I thought you were gonna say "because it just couldn't be worse than before, no matter how hard they try".
My guess is:
-LH will still ship with IE which will have a LOT of holes and more will be found over time. "Their" antispyware may not be too bad, but it's like fixing a flat tire everyday... Why not make IE secure instead?... (Can't see ActiveX support beign removed, either)
-(Home) Users will still run as admin for everyday stuff. You know what follows... Mind you, even if they "fixed" that, the users wouldd quickly learn to make themselves admin again (not knowing what it is or means, why, the consequences, risks or anything) just so their software runs. Too much soft requires users to be admin for trivial stuff.
It won't educate users about risks either, and hey'll keep doing the same old stuff.
This list could go on and on...
And they say it's going to be more secure, when they really have fixed none of the main problems. Ok, it may be more secrure, but that doesn't mean as secure as you would hope, or as secure as OS X... I still see tons of XP SP2 PCs with tons of viruses and spyware.
(And that's coming from someone who mostly uses Windows)
Most automated applications (even simple things like those using PLCs) have interlocks in the logic (code) and hardware (i.e. using relays) to prevent bad things to happen. Even small automation tasks are usually designed using tools like Stop and go procedures guide (Gemma in french), ensuring nothing bad happens in any case (like emergency stops or similar events). For anything safety related like that, there is a lot of redundancy built-in at every level (be it sensors, processing, comms,...) Systems are never perfect, but usually they're designed with regards to safety.
It may go to the lowest bidder, but that doesn't mean that it won't run over estimated/planned costs and time. Perhaps I'm a bit naive but I just can't see them take a untested and potentially dangerous system online, risking a lot of lives. I doubt they'd accept bids from companies without enough expertise to make something like this happen safely either.
If the drive is faulty, you just might not be able to overwrite the info (not reliably anyways).
I'm surprised he's even looking for this. I work in a place where for similar regulations we have to wipe HDs securely before disposal, but that's only for working ones. Damaged HDs cannot be sent back because of the info on them, they have to be destroyed locally. We take the platters out, but I'm not 100% sure how they get destroyed (probably degaussed then physically damaged). The companies we buy PCs from are aware of this too. If a drive dies in one of the PCs that's still under warranty, they replace it and we keep the old drive for proper disposal.
Such a device would only be useful for disposing of old PCs with functionnal HDs in them. I can't see the regulations let them do this.
Yes, money is an issue but it's FAR from being the only one.
-CRT has no dead/stuck pixels -CRT has no set resution (higher res, too) -CRT has much better contrasts -CRT has better color accuracy to some extent (my basic Eye-One calibrator doesn't work with LCDs either) -No response delays (and tests tweaked to get faster results) -Better viewing angles (...) I'm not sure about useable life either. Good CRTs lasts quite a while.
Of course money is also an issue. I got 2 *nice* (recent, calibrated and not refurbs either) 21" trinitrons on my photoshop PC for 400$ CDN very easily. Now to replace this with "good" 21" LCDs I'd be spending many times that much - for MUCH worse displays IMHO. Yes, I'd have some desk space back, but there's just no reason to spend an extra couple thousand $ or more for a much lesser product. It's not just a question of being cheap/frugal/poor. Even if one had the money, why waste it on a inferior product? I'd much rather spend those $$$ on some really good stuff that I need like good nikon glass instead of spending it to get lower quality stuff. I call it spending wisely - not being cheap. (Although it's true enough that for some people LCDs are too expensive) LCDs are WAY overhyped lately, it's incredible.
Also, we have a lot of high priced LCDs at work (some 17" that cost like 700$) that have VERY crappy picture, I have a hard time reading text on them... I haven't spent much time playing with them, but I've been very unimpressed by them overall...
So you think that they will give you internet with out TV, try it out, good luck.
Actually, I do have cable internet without a single TV channel. That never was a problem anywhere where I lived (not to mention that DSL has never been available anywhere I lived), no luck required whatsoever. Speeds are great and everything, and I get to use inexpensive VoIP over it too (15$/mo with taxes and all instead of my old telco that was charging me 65$ no matter what...)
A slow migration to open source apps would probably be best. Planning for that would be nice, but it's unfortunately it's just not hapenning at the "top level", and it's not like I can make the call either...
I've been thinking about moving away from ASP/ASP.Net lately, but php just isn't a replacement, and nobody wants to hear about J2EE or anything like that. Most of the times I've brought something like that up the usual answer is something along the lines of "who cares?"
You made a very good point about economical != best choice; and initial cost when switching over.
Not that I think any point was a absolute reason to stick to windows. The main point is that I hear a lot of people saying how we should switch to linux instead, because somehow not having to pay for windows makes the IT costs fall to 0$ they think... And making the switch isn't anywhere as simple as a lot of people think. There is a lot major issues involved in something like this.
I've heard we might be deploying firefox across country soon. Perhaps that may be a good start or an eye opener at least...
It's not a big deal if something like this happens, it's only a matter of changing your password at that very moment (ctrl-alt-del > change password in windows, not sure about sun boxes...). But I suppose lots of people won't see the real danger and would just keep it for convenience.
The governments going for microsoft software isn't necessarily not spending the money in a wise way. The cost of licenses is only a small part of IT costs, and keep in mind that switching away from windows doesn't bring licensing down to 0$ either (last I heard, they're not giving Oracle away).
What switching to linux means in a gov't setup:
-All gov't employees (users) have to learn to use a new desktop. For some people that aren't really computer literate, it already took years to be functionnal and learn to do the basic stuff. Take that away from them? You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.
-All gov't employees in the IT support field would need to be retrained for this new OS (can't just fire them or replace them, doesn't work like that). That alone could cost WAY more than licensing fees. Salaries might go up over time too...
-All the in house applications. Just about every desktop (or employee) makes use of in-house software, and a lot of our corporate apps runs only in windows. Port all our in-house built apps? Replace all them big corporate apps? That's far too time/money consuming to even be considered. Best case scenario, users would have to login to remote servers (citrix or such) or something along those lines. 99%+ of our intranet is ASP/ASP.Net pages too (using SQL server too)... This alone is a good reason to stick to windows.
-Management. I'm no linux guru, so there might be (very good) alternatives to do this with linux, but I'm not 100% sure. Everything across country is monitored by a central NOC 24/7 easily. We have Active Directory, SMS, VBScript/WMI and a whole lot of other mangement/scripting/automation/(...) options. Again, not too sure of what linux has to offer here... Sure thing is, you just can't take away all our tools, you'd definately have to have equivalents.
-Exchange-like calendaring and everything else (shared mailboxes, boardroom booking,... the whole 9 yards). AFAIK, there is no real replacement (I very well may be wrong). Add to that the tons of ms office (proprietary) format documents... Using an office suite that may open most of your word & excel files isn't good enough here, you pretty much need 100% support. Again, that point alone is also a big factor making the gov't stick to windows...
There's even more reasons, but I think this helps to show why windows may not be so much of a bad choice after all. There's many valid reasons to stick to it. Not that linux is bad, but it's not the solution to everything, and it's not always cheaper. It's not impossible to make the switch, but it's not going to be as cheap or easy as most people think.
I always wished groups had paypal account or such so you could send money to support them, but them being caught in a contract with the devil to publish their music, they can't just accept the money like that without letting others take their cut. When I find some good mp3's, I'd like to compensate the artists - not the record label execs, but right now there's no way of doing it.
Buying the CD gives most of the money to intermediates;
Buying a used CD gives those no money, but gives none to the artists either (only the used CD store makes a small profit);
And there is nothing worth using online (no, I don't want anything to do with iTunes or iTMS, nor napster, DRM and other crap)
If they were allowed to have some sort of paypal account and distribute their mp3's on the web or in a similar way (pay a few $ and you can download decent mp3's off the site?), I'm sure they'd make a killing at it.
Sure, there will always be a few who will abuse this, but they can't do anything to that (people have always shared, and you can't close all the holes). I think most people would gladly pay to support their artists.
English isn't really such a complicated language really. Other languages can be far more complex.
I know that in french, word's spell checker used to really suck (haven't written anything in french for years, so not sure how the current version is), so people would turn to far better programs for that like Correcteur 101 (last time I've used it is like 1996 or so).
Word's speller may suck with english text, but it seems to me like it's only worse with other languages.
Either ways, I don't rely on it too much. Some other apps have far worse spell checkers (like dreamweaver). What we would really need is a system wide spell checker built into the OS so it would work with everything (word, notepad, browsers, everything!), a bit like As-U-Type.
Fixing PCs used to be not so bad. You'd go over, have a look, fix things, explain (people would listen), and wouldn't mind paying (as PCs were more expensive back then and most ppl didn't know as much about PCs).
Nowadays, they'd want you to do it for free (or just about), argue with you over stuff they don't understand at all (some people are really confused yet think they know everything better than you). Reinstalling windows is a pain (reinstall XP home and reactivate fore them? or backup activation? this thing only gets in the way of elgit customers). People don't ask anymore when a little something isn't working, they wait till it won't even boot without crashing to ask, so you have to fix a unusable PC instead of some bugs. And most of the time you gotta work with this new XP teletubbies look and crappy new start menu (I so hate these things), options taken away from you (like the new user manager that really sucks). People don't seem to understand anymore formatting means everything on their PC will be gone, and no, I don't want to reinstall their warez either. Spyware and viruses are a real pain adding to all this lately. And when you can't fix it anymore (too often as they wait far too long), then you gotta manually find and backup all their files for each user profile (including outlook info, IM logs, photos, mp3s... gigs worth of crap). It's become WAY more trouble than it's worth (unless you really charge money, but nobody wants to pay that anymore). And even if you spend 4h of your time for 20$, they'll still be ungrateful. And then when they get home they'll just hit some porn site with IE again...
I only do it for a handfull of people now (family/close friends), and only if they don't mind changing a few things (like ditching IE). In some cases (like my mom who knows NOTHING about PCs) I've set them up with DeepFreeze so they can't mess them up anymore (and I keep a ghost image as well). Other people? The answer is no, find somebody else, not worth wasting my time.
Nobody wants to do the job anymore but some amateurs... It's no surprise to anyone who's ever been into this before.
Even then, there would have to be a LOT of popular songs on there for me to take that route.
How many good CDs worth buying get out per year? Not too many if you ask me, and too many of those only got 1 or 2 songs worth listening to.
Take that 15$ a month * 12 months, that's 180 songs off ITMS, even with an average of say, 3 good songs per CD, that's 60 CDs worth of "good tunes", which is more than what's put out yearly in the first place imho.
Of course YMMV, mainly depending on what you listen to (what genre).
And paying every month for the next 10 years or so, then cancelling (or they go bankrupt, you get fed up of issues with their service or whatever happens), then you have absolutely NOTHING left for all that money you paid over all that time. Not to mention that price will most likely increase too.
And even if you listened to so much stuff that it would cost more to buy them than renting, the music you want to listen to has to be available on napster as well and it just may not be (not like I really looked closely at their selection).
I'm not sure what bitrate ITMS uses (using AAC is still an advantage over napter no matter what), but napster being 128kbps (correct me if I'm wrong) rules it out as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not really picky or anything (I'm not an audiophile but I'm not deaf either).
Didn't we already have an article on this (business model comparison), other than the "napster was cracked" one (where you can turn the crappy 128kbps stream into uncompressed WAVs and burn them).
Either ways, 128kbps isn't enough, even on a cheap player with cheap earphones, you can easily tell the difference, no need to be an audiophile either...
Threat is one thing I'd be worried about for sure.
Then comes the questions of price. USB is cheap, I doubt this will "outcheap" it. I don't want an extra 10-20$ extra tacked onto everything I buy - and have to buy PCI (and PCMCIA?) cards for all my PCs so I can use the devices (might add a small cost to new PCs as well)
And third, even if we eliminate the concerns of being irradiated by dozens of RF devices day long at home and work (including small children), there's still the interference problem. I've had problems with a couple microsoft mouse (mice?) that wouldn't work reliably like that. I have no 900MHz phone, but I had a 2.4 one and a cell. If I had extra wireless stuff (900MHz phones, WiFi and what not) I can only see get worse.
No matter what people ask for or do, I don't think it will have it all. They might at some point in time have been leading, but right now they're playing catch-up big time.
Full, proper CSS support (including complex selectors) is just a start. We also very much need it to support standards (like support the <abbr> tag, not just <acronym>), including standard voice+xml technology as well (but I can't see that happen). If they don't use the same things as the rest of the world will use for that, then it just makes it harder for us to use the new technology, as a good portion of browsers won't support it (same thing about XForms or whatever). Their proprietary stuff prevents us from using these useful technologies. I think we don't need another ActiveX-like thing. It's their chance to prove us they're serious about their claims of interoperability (and security), but something tells me we'll be really deceived again. (And I didn't even ask for niceties like firefox style extensions, tabbed browsing or anything - just a good standards-compliant browser)
You make it sound like they're only attacking networks/means that nobody uses anymore, but they've done quite a lot of damage to BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule "communities" too. I wouldn't exactly say that nobody uses those anymore. Granted, they haven't shut down those 2 yet, but it's not like they aren't trying or not doing anything about them either. (Mind you I'm quite happy to see this crapzaa plague go away)
Perhaps ~40% don't mail it in, then another huge bunch don't get it because it "somehow" expired, or they later on tell you they do not honor the offer for PO Boxes (even though there were NO mention of that on the M.I.R.!). So I'm guessing for a 100$ M.I.R., they probably only really hand out something like 30$ in average.
And I find it annoying to make a unplanned detour to a crowded mall for something with a M.I.R. to find out that they don't work with PO Boxes... So for those of us with that for only address, it's pretty much forget about those things.
And to top things off, I see a lot of offers (*cough* bestbuy *cough*) for like, a 250$ HD that cost 130$ everywhere else, but with a 125$ M.I.R. making it a whole 5$ cheaper (that's IF you ever get your money back, and last I tried on something like that, surprisingly, I didn't!), you still pay taxes on that 125$ part you're supposed to get back (@15% tax here, that's almost 20$) making it absolutely pointless buying it in the first place, risking (or most likely?) not getting the money back, and if you ever get it back, still paying interest (or not getting paid interest) on that 125$ for x weeks/months.
Illegal? Maybe not, but not really honest of them, and definately not worth the trouble.
No monthly fees for satellite PVRs might be nice, but that's not my thing (and I had to pay 350$ cdn for mine). My sat PVR records shows with no quality loss whatsoever, including 5.1 audio if it's there. Even if Tivo didn't have monthly fees, there's no way I'd trade my sat PVR for a Tivo. Analog captures just don't look good enough (besides that cable here is really poor compared to sat quality in the first place, and sat has a better lineup and better prices).
Most of the cheapie services will optimize for bandwidth rather than quality for the sake of saving money but Vonage does the opposite, in my experience.
Vonage sounds good, but it does sound no better than my cheapie VoIP provider. Haven't had a problem either ways. The only differece I ever was able to notice is price.
Vonage is just as expensive as my old lanline, which was already way too much (my main reason to switch to something else). My cheapie provider cost me between 1/3 and 1/2 of what vonage would. In fact, I have a hard time finding any provider that charges more than them (so far I have not found one). To me, it looks like average service at 2 or 3x the price...
That's until you start looking deeper, then you see vonage here doesn't even have 911 service, whereas my cheapie provider has e911. (I get more features overall, not just e911)
No it's not just about economics. But the Pc based PVRs are also way too much of a PITA and time consuming to setup.
As for the DVD burning feature, like I had mentionned before, I can't imagine bothering with that. If you watch on PDA/phone or such (especially since recordnig quality hardly matters then), then I guess that can be handy for you. Even if I don't do that or never seen anyone even mention that (other than online), I'll still grant you that.
As for movie times, comisc, rss feeds and all those extra features, like I had said, I don't see a reason to have that on my TV (thru the TV, whatever). My HTPC alerady does all this, but I still do it right on the PC itself, while the TV does the thing it was intended for - show TV shows and movies. Perhaps the nature of what you watch/follow might change that. Comics wise I only check dilbert (at work) daily:p RSS feeds, nothing beats FeedDemon IMHO. I see absolutely no loss whatsoever not having these in my sat PVR (actually, it has a whole bunch of things like that that I don't use, like weather, interactive games, lotto numbers,...). Just like I don't miss not having a camera or mp3 player in my cell phone.
Well, most HDTV sat programming (in NA) went to secure encryption (nagravision 2) not long ago, so you can't record it (unecnrypted) as easily as before.
Decrypting actually isn't so CPU intensive. I used to record/decrypt HD off sat (DVB) easily with a lowly Athlon XP 2000+, and cpu load was rather low. I think memory speed/latency and such might be more of a concern. (AFAIK, some cards can also do the decrypting itself in hardware, you just send it the proper keys)
As for decoding, you don't need so much speed either. Your video card (well, good ones at least) have some mpeg2 decoding acceleration. Sames goes for some OTA HDTV tuner cards. With a 3GHz PC and a good video card, you can playback 1080i stuff off satellite as is more than easily. (Actually, I can play 1080i easily on a 2GHz PC with a so-so video card in VLC without any problems). At OTA HDTV bitrates it might be a bit more problematic (haven't tried, no feeds available here). 1080p contents in WMV9 (kind of mpeg4 almost sorta;) - even with DRM) should play fine with a 3GHz CPU supposedly, and mpeg4 usually more cpu intensive than mpeg2 (at same resolution/bitrate).
With optimized DVB software, fast video card drivers (not necessarily the latest version, some break mpeg2 decoding acceleration), recent video card, using a fast mpeg2 decoder with right settings, using a custom filtergraph worked fine on a 3GHz PC (decrypt/decode/watch real-time, usually mpeg2 @ 13mbit 720p HP@HL), and I've heard claims of it working on even slower setups (found it a bit hard to believe mind you).
What do you mean stuck with your PVR sat receiver?
IMHO, it beats all other PVRs hands down. No loss of quality - both for video and audio. I don't know if people using the analog counterparts are blind, don't care about quality or what, but there is NO way I'm putting up with the quality of the analog captures. With sat, I also keep digital sound (AC3 5.1 if present). Even the difference between analog captured audio (even with good card/cables and all) and basic mpeg audio recorded as is (not captured) is just about impossible not to notice. Not to mention (here at least) that cable is much lower quality to start with (and more expensive, bad packages,...). They also make some models that work with HDTV.
With a PC based PVR (not only with sat, but also digital cable boxes) you're forced you to use IR blasters, or even worse, some just can't change channels. It's a PITA to setup and , unreliablenot overly reliable.
With the PC based PVR, you gotta put a PC together, isntall OS and software. Configure it all (including codecs, TV guide, IR blasters,...), update/patch it like a normal PC.
My sat PVR works right out of the box (including remote and TV guide). No hassles. The whole thing (not just a PVR but also a sat receiver) cost me like 50$ than a basic hauppauge PCI capture card would have cost me.
The PC will cost significantly more. Especially if you want a nice HTPC case like D-Vines, a nice remote, quality parts (who wants a PVR that crashes middle of a show?) and all.
And don't tell me about burning DVDs from low quality analog captures that just aren't good enough to be burned anyways (and I can rip the movies off my PVR in 100% quality and burn them if I cared to anyways). And don't get me started on those extra features that don't belong there (like watch photos at under a half megapixel and bad gamut, when my family all lives >1000km away and have photo galleries to watch online and get 12MP DSLR pics snail-mailed onto DVDRs as well) and other things.
To complement things I have a HTPC as well. Even if it already has a capture card in it, lots of disk space and everything, I'm not using it as a PVR. It's just NOWHERE as good as the sat PVR is at that.
Unless you can't get satellite, then I can understand why one wouldn't use that instead.
I've used a LOT of different IDE RAID cards (promise, sil image based, HighPoint based,... most of the stuff around).
The only one that ever gave me a problem of all of them was a Rocket Raid 100 (HPT370A based). Promise has the best card of them all IMHO (performance wise, good drivers,... good overall). The sil image stuff is generic but it's very inexpensive and works surprisingly well (slow in DOS compared to promise cards though). Nice thing about them is most of the time they have a jumper to make them either RAID or a plain IDE controller to fit 4 more drives. (the promise has a hidden resistor hidden under a IC socket and needs you to reflash). I like the flexibility, it can be reused for different purposes in a different PC later on. The HP never amazed me. Not the best performance, not the best price, no particularly great drivers... And the only card that gave me problems was based on this. Eventually on one of them a port (one of the data pins) died. Hopefully their SATA stuff is better (but I tend to attribute my problems more to QC on this line of cards more than anything). Given another alternative, I'll stay away from HP, just like I stay away from VIA since their dreaded KT133 chipsets.
I've been playing with those desktop search engines last week.
I used to keep most stuff on my server and have the indexing server + a lot of IFilters index it all, and it was searcheable by a webpage. Not exactly the perfect solution, but so far, none of the desktop search tools have really been much better.
The only one (which is the worst overall IMHO and MS owned) who uses IFilter is the MSN junk (you couldn't pay me enough to install anything that says "MSN" on my PC anyways).
GDS and Copernic have very limited file type support (it's getting better, but why not make use of alerady installed 3rd party IFilters, as they already use the indexing service already? Well, at least GDS does). Addons for GDS/Copernic may help with filetype support later on, but knowing that software "is extendable" isn't exactly helping me right now.
And then, with these, as I keep my stuff mostly centralized (on server, access with mapped drives, easier to backup that way too), for each PC I have, I'd have to make the desktop search tool index many many gigs worth of data over the network. So all PCs generate hundreds of gigs of network traffic to do poor indexing. That's a lot of overhead for all PCs constantly updating their indexes too. Plus, the software has to be installed manually on all of them (I believe that some need you to be an admin to use them as well). And some are meant for single user only.
I still can't search inside a huge portion of my files (limited file type support), I stil can't do searches with any kind of special characters (brackets and stuff... things like you wish you could use even on google and that only get misinterpreted or stripped off).
My web page using the indexing server needs nothing installed on any PC, works for anybody, no huge network traffic, works for most file types, is still accessible when I'm away (it's a web page) as long as I got i'net access (can also manage files and all remotely), and the search page has some options to also search some SQL tables - a thing that no other tool does.
These desktop search tools may not be all bad, but they still have a LONG way to go. Right now, they don't fix any of my immediate issues, in fact, it's still worse than my old solution (for me at least). Not sure exactly how WinFS will change this, but it could definately help.
At 200$, it costs as much as a decent wireless mouse + trackball + touchpad + even a 4x5 graphire (which comes with a crappy mouse too).
That's a lot of different input devices to choose from (and it's great when you can use the one you prefer for whatever, like the graphire for photoshop). No more RSI either.
Got my little touchpad for 11$ in clearance (fellowes, w/ scroll). It's not my favorite pointing device but it does make a change - it feels better than my laptop's touchpad.
I can't imagine buying anything like this, let alone at 200$
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Security enchancements can only mean one thing:
... (Can't see ActiveX support beign removed, either)
I thought you were gonna say "because it just couldn't be worse than before, no matter how hard they try".
My guess is:
-LH will still ship with IE which will have a LOT of holes and more will be found over time. "Their" antispyware may not be too bad, but it's like fixing a flat tire everyday... Why not make IE secure instead?
-(Home) Users will still run as admin for everyday stuff. You know what follows... Mind you, even if they "fixed" that, the users wouldd quickly learn to make themselves admin again (not knowing what it is or means, why, the consequences, risks or anything) just so their software runs. Too much soft requires users to be admin for trivial stuff.
It won't educate users about risks either, and hey'll keep doing the same old stuff.
This list could go on and on...
And they say it's going to be more secure, when they really have fixed none of the main problems. Ok, it may be more secrure, but that doesn't mean as secure as you would hope, or as secure as OS X... I still see tons of XP SP2 PCs with tons of viruses and spyware.
(And that's coming from someone who mostly uses Windows)
Most automated applications (even simple things like those using PLCs) have interlocks in the logic (code) and hardware (i.e. using relays) to prevent bad things to happen. Even small automation tasks are usually designed using tools like Stop and go procedures guide (Gemma in french), ensuring nothing bad happens in any case (like emergency stops or similar events). For anything safety related like that, there is a lot of redundancy built-in at every level (be it sensors, processing, comms, ...) Systems are never perfect, but usually they're designed with regards to safety.
It may go to the lowest bidder, but that doesn't mean that it won't run over estimated/planned costs and time. Perhaps I'm a bit naive but I just can't see them take a untested and potentially dangerous system online, risking a lot of lives. I doubt they'd accept bids from companies without enough expertise to make something like this happen safely either.
If the drive is faulty, you just might not be able to overwrite the info (not reliably anyways).
I'm surprised he's even looking for this. I work in a place where for similar regulations we have to wipe HDs securely before disposal, but that's only for working ones. Damaged HDs cannot be sent back because of the info on them, they have to be destroyed locally. We take the platters out, but I'm not 100% sure how they get destroyed (probably degaussed then physically damaged). The companies we buy PCs from are aware of this too. If a drive dies in one of the PCs that's still under warranty, they replace it and we keep the old drive for proper disposal.
Such a device would only be useful for disposing of old PCs with functionnal HDs in them. I can't see the regulations let them do this.
Yes, money is an issue but it's FAR from being the only one.
-CRT has no dead/stuck pixels
-CRT has no set resution (higher res, too)
-CRT has much better contrasts
-CRT has better color accuracy to some extent (my basic Eye-One calibrator doesn't work with LCDs either)
-No response delays (and tests tweaked to get faster results)
-Better viewing angles
(...)
I'm not sure about useable life either. Good CRTs lasts quite a while.
Of course money is also an issue. I got 2 *nice* (recent, calibrated and not refurbs either) 21" trinitrons on my photoshop PC for 400$ CDN very easily. Now to replace this with "good" 21" LCDs I'd be spending many times that much - for MUCH worse displays IMHO. Yes, I'd have some desk space back, but there's just no reason to spend an extra couple thousand $ or more for a much lesser product. It's not just a question of being cheap/frugal/poor. Even if one had the money, why waste it on a inferior product? I'd much rather spend those $$$ on some really good stuff that I need like good nikon glass instead of spending it to get lower quality stuff. I call it spending wisely - not being cheap. (Although it's true enough that for some people LCDs are too expensive) LCDs are WAY overhyped lately, it's incredible.
Also, we have a lot of high priced LCDs at work (some 17" that cost like 700$) that have VERY crappy picture, I have a hard time reading text on them... I haven't spent much time playing with them, but I've been very unimpressed by them overall...
So you think that they will give you internet with out TV, try it out, good luck.
Actually, I do have cable internet without a single TV channel. That never was a problem anywhere where I lived (not to mention that DSL has never been available anywhere I lived), no luck required whatsoever. Speeds are great and everything, and I get to use inexpensive VoIP over it too (15$/mo with taxes and all instead of my old telco that was charging me 65$ no matter what...)
A lot of good points :)
A slow migration to open source apps would probably be best. Planning for that would be nice, but it's unfortunately it's just not hapenning at the "top level", and it's not like I can make the call either...
I've been thinking about moving away from ASP/ASP.Net lately, but php just isn't a replacement, and nobody wants to hear about J2EE or anything like that. Most of the times I've brought something like that up the usual answer is something along the lines of "who cares?"
You made a very good point about economical != best choice; and initial cost when switching over.
Not that I think any point was a absolute reason to stick to windows. The main point is that I hear a lot of people saying how we should switch to linux instead, because somehow not having to pay for windows makes the IT costs fall to 0$ they think... And making the switch isn't anywhere as simple as a lot of people think. There is a lot major issues involved in something like this.
I've heard we might be deploying firefox across country soon. Perhaps that may be a good start or an eye opener at least...
It's not a big deal if something like this happens, it's only a matter of changing your password at that very moment (ctrl-alt-del > change password in windows, not sure about sun boxes...). But I suppose lots of people won't see the real danger and would just keep it for convenience.
The governments going for microsoft software isn't necessarily not spending the money in a wise way. The cost of licenses is only a small part of IT costs, and keep in mind that switching away from windows doesn't bring licensing down to 0$ either (last I heard, they're not giving Oracle away).
... the whole 9 yards). AFAIK, there is no real replacement (I very well may be wrong). Add to that the tons of ms office (proprietary) format documents... Using an office suite that may open most of your word & excel files isn't good enough here, you pretty much need 100% support. Again, that point alone is also a big factor making the gov't stick to windows...
What switching to linux means in a gov't setup:
-All gov't employees (users) have to learn to use a new desktop. For some people that aren't really computer literate, it already took years to be functionnal and learn to do the basic stuff. Take that away from them? You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.
-All gov't employees in the IT support field would need to be retrained for this new OS (can't just fire them or replace them, doesn't work like that). That alone could cost WAY more than licensing fees. Salaries might go up over time too...
-All the in house applications. Just about every desktop (or employee) makes use of in-house software, and a lot of our corporate apps runs only in windows. Port all our in-house built apps? Replace all them big corporate apps? That's far too time/money consuming to even be considered. Best case scenario, users would have to login to remote servers (citrix or such) or something along those lines. 99%+ of our intranet is ASP/ASP.Net pages too (using SQL server too)... This alone is a good reason to stick to windows.
-Management. I'm no linux guru, so there might be (very good) alternatives to do this with linux, but I'm not 100% sure. Everything across country is monitored by a central NOC 24/7 easily. We have Active Directory, SMS, VBScript/WMI and a whole lot of other mangement/scripting/automation/(...) options. Again, not too sure of what linux has to offer here... Sure thing is, you just can't take away all our tools, you'd definately have to have equivalents.
-Exchange-like calendaring and everything else (shared mailboxes, boardroom booking,
There's even more reasons, but I think this helps to show why windows may not be so much of a bad choice after all. There's many valid reasons to stick to it. Not that linux is bad, but it's not the solution to everything, and it's not always cheaper. It's not impossible to make the switch, but it's not going to be as cheap or easy as most people think.
I always wished groups had paypal account or such so you could send money to support them, but them being caught in a contract with the devil to publish their music, they can't just accept the money like that without letting others take their cut. When I find some good mp3's, I'd like to compensate the artists - not the record label execs, but right now there's no way of doing it.
Buying the CD gives most of the money to intermediates;
Buying a used CD gives those no money, but gives none to the artists either (only the used CD store makes a small profit);
And there is nothing worth using online (no, I don't want anything to do with iTunes or iTMS, nor napster, DRM and other crap)
If they were allowed to have some sort of paypal account and distribute their mp3's on the web or in a similar way (pay a few $ and you can download decent mp3's off the site?), I'm sure they'd make a killing at it.
Sure, there will always be a few who will abuse this, but they can't do anything to that (people have always shared, and you can't close all the holes). I think most people would gladly pay to support their artists.
English isn't really such a complicated language really. Other languages can be far more complex.
I know that in french, word's spell checker used to really suck (haven't written anything in french for years, so not sure how the current version is), so people would turn to far better programs for that like Correcteur 101 (last time I've used it is like 1996 or so).
Word's speller may suck with english text, but it seems to me like it's only worse with other languages.
Either ways, I don't rely on it too much. Some other apps have far worse spell checkers (like dreamweaver). What we would really need is a system wide spell checker built into the OS so it would work with everything (word, notepad, browsers, everything!), a bit like As-U-Type.
Fixing PCs used to be not so bad. You'd go over, have a look, fix things, explain (people would listen), and wouldn't mind paying (as PCs were more expensive back then and most ppl didn't know as much about PCs).
Nowadays, they'd want you to do it for free (or just about), argue with you over stuff they don't understand at all (some people are really confused yet think they know everything better than you). Reinstalling windows is a pain (reinstall XP home and reactivate fore them? or backup activation? this thing only gets in the way of elgit customers). People don't ask anymore when a little something isn't working, they wait till it won't even boot without crashing to ask, so you have to fix a unusable PC instead of some bugs. And most of the time you gotta work with this new XP teletubbies look and crappy new start menu (I so hate these things), options taken away from you (like the new user manager that really sucks). People don't seem to understand anymore formatting means everything on their PC will be gone, and no, I don't want to reinstall their warez either. Spyware and viruses are a real pain adding to all this lately. And when you can't fix it anymore (too often as they wait far too long), then you gotta manually find and backup all their files for each user profile (including outlook info, IM logs, photos, mp3s... gigs worth of crap). It's become WAY more trouble than it's worth (unless you really charge money, but nobody wants to pay that anymore). And even if you spend 4h of your time for 20$, they'll still be ungrateful. And then when they get home they'll just hit some porn site with IE again...
I only do it for a handfull of people now (family/close friends), and only if they don't mind changing a few things (like ditching IE). In some cases (like my mom who knows NOTHING about PCs) I've set them up with DeepFreeze so they can't mess them up anymore (and I keep a ghost image as well). Other people? The answer is no, find somebody else, not worth wasting my time.
Nobody wants to do the job anymore but some amateurs... It's no surprise to anyone who's ever been into this before.
Even then, there would have to be a LOT of popular songs on there for me to take that route.
How many good CDs worth buying get out per year? Not too many if you ask me, and too many of those only got 1 or 2 songs worth listening to.
Take that 15$ a month * 12 months, that's 180 songs off ITMS, even with an average of say, 3 good songs per CD, that's 60 CDs worth of "good tunes", which is more than what's put out yearly in the first place imho.
Of course YMMV, mainly depending on what you listen to (what genre).
And paying every month for the next 10 years or so, then cancelling (or they go bankrupt, you get fed up of issues with their service or whatever happens), then you have absolutely NOTHING left for all that money you paid over all that time. Not to mention that price will most likely increase too.
And even if you listened to so much stuff that it would cost more to buy them than renting, the music you want to listen to has to be available on napster as well and it just may not be (not like I really looked closely at their selection).
I'm not sure what bitrate ITMS uses (using AAC is still an advantage over napter no matter what), but napster being 128kbps (correct me if I'm wrong) rules it out as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not really picky or anything (I'm not an audiophile but I'm not deaf either).
Didn't we already have an article on this (business model comparison), other than the "napster was cracked" one (where you can turn the crappy 128kbps stream into uncompressed WAVs and burn them).
Either ways, 128kbps isn't enough, even on a cheap player with cheap earphones, you can easily tell the difference, no need to be an audiophile either...
Threat is one thing I'd be worried about for sure.
Then comes the questions of price. USB is cheap, I doubt this will "outcheap" it. I don't want an extra 10-20$ extra tacked onto everything I buy - and have to buy PCI (and PCMCIA?) cards for all my PCs so I can use the devices (might add a small cost to new PCs as well)
And third, even if we eliminate the concerns of being irradiated by dozens of RF devices day long at home and work (including small children), there's still the interference problem. I've had problems with a couple microsoft mouse (mice?) that wouldn't work reliably like that. I have no 900MHz phone, but I had a 2.4 one and a cell. If I had extra wireless stuff (900MHz phones, WiFi and what not) I can only see get worse.
No matter what people ask for or do, I don't think it will have it all. They might at some point in time have been leading, but right now they're playing catch-up big time.
Full, proper CSS support (including complex selectors) is just a start. We also very much need it to support standards (like support the <abbr> tag, not just <acronym>), including standard voice+xml technology as well (but I can't see that happen). If they don't use the same things as the rest of the world will use for that, then it just makes it harder for us to use the new technology, as a good portion of browsers won't support it (same thing about XForms or whatever). Their proprietary stuff prevents us from using these useful technologies. I think we don't need another ActiveX-like thing. It's their chance to prove us they're serious about their claims of interoperability (and security), but something tells me we'll be really deceived again. (And I didn't even ask for niceties like firefox style extensions, tabbed browsing or anything - just a good standards-compliant browser)
You make it sound like they're only attacking networks/means that nobody uses anymore, but they've done quite a lot of damage to BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule "communities" too. I wouldn't exactly say that nobody uses those anymore. Granted, they haven't shut down those 2 yet, but it's not like they aren't trying or not doing anything about them either. (Mind you I'm quite happy to see this crapzaa plague go away)
Perhaps ~40% don't mail it in, then another huge bunch don't get it because it "somehow" expired, or they later on tell you they do not honor the offer for PO Boxes (even though there were NO mention of that on the M.I.R.!). So I'm guessing for a 100$ M.I.R., they probably only really hand out something like 30$ in average.
And I find it annoying to make a unplanned detour to a crowded mall for something with a M.I.R. to find out that they don't work with PO Boxes... So for those of us with that for only address, it's pretty much forget about those things.
And to top things off, I see a lot of offers (*cough* bestbuy *cough*) for like, a 250$ HD that cost 130$ everywhere else, but with a 125$ M.I.R. making it a whole 5$ cheaper (that's IF you ever get your money back, and last I tried on something like that, surprisingly, I didn't!), you still pay taxes on that 125$ part you're supposed to get back (@15% tax here, that's almost 20$) making it absolutely pointless buying it in the first place, risking (or most likely?) not getting the money back, and if you ever get it back, still paying interest (or not getting paid interest) on that 125$ for x weeks/months.
Illegal? Maybe not, but not really honest of them, and definately not worth the trouble.
No monthly fees for satellite PVRs might be nice, but that's not my thing (and I had to pay 350$ cdn for mine). My sat PVR records shows with no quality loss whatsoever, including 5.1 audio if it's there. Even if Tivo didn't have monthly fees, there's no way I'd trade my sat PVR for a Tivo. Analog captures just don't look good enough (besides that cable here is really poor compared to sat quality in the first place, and sat has a better lineup and better prices).
Most of the cheapie services will optimize for bandwidth rather than quality for the sake of saving money but Vonage does the opposite, in my experience.
Vonage sounds good, but it does sound no better than my cheapie VoIP provider. Haven't had a problem either ways. The only differece I ever was able to notice is price.
Vonage is just as expensive as my old lanline, which was already way too much (my main reason to switch to something else). My cheapie provider cost me between 1/3 and 1/2 of what vonage would. In fact, I have a hard time finding any provider that charges more than them (so far I have not found one). To me, it looks like average service at 2 or 3x the price...
That's until you start looking deeper, then you see vonage here doesn't even have 911 service, whereas my cheapie provider has e911. (I get more features overall, not just e911)
No it's not just about economics. But the Pc based PVRs are also way too much of a PITA and time consuming to setup.
:p RSS feeds, nothing beats FeedDemon IMHO. I see absolutely no loss whatsoever not having these in my sat PVR (actually, it has a whole bunch of things like that that I don't use, like weather, interactive games, lotto numbers, ...). Just like I don't miss not having a camera or mp3 player in my cell phone.
:)
As for the DVD burning feature, like I had mentionned before, I can't imagine bothering with that. If you watch on PDA/phone or such (especially since recordnig quality hardly matters then), then I guess that can be handy for you. Even if I don't do that or never seen anyone even mention that (other than online), I'll still grant you that.
As for movie times, comisc, rss feeds and all those extra features, like I had said, I don't see a reason to have that on my TV (thru the TV, whatever). My HTPC alerady does all this, but I still do it right on the PC itself, while the TV does the thing it was intended for - show TV shows and movies. Perhaps the nature of what you watch/follow might change that. Comics wise I only check dilbert (at work) daily
YMMV indeed
Well, most HDTV sat programming (in NA) went to secure encryption (nagravision 2) not long ago, so you can't record it (unecnrypted) as easily as before.
;) - even with DRM) should play fine with a 3GHz CPU supposedly, and mpeg4 usually more cpu intensive than mpeg2 (at same resolution/bitrate).
Decrypting actually isn't so CPU intensive. I used to record/decrypt HD off sat (DVB) easily with a lowly Athlon XP 2000+, and cpu load was rather low. I think memory speed/latency and such might be more of a concern. (AFAIK, some cards can also do the decrypting itself in hardware, you just send it the proper keys)
As for decoding, you don't need so much speed either. Your video card (well, good ones at least) have some mpeg2 decoding acceleration. Sames goes for some OTA HDTV tuner cards. With a 3GHz PC and a good video card, you can playback 1080i stuff off satellite as is more than easily. (Actually, I can play 1080i easily on a 2GHz PC with a so-so video card in VLC without any problems). At OTA HDTV bitrates it might be a bit more problematic (haven't tried, no feeds available here). 1080p contents in WMV9 (kind of mpeg4 almost sorta
With optimized DVB software, fast video card drivers (not necessarily the latest version, some break mpeg2 decoding acceleration), recent video card, using a fast mpeg2 decoder with right settings, using a custom filtergraph worked fine on a 3GHz PC (decrypt/decode/watch real-time, usually mpeg2 @ 13mbit 720p HP@HL), and I've heard claims of it working on even slower setups (found it a bit hard to believe mind you).
What do you mean stuck with your PVR sat receiver?
...). They also make some models that work with HDTV.
...), update/patch it like a normal PC.
IMHO, it beats all other PVRs hands down. No loss of quality - both for video and audio. I don't know if people using the analog counterparts are blind, don't care about quality or what, but there is NO way I'm putting up with the quality of the analog captures. With sat, I also keep digital sound (AC3 5.1 if present). Even the difference between analog captured audio (even with good card/cables and all) and basic mpeg audio recorded as is (not captured) is just about impossible not to notice. Not to mention (here at least) that cable is much lower quality to start with (and more expensive, bad packages,
With a PC based PVR (not only with sat, but also digital cable boxes) you're forced you to use IR blasters, or even worse, some just can't change channels. It's a PITA to setup and , unreliablenot overly reliable.
With the PC based PVR, you gotta put a PC together, isntall OS and software. Configure it all (including codecs, TV guide, IR blasters,
My sat PVR works right out of the box (including remote and TV guide). No hassles. The whole thing (not just a PVR but also a sat receiver) cost me like 50$ than a basic hauppauge PCI capture card would have cost me.
The PC will cost significantly more. Especially if you want a nice HTPC case like D-Vines, a nice remote, quality parts (who wants a PVR that crashes middle of a show?) and all.
And don't tell me about burning DVDs from low quality analog captures that just aren't good enough to be burned anyways (and I can rip the movies off my PVR in 100% quality and burn them if I cared to anyways). And don't get me started on those extra features that don't belong there (like watch photos at under a half megapixel and bad gamut, when my family all lives >1000km away and have photo galleries to watch online and get 12MP DSLR pics snail-mailed onto DVDRs as well) and other things.
To complement things I have a HTPC as well. Even if it already has a capture card in it, lots of disk space and everything, I'm not using it as a PVR. It's just NOWHERE as good as the sat PVR is at that.
Unless you can't get satellite, then I can understand why one wouldn't use that instead.
I've used a LOT of different IDE RAID cards (promise, sil image based, HighPoint based, ... most of the stuff around).
... good overall). The sil image stuff is generic but it's very inexpensive and works surprisingly well (slow in DOS compared to promise cards though). Nice thing about them is most of the time they have a jumper to make them either RAID or a plain IDE controller to fit 4 more drives. (the promise has a hidden resistor hidden under a IC socket and needs you to reflash). I like the flexibility, it can be reused for different purposes in a different PC later on. The HP never amazed me. Not the best performance, not the best price, no particularly great drivers... And the only card that gave me problems was based on this. Eventually on one of them a port (one of the data pins) died. Hopefully their SATA stuff is better (but I tend to attribute my problems more to QC on this line of cards more than anything). Given another alternative, I'll stay away from HP, just like I stay away from VIA since their dreaded KT133 chipsets.
The only one that ever gave me a problem of all of them was a Rocket Raid 100 (HPT370A based). Promise has the best card of them all IMHO (performance wise, good drivers,
I've been playing with those desktop search engines last week.
I used to keep most stuff on my server and have the indexing server + a lot of IFilters index it all, and it was searcheable by a webpage. Not exactly the perfect solution, but so far, none of the desktop search tools have really been much better.
The only one (which is the worst overall IMHO and MS owned) who uses IFilter is the MSN junk (you couldn't pay me enough to install anything that says "MSN" on my PC anyways).
GDS and Copernic have very limited file type support (it's getting better, but why not make use of alerady installed 3rd party IFilters, as they already use the indexing service already? Well, at least GDS does). Addons for GDS/Copernic may help with filetype support later on, but knowing that software "is extendable" isn't exactly helping me right now.
And then, with these, as I keep my stuff mostly centralized (on server, access with mapped drives, easier to backup that way too), for each PC I have, I'd have to make the desktop search tool index many many gigs worth of data over the network. So all PCs generate hundreds of gigs of network traffic to do poor indexing. That's a lot of overhead for all PCs constantly updating their indexes too. Plus, the software has to be installed manually on all of them (I believe that some need you to be an admin to use them as well). And some are meant for single user only.
I still can't search inside a huge portion of my files (limited file type support), I stil can't do searches with any kind of special characters (brackets and stuff... things like you wish you could use even on google and that only get misinterpreted or stripped off).
My web page using the indexing server needs nothing installed on any PC, works for anybody, no huge network traffic, works for most file types, is still accessible when I'm away (it's a web page) as long as I got i'net access (can also manage files and all remotely), and the search page has some options to also search some SQL tables - a thing that no other tool does.
These desktop search tools may not be all bad, but they still have a LONG way to go. Right now, they don't fix any of my immediate issues, in fact, it's still worse than my old solution (for me at least). Not sure exactly how WinFS will change this, but it could definately help.
At 200$, it costs as much as a decent wireless mouse + trackball + touchpad + even a 4x5 graphire (which comes with a crappy mouse too).
That's a lot of different input devices to choose from (and it's great when you can use the one you prefer for whatever, like the graphire for photoshop). No more RSI either.
Got my little touchpad for 11$ in clearance (fellowes, w/ scroll). It's not my favorite pointing device but it does make a change - it feels better than my laptop's touchpad.
I can't imagine buying anything like this, let alone at 200$