I am a little confused here... why the switch to OpenOffice on Windows first, then to Linux second? Is that not an extra step, that could be totally done away with?
Training, primarily, as well as care and feeding of the myriad process monkeys with their taproots in the flow.
Seriously, large organisations - including municipal governments - are notoriously risk-adverse. Not adverse to change, but adverse to unmanaged change. And if you're working with people who are extraordinarily process-minded (the nursing profession comes to mind) then you're not going to get the ball over the line without showing a step-by-step progress from point A to point B. Smaller steps will be seen as less-risky, and therefore better. Chaos in any bureaucracy is considered irreligeous.
...because extended pilot projects tend to expand into a full rollout when pulled by demand, when people see what they're missing and pull strings to have the pilot extended to them.
This is often a much more sure road to successful acceptance than big-bang rollout projects, where any issues tend to be magnified in that short window when the powers that be see themselves politically vulnerable to errors in execution and might pull the plug.
When going after user acceptance, a pull is better than a push; if users want the change, they're on your side and will work to show the change in the best light. When pushing the technology out to people who would rather have a bit of control over the process, you risk their ire if you tread on their schedules.
Um, pardon me again (NSIWT) but the Apple/// had a companion works product then that had fairly GUI approach (in a pre-PARC ascii-ish sort of way). It was nice, I liked it almost as much as the VT100 emulator (nearly all of Apple used A///'s as terminals internally to connect to the business systems, PDP-11/70's running RSTS-E).
The reason we weren't selling Apple///'s was not because of that, but because of our first ever set of reliability problems. A2's were burned-in in hot rooms before the public saw them, which meant they were reliable. On the A3 the clock chips kept falling over. It is very difficult to underestimate how much of a sales draw it was to be seen as the most reliable machine, which we no longer could boast. This is also why IBM achieved market dominance at the time, I believe -- when sales of personal computers hit the knee curve in sales and headed for the stratosphere, IBM owned mind share for "reliable". Like everything else IBM at the time, they were known for utter crap computing environments that were brilliantly supported, and fell over marginally less often than the Apple///. Sigh... if only those clock chips had been a bit more reliable, what a different world it would be.
I nominate early word processors as the first killer apps--applications so compelling that the related hardware purchase was an afterthought.
Would very much like to agree, but I remember more people used spreadsheets as word processors than used word processors for spreadsheets.
Oh and don't forget Apple PIE, a word processor with an elegant way of getting around the fact that the first Apple ]['s didn't have a shift key. And it had a nifty padded binder, too, which made it look professional and could double as a desk pillow.
Don't think NETBIOS was a Microsoft original, but I believe NETBEUI was -- an early non-routable protocol written by a large Amerind named Frank Beaver I think.
Umm...guys, VisiCalc first came out on Apple ]['s, not MS-DOS PC's. I worked at Apple during those years, and nearly every unit we sold was because of that app. 8086 PC's came in much later on in the piece. We were working on our first duck quack synthesizer when IBM brought out their competitor -- the one with the heavy steel plate in the keyboard to make it feel more solid (closest they could come to those big iron plates they put in the base of their mainframes).
You want to take your mittens off and touch them to an outside biometric scanner off in sub-zero weather? Do you also touch your tongue to frozen metal fixtures to see if it sticks?
Of course we never have problems like you describe because it never gets that cold in most parts of Australia. Generally we lose keys when the bower birds think they're pretty.
Maybe we just learned to hide food instead of sharing it. Hoarding as a survival skill? Possibly not the last primitive instinct we've kept past it's use-by date...
In Australia, it's fairly easy for a judge to classify an individual (client) as a "vexatious litigant" and require them to go through the courts to receive approval before they can bring suit against anyone, irrespective of their legal representation. We can't afford the court bandwidth to handle frivolous lawsuits, and judges here have little time for fools. Corporations are individuals in this context, I think (ianal). Does something along these lines appeal to the US judiciary? How difficult would it be to change that legal process in the USA?
WW2 Submarines did... there's not a lot to a diesel generator. If you vent the exhaust and snorkel the air intake, a diesel running underwater would just run cooler. If the electricals are sealed and the cable points well-insulated (slap some sort of nonconductive goo on the bare metal bits) you could run a welder from underwater.
My old departed friend Bob Long (W6QBN) when he wasn't telling me how these newfangled digital computers work, loved to talk about his amateur radio habit. An ex USN carrier radio officer, his interests covered morse skills, happily conveyng enormous detail about why you need an IF stage (think "applications middleware" but in an analogue sense) but more than anything he loved to rattle on about the subject of antennae.
It seems that you can get one or two watts of transmitter to go amazing distances if you know a little antennae theory and know how to lay your hands on a reel of coax cable.
Long-wires, capacity hats, incredible things like directional-discontinuity ring radiators, very high tech that can be built with a few iron fence stakes and a bit of wire and a good head for geometry.
Astoundingly powerful communications technology for an extremely accessible cost. If you want to know more get an old ARRL handbook. Sort of like the older Boy Scout Handbooks from back in the days when they were useful, but cover all the basics of home-brew transmitters. Get one.
One of the problems ham radio faces in times of cataclysmic storm is the shape of the ionosphere at the time and place. It's used as a signal reflector. On good days you can whisper from Maine to Tokyo on a watt. On bad days, you can't punch through with 50MW unless you have line of sight.
Sure. Whack a coil around the largest turbine and magnetize some rotating part. Voila', instant armature. Or MHD process from the plasma exiting the burn chamber at high speed? Shouldn't be hard to bulk transfer electrons from that sort of rotational kinetic. 20 plus tonnes of thrust - your generator is already there, you just have to wire it up.
Having a C5 suddenly go over your house in a location where the largest plane normally going over is a crop duster is quite an experience..
Decades ago I worked for Logisticon (in Mountain View iirc). I walked in one morning at 11am (usual starting time) and a moment later I heard someone over the PA system say "There is no cause for alarm.". Just that. (I loved that company). Walked back outside (who wouldn't, after a confidence-inspiring message like that?) to see a B-52 aimed directly at me. After the moment I needed to say "Hey, that's a B-52 isn't it?" it opened it's bomb bay doors.
A few dozen fly-bys like that and I discovered the Moffat NAS / Nasa AAMES airshow was going on next door. Fly-ins are a genuine hoot, and should be encouraged.
Just out of curiosity, is there any value in considering re-use of any of the mothballed SR-71 technology to claw back some of that horizontal component? Those suckers can move. How would they compare to the SC mothership? Swords to ploughshares...
To all of the people who want to cheer on private enterprise as far as space goes, you're barking up the wrong tree. Boeing and Lockheed, for example, have been producing real, orbital rockets for ages
Now hang on, have they had an original idea since 1970? Or if they have, was the poor sod who came up with it able to get the draft past the marketing wall? I may be experiencing a cynic atttack at the moment, but I can't believe either of those firms would ever let a simple, cheap idea get past the account managers.
hmm... on second thought, perhaps the Bazaar would be more appropriate, rather than the banker.
And in the deepest, darkest corner of the Crypt of Nadox where people were using local/say to discuss insider trading, a GM shows up and suspends their account for breach of EULA after reporting them to the SEC. And mom & pop investors would be limited to the mines of Gloomingdeep. The metaphor goes on a bit, doesn't it? Anything missing from the equation, other than the fact that Kobolds don't look good in neckties?
...include players of the stock exchange. Same principles, i.e. slow but continuous accumulation of a virtual commodity via intelligent application of rule sets.
I don't know about murder, but people do suicide over it (a recent event in the stock exchange where I work confirmed this to me).
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of commonality between an MMORPG and the stock exchange. Hmm... you listening, Sony? I can imagine my level 63 Vah Shir warrior wandering into the main bank at PoK, right-clicking the banker and investing in the international equities market. All on the credit card. Corporate takeovers could be PvP raids. Thwack!
Use a Palm PDA to keep your notes, dedicate one to the sensitive project. They're cheap, and a good journo should know how to hide the expense. Keep the right-size paperclip handy for the total reset at need.
Slashdot Mirror
that is furiously, hilariously funny and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Training, primarily, as well as care and feeding of the myriad process monkeys with their taproots in the flow.
Seriously, large organisations - including municipal governments - are notoriously risk-adverse. Not adverse to change, but adverse to unmanaged change. And if you're working with people who are extraordinarily process-minded (the nursing profession comes to mind) then you're not going to get the ball over the line without showing a step-by-step progress from point A to point B. Smaller steps will be seen as less-risky, and therefore better. Chaos in any bureaucracy is considered irreligeous.
This is often a much more sure road to successful acceptance than big-bang rollout projects, where any issues tend to be magnified in that short window when the powers that be see themselves politically vulnerable to errors in execution and might pull the plug.
When going after user acceptance, a pull is better than a push; if users want the change, they're on your side and will work to show the change in the best light. When pushing the technology out to people who would rather have a bit of control over the process, you risk their ire if you tread on their schedules.
The reason we weren't selling Apple ///'s was not because of that, but because of our first ever set of reliability problems. A2's were burned-in in hot rooms before the public saw them, which meant they were reliable. On the A3 the clock chips kept falling over. It is very difficult to underestimate how much of a sales draw it was to be seen as the most reliable machine, which we no longer could boast. This is also why IBM achieved market dominance at the time, I believe -- when sales of personal computers hit the knee curve in sales and headed for the stratosphere, IBM owned mind share for "reliable". Like everything else IBM at the time, they were known for utter crap computing environments that were brilliantly supported, and fell over marginally less often than the Apple ///. Sigh... if only those clock chips had been a bit more reliable, what a different world it would be.
Would very much like to agree, but I remember more people used spreadsheets as word processors than used word processors for spreadsheets.
Oh and don't forget Apple PIE, a word processor with an elegant way of getting around the fact that the first Apple ]['s didn't have a shift key. And it had a nifty padded binder, too, which made it look professional and could double as a desk pillow.
Don't think NETBIOS was a Microsoft original, but I believe NETBEUI was -- an early non-routable protocol written by a large Amerind named Frank Beaver I think.
Thanks, Aircheck... what I really needed to start my day at work was to have that tune running through my head. You're fired.
Umm...guys, VisiCalc first came out on Apple ]['s, not MS-DOS PC's. I worked at Apple during those years, and nearly every unit we sold was because of that app. 8086 PC's came in much later on in the piece. We were working on our first duck quack synthesizer when IBM brought out their competitor -- the one with the heavy steel plate in the keyboard to make it feel more solid (closest they could come to those big iron plates they put in the base of their mainframes).
Of course we never have problems like you describe because it never gets that cold in most parts of Australia. Generally we lose keys when the bower birds think they're pretty.
Maybe we just learned to hide food instead of sharing it. Hoarding as a survival skill? Possibly not the last primitive instinct we've kept past it's use-by date...
In Australia, it's fairly easy for a judge to classify an individual (client) as a "vexatious litigant" and require them to go through the courts to receive approval before they can bring suit against anyone, irrespective of their legal representation. We can't afford the court bandwidth to handle frivolous lawsuits, and judges here have little time for fools. Corporations are individuals in this context, I think (ianal). Does something along these lines appeal to the US judiciary? How difficult would it be to change that legal process in the USA?
Also might have had something to do with the local water table, which I have been told has something to do with signal propagation too.
Oh wait, incoming rez...
WW2 Submarines did... there's not a lot to a diesel generator. If you vent the exhaust and snorkel the air intake, a diesel running underwater would just run cooler. If the electricals are sealed and the cable points well-insulated (slap some sort of nonconductive goo on the bare metal bits) you could run a welder from underwater.
It seems that you can get one or two watts of transmitter to go amazing distances if you know a little antennae theory and know how to lay your hands on a reel of coax cable.
Long-wires, capacity hats, incredible things like directional-discontinuity ring radiators, very high tech that can be built with a few iron fence stakes and a bit of wire and a good head for geometry.
Astoundingly powerful communications technology for an extremely accessible cost. If you want to know more get an old ARRL handbook. Sort of like the older Boy Scout Handbooks from back in the days when they were useful, but cover all the basics of home-brew transmitters. Get one.
One of the problems ham radio faces in times of cataclysmic storm is the shape of the ionosphere at the time and place. It's used as a signal reflector. On good days you can whisper from Maine to Tokyo on a watt. On bad days, you can't punch through with 50MW unless you have line of sight.
Personally I'd go with "Arenak". Easy on the salt though, Mr. Seaton...
And of course they couldn't have called it the 586, because they added 100 to 486 and got 585.99912134 which marketing couldn't brand.
In other news, I'll be discussing the meaning of "I Bury Paul" from Magical Mystery Tour in a future blog entry. (Where's my roll of tinfoil?)
Sure. Whack a coil around the largest turbine and magnetize some rotating part. Voila', instant armature. Or MHD process from the plasma exiting the burn chamber at high speed? Shouldn't be hard to bulk transfer electrons from that sort of rotational kinetic. 20 plus tonnes of thrust - your generator is already there, you just have to wire it up.
Decades ago I worked for Logisticon (in Mountain View iirc). I walked in one morning at 11am (usual starting time) and a moment later I heard someone over the PA system say "There is no cause for alarm.". Just that. (I loved that company). Walked back outside (who wouldn't, after a confidence-inspiring message like that?) to see a B-52 aimed directly at me. After the moment I needed to say "Hey, that's a B-52 isn't it?" it opened it's bomb bay doors.
A few dozen fly-bys like that and I discovered the Moffat NAS / Nasa AAMES airshow was going on next door. Fly-ins are a genuine hoot, and should be encouraged.
Just out of curiosity, is there any value in considering re-use of any of the mothballed SR-71 technology to claw back some of that horizontal component? Those suckers can move. How would they compare to the SC mothership? Swords to ploughshares...
Now hang on, have they had an original idea since 1970? Or if they have, was the poor sod who came up with it able to get the draft past the marketing wall? I may be experiencing a cynic atttack at the moment, but I can't believe either of those firms would ever let a simple, cheap idea get past the account managers.
And in the deepest, darkest corner of the Crypt of Nadox where people were using local /say to discuss insider trading, a GM shows up and suspends their account for breach of EULA after reporting them to the SEC. And mom & pop investors would be limited to the mines of Gloomingdeep. The metaphor goes on a bit, doesn't it? Anything missing from the equation, other than the fact that Kobolds don't look good in neckties?
I don't know about murder, but people do suicide over it (a recent event in the stock exchange where I work confirmed this to me).
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of commonality between an MMORPG and the stock exchange. Hmm... you listening, Sony? I can imagine my level 63 Vah Shir warrior wandering into the main bank at PoK, right-clicking the banker and investing in the international equities market. All on the credit card. Corporate takeovers could be PvP raids. Thwack!
Use a Palm PDA to keep your notes, dedicate one to the sensitive project. They're cheap, and a good journo should know how to hide the expense. Keep the right-size paperclip handy for the total reset at need.