Considering that every RF technology I've
ever worked with has been imperfect, I'd hesitate to ride (or
even fly) a wireless network controlled plane.
Here are some of the wireless technologies I know:
XM radio... Great stuff, love what it offers, but I've
NEVER gone an entire day without some interruption of signa.
811.x lan. Love having wireless LAN at home, but please
please please don't turn on the microwave!
remote controlled anything (wireless). I've used wireless IR
repeaters, I've had RF remote controlled devices, every single
one of these devices exhibitied anomolous behavior at some point,
and every single one showed anomolous behavior more than once!
satellite TV (see XM bullet above)
GPS. many many "disconnects" over the course of a day.
AM/FM radio/OTA TV signals, always susceptible to interference, multi-path
(FM), lightning (AM), etc.
cell phones... don't get me started -- probably one of the
most promising technologies beat to death by money-grubbing
telcoms squeezing every bit of quality out of the transmission
protocols and tower dispersal until it's mediocre technology.
cordless phones... if you've still got the 2.4Ghz phones,
don't try talking on them while you're moving large data streams
on your 811.X network... noise, noise, noise (not to mention the
interference the other direction)
garage doors. It's not as bad these days, but our garage
door would spontaneously open and close when aircraft were near.
She states she is working on the reliability problem. I
wonder if it's possible to solve (any EEs out there to chime
in?). I used to work for a telcom, and they always had an
interesting poster up describing what 99.99% accuracy meant. The
most interesting representation: if commercial jets took off and
landed at that rate of effieciency, there would be a failure
every 10,000 landings/takeoffs. For the sake of simplifying, if
there were 5,000 flights a day, that would be 10,000 landings
plus takeoffs implying a statistical expectation of failure each
day.
I don't know to what level RF can be perfected without some
backup system (also RF) that would guarantee perfection but if
they ever start flying those suckers, I'm going to wait a while
before I board one.
While I understand that there is no proof that our phone conversations are recorded, there is a disturbing trend in the current administration being found conducting themselves a little outside of what they said they were.
I very much agree with. I find only small comfort is government disclaimers about what is actually being monitored. And, I don't know ultimately where that goes.
So you'd rather that Watergate never happened because Deep Throat was thrown in jail?
No! I definitely believe leaks serve a purpose, and there's a certain quid pro quo around how leaks occur. Sometimes they come in cooperation with the government (e.g., get an idea into the public domain, run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes, without pulling the government into the limelight), sometimes they come out of true altruism (Watergate would be a good example).
I also think though there are times when a leak is out of whack with any motivations, and it's appropriate to scan the landscape and throttle it. I don't deign to outline what the rules should be, but I'm not surprised it's sometimes necessary to really find who's involved with a leak, especially if lives could be at stake.
If you're talking to government officials, and there are
leaks that potentially endanger lives of agents, and collaterally
other agents in the field, you're going to get
more than a sideways look from the governmet, as
well you should.
If you are a reporter, and you're exchanging calls with anyone
on the "list" suspected of leaks why shouldn't the government
take a peek. As reported in the article, there is no
evidence the government is tapping or listening in to
the calls, merely looking at who's talking to whom.
This smacks of journalists pompously elevating their
self-importance to levels higher than they deserve. There are
many examples of inappropriate treatment of journalists. This
doesn't feel like one of them.
(shudder, I suspect I'm going to get hammered on this one)
SONY isn't ready to self-destruct, but it may be nearing
the final disposition of its actions the past ten years including
more and more proprietary technology, higher prices, and disdain
for the customers.
Consider:
Ten years ago, SONY began making integrated stereo
components, designed to interact with each other. I found this
an exciting and enticing trend until I discovered if I wanted to
take advantage of it, I'd have to completely replace
all components in my system -- no accommodations
for any "foreign" components. I know their ultimate motivation
is to sell SONY, but with even a modicum of extended
compatibility I would have considered their new systems. In its
"introduced" form, I not only refused to buy, I steered any
prospective customers away (and I had lots of people asking for
recommendations).
Also about ten years ago SONY introduced the mini-disk. It
was cool before mp3, but it was theirs. I took a chance at the
high school dance and got a recordable mini-disk unit... knowing
(thought so) the prices would plummet in a year or so and I could
round out my collection with much more reasonably priced players.
It never happened. When pressed for an
explanation, my local favorite salesman explained SONY refused to
license the technology for anything less than exorbitant fees so
no one was offering the technology other than SONY, or if they
did, it was for continued outrageous prices. (This was about the
time I really started developing the "fuck you SONY" attitude.)
SONY jumped into the small-gadget fray by gambling they could
introduce their idea of what was the perfect
storage device, the memory stick. Memory
ick! It was expensive, held less data,
and once again jealously guarded by SONY. If the rest of the
world didn't like SONY's game, SONY would just take their ball
and go home.
SONY and RootKit-gate. 'nuff said.
I don't know who's truly at the helm at SONY, but it's almost
as if they've intentionally dug this hole, about six feet deep.
I long ago eBay'ed and divested myself of all SONY equipment
(still have SONY music CDs, sorry... ) and swore that, until SONY
plays a little more nice, I'll never buy,
recommend, anything SONY again.
I've never been a video game fan, so I don't know about SONY's
escapades around those, but from what I see and hear it seems
SONY is consistent across their offerings and markets.
So, it isn't SONY "ready to self-destruct", it's SONY reaping
the rewards of what it's sown. It's too bad, they've shown
they're capable of creating sophisticated and innovative new
technologies.
What makes understanding (and meaning) problematic in
e-mail is also well known in AI research. Language, while
syntactically specific, grants latitude and license in rule
usage and interpretation/extraction of meaning.
A favorite example of the nuance of true interpretation:
A long-time foreman of a Nuclear Power Plant was at
his retirement party. When asked if he had any parting words of
wisdom regarding nuclear power, the foreman winked and said,
"Remember, you can never add too much coolant to the core
reaction chamber." The story ends with the foreman
looking up from his chair on the beach across the bay to see his
old plant going up in a mushroom cloud.
From that article, I agree: "If you're vulnerable to this kind of
unintentional prejudice, pick up the phone: People are much less likely
to prejudge after communicating by phone than they are after
receiving an e-mail."
But, from the article, I disagree: "E-mail tends to be short and
to the point." While e-mail can be short and
sweet, I've found it to be all over the map. I've seen e-mail as
a freebie for people who expound ad nauseum, and it's (e-mail)
ubiquitous presence multiplies the wandering missives. Short
and sweet is more typical in business settings (though I've seen
epics there, too.)
Consider the classic following example. Read each sentence
out loud, with emphasis on the bolded word.
I didn't steal the money.
I didn't steal the money.
I didn't steal the money.
I didn't steal the money.
I didn't steal the money.
I've fallen prey to this. It's too easy to project either
your mood, or your opinion, etc. into an e-mail's text and
consequently misinterpret the senders intent, message, sometimes
to the extent you've flipped their intent 180 degrees.
Most of the time this is just a nuisance. Sometimes it can be
amusing -- a story to share over beer (free).
It is worth exercising due care though to avoid escalations
and huge misunderstandings sometimes creating hard feelings, and
in more extreme cases damaging relationships. I learned from a
few hard lessons, if after a few exchanges a dialog became testy
and began escalation, I'd intervene on behalf of myself and the
correspondent by curtailing the e-mail until a quick chat on the
phone could reset the tone. That almost always
worked.
(While some use some convention to help make tone and such
more clear (e.g., *word*, emoticons, ALL-CAPS, etc.), I've found
that to help marginally, and in some cases inflame a tense dialog
further when that was not the intent.)
I've seen more sophisticated phishing examples by far, and
some are indistinguishable from what might be the real thing.
The distinguishing factor from a genuine missive is the best
phishes have links to bogus
addresses (sometimes denoted with only an IP address), and the
destination site asks for information company's won't ask for
from an e-mail.
One of the best phishes I've seen was sent to me -- it was
ostensibly from my phone company, and it described a problem with
my on-line bill pay (I don't). The letter was nicely formatted
with the colors and icons of my phone company. The link was a
giveaway, when I rolled over it, I could see the IP address, not
a phone company web-site.
I researched this a bit more, went to my phone company's web
site, and downloaded their graphics. A bit-for-bit comparison of
their icons, etc., and the phishers showed them to be identical.
(Interestingly, this puts phishers also in the position of being
guilty of more crime: copyright violations.)
Had my suspicions not been raised by the fact I
wasn't participating in on-line bill pay and the
phish indicated that problem, and had I not seen the IP address
by rolling over the link (which I only did because of above
suspicion), I easily could have been convinced I was dealing with
a real e-mail (NOTE: this was two years ago, before phishing had
become real big, and it was my first incident.)
I can easily believe many, if not most could
fall for well crafted phishing expeditions. I would agree with
the cited article, those are weak examples unlikely to catch
savvy users (though they still could catch the naive, of which
there are millions!). (And, I would claim some
of the examples really are nothing more than SPAM.)
I agree HDTV on the wire could be a serious problem. But, what I've seen from Comcast (my only experience so far) it appears they're introducing extra compression, and the HDTV of a friend gives a status showing a transfer rate of 6MBs. But, this article shows HDTV needing aroudn 20MBs for streaming. To move to a world of on-demand HDTV for the masses would seem to (as they're claiming) require not only some prioritization of the network, but I would think it would also require a more capable internet, i.e., bigger pipes almost everywhere.
In addition, at my friend's, we found that HDTV streams could grind the house network to a crawl, I don't know if it's related (since it really isn't part of the network, but it is coming in on the same coax). Considering everything I've seen and experienced (hiccups in the picture, sometimes outright halting) I don't think HDTV over the wire is ready for prime time yet.
However, if I were a provider, I would have to consider that all of a sudden even a small percentage of my customers could consume all of my bandwidth and would have to come up with some approach to keep the pipes working.
What I don't understand is that since the DOJ judegement against Microsoft they've had time to rewrite their entire flagship OS from scratch, yet still haven't been able to document it? How naive does the government have to be?
3 : analysis (as of an ore or drug) to
determine the presence, absence, or quantity of one or more
components
(from Merriam Webster).
Anyway, sometimes when I drink coffee I seem to have an
entirely opposite reaction and am overcome with sleepiness. It
only happens occasionally, and counterintuitively it always seems
to be a very strong brew of some Starbucks
blend. After doing a little research I discovered what you might
expect to be a stronger (caffeine-wise) coffee is actually the
weakest.
Turns out the darker the roast, the longer the beans have to
be roasted to become that dark. And the longer the beans are
roasted, the more caffeine is destroyed in the process.
So, while a roast may be described as bold, but it
doesn't necessarily mean it has extra kick. I prefer the bold
roast taste, but have taken to preparing much lighter roasts for
my morning kick-start.
Interestingly enough, this could also explain why I am
positively higher than a kite when I drink someones A&P Maxwell
House Drip grind coffee. It is a bland light looking
roast/blend, but it can really have a kick.
Here's one page
that answers some questions about caffeine.
Spanning 20+ years in computer programming I've stopped
trying to explain what it is like and how it is done. Heck, we
can't even clearly explain to peer programmers why vi is better
than emacs, XP is better than Linux, Gimp is better than
Photoshop (NOTE: these do not necessarily reflect my opinion,
FTR, I prefer: vim; Linux; and Photoshop)
I shrug my shoulders and explain it's mostly dull. It's kind
of like doing Math homework, except I have to do it every day for
my job. It's always about solving and debugging, and people's
eyes glaze when I begin poking programming nuance with a ten-foot
pole.
Fortunately I find most people don't really care. (Also for
those who would "get it", my experience has been
they are ones who dabble and experiment in it anyway already.)
(Aside: as for the original poster, congratulations on being
able to explain "big O notation". I sometimes suspect my
girlfriend of faking it.)
I don't know if I would join a union. I once belonged to
one in a PPG glass factory -- we made Anderson Twindows (actually
a pretty cool thing). But, the work wasn't too hard, and the pay
(for that market) was pretty good.
You could argue the salary and conditions
were a result of the union. That is probably true. But, as
power grows, so does (did, seemingly) abuse.
We were up for new contract and the union came so close to
putting us on the streets. They were demanding a cut back of the
number of glass "lines" each worker ran per shift. As it was at
the time, I was barely able to fill much more than four hours of
real work in an 8-hour shift, and now I almost had to strike
because the union wanted to bust balls with the company on this.
I know sometimes it's about putting a stake in the ground way
out to reach certain compromises, but this seemed off the scale.
If IT wanted to unionize it would have to be with sanity. I'm
not a big fan of seniority being the only yardstick for who stays
and who goes when there are cutbacks (more on that in a moment).
An IT union worth its salt would allow for hearings and maybe
prevent arbitrary and massive layoffs.
Which brings me to an abuse I only figured out 2 years after
getting laid off from a major telcom:
Part of my severance package was one months pay for every year
I'd been there, with a maximum payout of 10 months. I'd been
there for 21 years, so with my 60 day notice and severance, it
might seem generous that I'd be getting one year of pay. But
why would any employee with only ten years get the same
benefit? That didn't seem fair.
Turns out, part of the contract for getting and keeping the
severance requires the employee to honor what amounts to a gag
order... no bad mouthing the company, and no legal proceedings
against the company or they would take all of the money back.
Coincidentally it turns out that the statute of limitations
for EEOC actions against a company is 300 days which conveniently
happens to be 10 months. Aha! So, the company skates with what
(IMO) amounts to hush money and looks generous at the same time.
(for those who would claim these were generous terms, consider
there are many hidden "costs" to the 20+ year employees,
including but not limited to: health care coverage and costs,
pension changes)
If unions had the power to change that kind of treatment, I'd
consider them.
Empirical evidence in recent news suggests though (e.g.,
United Airlines, et al. where pensions have been handed over in
default to the government) unions ultimately have little power to
stem corporate abuse. The rich will continue to get richer, the
poor will continue to have babies.
What's up with Microsoft? I would recommend Thomas Peters'
"In Search of Excellence" for their review. While I
wouldn't agree 100% with all of "Search...", there are anecdotes
and good evidence around "customer service", and what makes a
company excellent.
Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where
Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of
piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?)
cultivates resentment and long term rot.
And now, Microsoft is creating account team members whose sole
function is to instill FUD in their customer, intimidating them
into shelling out even more money for services to ensure
Microsoft checks and balances are in Microsoft's favor? Sheesh.
This is a scam, pure and simple. As the article points out, if
Microsoft truly thinks something is amiss "it sics the
Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the
matter over to one of its sales managers".
Maybe Microsoft is doing this to themselves inadvertently, or
maybe it's a strategy. From the Fine Article:
When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred
me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that
channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers
navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of
the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by
informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to
attribute the responses to Lawless.
Microsoft's "complexities of software licensing" are the seed
of irritation. Accusing customers of ripping them off because
they can't figure these complex licenses out entirely is the
fertilizer to grow that seed into full blown resentment.
If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's
Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send
customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far,
there aren't.
Getting support for
OpenOffice, Workplace or Sun's StarOffice software built into
screen readers and magnifiers won't be easy. According to
assistive technology vendors, which are generally small
companies, the economics of supporting applications that have
limited market demand don't work in their favor.
Kind of reminds me the first time I went looking for a job: We
need someone with "x" years experience, sorry; But, how do I ever
get those "x" years? Also, I would think these
companies are suffering from the Microsoft Syndrome (it's the
biggest market, therefor that's all we'll write to) and are
missing an opportunity. I hope they roll the dice and buy into
their own futures. What is there about entire state governments
switching to Open Document Format (ODF) that sounds like "limited
markets"?
Also from the fine article:
Winske, who has
muscular dystrophy, said he instantly remembered how Microsoft
had to be "prodded and dragged, kicking and screaming" to make
its software accessible during the transition from DOS to
Windows
First, it's unfortunate the example set by Microsoft is what sets
the stage and expectation for anyone else. OSS is
not Microsoft. And, I hope OSS and ODF is given the
time and opportunity to step up to accessibility issues rather
than being brushed aside.
As for the article's claim these documents today don't work
well with screen magnifiers, etc., while I haven't done the
research, I find it difficult to believe there aren't some tools
out there that either are sufficient or could bridge the gap
until a more mature suite of extensions and support are added to
OpenOffice and others.
Cool, I can dust off my old bell bottom pants and platform
shoes. I knew they would come back!
All seriousness aside, I started out coding for mainframes,
mostly assembly. To this day some of the most screaming and cool
programs I ever wrote were on mainframes (wrote (in assembly) an
on-line trouble logging system to replace a paper system back in
'76).
I did lots of COBOL programming and maintenance for a major,
now absorbed by increasingly corrupt larger pseudo-telcos, telco.
COBOL, not the most exciting language, but the throughput and
data integrity of those days I've not seen matched since (and I
still love Unix as my first choice for environment).
Which brings me (and us) to what I think works in favor of
mainframes having a chance at a major comeback:
TCP/IP stack not builtin and assumed. In the old days,
if you wanted to communicate with other architectures it was a
RPITA. With internet protocol everything is easy. Now you can
take the raw power and integrity of the mainframe
and lace it up to foreign technology.
IBM's OSS/Linux participation. I don't know if IBM has
completely jumped on this bandwagon, but they've made
contributions, and you can "do" Unix on their mainframes. And,
they have cool passthrough mechanisms, how cool is it to write a
shell script that can access VSAM data? If you don't know, it is
very cool.
Mainframes historically have gi-huge support organizations
built up around them. They have backups to backups. And, it's
all managed for you.
Mainframes are single point of support, you all know you're
using the same configuration (well, to the extent you're in the
same virtual system on a mainframe).
Mainframes aren't Windows (sorry, had to put
that in for the troll mods.)
This is a partial list. I've long lusted for the raw power of
mainframes with the standard support and the nimble Unix
utilities.
Oh, please! Learn your OS history. NT/XP never sat on top of DOS, Win3.x or Win9x
Never said it (they) did. Actually if you look at your direct quote from my post, I used the term "paradigm". So, in that context, let me expand a bit: the paradigm was very much an assumption, one machine/computer, one user, hence the bizarre logical drives, all accessible to all levels by all users (by default at least -- yes, that's now changing, welcome to century 21).
As for intent, I was on the original NT Beta support team at Microsoft (there were 16 of us), and after walking in the door, I immediately began asking for information on setting up my machine with a multi-user configuration. The team treated me like I was some sort of nut case -- they emphasized multi-user meant multiple users could access services on one machine (file services, not new in NT though, etc.), not multiple users logged onto one machine.
They were barely comfortable with the notion of more than one user ever using one machine, even one user at a time!
As for all of this being a hack, you are absolutely right. I would actually probably be less adversarial with Microsoft if they were more candid about things like this, but to read their literature, they concede nothing, ever. (For example, the initial security access levels "rings" in the NT kernel were elegantly designed and promptly trampled to allow performance by granting direct video hardware access to non-privileged code -- go figure.)
I joined Microsoft in 1992 excited about being a part of what I thought was a sea change in their OS direction. I left shortly after when behind closed doors I discovered it was a facade designed to show Microsoft was ready to play on the same court with the big boys (namely, Unix). Unfortunately, they weren't. Unfortunately, they got away with it. Unfortunately, even today, they don't stand up to hardened Unix systems (they're closer than ever, but still not there).
A couple of interesting paragraphs in the article:
The good news for users is that those same
observers say Vista, which is being touted for its security
features, will eventually deliver a more secure and flexible
authentication architecture than exists today in
Windows.
The issue over the Vista authentication architecture began to
emerge last week when RSA CEO Art Coviello lamented in a press
interview the fact that Vista is not providing native support
initially for RSA's SecureID for Windows. RSA refused to comment
further, but the company will have to rewrite its GINA code using
the Credential Provider model.
Microsoft also refused comment on Coviello's remarks. A company
spokesman says the strategic direction now is Smart Cards, which
Microsoft is supporting natively in Vista.
Concerning "good news for users", I doubt it. Nothing good
has come of Microsoft's perception of "what is good" for users,
from the crippled layering of a multi-user paradigm on top of
what started out as a single user design (NT/XP over
Windows/DOS) to their constant and misguided attempts to create
intuitive GUIs (dancing paperclips, self-altering menus with
chevrons anyone?). Security is typically hard, and Microsoft
will screw this up too.
As for the second paragraphs, could Microsoft again be forcing
the hands of third party vendors? Seems they could (indeed, it
almost seems likely) wiggle their way into the security market
and start charging for different mechanisms of security. Of
course that can only happen after they've provided it "free" long
enough to get rid of pesky competitors like SecurID (GREAT
product, btw) and VPN providers.
I'll fight Microsoft's practices til forever, but I must
admit, I'm glad I'm near retirement as far as having to deal
with this crap anymore.
It's not entirely fair to offer an opinion, I have never
seen or used the Cox PVR. My experience has been there are few
pretenders to the throne that even come close to Tivo's quality
of service.
Tivo pioneered the user experience for PVR viewing, and from
their first offering (which I purchased and actually returned --
it was not quite ready for prime time then) which was
very good they have steadily improved their already leading
product.
If I had the option and was a Cox subscriber, not only would I
ask for the swap for similar pricing, I'd be happy to pay a
premium. Tivo is that good, and what I've seen of other
offerings is that bad! (I recently visited neighbors who had
their new Dish PVR. While I'd wished a Tivo for them, I was
happy for their new window into PVR viewing. I tried to walk
them through the simplest setups: record one show, pause live TV,
etc., but even I found the interface clunky, intrusive,
inconsistent, and obfuscated. It bordered on unusable. I was
able to figure it out, but it was a RPITA to use. And, before
anyone points out I had to "learn" how to use the tivo, too, that
really wasn't true. The litmus test for me for entertainment
gadgets is that I be able to use it out-of-the-box with no
instruction manual reading. Tivo is usable from the get-go.)
If I lived in a region where I had some OTHER cable service,
and heard Cox was offering PVR with Tivo, I'd switch.
What has been submitted as a pithy wry parody of a real
life warning may in fact be dead on in its message. In fact, it
may not be such a bad idea to make such a warning more de rigeur.
Perhaps we put a sticker on any computer (especially XP) for
general use, much like the cancer warning on a pack of
cigarettes.
It won't stop people from being careless, naive, or wild with
their computers attached to the ether, but even if only a few
poor souls escape the hell that is IE pop-up oblivion it would be
worth it. It could also save we who support a few miserable
hours of either fixing a problem or explaining to devastated
"clients" why there is no fix for their destroyed c: drive.
grep, quick lookups (maybe piped into simple awks)
(optional) perl, diff, sort, col, ncurses, et al.
I'm not being totally facetious. Usually the problem is
overkill with managing information. If it's low transaction
(sounds like yours is), with minimal dynamics, I've seen so many
sledgehammer applications that are exactly what you describe:
buggy, with data constantly "lost".
The tools I listed won't keep stuff from getting lost, but
software doesn't do that. Good management and procedures around
your inventory will. What it'd cost you to assign one person to
manage a reasonably simple solution would be way more than offset
the cost of expensive or custom software.
This really is feasible, I've done this myself. Heck, from
what you describe, I'd offer to put it together for you, write
the on-line help, and get you going. I'd venture I could put
together a working app in three or four days.
Again, not trying to be facetious, just consider looking more
closely at your procedures and policies. Good luck, we're
counting on you!
The MPAA froze plans to release the survey..., Other studios said the figures were so bad that releasing them would
hurt their stock prices and make a laughingstock of their
enforcement efforts. The result: Piracy, an issue that normally brings Hollywood studios together, was driving them apart. Although the studios
eventually agreed to release parts of the information, it was
only after months of infighting
I interpret this (IMO) that the MPAA had gotten so absurd in
their claims of piracy and their methodology for studying and
proving it they crossed a bright line that even insiders could
see and were embarrassed to allow public scrutiny. The numbers
they claim are staggering, but beyond believability.
fta:
In one market, it was calculated that
for every bootleg DVD that turned up in raids, seven more
existed.
This is a non sequitur. First, it's a questionable assumption a
disconvered pirated dvd is a lost sale. Second, it's
their SWAG that seven more exist, and to my
first point, it's not clear that represents loss of revenue.
fta:
While new data are potentially helpful
in negotiating with foreign governments because they also
estimate losses to local film industries, the information is also
bad news for the MPAA's antipiracy efforts.
Another non sequitur. What impact can fuzzy-math numbers truly
have?
This is funny, it almost sounds from the article that they
changed their methodology to increase their claimed "losses", and
had to rein them back in when they discovered their losses
exceeded global Gross (International) Product.
I'm surprised to see such an MPAA friendly article from WSJ.
Or maybe I'm not.
The big difference here in any and all of your arguments that Google is doing the same thing is Microsoft is convicted of abuse of monopolistic practices and therefor has a different level of responsibility in its business practices.
Six years ago I had a heated debate with a friend about
what should be done about Microsoft. I was (and still am)
adamant Microsoft needs legal throttling. Microsoft escaped by
the hair of their chin with a fortuitous changing of the guard
shortly after losing their DOJ battle (Clinton and Democrats to
Bush and the big-money-friendly Republicans). Clearly the new
regime had no appetite for any meaningful punishment for
Microsoft.
My friend waved his hands and said, "Let the market forces
settle it", to which I pointed out Microsoft had gained so much
power and momentum that market forces may have become irrelevant.
While better late than never, I think Dvorak makes some good
points, but would focus on one I think he misses the mark:
Preoccupation with Google. Microsoft is too
easily distracted by successful companies who are not
competitors. There is a deep-rooted belief that if a company like
Google is successful, then they are an enemy per se. So the
company obsesses on what Google is doing rather than
concentrating on important Microsoft projects. Now Microsoft is
about to do a deal with Yahoo to flank Google. This old-lady-like
skittishness is unbecoming for a company this
size.
I think Microsoft is right to worry about Google. Google has
blind-sided Microsoft on yet another "it's the internet" facet
they either glibly ignored, or just didn't see. Google has
planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, the OS isn't going to be
relevant in the future, thus allowing more free choice, and less
dependence on Microsoft. Google's "proof" that XMLHTTPREQUEST
can provide responsive web apps as stopgap technology (I can't
believe that there eventually will be some better replacement)
has spawned many other interesting companies and application.
Some of these "AJAX" apps are downright useful, and for the
casual user, can completely replace their office suites in
functionality (for their purposes), and then
some (remote, network accessible from anywhere).
The amazing irony in all of this is Microsoft invented what
may end up being the Silver Bullet that defeats them
(XMLHTTPREQUEST). And, finally, maybe market forces will level the playing field.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that every RF technology I've ever worked with has been imperfect, I'd hesitate to ride (or even fly) a wireless network controlled plane.
Here are some of the wireless technologies I know:
She states she is working on the reliability problem. I wonder if it's possible to solve (any EEs out there to chime in?). I used to work for a telcom, and they always had an interesting poster up describing what 99.99% accuracy meant. The most interesting representation: if commercial jets took off and landed at that rate of effieciency, there would be a failure every 10,000 landings/takeoffs. For the sake of simplifying, if there were 5,000 flights a day, that would be 10,000 landings plus takeoffs implying a statistical expectation of failure each day.
I don't know to what level RF can be perfected without some backup system (also RF) that would guarantee perfection but if they ever start flying those suckers, I'm going to wait a while before I board one.
this:
I very much agree with. I find only small comfort is government disclaimers about what is actually being monitored. And, I don't know ultimately where that goes.
No! I definitely believe leaks serve a purpose, and there's a certain quid pro quo around how leaks occur. Sometimes they come in cooperation with the government (e.g., get an idea into the public domain, run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes, without pulling the government into the limelight), sometimes they come out of true altruism (Watergate would be a good example).
I also think though there are times when a leak is out of whack with any motivations, and it's appropriate to scan the landscape and throttle it. I don't deign to outline what the rules should be, but I'm not surprised it's sometimes necessary to really find who's involved with a leak, especially if lives could be at stake.
If you're talking to government officials, and there are leaks that potentially endanger lives of agents, and collaterally other agents in the field, you're going to get more than a sideways look from the governmet, as well you should.
If you are a reporter, and you're exchanging calls with anyone on the "list" suspected of leaks why shouldn't the government take a peek. As reported in the article, there is no evidence the government is tapping or listening in to the calls, merely looking at who's talking to whom.
This smacks of journalists pompously elevating their self-importance to levels higher than they deserve. There are many examples of inappropriate treatment of journalists. This doesn't feel like one of them.
(shudder, I suspect I'm going to get hammered on this one)
SONY isn't ready to self-destruct, but it may be nearing the final disposition of its actions the past ten years including more and more proprietary technology, higher prices, and disdain for the customers.
Consider:
I don't know who's truly at the helm at SONY, but it's almost as if they've intentionally dug this hole, about six feet deep. I long ago eBay'ed and divested myself of all SONY equipment (still have SONY music CDs, sorry... ) and swore that, until SONY plays a little more nice, I'll never buy, recommend, anything SONY again.
I've never been a video game fan, so I don't know about SONY's escapades around those, but from what I see and hear it seems SONY is consistent across their offerings and markets.
So, it isn't SONY "ready to self-destruct", it's SONY reaping the rewards of what it's sown. It's too bad, they've shown they're capable of creating sophisticated and innovative new technologies.
What makes understanding (and meaning) problematic in e-mail is also well known in AI research. Language, while syntactically specific, grants latitude and license in rule usage and interpretation/extraction of meaning.
A favorite example of the nuance of true interpretation:
From that article, I agree: "If you're vulnerable to this kind of unintentional prejudice, pick up the phone: People are much less likely to prejudge after communicating by phone than they are after receiving an e-mail."
But, from the article, I disagree: "E-mail tends to be short and to the point." While e-mail can be short and sweet, I've found it to be all over the map. I've seen e-mail as a freebie for people who expound ad nauseum, and it's (e-mail) ubiquitous presence multiplies the wandering missives. Short and sweet is more typical in business settings (though I've seen epics there, too.)
Consider the classic following example. Read each sentence out loud, with emphasis on the bolded word.
I've fallen prey to this. It's too easy to project either your mood, or your opinion, etc. into an e-mail's text and consequently misinterpret the senders intent, message, sometimes to the extent you've flipped their intent 180 degrees.
Most of the time this is just a nuisance. Sometimes it can be amusing -- a story to share over beer (free).
It is worth exercising due care though to avoid escalations and huge misunderstandings sometimes creating hard feelings, and in more extreme cases damaging relationships. I learned from a few hard lessons, if after a few exchanges a dialog became testy and began escalation, I'd intervene on behalf of myself and the correspondent by curtailing the e-mail until a quick chat on the phone could reset the tone. That almost always worked.
(While some use some convention to help make tone and such more clear (e.g., *word*, emoticons, ALL-CAPS, etc.), I've found that to help marginally, and in some cases inflame a tense dialog further when that was not the intent.)
I've seen more sophisticated phishing examples by far, and some are indistinguishable from what might be the real thing. The distinguishing factor from a genuine missive is the best phishes have links to bogus addresses (sometimes denoted with only an IP address), and the destination site asks for information company's won't ask for from an e-mail.
One of the best phishes I've seen was sent to me -- it was ostensibly from my phone company, and it described a problem with my on-line bill pay (I don't). The letter was nicely formatted with the colors and icons of my phone company. The link was a giveaway, when I rolled over it, I could see the IP address, not a phone company web-site.
I researched this a bit more, went to my phone company's web site, and downloaded their graphics. A bit-for-bit comparison of their icons, etc., and the phishers showed them to be identical. (Interestingly, this puts phishers also in the position of being guilty of more crime: copyright violations.)
Had my suspicions not been raised by the fact I wasn't participating in on-line bill pay and the phish indicated that problem, and had I not seen the IP address by rolling over the link (which I only did because of above suspicion), I easily could have been convinced I was dealing with a real e-mail (NOTE: this was two years ago, before phishing had become real big, and it was my first incident.)
I can easily believe many, if not most could fall for well crafted phishing expeditions. I would agree with the cited article, those are weak examples unlikely to catch savvy users (though they still could catch the naive, of which there are millions!). (And, I would claim some of the examples really are nothing more than SPAM.)
I agree HDTV on the wire could be a serious problem. But, what I've seen from Comcast (my only experience so far) it appears they're introducing extra compression, and the HDTV of a friend gives a status showing a transfer rate of 6MBs. But, this article shows HDTV needing aroudn 20MBs for streaming. To move to a world of on-demand HDTV for the masses would seem to (as they're claiming) require not only some prioritization of the network, but I would think it would also require a more capable internet, i.e., bigger pipes almost everywhere.
In addition, at my friend's, we found that HDTV streams could grind the house network to a crawl, I don't know if it's related (since it really isn't part of the network, but it is coming in on the same coax). Considering everything I've seen and experienced (hiccups in the picture, sometimes outright halting) I don't think HDTV over the wire is ready for prime time yet.
However, if I were a provider, I would have to consider that all of a sudden even a small percentage of my customers could consume all of my bandwidth and would have to come up with some approach to keep the pipes working.
What I don't understand is that since the DOJ judegement against Microsoft they've had time to rewrite their entire flagship OS from scratch, yet still haven't been able to document it? How naive does the government have to be?
Great, I first had to look up assay:
(from Merriam Webster).Anyway, sometimes when I drink coffee I seem to have an entirely opposite reaction and am overcome with sleepiness. It only happens occasionally, and counterintuitively it always seems to be a very strong brew of some Starbucks blend. After doing a little research I discovered what you might expect to be a stronger (caffeine-wise) coffee is actually the weakest.
Turns out the darker the roast, the longer the beans have to be roasted to become that dark. And the longer the beans are roasted, the more caffeine is destroyed in the process. So, while a roast may be described as bold, but it doesn't necessarily mean it has extra kick. I prefer the bold roast taste, but have taken to preparing much lighter roasts for my morning kick-start.
Interestingly enough, this could also explain why I am positively higher than a kite when I drink someones A&P Maxwell House Drip grind coffee. It is a bland light looking roast/blend, but it can really have a kick.
Here's one page that answers some questions about caffeine.
Spanning 20+ years in computer programming I've stopped trying to explain what it is like and how it is done. Heck, we can't even clearly explain to peer programmers why vi is better than emacs, XP is better than Linux, Gimp is better than Photoshop (NOTE: these do not necessarily reflect my opinion, FTR, I prefer: vim; Linux; and Photoshop)
I shrug my shoulders and explain it's mostly dull. It's kind of like doing Math homework, except I have to do it every day for my job. It's always about solving and debugging, and people's eyes glaze when I begin poking programming nuance with a ten-foot pole.
Fortunately I find most people don't really care. (Also for those who would "get it", my experience has been they are ones who dabble and experiment in it anyway already.)
(Aside: as for the original poster, congratulations on being able to explain "big O notation". I sometimes suspect my girlfriend of faking it.)
I don't know if I would join a union. I once belonged to one in a PPG glass factory -- we made Anderson Twindows (actually a pretty cool thing). But, the work wasn't too hard, and the pay (for that market) was pretty good.
You could argue the salary and conditions were a result of the union. That is probably true. But, as power grows, so does (did, seemingly) abuse.
We were up for new contract and the union came so close to putting us on the streets. They were demanding a cut back of the number of glass "lines" each worker ran per shift. As it was at the time, I was barely able to fill much more than four hours of real work in an 8-hour shift, and now I almost had to strike because the union wanted to bust balls with the company on this.
I know sometimes it's about putting a stake in the ground way out to reach certain compromises, but this seemed off the scale.
If IT wanted to unionize it would have to be with sanity. I'm not a big fan of seniority being the only yardstick for who stays and who goes when there are cutbacks (more on that in a moment). An IT union worth its salt would allow for hearings and maybe prevent arbitrary and massive layoffs.
Which brings me to an abuse I only figured out 2 years after getting laid off from a major telcom:
Part of my severance package was one months pay for every year I'd been there, with a maximum payout of 10 months. I'd been there for 21 years, so with my 60 day notice and severance, it might seem generous that I'd be getting one year of pay. But why would any employee with only ten years get the same benefit? That didn't seem fair.
Turns out, part of the contract for getting and keeping the severance requires the employee to honor what amounts to a gag order... no bad mouthing the company, and no legal proceedings against the company or they would take all of the money back.
Coincidentally it turns out that the statute of limitations for EEOC actions against a company is 300 days which conveniently happens to be 10 months. Aha! So, the company skates with what (IMO) amounts to hush money and looks generous at the same time. (for those who would claim these were generous terms, consider there are many hidden "costs" to the 20+ year employees, including but not limited to: health care coverage and costs, pension changes)
If unions had the power to change that kind of treatment, I'd consider them.
Empirical evidence in recent news suggests though (e.g., United Airlines, et al. where pensions have been handed over in default to the government) unions ultimately have little power to stem corporate abuse. The rich will continue to get richer, the poor will continue to have babies.
Sigh.
What's up with Microsoft? I would recommend Thomas Peters' "In Search of Excellence" for their review. While I wouldn't agree 100% with all of "Search...", there are anecdotes and good evidence around "customer service", and what makes a company excellent.
Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?) cultivates resentment and long term rot.
And now, Microsoft is creating account team members whose sole function is to instill FUD in their customer, intimidating them into shelling out even more money for services to ensure Microsoft checks and balances are in Microsoft's favor? Sheesh. This is a scam, pure and simple. As the article points out, if Microsoft truly thinks something is amiss "it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers".
Maybe Microsoft is doing this to themselves inadvertently, or maybe it's a strategy. From the Fine Article:
Microsoft's "complexities of software licensing" are the seed of irritation. Accusing customers of ripping them off because they can't figure these complex licenses out entirely is the fertilizer to grow that seed into full blown resentment.
If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.
From the article:
Kind of reminds me the first time I went looking for a job: We need someone with "x" years experience, sorry; But, how do I ever get those "x" years? Also, I would think these companies are suffering from the Microsoft Syndrome (it's the biggest market, therefor that's all we'll write to) and are missing an opportunity. I hope they roll the dice and buy into their own futures. What is there about entire state governments switching to Open Document Format (ODF) that sounds like "limited markets"?
Also from the fine article:
First, it's unfortunate the example set by Microsoft is what sets the stage and expectation for anyone else. OSS is not Microsoft. And, I hope OSS and ODF is given the time and opportunity to step up to accessibility issues rather than being brushed aside.As for the article's claim these documents today don't work well with screen magnifiers, etc., while I haven't done the research, I find it difficult to believe there aren't some tools out there that either are sufficient or could bridge the gap until a more mature suite of extensions and support are added to OpenOffice and others.
Cool, I can dust off my old bell bottom pants and platform shoes. I knew they would come back!
All seriousness aside, I started out coding for mainframes, mostly assembly. To this day some of the most screaming and cool programs I ever wrote were on mainframes (wrote (in assembly) an on-line trouble logging system to replace a paper system back in '76).
I did lots of COBOL programming and maintenance for a major, now absorbed by increasingly corrupt larger pseudo-telcos, telco. COBOL, not the most exciting language, but the throughput and data integrity of those days I've not seen matched since (and I still love Unix as my first choice for environment).
Which brings me (and us) to what I think works in favor of mainframes having a chance at a major comeback:
This is a partial list. I've long lusted for the raw power of mainframes with the standard support and the nimble Unix utilities.
Never said it (they) did. Actually if you look at your direct quote from my post, I used the term "paradigm". So, in that context, let me expand a bit: the paradigm was very much an assumption, one machine/computer, one user, hence the bizarre logical drives, all accessible to all levels by all users (by default at least -- yes, that's now changing, welcome to century 21).
As for intent, I was on the original NT Beta support team at Microsoft (there were 16 of us), and after walking in the door, I immediately began asking for information on setting up my machine with a multi-user configuration. The team treated me like I was some sort of nut case -- they emphasized multi-user meant multiple users could access services on one machine (file services, not new in NT though, etc.), not multiple users logged onto one machine.
They were barely comfortable with the notion of more than one user ever using one machine, even one user at a time!
As for all of this being a hack, you are absolutely right. I would actually probably be less adversarial with Microsoft if they were more candid about things like this, but to read their literature, they concede nothing, ever. (For example, the initial security access levels "rings" in the NT kernel were elegantly designed and promptly trampled to allow performance by granting direct video hardware access to non-privileged code -- go figure.)
I joined Microsoft in 1992 excited about being a part of what I thought was a sea change in their OS direction. I left shortly after when behind closed doors I discovered it was a facade designed to show Microsoft was ready to play on the same court with the big boys (namely, Unix). Unfortunately, they weren't. Unfortunately, they got away with it. Unfortunately, even today, they don't stand up to hardened Unix systems (they're closer than ever, but still not there).
A couple of interesting paragraphs in the article:
Concerning "good news for users", I doubt it. Nothing good has come of Microsoft's perception of "what is good" for users, from the crippled layering of a multi-user paradigm on top of what started out as a single user design (NT/XP over Windows/DOS) to their constant and misguided attempts to create intuitive GUIs (dancing paperclips, self-altering menus with chevrons anyone?). Security is typically hard, and Microsoft will screw this up too.
As for the second paragraphs, could Microsoft again be forcing the hands of third party vendors? Seems they could (indeed, it almost seems likely) wiggle their way into the security market and start charging for different mechanisms of security. Of course that can only happen after they've provided it "free" long enough to get rid of pesky competitors like SecurID (GREAT product, btw) and VPN providers.
I'll fight Microsoft's practices til forever, but I must admit, I'm glad I'm near retirement as far as having to deal with this crap anymore.
It's not entirely fair to offer an opinion, I have never seen or used the Cox PVR. My experience has been there are few pretenders to the throne that even come close to Tivo's quality of service.
Tivo pioneered the user experience for PVR viewing, and from their first offering (which I purchased and actually returned -- it was not quite ready for prime time then) which was very good they have steadily improved their already leading product.
For those who may care, here is one of my earlier posts on tivo features vs Comcast.
If I had the option and was a Cox subscriber, not only would I ask for the swap for similar pricing, I'd be happy to pay a premium. Tivo is that good, and what I've seen of other offerings is that bad! (I recently visited neighbors who had their new Dish PVR. While I'd wished a Tivo for them, I was happy for their new window into PVR viewing. I tried to walk them through the simplest setups: record one show, pause live TV, etc., but even I found the interface clunky, intrusive, inconsistent, and obfuscated. It bordered on unusable. I was able to figure it out, but it was a RPITA to use. And, before anyone points out I had to "learn" how to use the tivo, too, that really wasn't true. The litmus test for me for entertainment gadgets is that I be able to use it out-of-the-box with no instruction manual reading. Tivo is usable from the get-go.)
If I lived in a region where I had some OTHER cable service, and heard Cox was offering PVR with Tivo, I'd switch.
Good luck, Tivo...
I'm waiting for the emacs emulation mode. (kidding, kidding)
What has been submitted as a pithy wry parody of a real life warning may in fact be dead on in its message. In fact, it may not be such a bad idea to make such a warning more de rigeur. Perhaps we put a sticker on any computer (especially XP) for general use, much like the cancer warning on a pack of cigarettes.
It won't stop people from being careless, naive, or wild with their computers attached to the ether, but even if only a few poor souls escape the hell that is IE pop-up oblivion it would be worth it. It could also save we who support a few miserable hours of either fixing a problem or explaining to devastated "clients" why there is no fix for their destroyed c: drive.
O, that it were not so. Sigh
You could probably manage your inventory with:
I'm not being totally facetious. Usually the problem is overkill with managing information. If it's low transaction (sounds like yours is), with minimal dynamics, I've seen so many sledgehammer applications that are exactly what you describe: buggy, with data constantly "lost".
The tools I listed won't keep stuff from getting lost, but software doesn't do that. Good management and procedures around your inventory will. What it'd cost you to assign one person to manage a reasonably simple solution would be way more than offset the cost of expensive or custom software.
This really is feasible, I've done this myself. Heck, from what you describe, I'd offer to put it together for you, write the on-line help, and get you going. I'd venture I could put together a working app in three or four days.
Again, not trying to be facetious, just consider looking more closely at your procedures and policies. Good luck, we're counting on you!
I don't know why I bother:
This is funny, it almost sounds from the article that they changed their methodology to increase their claimed "losses", and had to rein them back in when they discovered their losses exceeded global Gross (International) Product.
I'm surprised to see such an MPAA friendly article from WSJ. Or maybe I'm not.
The big difference here in any and all of your arguments that Google is doing the same thing is Microsoft is convicted of abuse of monopolistic practices and therefor has a different level of responsibility in its business practices.
Six years ago I had a heated debate with a friend about what should be done about Microsoft. I was (and still am) adamant Microsoft needs legal throttling. Microsoft escaped by the hair of their chin with a fortuitous changing of the guard shortly after losing their DOJ battle (Clinton and Democrats to Bush and the big-money-friendly Republicans). Clearly the new regime had no appetite for any meaningful punishment for Microsoft.
My friend waved his hands and said, "Let the market forces settle it", to which I pointed out Microsoft had gained so much power and momentum that market forces may have become irrelevant.
While better late than never, I think Dvorak makes some good points, but would focus on one I think he misses the mark:
I think Microsoft is right to worry about Google. Google has blind-sided Microsoft on yet another "it's the internet" facet they either glibly ignored, or just didn't see. Google has planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, the OS isn't going to be relevant in the future, thus allowing more free choice, and less dependence on Microsoft. Google's "proof" that XMLHTTPREQUEST can provide responsive web apps as stopgap technology (I can't believe that there eventually will be some better replacement) has spawned many other interesting companies and application.
Some of these "AJAX" apps are downright useful, and for the casual user, can completely replace their office suites in functionality (for their purposes), and then some (remote, network accessible from anywhere).
The amazing irony in all of this is Microsoft invented what may end up being the Silver Bullet that defeats them (XMLHTTPREQUEST). And, finally, maybe market forces will level the playing field.