"Right... because Apple is really known for driving prices down."
Look at the original iPad.
The Doctors aren't evil... they just practice medicine the old fashioned way. Most learned their diagnostic skills when rotary phones were the standard. Would you consider a rotary phone today adequate technology to place a call today... If you want to be treated in methods that are
As for the FDA... They're not that bad.... just usually very blinder focused. I really don't see them having an issue with this in terms of data collection. (I don't see apple supporting a portable pacemaker BlueToothed into an iPhone to get it's operational controls from some data center in lower elbonia).
and you'll be surprised that most of your medical procedure data is already in the cloud, if you used insurance or put your SSN on any form (The bad news about HIPAA is that it's 'portable'... often to the highest bidder ). The problem is most of the diagnostic information is in islands that the MDs don't even have good access to.
As for privacy/security issues...Noted. Data Interpretation... that's well outside of Apple's purview... I can't see Apple doing anything other than providing a secure end to end pipe. The back end, whether it be Johns Hopkins, or Joe's Appliance, and Blood Pressure monitoring will likely have to prove their system, including interpretation someplace. But raw data, in standard HLxx code, has to stand on it's own against the diagnostic standard in the HIPAA world. Non Issue (assuming the regulatory people validate it's to the HLxx standard).
And they are most effective when the consumer determines what 'value' 'quality' is.
And I do think they will just be a simple platform where they charge 30% (or less) to allow other companies that are actually in the healthcare business to use their platform to do their stuff, purely as a common app-platform/payment/identity/secure delivery conduit. If insurance (sigh... see my comments above;-) pays $19.99 for an app to monitor blood glucose from a BT enabled skin patch (or one that is part of a 'rumored iWatch'), then Apple could be in line to make $6 on every diabetic with a smart phone, and have a huge number of diabetics spend $600(phone) + $99(iwatch) on Apple Hardware (and $50+ month in bandwidth) just for the ability to have continuous blood monitoring. If proved viable to regulatory reviewers, this would be a huge win compared to comparable FDA approved standalone solutions much more in price, and much less capability.
Working for one of the top three Insurance (oops, I mean 'Health Benefits Management'), and one of the 'World Famous' Medical Centers (both in the same state, you can figure it out), and the largest Pharma company in the free world at the time (and having two small town country doctors in the family), I've seen the world from all sides, and it's not pretty. BR> My quick summation of the problem... every HBM has a different definition of 'good' care, based on 'average' care models, which are highly fragmented and almost require an HBM to make sure the payer (re: for most... your employer) gets the lowest cost for average or better quality, based on nothing but prior outcomes, and use 'Steerage' and 'Preferred Provider' methods to extort health care providers into capitulation, and the term 'quality' really evolves into a Fast Food Metaphor, and the quality/$$ spent actually goes down.
Any payor Model, Gov't or HBM, that allows someone else to get between you and the MD to negotiate a price or what is expected for a symptom... is the problem. There should be no middle men in healthcare. Especially Middlemen paid by someone else with no skin in the game (my employer/pension-manager)
Hence you control what you need to control... the PoS systems physically separate to the Router hub (owned by HQ), and consider the rest of the network hostile. Simple engineering principles. Basically make the rest of the Store one big 'internet' and portal all store employee access back to the mother ship as if every employee is working from home. Managers... Same. Suppliers (if they are in the store). None. Obviously the major integration point is store inventory to PoS, (Did we sell the last one... is there one in the back room, when is the next shipment coming in, the price is what?), but that is either one system that should be on the critical business ops network, or integrated systems that either have local compute services (again all segregated from the non-critical traffic.
I tend to think that POS equipment should be on a separate network. separate hardware plant to the VPN (and then separate E2E encryption over the router) back to the mothership. Period. VLANS are hard to 'really isolate.' and it's always easier to 'uptick' your controls on a critical network, than it is to run a mixed mode on the same infrastructure. That said, the other side of that is creating a monitoring space for inbound IPs from this tier of vendors and and devices (should a HVAC vendor IP, or one of their onsite controller be reaching INTO 'more vital engineering spaces' on the Target fabric, with question and follow-up?) that would like up like Times Square as unauthorized activity if traffic doesn't go directly from Point A to Point B.)
Once you get to the soft gooey center of the POS system... then all bets are off. You need to either hyper isolate them, or hyper monitor them for deltas in their operational configuration and output.
I had the chance to work at Target HQ for Corp IT Security (more internal and Store Employee AIM), and when I interviewed, the manager was more extremely not excited to hire me at al, saying that I didn't have the political chops to get my ideas implemented. I tended to argue HIS role as management (my job is ideas and execution... your job is facilitation and corporate political knowledge). I think telling your hiring manager that he doesn't understand his role in security (it was all COBIT and ISO to him... give me the process, not the security, sigh) was probably not in the top 10 ways to get hired.
I'm now working for one of the consulting companies who is cleaning up the mess. Knowing who I know, my guess is this will likely fall on Security Operations (outsourced), as they are tasked with analytics of these events and 'sell threat intelligence' to Target. Very few U.S. citizenry will be affected by this. My man on the inside (responsible for the engineering of of the Network Security Monitoring into a very large ArcSight implementation ) warned me months ago (while I was being hired into the AIM group), that his biggest issue was the number of vendors traversing the net. His focus was more retail suppliers and supply chain, but one can see where HVAC could just be lumped into the same pool. And he knows enough to cover his butt with paperwork (we spent a lot of time at another site... where we the 'toilet paper file' (to 'Cover our A*****' - paper memos showing receipt of email containing Formal Risk Assessments to management, and meeting notes of any meetings to discuss without a paper trail, and the formal response in the Risk Plan, [often just noting the problem, and stating that 'monitoring would catch any breach in an acceptable timeframe'... which was our out in that there was no SLA for breach detection outlined in any response plan]).
From what I read from Target, my colleagues eye-rolling, and the fact that their SecOps group was also off shored, they had a similar response.
same was said about the IBM PC (, then the XT, then the AT) by mainframers, and big Unix (academics).
The fact of the matter is, when your computing platform is basically a web interface and a back end that is truly agnostic (no IE6 Active X crap), all endpoint devices will become utilities.
The computational high ground will become services, which is what MSOffice (et al... file sharing/sharepoint, IE) pretty much is for 70% of corporate computing. Office is roadmapped to be fully cloud delivered (you can't buy a X86 version of it) by 2023.
Which to the OP point... Windows as a capitated license will go to zero as part of MS's revenue stream... pushing up capitated cloud services as their primary solution. MS will survive.... as a 'mini-me' of IBM (or visa versa), based on it's control of AD on your network (as AD migrates as a integration point to legacy applications and Office, to your compliance required security rights management system).
That's why I only listen to RIM's CEOs. That way at least it's stereophone.
Steve is the antithetical CEO, however. While he's CEO in title, He acts as if he's the ProductManager. The number of patents he's referenced as [co-]holder shows that he does get down into the details (and cares enough to put his name on it).
"We have a few reactors here in the U.S. that are obviously being ran "on the cheap", and frankly those companies should be ran out of town"
We have a few coal mines/oil wells run on the same economic premise (and coal powered electrial plants as well). I'm not fine with any energy company improving profitability without regard to the risks to the energy employees or global community. The differences between Upper Big Branch, Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima, are without distinction.
They just cease processing with a Failed UniBus Address Register (FUBAR) = 17777777
Any company that wrote it's training manuals with variables of $FOO and $BAR was my kind of company
- TTL
P.S. I still dream in TECO. Not that wussy VTEDIT full screen stuff... but writing programs in TECO and executing in MUNG.
My therapist says I have closure issues;-)
the other factor on OS X releases is that Apple is constantly releasing new integration features and hardware (MBA, Iphone, Time Machine, New graphics drivers for new MPBs, etc), that it wants OS X to be optimized to work with. I'm not surprised that with the near advent of Iphone 2, there needed to be some interface work done to support the new system... (One of note that seemed to commented on MacRumors.com is a GoogleSync Library file.)
It's this philosophy (Mac OS X is the preferred integration point for the entire Apple Product Line) that promotes more frequent releases.
I don't think Microsoft follows the same philosophy, hence every product (MS or 3rd Party) typically comes with a CD to upload a driver that may or may not have been consistently tested (both as a user experience and purely technical integration) against Windows. Also, given the fact that Windows has hundreds of key components that 3rd parties (read: graphics drivers, disk drives, network controller etc) need to support against Windows, issuing Service Pack level upgrades more frequently would only lower the quality of the 'microsoft experience.' So For microsoft, less equals better user experience.
you're too much in the electronic mode of identity theft. The critical item is getting your SSN, address and real name... At that point, I can start 'becoming' you. Your online credentials are nice (I can just impersonate you).... however, being able to leverage your credit to buy a car, open a stock account, or a worst case scenario... buy life insurance on you, with me (in a faux identity again) as the beneficiary.... See how a fraudster can cash out in that scenario!
online credentials are nice, but for the most part, the key true identity theft is to get enough information about you from the online side, to imitate you in 'real' life. I don't want to buy a TV set.... I want live on your credit for a long time, then disappear when the bill collectors and credit police come calling.
"With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it? "
It's not just the funds the fraudsters are after... They are after 3 things:
1) Once you have a bank account, you capacity in the laundering pipeline. With the $10,000 detection threshholds, and the other AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, it takes a lot more bank Xfers to multiple parallel accounts to move money between the point of fraud, to the point of safe harbor. ACH-IN.... ACH-OUT. These are often 'mule' accounts to allow a network of smaller transfers that allow a larger aggregate money movement. Since I have 30-90 days before you notice all these $1-9000 xfers going in and out of your account... I need to constantly get new bank accounts to keep my laundering pipeline at full 'bandwidth.' If I'm lucky, I can pull a change of (email) address on you, so I can completely control the account for a small period of time (NOTE: address change just got 'red flagged' by the US FACT act of 2003... so in addition to Patriot Act reviews at account opening... address changes will (mandatory by all financial institutions by Nov 2008) be audited by regulators to verify the organization did due diligence to check for fraudulent activity).
2) Having a Bank Account makes opening a PayPal, a credit card, a stock trading or another bank account all the easier. All of these are much more lucrative, and they can leverage funds (margin, credit) , and if I open them, there is much less chance of detection by you (since I completely control the contact information). This is classic identity theft ("Officer, I don't have a bank account in the Outer Antilles!")
3) if we get lucky, you got cash... which we'll use in a leverage scam (open a stock account, and seed a pumpNdump).
"I for one welcome our new Email Overlords."
"Gmail2.0b"+"Secure IMAP"+"GoogleGroups"+"Google Domain Hosting"= Family mailbox manager.
I got 2.0 yesterday, and IMAP last week. Between the two, I immediately decided to separate myself from my Charter for business mail services. But as I looked, between Google Groups and Google MX domain hosting, I'm about 90% into deciding to move my 'lastname.org' and.net (some domain snarfer has my 'lastname.com'... the money grubbing scum!) to google, and use Gmail as the bassomatic of mail services for my blood relatives. The last 10% is purely confirmation... I'm playing with the setup right now. Migration will start next week.
I manage about 150 of my relatives email forwarding for relative@'lastname'.org/net using a friends Linux system and a simple sendmail alias management file. Google, while a bit harder, looks like I can do that (using a 'forward' account with nicknames and filters... can't manage with a text file... sucks), PLUS offer direct emailboxes that provide IMAP and POP services to my extended family. This is a godsend for the 10 of us who are consultants 'in the field' and our current ISPs are (properly) not allowing external SMTP connections for sending mail from POP enabled accounts. And I can also manage my mom's mailbox, which is no small feat (76 year old women [with a political agenda] are the hardest of clients).
And Google's IMAP and POP use encrypted transports... my Cable/ISP does not.
With Metro WiFi coming in at 1/5th what I pay for cable+internet, plus google being a the central service that allows me to globify my email access, my email management... I see this a good thing.
I would piggyback on the last response and state that DiskWarrior is a must have if you suspect any disk defects causing problems. It's saved my butt a couple times, especially when the problems from a nondisk subsystem (mine was kernel panics due to a cold solder joint on main board (nothing like running for 2 hours and then getting a partial power fail).
Diskwarrior clean up most of the problems on a disk in place, and I've used it to make an unbootable drive bootable (took a 2nd Mac and 'T' Mode booting), but it worked.
My Leopard upgrade will be in place... I'll back up to my FW drive, then diskwarrior my system drive, then upgrade. Once DiskWarriot is upgraded to be leopard capable, I DW my system disk again (to compress the system directories... slightly better performance)
no mod points today... but I just want to echo this statement... When I was buying for PCs for one of the largest medical/research institutions, the fact that vendors could not build to a 'locked spec' really drove us crazy.
Today's Macs are certified to work with it's OS and key SW... XP/PC based OEMs 'sort of kind of' make their HW work with XP, and depot repair is a crap shoot. While not perfect (Macs change specs without notice), Support/Integration teams want someone who 'own's' both the HW and the SW for the desktop (Oh, it sucks when you hear a DeLL Tech Support person say "We'll submit a bug into Microsoft... HOPEFULLY, we'll hear something in the next couple of weeks).
The downside is single source... MS had 'driven' a semi-open HW environment... if you can make it work with MS software you can drive the market price down in the commodity competition... If you are a purchaser (not a tech), this is a panacea you give up with a single source supplier of OSX/Macs. Just the threat of inviting in HP or Lenovo for an open bid on business every other year will make a Dell or a Gateway turn the pricing screws for selling another 12K systems over the new contract period. Apple, not having any competition, and the perceived 'initial' higher price (note: that when you 'require' commitment to agreed specs pay as much or more for vendors to support lock step batches) sours many procurement and Tech leaders where the desktop budget has a huge (or small) multiplier.
1) 6am grapes or apples or orange sections , steel-cut oatmeal w/ cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice, 40gm of protein with milk and water, banana.
2) 8am whole grapefruit peeled and sectioned, 3eggs scrambled (no cheese), salsa. Work has a nice commisary... the eggs cost a buck... I bring the grapefruit.
I need 2 breakfasts to function right and stay in shape. (I do 6 meals a day, and workout at the gym in the basement of the office centre) If I do caffeine, green tea with lunch.
And I think Apple is really smart... my guess is because Apple is selling the thing, there is no 'Cingular' front-load discount, where they make it up on the 2 year contract. So, the contract length is not trying to recover the discounted price of the iPhone. my guess is the contract will be $80/month or less. I can see it at $69.99/month.
5. Front Row becomes the 'real' 'Universal app': Apple will take the iTV idea and slowly take over the home computing market.... iTV will hub your Video/VidonDemand/TVtimeshifting/Tivo and VOIP. Much like Apple's 'going against the man' with the music labels... Apple will attack the Cable and Telcos (aren't they the REAL Enemy?). See apple partnering with Sprint or possibly some major ISP delivery company (Onvoy? Level3?) and provide a final mile solution for combining.Mac (backup services, email services, Identity services), internet, cable on demand services 'for the rest of us'
4. One Front Row to rule then all: As you get your digital appliance hub above, iLife becomes the MS office of the personal life. You cradle your macPhone, and your calendar, ipod shuffle music, your fav vidpodcast, updated phone list, email and stock tips get uploaded. you change your plans, your macPhone 'calls home' via.mac and updates your operational calendar. 3rd Party home automation systems are given a SDK to integrate alarms, home automation, webcans, etc... so you can 'call home' and 'see' whats going on in the back yard via a iChat AV optimized for your phone.
3. Wireless displays. If you can use 'n' protocols to beam DVD quality to your TV set, why not beam from your system to a disconnected display... High end Apple Displays will have Airport'N' built-in (see the iTV as a tuner above), and your 'laptop' will all of sudden be bluetooth enabled battery powered Mac Core 2 Duo Mini [form factor: about 1/4 the size of a MacbookPro] and a keyboard pointing device that folds up into a similar form factor. High End Laptops will use 'n' protocols to use a high end display as a wireless docking station (firewire 800, USB, isight, speakers on the CinemaDisplay... all connected via 'n' to the laptop). With 'N' wireless speeds, your iTV hubs your data storage around the home, syncing 'hot files' to your local cache of 40GB Hybrid disk (nearline storage powered by 'time machine' undertechnologies.). This new macMini will have a 'tablet' connector built (friction lock, way cool btw), with a small form screen/ptr/keyboard (utilizing apple's infinite resolution patent). This will have cross over applicability into the mobile workforce (Jobs and I actually talked about this in the medical model during the NeXT days.... We needed the ability in a hospital setting to 'beam down' medical records to a handheld for portability during a care episode, and dynamically sync the master record with new/entered info, (this was 1991, mind you), and be able to just have 'displays' in diagnostic rooms where you could carry in your computer and it automatically 'beams' your information into the larger display for visualization and/or collaboration).
2. Apple will become a 'systems' company. It's not hardware that people crave, it's not software that people desire... it's the 'it just works' and the 'insanely great' that the common folks desire. Apple will press systems integration as it's 'insanely great' idea. Home networking is now the 'pain' families put up with. Networking computers, Home Theater, Music, etc. Apple's 'sharp point' into the consumer market place will be that it has the core hardware and software to 'bring it all together (iTV, MacPhone, ITunes, Bonjour, Airport)... The Apple Store will compete with BestBuy's Magnolia AND GeekSquad for the 'servicing' the common folk.
1. Leopard will make everyone from the wall street Journal to Dr Dobb's Journal orgasm.
0. I will short apple stock next year... Wall Street will be overrun by people running from Google and Toyota and Cable companies and will be pouring money into Apple. By Xmas next year, Apple will have nowhere to go but down.
ah yes, X11 and 3270 support are not well integrated into the Mac physical interface (tn3270 sucks for those who have true 327x terminals). At least you can go buy a $15 mouse to fix your problems. Every try to buy a 327x USB keyboard? I wish my company would have converted all it's green screen development to a 'modern' computing environment such as X11....;-)
Honestly... If there is one thing the mac 'religon' takes seriously is the 'simple' pointing device, and building that into their hardware platform. The UI supports multi-button mice, but the core of the UI is focus on making the 'one button' interface for 'rest of us'.
For the what, million people in the world that 'require' X11 functionality on a mac laptop, buying a $15 mouse is a pretty simple workaround.
First off, silly putty was invented as a 'mistake' of trying to find a silicone based source of synthetic rubber, not making an explosive. Similar to the 'mistake' of how Post-It notes were discovered (the goal was to find a more permanent glue, not one that 'slightly, and reusably sticky.'
and it's probably not the 2nd, or the hundred and 2nd, as toys and household products have often been used...
the 'cricket clickers' used by US Airborne to do IFF (Identify: Friend or Foe) was well documented in every DDay film.
Latex condoms are common waterproofing tools for amphibious assaults.
Burnt Shoe polish was the standard 'camo black' for night assaults.
Slashdot Mirror
"Right... because Apple is really known for driving prices down."
Look at the original iPad.
The Doctors aren't evil... they just practice medicine the old fashioned way. Most learned their diagnostic skills when rotary phones were the standard. Would you consider a rotary phone today adequate technology to place a call today... If you want to be treated in methods that are
As for the FDA... They're not that bad.... just usually very blinder focused. I really don't see them having an issue with this in terms of data collection. (I don't see apple supporting a portable pacemaker BlueToothed into an iPhone to get it's operational controls from some data center in lower elbonia).
and you'll be surprised that most of your medical procedure data is already in the cloud, if you used insurance or put your SSN on any form (The bad news about HIPAA is that it's 'portable'... often to the highest bidder ). The problem is most of the diagnostic information is in islands that the MDs don't even have good access to.
As for privacy/security issues...Noted. Data Interpretation... that's well outside of Apple's purview... I can't see Apple doing anything other than providing a secure end to end pipe. The back end, whether it be Johns Hopkins, or Joe's Appliance, and Blood Pressure monitoring will likely have to prove their system, including interpretation someplace. But raw data, in standard HLxx code, has to stand on it's own against the diagnostic standard in the HIPAA world. Non Issue (assuming the regulatory people validate it's to the HLxx standard).
And they are most effective when the consumer determines what 'value' 'quality' is.
And I do think they will just be a simple platform where they charge 30% (or less) to allow other companies that are actually in the healthcare business to use their platform to do their stuff, purely as a common app-platform/payment/identity/secure delivery conduit. If insurance (sigh... see my comments above;-) pays $19.99 for an app to monitor blood glucose from a BT enabled skin patch (or one that is part of a 'rumored iWatch'), then Apple could be in line to make $6 on every diabetic with a smart phone, and have a huge number of diabetics spend $600(phone) + $99(iwatch) on Apple Hardware (and $50+ month in bandwidth) just for the ability to have continuous blood monitoring. If proved viable to regulatory reviewers, this would be a huge win compared to comparable FDA approved standalone solutions much more in price, and much less capability.
PING! +1 (no karma to give)
Working for one of the top three Insurance (oops, I mean 'Health Benefits Management'), and one of the 'World Famous' Medical Centers (both in the same state, you can figure it out), and the largest Pharma company in the free world at the time (and having two small town country doctors in the family), I've seen the world from all sides, and it's not pretty.
BR> My quick summation of the problem... every HBM has a different definition of 'good' care, based on 'average' care models, which are highly fragmented and almost require an HBM to make sure the payer (re: for most... your employer) gets the lowest cost for average or better quality, based on nothing but prior outcomes, and use 'Steerage' and 'Preferred Provider' methods to extort health care providers into capitulation, and the term 'quality' really evolves into a Fast Food Metaphor, and the quality/$$ spent actually goes down.
Any payor Model, Gov't or HBM, that allows someone else to get between you and the MD to negotiate a price or what is expected for a symptom... is the problem. There should be no middle men in healthcare. Especially Middlemen paid by someone else with no skin in the game (my employer/pension-manager)
Hence you control what you need to control... the PoS systems physically separate to the Router hub (owned by HQ), and consider the rest of the network hostile. Simple engineering principles. Basically make the rest of the Store one big 'internet' and portal all store employee access back to the mother ship as if every employee is working from home. Managers... Same. Suppliers (if they are in the store). None. Obviously the major integration point is store inventory to PoS, (Did we sell the last one... is there one in the back room, when is the next shipment coming in, the price is what?), but that is either one system that should be on the critical business ops network, or integrated systems that either have local compute services (again all segregated from the non-critical traffic.
I tend to think that POS equipment should be on a separate network. separate hardware plant to the VPN (and then separate E2E encryption over the router) back to the mothership. Period. VLANS are hard to 'really isolate.' and it's always easier to 'uptick' your controls on a critical network, than it is to run a mixed mode on the same infrastructure. That said, the other side of that is creating a monitoring space for inbound IPs from this tier of vendors and and devices (should a HVAC vendor IP, or one of their onsite controller be reaching INTO 'more vital engineering spaces' on the Target fabric, with question and follow-up?) that would like up like Times Square as unauthorized activity if traffic doesn't go directly from Point A to Point B.)
Once you get to the soft gooey center of the POS system... then all bets are off. You need to either hyper isolate them, or hyper monitor them for deltas in their operational configuration and output.
I had the chance to work at Target HQ for Corp IT Security (more internal and Store Employee AIM), and when I interviewed, the manager was more extremely not excited to hire me at al, saying that I didn't have the political chops to get my ideas implemented. I tended to argue HIS role as management (my job is ideas and execution... your job is facilitation and corporate political knowledge). I think telling your hiring manager that he doesn't understand his role in security (it was all COBIT and ISO to him... give me the process, not the security, sigh) was probably not in the top 10 ways to get hired.
I'm now working for one of the consulting companies who is cleaning up the mess. Knowing who I know, my guess is this will likely fall on Security Operations (outsourced), as they are tasked with analytics of these events and 'sell threat intelligence' to Target. Very few U.S. citizenry will be affected by this. My man on the inside (responsible for the engineering of of the Network Security Monitoring into a very large ArcSight implementation ) warned me months ago (while I was being hired into the AIM group), that his biggest issue was the number of vendors traversing the net. His focus was more retail suppliers and supply chain, but one can see where HVAC could just be lumped into the same pool. And he knows enough to cover his butt with paperwork (we spent a lot of time at another site... where we the 'toilet paper file' (to 'Cover our A*****' - paper memos showing receipt of email containing Formal Risk Assessments to management, and meeting notes of any meetings to discuss without a paper trail, and the formal response in the Risk Plan, [often just noting the problem, and stating that 'monitoring would catch any breach in an acceptable timeframe'... which was our out in that there was no SLA for breach detection outlined in any response plan]).
From what I read from Target, my colleagues eye-rolling, and the fact that their SecOps group was also off shored, they had a similar response.
same was said about the IBM PC (, then the XT, then the AT) by mainframers, and big Unix (academics). The fact of the matter is, when your computing platform is basically a web interface and a back end that is truly agnostic (no IE6 Active X crap), all endpoint devices will become utilities. The computational high ground will become services, which is what MSOffice (et al... file sharing/sharepoint, IE) pretty much is for 70% of corporate computing. Office is roadmapped to be fully cloud delivered (you can't buy a X86 version of it) by 2023. Which to the OP point... Windows as a capitated license will go to zero as part of MS's revenue stream... pushing up capitated cloud services as their primary solution. MS will survive.... as a 'mini-me' of IBM (or visa versa), based on it's control of AD on your network (as AD migrates as a integration point to legacy applications and Office, to your compliance required security rights management system).
That's why I only listen to RIM's CEOs. That way at least it's stereophone. Steve is the antithetical CEO, however. While he's CEO in title, He acts as if he's the ProductManager. The number of patents he's referenced as [co-]holder shows that he does get down into the details (and cares enough to put his name on it).
"We have a few reactors here in the U.S. that are obviously being ran "on the cheap", and frankly those companies should be ran out of town"
We have a few coal mines /oil wells run on the same economic premise (and coal powered electrial plants as well). I'm not fine with any energy company improving profitability without regard to the risks to the energy employees or global community. The differences between Upper Big Branch, Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima, are without distinction.
They just cease processing with a Failed UniBus Address Register (FUBAR) = 17777777
Any company that wrote it's training manuals with variables of $FOO and $BAR was my kind of company
- TTL
P.S. I still dream in TECO. Not that wussy VTEDIT full screen stuff... but writing programs in TECO and executing in MUNG. My therapist says I have closure issues;-)
84 or as I prefer to say it, 124.
or as I prefer to say it, 2,191,320,000 Microfortnights (give or take...)
until they start charging for youtube views... (e.g. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10221501-93.html)
The more appropriate quote:
"From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
I'll bet $299. Who ever wins get the split the diffence ($100). You can't lose with that bet (the worst you'll pay is $399;-))
the other factor on OS X releases is that Apple is constantly releasing new integration features and hardware (MBA, Iphone, Time Machine, New graphics drivers for new MPBs, etc), that it wants OS X to be optimized to work with. I'm not surprised that with the near advent of Iphone 2, there needed to be some interface work done to support the new system... (One of note that seemed to commented on MacRumors.com is a GoogleSync Library file.)
It's this philosophy (Mac OS X is the preferred integration point for the entire Apple Product Line) that promotes more frequent releases.
I don't think Microsoft follows the same philosophy, hence every product (MS or 3rd Party) typically comes with a CD to upload a driver that may or may not have been consistently tested (both as a user experience and purely technical integration) against Windows. Also, given the fact that Windows has hundreds of key components that 3rd parties (read: graphics drivers, disk drives, network controller etc) need to support against Windows, issuing Service Pack level upgrades more frequently would only lower the quality of the 'microsoft experience.' So For microsoft, less equals better user experience.
you're too much in the electronic mode of identity theft. The critical item is getting your SSN, address and real name... At that point, I can start 'becoming' you. Your online credentials are nice (I can just impersonate you).... however, being able to leverage your credit to buy a car, open a stock account, or a worst case scenario... buy life insurance on you, with me (in a faux identity again) as the beneficiary.... See how a fraudster can cash out in that scenario!
online credentials are nice, but for the most part, the key true identity theft is to get enough information about you from the online side, to imitate you in 'real' life. I don't want to buy a TV set.... I want live on your credit for a long time, then disappear when the bill collectors and credit police come calling.
"With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it? "
It's not just the funds the fraudsters are after... They are after 3 things:
1) Once you have a bank account, you capacity in the laundering pipeline. With the $10,000 detection threshholds, and the other AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, it takes a lot more bank Xfers to multiple parallel accounts to move money between the point of fraud, to the point of safe harbor. ACH-IN.... ACH-OUT. These are often 'mule' accounts to allow a network of smaller transfers that allow a larger aggregate money movement. Since I have 30-90 days before you notice all these $1-9000 xfers going in and out of your account... I need to constantly get new bank accounts to keep my laundering pipeline at full 'bandwidth.' If I'm lucky, I can pull a change of (email) address on you, so I can completely control the account for a small period of time (NOTE: address change just got 'red flagged' by the US FACT act of 2003... so in addition to Patriot Act reviews at account opening... address changes will (mandatory by all financial institutions by Nov 2008) be audited by regulators to verify the organization did due diligence to check for fraudulent activity).
2) Having a Bank Account makes opening a PayPal, a credit card, a stock trading or another bank account all the easier. All of these are much more lucrative, and they can leverage funds (margin, credit) , and if I open them, there is much less chance of detection by you (since I completely control the contact information). This is classic identity theft ("Officer, I don't have a bank account in the Outer Antilles!")
3) if we get lucky, you got cash... which we'll use in a leverage scam (open a stock account, and seed a pumpNdump).
"I for one welcome our new Email Overlords." "Gmail2.0b"+"Secure IMAP"+"GoogleGroups"+"Google Domain Hosting"= Family mailbox manager. I got 2.0 yesterday, and IMAP last week. Between the two, I immediately decided to separate myself from my Charter for business mail services. But as I looked, between Google Groups and Google MX domain hosting, I'm about 90% into deciding to move my 'lastname.org' and .net (some domain snarfer has my 'lastname.com'... the money grubbing scum!) to google, and use Gmail as the bassomatic of mail services for my blood relatives. The last 10% is purely confirmation... I'm playing with the setup right now. Migration will start next week.
I manage about 150 of my relatives email forwarding for relative@'lastname'.org/net using a friends Linux system and a simple sendmail alias management file. Google, while a bit harder, looks like I can do that (using a 'forward' account with nicknames and filters... can't manage with a text file... sucks), PLUS offer direct emailboxes that provide IMAP and POP services to my extended family. This is a godsend for the 10 of us who are consultants 'in the field' and our current ISPs are (properly) not allowing external SMTP connections for sending mail from POP enabled accounts. And I can also manage my mom's mailbox, which is no small feat (76 year old women [with a political agenda] are the hardest of clients).
And Google's IMAP and POP use encrypted transports... my Cable/ISP does not.
With Metro WiFi coming in at 1/5th what I pay for cable+internet, plus google being a the central service that allows me to globify my email access, my email management... I see this a good thing.
I would piggyback on the last response and state that DiskWarrior is a must have if you suspect any disk defects causing problems. It's saved my butt a couple times, especially when the problems from a nondisk subsystem (mine was kernel panics due to a cold solder joint on main board (nothing like running for 2 hours and then getting a partial power fail).
Diskwarrior clean up most of the problems on a disk in place, and I've used it to make an unbootable drive bootable (took a 2nd Mac and 'T' Mode booting), but it worked.
My Leopard upgrade will be in place... I'll back up to my FW drive, then diskwarrior my system drive, then upgrade. Once DiskWarriot is upgraded to be leopard capable, I DW my system disk again (to compress the system directories... slightly better performance)
no mod points today... but I just want to echo this statement... When I was buying for PCs for one of the largest medical/research institutions, the fact that vendors could not build to a 'locked spec' really drove us crazy.
Today's Macs are certified to work with it's OS and key SW... XP/PC based OEMs 'sort of kind of' make their HW work with XP, and depot repair is a crap shoot. While not perfect (Macs change specs without notice), Support/Integration teams want someone who 'own's' both the HW and the SW for the desktop (Oh, it sucks when you hear a DeLL Tech Support person say "We'll submit a bug into Microsoft... HOPEFULLY, we'll hear something in the next couple of weeks).
The downside is single source... MS had 'driven' a semi-open HW environment... if you can make it work with MS software you can drive the market price down in the commodity competition... If you are a purchaser (not a tech), this is a panacea you give up with a single source supplier of OSX/Macs. Just the threat of inviting in HP or Lenovo for an open bid on business every other year will make a Dell or a Gateway turn the pricing screws for selling another 12K systems over the new contract period. Apple, not having any competition, and the perceived 'initial' higher price (note: that when you 'require' commitment to agreed specs pay as much or more for vendors to support lock step batches) sours many procurement and Tech leaders where the desktop budget has a huge (or small) multiplier.
1) 6am grapes or apples or orange sections , steel-cut oatmeal w/ cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice, 40gm of protein with milk and water, banana.
2) 8am whole grapefruit peeled and sectioned, 3eggs scrambled (no cheese), salsa. Work has a nice commisary... the eggs cost a buck... I bring the grapefruit.
I need 2 breakfasts to function right and stay in shape. (I do 6 meals a day, and workout at the gym in the basement of the office centre) If I do caffeine, green tea with lunch.
And I think Apple is really smart... my guess is because Apple is selling the thing, there is no 'Cingular' front-load discount, where they make it up on the 2 year contract. So, the contract length is not trying to recover the discounted price of the iPhone. my guess is the contract will be $80/month or less. I can see it at $69.99/month.
5. Front Row becomes the 'real' 'Universal app': Apple will take the iTV idea and slowly take over the home computing market.... iTV will hub your Video/VidonDemand/TVtimeshifting/Tivo and VOIP. Much like Apple's 'going against the man' with the music labels... Apple will attack the Cable and Telcos (aren't they the REAL Enemy?). See apple partnering with Sprint or possibly some major ISP delivery company (Onvoy? Level3?) and provide a final mile solution for combining .Mac (backup services, email services, Identity services), internet, cable on demand services 'for the rest of us'
.mac and updates your operational calendar. 3rd Party home automation systems are given a SDK to integrate alarms, home automation, webcans, etc... so you can 'call home' and 'see' whats going on in the back yard via a iChat AV optimized for your phone.
4. One Front Row to rule then all: As you get your digital appliance hub above, iLife becomes the MS office of the personal life. You cradle your macPhone, and your calendar, ipod shuffle music, your fav vidpodcast, updated phone list, email and stock tips get uploaded. you change your plans, your macPhone 'calls home' via
3. Wireless displays. If you can use 'n' protocols to beam DVD quality to your TV set, why not beam from your system to a disconnected display... High end Apple Displays will have Airport'N' built-in (see the iTV as a tuner above), and your 'laptop' will all of sudden be bluetooth enabled battery powered Mac Core 2 Duo Mini [form factor: about 1/4 the size of a MacbookPro] and a keyboard pointing device that folds up into a similar form factor. High End Laptops will use 'n' protocols to use a high end display as a wireless docking station (firewire 800, USB, isight, speakers on the CinemaDisplay... all connected via 'n' to the laptop). With 'N' wireless speeds, your iTV hubs your data storage around the home, syncing 'hot files' to your local cache of 40GB Hybrid disk (nearline storage powered by 'time machine' undertechnologies.). This new macMini will have a 'tablet' connector built (friction lock, way cool btw), with a small form screen/ptr/keyboard (utilizing apple's infinite resolution patent). This will have cross over applicability into the mobile workforce (Jobs and I actually talked about this in the medical model during the NeXT days.... We needed the ability in a hospital setting to 'beam down' medical records to a handheld for portability during a care episode, and dynamically sync the master record with new/entered info, (this was 1991, mind you), and be able to just have 'displays' in diagnostic rooms where you could carry in your computer and it automatically 'beams' your information into the larger display for visualization and/or collaboration).
2. Apple will become a 'systems' company. It's not hardware that people crave, it's not software that people desire... it's the 'it just works' and the 'insanely great' that the common folks desire. Apple will press systems integration as it's 'insanely great' idea. Home networking is now the 'pain' families put up with. Networking computers, Home Theater, Music, etc. Apple's 'sharp point' into the consumer market place will be that it has the core hardware and software to 'bring it all together (iTV, MacPhone, ITunes, Bonjour, Airport)... The Apple Store will compete with BestBuy's Magnolia AND GeekSquad for the 'servicing' the common folk.
1. Leopard will make everyone from the wall street Journal to Dr Dobb's Journal orgasm.
0. I will short apple stock next year... Wall Street will be overrun by people running from Google and Toyota and Cable companies and will be pouring money into Apple. By Xmas next year, Apple will have nowhere to go but down.
ah yes, X11 and 3270 support are not well integrated into the Mac physical interface (tn3270 sucks for those who have true 327x terminals). At least you can go buy a $15 mouse to fix your problems. Every try to buy a 327x USB keyboard? I wish my company would have converted all it's green screen development to a 'modern' computing environment such as X11.... ;-)
Honestly... If there is one thing the mac 'religon' takes seriously is the 'simple' pointing device, and building that into their hardware platform. The UI supports multi-button mice, but the core of the UI is focus on making the 'one button' interface for 'rest of us'.
For the what, million people in the world that 'require' X11 functionality on a mac laptop, buying a $15 mouse is a pretty simple workaround.
Accenture.
First off, silly putty was invented as a 'mistake' of trying to find a silicone based source of synthetic rubber, not making an explosive. Similar to the 'mistake' of how Post-It notes were discovered (the goal was to find a more permanent glue, not one that 'slightly, and reusably sticky.'
and it's probably not the 2nd, or the hundred and 2nd, as toys and household products have often been used...
the 'cricket clickers' used by US Airborne to do IFF (Identify: Friend or Foe) was well documented in every DDay film.
Latex condoms are common waterproofing tools for amphibious assaults.
Burnt Shoe polish was the standard 'camo black' for night assaults.