I'll trade government waste and nepotism any day for corporate governance, where the almight buck is the ultimate determiner. The next time you think the government is so terrible, walk out to your car and go for a drive. Put on that seatbelt mandated by law, drive on those standardized roads in a vehicle mandated to meet safety regulations and thank your lucky stars that zealots like Nader and the government got together to force automobile manufacturers to build safer vehicles. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with endless iterations of the Pinto. Recalls are expensive, funerals are cheap.
The standard which the Internet is based on, IP, was created by the DARPA project - yes, a government project - and the Internet wouldn't exist as we know it without that standard being the rock that everyone else built their whiz-bang toys upon. It was created without market influence, away from public scrutiny or input, and was decided upon by people with a very firm forward vision of a network that anyone could use.
If you let the market decide, then you end up with consumer electronics, with six methods of running video (coax, composite, S-Video, component, DVI and HDMI), five methods of running audio (coax, composite, digital coax, SPDIF, HDMI), several incompatible international standards for both digital and analog video, several incompatible standards for digital audio and almost innumerable storage media to choose from. Even when they all get on the same page (HDTV), they still can't agree on what to do and end up with a dozen digital TV iterations. What a joke. Give me the UN and the global telephone system (which it governs) over that mess any day.
This is just the ever constant march of technology. Every single technology, from the wheel to paper to the telegraph to the modern computer has been about drastically reducing the amount of effort we need to exist. What we have reached is the point where all this 'work-reduction' is starting to act counter to our health, both physically and sociologically. Physically, we are more obese and overweight than any society in history. Sociologically, we are lax, as you say, but we are also suffering because we know in our hearts that the amount of valuable work that a human can do is decreasing on a worldwide scale, whether you live in Burundi or Boston. We are seeing the dawn of an age where the only work requiring humans is the basest, most mundane aspects of existence like growing food, and even that can mostly be done by machines.
It hit here first, because most computer-related technologies were invented here. When those wizard programmers you talk about start earning the valuable coin for maintaining the machines that do all the work, they will eventually see all the 'benefits' that we do here in North America... and they will get soft and lazy just like us.
Rhetorical question: why can't the benefits of technology be spread more evenly, so that we ALL have 3 day workdays instead of having some of us never work (the idle rich), some of us bust our asses (IT maintaining the machines that do the work) and some of us scrap over what little work is left that machines don't currently do?
Just announced in their annual industry meeting that they are considering QoS penalties on IP services that compete with their own offerings (phone, inet, tv), so I'm seeing this evolve in Canada first hand. The speaker used the highway metaphor, saying that the company was tired of providing the highway at their cost while others rode on it for free. I spoke to him afterwards and reminded him that my inet packets spend over 99% of their time on the Internet and only a small percentage of time on his company's network, making the more apt metaphor a door instead of a highway. I then asked him whether he considered it fair for the person holding the door to dictate where I went and what I did once I walked through, especially since I had already paid the doorman to walk through in the first place. It turned into quite a lively debate.
The problem with PDAs is that on one hand, they have 'lesser' products like the iPod that do music terrifically and do the other stuff (notes, calendar, contacts) good enough that the PDA isn't really necessary for the average customer. On the other hand, the power user now has full computers that fit in the palm of the hand like the OQO or the Handspring. Why would they opt for the PalmOS or Windows Mobile, with all the kludges and fixes those choices imply, when they can run a full copy of WinXP and have more or less seamless interaction with their desktop at home or work? Heck, the handtop computer could actually *be* the desktop with the right peripherals. Methinks the PDA's days are numbered, being caught between two superior products at both ends of the scale.
I think it was intended to be humourous. The general gist is that if your photography doesn't extend to zillions of pictures, Photoshop is probably just fine. When the number of pictures starts to climb, the organization abilities of Aperature start to really show their worth and make Photoshop look to be a bit less ideal. I'm a wedding photographer who shoots a lot of shots and will love the organizational abilities of Aperature.
It is changing in two related ways. The first is that the entire desktop is being shrunk and ways are being found to take that power on the road. Examples would be the OQO and the smaller notebooks on the market. The second is that some functionality is being parceled out to PDAs, Blackberries, iPods when those functions require portability, but they still 'dock' with the desktop at home. Lighter computer users will choose the first option to eliminate replicated features. Heavier users will stick with the second so that they have some heavy grunt power when they need it at home. There will always be heavier users (gamers, for example), so desktops will still continue to be sold, perhaps just in smaller numbers.
You are right. Some people shouldn't switch because they aren't hard wired to handle change all that well. These are the same people that crap their pants when a new product comes down the line from their company or a new piece of office software comes down. It won't matter if it is more efficient, crashes less, is more intuitive... it isn't the old stuff.
I educated my Dad on a Mac and it took a good couple of months before he caught on the idea of applications staying running in the dock when he closed their active windows. It was another couple of months before he figured out how to disconnect his peripherals so he could take his laptop with him (one USB cable). It was frustrating as hell to watch.
What Ottawa have you lived in? The Ottawa I lived in hit +25C during the summer on the rarest of days and never got below -15C in the winter. The local myth said that the humidity made those values *seem* worse, but compared to Edmonton, where I grew up, Ottawa was a breeze.
The year I left Edmonton, there was a three week spell where the daytime hit hit a balmy -35C, so the low was -45 to -50C at night. We regularly hit +30C for at least a few weeks during the summer, too. If you can get plants to grow here, you can grow them anywhere.
I don't think they'll be moving as many as you think and they have lost one for sure sale from me. I had the financing all worked up for a 2 GHZ dual G5, including that beautiful 30" monitor and, on a hunch, I decided to hold off until after the keynote. I cancelled my order this morning.
When I spend over 6K CAD on a computer with this kind of performance, I expect it to be useful to me (my needs are reasonably modest) for several years to come, not just for the next two years, guaranteed, and then for some unspecified period afterwards. Anybody with needs like mine would be stupid to buy into a platform on the way out. This is going to impact on sales, guaranteed. The only question is how much.
My current computer is a 12" Powerbook, though, and it has been my dream to run off the laptop exclusively for quite some time, driving an external monitor. I make do with the Powerbook, though I definitely see performance issues, so if this move will increase my battery life AND the performance of the laptop as a whole, then I'll just wait until the initial offerings next spring and drop my coin on a new laptop instead.
So, let me get this straight. A mayor and city council, all of whom live and work in the municipality in question, are the dark arm of Big Brother, just waiting to control their citizens through the manipulation of their local wifi network? This is all too much doom and gloom considering you can vote them out, can see what they are doing much easier than any state or federal politico and that they are affected by their own decisions.
Seeing as this is a case of local municipalities fighting for their rights against much larger entities (states, nations, national corporations), I think that your fears might be a bit misplaced. It is the old "think global, act local" maxim in action, in this case with the municipalities acting to defend local rights against those that would take them away.
My problem is that the environmental movement is tarred with such a huge brush that it does the movement a gross disservice. For example, stating that the environmental movement is anti-technology is not only a generalization, it is also dead wrong. Read a few environmental magazines and you quickly see that they simply advocate different technology, i.e. sustainable technology or technology with a smaller ecological footprint. There are the usual Luddites out there, but you get a big enough sample of any population and you'll find the loonies - and mainstream ideologies like Capitalism are no exception.
By definition, anyone that believes 100% in something is an extremist, including someone advocating a 100% unfettered free market governing every single last aspect of society. Of course, as the advocates of that particular position are the one's running the ship in the US, they certainly aren't going to stand for anyone calling it an extreme view. It is in their best interests to brand it as normal and anything left of that stance as the extreme, which explains the Bush Administration's stance on global warming and the actions they have taken to undermine and discredit scientists who advocate that view.
Due to some ridiculous permissions issues, my copy of Virex will not scan other Admin accounts when I run a full system scan, stating that I don't have the priviledges necessary to scan the files. I can delete the entire account as an Admin user, but I can't scan it for viruses.
The only solution, until the manufacturer gets its act together and fixes this ridiculous issue, is to log in as root and then run Virex. Once the scan is done, you log out and then back into the normal Admin account.
So there is at least ONE instance where you have to log in as root...
They aren't charging you more for being a standalone customer. They are charging you full price while they give their customers who have committed to more than one service through them a discount. It isn't illegal to give customers a fiscal incentive in order to buy more than one product.
If it was, then the value meals you see at literally every fast food restaurant would be a thing of the past. Do you line up to bitch to the manager of your local McD's because the person in front of you in line paid 30% less for their burger because they got it with fries and a drink rather than on its own like you got it?
That being said, I personally prefer loyalty incentives that aren't tied to how many services you buy or how much those services cost. A subscription service should have a set percentage reduction per year (-10%/year to max of -30%, say) and if you leave for another provider, you start from scratch. That would allow every customer to receive something for their loyalty, and the customers with more services receive a bigger dollar discount compared to someone like yourself with just one service.
and I've just started charging for my service. I was exhausted trying to keep up with the repeat problems from my friends and family and the whole barter thing didn't work for me. I'm still owed about 5 cases of beer and a couple of steaks that haven't materialized in a little over a year.
My rates:
$20 an hour for friends and family.
$40 for everyone else.
What I've found is that most of my family and true friends felt guilty about taking up my time, anyway, and wanted to pay me for it all along. The rest of the freeloaders voiced their bitch and I haven't heard from them since.
I have a few rules, though. I only fix spyware/viruses once per customer. I set them up with a free comprehensive solution from the ISP I work at that seems to work really well. If they catch something past that point, it is from their kids on Kazaa, software they have downloaded, or because they have taken off the protections I put in. I'm not going to waste my time on some joker who can't follow my instructions because they are inconvenient.
I am thinking of doing exactly what you describe: Mac Mini connected to a string of large Firewire drives housing my movies and music as a central entertainment 'server' connected wirelessly to the home.
My question:
How do you access iTunes and other entertainment software from the computers on the network?
I've thought about remote access software (server on the Mac Mini, clients on the other computers) that would allow someone to directly control the Mac Mini remotely. From what you describe, though, iTunes at least can be accessed by more than one computer on the network without having to go that route. What about DVD playback software, though?
Q: Why does Real want to reverse engineer Apple's format?
A. People are buying into it. If they weren't, and iTMS wasn't the most successful online music store and iTunes and the iPod weren't the best way to integrate the store, your personal collection and your portable player... Real wouldn't bother.
Q. Why are people buying into three products that don't work with outside solutions well, especially when Apple works actively to keep it that way?
A. Some don't know, some don't care, but the best answer is what they have works well enough for them that they aren't seeking out other alternatives. When people see me sync my iPod with my Powerbook, they are jealous of the integration that Apple has managed - which means Apple gives customers something in exchange for buying products that really only work well together. They (and I) are willing to lose out on outside options in exchange for convenience, ease and useability.
Q: Is Apple somehow immoral or greedy for wanting to keep their solutions proprietary?
A: Only if they stop providing a good value in exchange for the lack of outside options. If they lock a customer in and don't give that customer a reason to agree to be locked in, then people will start to seek out other alternatives. The Free Software phenomenon is based precisly on this value ratio issue; MS locks you in, but you get very little additional value (I would argue that you lose value) in exchange. In reaction to this, people went looking for other alternatives.
Q: Does Real want to protect our "rights" and maximize our "choices" to protect us from Apple's greed?
A: Give me a break. They want a piece of Apple's action.
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The standard which the Internet is based on, IP, was created by the DARPA project - yes, a government project - and the Internet wouldn't exist as we know it without that standard being the rock that everyone else built their whiz-bang toys upon. It was created without market influence, away from public scrutiny or input, and was decided upon by people with a very firm forward vision of a network that anyone could use.
If you let the market decide, then you end up with consumer electronics, with six methods of running video (coax, composite, S-Video, component, DVI and HDMI), five methods of running audio (coax, composite, digital coax, SPDIF, HDMI), several incompatible international standards for both digital and analog video, several incompatible standards for digital audio and almost innumerable storage media to choose from. Even when they all get on the same page (HDTV), they still can't agree on what to do and end up with a dozen digital TV iterations. What a joke. Give me the UN and the global telephone system (which it governs) over that mess any day.
It hit here first, because most computer-related technologies were invented here. When those wizard programmers you talk about start earning the valuable coin for maintaining the machines that do all the work, they will eventually see all the 'benefits' that we do here in North America ... and they will get soft and lazy just like us.
Rhetorical question: why can't the benefits of technology be spread more evenly, so that we ALL have 3 day workdays instead of having some of us never work (the idle rich), some of us bust our asses (IT maintaining the machines that do the work) and some of us scrap over what little work is left that machines don't currently do?
Just announced in their annual industry meeting that they are considering QoS penalties on IP services that compete with their own offerings (phone, inet, tv), so I'm seeing this evolve in Canada first hand. The speaker used the highway metaphor, saying that the company was tired of providing the highway at their cost while others rode on it for free. I spoke to him afterwards and reminded him that my inet packets spend over 99% of their time on the Internet and only a small percentage of time on his company's network, making the more apt metaphor a door instead of a highway. I then asked him whether he considered it fair for the person holding the door to dictate where I went and what I did once I walked through, especially since I had already paid the doorman to walk through in the first place. It turned into quite a lively debate.
The problem with PDAs is that on one hand, they have 'lesser' products like the iPod that do music terrifically and do the other stuff (notes, calendar, contacts) good enough that the PDA isn't really necessary for the average customer. On the other hand, the power user now has full computers that fit in the palm of the hand like the OQO or the Handspring. Why would they opt for the PalmOS or Windows Mobile, with all the kludges and fixes those choices imply, when they can run a full copy of WinXP and have more or less seamless interaction with their desktop at home or work? Heck, the handtop computer could actually *be* the desktop with the right peripherals. Methinks the PDA's days are numbered, being caught between two superior products at both ends of the scale.
I think it was intended to be humourous. The general gist is that if your photography doesn't extend to zillions of pictures, Photoshop is probably just fine. When the number of pictures starts to climb, the organization abilities of Aperature start to really show their worth and make Photoshop look to be a bit less ideal. I'm a wedding photographer who shoots a lot of shots and will love the organizational abilities of Aperature.
And that it now has a digital audio out according to the website. My 12" has analog only.
It is changing in two related ways. The first is that the entire desktop is being shrunk and ways are being found to take that power on the road. Examples would be the OQO and the smaller notebooks on the market. The second is that some functionality is being parceled out to PDAs, Blackberries, iPods when those functions require portability, but they still 'dock' with the desktop at home. Lighter computer users will choose the first option to eliminate replicated features. Heavier users will stick with the second so that they have some heavy grunt power when they need it at home. There will always be heavier users (gamers, for example), so desktops will still continue to be sold, perhaps just in smaller numbers.
I educated my Dad on a Mac and it took a good couple of months before he caught on the idea of applications staying running in the dock when he closed their active windows. It was another couple of months before he figured out how to disconnect his peripherals so he could take his laptop with him (one USB cable). It was frustrating as hell to watch.
The year I left Edmonton, there was a three week spell where the daytime hit hit a balmy -35C, so the low was -45 to -50C at night. We regularly hit +30C for at least a few weeks during the summer, too. If you can get plants to grow here, you can grow them anywhere.
When I spend over 6K CAD on a computer with this kind of performance, I expect it to be useful to me (my needs are reasonably modest) for several years to come, not just for the next two years, guaranteed, and then for some unspecified period afterwards. Anybody with needs like mine would be stupid to buy into a platform on the way out. This is going to impact on sales, guaranteed. The only question is how much.
My current computer is a 12" Powerbook, though, and it has been my dream to run off the laptop exclusively for quite some time, driving an external monitor. I make do with the Powerbook, though I definitely see performance issues, so if this move will increase my battery life AND the performance of the laptop as a whole, then I'll just wait until the initial offerings next spring and drop my coin on a new laptop instead.
Seeing as this is a case of local municipalities fighting for their rights against much larger entities (states, nations, national corporations), I think that your fears might be a bit misplaced. It is the old "think global, act local" maxim in action, in this case with the municipalities acting to defend local rights against those that would take them away.
My problem is that the environmental movement is tarred with such a huge brush that it does the movement a gross disservice. For example, stating that the environmental movement is anti-technology is not only a generalization, it is also dead wrong. Read a few environmental magazines and you quickly see that they simply advocate different technology, i.e. sustainable technology or technology with a smaller ecological footprint. There are the usual Luddites out there, but you get a big enough sample of any population and you'll find the loonies - and mainstream ideologies like Capitalism are no exception.
By definition, anyone that believes 100% in something is an extremist, including someone advocating a 100% unfettered free market governing every single last aspect of society. Of course, as the advocates of that particular position are the one's running the ship in the US, they certainly aren't going to stand for anyone calling it an extreme view. It is in their best interests to brand it as normal and anything left of that stance as the extreme, which explains the Bush Administration's stance on global warming and the actions they have taken to undermine and discredit scientists who advocate that view.
Due to some ridiculous permissions issues, my copy of Virex will not scan other Admin accounts when I run a full system scan, stating that I don't have the priviledges necessary to scan the files. I can delete the entire account as an Admin user, but I can't scan it for viruses.
The only solution, until the manufacturer gets its act together and fixes this ridiculous issue, is to log in as root and then run Virex. Once the scan is done, you log out and then back into the normal Admin account.
So there is at least ONE instance where you have to log in as root ...
If it was, then the value meals you see at literally every fast food restaurant would be a thing of the past. Do you line up to bitch to the manager of your local McD's because the person in front of you in line paid 30% less for their burger because they got it with fries and a drink rather than on its own like you got it?
That being said, I personally prefer loyalty incentives that aren't tied to how many services you buy or how much those services cost. A subscription service should have a set percentage reduction per year (-10%/year to max of -30%, say) and if you leave for another provider, you start from scratch. That would allow every customer to receive something for their loyalty, and the customers with more services receive a bigger dollar discount compared to someone like yourself with just one service.
My rates:
- $20 an hour for friends and family.
- $40 for everyone else.
What I've found is that most of my family and true friends felt guilty about taking up my time, anyway, and wanted to pay me for it all along. The rest of the freeloaders voiced their bitch and I haven't heard from them since.I have a few rules, though. I only fix spyware/viruses once per customer. I set them up with a free comprehensive solution from the ISP I work at that seems to work really well. If they catch something past that point, it is from their kids on Kazaa, software they have downloaded, or because they have taken off the protections I put in. I'm not going to waste my time on some joker who can't follow my instructions because they are inconvenient.
I am thinking of doing exactly what you describe: Mac Mini connected to a string of large Firewire drives housing my movies and music as a central entertainment 'server' connected wirelessly to the home. My question: How do you access iTunes and other entertainment software from the computers on the network? I've thought about remote access software (server on the Mac Mini, clients on the other computers) that would allow someone to directly control the Mac Mini remotely. From what you describe, though, iTunes at least can be accessed by more than one computer on the network without having to go that route. What about DVD playback software, though?
A. People are buying into it. If they weren't, and iTMS wasn't the most successful online music store and iTunes and the iPod weren't the best way to integrate the store, your personal collection and your portable player ... Real wouldn't bother.
Q. Why are people buying into three products that don't work with outside solutions well, especially when Apple works actively to keep it that way?
A. Some don't know, some don't care, but the best answer is what they have works well enough for them that they aren't seeking out other alternatives. When people see me sync my iPod with my Powerbook, they are jealous of the integration that Apple has managed - which means Apple gives customers something in exchange for buying products that really only work well together. They (and I) are willing to lose out on outside options in exchange for convenience, ease and useability.
Q: Is Apple somehow immoral or greedy for wanting to keep their solutions proprietary?
A: Only if they stop providing a good value in exchange for the lack of outside options. If they lock a customer in and don't give that customer a reason to agree to be locked in, then people will start to seek out other alternatives. The Free Software phenomenon is based precisly on this value ratio issue; MS locks you in, but you get very little additional value (I would argue that you lose value) in exchange. In reaction to this, people went looking for other alternatives.
Q: Does Real want to protect our "rights" and maximize our "choices" to protect us from Apple's greed?
A: Give me a break. They want a piece of Apple's action.