20031006 I have been using YYYYMMDD for a few years. It is becoming acceptable in the US. If someone sees an eight-digit number that start with "200", they assume it is a date, especially if the context supports it, such as on checks. Just remember to always zero fill the month and the day.
2003-10-06 The dashes do save the brain from a moment's work. Maybe I will switch.
I do not understand why anything that has a possible global audience (such as anything on the internet) does not use a date format that is understandable by the entire audience.
I accidentally opened the article twice. The first window has that line about the Sponsor. That line has disappeared from later attempts.
There is an informative post scored 0 by an AC (really close to this post) that starts: This is Kurtis from TheTechLounge. I wrote the article. saying that the Sponsor line is because they provided software, not because they paid for the interview.
The King of Prussia, PA office of Robert Half Technology has worked very well for me. I am hard to place: high pay, goal-oriented, will not sit at a desk for months. Most of the consulting jobs around here are temp workers (filling a seat in the office) for the 3-month probationary period until they offer a full-time position. I have absolutely no desire to work full-time. Most companies use me as a troubleshooter to inject some technical expertise when they have problems. RHT has been able to find that type of work for me. Once I have worked with a client, they call ME again. RHT has been surprised by timesheets from me for clients they had not called for months, but the money is direct deposited that Friday.
I know several other people who work through them. RHT consistently finds a good match, making both the consultants and the customers happy. And yes, several of them are on the "work 3 months and we will hire you" plan.
It has been fun wacthing the name changes: Robert Half International (Consulting division) RHI Consulting RHI Technology Robert Half Technology (RHT)
They had 5 groups that specialized in: computers/technology, graphics/multimedia, business/management, secretarial/temp workers, and (forgotten). I have been too busy working through them to check the current setup.
--- As I said, most of the "consulting" firms around here are providing people for possible full-time work. I was keeping in touch with around 20 of them from 1998 into 2002, but they never placed me. I gave up when one company told me they were going to send 5 other resumes to the client first, then send mine if the client demanded real expertise. I have never proactively found a job; when a client needs my skill set, someone calls me.
I tried to find the parent you were quoting. I guess you just like italics.
The sun is the only source of renewable energy The sun is the only non-renewable source of power. It is also the main source of power for most of the solar system. All the other sources are storing the sun's power, and can be renewed.
Want more coal: grow trees and bury them. Want more oil: raise elephants and bury them. See, they can be renewed, but renewing the sun is way beyond our current technology. But renewing these resources will probably take longer than than it takes to make them obsolete, and upset the elephant-loving environmentalists.
Now in the short term, using power that will be wasted if it is not used is cool. The sun's power can either be captured or wasted, so solar panels are great until the crazies decide they are causing global cooling. Windmills are great until the crazies decide that we are disturbing the weather patterns. Waterwheels are great, unless they upset the migration patterns for fish. Building a dam... can we do that anymore? They cause major changes to the ecology.
So much for the humor. I agree with most of the posts. Nuclear power should be the major source of power today, but it is a public relations nightmare because it was first associated with weapons of mass destruction. Most of the people alive today were not alive when nuclear weapons were used, but the cold war only ended in the late 80s. Give us another 2 generations, and it will be more acceptable, unless there is another catastrophe.
That said, I live in the fallout zone for a nuclear power plant. I have no idea where its power is used, but I doubt it powers the homes in this area.
But everybody, please remember that most of us have no input in the real world. The current power structure is owned by big business, and they will defend the current situation until someone finds a way to make it completely obsolete.
I was attempting to point out that NDAs have a use when the company is working on patents. If you got a laugh from it, that is a bonus.
Enough of the key features of the product have been tested and working for years. They were enough to get it used in the corporate world. Then we found that it crashes regularly. We are building on another company's software, the architecture of their software has a flaw, and that code is closed; it has been very difficult for us to create a workaround. We were making progress earlier this year when we put it on hold because our consulting careers became very busy.
Yes, we are under the delusion that we can take our time. Hey, it has been 4 years, and the customers are still faced with the same issues that we are solving. One (big but unlikely) customer spent millions of dollars to develop a system that does less than our product, but does solve a few of the issues we are solving. Our solution is much better, and the price will be much lower.
There have been many "misplaced words". We talk about it to possible customers to get their input. None of the big software companies think the way we do, so it is unlikely they will beat us to launch. But if they were able to understand the concepts, they could throw enough human resources at it until it worked. For our small group, we had the right combination of technologies. The original vision came from combining wish lists for several platforms with years of experience with how technology is used in the corporate world. Very marketable functions were added with the phrase, "Company A would love it if it had this one more feature." So if Big Brother Company saw the feature list, and had someone who understood the business benefits, then they might be able to kill our company. But the IT world is regressing so we have not worried much.
You claim that your business plan requires your company be a monopoly. Revolutionary ideas work best as a monopoly for a limited time. We are not buying a McDonald's franchise; we hope we are launching the next MS or Oracle. - We are also trying to allow most of the code to be open. Using closed source software has caused the 3-year delay for our launch, and we do not want others cursing us.
Sticking with your consulting careers is perhaps the best indication of just how serious you are about this product. Without our consulting careers, we would lose the contacts we need to sell the product. We are ready to give up the consulting careers as soon as the product launches.
I really cannot defend the delay. Each time we procrastinated, it seemed reasonable. Three years have passed since the code was function complete, and it has still not launched. We really hope to solve that one problem during the end-of-year doldrums.
Re:So ... submarining and adding changes are you?
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The Cult of the NDA
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We are not submarining any patents. We are waiting for a couple of reasons:
1. We want the product done. Why spend the money on patents if we cannot implement them? We are not legal vultures patenting all possible ideas so we can sue later. We are consultants who want to make the world better through software. We are writing the platform we want our customers to use because it would make our work easier.
2. Patents are expensive! IP lawyers need $8000 per patent to start, will admit up front that it may cost twice that, and are LAWYERS. Any lawyer can milk their customers better than the Big5 consulting firms. - So we need $8000 to $20,000 per patent IN THE U.S. - Then add more money so we can patent it in Canada and Europe. We have to be really careful about the European patent application. While applying for a trademark in the U.S. allows the U.S. date of application to be used for Europe, the European patent application should come first, since it must be published there before the U.S. patent is published. (One of our beta testing companies is based in Europe, so this is a major concern for us.)
We know that we can get one patent. We think there may be several more associated technologies that are patentable. We could get started for $8000, but the patents could cost us $100,000. While we have that kind of money, with the current IT market, most of us are living off our savings, and do not want to invest that much money until we are certain the product will work.
I have a world changing idea. (Yeah!) It took an enormous effort for my company to build it. (OK.) It has a market waiting for it. (Good, maybe we can make some money.) There are several big companies that have the resources to reproduce our effort, and once we are successful, they will have the motive to do so. (Uh, oh.)
But wait! There is an answer. This great country (U.S.) has decided that software ideas can be patented. Now this is usually done by those big companies to raise the barrier of entry so startups can be killed or at least threatened if they become competitive. Luckily our idea is far from mainstream and requires much specialized technical knowledge to implement. We will be first to market, and our solution answers many issues that are in the news today.
But we cannot advertise the features AND get a patent on those features UNLESS every prospective customer signs an NDA. Once the NDA is signed, the customer is considered part of the development team, and does not count against the application for a patent.
--- This is a true story. In our favor, several of us involved in the effort are consultants to our target market, and have the contacts to create a market for the product under the terms specified above. We are also able to identify that our product is unique. To answer the article:
1) A unique new product or idea is essential to a startup's success. In this case, yes, but only because we need the patents before a big company decides to clone us. The business plan includes the need for patents, and NDAs are required for the patent application to be successful.
2) The first company to capitalize on a new product or idea has a unique and sustainable advantage. No, we may be unique today, but that is not sustainable without patents. We are not counting on being "first", we are counting on being "only".
3) I have a unique idea for a new product or service. Yes, because the idea requires much technical ability to implement, and (so far) no one else has thought of it. And because of our unique skill set, we would probably be contacted to help if anyone planned a similar product.
4) If others find out about my unique idea, they could bring it to market first, and steal the advantage from me. Yes, but today they would not care. We are protecting it to get the patents that will protect us later when they do care.
5) Therefore, by disclosing my idea only under the strictest confidentiality, I preserve an advantage for myself. Yes, we need the NDAs to get the patents to have an advantage later.
We also have what it takes to make a startup successful: - Dumb Luck: We have customers before we have a product. - Execution: We have a business plan, and several high-level managerial types that believe in it. - Stay focused: This is the hard one. If we dedicated the resources to the product, it might have been released a few years ago. We actually thought the code was done, and had dates for installing it at customers, and then found a major problem with the platform under it that causes the product to crash under heavy load. Oops. And we have consulting careers that limit the time we dedicate to it. We believe the product can be delayed because the IT world has stagnated. So far, this is accurate.
X is an old protocol, designed to work on slow machines
When articles about X appear, everyone says that X has problems because it is old. And I almost understand if features were hacked into it, but they should become efficient during the open source refactoring. X is one of the big projects, so everything should be reviewed regularly, especially anything to do with performance since that is the itch that everybody wants scratched.
What I do not understand is how older is not better. Older code was written when resources (CPU cycles, hard drive space, bandwidth) were scarce and programmers cared about performance. I have tuned many apps where the original programmer used the first algorithm that worked without any thought about performance. The old-style programmers had to make every function as quick as possible or the apps would not be usable.
I was building a commercial app on the just released 386. My original search algorithm sucked: start at the top of the index and continue until the key is found. But it ran great on the 386. Then a customer ran it on an XT. Ouch. It took almost an hour to run. A quick rewrite and it would run in less than a minute on an XT. It was the requirement to run on limited resource hardware that forced me to fix it. I learned to always care about performance. If all the customers used Pentiums (which did not exist then) than the original algorithm could have survived without complaints.
My question is: How can an old protocol designed to work with slow machines be worse than a new protocol that requires modern hardware?
You disagreed with my line: Bill and Steve have never shown much ability running a business. They saw an opportunity, took advantage of it, and then ruthlessly defended their position. But every attempt to diversify their business has failed.
Here are your thoughts plus my commments: They still only sell BASIC for homebrew computers. MS did well selling BASIC interpreters to the personal computer manufacturers. They did lots of fast talking about how each manufacturer's version of BASIC would be compatible with the other versions. It was too bad they could not learn how to port it without changing it. MS created the standard, and could not fulfill it.
Remember, they actually did survive a couple of years before Office became their big money maker. Their next big hit was MS-DOS. They got that chance because IBM wanted their BASIC. They saw the opportunity to pull a fast one, and the rest is history. That one event of fast thinking created the bankroll that allowed everything else.
Before Windows 3.x squeezed Word Perfect out of the market (because WP for Windows was late and as bug-ridden as an English brothel), very few people used Word. I don't about the rest of the Office apps, but they hardly dominated. You have to agree they've diversified a bit from the OS business. Read the stories about how MS tricked WordPerfect Corp.. It is very difficult to put out a product when you do not have the specifications for the API. MSWord was the killer app that sold MSWindows. And the office suite became the new cash cow.
Ah, and the X-Box too. Yes, they sell each unit with a loss, but they make money from... controlling the standard, that is the X-Box hardware, and selling licenses to those who want to make money from software for the platform. Yes, they still lose money on the X-Box. And if it stays around for a few years, they may be able to make money on it. It could become a good strategic decision if MS survives. But they are doing it to attempt to control another standard, not because it will make money in the near future.
That's also why they decided to squash Netscape, who, by the way, tried to use exactly the same tactics: dominate on the client side to make money from the servers. And to dominate on the client side, they introdused a lot of new "standards". Netscape failed because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are better at running a business that way, and came earlier to the game of domination. Netscape had to convince people that this new type of application had any benefit. So they developed a business model where the application was free for home use. And it worked: everybody knows what is a web browser. Netscape WAS the standard. Their inventions were not introduced to be incompatible; they were introduced to improve the product. - MS used their previous monopoly to dominate the market. Netscape failed because they could not compete against the monopoly power of MS. MS did introduce incompatibilities with Netscape and the newly active W3C recommendations. Have you ever written JavaScript (a purely Netscape invention) that has to check browser version because MS decided to use a different DOM. I expect the true reason they used a different DOM was because they did not have the technical expertise to figure out how to program the DOM that was in Netscape, but it did make much work for website developers everywhere.
All those Windows apps and arcane hardware devices everybody uses will magically vanquish within the next 12 months.
I did not say that all MSWindows PCs will disappear next year. I did not say that MS will disappear.
My belief is that the move away from MSOffice will hurt MS's profits very badly. With the accounting tricks MS uses, the loss of those profits will be enough to put the company in the red. The panic that MS is falling will increase the migration away from MS products, further hurting their revenues. And it continues until they disappear.
They will not disappear next year. The dividends are moving money from MS's accounts to Bill and Steve's pockets while helping keep the stock price up. But even after the dividends, they have more than $30,000,000,000. That is enough to keep the company alive for 2 years even if all revenues stopped, and the revenues will not stop next year. Hopefully MS can survive long enough (6 years) to fulfill its contract with the U.S. Army. Does declaring bankruptcy protect a company from the guys with guns? When their boss runs the bankruptcy court?
Other possibilities: - Selling pieces of the company (assuming anybody wants them.) - Finding a business model that does not depend on accounting tricks. - Finding a business model that does not depend on controlling the standards. - Finding a business model that does not depend on being a monopoly. - Finding a business model that does not depend on having tons of cash.
Bill and Steve have never shown much ability running a business. They saw an opportunity, took advantage of it, and then ruthlessly defended their position. But every attempt to diversify their business has failed. Maybe the big change coming is that MS will hire a CEO or President who has some experience running a big business profitably.
If he really [actually] thinks that the downfall of Microsoft is an inevitability, I'd love to hear his timeframe on that.
Read my other posts. I believe MS will fall next year. I also believe Linux will play a very small part in that downfall. It will be the loss of revenue when OpenOffice becomes the standard for corporations that will put MS into the red.
Be thankful that Linux does exist. What would happen if MS disppeared and there was no OS usable and ready to become the standard? Yes, Linux will become #1 for the home consumer, but not because it beat MSWindows. It will be because MS's business model failed, and Linux was there to fill the void.
Maybe I am strange, but I want the tax to be even more progressive, and I am currently in the class that would be hurt.
When I was trying to grow up and go to college and become something, I took home 78% of my "pay" and could not pay my bills. My income tax return was around $200, so they were keeping 20% of my "pay".
Now I take home 59% of my pay. My income tax refund is around $600, so they are keeping 40% of my "pay".
I really wish there was a way that I could pay more now, and not have paid as much when I needed it. An extra $2000 when I was making $10,000 and taking home $7800 could have made a real difference in my life. Now I buy guitars that are $2000 without thinking about how the money will affect my life.
I have no personal knowledge of this, but the subject came up when a friend who lived here (PA) was moving back there. (He grew up in NH.)
The main source of income for New Hampshire is property taxes. Much of their land is very scenic, and it is a popular place for rich people to retire. (as opposed to FL where poor people retire to the swamp.) Having no sales tax is a marketing point, and they do not have a large tourist trade to milk with a sales tax. Since the residents are going to support the state anyway, their taxes are based on the size of the residence. OK, it is still "progressive" since those that can afford the big houses pay more than others.
The lack of sales tax can be a great marketing point. DE does not have sales tax, so their businesses draw people from PA and NJ (and probably MD) to avoid the sales tax. That means that DE businesses thrive while those in nearby states are hurt. - This only counts for portable items. Cars still need to be reported (registered) in the state they will be used, so NJ and PA claim their money anyway. But when buying jewelry, the ability to save (or spend an extra) 6% can make a big difference.
In the US, the most common unit for beer is the "can" or "bottle", which is standardized at 12 fl. oz. Of course, you usually don't want 16 oz of our beer because it is awful if it is not cold enough to freeze your taste buds. At 12 oz, you can drink it before it warms. Most places even serve draft beer in 12 oz mugs.
There is also the "large" size, which is 20 or 22 oz, for only $1 more. But that is for after your taste buds are destroyed.
The one consolation is that better places serve Guinness. If they have it on draft, you are usually stuck with a 12 oz mug. Sometimes they serve a 16 oz can and an empty 12oz mug, but then you cannot pour it properly. The best places (usually Irish pubs) will have Guinness (and Murphy's!) on draft and serve a 16 oz mug and know how to pour it.
Several friends have been to Ireland and say that everywhere serves pints and they know how to pour a Stout.
Used by the KDE developers and mages on topside to classify everything. If you ask the librarian where a book is, he tells you to ook it up in the ook catalog. He abbreviates it to "Ook, OOK!"
Thank you for the clarification. It was both interesting and informative.
I did mention that my post was based on memory, and was biased because most of my information came from Unisys.
One correction, Graphics Image Format would have been redundant. GIF = Graphics Interchange Format
I think Compuserve was hoping that it would replace the hundreds of image file formats. With their market power, it did. I remember it (and JPGs to save bandwidth) being the primary format for many BBSs. They were popular enough for the browser makers to standardize on it.
It was common for programmers to beg, borrow, or steal useful algorithms from each other (IMHO the sign of a good programmer anyway).
Hey, isn't this the perfect example why software patents are bad?
I remember the days when if you saw code that worked, you used it. I usually improved it, or at least adapted it to the current application, but there were no worries about where it came from. There was not an "open source" movement to collect the improvements, so it was more difficult to exchange code, but it did happen. RMS is trying to return to the days when software added value to other business, rather than being its own business. I believe we are almost there.
Partnering with MS is always a bad idea. Get MS to buy you? Take the money and run. Expect that a partnership with MS will benefit you? Forget it.
Unisys put much work into making NT work on more than 4 processors. As soon as they started selling 20 processor NT systems, MS released their 12(?) processor systems. Would you rather buy a proprietary system with a little extra power or get the standard from the source? Yeah, so did everybody else. Anybody who needed more power was already running a variant of Unix.
A current "partner" is Groove. At least they made MS give them $50 million for the right to look at their code. And their technology is locked into MS anyway since it depends on ActiveX. Just wait and see how much of the tech is merged into MS Sharepoint. (Groove does have some name recognition because it was founded by Ray Ozzie, one of the creators of Lotus Notes, but much of the Notes community will not use Groove because it is too dependent on MS software, so the name recognition does not help with Groove's target market.)
I worked at Unisys while they were getting much of the bad publicity. According to my memory of the situation:
1. Unisys developed and patented a compression algorithm. 2. Compuserve licensed that algorithm for their graphics format (.GIF). 3. The original web browser programmers built in compatibility for the popular Compuserve graphic format. (I have read stories that imply they knew it used protected IP, but did not care.) 4. Most web site developers used the format to build web pages with graphics. 5. Unisys noticed. They were collecting royalties from some companies, but others were using it in violation of the patent. Unisys did not want to void their current contracts so... 6. Unisys demanded royalties from the makers of software that included the algorithm. (Notice they did not go after the web site developers or the internet users.) I do not think they had to sue anybody, just asked for a few cents for using their algorithm. I believe it was cheap enough that nobody cared about paying. 7. Unisys made so much money that it barely covered the cost of collecting it, and received some bad press. (I checked how to get a license back then. The web site had a printable form buried very deeply. Ignoring their public statements, I think they hoped that only companies big enough to catch the public eye would bother filing it.) 8. A few years pass. 9. Unisys declined to renew the patent, even though it is obviously still relevant. They could have received revenues from it for another 14 (17?) years, but decided it was not worth the paperwork. (Not the renewal filing paperwork. The paperwork involved with licensing the technology, since they had kept the price so low.) 10. Today, anybody, including free software, can use this algorithm.
Unisys had to protect their patent to maintain their current contracts. This happened during a really bad time for Unisys. They had completely bungled their merger, and were losing money really well.
Yet they did not use their patent for extortion, and as soon as possible, they freed the software.
I am not saying we should all love Unisys. Unisys has some great engineers, and makes good hardware and software. They lack marketing savvy, and so partner with Microsoft. Today they are basically a Microsoft development department that pays MS for the priviledge of being one, while MS attempts to steal the code. (If MS had anybody that could understand the code, Unisys would be in trouble.) Unisys still provides hardware, software, and services to industries such as banks and airlines. Their services industry is very profitable. The downside is that most of their current offerings are tied to MS, so when MS falls, so will Unisys.
I already have wagered on MS's decline, both financially and professionally. I am getting pretty good odds since I have a minority opinion. Check back around the end of 2004.
MSWindows is only one-third of MS's revenues. MSOffice is their cash cow. If everybody keeps Windows and switches to OpenOffice, MS will be in the red. One of the reasons MS is fighting Linux so hard is so few people will notice that OpenOffice exists.
I am really surprised that Apple has not marketed itself into the corporate world. They have stability and reliability. They have proven applications by the market leaders. And they have the best UI. So why are businesses looking at Linux instead of Apple?
I like Linux. I learned Unix before MSWindows3.1 existed. I actually left the industry when it became clear that I was expected to use the awful Windows API. It was not bad for Solitaire, and OK for MSWord, but for programming? Ugh! I have not tried building an app for use in a Linux windows manager, so I cannot say the API is better than MS's API, but it would be very difficult for it to be worse. Also, there is not a clear dominant API for Linux, so I do not know which to learn.
Please tell my boss. He assumes that I can be in more than 3 places at the same time. I have never managed to prove it was not possible. Maybe someday I will miss a deadline?
I once billed over 30 hours each for 5 different clients in the same week for a total of 164 hours. I was salaried at the time, so it did not benefit me at all. Each manager decided how many hours to bill for me. That week I started Monday at 11 AM and took off THU and FRI. Accounting was a little upset until they realized how much the invoices were worth. BTW, that company no longer exists.
--- File systems are not about physical objects. Their purpose is to describe the realtionships between objects. The easiest paradigm is the Folder, which groups items. But items can be grouped by different attributes. A proposal template can be categorized under "MSWord templates", "things used by salespeople", and "things needing the approval of lawyers". The ability for it to be found in several Folders reflects the real world, even though the template only exists once.
--- Building a warp generator sounds like fun. Call me in a few years when I have time to focus on it.
You understand the problem; do you understand the solution?
Computers have advanced well into what were just dreams even in the 1980s. But we are still stuck with many of the paradigms that were created to: - Make computers useful when they were very slow. - Make computers understandable to people who did not grow up with them. Today, many of the concepts should be obsolete, but I have not heard of any real advancements other than finding uses for the better bandwidth. So I started a company to develop what will hopefully be the next step.
I believe you need to understand both the old fast relational database paradigm, and the newer but slower document-based database paradigm to be able to see what comes next. Luckily, most techies hate Lotus Notes. The former secretaries and managers who do work with it have little concept of how revolutionary it is; they just like that they can understand it. I hope this leaves the field open for me and my company to become in the next 10 years what Oracle was back around 1990. Wish me luck, or try to compete. Either way technology will advance.
The Lotus Notes client is a decent mail system. It can fetch mail from multiple domains. It will use Rules to move mail to Folders or delete it.
If you just accept all the defaults, the Domino server is easy to setup. Oh, wait, you do have to give it a name.
I helped some family members set up a few clients and a server. The only purpose of the server is so they can "replicate" their mail and address books from their desktops (at several residences) to the laptop for when they are travelling, which they do often. The server is on the laptop. They replicate just after they arrive, and just before they leave. The advantages: 1. They receive mail from several accounts, and it all goes into one Inbox. 2. They can organize their mail into Folders. 3. They can delete the mail. 4. They can add or delete addresses from their Address Book. 5. They do not have to worry about auto-run viruses. (And are smart enough not to open attachments without scanning.) Notes even lets them look at MSWord attachments in Preview mode. 6. All of their computers get updated each time they replicate. So all of their addresses are up-to-date. All of their mail is organized at each house the same way. They have the same Folders at each house. And they can delete a memo once and it will be deleted at the other houses. (Or they can realize they need it, and make a copy of it before Replication.)
I usually recommend Mozilla Mail for single-computer home users, but I do not know of another product that gives them these abilities. Anyone have suggestions?
--- As far as using Notes as a database program, IT IS THE EASIEST DATABASE PROGRAM YET.
About 90% of the professional Notes developers had no programming background before starting with Lotus Notes, and run away screaming if you try to explain relational databases to them. "What do you mean I cannot just add another field? I want it to appear on the screen right here. How do I know how long it should be? Some people have long last names." Yet they are building applications for the world's largest companies (DuPont, Ford, GM, most drug companies.)
--- I do wish IBM would market the stand-alone client better. It would help if more people would use it at home as well as at work. Anything that gets people away from MSOutlook is a good thing.
If you hit delete on a message when in the "Sent" View, you get this message: You are about to delete the selected document(s) from the Sent view. This action will delete the selected document(s) from all folders they belong to.
Would you like to continue deleting these documents or remove them from the Sent View instead?
[Delete] [Remove] [Cancel]
When I did support, the usual call was "I removed it from Sent and now it is not in my other Folder." Apparently Lotus/IBM noticed and fixed the View so that: 1. Documents can be marked not to show there. 2. This message appears.
A good developer would implement this anywhere there could be confusion. I am surprised that Lotus did not put a similar warning message on the "All Documents" View. A good LotusScript developer could program the mail so the warning appears whenever a document is about to be deleted, and (after testing) it could be implemented company-wide by the next day. The wonders of Open Source! Almost all Notes applications, including all the standard ones, come with the source visible and able to be modified.
I was not really asking for help. I am in the habit of ALWAYS right-button dragging when using MSWindows. That way I can choose what I want it to do regardless of the situation-sensitive default. (I thought it was obvious from the post that I understand how it works.)
The problem with the using CTRL and/or SHIFT + Drag is that it takes two hands. Files are not heavy. I like that I can move them with one hand.
The qualification for when it creates a Shortcut is the same as everything else in MSWindows: what is the file extension? Executable files (.EXE and.COM) create Shortcuts when dragged. Apparently MS does not consider BAT files to be executable. All other files (including.BAT and.DLL) are moved if on the same drive.
Checked in Win98: Dragging SPOOL.EXE creates a Shortcut. Has that changed for WinXP, or is the spooler no longer a.EXE?
My point was that the parent to my post suggested that Lotus Notes was not following the standard set by MS, and I was suggesting that MS had no standard.
--- The moderators are having FUN! My post above is currently: + 2 Insightful + 2 Informative -3 Troll For a total of: + 1 Troll
I guess some Slashdotters REALLY do not like Lotus Notes, or having it suggested that Notes follows the Unix ideas for files.
And when you delete a message from one folder, it's deleted from all of them!
If you are deleting an email, that implies that you are done with the information. If you just want to reorganize it, then you (the user) should understand what it means to organize.
The problem is that users are trained on the MS vision that everything can only exist in one place and to put it in two places requires making a copy. This approach has problems: 1. Very wasteful of hard drive space. You need to have complete copies of a document in every folder/directory it belongs. Today hard drive space is cheap, but MS is trying to grow the data file sizes to keep up. 2. Each copy is not updated with the others. You usually forget which should be the master copy. And the users don't care about maintaining the master copy; they want to work on the one to which they have access. Making it read-only means there will be even more copies made so people can get their work done.
Unix/Linux users have symbolic links. They are exposed to them very early, and learn that a link to a file can be treated as the file, for everything except its organization. Updating the file updates it everywhere.
Lotus Notes allows all approaches: 1. You can make copies. Copy/Paste always does this. 2. You can make links. Dragging always does this. 3. You can put links to anything inside other documents. This allows you to send a memo with links to the documents that need your attention. 4. You have Views, which show all documents based on selection formulas. 5. It has great filtering capabilities. You can show all documents that contain the word "slashdot" that were created between 2 dates.
But is a first-time user going to expect it? Of course not, he thinks the folders work like everywhere else, and copy means make a copy, not just a link.
Your "first-time user" expects "the folders work like everywhere else"? - A first-time user should not have a problem. They learn what happens without any expectations. - A "first-time user" that has been using MS products for a while should know never to expect consistent results. Try dragging a file in MSWindows: 1. If it is an executable, it will create a Shortcut. 2. If it is to the same hard drive, it will move the file. (And remember that "My Documents" and "Desktop" are usually on the C Drive.) 3. If it is to a different hard drive, it will make a copy. (What happens if it is a mapped network share on the same computer?)
That is 3 different results from the same user action! So how do folders work everywhere else?
--- Anyway, I expect MS to die soon. Windows will wither without MS. The next generation of users will probably start with Linux and be better off.
Slashdot Mirror
20031006
I have been using YYYYMMDD for a few years. It is becoming acceptable in the US. If someone sees an eight-digit number that start with "200", they assume it is a date, especially if the context supports it, such as on checks. Just remember to always zero fill the month and the day.
2003-10-06
The dashes do save the brain from a moment's work. Maybe I will switch.
I do not understand why anything that has a possible global audience (such as anything on the internet) does not use a date format that is understandable by the entire audience.
I accidentally opened the article twice. The first window has that line about the Sponsor. That line has disappeared from later attempts.
There is an informative post scored 0 by an AC (really close to this post) that starts:
This is Kurtis from TheTechLounge. I wrote the article.
saying that the Sponsor line is because they provided software, not because they paid for the interview.
The King of Prussia, PA office of Robert Half Technology has worked very well for me. I am hard to place: high pay, goal-oriented, will not sit at a desk for months. Most of the consulting jobs around here are temp workers (filling a seat in the office) for the 3-month probationary period until they offer a full-time position. I have absolutely no desire to work full-time. Most companies use me as a troubleshooter to inject some technical expertise when they have problems. RHT has been able to find that type of work for me. Once I have worked with a client, they call ME again. RHT has been surprised by timesheets from me for clients they had not called for months, but the money is direct deposited that Friday.
I know several other people who work through them. RHT consistently finds a good match, making both the consultants and the customers happy. And yes, several of them are on the "work 3 months and we will hire you" plan.
It has been fun wacthing the name changes:
Robert Half International (Consulting division)
RHI Consulting
RHI Technology
Robert Half Technology (RHT)
They had 5 groups that specialized in: computers/technology, graphics/multimedia, business/management, secretarial/temp workers, and (forgotten). I have been too busy working through them to check the current setup.
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As I said, most of the "consulting" firms around here are providing people for possible full-time work. I was keeping in touch with around 20 of them from 1998 into 2002, but they never placed me. I gave up when one company told me they were going to send 5 other resumes to the client first, then send mine if the client demanded real expertise. I have never proactively found a job; when a client needs my skill set, someone calls me.
I tried to find the parent you were quoting. I guess you just like italics.
The sun is the only source of renewable energy
The sun is the only non-renewable source of power. It is also the main source of power for most of the solar system. All the other sources are storing the sun's power, and can be renewed.
Want more coal: grow trees and bury them.
Want more oil: raise elephants and bury them.
See, they can be renewed, but renewing the sun is way beyond our current technology. But renewing these resources will probably take longer than than it takes to make them obsolete, and upset the elephant-loving environmentalists.
Now in the short term, using power that will be wasted if it is not used is cool. The sun's power can either be captured or wasted, so solar panels are great until the crazies decide they are causing global cooling. Windmills are great until the crazies decide that we are disturbing the weather patterns. Waterwheels are great, unless they upset the migration patterns for fish. Building a dam... can we do that anymore? They cause major changes to the ecology.
So much for the humor. I agree with most of the posts. Nuclear power should be the major source of power today, but it is a public relations nightmare because it was first associated with weapons of mass destruction. Most of the people alive today were not alive when nuclear weapons were used, but the cold war only ended in the late 80s. Give us another 2 generations, and it will be more acceptable, unless there is another catastrophe.
That said, I live in the fallout zone for a nuclear power plant. I have no idea where its power is used, but I doubt it powers the homes in this area.
But everybody, please remember that most of us have no input in the real world. The current power structure is owned by big business, and they will defend the current situation until someone finds a way to make it completely obsolete.
I was attempting to point out that NDAs have a use when the company is working on patents. If you got a laugh from it, that is a bonus.
Enough of the key features of the product have been tested and working for years. They were enough to get it used in the corporate world. Then we found that it crashes regularly. We are building on another company's software, the architecture of their software has a flaw, and that code is closed; it has been very difficult for us to create a workaround. We were making progress earlier this year when we put it on hold because our consulting careers became very busy.
Yes, we are under the delusion that we can take our time. Hey, it has been 4 years, and the customers are still faced with the same issues that we are solving. One (big but unlikely) customer spent millions of dollars to develop a system that does less than our product, but does solve a few of the issues we are solving. Our solution is much better, and the price will be much lower.
There have been many "misplaced words". We talk about it to possible customers to get their input. None of the big software companies think the way we do, so it is unlikely they will beat us to launch. But if they were able to understand the concepts, they could throw enough human resources at it until it worked. For our small group, we had the right combination of technologies. The original vision came from combining wish lists for several platforms with years of experience with how technology is used in the corporate world. Very marketable functions were added with the phrase, "Company A would love it if it had this one more feature." So if Big Brother Company saw the feature list, and had someone who understood the business benefits, then they might be able to kill our company. But the IT world is regressing so we have not worried much.
You claim that your business plan requires your company be a monopoly.
Revolutionary ideas work best as a monopoly for a limited time. We are not buying a McDonald's franchise; we hope we are launching the next MS or Oracle.
- We are also trying to allow most of the code to be open. Using closed source software has caused the 3-year delay for our launch, and we do not want others cursing us.
Sticking with your consulting careers is perhaps the best indication of just how serious you are about this product.
Without our consulting careers, we would lose the contacts we need to sell the product. We are ready to give up the consulting careers as soon as the product launches.
I really cannot defend the delay. Each time we procrastinated, it seemed reasonable. Three years have passed since the code was function complete, and it has still not launched. We really hope to solve that one problem during the end-of-year doldrums.
We are not submarining any patents. We are waiting for a couple of reasons:
1. We want the product done. Why spend the money on patents if we cannot implement them? We are not legal vultures patenting all possible ideas so we can sue later. We are consultants who want to make the world better through software. We are writing the platform we want our customers to use because it would make our work easier.
2. Patents are expensive! IP lawyers need $8000 per patent to start, will admit up front that it may cost twice that, and are LAWYERS. Any lawyer can milk their customers better than the Big5 consulting firms.
- So we need $8000 to $20,000 per patent IN THE U.S.
- Then add more money so we can patent it in Canada and Europe. We have to be really careful about the European patent application. While applying for a trademark in the U.S. allows the U.S. date of application to be used for Europe, the European patent application should come first, since it must be published there before the U.S. patent is published. (One of our beta testing companies is based in Europe, so this is a major concern for us.)
We know that we can get one patent. We think there may be several more associated technologies that are patentable. We could get started for $8000, but the patents could cost us $100,000. While we have that kind of money, with the current IT market, most of us are living off our savings, and do not want to invest that much money until we are certain the product will work.
I have a world changing idea. (Yeah!) It took an enormous effort for my company to build it. (OK.) It has a market waiting for it. (Good, maybe we can make some money.) There are several big companies that have the resources to reproduce our effort, and once we are successful, they will have the motive to do so. (Uh, oh.)
But wait! There is an answer. This great country (U.S.) has decided that software ideas can be patented. Now this is usually done by those big companies to raise the barrier of entry so startups can be killed or at least threatened if they become competitive. Luckily our idea is far from mainstream and requires much specialized technical knowledge to implement. We will be first to market, and our solution answers many issues that are in the news today.
But we cannot advertise the features AND get a patent on those features UNLESS every prospective customer signs an NDA. Once the NDA is signed, the customer is considered part of the development team, and does not count against the application for a patent.
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This is a true story. In our favor, several of us involved in the effort are consultants to our target market, and have the contacts to create a market for the product under the terms specified above. We are also able to identify that our product is unique. To answer the article:
1) A unique new product or idea is essential to a startup's success.
In this case, yes, but only because we need the patents before a big company decides to clone us. The business plan includes the need for patents, and NDAs are required for the patent application to be successful.
2) The first company to capitalize on a new product or idea has a unique and sustainable advantage.
No, we may be unique today, but that is not sustainable without patents. We are not counting on being "first", we are counting on being "only".
3) I have a unique idea for a new product or service.
Yes, because the idea requires much technical ability to implement, and (so far) no one else has thought of it. And because of our unique skill set, we would probably be contacted to help if anyone planned a similar product.
4) If others find out about my unique idea, they could bring it to market first, and steal the advantage from me.
Yes, but today they would not care. We are protecting it to get the patents that will protect us later when they do care.
5) Therefore, by disclosing my idea only under the strictest confidentiality, I preserve an advantage for myself.
Yes, we need the NDAs to get the patents to have an advantage later.
We also have what it takes to make a startup successful:
- Dumb Luck: We have customers before we have a product.
- Execution: We have a business plan, and several high-level managerial types that believe in it.
- Stay focused: This is the hard one. If we dedicated the resources to the product, it might have been released a few years ago. We actually thought the code was done, and had dates for installing it at customers, and then found a major problem with the platform under it that causes the product to crash under heavy load. Oops. And we have consulting careers that limit the time we dedicate to it. We believe the product can be delayed because the IT world has stagnated. So far, this is accurate.
X is an old protocol, designed to work on slow machines
When articles about X appear, everyone says that X has problems because it is old. And I almost understand if features were hacked into it, but they should become efficient during the open source refactoring. X is one of the big projects, so everything should be reviewed regularly, especially anything to do with performance since that is the itch that everybody wants scratched.
What I do not understand is how older is not better. Older code was written when resources (CPU cycles, hard drive space, bandwidth) were scarce and programmers cared about performance. I have tuned many apps where the original programmer used the first algorithm that worked without any thought about performance. The old-style programmers had to make every function as quick as possible or the apps would not be usable.
I was building a commercial app on the just released 386. My original search algorithm sucked: start at the top of the index and continue until the key is found. But it ran great on the 386. Then a customer ran it on an XT. Ouch. It took almost an hour to run. A quick rewrite and it would run in less than a minute on an XT. It was the requirement to run on limited resource hardware that forced me to fix it. I learned to always care about performance. If all the customers used Pentiums (which did not exist then) than the original algorithm could have survived without complaints.
My question is:
How can an old protocol designed to work with slow machines be worse than a new protocol that requires modern hardware?
You disagreed with my line:
... controlling the standard, that is the X-Box hardware, and selling licenses to those who want to make money from software for the platform.
Bill and Steve have never shown much ability running a business. They saw an opportunity, took advantage of it, and then ruthlessly defended their position. But every attempt to diversify their business has failed.
Here are your thoughts plus my commments:
They still only sell BASIC for homebrew computers.
MS did well selling BASIC interpreters to the personal computer manufacturers. They did lots of fast talking about how each manufacturer's version of BASIC would be compatible with the other versions. It was too bad they could not learn how to port it without changing it. MS created the standard, and could not fulfill it.
Remember, they actually did survive a couple of years before Office became their big money maker.
Their next big hit was MS-DOS. They got that chance because IBM wanted their BASIC. They saw the opportunity to pull a fast one, and the rest is history. That one event of fast thinking created the bankroll that allowed everything else.
Before Windows 3.x squeezed Word Perfect out of the market (because WP for Windows was late and as bug-ridden as an English brothel), very few people used Word. I don't about the rest of the Office apps, but they hardly dominated. You have to agree they've diversified a bit from the OS business.
Read the stories about how MS tricked WordPerfect Corp.. It is very difficult to put out a product when you do not have the specifications for the API. MSWord was the killer app that sold MSWindows. And the office suite became the new cash cow.
Ah, and the X-Box too. Yes, they sell each unit with a loss, but they make money from
Yes, they still lose money on the X-Box. And if it stays around for a few years, they may be able to make money on it. It could become a good strategic decision if MS survives. But they are doing it to attempt to control another standard, not because it will make money in the near future.
That's also why they decided to squash Netscape, who, by the way, tried to use exactly the same tactics: dominate on the client side to make money from the servers. And to dominate on the client side, they introdused a lot of new "standards". Netscape failed because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are better at running a business that way, and came earlier to the game of domination.
Netscape had to convince people that this new type of application had any benefit. So they developed a business model where the application was free for home use. And it worked: everybody knows what is a web browser. Netscape WAS the standard. Their inventions were not introduced to be incompatible; they were introduced to improve the product.
- MS used their previous monopoly to dominate the market. Netscape failed because they could not compete against the monopoly power of MS. MS did introduce incompatibilities with Netscape and the newly active W3C recommendations. Have you ever written JavaScript (a purely Netscape invention) that has to check browser version because MS decided to use a different DOM. I expect the true reason they used a different DOM was because they did not have the technical expertise to figure out how to program the DOM that was in Netscape, but it did make much work for website developers everywhere.
All those Windows apps and arcane hardware devices everybody uses will magically vanquish within the next 12 months.
I did not say that all MSWindows PCs will disappear next year. I did not say that MS will disappear.
My belief is that the move away from MSOffice will hurt MS's profits very badly. With the accounting tricks MS uses, the loss of those profits will be enough to put the company in the red. The panic that MS is falling will increase the migration away from MS products, further hurting their revenues. And it continues until they disappear.
They will not disappear next year. The dividends are moving money from MS's accounts to Bill and Steve's pockets while helping keep the stock price up. But even after the dividends, they have more than $30,000,000,000. That is enough to keep the company alive for 2 years even if all revenues stopped, and the revenues will not stop next year. Hopefully MS can survive long enough (6 years) to fulfill its contract with the U.S. Army. Does declaring bankruptcy protect a company from the guys with guns? When their boss runs the bankruptcy court?
Other possibilities:
- Selling pieces of the company (assuming anybody wants them.)
- Finding a business model that does not depend on accounting tricks.
- Finding a business model that does not depend on controlling the standards.
- Finding a business model that does not depend on being a monopoly.
- Finding a business model that does not depend on having tons of cash.
Bill and Steve have never shown much ability running a business. They saw an opportunity, took advantage of it, and then ruthlessly defended their position. But every attempt to diversify their business has failed. Maybe the big change coming is that MS will hire a CEO or President who has some experience running a big business profitably.
If he really [actually] thinks that the downfall of Microsoft is an inevitability, I'd love to hear his timeframe on that.
Read my other posts. I believe MS will fall next year. I also believe Linux will play a very small part in that downfall. It will be the loss of revenue when OpenOffice becomes the standard for corporations that will put MS into the red.
Be thankful that Linux does exist. What would happen if MS disppeared and there was no OS usable and ready to become the standard? Yes, Linux will become #1 for the home consumer, but not because it beat MSWindows. It will be because MS's business model failed, and Linux was there to fill the void.
Maybe I am strange, but I want the tax to be even more progressive, and I am currently in the class that would be hurt.
When I was trying to grow up and go to college and become something, I took home 78% of my "pay" and could not pay my bills. My income tax return was around $200, so they were keeping 20% of my "pay".
Now I take home 59% of my pay. My income tax refund is around $600, so they are keeping 40% of my "pay".
I really wish there was a way that I could pay more now, and not have paid as much when I needed it. An extra $2000 when I was making $10,000 and taking home $7800 could have made a real difference in my life. Now I buy guitars that are $2000 without thinking about how the money will affect my life.
I have no personal knowledge of this, but the subject came up when a friend who lived here (PA) was moving back there. (He grew up in NH.)
The main source of income for New Hampshire is property taxes. Much of their land is very scenic, and it is a popular place for rich people to retire. (as opposed to FL where poor people retire to the swamp.) Having no sales tax is a marketing point, and they do not have a large tourist trade to milk with a sales tax. Since the residents are going to support the state anyway, their taxes are based on the size of the residence. OK, it is still "progressive" since those that can afford the big houses pay more than others.
The lack of sales tax can be a great marketing point. DE does not have sales tax, so their businesses draw people from PA and NJ (and probably MD) to avoid the sales tax. That means that DE businesses thrive while those in nearby states are hurt.
- This only counts for portable items. Cars still need to be reported (registered) in the state they will be used, so NJ and PA claim their money anyway. But when buying jewelry, the ability to save (or spend an extra) 6% can make a big difference.
In the US, the most common unit for beer is the "can" or "bottle", which is standardized at 12 fl. oz. Of course, you usually don't want 16 oz of our beer because it is awful if it is not cold enough to freeze your taste buds. At 12 oz, you can drink it before it warms. Most places even serve draft beer in 12 oz mugs.
There is also the "large" size, which is 20 or 22 oz, for only $1 more. But that is for after your taste buds are destroyed.
The one consolation is that better places serve Guinness. If they have it on draft, you are usually stuck with a 12 oz mug. Sometimes they serve a 16 oz can and an empty 12oz mug, but then you cannot pour it properly. The best places (usually Irish pubs) will have Guinness (and Murphy's!) on draft and serve a 16 oz mug and know how to pour it.
Several friends have been to Ireland and say that everywhere serves pints and they know how to pour a Stout.
OOK = Official Otherworldly Klassification
Used by the KDE developers and mages on topside to classify everything. If you ask the librarian where a book is, he tells you to ook it up in the ook catalog. He abbreviates it to "Ook, OOK!"
Thank you for the clarification. It was both interesting and informative.
I did mention that my post was based on memory, and was biased because most of my information came from Unisys.
One correction, Graphics Image Format would have been redundant.
GIF = Graphics Interchange Format
I think Compuserve was hoping that it would replace the hundreds of image file formats. With their market power, it did. I remember it (and JPGs to save bandwidth) being the primary format for many BBSs. They were popular enough for the browser makers to standardize on it.
It was common for programmers to beg, borrow, or steal useful algorithms from each other (IMHO the sign of a good programmer anyway).
Hey, isn't this the perfect example why software patents are bad?
I remember the days when if you saw code that worked, you used it. I usually improved it, or at least adapted it to the current application, but there were no worries about where it came from. There was not an "open source" movement to collect the improvements, so it was more difficult to exchange code, but it did happen. RMS is trying to return to the days when software added value to other business, rather than being its own business. I believe we are almost there.
Partnering with MS is always a bad idea.
Get MS to buy you? Take the money and run.
Expect that a partnership with MS will benefit you? Forget it.
Unisys put much work into making NT work on more than 4 processors. As soon as they started selling 20 processor NT systems, MS released their 12(?) processor systems. Would you rather buy a proprietary system with a little extra power or get the standard from the source? Yeah, so did everybody else. Anybody who needed more power was already running a variant of Unix.
A current "partner" is Groove. At least they made MS give them $50 million for the right to look at their code. And their technology is locked into MS anyway since it depends on ActiveX. Just wait and see how much of the tech is merged into MS Sharepoint. (Groove does have some name recognition because it was founded by Ray Ozzie, one of the creators of Lotus Notes, but much of the Notes community will not use Groove because it is too dependent on MS software, so the name recognition does not help with Groove's target market.)
I worked at Unisys while they were getting much of the bad publicity. According to my memory of the situation:
1. Unisys developed and patented a compression algorithm.
2. Compuserve licensed that algorithm for their graphics format (.GIF).
3. The original web browser programmers built in compatibility for the popular Compuserve graphic format. (I have read stories that imply they knew it used protected IP, but did not care.)
4. Most web site developers used the format to build web pages with graphics.
5. Unisys noticed. They were collecting royalties from some companies, but others were using it in violation of the patent. Unisys did not want to void their current contracts so...
6. Unisys demanded royalties from the makers of software that included the algorithm. (Notice they did not go after the web site developers or the internet users.) I do not think they had to sue anybody, just asked for a few cents for using their algorithm. I believe it was cheap enough that nobody cared about paying.
7. Unisys made so much money that it barely covered the cost of collecting it, and received some bad press.
(I checked how to get a license back then. The web site had a printable form buried very deeply. Ignoring their public statements, I think they hoped that only companies big enough to catch the public eye would bother filing it.)
8. A few years pass.
9. Unisys declined to renew the patent, even though it is obviously still relevant. They could have received revenues from it for another 14 (17?) years, but decided it was not worth the paperwork. (Not the renewal filing paperwork. The paperwork involved with licensing the technology, since they had kept the price so low.)
10. Today, anybody, including free software, can use this algorithm.
Unisys had to protect their patent to maintain their current contracts. This happened during a really bad time for Unisys. They had completely bungled their merger, and were losing money really well.
Yet they did not use their patent for extortion, and as soon as possible, they freed the software.
I am not saying we should all love Unisys. Unisys has some great engineers, and makes good hardware and software. They lack marketing savvy, and so partner with Microsoft. Today they are basically a Microsoft development department that pays MS for the priviledge of being one, while MS attempts to steal the code. (If MS had anybody that could understand the code, Unisys would be in trouble.) Unisys still provides hardware, software, and services to industries such as banks and airlines. Their services industry is very profitable. The downside is that most of their current offerings are tied to MS, so when MS falls, so will Unisys.
I already have wagered on MS's decline, both financially and professionally. I am getting pretty good odds since I have a minority opinion. Check back around the end of 2004.
MSWindows is only one-third of MS's revenues. MSOffice is their cash cow. If everybody keeps Windows and switches to OpenOffice, MS will be in the red. One of the reasons MS is fighting Linux so hard is so few people will notice that OpenOffice exists.
I am really surprised that Apple has not marketed itself into the corporate world. They have stability and reliability. They have proven applications by the market leaders. And they have the best UI. So why are businesses looking at Linux instead of Apple?
I like Linux. I learned Unix before MSWindows3.1 existed. I actually left the industry when it became clear that I was expected to use the awful Windows API. It was not bad for Solitaire, and OK for MSWord, but for programming? Ugh! I have not tried building an app for use in a Linux windows manager, so I cannot say the API is better than MS's API, but it would be very difficult for it to be worse. Also, there is not a clear dominant API for Linux, so I do not know which to learn.
Please tell my boss. He assumes that I can be in more than 3 places at the same time. I have never managed to prove it was not possible. Maybe someday I will miss a deadline?
I once billed over 30 hours each for 5 different clients in the same week for a total of 164 hours. I was salaried at the time, so it did not benefit me at all. Each manager decided how many hours to bill for me. That week I started Monday at 11 AM and took off THU and FRI. Accounting was a little upset until they realized how much the invoices were worth. BTW, that company no longer exists.
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File systems are not about physical objects. Their purpose is to describe the realtionships between objects. The easiest paradigm is the Folder, which groups items. But items can be grouped by different attributes. A proposal template can be categorized under "MSWord templates", "things used by salespeople", and "things needing the approval of lawyers". The ability for it to be found in several Folders reflects the real world, even though the template only exists once.
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Building a warp generator sounds like fun. Call me in a few years when I have time to focus on it.
You understand the problem; do you understand the solution?
Computers have advanced well into what were just dreams even in the 1980s. But we are still stuck with many of the paradigms that were created to:
- Make computers useful when they were very slow.
- Make computers understandable to people who did not grow up with them.
Today, many of the concepts should be obsolete, but I have not heard of any real advancements other than finding uses for the better bandwidth. So I started a company to develop what will hopefully be the next step.
I believe you need to understand both the old fast relational database paradigm, and the newer but slower document-based database paradigm to be able to see what comes next. Luckily, most techies hate Lotus Notes. The former secretaries and managers who do work with it have little concept of how revolutionary it is; they just like that they can understand it. I hope this leaves the field open for me and my company to become in the next 10 years what Oracle was back around 1990. Wish me luck, or try to compete. Either way technology will advance.
The Lotus Notes client is a decent mail system. It can fetch mail from multiple domains. It will use Rules to move mail to Folders or delete it.
If you just accept all the defaults, the Domino server is easy to setup. Oh, wait, you do have to give it a name.
I helped some family members set up a few clients and a server. The only purpose of the server is so they can "replicate" their mail and address books from their desktops (at several residences) to the laptop for when they are travelling, which they do often. The server is on the laptop. They replicate just after they arrive, and just before they leave. The advantages:
1. They receive mail from several accounts, and it all goes into one Inbox.
2. They can organize their mail into Folders.
3. They can delete the mail.
4. They can add or delete addresses from their Address Book.
5. They do not have to worry about auto-run viruses. (And are smart enough not to open attachments without scanning.) Notes even lets them look at MSWord attachments in Preview mode.
6. All of their computers get updated each time they replicate. So all of their addresses are up-to-date. All of their mail is organized at each house the same way. They have the same Folders at each house. And they can delete a memo once and it will be deleted at the other houses. (Or they can realize they need it, and make a copy of it before Replication.)
I usually recommend Mozilla Mail for single-computer home users, but I do not know of another product that gives them these abilities. Anyone have suggestions?
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As far as using Notes as a database program, IT IS THE EASIEST DATABASE PROGRAM YET.
About 90% of the professional Notes developers had no programming background before starting with Lotus Notes, and run away screaming if you try to explain relational databases to them. "What do you mean I cannot just add another field? I want it to appear on the screen right here. How do I know how long it should be? Some people have long last names." Yet they are building applications for the world's largest companies (DuPont, Ford, GM, most drug companies.)
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I do wish IBM would market the stand-alone client better. It would help if more people would use it at home as well as at work. Anything that gets people away from MSOutlook is a good thing.
Actually, this does happen SOMETIMES.
If you hit delete on a message when in the "Sent" View, you get this message:
You are about to delete the selected document(s) from the Sent view. This action will delete the selected document(s) from all folders they belong to.
Would you like to continue deleting these documents or remove them from the Sent View instead?
[Delete] [Remove] [Cancel]
When I did support, the usual call was "I removed it from Sent and now it is not in my other Folder." Apparently Lotus/IBM noticed and fixed the View so that:
1. Documents can be marked not to show there.
2. This message appears.
A good developer would implement this anywhere there could be confusion. I am surprised that Lotus did not put a similar warning message on the "All Documents" View. A good LotusScript developer could program the mail so the warning appears whenever a document is about to be deleted, and (after testing) it could be implemented company-wide by the next day. The wonders of Open Source! Almost all Notes applications, including all the standard ones, come with the source visible and able to be modified.
I was not really asking for help. I am in the habit of ALWAYS right-button dragging when using MSWindows. That way I can choose what I want it to do regardless of the situation-sensitive default. (I thought it was obvious from the post that I understand how it works.)
.COM) create Shortcuts when dragged. Apparently MS does not consider BAT files to be executable. All other files (including .BAT and .DLL) are moved if on the same drive.
.EXE?
The problem with the using CTRL and/or SHIFT + Drag is that it takes two hands. Files are not heavy. I like that I can move them with one hand.
The qualification for when it creates a Shortcut is the same as everything else in MSWindows: what is the file extension? Executable files (.EXE and
Checked in Win98: Dragging SPOOL.EXE creates a Shortcut. Has that changed for WinXP, or is the spooler no longer a
My point was that the parent to my post suggested that Lotus Notes was not following the standard set by MS, and I was suggesting that MS had no standard.
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The moderators are having FUN! My post above is currently:
+ 2 Insightful
+ 2 Informative
-3 Troll
For a total of:
+ 1 Troll
I guess some Slashdotters REALLY do not like Lotus Notes, or having it suggested that Notes follows the Unix ideas for files.
And when you delete a message from one folder, it's deleted from all of them!
If you are deleting an email, that implies that you are done with the information. If you just want to reorganize it, then you (the user) should understand what it means to organize.
The problem is that users are trained on the MS vision that everything can only exist in one place and to put it in two places requires making a copy. This approach has problems:
1. Very wasteful of hard drive space. You need to have complete copies of a document in every folder/directory it belongs. Today hard drive space is cheap, but MS is trying to grow the data file sizes to keep up.
2. Each copy is not updated with the others. You usually forget which should be the master copy. And the users don't care about maintaining the master copy; they want to work on the one to which they have access. Making it read-only means there will be even more copies made so people can get their work done.
Unix/Linux users have symbolic links. They are exposed to them very early, and learn that a link to a file can be treated as the file, for everything except its organization. Updating the file updates it everywhere.
Lotus Notes allows all approaches:
1. You can make copies. Copy/Paste always does this.
2. You can make links. Dragging always does this.
3. You can put links to anything inside other documents. This allows you to send a memo with links to the documents that need your attention.
4. You have Views, which show all documents based on selection formulas.
5. It has great filtering capabilities. You can show all documents that contain the word "slashdot" that were created between 2 dates.
But is a first-time user going to expect it? Of course not, he thinks the folders work like everywhere else, and copy means make a copy, not just a link.
Your "first-time user" expects "the folders work like everywhere else"?
- A first-time user should not have a problem. They learn what happens without any expectations.
- A "first-time user" that has been using MS products for a while should know never to expect consistent results. Try dragging a file in MSWindows:
1. If it is an executable, it will create a Shortcut.
2. If it is to the same hard drive, it will move the file. (And remember that "My Documents" and "Desktop" are usually on the C Drive.)
3. If it is to a different hard drive, it will make a copy. (What happens if it is a mapped network share on the same computer?)
That is 3 different results from the same user action! So how do folders work everywhere else?
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Anyway, I expect MS to die soon. Windows will wither without MS. The next generation of users will probably start with Linux and be better off.