There needs to be random comment here about real men driving little natural gas cars and the frequency of farts while driving creating some sort of natural phenomenon involving sea turtles and climate change, but the words escape me right now...
But, but, but, do I need antivirus for my Mac??
(wait for it)....
NO, Macs don't get viruses!!!!
(this has little to do with the actual topic here, just trying to add to the hysteria)
You are a fool, and will be the first one to cry 'why didn't they do something? They spend all that money on spying, they should have known!'. There is simply no way to win with people like you, and it isn't until you get yourselves blown up in some terrorist activity that it occurs to you that there is a very real threat out there and they mostly want YOU dead.
Wake up! There are people in this world that want to kill you, and they will stop at nothing to accomplish that task. The very people that you are suspecting of covering something up are actually working night and day to keep you safe. Yes, they will make mistakes because that is what humans do. However, without them and their efforts, you will be very dead and we will go back to living in the 5th century as these whacked out terrorists want.
To believe the threat does not exist is nothing but wishful thinking. Get over yourself and deal with it.
My bad. I did think about this one, and I don't think it was that far fetched at all. In fact, until Mini posted this morning, I was beginning to buy into the theory...
After reading all of the various blogs and press over the last few hours, I can piece everything together except for the exact reason.
Martin was terminated for cause. If an exec is leaving, it takes several months to coordinate. This was very sudden and abrupt. If Martin left on his own, there would not have been anything scheduled for him. Instead, he just didn't show up to a press event.
So, why would Microsoft just fire someone and walk them to the door? There are, according to Microsoft HR, two reasons one can be walked out without due cause or process. The first is having child porn on your computer. The second is physical violence. I know this because I had to fire someone for getting into a fight with his girlfriend in the Microsoft parking lot. He pushed her to the ground, it was all caught on camera and she filed a complaint. Two days later he was on a plane back to his home country (he was here on a visa). I, as his GM, was given no choice, no recourse, no room to wiggle and this is when the HR policy was spelled out to me.
Heck, we caught a guy mastrubating in his office and all he got was a warning. Regular porn gets a warning, child porn gets a boot.
Martin did not just get mad and quit in a huff, people do not walk away from a $500K/year position in a huff. The only logical explaination is a termination, and the only two reasons for such an abrupt termination is the above. Even Ballmer can't override this particular policy.
We can olny hope it was the physical violence, not the child porn.
I worry about the long term effects on the eyes. You are constantly focusing on sonething only an inch or less from your eye, and the eye strain might have a negative effect over time.
Remembering Steve Martin's movie 'The Jerk' where a device designed to keep your glasses from slipping down your nose eventually made everyone on the planet cross-eyed, I would use this but definitely limit my time.
OK, OK, I admit it, I am not an electrician! 210, 211, what's the diff?;>) We focused on the fact that a digital carrier signal on the AC wave would go in one side of a transformer and not come out the other. I stand corrected on the voltage/current issues.
I am assuming a local loop for the broadband that doesn't have to concern itself with the higher voltage stepdowns. I believe 220 is what comes out of the local substations. A broadband carrier could tap in at that point with backhaul and only have to deal with the 220-110 stepdown. The issue is physics, so until you see them up on the poles replacing the big ugly transformers with something sleek and digital-looking, I would not hold my breath for broadband over powerlines.
While interference is an issue, it is not the issue that has prevented us from doing this. I do not see anything that shows they have solved the fundamental issue.
In the US, the power lines in your neighborhood are typically carrying 220 volts, which is more efficient than carrying 110, which is what your house eats. Those great big ugly transformers you see on every other pole are used to step the voltage down to 110 so your Xbox doesn't light on fire (note: the Xbox 360 has other means for accomplishing this)
Unfortunately, the big transformer has a nasty side-effect: It acts as a low-pass filter on the power. This is a good thing if you want clean power. It is a bad thing if you are trying to carry a high-frequency wave of data on top of the 60-cycle hummer. The data is stripped off by the transformer. Since we developed the 'every other house' transformer model for the most part in the US, this means you might be able to talk to one of your neighbors.
In Europe, they use a different model, a transformer for every block, so they have a less severe problem, but a problem none the less.
This is why you can use your internal AC wiring for phones and stuff, but not get very far outside, I am not aware of how they have eliminated this problem.
I had no idea I was so far out of the mainstream and working with an antiquated and inefficient, yet overpriced technology. I have been using my Blackberry for several years, and quite happy with it, until now. I find out that the federal government is using Blackberrys. These are the same guys that designed and launched a space shuttle with 8-bit processors, run Amtrak and the US Mail, and I suspect are responsible for the hidden mess we call the Internal Revenue Service. They have NEVER used current, mainstream, efficient technology in the history of man. Therefor I must draw the conclusion that the Blackberry is 1980's technology that has somehow been kept alive through government contracts 20 years past its useful life. I must also assume it is WAY overpriced, non-compatable with any other known technology and incapable of performing any useful function that might somehow cause productivity gain.
I feel sick. I need a Smart Phone...
It is important to separate marketeting from actual usage. The ability to search a handwritten note is great, until you have several hundred files to search. It, simply put, is not a functional option. In practice, you quickly find it is easier to use a notebook and pen than it is to fumble with the attempt to search handwriting for something.
Stop drinking the Koolaid, put down the cup and try the tablet for 6 months as your sole note taking ability. You will be back agreeing with me.
"Before giving our final verdict on it, however, let's consider one more thing. Who is this hybrid product designed for? Is it for power users like you and me? Anyone who buys this notebook probably has a few hundred people working under him/her to do his/her presentations, work on excel and so on. The tablet is then around for sheer novelty and flaunt value. It's nice to have a tablet these days and that's what Lenovo is playing at.
Those who own a tablet will normally be attending long meetings, taking quick notes and wouldn't want to generally carry around heavy models, but to the majority of us, tablet PCs don't make sense, financially or pragmatically."
I used a tablet PC for several years while at Microsoft, partly because I wanted to understand what or if there was an application and partly because it was the politically-correct thing to do. I was not impressed. It really has nothing to do with the form-factor, although performance is a key factor. It has more to do with the software, specifically Windows for Tablet, and the whole human interaction thing.
I took notes on it for about 9 months, and then finally had to stop when I realized I couldn't find anything for later review. The files were all there, my notes were in them, but to open and close hundreds of files looking for the meeting where that guy said that thing about that stuff? Forget it. There was no way I could be more efficient than the notebook and pen. True, you can't search your notebook electronically, but you can't search your written notes either. Convert handwriting to text? Forget about it, the error correction you have to go through eliminates ANY potential savings.
My old-fashion father, now an 80 year-old CPA, used to laugh when I would bring home the latest PDA/calendar/phone thingy. He would smile, take out his daytimer and set it on the table. We would race to see who could look up a personal schedule for a specific date. I never won the race. I was never even close. I still cannot win that race, and I still cannot even come close.
The Tablet does have some unique applications, such as the Doctor doing their rounds and updating charts on the fly. Inventory perhaps. There are others. But as a general purpose note-taking computing platform, forget about it. It the latest technology cannot outperform the oldest known writing standard in the world, pen and paper, and can't make general office functions any better, it is just technology looking for a solution.
The comment was made that digital labs (Walmart I suppose) do a better job than inkjet printers and use 'real' photographic paper. This is what I am calling bullshit on. There are over 200 different types of archival and canvas inkjet papers available out there, as compared to the high-gloss kodak crap the 'digital lab' will use.
I do have my own digital lab, by the way...
I absulutely agree with your comments. I am surprised at the amount of bad advice being thrown around this thread. I have been using the Epson 2200 for my professional photography work for several years (Lyson Cavepaint bulk feed) and I have yet to see a lab or a laser with the ability to produce the same quality. Once you figure out to go to bulk feed and get off the Epson ink nipple, these just can't be beat for quality photography work.
Common sense through all the comments: Do not buy inkjets and if you really wanna print out your pictures, go to an online service. Much cheaper and real photo paper...
Bullshit. I am a professional photographer and I can tell you that I can produce work on my Epson 2200 that exceeds anything a lab can produce from the same photo. DO not hand out advice when you obviously have NO idea what you are talking about.
The only issue I have with your advise is that the newer printers (Epson 2200 caliber) have a much wider color gamut than the older printers. If you are doing any serious photography work, there is a HUGE difference.
You need to look at your color inkjet printer, at the level of the C86, as an ink-delivery system. Epson should (and does) give these printers away because what they really sell is ink. In fact, if you go to the Epson site and look at their refurbished printers, in many cases you can pick up a refurb for the price of the new ink included with the printer.
If you are going to do a lot of printing, get a printer that has bulk-feed systems available. The ink cost is about 10% of the cost of replacing cartridges.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and your advise is worthless.
I am a professional photographer and I have been using the Epson 2200 and Espon 4000 for my work, and there is NO WAY a dye-sublimation printer could do the work these pigment-based inkjet printers do. I use a bulk-feed system for my 2200 with the Lyson Cavepaint pigment inks and I have compared my 13x19 prints with dye-sublimation. There is no comparison, the inkjet is far and away better in color gamut, subtle tones and in the huge variety of archival and canvas 'papers' that are available.
As has been mentioned already, the pay-per-click model of advertising revenue simply cannot hold as a business model forever. The alternative business model that Amazon uses is the pay-for-a-click-that-generates-a-sale version, which is very similar to my rule of 'if you are happy, I had better be very happy' for paying sales people. The Google model violates this rule in that Google can be happy, but the customer isn't because the conversion ratio of clicks to orders is not high enough for the advertiser to be happy.
I developed this simple rule a long time ago while starting my first company and trying to figure out a model for commissioned sales people that actually made sense. I found that this rule applies to a lot of different scenarios in business, and I have found that if a situation involving revenue and multiple players violates the rule, failure of some form is ahead.
I don't think we, as an industry, have fully figured out this online advertising thing, and there are going to be some failures along the way to finding the right model. The question, as always, is the magnitude of the failure.
But while the frame rate has increased, so has the CPU. In 1990, we were looking at 200 Mhz CPUs max and the frame rate was 10Mb less collision loss, which was at least 50%. Now we have 3.5GHz systems dealing with ethernet over 1GHz fiber with the same collision rate problem. If you do the math, we haven't really made the problem any worse.
This sounds very similar to the 'smart card' concept back in the late 80's and early 90's. Intel had the 586-driven smart-cards, and I believe 3Com had them as well. They were intended to offload the CPU by putting parts of the stack on the card. They failed because the performance gain and CPU offload numbers were never enough to justify the price difference.
I wonder what has changed? I have never known the CPU to get dragged down by network traffic, but maybe in the network server markets it is different, However with the Ethernet chipsets being designed into the motherboard and integrated into the tight circle of RAM and CPU, it isn't clear there is a need for this.
How long before the network control is put into the CPU? It is going to be tough to beat that type of performance.
Slashdot Mirror
Or we can all just agree that it's probably right and move on to something else.
But is he is or is he isn't correct?
There needs to be random comment here about real men driving little natural gas cars and the frequency of farts while driving creating some sort of natural phenomenon involving sea turtles and climate change, but the words escape me right now...
But, but, but, do I need antivirus for my Mac?? (wait for it).... NO, Macs don't get viruses!!!! (this has little to do with the actual topic here, just trying to add to the hysteria)
You are a fool, and will be the first one to cry 'why didn't they do something? They spend all that money on spying, they should have known!'. There is simply no way to win with people like you, and it isn't until you get yourselves blown up in some terrorist activity that it occurs to you that there is a very real threat out there and they mostly want YOU dead.
Wake up! There are people in this world that want to kill you, and they will stop at nothing to accomplish that task. The very people that you are suspecting of covering something up are actually working night and day to keep you safe. Yes, they will make mistakes because that is what humans do. However, without them and their efforts, you will be very dead and we will go back to living in the 5th century as these whacked out terrorists want.
To believe the threat does not exist is nothing but wishful thinking. Get over yourself and deal with it.
My bad. I did think about this one, and I don't think it was that far fetched at all. In fact, until Mini posted this morning, I was beginning to buy into the theory...
I am not sure I understand. You supplied a link to minimsft?
After reading all of the various blogs and press over the last few hours, I can piece everything together except for the exact reason. Martin was terminated for cause. If an exec is leaving, it takes several months to coordinate. This was very sudden and abrupt. If Martin left on his own, there would not have been anything scheduled for him. Instead, he just didn't show up to a press event. So, why would Microsoft just fire someone and walk them to the door? There are, according to Microsoft HR, two reasons one can be walked out without due cause or process. The first is having child porn on your computer. The second is physical violence. I know this because I had to fire someone for getting into a fight with his girlfriend in the Microsoft parking lot. He pushed her to the ground, it was all caught on camera and she filed a complaint. Two days later he was on a plane back to his home country (he was here on a visa). I, as his GM, was given no choice, no recourse, no room to wiggle and this is when the HR policy was spelled out to me. Heck, we caught a guy mastrubating in his office and all he got was a warning. Regular porn gets a warning, child porn gets a boot. Martin did not just get mad and quit in a huff, people do not walk away from a $500K/year position in a huff. The only logical explaination is a termination, and the only two reasons for such an abrupt termination is the above. Even Ballmer can't override this particular policy. We can olny hope it was the physical violence, not the child porn.
I worry about the long term effects on the eyes. You are constantly focusing on sonething only an inch or less from your eye, and the eye strain might have a negative effect over time. Remembering Steve Martin's movie 'The Jerk' where a device designed to keep your glasses from slipping down your nose eventually made everyone on the planet cross-eyed, I would use this but definitely limit my time.
OK, OK, I admit it, I am not an electrician! 210, 211, what's the diff? ;>) We focused on the fact that a digital carrier signal on the AC wave would go in one side of a transformer and not come out the other. I stand corrected on the voltage/current issues.
I am assuming a local loop for the broadband that doesn't have to concern itself with the higher voltage stepdowns. I believe 220 is what comes out of the local substations. A broadband carrier could tap in at that point with backhaul and only have to deal with the 220-110 stepdown. The issue is physics, so until you see them up on the poles replacing the big ugly transformers with something sleek and digital-looking, I would not hold my breath for broadband over powerlines.
While interference is an issue, it is not the issue that has prevented us from doing this. I do not see anything that shows they have solved the fundamental issue. In the US, the power lines in your neighborhood are typically carrying 220 volts, which is more efficient than carrying 110, which is what your house eats. Those great big ugly transformers you see on every other pole are used to step the voltage down to 110 so your Xbox doesn't light on fire (note: the Xbox 360 has other means for accomplishing this) Unfortunately, the big transformer has a nasty side-effect: It acts as a low-pass filter on the power. This is a good thing if you want clean power. It is a bad thing if you are trying to carry a high-frequency wave of data on top of the 60-cycle hummer. The data is stripped off by the transformer. Since we developed the 'every other house' transformer model for the most part in the US, this means you might be able to talk to one of your neighbors. In Europe, they use a different model, a transformer for every block, so they have a less severe problem, but a problem none the less. This is why you can use your internal AC wiring for phones and stuff, but not get very far outside, I am not aware of how they have eliminated this problem.
I had no idea I was so far out of the mainstream and working with an antiquated and inefficient, yet overpriced technology. I have been using my Blackberry for several years, and quite happy with it, until now. I find out that the federal government is using Blackberrys. These are the same guys that designed and launched a space shuttle with 8-bit processors, run Amtrak and the US Mail, and I suspect are responsible for the hidden mess we call the Internal Revenue Service. They have NEVER used current, mainstream, efficient technology in the history of man. Therefor I must draw the conclusion that the Blackberry is 1980's technology that has somehow been kept alive through government contracts 20 years past its useful life. I must also assume it is WAY overpriced, non-compatable with any other known technology and incapable of performing any useful function that might somehow cause productivity gain. I feel sick. I need a Smart Phone...
It is important to separate marketeting from actual usage. The ability to search a handwritten note is great, until you have several hundred files to search. It, simply put, is not a functional option. In practice, you quickly find it is easier to use a notebook and pen than it is to fumble with the attempt to search handwriting for something. Stop drinking the Koolaid, put down the cup and try the tablet for 6 months as your sole note taking ability. You will be back agreeing with me.
I used a tablet PC for several years while at Microsoft, partly because I wanted to understand what or if there was an application and partly because it was the politically-correct thing to do. I was not impressed. It really has nothing to do with the form-factor, although performance is a key factor. It has more to do with the software, specifically Windows for Tablet, and the whole human interaction thing.
I took notes on it for about 9 months, and then finally had to stop when I realized I couldn't find anything for later review. The files were all there, my notes were in them, but to open and close hundreds of files looking for the meeting where that guy said that thing about that stuff? Forget it. There was no way I could be more efficient than the notebook and pen. True, you can't search your notebook electronically, but you can't search your written notes either. Convert handwriting to text? Forget about it, the error correction you have to go through eliminates ANY potential savings.
My old-fashion father, now an 80 year-old CPA, used to laugh when I would bring home the latest PDA/calendar/phone thingy. He would smile, take out his daytimer and set it on the table. We would race to see who could look up a personal schedule for a specific date. I never won the race. I was never even close. I still cannot win that race, and I still cannot even come close.
The Tablet does have some unique applications, such as the Doctor doing their rounds and updating charts on the fly. Inventory perhaps. There are others. But as a general purpose note-taking computing platform, forget about it. It the latest technology cannot outperform the oldest known writing standard in the world, pen and paper, and can't make general office functions any better, it is just technology looking for a solution.
uses Google search to find them..... I simply can't believe I am the first one to use this.
The comment was made that digital labs (Walmart I suppose) do a better job than inkjet printers and use 'real' photographic paper. This is what I am calling bullshit on. There are over 200 different types of archival and canvas inkjet papers available out there, as compared to the high-gloss kodak crap the 'digital lab' will use. I do have my own digital lab, by the way...
I absulutely agree with your comments. I am surprised at the amount of bad advice being thrown around this thread. I have been using the Epson 2200 for my professional photography work for several years (Lyson Cavepaint bulk feed) and I have yet to see a lab or a laser with the ability to produce the same quality. Once you figure out to go to bulk feed and get off the Epson ink nipple, these just can't be beat for quality photography work.
Bullshit. I am a professional photographer and I can tell you that I can produce work on my Epson 2200 that exceeds anything a lab can produce from the same photo. DO not hand out advice when you obviously have NO idea what you are talking about.
The only issue I have with your advise is that the newer printers (Epson 2200 caliber) have a much wider color gamut than the older printers. If you are doing any serious photography work, there is a HUGE difference.
If you are going to do a lot of printing, get a printer that has bulk-feed systems available. The ink cost is about 10% of the cost of replacing cartridges.
I am a professional photographer and I have been using the Epson 2200 and Espon 4000 for my work, and there is NO WAY a dye-sublimation printer could do the work these pigment-based inkjet printers do. I use a bulk-feed system for my 2200 with the Lyson Cavepaint pigment inks and I have compared my 13x19 prints with dye-sublimation. There is no comparison, the inkjet is far and away better in color gamut, subtle tones and in the huge variety of archival and canvas 'papers' that are available.
I developed this simple rule a long time ago while starting my first company and trying to figure out a model for commissioned sales people that actually made sense. I found that this rule applies to a lot of different scenarios in business, and I have found that if a situation involving revenue and multiple players violates the rule, failure of some form is ahead.
I don't think we, as an industry, have fully figured out this online advertising thing, and there are going to be some failures along the way to finding the right model. The question, as always, is the magnitude of the failure.
But while the frame rate has increased, so has the CPU. In 1990, we were looking at 200 Mhz CPUs max and the frame rate was 10Mb less collision loss, which was at least 50%. Now we have 3.5GHz systems dealing with ethernet over 1GHz fiber with the same collision rate problem. If you do the math, we haven't really made the problem any worse.
I wonder what has changed? I have never known the CPU to get dragged down by network traffic, but maybe in the network server markets it is different, However with the Ethernet chipsets being designed into the motherboard and integrated into the tight circle of RAM and CPU, it isn't clear there is a need for this.
How long before the network control is put into the CPU? It is going to be tough to beat that type of performance.