Personally I have no problem with Police enforcing laws, it's just when they go for the easy, (relatively) harmless, money-grabbing ones to the detriment of rapes, murders, assault, criminal damage, etc. that I have a problem.
Ok now, I hate traffic tickets as much as the next person, and think the way they're enforced is often all about revenue... but I would take issue with the claim that it's to the detriment of stopping other crimes... in fact, in alot of cities, one of the first things they do when a neighborhood has an increase in violent crime is to increase the traffic patrols, because they're a visible police presence which turns on the flashers often and allows for all sorts of weird technicalties to bug someone for a few minutes.
Actually at 100 a blowout still isn't that big a deal as long as you don't slam the brakes or jerk the wheel... hell I find them less intimidating at 100 because I'm actually paying attention to the road so I tend not to have a gut reaction.
And we still get caught on occasion because a) they use airplanes b) they use unmarked cars c) they hide behind underpasses d) its dark and they don't have that reflective tape on back and you accidentally pass them... wooops!
Yeah, I've more or less given up on OGG, MP3 isn't going away, and players will continue to support it, and the licensing fees of MP3 haven't been restrictive anywhere in my life as of yet.
I got a portable player which can handle both, and I ripped a few into OGG and can't hear any significant difference... what I do notice is that the harder to decode OGG files eat up the battery faster.
Wrong... music files are on the 10s of megabytes at the most, so it can work quite well with just a single user who has the full file.
Or you could put up say a dozen servers and then you're definitely fine.
Plus, in my experience, alot of the college kids who using the P2P stuff are downloading pretty much every song they can get their hands on, so it could take days or weeks before they get around to discovering it's a bad song and deleting it.
It's also great for those of us who dig super fancy cell phones... I just bought a treo, and I'm loving it... but when I go to the beach or other electronic unfriendly places, I pop out the SIM card and put it in my old motorolla... I'm fortunate to have the old motorolla, but if I didn't, I would love to pick up some sub $20 phone to put the SIM card in.
Yeah that's a big part of it, web search engines were never intended for that... and my particular search is a little unfair, in that alot of "how to" projects include counter-sinking a screw... it's really just the first page of for sales that bugged me.
I wouldn't call it useless... but certainlly not as useful as it used to be for me... this weekend I needed to learn how to countersink a screw.
So I searched "how to countersink a screw"... and first a handful of links selling bits used in countersinking, then a page or two of links for how to projects which required the countersinking of a screw... then a few links about what a countersunk screw is... then I said screw it, this doesn't look so hard and I just did it... never found the link, but I'm sure it's there somewhere after page 3 where I gave up.
A client application with direct access to the database is easily replaced by another one that does nasty things to the database because security in the database layer is necessarily less granular than security in the application layer.
It shouldn't be if you set it up right. Besides if security is paramount and you have a database and you want a client-side app you should have an n-tier application anyway, you keep all the security, you can change databases without a hassle, you can load balance, you can do all sorts of fun and difficult things while just rewriting that middle layer.... actually you can strike the client-side app from the above sentence, alot of the more intense web-apps use an n-tier system too.
I agree it could and should be done... but you asked originally is it too hard, and I still think it's too hard.
There's significant competition in the market place, so what you call a little more effort may be cost prohibitive.... and even if not I still wager the support hassles aren't worth it, realize these have become commodity items for "every house", they end up stuffed in attics, under desks, in closets... sir please give me your serial # would likely add a minimum of a minute to every support call, and probably more... that's serious money.
And last but not least, if I'm not mistaken Windows doesn't like secured connections if it's not expecting them... so out of the box these won't "just work" like the ones they're selling today, hence offering a competitive disadvantage.... unfortunately security rarely sells over convenience.
Like I said, I agree with you, it's the way it should be, I just imagine it a very difficult pitch to management.
Yes, too hard for support, and what would a hard reset due to these put them back to this secured state? Then it's hard for manufacturing... put them to the insecure state? Then what was the point to begin with, the salesman will just say, the first thing you do is hold down the little red button for 10 seconds.
What I'd like to hear from an AJAX expert is a list of what you CAN'T do well or *reliably* with an AJAX app--based on experience, not guesses. It seems that all of the successful AJAX apps I've seen have had UIs that were so simple that they were just marginally more than a static HTML page.
I'm far from an expert, but I'm in the design stages of a new project and AJAX was my first hope, but the below are the reasons I'm not using it...
First and foremost it can't interface with the client computer well. For example, write to the client filesystem without unduly prompting the user, interface with equipment hooked up to USB/Serial ports.
Significantly smaller reason... rapid development of GUI's just isn't there in the HTML world... yes sure for simple information apps it is, but for an application you expect someone to spend 8 hours a day in I have yet to see it done right.
I agree... I still do alot of coding in emacs, it's still my favorite text editor, I still open it up to do certain things to my code... but my projects finally go just too big, now I use visual studio where appropriate and Zend's IDE for my web projects and the savings in my time have more than paid for each of them.
On the other hand, bad (as most of the free IDE's out there are in my experience) are exactly the opposite... they waste time, they lose code when they crash, they generally are a hassle... but the good ones, worth their weight in gold.
And it still doesn't run the latest version of Quickbooks... it does now run 2 or 3 year old versions though, so a step in the right direction.
But until it runs quickbooks it's alienating a large # of small businesses.... granted, I think that's Intuit's fault, not Xandros or Wine or the OSS community in general, but it's still fact.
I hope you're right... I love sourceforge, but the real kicker about it to me is the amount of cruft, for every cool, neat or useful project, I find 4 useless ones... for every 10th wow i won't that project, 1 is dead and not supported, doesn't run, has no support, etc.
I absolutely LOVE the idea behind sourceforge, I wish I had the time and skills to help with projects there... but the one thing I wish they had was a better frontend to the projects... even putting projects without current releases or without active user contact or without whatever it takes to be a success one level behind the projects which just fucking rock would be a big step.... if I type in sourceforge.net I want to see some cool programs right away and in my face, the stuff that's supported actively, is cross platform, and has steam both behind it and in its future... things like GAIM and GIMP and Inkscape.
I know this isn't sourceforge's goal right now, and perhaps it never should be, I just know I'd like such an interface to all those projects.
Yeah, an article saying they're not growing fast enough to keep Wall Street happy... BFD! They have a huge market share, and are still growing! So that shows their ideology as antiquated or obselete?! Are you kidding? Linux/*BSD is pecking them to death, are you kidding? Windows 2003 showed their first serious entry into the server market, and who knows what's next, proprietary IS working for them, whatever the benefits of OSS (and for the record, I think they're many) proprietary is working for the MS bottom line even if it's not always working to the benefit of the end users.
Do they keep making money, yes, do they keep growing yes, do they run the risk of being beat in certain segments, possibly... do the answers to those questions necessitate a DRASTIC change in company philosophy... give me a break, your ideology is clearly clouding your views... I'm glad the grass is so green on your side, but you really need to take a more realistic view of the landscape.
So if they're lucky, their stock price stays where it is
So tell me, if they switch to an OSS model, what's the "if they're lucky" and "if they're unlucky" options? Hmmm, perhaps "if they're lucky" they remain relevant and their stock drops 50%, and "if they're unlucky" they lose huge percentages (10-15 is HUGE in this context, 25-30 is uncomphrensible) and their stock becomes worthless.
Seriously, slashdot is full of people who are optimists, and full of people with some phenomenal ideas as alternates to Windows, as competition, as different business models, as great things microsoft should adopt, as a whole lot of things... but the people supporting this article are just being ridiculous, you're putting MS in a funk which doesn't exist, and suggesting a solution which doesn't address the actualy problems and at the same time undercutting the biggest routes of success it has.
It's the best thing Microsoft could do right now. Which is why they won't do it. It's like what they say about generals always fighting the last war. Gates and Ballmer got where they are by hewing to a specific ideology. They're not changing their minds in this lifetime or the next, even if its clear that that ideology is antiquated and obsolete.
So you said alot, fine... then you make this massive claim at the end even though you have absolutely no support for it. Where's the clear evidence that this is the best thing for Microsoft like you make it sound? Where in the world are you finding any evidence to claim that their current ideology is antiquated and obselete?
I know this is an OSS friendly place to post messages, but come on. I'm pretty sure MS is still happy with their current business plan, and I'm pretty sure it's still working well for them.... but really, if you think the best thing MS can do is go open source, tell us why, I'm really curious.
I concur, Debian in particular is getting light years better over the last 18 months... even my laptop *almost* works out of the box with the Debian installer (though unfortunately that's taken steps backwards the last 9 months or so)...
And whatever ubuntu put on top of debian, everything does just work with the exception of some Wine oddities... but I still prefer plain Debian so my servers are the same as my clients.
I was trying to denote the soft e as in pet... same a as in pita.
No, my pronunciation is not official, but it's both what all dictionaries I've consulted show, and the way every contemporary I've discused petabytes with, including "one of those guys who really should know" and has pbyte as his license plate.
I know I know, anecdotal, but I'm pretty well convinced at this point.
So why haven't you gotten the cabling + a small hub for the USB devices? Can't cost that much more... and for a few more bucks you can get a USB CD drive which will handle the basics.
The states have laws against this too, it's called predatory pricing... the problem is that it's difficult to prove, so much so that economists say there has never been a "clear example" of predatory pricing as a successful business practice.
That's not to say people haven't tried, lawsuits abound...
And I dunno what your frame of reference is, but I'm in a pretty major city and know at least 2 such places within walking distance... another half a dozen throughout the city come to mind almost immediately, and I'm not exactly a book nut, so I'm sure there're many more I have no idea about.
The thing is, in certain industries, the atmosphere, the customer service, the *some intangible here* count for alot. Historically music and books have been two of these... so was coffee kind of for a short while... music is losing this because they just couldn't compete on the offerings for the price... I dunno, maybe I'm overpaying like mad, but it seems given the number of books people buy a year the mom and pops still have a shot if they offer something worthwhile because the difference isn't quite as great.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the concept of what you're saying, and I do believe it applies to B&N, but I think it applies much more strongly to Best Buy & the music world, or Walmart & the general stores.
Thin clients can take a real shot at being the future of computing when they're significantly cheaper to purchase and deploy.
Right now you might save a few bucks per desktop, but you'll likely pay it back in the salaries of your IT staff and training, at least up front, I know it's supposed to reduce staff time and such, but fact is it's a different staff, one that needs to know a little more and hence demands a higher salary... regardless though, it takes alot of deployments to make it a profitable decision.
IMO Thin clients never took off because desktop prices dropped too quickly.... all that said, these aren't thin clients anyway.
If I were to buy a stolen laptop (not that I'm into that kind of thing anyway),
Why do you assume the buyer is aware they've just purchased a stolen laptop?
If I were a laptop theif I don't really imagine my target market is people who want stolen laptops (unless I steal so many I use a fence)... I imagine it's the ebay crowd, and perhaps I'm rebranding them as company used decommissioned laptops to explain the pre-installed crap. Or maybe I'm at a swap meet dumping them relatively cheap etc.
Alot of buyers of stolen equipment would likely know it if they bothered to think hard on it, but they also tend to just not ask and hope they're really getting a great deal.
I dunno, I think the ubiquity is exactly what it needs to succeed... as long as it's only in some places it's going to suffer the fate mentioned in TFA.
I mean, think of all the blackberries and treo's on the road today, I know I, and I'm assuming alot of others, would gladly buy a significantly cheaper and/or more functional PDA, scratch the monthly data charges, and use WIFI for the email services, heck if it were good enough use Skype for the voice (but regardless, even just the email would be awesome)
However, if it's only in 3 cities throughout the country, I'll stick with the cell network which is much more consistent.
Personally, I wonder, were there relability issues? I'll toss my $30 a month DSL bill to use a free wifi if it's ALWAYS working, but if it's down even 10%, I'll keep paying my $30 a month for the right to complain loudly and maintain my QOS.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I have no problem with Police enforcing laws, it's just when they go for the easy, (relatively) harmless, money-grabbing ones to the detriment of rapes, murders, assault, criminal damage, etc. that I have a problem.
Ok now, I hate traffic tickets as much as the next person, and think the way they're enforced is often all about revenue... but I would take issue with the claim that it's to the detriment of stopping other crimes... in fact, in alot of cities, one of the first things they do when a neighborhood has an increase in violent crime is to increase the traffic patrols, because they're a visible police presence which turns on the flashers often and allows for all sorts of weird technicalties to bug someone for a few minutes.
Actually at 100 a blowout still isn't that big a deal as long as you don't slam the brakes or jerk the wheel... hell I find them less intimidating at 100 because I'm actually paying attention to the road so I tend not to have a gut reaction.
And we still get caught on occasion because a) they use airplanes b) they use unmarked cars c) they hide behind underpasses d) its dark and they don't have that reflective tape on back and you accidentally pass them... wooops!
Yeah, I've more or less given up on OGG, MP3 isn't going away, and players will continue to support it, and the licensing fees of MP3 haven't been restrictive anywhere in my life as of yet.
I got a portable player which can handle both, and I ripped a few into OGG and can't hear any significant difference... what I do notice is that the harder to decode OGG files eat up the battery faster.
Wrong... music files are on the 10s of megabytes at the most, so it can work quite well with just a single user who has the full file.
Or you could put up say a dozen servers and then you're definitely fine.
Plus, in my experience, alot of the college kids who using the P2P stuff are downloading pretty much every song they can get their hands on, so it could take days or weeks before they get around to discovering it's a bad song and deleting it.
It's also great for those of us who dig super fancy cell phones... I just bought a treo, and I'm loving it... but when I go to the beach or other electronic unfriendly places, I pop out the SIM card and put it in my old motorolla... I'm fortunate to have the old motorolla, but if I didn't, I would love to pick up some sub $20 phone to put the SIM card in.
Yeah that's a big part of it, web search engines were never intended for that... and my particular search is a little unfair, in that alot of "how to" projects include counter-sinking a screw... it's really just the first page of for sales that bugged me.
I wouldn't call it useless... but certainlly not as useful as it used to be for me... this weekend I needed to learn how to countersink a screw.
So I searched "how to countersink a screw"... and first a handful of links selling bits used in countersinking, then a page or two of links for how to projects which required the countersinking of a screw... then a few links about what a countersunk screw is... then I said screw it, this doesn't look so hard and I just did it... never found the link, but I'm sure it's there somewhere after page 3 where I gave up.
A client application with direct access to the database is easily replaced by another one that does nasty things to the database because security in the database layer is necessarily less granular than security in the application layer.
It shouldn't be if you set it up right. Besides if security is paramount and you have a database and you want a client-side app you should have an n-tier application anyway, you keep all the security, you can change databases without a hassle, you can load balance, you can do all sorts of fun and difficult things while just rewriting that middle layer.... actually you can strike the client-side app from the above sentence, alot of the more intense web-apps use an n-tier system too.
I agree it could and should be done... but you asked originally is it too hard, and I still think it's too hard.
There's significant competition in the market place, so what you call a little more effort may be cost prohibitive.... and even if not I still wager the support hassles aren't worth it, realize these have become commodity items for "every house", they end up stuffed in attics, under desks, in closets... sir please give me your serial # would likely add a minimum of a minute to every support call, and probably more... that's serious money.
And last but not least, if I'm not mistaken Windows doesn't like secured connections if it's not expecting them... so out of the box these won't "just work" like the ones they're selling today, hence offering a competitive disadvantage.... unfortunately security rarely sells over convenience.
Like I said, I agree with you, it's the way it should be, I just imagine it a very difficult pitch to management.
Yes, too hard for support, and what would a hard reset due to these put them back to this secured state? Then it's hard for manufacturing... put them to the insecure state? Then what was the point to begin with, the salesman will just say, the first thing you do is hold down the little red button for 10 seconds.
What I'd like to hear from an AJAX expert is a list of what you CAN'T do well or *reliably* with an AJAX app--based on experience, not guesses. It seems that all of the successful AJAX apps I've seen have had UIs that were so simple that they were just marginally more than a static HTML page.
I'm far from an expert, but I'm in the design stages of a new project and AJAX was my first hope, but the below are the reasons I'm not using it...
First and foremost it can't interface with the client computer well. For example, write to the client filesystem without unduly prompting the user, interface with equipment hooked up to USB/Serial ports.
Significantly smaller reason... rapid development of GUI's just isn't there in the HTML world... yes sure for simple information apps it is, but for an application you expect someone to spend 8 hours a day in I have yet to see it done right.
I agree... I still do alot of coding in emacs, it's still my favorite text editor, I still open it up to do certain things to my code... but my projects finally go just too big, now I use visual studio where appropriate and Zend's IDE for my web projects and the savings in my time have more than paid for each of them.
On the other hand, bad (as most of the free IDE's out there are in my experience) are exactly the opposite... they waste time, they lose code when they crash, they generally are a hassle... but the good ones, worth their weight in gold.
And it still doesn't run the latest version of Quickbooks... it does now run 2 or 3 year old versions though, so a step in the right direction.
But until it runs quickbooks it's alienating a large # of small businesses.... granted, I think that's Intuit's fault, not Xandros or Wine or the OSS community in general, but it's still fact.
I hope you're right... I love sourceforge, but the real kicker about it to me is the amount of cruft, for every cool, neat or useful project, I find 4 useless ones... for every 10th wow i won't that project, 1 is dead and not supported, doesn't run, has no support, etc.
I absolutely LOVE the idea behind sourceforge, I wish I had the time and skills to help with projects there... but the one thing I wish they had was a better frontend to the projects... even putting projects without current releases or without active user contact or without whatever it takes to be a success one level behind the projects which just fucking rock would be a big step.... if I type in sourceforge.net I want to see some cool programs right away and in my face, the stuff that's supported actively, is cross platform, and has steam both behind it and in its future... things like GAIM and GIMP and Inkscape.
I know this isn't sourceforge's goal right now, and perhaps it never should be, I just know I'd like such an interface to all those projects.
Yeah, an article saying they're not growing fast enough to keep Wall Street happy... BFD! They have a huge market share, and are still growing! So that shows their ideology as antiquated or obselete?! Are you kidding? Linux/*BSD is pecking them to death, are you kidding? Windows 2003 showed their first serious entry into the server market, and who knows what's next, proprietary IS working for them, whatever the benefits of OSS (and for the record, I think they're many) proprietary is working for the MS bottom line even if it's not always working to the benefit of the end users.
Do they keep making money, yes, do they keep growing yes, do they run the risk of being beat in certain segments, possibly... do the answers to those questions necessitate a DRASTIC change in company philosophy... give me a break, your ideology is clearly clouding your views... I'm glad the grass is so green on your side, but you really need to take a more realistic view of the landscape.
So if they're lucky, their stock price stays where it is
So tell me, if they switch to an OSS model, what's the "if they're lucky" and "if they're unlucky" options? Hmmm, perhaps "if they're lucky" they remain relevant and their stock drops 50%, and "if they're unlucky" they lose huge percentages (10-15 is HUGE in this context, 25-30 is uncomphrensible) and their stock becomes worthless.
Seriously, slashdot is full of people who are optimists, and full of people with some phenomenal ideas as alternates to Windows, as competition, as different business models, as great things microsoft should adopt, as a whole lot of things... but the people supporting this article are just being ridiculous, you're putting MS in a funk which doesn't exist, and suggesting a solution which doesn't address the actualy problems and at the same time undercutting the biggest routes of success it has.
It's the best thing Microsoft could do right now. Which is why they won't do it. It's like what they say about generals always fighting the last war. Gates and Ballmer got where they are by hewing to a specific ideology. They're not changing their minds in this lifetime or the next, even if its clear that that ideology is antiquated and obsolete.
So you said alot, fine... then you make this massive claim at the end even though you have absolutely no support for it. Where's the clear evidence that this is the best thing for Microsoft like you make it sound? Where in the world are you finding any evidence to claim that their current ideology is antiquated and obselete?
I know this is an OSS friendly place to post messages, but come on. I'm pretty sure MS is still happy with their current business plan, and I'm pretty sure it's still working well for them.... but really, if you think the best thing MS can do is go open source, tell us why, I'm really curious.
I concur, Debian in particular is getting light years better over the last 18 months... even my laptop *almost* works out of the box with the Debian installer (though unfortunately that's taken steps backwards the last 9 months or so)...
And whatever ubuntu put on top of debian, everything does just work with the exception of some Wine oddities... but I still prefer plain Debian so my servers are the same as my clients.
I was trying to denote the soft e as in pet... same a as in pita.
No, my pronunciation is not official, but it's both what all dictionaries I've consulted show, and the way every contemporary I've discused petabytes with, including "one of those guys who really should know" and has pbyte as his license plate.
I know I know, anecdotal, but I'm pretty well convinced at this point.
none of the above, it's pronounced pet-a (soft a at the end)
So why haven't you gotten the cabling + a small hub for the USB devices? Can't cost that much more... and for a few more bucks you can get a USB CD drive which will handle the basics.
The states have laws against this too, it's called predatory pricing... the problem is that it's difficult to prove, so much so that economists say there has never been a "clear example" of predatory pricing as a successful business practice.
That's not to say people haven't tried, lawsuits abound...
And I dunno what your frame of reference is, but I'm in a pretty major city and know at least 2 such places within walking distance... another half a dozen throughout the city come to mind almost immediately, and I'm not exactly a book nut, so I'm sure there're many more I have no idea about.
The thing is, in certain industries, the atmosphere, the customer service, the *some intangible here* count for alot. Historically music and books have been two of these... so was coffee kind of for a short while... music is losing this because they just couldn't compete on the offerings for the price... I dunno, maybe I'm overpaying like mad, but it seems given the number of books people buy a year the mom and pops still have a shot if they offer something worthwhile because the difference isn't quite as great.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the concept of what you're saying, and I do believe it applies to B&N, but I think it applies much more strongly to Best Buy & the music world, or Walmart & the general stores.
Thin clients can take a real shot at being the future of computing when they're significantly cheaper to purchase and deploy.
Right now you might save a few bucks per desktop, but you'll likely pay it back in the salaries of your IT staff and training, at least up front, I know it's supposed to reduce staff time and such, but fact is it's a different staff, one that needs to know a little more and hence demands a higher salary... regardless though, it takes alot of deployments to make it a profitable decision.
IMO Thin clients never took off because desktop prices dropped too quickly.... all that said, these aren't thin clients anyway.
If I were to buy a stolen laptop (not that I'm into that kind of thing anyway),
Why do you assume the buyer is aware they've just purchased a stolen laptop?
If I were a laptop theif I don't really imagine my target market is people who want stolen laptops (unless I steal so many I use a fence)... I imagine it's the ebay crowd, and perhaps I'm rebranding them as company used decommissioned laptops to explain the pre-installed crap. Or maybe I'm at a swap meet dumping them relatively cheap etc.
Alot of buyers of stolen equipment would likely know it if they bothered to think hard on it, but they also tend to just not ask and hope they're really getting a great deal.
As someone once said, "If you build it, they will come."
You're wrong. No one ever said that.
He's right, it wasn't a someone, it was a disembodied voice.
I dunno, I think the ubiquity is exactly what it needs to succeed... as long as it's only in some places it's going to suffer the fate mentioned in TFA.
I mean, think of all the blackberries and treo's on the road today, I know I, and I'm assuming alot of others, would gladly buy a significantly cheaper and/or more functional PDA, scratch the monthly data charges, and use WIFI for the email services, heck if it were good enough use Skype for the voice (but regardless, even just the email would be awesome)
However, if it's only in 3 cities throughout the country, I'll stick with the cell network which is much more consistent.
Personally, I wonder, were there relability issues? I'll toss my $30 a month DSL bill to use a free wifi if it's ALWAYS working, but if it's down even 10%, I'll keep paying my $30 a month for the right to complain loudly and maintain my QOS.