the "adam & story".
This is humor... don't get all wound up.
Actually I was talking about the corporate/small biz environment. At work there is no reason for 99% of the users to need devices with unsigned drivers or programs that require admin right. If there is the odd case or so of a researcher, lab, etc that needs those things, give it to him or her---their machine will not be a stable and might crash more. Just a trade off..
It's just the annoyance factor... not only has your machine just crashed, but now you have to wait -- what seems like a long time -- for it to reboot. Because desktops are rarely rebooted, the the restarts generally occur when someone is watching (no one cares how long the reboot takes at 3 AM after the updates are downloaded).
That said, our Windows XP machines almost never crash--probably over a year between an unexpected reboot (most are from software installs.) If you want to keep your XP (Mac, Linux) desktop machines stable, don't install crap drivers and don't run as administrator. Almost all the problems come from bad drivers (just say no to unsigned drivers) or mis-use of admin rights.
Two more differences.... Microsoft chases the corporate market much more aggressively -- and has an OS and marketing strategy tuned to those market's needs (centralized control, scalability). And Microsoft has a broader product line (besides a scalable, supported server) they have a significant game business--both hardware and software. The retail locations will be able to push XBox and MS Studio Games--something that Apple really can't offer.
Actually, I really like IIS. I was just trying to have civil discourse and be open minded. Both are excellent alternatives.
Why aren't there any decent open source fonts? What I hear you say, font designers want to get paid for their work?
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers). The commercial alernatives invest in easy-to-use (watered down) configuration utilities that make it easy to set up. Contrast apache (perhaps the best of the FOSS) with IIS. Apache is in many ways a much better program, but the configuration is via a really obscure configuration file--and if you do something wrong you've broken it. ISS has a slick UI with nice dropdowns and checkboxes. MS spent as much effort on the UI as they did on the actual product. This is very different than FOSS.
Secondly, the documentation is typically better on commercial software than FOSS (there are some expections, mostly badly documented commercial software rather than well documented FOSS). Again, writers, proofreaders and editors want to get paid for their work.
I the long run there are probably only a score or so of free software applilications that are substainable. With the exception of these star applications (apache, linux, etc.) the real reason for using FOSS is that it's free. For example, if both MS Office and OO were both free, which would people choose? If they were both $99 (the home/student price of Office) which would they choose. Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
You should just check the apple web site.
/. was how wonderful and easy-to-use the Apple web site was. If you can't find the answer, including full documentation on the site, you don't need to worry your pretty little haad about it. We're Apple, marketing (and really clever naming) rules.
Yesterdays top news in
See below for marketing jargon speak:
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) in Mac OS X Snow Leopard addresses this pressing need. It's a set of first-of-their-kind technologies that makes it much easier for developers to squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems. With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they're running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you'll start noticing significant improvements in performance.
They are only going to get the hobbyist/enthusast users--unlikely to get any data from big corporate installs. What‘s the benefit of installing this software?
Also sounds like spyware to me.
MS gets similar data through its monitoring in Office & other applications.
-- Consulting service
-- Cloud computing (azure)
-- Rich internet applications (silverlight)
-- Search & advertising (bing) -- Publishing
-- High performance, supported database server (MS SQL)
-- Development tools
-- Enterprise-leve, supported email (exchange)
It's harder for companies with a broad product line and wide audience to control web consistency. Companies that have a huge range of markets or products--managed by different product/regional groups--frequently have a problem presenting a unified look to their web site
Consider the case of GE--the website for consumer appliances should be very different than that of jet engines and that of financial services -- all GE products.
Apple has the advantage of a very limited product line; a mini desktop, a pro desktop and a couple of laptops, a phone, a couple of applications, an OS and a music player. Their target audience is 98% consumers.
This is a much simplier case than Microsoft which sell a product range from an OS, search, hardware, games, low-end serves, high-end servers, a wide range of applications (from consumer to heavy-duty data centers). It's target market is primarily businesses, but ranges from micro business to enterprise, but also includes a significant consumer audience.
It's too bad the reviewer didn't consider content or target audiences.
An $11 million infrastructure/research project doesn't strike me as excessive. Assuming about $1 million of parts, equpment and travel, that leave $10 million for salaries. A fully allocated (or loaded in the accounting sense) employee is probably about $300k/year (salary, overhead, space) which means the project employed about 33 people for one year. Some of those were probably engineers, tech writers, while others administrators. A small team at cisco, IBM, apple or other non-government firm would probably cost about the same and produce equivalent results.
There might be a bit more overhead for DOD projects if it needed security requirements. Security adds to the cost and means that the project can't be off-shored to cheaper employees.
It's offered really cheaply on a bunch of Dells. The program calls home and reports its IP address when activated after being stolen. I doubt if the police are going to do anything with the report of an IP address on a stolen used computer that might be worth $1000 (probably less). All the cops are going to tell you to do is a) use a cable lock in the future b) don't leave the machine in your (car, house, office, etc.) in plain sight and c) call your insurance company. In most cities, cops don't even investigate stolen cars. The original lojack for cars (identifier beacons) might have been useful in a couple of cases, but lojact for computers is almost a complete waste of money. Better off investing in a) a cable lock, b) computer cover and c) insurance.
Unlikly to happen if you go with the paid option. Big companies like MS, Apple, Oracle, etc. have (or should have) various checks in place so a single employee can't take the source with them.
The network argument was core to protecting the old Ma Bell (former/real AT&T) for many years. They used the same argument that unapproved equipment could damage the network. Now the new AT&T (and Apple) is trying the same argument about "danger" to infrastructure. Although there many have been some technical reasons for both arguments, it's really about profit.
I hope the software/hardware on the towers and switching systems is robust enough to handle rouge events. Even if there aren't jail broken phones, a motivated hacker (with some significant RF engineering background) could whip up a device that could crash the network. THe argument for closed devices is all about profit.