Problem is, technology like Folder Redirection is not perfect and can break without making it terribly obvious to users or administrators that it's broken. IT admin thinks that user profiles are synchronizing, users have been told that their stuff is being backed-up, but it hasn't worked for a couple of months and now the user's machine dies and it turns out that their stuff was not backed up.
I suppose this is a good point. I've been knocking around getting an XPS13 Developer Edition, it would be nice to have a model that Linux is entirely supported on, but with the price point coming in closer to $2000 than $1000 it's hard for me to justify it.
Users complain no matter what. Users lie too. These both must be considered when planning and implementing widescale IT policy.
In my experience it does not take a long time for users to get used to the replacement computer. It's usually within a matter of hours if the OS version remains the same, or a matter of days when the OS version changes. It takes longer for users to grow accustomed to the OS changing on the same machine than it takes for users to grow accustomed to a new machine with the same OS version.
The only times I've seen significant pushback is when software that they have used is no longer available. This is generally only a few users and generally only specific cases, and usually that software's functions are being migrated to another product.
I guess it's just dependent on how your organization is structured.
We have around a hundred facilities, I'd guess around 40,000 devices, at this point majority portables. We have perhaps eighteen regular desktop support technicians and a smattering of interns and other staff that do desktop support. There is a depot with dedicated staff for bench service but management has opted to use field-service where possible to reduce the need for loaners and the associated property-control paperwork headaches when tracked assets are moved around, especially when specific budgets paid for specific assets, or specific accessories like docking stations go only with certain models.
The depot guys often end up with the worst cases to fix, or to declare dead and then cannibalize for any few remaining good components. They're also the ones that attempt to solder when ports and other connectors get broken-off the all-in-one mainboards, so sometimes a unit with a dead port and no viable parts supply can be returned to service. They additionally do component-level repair for monitors for our few desktop computers, usually the ever-building supply of LCD panels with bulged and leaking capacitors, and sometimes they get to do UPS battery changeouts and recertifications when the PC-side is slow.
Surprisingly it was Dell. Don't remember the exact model off of the top of my head though. Even more amusingly the rep thought that the storage was soldered-on and swore up and down that it was not modular; when we opened up the machine we found that it was removable. That meant we could buy all units with the 128GB option and can just upgrade after-the-fact to larger storage for those few users that need it.
Even if it's not user-repairability, IT shops for sufficiently large organizations like being able to fix devices when they're damaged, or at least being able to retrieve user data.
We've basically migrated away from one vendor because they promised us portable computers that were serviceable and that there'd be parts availability. Instead we got portables that used a lot of adhesives, had a lot of integration where ports were on mainboards such that damage to ports would destroy the mainboard, and where parts were available they were extremely expensive and very slow to arrive. As a result we re-evaluated and switched to a different vendor, and in the eval process we disassembled machines and saw just how good claims of repair and reliability were. We ended up with machines with connectors on inexpensive and easily-replaced daughterboards, with modular storage, and with inexpensive replacement plastic housings. It's still expensive if a screen gets smashed, but if someone drops the laptop/convertible-tablet with a USB flash memory stick plugged in we don't necessarily have to replace the whole computer. We can replace a daughter-card with the USB and power input ports for $50, replace the broken bezel surrounding the keyboard for $30, not have to buy a $500 mainboard etc.
I doubt that Microsoft has created something that's unhackable, and since once a vulnerability is discovered it can usually be exploited through some automated process, it won't take l33t h4xx0rs to make use of stolen devices once an automated tool is in the wild.
My complaint about any device whose storage is soldered on is that if there's a physical fault, it may not be possible to retrieve the contents. And while the goal is for a "cloud" system, where the contents are backed-up, I neither trust the reliability of the network nor the security of the storage provider to ensure that my stuff is both backed-up and remains exclusively mine.
As far as I am aware geolocation is not that granular, even with phones using IPv6, and if I were a competitor and concerned that Amazon was going to do this with customers using my Internet hotspots I'd contract to a service to act as gateway that doesn't immediately indicate where the shopper is connecting from.
Based on your username I expect that you're of the same generation I am, and that the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out right about the time you were old enough to pay attention to video games.
For this generation an Atari 2600 would feel like a step backward, but for those who are only a few years older it might be just what they want, as it was the mainstream system when they were old enough to get into video games. In short, if it emulates the 2600 and even the 5200 or 7800 it would be aimed at children of the seventies more than children of the eighties.
I think I know what neighborhood in what city you live in. A barber-shop/hair-salon and cell-phone store went in where the gardening center used to be on the South side of the building, right?
Whole Foods is big, but they're not nearly as ubiquitous as other grocery stores. Arguably they border on the boutique when you consider the relatively few number of locations, the type of merchandise, and the prices. They do not cater to the mass-market crowd.
As for corporations, I learned to not idolize them when Sears started its long, slow descent into corporate suicide.
At least in Costco's case, their membership price is what's used to pay operating costs. It's the sales of merchandise that produce profit, but because the operating costs are covered, it doesn't take a lot of markup over cost to make that profit. In exchange it creates very loyal customers, so at least for now they're smart to not try to raise prices and upset the apple-cart.
Amazon's pricing is not based on that kind of model, as Prime does not account for enough revenue to pay for their operations.
Well, there is a theory (lowercase "t") that the periodic extinction events seen on Earth strongly correlate with a long-period orbit of something that swoops-in close enough to the Solar System to disturb Kuiper Belt objects, which sends them into the Inner Solar System to crash into the various planets and moons. A Brown Dwarf Star is generally the size of the object expected to cause this where we wouldn't be able to see it in our sky.
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. At one point grocery stores used to be somewhat all-purpose in suburban areas, sometimes they'd have a decent sit-down restaurant, a section with more housewares, sometimes clothing or a limited amount of furniture, etc. We even had a chain around here that folded-into Smiths, then Fred Meyer, and ultimately Kroger that had a garden section similar to what you'd find at a Home Depot or Lowes. At some point most of the stores did-away with these extra features except for a few that retained "Marketplace" tacked-on after the name of the store, but even those usually limited themselves to a little bit of interior decor and some housewares like you'd find at a Bed Bath and Beyond. Everyone basically pushed to the bottom, basically going to mostly food.
Now that trend seems to be reversing. Local grocery stores are even opening wine bars inside, plus restaurants and the like. The amount of non-food stuff hasn't grown yet but I'm curious if it will, if grocers expect people to get tired of making multiple stops. With Target and Walmart having increased the size of their grocery departments this sort of expansion within grocery stores might be a way of fighting-back against Target and Walmart.
It'll be curious if Amazon uses the grocery stores as a means to receive Amazon purchases quickly without having to have a Prime membership; if ship-to-store for next-day pickup on things that normally would require several days becomes a thing. That might be one of the ways to appeal to customers that might be able to afford Whole Foods pricing.
Perhaps, given that Amazon has like, two retail locations, the point of this is to prevent other sellers like, oh, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc, from being able to block retail customers from searching for Amazon pricing on items they find in-store?
'cause it seems to me that if a seller doesn't really have a brick-and-mortar presence, that this patent doesn't help them actively.
Sounds to me like it would have been a technology integrated into luxury automobiles. We already saw other tech like 12" phonographs in luxury automobiles, so it's not exactly a stretch to imagine such a thing being popular for businessmen in sufficiently lofty jobs where better communications would make for more decisions. On top of that automobiles have had generators or alternators since the nineteen-teens, when Cadillac adopted a Delco starter/generator unit, so something of a modern electrical system existed. I remember Dad's '40 Buick having a 6V generator, not the most sophisticated of devices, but it would have been enough to power a two-way radio like a cellular phone.
Early phones would have been huge, but as the usefulness was demonstrated companies would have sought to make them smaller. They might still have essentially remained carphones until the integrated-circuit era, but that doesn't mean that no one would have had them.
So were cell phones until almost the end of the analog era. Because of cell phones the FCC made it illegal to listen to certain frequencies that finally had been set aside for cell phones, and then made it illegal to sell scanners that could even listen to those frequencies.
The only difference with digital cell phones is that since you're encoding already, it's not exactly a burden to encrypt too, at least weakly enough that random third-parties cannot decode the communications between the phone as a transceiver and the tower as a transceiver as a matter of course.
For a time there were attempts to use spread-spectrum or spectrum-hopping to protect analog cell phone calls, but the technology didn't work as well as digital communications does.
Some have advocated changing just the filter, but since one has to add oil to make-up for the oil removed with the filter anyway, and since I'm already getting dirty under the car, I just change the oil when I change the filter.
I've knocked-around using a remote oil filter adapter on the Renegade, and throwing on one of those quarter-turn drain plugs to boot, but haven't done so yet.
The one-gallon grocery store milk/water bottles also work well for oil disposal, and my city will take the full jugs instead of requiring me to dump them into a tank like the auto parts store does. So probably once a year I take a few gallons of oil in.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is, technology like Folder Redirection is not perfect and can break without making it terribly obvious to users or administrators that it's broken. IT admin thinks that user profiles are synchronizing, users have been told that their stuff is being backed-up, but it hasn't worked for a couple of months and now the user's machine dies and it turns out that their stuff was not backed up.
Seen it firsthand.
I suppose this is a good point. I've been knocking around getting an XPS13 Developer Edition, it would be nice to have a model that Linux is entirely supported on, but with the price point coming in closer to $2000 than $1000 it's hard for me to justify it.
Users complain no matter what. Users lie too. These both must be considered when planning and implementing widescale IT policy.
In my experience it does not take a long time for users to get used to the replacement computer. It's usually within a matter of hours if the OS version remains the same, or a matter of days when the OS version changes. It takes longer for users to grow accustomed to the OS changing on the same machine than it takes for users to grow accustomed to a new machine with the same OS version.
The only times I've seen significant pushback is when software that they have used is no longer available. This is generally only a few users and generally only specific cases, and usually that software's functions are being migrated to another product.
I guess it's just dependent on how your organization is structured.
We have around a hundred facilities, I'd guess around 40,000 devices, at this point majority portables. We have perhaps eighteen regular desktop support technicians and a smattering of interns and other staff that do desktop support. There is a depot with dedicated staff for bench service but management has opted to use field-service where possible to reduce the need for loaners and the associated property-control paperwork headaches when tracked assets are moved around, especially when specific budgets paid for specific assets, or specific accessories like docking stations go only with certain models.
The depot guys often end up with the worst cases to fix, or to declare dead and then cannibalize for any few remaining good components. They're also the ones that attempt to solder when ports and other connectors get broken-off the all-in-one mainboards, so sometimes a unit with a dead port and no viable parts supply can be returned to service. They additionally do component-level repair for monitors for our few desktop computers, usually the ever-building supply of LCD panels with bulged and leaking capacitors, and sometimes they get to do UPS battery changeouts and recertifications when the PC-side is slow.
Surprisingly it was Dell. Don't remember the exact model off of the top of my head though. Even more amusingly the rep thought that the storage was soldered-on and swore up and down that it was not modular; when we opened up the machine we found that it was removable. That meant we could buy all units with the 128GB option and can just upgrade after-the-fact to larger storage for those few users that need it.
Heh. I'll use a voice-assistant when it runs locally and I have the ability to control what stores.
If it has to connect to someone else's server just to process then I'm sorry, I don't want it.
Same here. God we're getting old.
Even if it's not user-repairability, IT shops for sufficiently large organizations like being able to fix devices when they're damaged, or at least being able to retrieve user data.
We've basically migrated away from one vendor because they promised us portable computers that were serviceable and that there'd be parts availability. Instead we got portables that used a lot of adhesives, had a lot of integration where ports were on mainboards such that damage to ports would destroy the mainboard, and where parts were available they were extremely expensive and very slow to arrive. As a result we re-evaluated and switched to a different vendor, and in the eval process we disassembled machines and saw just how good claims of repair and reliability were. We ended up with machines with connectors on inexpensive and easily-replaced daughterboards, with modular storage, and with inexpensive replacement plastic housings. It's still expensive if a screen gets smashed, but if someone drops the laptop/convertible-tablet with a USB flash memory stick plugged in we don't necessarily have to replace the whole computer. We can replace a daughter-card with the USB and power input ports for $50, replace the broken bezel surrounding the keyboard for $30, not have to buy a $500 mainboard etc.
I doubt that Microsoft has created something that's unhackable, and since once a vulnerability is discovered it can usually be exploited through some automated process, it won't take l33t h4xx0rs to make use of stolen devices once an automated tool is in the wild.
My complaint about any device whose storage is soldered on is that if there's a physical fault, it may not be possible to retrieve the contents. And while the goal is for a "cloud" system, where the contents are backed-up, I neither trust the reliability of the network nor the security of the storage provider to ensure that my stuff is both backed-up and remains exclusively mine.
As far as I am aware geolocation is not that granular, even with phones using IPv6, and if I were a competitor and concerned that Amazon was going to do this with customers using my Internet hotspots I'd contract to a service to act as gateway that doesn't immediately indicate where the shopper is connecting from.
Based on your username I expect that you're of the same generation I am, and that the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out right about the time you were old enough to pay attention to video games.
For this generation an Atari 2600 would feel like a step backward, but for those who are only a few years older it might be just what they want, as it was the mainstream system when they were old enough to get into video games. In short, if it emulates the 2600 and even the 5200 or 7800 it would be aimed at children of the seventies more than children of the eighties.
I think I know what neighborhood in what city you live in. A barber-shop/hair-salon and cell-phone store went in where the gardening center used to be on the South side of the building, right?
True, but in exchange I suspect more people would expect even better prices on things.
Whole Foods is big, but they're not nearly as ubiquitous as other grocery stores. Arguably they border on the boutique when you consider the relatively few number of locations, the type of merchandise, and the prices. They do not cater to the mass-market crowd.
As for corporations, I learned to not idolize them when Sears started its long, slow descent into corporate suicide.
At least in Costco's case, their membership price is what's used to pay operating costs. It's the sales of merchandise that produce profit, but because the operating costs are covered, it doesn't take a lot of markup over cost to make that profit. In exchange it creates very loyal customers, so at least for now they're smart to not try to raise prices and upset the apple-cart.
Amazon's pricing is not based on that kind of model, as Prime does not account for enough revenue to pay for their operations.
Well, there is a theory (lowercase "t") that the periodic extinction events seen on Earth strongly correlate with a long-period orbit of something that swoops-in close enough to the Solar System to disturb Kuiper Belt objects, which sends them into the Inner Solar System to crash into the various planets and moons. A Brown Dwarf Star is generally the size of the object expected to cause this where we wouldn't be able to see it in our sky.
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. At one point grocery stores used to be somewhat all-purpose in suburban areas, sometimes they'd have a decent sit-down restaurant, a section with more housewares, sometimes clothing or a limited amount of furniture, etc. We even had a chain around here that folded-into Smiths, then Fred Meyer, and ultimately Kroger that had a garden section similar to what you'd find at a Home Depot or Lowes. At some point most of the stores did-away with these extra features except for a few that retained "Marketplace" tacked-on after the name of the store, but even those usually limited themselves to a little bit of interior decor and some housewares like you'd find at a Bed Bath and Beyond. Everyone basically pushed to the bottom, basically going to mostly food.
Now that trend seems to be reversing. Local grocery stores are even opening wine bars inside, plus restaurants and the like. The amount of non-food stuff hasn't grown yet but I'm curious if it will, if grocers expect people to get tired of making multiple stops. With Target and Walmart having increased the size of their grocery departments this sort of expansion within grocery stores might be a way of fighting-back against Target and Walmart.
It'll be curious if Amazon uses the grocery stores as a means to receive Amazon purchases quickly without having to have a Prime membership; if ship-to-store for next-day pickup on things that normally would require several days becomes a thing. That might be one of the ways to appeal to customers that might be able to afford Whole Foods pricing.
Albert Einstein didn't speak till he was more than 5 years old either. There was nothing wrong with him.
Sure there was. He married his first-cousin. Hell, he left his wife for his first-cousin.
No, that's what causes pandemics.
Are you saying we found Trump's Slashdot handle?
We did it Internet!
Perhaps, given that Amazon has like, two retail locations, the point of this is to prevent other sellers like, oh, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc, from being able to block retail customers from searching for Amazon pricing on items they find in-store?
'cause it seems to me that if a seller doesn't really have a brick-and-mortar presence, that this patent doesn't help them actively.
"Go home dad, you're drunk!"
Sounds to me like it would have been a technology integrated into luxury automobiles. We already saw other tech like 12" phonographs in luxury automobiles, so it's not exactly a stretch to imagine such a thing being popular for businessmen in sufficiently lofty jobs where better communications would make for more decisions. On top of that automobiles have had generators or alternators since the nineteen-teens, when Cadillac adopted a Delco starter/generator unit, so something of a modern electrical system existed. I remember Dad's '40 Buick having a 6V generator, not the most sophisticated of devices, but it would have been enough to power a two-way radio like a cellular phone.
Early phones would have been huge, but as the usefulness was demonstrated companies would have sought to make them smaller. They might still have essentially remained carphones until the integrated-circuit era, but that doesn't mean that no one would have had them.
So were cell phones until almost the end of the analog era. Because of cell phones the FCC made it illegal to listen to certain frequencies that finally had been set aside for cell phones, and then made it illegal to sell scanners that could even listen to those frequencies.
The only difference with digital cell phones is that since you're encoding already, it's not exactly a burden to encrypt too, at least weakly enough that random third-parties cannot decode the communications between the phone as a transceiver and the tower as a transceiver as a matter of course.
For a time there were attempts to use spread-spectrum or spectrum-hopping to protect analog cell phone calls, but the technology didn't work as well as digital communications does.
Some have advocated changing just the filter, but since one has to add oil to make-up for the oil removed with the filter anyway, and since I'm already getting dirty under the car, I just change the oil when I change the filter.
I've knocked-around using a remote oil filter adapter on the Renegade, and throwing on one of those quarter-turn drain plugs to boot, but haven't done so yet.
The one-gallon grocery store milk/water bottles also work well for oil disposal, and my city will take the full jugs instead of requiring me to dump them into a tank like the auto parts store does. So probably once a year I take a few gallons of oil in.