Unless of course you want to tell your client "Well, if I wasn't so damn cheap I'd be able to see the spreadsheet you just sent me. Can you install Open Office, resave it, redo your graphs and email that back to me, please?"
Just 'cause something is free doesn't mean it's good. Looking like a clown and losing business has a cost.
That's a really good idea! It's great for jogging. Thanks to you, I've just invented an alternative to traditional jogging hand-weights: Imagine a handle, and at either end is "spool" storage for 25 disks. You can then jog along, have 100 CD's at your disposal AND get a great upper body workout.
Of course, shuffling songs between disks may take a bit of dexterity, but that's just another benefit! Before you know it, you'll be seamlessly mixing tunes as you go!
Thanks for the tremendous idea. It's amazing how coporate America can create these artificial needs in an attempt to bilk us out of $100's of dollars.
Steve Jobs knew this from the outset. Accorting to a Fortune article, he went to the labels and said "Look, we have some really smart people who know this drm stuff down cold, and you can't stop it. What makes it worse, is that once you have the key you can unlock every door". He used this as the justification for an uncomplicated scheme.
Getting hacked would therefore come as no big surprise to Apple/Jobs. But when you add it up: Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble.
The iTunes model is so open, there is little reason to hack it. Of those who would want to, you then have a subset of those with the skills to do so, and you end up with an insignificant number.
The new MS model, with an expiration date, screams for a hack. But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...
Sir, I have some bad news... the building collapsed and your family is dead.
The good news is: (handing card) Lionel Hutz, Attoney at Law! Sir, today is your lucky day!
Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers. Because of the incorporation techniques that they use, getting sued is essentially no problem. They hide behind the corporate veil and just declare bankruptcy for the shell corporation that built that 30 story condo building that now leaks like a sieve. That's if the company hasn't been wound down by the time the problem crops up.
Using tort is completely reactive. The burden on police, fire, hospitals and the legal system itself is only increased because the building has already burnt down. Standards are preventative.
IBM is the #3 server vendor in the world behind HP and Dell. They have about 15% market share. IBM has been investing billions into Linux and the types of servers that would support it best (notably blade servers -- perfect for grids).
In December 2000 IBM committed to invest $1Billion in Linux software, hardware, services, the open source community and partnerships during 2001. That's only 2001! If anything, they have only increase their rate of investment.
Add to all of this their strong commitment to WebSphere and Java, and you have a company that has more than embraced Linux. When IBM invested 2.5 Billion in a new semiconductor manufacturing facility,they automated the facility using Linux.
Come back to our world where Big Blue is bigger & bluer than ever!
According to an
Apple Insider article, Apple is already ahead of this game. They will deliver sooner, at a lower cost, and very likely a better product. Guesses (aren't they always with Apple?) include an intro around April 28 for the first anniversary of the iTMS.
Sources: Apple readying 4th-generation iPod
(snip)
While sources could not pin-point a specific day or month of introduction, they said the soon to be released player would boast a 50GB hard disk capable of holding 12,500 songs and carry an approximate cost of $499.
Unlike the recent capacity-centric revisions to the iPod line, the 4th-generation iPod will host a number of architectural advancements and new features. Most apparent, sources say, is the presence of a 2-inch color screen for displaying photos stored on the pod, from the palm of your hand.
The player will reportedly also adopt a video output jack that will allow users to connect their iPods to television sets, sources said. Meanwhile, no mention was made in regards to an output jack capable of relaying audio to a home entertainment center.
(/snip)
Oh, OK. That makes sense. For a minute I thought that they were funding the effort. Instead they are paying them for a license that no other corporation believes is valid.
I hear that MS hired Oliver North as a consultant to purchase the licenses. When prompted, Steve Balmer "could not recall" any such arrangement.
There is nothing wrong with paid inclusion. Inktomi has been doing it for ages. You used to be able to submit to Inktomi for free via Hotbot, but that got cut off.
Some services (Inktomi again, I think) allow you to pay for "deep searching". The spider will crawl deeper into your site and index more pages.
There are two ways to view this. On one hand, being indexed provides a benefit to the publisher. But doing the indexing takes $ and resources. This practice says that they'll index more, but for a price.
However, it will create more pages from sites with the financial resources to pay for the crawling. This could tilt results towards commercial sites.
Regardless, searches couldn't get worse. It seems like shopping portals have dominated the search results lately.
There were two deficiencies: Size and synchronization.
Part of what made the Palm succeed was size, but just as much the one-button-sync to your desktop applications.
As usual, Apple ignored the Windows user, believed that the Newton was a computing platform all of its own and provided an exceptionally weak sync solution. If I remember right, there was no straighforward way to link your calendar on Win. Outlink and one other solution came along later, but it was too little, too late. That stuff needed to be in the box.
Size was an issue with day-to-day carrying, but from a business standpoint where you have a briefcase anyhow, it wasn't. The larger screen is what made the Newton versatile. I cannot enter lots of text into a PocketPC with transcriber or Calligrapher because you just run out of space. It's like tyring to write on a playing card.
To date, no PDA has risen to the usability level of the Newton. We all talk about "intuitive" and Apple really created an intuitive device. Show me a PDA where I can drag-n-drop text for copy/paste, or scrub text to erase it ( and see a Poof! animation to boot) and then we'll talk.
That's why I've moved to Vivisimo:
- meta search that hits all the best engines (customizable)
- Really basic front page (Google-esque) and a good advanced page
- Clusters results in to categories so you can easily filter the relevant stuff out.
- Lots of other nifty tools, like page preview right from the search results page.
Dogpile also uses Vivisimo's technology, but overall I find Vivisimo more usable (better tree, fewer graphics).
Because I get my Google results through Vivisimo (it searches Netscape, which uses Google), I never use traditional engines except for comparison purposes, category browsin and, of course, Google Groups.
Not to mention, SCO's market cap is only $250 million. If any of the big boys started to see a risk of losing, some form of hostile takeover would likely result. IBM (or a coalition) would only need to gain half the shares (or possibly less) to make the whole problem go away.
We currently use a product called DevTrack from Tech Excel. It's pretty decent, configurable and supports workflow.
That being said, they're getting greedy by calling it an "enterprise" product and jacking up the price. This puts them into the same price/space as Remedy, and in comparison they are not as good. We use Remedy for our tech support and will probably deploy it out to the development and production application support groups for tracking there.
Also don't forget the products from Merant: Stuff in the PVCS suite and the new Dimensions product. I have not investigated any of these much, but Dimensions seems quite sophisticated.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless of course you want to tell your client "Well, if I wasn't so damn cheap I'd be able to see the spreadsheet you just sent me. Can you install Open Office, resave it, redo your graphs and email that back to me, please?"
Just 'cause something is free doesn't mean it's good. Looking like a clown and losing business has a cost.
That's a really good idea! It's great for jogging. Thanks to you, I've just invented an alternative to traditional jogging hand-weights: Imagine a handle, and at either end is "spool" storage for 25 disks. You can then jog along, have 100 CD's at your disposal AND get a great upper body workout.
Of course, shuffling songs between disks may take a bit of dexterity, but that's just another benefit! Before you know it, you'll be seamlessly mixing tunes as you go!
Thanks for the tremendous idea. It's amazing how coporate America can create these artificial needs in an attempt to bilk us out of $100's of dollars.
Steve Jobs knew this from the outset. Accorting to a Fortune article, he went to the labels and said "Look, we have some really smart people who know this drm stuff down cold, and you can't stop it. What makes it worse, is that once you have the key you can unlock every door". He used this as the justification for an uncomplicated scheme.
Getting hacked would therefore come as no big surprise to Apple/Jobs. But when you add it up:
Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble.
The iTunes model is so open, there is little reason to hack it. Of those who would want to, you then have a subset of those with the skills to do so, and you end up with an insignificant number.
The new MS model, with an expiration date, screams for a hack. But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...
Sir, I have some bad news... the building collapsed and your family is dead.
The good news is: (handing card) Lionel Hutz, Attoney at Law! Sir, today is your lucky day!
Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers. Because of the incorporation techniques that they use, getting sued is essentially no problem. They hide behind the corporate veil and just declare bankruptcy for the shell corporation that built that 30 story condo building that now leaks like a sieve. That's if the company hasn't been wound down by the time the problem crops up.
Using tort is completely reactive. The burden on police, fire, hospitals and the legal system itself is only increased because the building has already burnt down. Standards are preventative.
Out of the IT World? More like off of the planet!
IBM is the #3 server vendor in the world behind HP and Dell. They have about 15% market share. IBM has been investing billions into Linux and the types of servers that would support it best (notably blade servers -- perfect for grids).
In December 2000 IBM committed to invest $1Billion in Linux software, hardware, services, the open source community and partnerships during 2001. That's only 2001! If anything, they have only increase their rate of investment.
Add to all of this their strong commitment to WebSphere and Java, and you have a company that has more than embraced Linux. When IBM invested 2.5 Billion in a new semiconductor manufacturing facility,they automated the facility using Linux.
Come back to our world where Big Blue is bigger & bluer than ever!
According to an Apple Insider article, Apple is already ahead of this game. They will deliver sooner, at a lower cost, and very likely a better product. Guesses (aren't they always with Apple?) include an intro around April 28 for the first anniversary of the iTMS.
Sources: Apple readying 4th-generation iPod
(snip) While sources could not pin-point a specific day or month of introduction, they said the soon to be released player would boast a 50GB hard disk capable of holding 12,500 songs and carry an approximate cost of $499.
Unlike the recent capacity-centric revisions to the iPod line, the 4th-generation iPod will host a number of architectural advancements and new features. Most apparent, sources say, is the presence of a 2-inch color screen for displaying photos stored on the pod, from the palm of your hand.
The player will reportedly also adopt a video output jack that will allow users to connect their iPods to television sets, sources said. Meanwhile, no mention was made in regards to an output jack capable of relaying audio to a home entertainment center. (/snip)
Try one of the categorization sites, like Dogpile, Vivisimo, Mooter or the very nifty Grokker client.
All of them separate data into categories so you can drill into what's important.
Oh, OK. That makes sense. For a minute I thought that they were funding the effort. Instead they are paying them for a license that no other corporation believes is valid.
I hear that MS hired Oliver North as a consultant to purchase the licenses. When prompted, Steve Balmer "could not recall" any such arrangement.
There is nothing wrong with paid inclusion. Inktomi has been doing it for ages. You used to be able to submit to Inktomi for free via Hotbot, but that got cut off.
Some services (Inktomi again, I think) allow you to pay for "deep searching". The spider will crawl deeper into your site and index more pages.
There are two ways to view this. On one hand, being indexed provides a benefit to the publisher. But doing the indexing takes $ and resources. This practice says that they'll index more, but for a price.
However, it will create more pages from sites with the financial resources to pay for the crawling. This could tilt results towards commercial sites.
Regardless, searches couldn't get worse. It seems like shopping portals have dominated the search results lately.
There were two deficiencies: Size and synchronization.
Part of what made the Palm succeed was size, but just as much the one-button-sync to your desktop applications.
As usual, Apple ignored the Windows user, believed that the Newton was a computing platform all of its own and provided an exceptionally weak sync solution. If I remember right, there was no straighforward way to link your calendar on Win. Outlink and one other solution came along later, but it was too little, too late. That stuff needed to be in the box.
Size was an issue with day-to-day carrying, but from a business standpoint where you have a briefcase anyhow, it wasn't. The larger screen is what made the Newton versatile. I cannot enter lots of text into a PocketPC with transcriber or Calligrapher because you just run out of space. It's like tyring to write on a playing card.
To date, no PDA has risen to the usability level of the Newton. We all talk about "intuitive" and Apple really created an intuitive device. Show me a PDA where I can drag-n-drop text for copy/paste, or scrub text to erase it ( and see a Poof! animation to boot) and then we'll talk.
That's why I've moved to Vivisimo: - meta search that hits all the best engines (customizable) - Really basic front page (Google-esque) and a good advanced page - Clusters results in to categories so you can easily filter the relevant stuff out. - Lots of other nifty tools, like page preview right from the search results page. Dogpile also uses Vivisimo's technology, but overall I find Vivisimo more usable (better tree, fewer graphics). Because I get my Google results through Vivisimo (it searches Netscape, which uses Google), I never use traditional engines except for comparison purposes, category browsin and, of course, Google Groups.
I wonder if this is a good time to introduce my new site concept: *. (splashdot) I can't imagine anyone taking issue with that.
Not to mention, SCO's market cap is only $250 million. If any of the big boys started to see a risk of losing, some form of hostile takeover would likely result. IBM (or a coalition) would only need to gain half the shares (or possibly less) to make the whole problem go away.
We currently use a product called DevTrack from Tech Excel. It's pretty decent, configurable and supports workflow. That being said, they're getting greedy by calling it an "enterprise" product and jacking up the price. This puts them into the same price/space as Remedy, and in comparison they are not as good. We use Remedy for our tech support and will probably deploy it out to the development and production application support groups for tracking there. Also don't forget the products from Merant: Stuff in the PVCS suite and the new Dimensions product. I have not investigated any of these much, but Dimensions seems quite sophisticated.