As an atheist who lives in rural Illinois, where there are plenty of bible thumpers, I would be happy to have a much faster internet connection. It would also hopefully educate the uneducated masses here about such evil sites like the pandas thumb which would help them become less thumperish.
I do not think that you are remembering things clearly. Rambus was competing with the original DDR, not DDR2. Yes, the original Rambus was slightly faster than DDR, but with horrible latency issues compared to it. Read some chipset reviews for a VIA DDR chipset on a P IV vs Rambus. Also, Rambus was originally shoved down or throats by Intel on the Pentium III (or at least they tried). Rambus was also a lot more expensive to manufacture being a totally new design, while DDR was an extension of standard SDRAM. Much like how HD-DVD was cheaper to make than Blu-Ray being an extension of an existing process.
Also, I believe that Rambus originally went after the memory makers for DDR, not just DDR2. So yes, after latency was taken care of in streaming, it was faster, but it was never cheaper.
It is not that corporations cannot take most employee compensation as a deduction, only "excessive"amounts. I heard about the maximum deductible compensation from my CPA. I do not have a year or IRS reference as there are so many google hits on the topic. However, my CPA dealt mainly with corporate and small business taxes over the past 40 years. He probably has a better grasp of the changes than most people.
Then again, I could also be remembering what he said wrong.
That was what I saw happening when I worked there. When they bough in Lenny, from a fast food place, a lot of high profit, but not neccissarily high dollar customers got angry. We made more on a couple of packs of fuses and batteries than we did a computer quite often, unless the service plan was sold.
Yeah, I know, the "when I was a young 'un" thing is probably true, but take a look at their financial history, I think it speaks for itself. And again, go into a store, try to find fuses, transistors, resistors, or better yet, am employee that knows anything about them.
I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense. Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws. In comes stock bonuses and stock options. The problem with that is that a highly paid employee (most likely a decision maker) will do what is best for them, which is kick up the stock price so that they get higher effective pay. Easy way to do that, kill long term R&D. In addition with companies hiring people with business BS degrees who then get an MBA to manage, instead of the engineers, everything is looked at on the current P&L statement, not the 10+ year roadmap.
The combination of the higher ups wanting short term profits due to changes in tax law, along with many fewer R&D companies (HP for example) having engineers and technical people making decisions has decimated R&D.
I remember when HP meant test equipment and awesome calculators, not lousy consumer based computers (Thanks Carly). Another example, don't laugh too hard, is Radio Shack. I used to work for Radio Shack in the late 80's and the early 90's. When I started, they actually had R&D (they had a dye based CD-R technology they were working on, but had RIAA type problems with), manufacturing, a lot of electronic components, etc. When the founder of Tandy died, the MBA style management came in. They started off selling manufacturing, as that was not part of the "Core Business", sold off the credit card division, which made a nice one time profit, that then really made customers made because of lack of customer service, and lowered sales because of tighter credit requirements. They stopped carrying a lot of small parts, because of the low dollar value, regardless if they were high profit. In short, Charles Tandy, the leather salesman, ran it better and more profitably than the "business school" people that were bought in because he understood the business.
We need to find a way to encourage the people who know the business they are in to get higher up and make decisions, rather than feeding the orgy of MBA's and people with business degrees that now rule most companies. As to how, I have very little in the way of ideas, but I think some tax law encouraging long term and pure science R&D would be helpful, if it could not be bastardized for other purposes (yeah, I know, a pipe dream).
Or, they could do what has been done with more than one song in the game, have the original artist record a new version of the song for the game. Hello There by Cheap Trick on... I don't remember which game, is a newer recorder version of the original song. That version was never released by a record company, just the band. I think that is a great way for the artist to actually get compensated also, cut out the middle man. If that band still has it's chops it is an awesome solution. And as far as the Cheap Trick song goes, the newer version totally rocks out in comparison to the original.
I will admit, I own a Zune. I got an 8GB model for Christmas this year (and yes, that is what I asked for). I have used iTunes (my Mother in law has an iPod) and the Zune software. I found the Zune software much more user friendly than iTunes and less bloated. The hardware seems solid, it has fast response, is easy to navigate, and good sound quality. I would be sad to see Microsoft drop the Zune line.
Too many people in the world are oblivious to the fact that there are other options except for an iPod. My wife has a 5 year old Creative Zen 8GB (HD based) that still works fine, and for Christmas she got a 16GB xFi model. We are happy with them. I just with more people would give them a chance.
I think the thing Apple really got right with the iPod is the marketing, and ease of buying songs (though the Zune market place is easy also, and you can buy songs from the Zune if you have WiFi setup on it). I do not think the controls are anything revolutionary, as Creative had a similar control theme before Apple. However, I think that iPod is as synonymous with MP3/portable media players as the name Xerox is with copiers (or at least used to be). I think over time it will change to where the iPod is no longer the dominant player, but it will take time.
The Windows target may change, but most well written programs written to API's and system variables instead of hard coded paths will work with all versions of Windows from 98/NT on. And as far as msi, exe and cab files go, the msi format has been used since Windows 2000, and cab files are just another compression format.
A well written program from 1998 will still work and install today.
There is an easy solution for that. For any changes in the protected directories I start up a command prompt as administrator, and do it all command line. No UAC prompts, and quite often quicker than the graphical method. cacls is also quite useful for permissions.
I normally keep a run as administrator window open for any system changes I want to make. However, still keeps the UAC there for anything unexpected that is trying to change system files.
Re:One thing I have noticed
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I know this first hand. I was an IT admin who was taking care of things with very few problems. I had a poor review from the business manager due to what he said was low productivity. In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything. He never saw the preventative maintenance and testing that I performed that kept it running well.
The problem is not 25 year old buildings, it is almost 60 and 100 year old buildings. I live in a small town in the midwest and our high school is almost 100 years old with additions and renovations, same with the middle school, and the elementary school is a young almost 60 years old. We need new buildings, but cannot get referendums passed. Yes, the building does make a difference if there is inadequate electrical or data, or if it is about 100 in the school in August and September. Our US House rep's district has much wealthier and bigger towns and would not bother to do anything for us country bumkins.
And as far as curriculum goes, at least here most of it is dictated by the state board of education. The problem with centralized curriculum is that the curriculum in a farming/small industrial town of 2000 (300 people in the high school, and that is 3 towns combined for the district) will be vastly different than that of a school that has 4000 students. There does need to be localization.
Actually, they are not pandering to the people making minimum wage. They are pandering to the unions, where too many contracts and prevailing wages are based somewhat on the minimum wage and seniority, rather than the actual ability to do a job well.
It may void the warranty, but are you going to try to tell me that any computer made in the past 5 years (and under warranty) came with smaller than a 10GB drive?? Even my Blueberry IBook (original series) came with a 4GB drive.
I don't know of any manufacturer that offers support for more than 5 years except on rather specialized equipment.
I thuroughly agree with that comment. My grades in HS in English were mediocre at best, yet when it came to comp II in college, I ended up with an A with accolades from the instructor, with a very similar writing style to my HS style. At my HS, length mattered more than content.
When it came to GRE time though, I only hade a 530 in English. However, since I was going to grad school to teach physics and math, they did not look at that part of the score. For reference, I had a 750 on the math part of the GRE. I never took the SAT, only ACT and GRE.
Please excuse any incoherent ramblings, I am off to bed in about 2 minutes.
Re:Am I just being overly simplistic...
on
IPv6 Essentials
·
· Score: 1
Don't just unlock the 127 network. Take a look sometime at how many addresses are "reserved". I think almost half of the Class A addresses are "ARIN reserved", plus a good chunk of the rest of the address space. Go to www.arin.net to check it out. Try typing in 1.0.0.0, or 2.0.0.0, or 5.0.0.0,... etc for an address. Also, look at how many Class A addresses the DOD has.
You must changed the default browser settings for Server 2003. Every one I have used by default turns off all active content, including js when you log in. It can be a pain, but it does severly limit damage when visiting websites.
I think that Liberal Arts courses are normally good for students.
I have a degree in electrical engineering (now working as a Network Admin at a small college), with a music minor, and also took extra business classes (accounting and management). I feel that well rounded people make better employees because they better understand other people and are also better at seeing the big picture in a business.
I would tend to disagree with that. If you put in a blank CD, Windows xP will ask you what to do with it, ie make a music cd, etc. Also, if you put in a DVD without a DVD codec installed, it will tell you that you need to install a DVD codec, and if I remember correctly take you to a web page that lists available DVD programs for windows (it has been a while).
Again, how is this intuitive. How is a new user supposed to know that Synaptic Package Manager is for managing applications? How is that intuitive at all?? I will admit that I am primarily a Windows user (work and kids games), however I do use a Mac on a regular basis and occasionaly Linux. Until Linux has controls and applications that are more intuitive, such as "Add and Remove Programs", I think that it will have a hard time gaining much more than enthusiast and limited corporate users.
As a person with a degree in Electrical Engineering, who then went to grad school for secondary ed physics and math, I found that the classes that helped my writing the most were those classes that a lot of people dread, the gen-ed classes. I found that my Pscychology, the grad level Education classes, and anthropology type classes really improved my writing. The reason is that I was made to work outside of my comfort level of math and physics, and actually do reasearch, put coherent thoughts together, and think about what I was writing.
I never had much of a problem with clarity in my writings, and personally I prefer to write things for clarity. However, in the business world, presenting ideas with "elegance and grace" and a good pitch will often get your proposal more consideration than just pure clarity.
Final reccomendation, make them learn to use more colorful word choices, and write on things that they may be interested in, but do not have any great knowledge of.
I do not think that it is a case of not being understood by co-workers, it is more of a case of trying to impress them. Even though I have the ability to use all of the popular corporate catch phrases of the day, I prefer not to use them, as most of them are politically correct double speak that says absolutely nothing in a fancy flourish of words. It may have held me back a little bit, but I think that when communicating with non IT people clear use of traditional language will get you just about as far as corporate speak will.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, not quite awake yet!
I guess you have not used OWA on Exchange 2007 then. It works just peachy on Chrome and Firefox. Gives all the context menus and looks the same.
As an atheist who lives in rural Illinois, where there are plenty of bible thumpers, I would be happy to have a much faster internet connection. It would also hopefully educate the uneducated masses here about such evil sites like the pandas thumb which would help them become less thumperish.
I do not think that you are remembering things clearly. Rambus was competing with the original DDR, not DDR2. Yes, the original Rambus was slightly faster than DDR, but with horrible latency issues compared to it. Read some chipset reviews for a VIA DDR chipset on a P IV vs Rambus. Also, Rambus was originally shoved down or throats by Intel on the Pentium III (or at least they tried). Rambus was also a lot more expensive to manufacture being a totally new design, while DDR was an extension of standard SDRAM. Much like how HD-DVD was cheaper to make than Blu-Ray being an extension of an existing process.
Also, I believe that Rambus originally went after the memory makers for DDR, not just DDR2. So yes, after latency was taken care of in streaming, it was faster, but it was never cheaper.
I suggest you read the comments from the readers of that article, ripping the author's inaccuracies, before making such a statement.
It is not that corporations cannot take most employee compensation as a deduction, only "excessive"amounts. I heard about the maximum deductible compensation from my CPA. I do not have a year or IRS reference as there are so many google hits on the topic. However, my CPA dealt mainly with corporate and small business taxes over the past 40 years. He probably has a better grasp of the changes than most people.
Then again, I could also be remembering what he said wrong.
That was what I saw happening when I worked there. When they bough in Lenny, from a fast food place, a lot of high profit, but not neccissarily high dollar customers got angry. We made more on a couple of packs of fuses and batteries than we did a computer quite often, unless the service plan was sold.
Yeah, I know, the "when I was a young 'un" thing is probably true, but take a look at their financial history, I think it speaks for itself. And again, go into a store, try to find fuses, transistors, resistors, or better yet, am employee that knows anything about them.
I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense. Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws. In comes stock bonuses and stock options. The problem with that is that a highly paid employee (most likely a decision maker) will do what is best for them, which is kick up the stock price so that they get higher effective pay. Easy way to do that, kill long term R&D. In addition with companies hiring people with business BS degrees who then get an MBA to manage, instead of the engineers, everything is looked at on the current P&L statement, not the 10+ year roadmap.
The combination of the higher ups wanting short term profits due to changes in tax law, along with many fewer R&D companies (HP for example) having engineers and technical people making decisions has decimated R&D.
I remember when HP meant test equipment and awesome calculators, not lousy consumer based computers (Thanks Carly). Another example, don't laugh too hard, is Radio Shack. I used to work for Radio Shack in the late 80's and the early 90's. When I started, they actually had R&D (they had a dye based CD-R technology they were working on, but had RIAA type problems with), manufacturing, a lot of electronic components, etc. When the founder of Tandy died, the MBA style management came in. They started off selling manufacturing, as that was not part of the "Core Business", sold off the credit card division, which made a nice one time profit, that then really made customers made because of lack of customer service, and lowered sales because of tighter credit requirements. They stopped carrying a lot of small parts, because of the low dollar value, regardless if they were high profit. In short, Charles Tandy, the leather salesman, ran it better and more profitably than the "business school" people that were bought in because he understood the business. We need to find a way to encourage the people who know the business they are in to get higher up and make decisions, rather than feeding the orgy of MBA's and people with business degrees that now rule most companies. As to how, I have very little in the way of ideas, but I think some tax law encouraging long term and pure science R&D would be helpful, if it could not be bastardized for other purposes (yeah, I know, a pipe dream).
Or, they could do what has been done with more than one song in the game, have the original artist record a new version of the song for the game. Hello There by Cheap Trick on... I don't remember which game, is a newer recorder version of the original song. That version was never released by a record company, just the band. I think that is a great way for the artist to actually get compensated also, cut out the middle man. If that band still has it's chops it is an awesome solution. And as far as the Cheap Trick song goes, the newer version totally rocks out in comparison to the original.
I will admit, I own a Zune. I got an 8GB model for Christmas this year (and yes, that is what I asked for). I have used iTunes (my Mother in law has an iPod) and the Zune software. I found the Zune software much more user friendly than iTunes and less bloated. The hardware seems solid, it has fast response, is easy to navigate, and good sound quality. I would be sad to see Microsoft drop the Zune line.
Too many people in the world are oblivious to the fact that there are other options except for an iPod. My wife has a 5 year old Creative Zen 8GB (HD based) that still works fine, and for Christmas she got a 16GB xFi model. We are happy with them. I just with more people would give them a chance.
I think the thing Apple really got right with the iPod is the marketing, and ease of buying songs (though the Zune market place is easy also, and you can buy songs from the Zune if you have WiFi setup on it). I do not think the controls are anything revolutionary, as Creative had a similar control theme before Apple. However, I think that iPod is as synonymous with MP3/portable media players as the name Xerox is with copiers (or at least used to be). I think over time it will change to where the iPod is no longer the dominant player, but it will take time.
The Windows target may change, but most well written programs written to API's and system variables instead of hard coded paths will work with all versions of Windows from 98/NT on. And as far as msi, exe and cab files go, the msi format has been used since Windows 2000, and cab files are just another compression format.
A well written program from 1998 will still work and install today.
There is an easy solution for that. For any changes in the protected directories I start up a command prompt as administrator, and do it all command line. No UAC prompts, and quite often quicker than the graphical method. cacls is also quite useful for permissions.
I normally keep a run as administrator window open for any system changes I want to make. However, still keeps the UAC there for anything unexpected that is trying to change system files.
I know this first hand. I was an IT admin who was taking care of things with very few problems. I had a poor review from the business manager due to what he said was low productivity. In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything. He never saw the preventative maintenance and testing that I performed that kept it running well.
The problem is not 25 year old buildings, it is almost 60 and 100 year old buildings. I live in a small town in the midwest and our high school is almost 100 years old with additions and renovations, same with the middle school, and the elementary school is a young almost 60 years old. We need new buildings, but cannot get referendums passed. Yes, the building does make a difference if there is inadequate electrical or data, or if it is about 100 in the school in August and September. Our US House rep's district has much wealthier and bigger towns and would not bother to do anything for us country bumkins.
And as far as curriculum goes, at least here most of it is dictated by the state board of education. The problem with centralized curriculum is that the curriculum in a farming/small industrial town of 2000 (300 people in the high school, and that is 3 towns combined for the district) will be vastly different than that of a school that has 4000 students. There does need to be localization.
No, that is not quite correct.
It should be, AT &AT &C1D2 &ScrewU2
Actually, they are not pandering to the people making minimum wage. They are pandering to the unions, where too many contracts and prevailing wages are based somewhat on the minimum wage and seniority, rather than the actual ability to do a job well.
It may void the warranty, but are you going to try to tell me that any computer made in the past 5 years (and under warranty) came with smaller than a 10GB drive?? Even my Blueberry IBook (original series) came with a 4GB drive.
I don't know of any manufacturer that offers support for more than 5 years except on rather specialized equipment.
I thuroughly agree with that comment. My grades in HS in English were mediocre at best, yet when it came to comp II in college, I ended up with an A with accolades from the instructor, with a very similar writing style to my HS style. At my HS, length mattered more than content.
When it came to GRE time though, I only hade a 530 in English. However, since I was going to grad school to teach physics and math, they did not look at that part of the score. For reference, I had a 750 on the math part of the GRE. I never took the SAT, only ACT and GRE.
Please excuse any incoherent ramblings, I am off to bed in about 2 minutes.
Don't just unlock the 127 network. Take a look sometime at how many addresses are "reserved". I think almost half of the Class A addresses are "ARIN reserved", plus a good chunk of the rest of the address space. Go to www.arin.net to check it out. Try typing in 1.0.0.0, or 2.0.0.0, or 5.0.0.0, ... etc for an address. Also, look at how many Class A addresses the DOD has.
There is no real shortage for the US, yet.
You must changed the default browser settings for Server 2003. Every one I have used by default turns off all active content, including js when you log in. It can be a pain, but it does severly limit damage when visiting websites.
I think that Liberal Arts courses are normally good for students.
I have a degree in electrical engineering (now working as a Network Admin at a small college), with a music minor, and also took extra business classes (accounting and management). I feel that well rounded people make better employees because they better understand other people and are also better at seeing the big picture in a business.
I would tend to disagree with that. If you put in a blank CD, Windows xP will ask you what to do with it, ie make a music cd, etc. Also, if you put in a DVD without a DVD codec installed, it will tell you that you need to install a DVD codec, and if I remember correctly take you to a web page that lists available DVD programs for windows (it has been a while).
Again, how is this intuitive. How is a new user supposed to know that Synaptic Package Manager is for managing applications? How is that intuitive at all?? I will admit that I am primarily a Windows user (work and kids games), however I do use a Mac on a regular basis and occasionaly Linux. Until Linux has controls and applications that are more intuitive, such as "Add and Remove Programs", I think that it will have a hard time gaining much more than enthusiast and limited corporate users.
As a person with a degree in Electrical Engineering, who then went to grad school for secondary ed physics and math, I found that the classes that helped my writing the most were those classes that a lot of people dread, the gen-ed classes. I found that my Pscychology, the grad level Education classes, and anthropology type classes really improved my writing. The reason is that I was made to work outside of my comfort level of math and physics, and actually do reasearch, put coherent thoughts together, and think about what I was writing. I never had much of a problem with clarity in my writings, and personally I prefer to write things for clarity. However, in the business world, presenting ideas with "elegance and grace" and a good pitch will often get your proposal more consideration than just pure clarity. Final reccomendation, make them learn to use more colorful word choices, and write on things that they may be interested in, but do not have any great knowledge of.
I do not think that it is a case of not being understood by co-workers, it is more of a case of trying to impress them. Even though I have the ability to use all of the popular corporate catch phrases of the day, I prefer not to use them, as most of them are politically correct double speak that says absolutely nothing in a fancy flourish of words. It may have held me back a little bit, but I think that when communicating with non IT people clear use of traditional language will get you just about as far as corporate speak will.