My wife's used to it.:) She eats a lot slower than I do so she doesn't mind that I have something to do instead of watching her take one painfully, agonizingly slow bite after another, like some kind of human eating sloth.
Besides, we had ourselves almost talked into thinking we had West Nile virus until I was able to call up the symptoms.
Not sure I'd trade
on
Handtop Roundup
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Those are some neat little units but I got an iPAQ 4355 with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and keyboard for 400 bucks. The keyboard isn't quite as useful as the fuller size ones but still quite good. For the functionality I get I'm not sure I'd spring for the extra 1,600 dollars. Not without a really good reason. If I need more storage I can add an expansion card, still far short of a handtop but enough for what I need.
Seems like the handtops might be in kind of a clumsy market nitch. For just a little more you can get a full blown laptop with more power and storage. For a lot less you can get a very functional PDA that does most of what you'd want a handtop to do with a longer battery life that's much easier to carry around. I could see uses for these, I'm just not sure it's a big market.
No, my iPAQ isn't Linux friendly. Had there been a Linux option for my iPAQ I'd certainly have opted for it. Hopefully HP will offer a Linux-based PDA to go with their Linux laptops. That would be a killer combination.
It was pretty funny last night. Having dinner at a Thai restaurant and decided just for grins to kick on the Wi-Fi link. To my surprise it found a network right away, an open wireless router at the mortgage company next door. Great thai food and high speed internet. Nice bonus.
That corporate culture would move from treating their customer base as a revenue source to treating them like criminals. What it really demonstrates is how little respect companies have for an individual customer.
And, really, why should they? MSFT knows that they'll lose a certain percentage of companies audited by BSA, but not all of them. And there will be more new ones to take their place. MSFT losing one customer is meaningless but the BSA action would likely boost licensing from a thousand others who heard about it.
RIAA gets a double bonus from their legal action. Not only does it scare away people sharing copyrighted music, but it also taints all downloaded music, even from legal sources. Can't have muscians getting popular outside the major labels, now can we?
The CD music business is hugely profitable and a collalition of five or six companies pretty much own the lift. The whole pipeline is set up to control prices. So the RIAA lawsuits protect that turf while they figure out how to squeeze even fatter profits out of iTunes and other legal download companies. The lawsuits will likely continue because there is no downside for the big labels. Unless you think our spineless Congress will step in and do something for the average citizen...HAHAHAHA! Don't hold your breath.
The only recourse I think consumers will have is to unionize. Consumer unions. Where groups of people band together to negotiate for something like cell service. I do that for some of my customers. Negotiate big software and service purchases. And, let me tell you, vendors would roll over and bark like dog if I asked them to. My customers get a better deal because they're buying in bulk. Consumer unions could do the same thing.
The downside would be, taking an example like cell service, everyone has different needs and wants different features. That's what fragments the union. Another problem is when the union leadership turns into AARP, which started selling its constituency instead of representing them. I personally get some pretty incredible offers from vendors, as would the leadership of a consumer union.
Still it has potential. A consumer union with enough members could pretty much dictate price and service terms, but it's like trying to herd cats keeping them together.
``I heard about a concept technology the other week. Why isn't in mass use or production already? Must be the President with an evil agenda.'' Get over yourself.
RTFA twitless. The research was sponsored by this off the wall organization called the Dept. of Energy and has been around almost 20 years. Many interesting alternative fuel research projects were started in the wake of the '74 oil crisis. We have a lot of options we're not exercising, but the algae oil is one of the few that has the potential to replace all our transportation energy.
It may not be an evil agenda but he's definitely not putting a lot of thinking into what he does. Which makes you two a perfect match.
And some day I want to run it on algae oil. This article was on/. not long ago.
We could grow almost all the oil we need, certainly enough to make a huge dent in imports, on a couple hundred square miles of the Senora Desert. I know it's ecologically sensitive but I think for oil independence the scorpions, mice and other critters can just deal with it.
Why aren't we doing this now? Guess it couldn't be because we have an oil family with connections to the Saudi Royal family in office? Or big oil companies with too much influence over elected officials? Nah, must be some other really good reason.
I've talked to these people, I think they could really do it. Probably could've built the whole project for about half of what we've spent on Iraq. So, which would get us farther? Invading Iraq or cutting back on our oil imports?
Companies all paying for the exact same software that does the exact same thing is economic insanity.
Say 100 companies all chip in a percentage of what they would've paid on license fees to improving OpenOffice with features they want. Yes, it costs them some money and yes, some other companies will get the benefit of those improvements for free. But they still save a ton of $$ and don't have to keep paying and paying and paying like you do with Microcrapware.
The basic problem - the reason why tech support in general (especially from a large company) is almost certain to suck whether it's in India, Wales, the United States or even Texas - is that people who are clueful don't want to do technical support.
Quite right. Makes me wonder if there's a market for premium ala carte tech support from very knowledgable users? If we can't figure out the solution you don't get charged. Sort of like dial-a-consultant for troubleshooting.
If I wasn't in the business, I'd certainly use something like that. It would be worth the extra money to me just on the aggravation factor. Besides, when you're out on the road and you need help, you need it right now.
Personally, I hope Hell never fixes their crappy support. One of the classes I teach is how to build your own PC. Ever since they shipped everything to India that class has been doing much better.
Crap service is going to undermine their reputation.
Then they could've carried these bastards through the Republican convention in chains as an example to the ever-shrinking part of the population that isn't already a federal criminal!
This the pre-election push to show Ashcroft's kinder, gentler side.
Oh, if those OSS people would just use a different license, then you'd get the backing of the business community. Ooooweeee.
Here's a clue for Businessweek and the rest of that crowd: Most OSS developers started their projects to be free from the advice and oversight of the business community. You're barking up the wrong tree.
OSS developers are professionals, they're business people themselves quite often. They're very good at what they do and have thought through the licensing issues a long time ago. You can't tell them what to do and it's never been about market share.
If you don't like the GPL, then don't use it. It's your loss. I think about a 100 companies chipping in to make improvements to OpenOffice. They get back a product that saves them thousands, maybe even millions in license fees. I'd call that a pretty good investment. Yes, other companies and people that didn't pay will get those improvements and savings as well. Too bad. You still saved millions, it's still a good deal and economically more efficient. Thousands of companies all paying for the same software that does the same thing is economic insanity.
The successful business model for that is SalesForce.com. I think there's a service market for big package systems like CRM, accounting, and HR. There are some big advantages to paying the developers to run the system. But I'm not so sure those economies apply to Office.
I think about our office, we don't even walk across the hall to another office, we Email each other. Our offices could be a thousand miles apart and we wouldn't know the difference. We already have places we can put documents for sharing and distribution, but it's just not needed all that often.
At least it sounds like MSFT learned from the Passport disaster. No one would trust MSFT with their corporate documents, and I don't think that's what this is about anyway.
I'm still having a hard time seeing a win here. What would be the compelling motivation to buy this? How much more collaboration do we really need? What real-world business problem does this solve? Another pony show to keep people occupied until they can get Longbone out the door.
The problem is that they never adjusted the insurance rates downwards to reflect these lowered accident rates, effectively giving their profits a big boost.
Remember all the billions software pirates were costing us honest users in higher prices? Seen your Windows OS prices go down lately? No?
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting damn tired of having my life run by corporate special interets. We pay all the bills and we're the ones getting fscked.
My wife and I were driving home from dinner and she pointed out that the music on the popular radio stations all sounded the same. The instruments, the type of singing, she called it modified grunge. Grunge Lite if you will. All angst and woe is me, which means they're probably singing about their record contracts. I used to joke Sarah Mclaughlin and Alanis Morissett were actually the same person working for different labels.
So at a time when they're suing thousands of their own customers...not a good business strategy IMHO...they're also cranking out really boring, insanely depressing music that all sounds like it was stamped out with an audio cookie cutter.
If this keeps up they'll have to give up the cocaine, private jets and porn star girlfriends! I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for them.
So, yeah, hit them back in the wallet. Go out and sample free downloads, there are thousands of legal songs you can check out. Here are a couple links to get you started:
www.goingware.com/tips/legal-downloads.html
music.download.com
irate.sourceforge.net
You can also shop at used CD stores. The only way you're going to get them to change is to stop buying their crap.
MSFT intends to patent a switch or button on the front or side of the machine that causes power to be restored to the machine if it is not currently operational and to cut off the power if the machine is operational
And people say MSFT doesn't invest in R&D. Brilliant!
It's not just the operating system but productivity software like OO, which helped one of my customers save enough on license fees to keep two full time people. That's two jobs that would've gone away and they still saved the value of a third FTE.
MSFT and Cap Gemini aren't exactly strangers:
www.crm2day.com/news/crm/EpApFEpAFyLJAFhzJR.php
I was going to look up what servers Cap Gemini run their web site with but can't get to Netcraft right at the present. I'd really laugh if they run Linux/Apache.
Let me get this straight
on
Latest SP2 News
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· Score: 3, Funny
The post service pack exploits are coming out before the service pack? Day 0 exploits are one thing but this is like a day -14 exploit.
Pretty soon we'll have Longhorn exploits coming out.
Guess I'm surprised people are so used to getting porked that steps like that are necessary to keep a box from being infected during an OS install.
Doesn't anyone else think this is absolutely insane? Not to mention that you still need virus, spyware and trojan programs to keep your machine working in any kind of order. I'm continually astounded that we just accept this as normal.
Although it does smack of show me your papers, I don't think that's the main issue. What the court is looking at is the executive branch issuing secret regulations that are not reviewable by the courts.
Privacy is becoming much more important in the age of identity theft. I went around with a cell phone provider on a service quote because I wouldn't give them my social security number. I tried to explain to them if I'm not claiming income from them, they don't get my social security number. First they said it was the law but once I questioned them about which law they backed off to it being company policy. The dentist office tried to claim the insurance company requires it, but all they really need is your group policy number and employee ID.
Google and nake chicks in the same magazine. There's something karmic about that. With so many people using Google to search for naked chicks it just seems...
I'd probably pick the engineering program instead of the CS department and focus on robotics and automated process engineering. If I stuck with CS it would again focus on robotic programming and embeded systems.
I think we're a little ahead of the curve for robitics technician but maybe not for industrial processes.
Outsource enough jobs to India and what other numbers would you expect? A lot of IT people...with a few notable exceptions...are generally pretty bright. Some had different careers before IT. Some of them went back to being male models and gigillos like they were before and many in college changed majors. Still more saw the hand writing on the wall and decided to set up a non-IT sideline career because you couldn't count on being able to make a living in the field if you lost your job.
It's like we never learn in this country. Dependence on foreign oil isn't bad enough, now we're dependent on foreign manufacturing...actually shipping entire factories including specialized equipment overseas. Now we're exporting mind share. Economists be blowed, I think this is a really dangerous trend. It's not being xenophobic to suggest that too much reliance on other countries, for anything, is a really bad idea.
I remember when I was a kid Disney was about immagination, about pushing the technology envelope, that the future was a better place and it was a fun place to work. Not anymore.
The only thing magic about Disney these days is their almost bottomless capacity for greed. Their products are unimaginative, formulaic and their theme parks are little better than entertainment sweat shops. Disney lawyers suing day care centers for having the audacity to paint one of their characters on a wall, DRM, the Bono Act. The list gets rather lengthy.
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My wife's used to it. :) She eats a lot slower than I do so she doesn't mind that I have something to do instead of watching her take one painfully, agonizingly slow bite after another, like some kind of human eating sloth.
Besides, we had ourselves almost talked into thinking we had West Nile virus until I was able to call up the symptoms.
Seems like the handtops might be in kind of a clumsy market nitch. For just a little more you can get a full blown laptop with more power and storage. For a lot less you can get a very functional PDA that does most of what you'd want a handtop to do with a longer battery life that's much easier to carry around. I could see uses for these, I'm just not sure it's a big market.
No, my iPAQ isn't Linux friendly. Had there been a Linux option for my iPAQ I'd certainly have opted for it. Hopefully HP will offer a Linux-based PDA to go with their Linux laptops. That would be a killer combination.
It was pretty funny last night. Having dinner at a Thai restaurant and decided just for grins to kick on the Wi-Fi link. To my surprise it found a network right away, an open wireless router at the mortgage company next door. Great thai food and high speed internet. Nice bonus.
And, really, why should they? MSFT knows that they'll lose a certain percentage of companies audited by BSA, but not all of them. And there will be more new ones to take their place. MSFT losing one customer is meaningless but the BSA action would likely boost licensing from a thousand others who heard about it.
RIAA gets a double bonus from their legal action. Not only does it scare away people sharing copyrighted music, but it also taints all downloaded music, even from legal sources. Can't have muscians getting popular outside the major labels, now can we?
The CD music business is hugely profitable and a collalition of five or six companies pretty much own the lift. The whole pipeline is set up to control prices. So the RIAA lawsuits protect that turf while they figure out how to squeeze even fatter profits out of iTunes and other legal download companies. The lawsuits will likely continue because there is no downside for the big labels. Unless you think our spineless Congress will step in and do something for the average citizen...HAHAHAHA! Don't hold your breath.
The only recourse I think consumers will have is to unionize. Consumer unions. Where groups of people band together to negotiate for something like cell service. I do that for some of my customers. Negotiate big software and service purchases. And, let me tell you, vendors would roll over and bark like dog if I asked them to. My customers get a better deal because they're buying in bulk. Consumer unions could do the same thing.
The downside would be, taking an example like cell service, everyone has different needs and wants different features. That's what fragments the union. Another problem is when the union leadership turns into AARP, which started selling its constituency instead of representing them. I personally get some pretty incredible offers from vendors, as would the leadership of a consumer union.
Still it has potential. A consumer union with enough members could pretty much dictate price and service terms, but it's like trying to herd cats keeping them together.
RTFA twitless. The research was sponsored by this off the wall organization called the Dept. of Energy and has been around almost 20 years. Many interesting alternative fuel research projects were started in the wake of the '74 oil crisis. We have a lot of options we're not exercising, but the algae oil is one of the few that has the potential to replace all our transportation energy.
It may not be an evil agenda but he's definitely not putting a lot of thinking into what he does. Which makes you two a perfect match.
We could grow almost all the oil we need, certainly enough to make a huge dent in imports, on a couple hundred square miles of the Senora Desert. I know it's ecologically sensitive but I think for oil independence the scorpions, mice and other critters can just deal with it.
Why aren't we doing this now? Guess it couldn't be because we have an oil family with connections to the Saudi Royal family in office? Or big oil companies with too much influence over elected officials? Nah, must be some other really good reason.
I've talked to these people, I think they could really do it. Probably could've built the whole project for about half of what we've spent on Iraq. So, which would get us farther? Invading Iraq or cutting back on our oil imports?
Say 100 companies all chip in a percentage of what they would've paid on license fees to improving OpenOffice with features they want. Yes, it costs them some money and yes, some other companies will get the benefit of those improvements for free. But they still save a ton of $$ and don't have to keep paying and paying and paying like you do with Microcrapware.
Quite right. Makes me wonder if there's a market for premium ala carte tech support from very knowledgable users? If we can't figure out the solution you don't get charged. Sort of like dial-a-consultant for troubleshooting.
If I wasn't in the business, I'd certainly use something like that. It would be worth the extra money to me just on the aggravation factor. Besides, when you're out on the road and you need help, you need it right now.
Personally, I hope Hell never fixes their crappy support. One of the classes I teach is how to build your own PC. Ever since they shipped everything to India that class has been doing much better.
Crap service is going to undermine their reputation.
This the pre-election push to show Ashcroft's kinder, gentler side.
Advertising has always played around the fringes of the truth, like system specs. But lately it's gone from stretching the truth to inventing it.
Here's a clue for Businessweek and the rest of that crowd: Most OSS developers started their projects to be free from the advice and oversight of the business community. You're barking up the wrong tree.
OSS developers are professionals, they're business people themselves quite often. They're very good at what they do and have thought through the licensing issues a long time ago. You can't tell them what to do and it's never been about market share.
If you don't like the GPL, then don't use it. It's your loss. I think about a 100 companies chipping in to make improvements to OpenOffice. They get back a product that saves them thousands, maybe even millions in license fees. I'd call that a pretty good investment. Yes, other companies and people that didn't pay will get those improvements and savings as well. Too bad. You still saved millions, it's still a good deal and economically more efficient. Thousands of companies all paying for the same software that does the same thing is economic insanity.
Invest in sanity, invest in OSS.
I think about our office, we don't even walk across the hall to another office, we Email each other. Our offices could be a thousand miles apart and we wouldn't know the difference. We already have places we can put documents for sharing and distribution, but it's just not needed all that often.
At least it sounds like MSFT learned from the Passport disaster. No one would trust MSFT with their corporate documents, and I don't think that's what this is about anyway.
I'm still having a hard time seeing a win here. What would be the compelling motivation to buy this? How much more collaboration do we really need? What real-world business problem does this solve? Another pony show to keep people occupied until they can get Longbone out the door.
Remember all the billions software pirates were costing us honest users in higher prices? Seen your Windows OS prices go down lately? No?
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting damn tired of having my life run by corporate special interets. We pay all the bills and we're the ones getting fscked.
So at a time when they're suing thousands of their own customers...not a good business strategy IMHO...they're also cranking out really boring, insanely depressing music that all sounds like it was stamped out with an audio cookie cutter.
If this keeps up they'll have to give up the cocaine, private jets and porn star girlfriends! I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for them.
So, yeah, hit them back in the wallet. Go out and sample free downloads, there are thousands of legal songs you can check out. Here are a couple links to get you started:
You can also shop at used CD stores. The only way you're going to get them to change is to stop buying their crap.
And people say MSFT doesn't invest in R&D. Brilliant!
MSFT and Cap Gemini aren't exactly strangers:
www.crm2day.com/news/crm/EpApFEpAFyLJAFhzJR.php
I was going to look up what servers Cap Gemini run their web site with but can't get to Netcraft right at the present. I'd really laugh if they run Linux/Apache.
Pretty soon we'll have Longhorn exploits coming out.
Guess I'm surprised people are so used to getting porked that steps like that are necessary to keep a box from being infected during an OS install.
Doesn't anyone else think this is absolutely insane? Not to mention that you still need virus, spyware and trojan programs to keep your machine working in any kind of order. I'm continually astounded that we just accept this as normal.
Privacy is becoming much more important in the age of identity theft. I went around with a cell phone provider on a service quote because I wouldn't give them my social security number. I tried to explain to them if I'm not claiming income from them, they don't get my social security number. First they said it was the law but once I questioned them about which law they backed off to it being company policy. The dentist office tried to claim the insurance company requires it, but all they really need is your group policy number and employee ID.
What color is the sky on your planet? lol.
A false sense of security. lol. At least it will stop most of the exploits out in the world now. That should cut down some of the background noise.
...appropriate.
Is exactly what you get in an organization when the problem is dictating the solution.
I think we're a little ahead of the curve for robitics technician but maybe not for industrial processes.
It's like we never learn in this country. Dependence on foreign oil isn't bad enough, now we're dependent on foreign manufacturing...actually shipping entire factories including specialized equipment overseas. Now we're exporting mind share. Economists be blowed, I think this is a really dangerous trend. It's not being xenophobic to suggest that too much reliance on other countries, for anything, is a really bad idea.
The only thing magic about Disney these days is their almost bottomless capacity for greed. Their products are unimaginative, formulaic and their theme parks are little better than entertainment sweat shops. Disney lawyers suing day care centers for having the audacity to paint one of their characters on a wall, DRM, the Bono Act. The list gets rather lengthy.
A greedy, ugly, disgusting company.