Ok, so, I get it. The PS3 will have a processor that has an instruction set dedicated to protected the threads of a program from infiltration by something that has already compromised the operating system. The obvious advantage is the protection of the data stored in those threads at a time of either pre or post processing.
That sounds like a great technology. Truly. If used for the right purposes.
WHY are you implementing it on a GAME CONSOLE? (I'm also a little scared of the wording '...allow an application to protect itself... - we're writing sentience into these things, now, too? Might cause some ethical issues with first-person shooters..)
I'd love that sort of protection on a kiosk machine, something we'd send to a trade show, or even the laptops employed by our sales force. But the PS3? Nothing mission-critical is going to happen on the PS3. Nothing. Wait, wait.. I think I figured it out...
Digital Rights Management. Gotcha, gotcha. Thanks, Sony. It's nice to know that the PS3 will have an anti-modchip on it from the getgo.
2-3 minutes per transaction? Do you live in a place where you have to walk fifteen miles to use a phone? If you look out the window, are there farms on three sides of whereever you're sitting?
Cash barely touches my hands anymore. I work four days out of the week. My paycheck is automagically deposited in my bank account every friday morning at about four AM. They even split it among my checking and savings nicely. I buy lunch with my plastic. We visit a variety of establishments in various forms of (dis)modernization, and never have I had to wait more than twenty seconds for a process to complete. Every other friday, when I go to get gas, I pay with my card. In and out verified-transacted-deducted-paid in under half a minute. The few times I go to McDonalds (they have this neat 24 hour drive thru thing, great for all-nighters), my card is verified and my tab is paid before I've got it out of the reader.
I've been playing since closed beta. Played through that, open beta, and since November 27, 2004 (Retail day).
It's a miserable, shitty situation when you can't play the game when your time is free. I work for a living, I go to school, and in my sparse free time I get to play WoW. Doesn't help though, when the one-and-a-half to two hours I have available to play are largely sucked up by [Authenticating...]. Such a crock.
I partially blame the lack of connectivity and stability for the now certain loss of my Guild. 130 characters, about 70 unique people. Maybe eight of us come on with any regularity now. Those that are left over who do trickle in? Stories of issues connecting, frustration, resulting in time spent playing F.E.A.R. or Oblivion instead.
Another poster said it best; if my systems were down 20% of the time, or if authentication to email or a terminal server or DocuSpank took 15 minutes, I'd be out of a job very fast.
Listen up, Blizzard! You're driving your customers away! It's impossible to do a 45 minute Baron run because once you get goin- goin- goin- goin- goin- go.. [Disconnected from server]
...for about two weeks. Most disorganized bunch of fu*k-ups I've ever seen.
Yes, the unlicensed software usage is true, and widespread.
The keylogger thing mentioned above happened once, and the tech was summarily fired. I'm pretty sure the customer got a completely new machine, too, because of it.
Our supervisor was a douche, complete and total jerk. When I confronted him about the issue of pirated hardware, he held sort of the 'BestBuy is like Wal*Mart' attitude, with the assumption that the corporation could just strong-arm the publisher into submission.
Not entirely true. I might be the exception, but I don't drink, or smoke, never have and quite possibly never will (alcohol simply doesn't appeal to me, and smoking is a disgusting nasty habit, which does nothing worthwhile for you), and I love the Grand Theft Auto franchise. My Liberty City Stories-armed PSP is always with me, and I try to get as much as possible out of the larger offerings. I think they're really good games (from a playability standpoint, not necessarily the morality.)
(The DS is the only one to start off at $149.99 and is basically their most expensive system).
The DS is down to 129.99 now, I think. Our local Gamestop has a coupon for something like 20$ off (109.99). However, you can buy a shiny new gamecube for 99.99$ from most places these days.
Oh, no. We definately do specialized software builds. It doesn't make sense to not do that. A CAD designer has no use for ADP's payroll suite. A CAD designer IS dead in the water if all they have to work with is MS Office 2000.
My original post mentions four different physical hardware configurations. Your username is associated with your MAC address. I can tell that Joe Lamer is at 00:11:BA:03:11:DC, and he's a technical writer. He's got a Dimension 3100 and he'll get the suite that includes Adobe and a dozen other utilities. User #2 would be at such and such a MAC address, he's a CAD guy (his MAC is in the CAD list), so he's got a precision 470 with a hydra display and needs SolidWorks2006 and AutoCAD LT.
It's not the system that's unreliable. It's the users, and the fact that our department is often overworked and understaffed. It's the fact that the users in most cases really don't give a shit. They don't care what you've told them, or how you've told them to do XY or Z, they're still going to call you because they didn't remember that they were supposed to twist this and pull that to get the shit from place A to B.
And yes, most of the machines can't be booted from a bootable CD. SolidWorks 2006.0, PCad, and quite a few of the other utilities our facility uses on a daily basis won't fit on a 'bootable CD'. Plus a CD can be stolen, scratched, or otherwise made unbootable. Yeah, we'd have extras, but that's not the point.
The EDS solution (while EDS isn't the best organization, this solution is highly effective in malware prone environments); GigE to the console, unified desktop system. You have three or four builds of different machines (Laptop, High-performance desktop, 'Information worker' desktop, kiosk) with an imaged pushed every night. Users data is stored nonlocally, in mapped network drives. Expensive to implement? Sure. Cost savings in the long run? You betcha! Plus, the helpdesk ends up with LEGITIMATE user issues, not 'Wah, I don't want to read the onscreen directions, you do it!'.
Once GhostRecon comes out. I'm in the States, not Japan, I'd like to point out, but GhostRecon's latest offering seems like a very attractive title. And, of course, now that Oblivion is out...
They're reeling from a monumental loss. (Chances are that I'm totally wrong, but being an armchair consipiracy theorist, this thought works out. Keep reading.)
IBM sold off the ThinkPad and ThinkCentre division to concentrate on other things. Chip manufacturing? A major issue to Apple was the availability of the IBM PowerPC G5 chip, with the expanded feature set that Apple so desperately wanted. It just didn't happen fast enough, early enough, because IBM couldn't keep up with the production. IBM also failed to produce a G5 chip that would function adequately in a PowerBook environment.
Enter Intel.
The PowerPC G5 is released. The Apple crowd adores it.
The PowerPC G5 is realized to be an expensive system.
IBM fails to produce chips fast enough, with a rich enough featureset.
Apple, now strained after offering the G4 and the G5 way beyond the timeframe that of the G3 and the G4 overlap now begin to cry, having been unable to transition out the G4, and enter the G5 generation with the advent of the portable G5 (PowerBook, iBook).
IBM makes room to step up production. Sells ThinkPad and ThinkCentre to Lenovo. This is a huge gamble.
Apple switches to the Intel chip, a not-so-difficult proposition for them, since OS X - the crown software jewel of the Apple empire - ran on x86 hardware since it's inception.
Magically, with Apple out of the way, IBM is now available to supply Microsoft and Sony with PowerPC chips for use in the next revision of their game console systems (360, PS3). Albeit, IBM producing the PowerPC core is still sluggish, as evident by the rampant 'supply shortages' responsible for the slip in 360 delivery. (I'm not convinced that this is the case, though. I think Microsoft just has us by the short-and-curlies.)
The key portion of my retort which you failed to acknowledge was the qualifying use of the word 'if'. 'If' is a conditional statement which is invoked when a particular requirement is met. The option (my emphasis, your word) is disregarded if the requirement is NOT met (read: TPM is not used in such a manner). The requirement in this case would be - obviously - implementation of such a TPM scheme. The fact that I used the term 'if' indicates that I may or may not have implemented such a scheme, even though the option is available to me.
A set of examples would be
'If I stick my hand in that fire, I'm going to be burned!'
'If I compile this code with the wrong library, it's not going to work!'
'If I'm an asshole to someone, they might not like me anymore!'
'If my data was encrypted with a key dependant on my processors serial number, and I needed to recover that data on a machine with a processor other than the aforementioned hardware, I would be sent up a proverbial astuary without an adequate means of propulsion.'
There's no reason to condescend to someone in the manner you have.
But if there were uses for TPM which directly translated into a user feature - like being able to save.DOC files to your USB stick, encrypted to your own TPM serial, for example - then I would say yeah, its something that can be used.
I can safely say that I do not want this. I use my jumpdrive to keep a backup of three directories; a script automagically copies fresh versions of a particular tree into a branch on my jumpdrive. This is done for portability and backup purposes. If, for example, my.doc and.mpp and *.* files were encrypted with my ThinkPad's TPM serial, then recovery from another machine (lets say that my laptop is stolen, or otherwise destroyed [with fire]) is pointless - there's no way to replicate that serial.
Long story short: TPM serialization == bad for backups.
I want a service that can handle and tabulate my finances online. That way, the IRS can just subpoena google every mid-april, and I don't have to file my taxes that year! Google can do it for me!
In some cases, decryption is reliant on translation.
Take for example World War II; Allied forces began using Navajo - a native american language from the south west - as code. It was unbreakable by the Japanese for many years, to the point where they were more content to simply try and capture our 'code-talkers'.
Consider, you have a block of cyphered, unreadable text. You factor out the key, eventually, and apply it to the text. Did it work? Or have you ended up with more unreadable gobbledy goo? You really wouldn't know, unless you understood the target language, as well.
Some downtime is simply unavoidable. Three issues in the immediate past come to mind.
Catastrophic Power Outage; I arrived to our shop after getting a slew of text-message alerts saying this that and the other thing is down. On my day off. I came to find that someone had smashed their car into the transformer for our building, and, as such, power had been disconnected at the mains. Our companies needs and budget don't require and can not support an additional mains power source, or a redundant power generator. We have since implemented a plan to provide a small-ish generator to keep absolutely essential services online (since we are a global company). We had to wait for replacement parts to be shipped in from a neighboring city 100 miles away, by flatbed truck, before repairs could be affected. I recall spending my time retrieving data restore tapes from our offsite backup warehouse, untangling a few mangled rats nests in some peoples cubes, and reevaluating the rack-cabling situation in the server room while the power company slaved to restore power for us. Total downtime: 9 hours.
Inconsistant Service from ISP; Our company used a single Frontier T1 for our net uplink. With the number of users and systems we provided connectivity to, the T was almost always saturated - around lunchtime (when people would browse the net at their leisure), doing work was amost impossible. The team would often recieve false-positive alerts about services being down because of high latency. The solution was twofold; reevaluate our web-usage systems (proxies, spamware, spyware, compartmentalization), and provide more bandwidth. We upgraded from the single Frontier T1, to a set of four bonded PAETEC T1s (provides 6.0Mbps). That was a godsend. We implemented a hardcore project to migrate services from the Frontier link to the PAETEC link. Changed the DHCP scope, wrote new firewall rules, migrated services to the new gateway. Went very well. The next week? PAETEC issued a SERVICE_DISCONNECT order for our shiny new bonded T that everyone was happily using. They also failed the inform us of this SERVICE_DISCONNECT order until about five hours after the event. It was a mistaken order, and recinded immediately, but not until the infrastructure engineers rebuilt the upstream and downstream routers from scratch, bought and swapped AUIs and interface cards at great expense, this that and the other thing, only to find out that there was something wrong with the line itself. Once the problem was located, it was solved in a matter of minutes. Total downtime: 6 hours, 30 minutes.
Various routing policy issues with both PAETEC and Frontier, costing us between five and ten minutes of downtime every three weeks or so.
There are changes that run deeper than the color of the case. The backlit screen on the DS is much brighter, the wireless is stronger, but uses less battery life, and the battery is overall longer-lasting.
GBA games now stick out from the device, as well, causing pocket-issues.
Bought and paid for. Our local GameStop(s) gets about two systems in as many weeks. It's certainly become ridiculous. Never again will I pay full-price for a pre-order. It's such a crock of shit, now over 3 months displaced from the official launch date.
I'm quite content with the current battery of games I've accquired. With the not-so-modest amount of time I have at my disposal (between work, classes, and other life-stuff), I've been consumed by World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 2, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.
I can't add to Sony's coffers because of the DRM scandal. I find it morally reprehensible. Same goes for Apple - whom I've loved dearly for years, and who is due for a cash infusion from my wallet (my AppleCare on the PowerBook just expired) - they're in bed with Intel who seems to be causing a larger-than-normal price gouge, as well as the whole Intel & Skype versus AMD bitchfest. I'd almost jump on the 360, but, well, I'd be better off with a waterproof camera in Loch Ness, looking for Nessie and Bigfoot having a swim together. I believe someone here commentted on how it's 'less of a challenge to find a decent margarita in Kuwait'.
Long story short: I'm going to wait on the new tech until all of the cards are on the table. For now, I'm quite comfortable with what I've got. Wait... wait... did you hear that? I think my checking account just sighed with relief...
Microsoft rushed a product out the door. It comes with rehashed titles, and nothing really New (tm). They also can't keep them in stock. We'll see the PS3 at the end of fall, just in time for the xmas rush, with the typically Sony-style artificial shortage, followed by an explosion of new titles, game pads, enhancements, and other fun bells and whistles.
This will be followed closely by the Xbox 1080, and the iMac Intel CoreQuadra Pro, running at a whopping 3.0GHz.
What you need is layers. You have your hideously overpriced and oversized 14400x2480 display. On top of that, you must add a high resolution photosensitive layer. Above that, a removable scratch-proof, heat-resistant panel. The third will be your actual working surface. Input is provided at the photosensitive layer, through the use of a series of digital laserpointer pens. Users could be defined either by a data tag embedded in the laser (this is already widely used - laser tag, anyone?), or as simply as a differently colored laser-pointer in the pen.
If ever you damage the outermost layer, it can be replaced, at a fraction of the cost fo the massive display.
A virtual coaster appears underneath it. You may customize this to your level of desired geekdom. For some, a nice lace doiley. For others, damaged floppy disks or burn-failed CDs and DVDs.
This is a huge project, or atleast is going to become one very quickly.
First of all, the Remote Desktop idea was great, a quick and simple solution to that problem. The issue there is that it won't work. Any rendering using OpenGL or DirectX will not function across Remote Desktop. Period. There goes your Photoshop elements (believe-you-me, I was PISSED when I could see the photoshop canvas, but none of the toolboxes.), AutoCAD, AutoDesk, etc, etc, etc. You might want to look into NoMachine (or NX as some call it). I know it can handle some of the lower-level stuff, but nothing graphically intense.
Licensing? FlexLM is in a PAIN IN THE ASS. But it's great once you get it working. Of course, the app has to support FlexLM. I assume your university uses Active Directory, or Open Directory, or even an NT Domain system to manage the users / computers issues. If you were to, say, set up a series of read-only network shares where users - users in particular groups, CAD Students, for example - could map the drive and use AutoDesk, or even copy it locally if you feel like managing that. All you might need are a few Settings.reg files. Enter FlexLM, if you can get it working, and you might be golden.
DO NOT RELY ON STUDENTS TO DO THEIR OWN BACKUPS! I would reccomend setting up a terminal-server system, where everyone on campus has access to the same suite of applications (accessable over remote desktop, of course). Our company does this - we provide the professional set of Microsoft Office apps, our web portals, etc, etc. It's nice when I'm on my PowerBook and I need to write something or view something that's in a MS Word.doc. Sure, there's Office for Mac, but I might get better results if I just burn the file to a CD and throw it into a woodchipper. - Enter my backups statement, again with the network shares - provide each student with a share on the network, inside his or her Windows 2003 Server profile (created when they logged into the terminal server), that is backed up regularly, AND is immediately accessable from their terminal login session.
Oh, and if you're going with Dell laptops, see if you can't put together a team of four or five IT or CS students to play tech support. Make sure you have a veritable shittonne of spare parts for whatever make/model of laptop your university will be providing for these students. Believe me, there's nothing like a panicked grad student, with a thesis tucked neatly inside a machine that won't boot. 'Course, that's only major in the long run, but you see my point. Short term: it creates campus jobs and keeps your people happy. Plus, no need to buy a larger wave of new Dells every eight months.
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Ok, so, I get it. The PS3 will have a processor that has an instruction set dedicated to protected the threads of a program from infiltration by something that has already compromised the operating system. The obvious advantage is the protection of the data stored in those threads at a time of either pre or post processing.
That sounds like a great technology. Truly. If used for the right purposes.
WHY are you implementing it on a GAME CONSOLE? (I'm also a little scared of the wording '...allow an application to protect itself... - we're writing sentience into these things, now, too? Might cause some ethical issues with first-person shooters..)
I'd love that sort of protection on a kiosk machine, something we'd send to a trade show, or even the laptops employed by our sales force. But the PS3? Nothing mission-critical is going to happen on the PS3. Nothing. Wait, wait.. I think I figured it out...
Digital Rights Management. Gotcha, gotcha. Thanks, Sony. It's nice to know that the PS3 will have an anti-modchip on it from the getgo.
2-3 minutes per transaction? Do you live in a place where you have to walk fifteen miles to use a phone? If you look out the window, are there farms on three sides of whereever you're sitting?
Cash barely touches my hands anymore. I work four days out of the week. My paycheck is automagically deposited in my bank account every friday morning at about four AM. They even split it among my checking and savings nicely. I buy lunch with my plastic. We visit a variety of establishments in various forms of (dis)modernization, and never have I had to wait more than twenty seconds for a process to complete. Every other friday, when I go to get gas, I pay with my card. In and out verified-transacted-deducted-paid in under half a minute. The few times I go to McDonalds (they have this neat 24 hour drive thru thing, great for all-nighters), my card is verified and my tab is paid before I've got it out of the reader.
I've been playing since closed beta. Played through that, open beta, and since November 27, 2004 (Retail day).
It's a miserable, shitty situation when you can't play the game when your time is free. I work for a living, I go to school, and in my sparse free time I get to play WoW. Doesn't help though, when the one-and-a-half to two hours I have available to play are largely sucked up by [Authenticating...]. Such a crock.
I partially blame the lack of connectivity and stability for the now certain loss of my Guild. 130 characters, about 70 unique people. Maybe eight of us come on with any regularity now. Those that are left over who do trickle in? Stories of issues connecting, frustration, resulting in time spent playing F.E.A.R. or Oblivion instead.
Another poster said it best; if my systems were down 20% of the time, or if authentication to email or a terminal server or DocuSpank took 15 minutes, I'd be out of a job very fast.
Listen up, Blizzard! You're driving your customers away! It's impossible to do a 45 minute Baron run because once you get goin- goin- goin- goin- goin- go.. [Disconnected from server]
Hell yeah. My favorite thing about an X session with a GUI is that I can fit more than one terminal on the display.
...for about two weeks. Most disorganized bunch of fu*k-ups I've ever seen.
Yes, the unlicensed software usage is true, and widespread.
The keylogger thing mentioned above happened once, and the tech was summarily fired. I'm pretty sure the customer got a completely new machine, too, because of it.
Our supervisor was a douche, complete and total jerk. When I confronted him about the issue of pirated hardware, he held sort of the 'BestBuy is like Wal*Mart' attitude, with the assumption that the corporation could just strong-arm the publisher into submission.
I guess he was wrong.
...which it'd be hard to assume it isn't, then sir, I owe you a drink.
Not entirely true. I might be the exception, but I don't drink, or smoke, never have and quite possibly never will (alcohol simply doesn't appeal to me, and smoking is a disgusting nasty habit, which does nothing worthwhile for you), and I love the Grand Theft Auto franchise. My Liberty City Stories-armed PSP is always with me, and I try to get as much as possible out of the larger offerings. I think they're really good games (from a playability standpoint, not necessarily the morality.)
(The DS is the only one to start off at $149.99 and is basically their most expensive system).
The DS is down to 129.99 now, I think. Our local Gamestop has a coupon for something like 20$ off (109.99). However, you can buy a shiny new gamecube for 99.99$ from most places these days.
Oh, no. We definately do specialized software builds. It doesn't make sense to not do that. A CAD designer has no use for ADP's payroll suite. A CAD designer IS dead in the water if all they have to work with is MS Office 2000.
My original post mentions four different physical hardware configurations. Your username is associated with your MAC address. I can tell that Joe Lamer is at 00:11:BA:03:11:DC, and he's a technical writer. He's got a Dimension 3100 and he'll get the suite that includes Adobe and a dozen other utilities. User #2 would be at such and such a MAC address, he's a CAD guy (his MAC is in the CAD list), so he's got a precision 470 with a hydra display and needs SolidWorks2006 and AutoCAD LT.
It's simple enough if you can set it up properly.
It's not the system that's unreliable. It's the users, and the fact that our department is often overworked and understaffed. It's the fact that the users in most cases really don't give a shit. They don't care what you've told them, or how you've told them to do XY or Z, they're still going to call you because they didn't remember that they were supposed to twist this and pull that to get the shit from place A to B. And yes, most of the machines can't be booted from a bootable CD. SolidWorks 2006.0, PCad, and quite a few of the other utilities our facility uses on a daily basis won't fit on a 'bootable CD'. Plus a CD can be stolen, scratched, or otherwise made unbootable. Yeah, we'd have extras, but that's not the point.
The EDS solution (while EDS isn't the best organization, this solution is highly effective in malware prone environments); GigE to the console, unified desktop system. You have three or four builds of different machines (Laptop, High-performance desktop, 'Information worker' desktop, kiosk) with an imaged pushed every night. Users data is stored nonlocally, in mapped network drives. Expensive to implement? Sure. Cost savings in the long run? You betcha! Plus, the helpdesk ends up with LEGITIMATE user issues, not 'Wah, I don't want to read the onscreen directions, you do it!'.
Once GhostRecon comes out. I'm in the States, not Japan, I'd like to point out, but GhostRecon's latest offering seems like a very attractive title. And, of course, now that Oblivion is out...
IBM sold off the ThinkPad and ThinkCentre division to concentrate on other things. Chip manufacturing? A major issue to Apple was the availability of the IBM PowerPC G5 chip, with the expanded feature set that Apple so desperately wanted. It just didn't happen fast enough, early enough, because IBM couldn't keep up with the production. IBM also failed to produce a G5 chip that would function adequately in a PowerBook environment.
Enter Intel.
So now they have to try to make it up.
A set of examples would be
There's no reason to condescend to someone in the manner you have.
But if there were uses for TPM which directly translated into a user feature - like being able to save .DOC files to your USB stick, encrypted to your own TPM serial, for example - then I would say yeah, its something that can be used.
.doc and .mpp and *.* files were encrypted with my ThinkPad's TPM serial, then recovery from another machine (lets say that my laptop is stolen, or otherwise destroyed [with fire]) is pointless - there's no way to replicate that serial.
I can safely say that I do not want this. I use my jumpdrive to keep a backup of three directories; a script automagically copies fresh versions of a particular tree into a branch on my jumpdrive. This is done for portability and backup purposes. If, for example, my
Long story short: TPM serialization == bad for backups.
I want a service that can handle and tabulate my finances online. That way, the IRS can just subpoena google every mid-april, and I don't have to file my taxes that year! Google can do it for me!
In some cases, decryption is reliant on translation.
Take for example World War II; Allied forces began using Navajo - a native american language from the south west - as code. It was unbreakable by the Japanese for many years, to the point where they were more content to simply try and capture our 'code-talkers'.
Consider, you have a block of cyphered, unreadable text. You factor out the key, eventually, and apply it to the text. Did it work? Or have you ended up with more unreadable gobbledy goo? You really wouldn't know, unless you understood the target language, as well.
There are changes that run deeper than the color of the case. The backlit screen on the DS is much brighter, the wireless is stronger, but uses less battery life, and the battery is overall longer-lasting.
GBA games now stick out from the device, as well, causing pocket-issues.
Right here.
Bought and paid for. Our local GameStop(s) gets about two systems in as many weeks. It's certainly become ridiculous. Never again will I pay full-price for a pre-order. It's such a crock of shit, now over 3 months displaced from the official launch date.
I'm quite content with the current battery of games I've accquired. With the not-so-modest amount of time I have at my disposal (between work, classes, and other life-stuff), I've been consumed by World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 2, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.
I can't add to Sony's coffers because of the DRM scandal. I find it morally reprehensible. Same goes for Apple - whom I've loved dearly for years, and who is due for a cash infusion from my wallet (my AppleCare on the PowerBook just expired) - they're in bed with Intel who seems to be causing a larger-than-normal price gouge, as well as the whole Intel & Skype versus AMD bitchfest. I'd almost jump on the 360, but, well, I'd be better off with a waterproof camera in Loch Ness, looking for Nessie and Bigfoot having a swim together. I believe someone here commentted on how it's 'less of a challenge to find a decent margarita in Kuwait'.
Long story short: I'm going to wait on the new tech until all of the cards are on the table. For now, I'm quite comfortable with what I've got. Wait... wait... did you hear that? I think my checking account just sighed with relief...
Microsoft rushed a product out the door. It comes with rehashed titles, and nothing really New (tm). They also can't keep them in stock. We'll see the PS3 at the end of fall, just in time for the xmas rush, with the typically Sony-style artificial shortage, followed by an explosion of new titles, game pads, enhancements, and other fun bells and whistles.
This will be followed closely by the Xbox 1080, and the iMac Intel CoreQuadra Pro, running at a whopping 3.0GHz.
How do you send 50,000 spam emails to 1.2 million people? Or were they sending 50,000 mail messages to EACH person?
What you need is layers. You have your hideously overpriced and oversized 14400x2480 display. On top of that, you must add a high resolution photosensitive layer. Above that, a removable scratch-proof, heat-resistant panel. The third will be your actual working surface. Input is provided at the photosensitive layer, through the use of a series of digital laserpointer pens. Users could be defined either by a data tag embedded in the laser (this is already widely used - laser tag, anyone?), or as simply as a differently colored laser-pointer in the pen.
If ever you damage the outermost layer, it can be replaced, at a fraction of the cost fo the massive display.
A virtual coaster appears underneath it. You may customize this to your level of desired geekdom. For some, a nice lace doiley. For others, damaged floppy disks or burn-failed CDs and DVDs.
This is a huge project, or atleast is going to become one very quickly.
.doc. Sure, there's Office for Mac, but I might get better results if I just burn the file to a CD and throw it into a woodchipper. - Enter my backups statement, again with the network shares - provide each student with a share on the network, inside his or her Windows 2003 Server profile (created when they logged into the terminal server), that is backed up regularly, AND is immediately accessable from their terminal login session.
First of all, the Remote Desktop idea was great, a quick and simple solution to that problem. The issue there is that it won't work. Any rendering using OpenGL or DirectX will not function across Remote Desktop. Period. There goes your Photoshop elements (believe-you-me, I was PISSED when I could see the photoshop canvas, but none of the toolboxes.), AutoCAD, AutoDesk, etc, etc, etc. You might want to look into NoMachine (or NX as some call it). I know it can handle some of the lower-level stuff, but nothing graphically intense.
Licensing? FlexLM is in a PAIN IN THE ASS. But it's great once you get it working. Of course, the app has to support FlexLM. I assume your university uses Active Directory, or Open Directory, or even an NT Domain system to manage the users / computers issues. If you were to, say, set up a series of read-only network shares where users - users in particular groups, CAD Students, for example - could map the drive and use AutoDesk, or even copy it locally if you feel like managing that. All you might need are a few Settings.reg files. Enter FlexLM, if you can get it working, and you might be golden.
DO NOT RELY ON STUDENTS TO DO THEIR OWN BACKUPS! I would reccomend setting up a terminal-server system, where everyone on campus has access to the same suite of applications (accessable over remote desktop, of course). Our company does this - we provide the professional set of Microsoft Office apps, our web portals, etc, etc. It's nice when I'm on my PowerBook and I need to write something or view something that's in a MS Word
Oh, and if you're going with Dell laptops, see if you can't put together a team of four or five IT or CS students to play tech support. Make sure you have a veritable shittonne of spare parts for whatever make/model of laptop your university will be providing for these students. Believe me, there's nothing like a panicked grad student, with a thesis tucked neatly inside a machine that won't boot. 'Course, that's only major in the long run, but you see my point. Short term: it creates campus jobs and keeps your people happy. Plus, no need to buy a larger wave of new Dells every eight months.
Lemme know if you have any questions.