As much as I'd love to say WalMart had no idea, and do dislike some of their business practices, they also in my experiance get a few things as well.
First of all, for a certain segment of the population, they fit quite well. The prices are cheap, even on name brand items like other posters mentioned (grocery items like frozen foods).
They also don't bother you while shopping. This can be good or bad, but you know, Best Buy can S**k it, I don't need 5 people asking me if I need help within a minute and 40 feet of walking. I mean, they just SAW me say no thanks to # 1~3... Your experiance obviously varied, but I've always been helped if I approached a WalMart associate, they just don't glom onto you like at other stores.
Finally, they really do returns well. They give you a year on everything they sell, and they deal with the manufacturer. I've even had them take back products without a recipt, just a barcode to scan, and they gave me back cash. Try that somewhere else. I've even taken back compact flourscent bulbs that burned out in 3 years which was under the 7 Lights of America claimed, and Walmart opened a new package to give me the one replacement bulb.
So if I know what I want, and the price is good, I will shop at WalMart. In my area and in my experiance, their customer service is good, and they stand behind their products. It's rare that I need to take something back to the store, but if I do, they take care of me, none of the all too common 30 return policy, blah blah... I know if I was a chronic returner, they'd cut me off, but I wish more stores would realize that taking care of the customer once every two years or so on a $100 item will have them coming back for incidentals etc...
Well, I don't know about OSS exactly, but there are things like GLPI that is a helpdesk system that includes calanders. At work we use Oracle Calendar which runs cross platform, but isn't cheap. There are wiki based calendar plugins. I'm not entirely sure why calendars need to be integrated with e-mail, they seem separate to me.
And I don't know how useful calendaring is, I rarely use it, just for some e-mail reminders. However, we do use Oracle Caledar for scheduling out conference rooms.
Some of your issues above can be mitigated with some permissions hacking. That is, make users part of the network configuraters group in XP, bam, they can change network settings to join their home network - they CAN'T install crap. Use a VPN - and VNC and take control remotely rather than going out to their houses if they need further support. Look into Sudo for Windows on Sourceforge, and define proper restrictions as to what they can elevate their privilidges for. etc...
Or for the non-techies, Hamachi + internetsharing of choice.
Re:So let the flame wars begin!
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But as far as time has borne it out - it was a bug. Mac OS got Unix, Linux/Unix retain *several* powerful shells and Windows has *added, as a feature* Powershell for XPSP2 and Vista. So as far as I can see, not having a CLI *is* a bug, one that all 3 major OS flavors have retained or remidied since 1989.
I'm not, I was replying to the guy who claimed that it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to test software at the OS level, to which I was explaining why that isn't the case. Then I did go off on a tangent as to why many people are not rushing to that testing either.
Well, it's not just does X software work, but does it work in several different software configurations. So first you try your basic image cadre of software with Vista. And you need to run it for a week or two to see if any bugs or incompatibilities show up when doing various tasks for 8 hours a day. Then you have several different people do the same thing (well you'd do this at the same time but hey). Non IT people.
Then you take several critical software configurations and see if they also work ok. Does Inventor work in Vista/base software? Does Inventor + Vault work? Does it work through the VPN? What about with ANSYS installed? etc...
Then you have some non IT people test this out.
I mean, you're pretty irresponsible if you just see if it installs and runs, and do a 10 minute test of a list of functions... that could mean you're just lucky when it all works for... 10 minutes.
Plus, under-resourced? What about opportunity cost? You do realize there may be many projects that are more useful to the company to complete before an update to an OS that doesn't solve any problems they currently have. For example, XP works. It's already tested where I work. We have several things that we need to get done, and things that would be nice to get done. Like the Software Licensing management update. Like new mailservers that don't run on 15 year old UNIX machines, and 25 year old VMS machines. Like an upgrade of the Domain off of NT4 to 2003. Like testing out Acronis for imaging over Ghost 8.2.
All of which provide tangable benefits and fix issues RIGHT NOW, as opposed to Vista that so far solves nothing except maybe dynamic HALs, which would be also solved via Acronis or mitigated via Sysprep(which we do). Plus we'd need to spend CRAPLOADS of money for Vista, wheras the other updates are much cheaper and provide a lot more percieved benefits for the money.
And lets not talk about the DOS6.22 install we just did to run a controller card...
I don't know about your banks, but mine (HSBC USA) doesn't do much of anything by e-mail for all sorts of security reasons. They have implimented something called "Bank Mail" which is a rudimentary webmail client INSIDE their WebBanking interface. That seems reasonably secure to me, and a logical solution to the problem for banks.
Doesn't this totally break any security then? I mean, how hard is it to send a keypress from a program to a window? AutoIT can do that eaisly. I don't think that would even trigger any security stuff, as opposed to trying to hook a keylogger so you can programatically pass the password to sudo or whatever.
Basically, I can't see this improving actual security much beyond the time it takes malware to incoporate AutoIT or the like.
Finally, as it's just ANOTHER "Are you really sure?" box, with no real indication what it's asking to do, why it's bothering you, or what's trying to do it (it just gives program names IME with the RCs, which often aren't that helpful to non techies) it fails the same as everything else. Users will just click until the "thing" they are trying to do works.
At least with a password based dialog, they can't just click ok ten times and have it go. And having it be optional means the slightly savvy will just turn it off as it is annoying.
Overall, I'm not sure UAC is useful - and I don't think you can set up "rules" like you can with coreforce or ProcessGuard which would then actually make this more than an annoyance.
Maybe you had a crappy GPS, or you need to learn how to use it. I have a $100 Garmin Legend b/w hand held, which for $80 I got Maps for US and Canada that I can load onto it (well, not all of them as it only has 8MB flash, but I can load in the expected area, and it has base interstate and state routes built in).
Beyond having a map, I can just put it in "compass" mode and it gives me both the lat/long coordinates as well as a nice compass display with south or whatever direction I'm heading.
Of course this isn't as nice as a real NAV system, but with a laptop, or some planning, or again the ability to read a map + compass mode, it gives you both the compass and more waypoint etc capibilities.
I believe that I saw with the new niagra? server from SUN (the ones shown in Wired tied to trees) there was a software warrenty. I would guess that any support contract on a software stack/integrated solution like from IBM or whatever would qualify as a software warrenty...
Coreforce is an interesting approach to this, though of course massive simplification of the interface, and something like extension installs of community profiles would be necessary - something like:
I see you're trying to install FireFox. Use CoreForce(tm) FireFox Profile? [OK][Advanced]
So you herd most users to using the CoreForce approved profile, but people could click advanced to use no profile (massive pop-up barrage/manual setup) or an option to pick from several profiles (maybe on a website) from different community members.
Of course, if CoreForce hadn't seen the program before something like:
I see you are installing/running Foo. We do not have a profile available. [Stop Install and Request Profile][Advanced]
And then there is an entry made online requesting a profile. Of course, under advanced you'd be able to submit your created profile for review.
The problem with this is the same as with phishing protection, you are basically telling somebody every program you run, and at least the first time you run it. This has all the privacy implications . . . Then again, with the popularity of "threatsense" networks, I suppose it doesn't bother most people, and there's always the manual config.
Of course, for this to catch on, there'd need to be either a huge community, or a monthly fee to keep testing, creating, updating, hosting etc all the profiles.
Ummm. . . VMWare ESX server clusters under the virtual Zone based servers? Maybe not even have separate clusters, but make all 2700 servers Virtual, run them in ESX cluster that is 2700+ servers, and let ESX handle the proper clustering? Would that work?
This may always fall to the problem of the silent majority. That is, a majority of any "group" (labels being convienient but often woefully inaccurate) may not agree to any great extent with the visible talking heads that identify or claim to be part of that group. Extreme positions are often more vocal than moderate positions as moderates may well feel like it's ok to have position "x", even if they disagree with it; or even if they think it's wrong and not ok to have/be "x" they don't feel it's enough of an issue to make a big deal over.
The general apathy requires quite an affront to their belief system to have anything happen. Extremeists find this happening much more often than moderates. Hence many positions argued in public are simply one extreme talking head against another, with most everyone else shaking their head wondering why it's such a big deal.
The question I have is: Will this voucher pay for the entire year at any (public) school? Does it cover transportation? Because if not, then it's not really as much of a choice if parents need to spend time driving, paying for city busses(if available) etc... Because there is still additional cost involved over the default school.
Also, except for a school totally drying up as no students go there, a voucher system like the above seems to me like it wouldn't change much - schools could not demand a higher premium if they are good...
The rest of the Web ought to care because otherwise they are more and more suceptible to phishing scams and the like. Not knowing the difference between a stranger and a trusted adult is how childern get kidnapped. Likewise, not knowing that ebay is different from your bank is different from a random link on google is how people get tricked into giving away CC numbers and become victims of identity theft.
People absolutely should know when something is in their house vs at a companies site. For all sorts of reasons. How could you make any sort of reasonable decisions if you didn't see a distinction between your house and the mall? This is what you're advocating for those online. I'd say that could be an issue.
Part of the problem is Google is trying to out MS MS in following the buy out lots of startups for cool technology. That can work, but MS has LOTS of money and can likely buy out more companies than Google can. Also, MS has more infrastructure and experiance in rebranding and integrating purchased products.
While I don't deny that the buy out a startup is a valid business strategy, I wonder if trying to do the same thing as Microsoft makes sense for a company as different as Google (I.E. they don't sell software AFAIK).
I'd been considering buying Vista Retail (first time ever Retail purchase for me) as I've been building computers for a while, and decided to get more legit for a number of reasons, not the lease of which is convienience with all the online things.
That said, this news sort of alters my POV, which is, I still plan to purchase it, but just so I can feel better when I need to pirate it to actually use it after an upgrade or so.
The whole thing missed here is that companies need to make paid offerings more convienient than pirating them, but it seems the companies keep doing the latter.
Naa, it's personal preference. I think it makes all text look horribly fuzzy and large on most LCDs, though my Toshiba laptop does look nice with it. It really depends on the LCD.
Ehh, that's not really a selling point sadly. I've told people just as I hand back the PC after fixing it at Best Buy AND charging them $199-$299 to do so that they got hit because of IE (or Kazaa, but hey), and they just give me a blank stare when I say to go to www.opera.com or www.getfirefox.com and get one of them. Security doesn't sell.
That said IE7 is about as familiar to the user as Opera's default, and if Opera's experiance is any indication, many will be entirely lost when it shows up about how to use it. Whether that might get people to switch to FF for a more familiar interface, or not is unknown.
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As much as I'd love to say WalMart had no idea, and do dislike some of their business practices, they also in my experiance get a few things as well.
... I know if I was a chronic returner, they'd cut me off, but I wish more stores would realize that taking care of the customer once every two years or so on a $100 item will have them coming back for incidentals etc...
First of all, for a certain segment of the population, they fit quite well. The prices are cheap, even on name brand items like other posters mentioned (grocery items like frozen foods).
They also don't bother you while shopping. This can be good or bad, but you know, Best Buy can S**k it, I don't need 5 people asking me if I need help within a minute and 40 feet of walking. I mean, they just SAW me say no thanks to # 1~3...
Your experiance obviously varied, but I've always been helped if I approached a WalMart associate, they just don't glom onto you like at other stores.
Finally, they really do returns well. They give you a year on everything they sell, and they deal with the manufacturer. I've even had them take back products without a recipt, just a barcode to scan, and they gave me back cash. Try that somewhere else. I've even taken back compact flourscent bulbs that burned out in 3 years which was under the 7 Lights of America claimed, and Walmart opened a new package to give me the one replacement bulb.
So if I know what I want, and the price is good, I will shop at WalMart. In my area and in my experiance, their customer service is good, and they stand behind their products. It's rare that I need to take something back to the store, but if I do, they take care of me, none of the all too common 30 return policy, blah blah
Well, I don't know about OSS exactly, but there are things like GLPI that is a helpdesk system that includes calanders. At work we use Oracle Calendar which runs cross platform, but isn't cheap. There are wiki based calendar plugins. I'm not entirely sure why calendars need to be integrated with e-mail, they seem separate to me.
And I don't know how useful calendaring is, I rarely use it, just for some e-mail reminders. However, we do use Oracle Caledar for scheduling out conference rooms.
We're installing IE7 as a security update, but we don't use or support it, instead we support FireFox 2.0.0.1, though I use Opera.
Some of your issues above can be mitigated with some permissions hacking. That is, make users part of the network configuraters group in XP, bam, they can change network settings to join their home network - they CAN'T install crap. Use a VPN - and VNC and take control remotely rather than going out to their houses if they need further support. Look into Sudo for Windows on Sourceforge, and define proper restrictions as to what they can elevate their privilidges for. etc...
Or for the non-techies, Hamachi + internetsharing of choice.
But as far as time has borne it out - it was a bug. Mac OS got Unix, Linux/Unix retain *several* powerful shells and Windows has *added, as a feature* Powershell for XPSP2 and Vista. So as far as I can see, not having a CLI *is* a bug, one that all 3 major OS flavors have retained or remidied since 1989.
I'm not, I was replying to the guy who claimed that it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to test software at the OS level, to which I was explaining why that isn't the case. Then I did go off on a tangent as to why many people are not rushing to that testing either.
Well, it's not just does X software work, but does it work in several different software configurations. So first you try your basic image cadre of software with Vista. And you need to run it for a week or two to see if any bugs or incompatibilities show up when doing various tasks for 8 hours a day. Then you have several different people do the same thing (well you'd do this at the same time but hey). Non IT people.
... 10 minutes.
Then you take several critical software configurations and see if they also work ok. Does Inventor work in Vista/base software? Does Inventor + Vault work? Does it work through the VPN? What about with ANSYS installed? etc...
Then you have some non IT people test this out.
I mean, you're pretty irresponsible if you just see if it installs and runs, and do a 10 minute test of a list of functions... that could mean you're just lucky when it all works for
Plus, under-resourced? What about opportunity cost? You do realize there may be many projects that are more useful to the company to complete before an update to an OS that doesn't solve any problems they currently have. For example, XP works. It's already tested where I work. We have several things that we need to get done, and things that would be nice to get done. Like the Software Licensing management update. Like new mailservers that don't run on 15 year old UNIX machines, and 25 year old VMS machines. Like an upgrade of the Domain off of NT4 to 2003. Like testing out Acronis for imaging over Ghost 8.2.
All of which provide tangable benefits and fix issues RIGHT NOW, as opposed to Vista that so far solves nothing except maybe dynamic HALs, which would be also solved via Acronis or mitigated via Sysprep(which we do). Plus we'd need to spend CRAPLOADS of money for Vista, wheras the other updates are much cheaper and provide a lot more percieved benefits for the money.
And lets not talk about the DOS6.22 install we just did to run a controller card...
I don't know about your banks, but mine (HSBC USA) doesn't do much of anything by e-mail for all sorts of security reasons. They have implimented something called "Bank Mail" which is a rudimentary webmail client INSIDE their WebBanking interface. That seems reasonably secure to me, and a logical solution to the problem for banks.
Doesn't this totally break any security then? I mean, how hard is it to send a keypress from a program to a window? AutoIT can do that eaisly. I don't think that would even trigger any security stuff, as opposed to trying to hook a keylogger so you can programatically pass the password to sudo or whatever.
Basically, I can't see this improving actual security much beyond the time it takes malware to incoporate AutoIT or the like.
Finally, as it's just ANOTHER "Are you really sure?" box, with no real indication what it's asking to do, why it's bothering you, or what's trying to do it (it just gives program names IME with the RCs, which often aren't that helpful to non techies) it fails the same as everything else. Users will just click until the "thing" they are trying to do works.
At least with a password based dialog, they can't just click ok ten times and have it go. And having it be optional means the slightly savvy will just turn it off as it is annoying.
Overall, I'm not sure UAC is useful - and I don't think you can set up "rules" like you can with coreforce or ProcessGuard which would then actually make this more than an annoyance.
Maybe you had a crappy GPS, or you need to learn how to use it. I have a $100 Garmin Legend b/w hand held, which for $80 I got Maps for US and Canada that I can load onto it (well, not all of them as it only has 8MB flash, but I can load in the expected area, and it has base interstate and state routes built in).
Beyond having a map, I can just put it in "compass" mode and it gives me both the lat/long coordinates as well as a nice compass display with south or whatever direction I'm heading.
Of course this isn't as nice as a real NAV system, but with a laptop, or some planning, or again the ability to read a map + compass mode, it gives you both the compass and more waypoint etc capibilities.
I believe that I saw with the new niagra? server from SUN (the ones shown in Wired tied to trees) there was a software warrenty. I would guess that any support contract on a software stack/integrated solution like from IBM or whatever would qualify as a software warrenty...
Coreforce is an interesting approach to this, though of course massive simplification of the interface, and something like extension installs of community profiles would be necessary - something like:
I see you're trying to install FireFox. Use CoreForce(tm) FireFox Profile? [OK][Advanced]
So you herd most users to using the CoreForce approved profile, but people could click advanced to use no profile (massive pop-up barrage/manual setup) or an option to pick from several profiles (maybe on a website) from different community members.
Of course, if CoreForce hadn't seen the program before something like:
I see you are installing/running Foo. We do not have a profile available. [Stop Install and Request Profile][Advanced]
And then there is an entry made online requesting a profile. Of course, under advanced you'd be able to submit your created profile for review.
The problem with this is the same as with phishing protection, you are basically telling somebody every program you run, and at least the first time you run it. This has all the privacy implications . . . Then again, with the popularity of "threatsense" networks, I suppose it doesn't bother most people, and there's always the manual config.
Of course, for this to catch on, there'd need to be either a huge community, or a monthly fee to keep testing, creating, updating, hosting etc all the profiles.
Ummm. . . VMWare ESX server clusters under the virtual Zone based servers? Maybe not even have separate clusters, but make all 2700 servers Virtual, run them in ESX cluster that is 2700+ servers, and let ESX handle the proper clustering? Would that work?
This may always fall to the problem of the silent majority. That is, a majority of any "group" (labels being convienient but often woefully inaccurate) may not agree to any great extent with the visible talking heads that identify or claim to be part of that group. Extreme positions are often more vocal than moderate positions as moderates may well feel like it's ok to have position "x", even if they disagree with it; or even if they think it's wrong and not ok to have/be "x" they don't feel it's enough of an issue to make a big deal over.
The general apathy requires quite an affront to their belief system to have anything happen. Extremeists find this happening much more often than moderates. Hence many positions argued in public are simply one extreme talking head against another, with most everyone else shaking their head wondering why it's such a big deal.
The question I have is: Will this voucher pay for the entire year at any (public) school? Does it cover transportation? Because if not, then it's not really as much of a choice if parents need to spend time driving, paying for city busses(if available) etc... Because there is still additional cost involved over the default school.
Also, except for a school totally drying up as no students go there, a voucher system like the above seems to me like it wouldn't change much - schools could not demand a higher premium if they are good...
I would expect you could use something like VNC or remote X Sessions over ssh/vpn (Hamachi, OpenVPN, etc) and keep the data local.
Or, if you need it spread out for some reason, iFolder or rSync seem the best choices. However, you could also look at AFS.
Basically, you have to get the long haul data transfers down somehow, or else get faster connections.
Everyone can use Sysprep + ghost or Acronis or whatever to do that.
This has been mentioned, but I wonder if something like iFolder cleaned up a little and SSL back in wouldn't meet that criteria.
The rest of the Web ought to care because otherwise they are more and more suceptible to phishing scams and the like. Not knowing the difference between a stranger and a trusted adult is how childern get kidnapped. Likewise, not knowing that ebay is different from your bank is different from a random link on google is how people get tricked into giving away CC numbers and become victims of identity theft.
People absolutely should know when something is in their house vs at a companies site. For all sorts of reasons. How could you make any sort of reasonable decisions if you didn't see a distinction between your house and the mall? This is what you're advocating for those online. I'd say that could be an issue.
Part of the problem is Google is trying to out MS MS in following the buy out lots of startups for cool technology. That can work, but MS has LOTS of money and can likely buy out more companies than Google can. Also, MS has more infrastructure and experiance in rebranding and integrating purchased products.
While I don't deny that the buy out a startup is a valid business strategy, I wonder if trying to do the same thing as Microsoft makes sense for a company as different as Google (I.E. they don't sell software AFAIK).
Open Office or the like...? There are still local apps that compete with MSOffice. Free local apps in this case still might (ought?) beat web ones.
I'd been considering buying Vista Retail (first time ever Retail purchase for me) as I've been building computers for a while, and decided to get more legit for a number of reasons, not the lease of which is convienience with all the online things.
That said, this news sort of alters my POV, which is, I still plan to purchase it, but just so I can feel better when I need to pirate it to actually use it after an upgrade or so.
The whole thing missed here is that companies need to make paid offerings more convienient than pirating them, but it seems the companies keep doing the latter.
Naa, it's personal preference. I think it makes all text look horribly fuzzy and large on most LCDs, though my Toshiba laptop does look nice with it. It really depends on the LCD.
Ehh, that's not really a selling point sadly. I've told people just as I hand back the PC after fixing it at Best Buy AND charging them $199-$299 to do so that they got hit because of IE (or Kazaa, but hey), and they just give me a blank stare when I say to go to www.opera.com or www.getfirefox.com and get one of them. Security doesn't sell.
That said IE7 is about as familiar to the user as Opera's default, and if Opera's experiance is any indication, many will be entirely lost when it shows up about how to use it. Whether that might get people to switch to FF for a more familiar interface, or not is unknown.