I HIGHLY doubt this is a win for the abused... er, I mean, consumer. I properly filed for a free copy of my credit report from experian (NOT those rape you FreeCreditReport.moreSpam places) and started recieving specific junk mail and telemarketing which I was free of before.
So, what does "free" mean? Free from cost? Free from marketing? Free from being spied on?
The link in the story just looks like another phishing scam to me. Nothing about the site says, "No really, we're the official one that's not gonna sell all your information to whomever wants it." What's "official" about it?
What would be a consumer win is that the credit agencies automatically send out annual credit reports along with a report of who looked at your credit during the last year and EXACTLY what they saw.
Between big business and big goverment, the little guy has no hope.
Heck ya. I do so all the time. I don't favor MySql except for quick and sloppy stuff. Heck, I do OpenBSD, Apache 1, PostGresql, php/perl. You want extreme pain? Trying doing any thing simple with oracle. Never try and do anything simple with oracle - NEVER.
However, the "extreme pain" your are probably reffering to is most of the free server software we all install is mainly for LAMP. Using another db is probably the least tested item. In addition to so MANY of these projects are haphazard in documentation and are only mostly portable. So, you end up becoming a co-developer instead of simple user. That is painful, but it's not the fault of the db so much as the cost of free software.
You can be skeptical all you want. Someone at Walmart made the call, and they were right.
They were right on this one thing that they let a reporter know. I'm sure their mistakes aren't getting quite the same coverage.
I'm sure they right more than they are wrong, but this is (in some ways) the same sort of idea as the old story "my tivo thinks I'm gay" covered. Yes, they are more sophisticated, but I bet you there is still room for adult supervision.
But it STILL not internet service. The internet was meant to be syncronous. Almost all services are tcp based. The internet was meant to be a mechinism to share. The internet IS P2P. I get wildly pissed off at this crap the corporations shove at us and expect us to thank them for their pricing. We shouldn't be looking to south korea and canada for leadership in networking the nation.
If you don't have a "always on", syncronous connection with static ip where you can do what ever you want on any port, it is NOT an internet service.
Not that the public utility comissions of the world ever care about actual people.
There's only one issue that matters: How good the canidate is in bed. I learned this, of course, during the Clinton years. You see, no matter which party gets elected, you get screwed. If you're going to get screwed, you might as well make it good.
Once you get to a certian high stadard of living, entertianment becomes a commodity. And I mean commodity in the economic sense of the word: no matter how much you charge, you will make more money, even at the loss of volume. People will pay their cable bill before their water bill. Iraqis went to extrodinary measures for satalite tv, and it was/is the biggest growth segment of their current economy.
Apple has, overall, been steadily selling more computers every year. The issue is that over the last 20 years, the PC market has grown insanely fast. Thus, to look at market share of new computer sales is interesting for some things. But for apple investors, they see a steady and predicable increase in sales and (even better) higher margins for each sale.
Another thing, how is market share measured? Are you counting all of the die hard mac fans that STILL use their old systems? No one mentions this, but it was one of the biggest selling points in my apple purchase: macs last. Consumer reports gave apple the best ratings for support, satisfaction and durabiliy. Take a look at ebay prices. All computers depreciate fast, but my 1/2 year old powerbook is still being sold in the local papers and ebay for the same price that I bought it. When you buy your next laptop, shop for the extended warrenties and good luck on finding a three year warrenty one that even compares to the apple care version.
When it comes down to it, apple make good computers. If they wanted to expand their market share, I think they could EASILY take over the workstation market that sgi and sun used to service. They have every technicial thing in place to really make great inroads into business and education (again). Why isn't it happening?
Their image and sales staff. Stuffy executives have seen the stupid apple ads and apple stores. Would you trust your 2 million dollar upgrade budget and future bonus to some slacker hippie wearing a black t-shirt with a target... er apple on his chest, stinking of pachouli and calls you "suit dude"? I only slight exagerate to make my point. Ya, ya, ya... creative professionals... blahh, blahh. With minor design changes and just a few (very few) extra software offerings, they could easily compete in the business world. I believe the issue really is, that they don't want to. That powerbook easily outperforms the latest and greatest company thinkpad I was given (really). I can the same programs on my virtual pc as fast as on the thinkpad. If they'd just get over their mouse button phobia and add a nice docking solution like... everone else under the sun, they would get a good boost in sales. But they don't need to, to keep the current sales going; macs sell themselves. If you really want to increase sales, you got to start telling people one by one about the value of a mac. Most pc sales are businesses. Business people will buy value. Long life, security, upgradeable, powerful, FAR more managable, easy, friendly, etc. How can you NOT sell that stuff?!
Apple has some of the best value out there right now and shit for brains in sales.
Ya know, in the 30 seconds I took to follow the above link, I didn't see any mention of exchange or mapi any where obvious. And if you can replace exchange, that's something to brag about.
I've been saying this since CD's really hit the market. I was working in top 40 radio at the time we switched from vinyl to CDs. What I noticed is that CDs do degrade over time. It's like they lose their dynamic headroom, but not their fidelity. In other words, frequently played CDs had to be turned up a little more than others. I attributed this to the cheap alluminum (sp?) or the plastic oxidizing (or something) in the prescence of light.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm sure I can reproduce this and it is easily measurable.
I can remember reading articles six years ago begging M$ to change this policy. What did they do? Nothing. For those of us, subject to the law, that's negligence or endagerment or at the least, gross irresponsibility. So, at this rate maybe we'll be able to disable html and active scripts on outlook before the next ice age.
I wonder if the dual core prediction to to help licensing sales? Oracle, in it's infinate ego, charges you for TWO cpu licenses and makes you upgrade to enterprise edition if you have a dual core cpu (like the power4). Check it out
Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a Processor basis may be accessed by your internal users (including agents and contractors) and by your third party users. For the purposes of counting the number of processors which require licensing, a multicore chip with "n" processor cores shall be counted as "n" processors. As M$ and oracle a jointly proven, there is not limit to greed.
While I think this article exagerates, it reveals something else, which the parent post and the MS streaming patch server post hints at. Your pc will be 0wned by MS. If you own 95% of the pc's in the world, what would you do? If you're M$, you'd set up the worlds largest grid computer to crush you competitors. Those competitors right now are 1) linux and 2) google. The linux angle is well covered here, but everyone's forgot google. Remember, longhorn will not have a hierarchicial file system, but an object relational file system. This is a feature to let you just save stuff and smart sql queries are supposed to index it so you can find it or make sense of it later. Of course, if your stuff is already indexed, it would make it awfully easy to add pointers to it from another computer on the net. Heck, that computer could even index the index making it oh so easy to find neat information on 95% of the worlds computers. The google index will look tiny compared to that. And the upside to all of this? You'll have to pay M$ (in some way) to use any of this, including your own system....and you thought passport was for secure remote authentication.
Sure, I may have the details wrong, but I believe the stategy is right. If google show ANY sign of weakness (such as selling out to IPO and feeling pressure from a million investors with the planning capacity of a fruit fly), M$ will kill them. I also predict M$ will win, google will fail, no one will be able to catch up in the search martket after that happens, and innovation and creativity will grind to a halt. Yet one more nail to go into the coffin of the western world.
Look, you have some good points and examples, but when you tread onto the moral issues, you're missing some thing. Much of what you're saying is predicated on the basis of an even playing field. In other words, the difference in making a product in western world and (let's say) china is that in the western world, we have rights, limits, and values. In China, they don't take to favorably of you questioning your employee contract. In fact, strikes are very simple to solve: kill'em all. Morals should not be driven by the lowest bidder, if you get my drift. At one time (a long time ago), the US based it's foriegn policy on promoting such freedoms and liberty in the world to expand its markets while bringing good to the world. That's too expensive now, as evidenced by who gets most favored nation trading status. At the current status quo, we could never compete commercially with driven, near-slave labor. Liberty is expensive, and that explains why it keeps being removed by the powers that be.
Secondly, I love how you just waive off the current issues with "a certian class of jobs will be destroyed" and your above example of the disapperence of farm and factory work. Farm work: basic hard labor, not much specialization and it has on the job training and it's not hard to switch to. Factory work: about the same thing, but more training, and often better conditions. Programming: all mental, VERY specialized, large experience and education requirements, not easy to get into. What you're saying to the experinced programmer is all of that time and engergy that was expended in their vocation (and a part of their life's meaning) was pointless. All of their work was for nothing, and now they need to start all over again.
I've noticed the popular economics doesn't care at all for people or humanity, just money. It reminds me of a quote from Stalin: "When 5 people die, it's a tragedy. When 50,000 die, it's a statistic."
I know a guy working through his MBA, sitting in class hooked up to the net wireless through through Verizon Wireless. He's getting a minumum of 144kbps both ways most of the time. Considering that most of the US and world is connected vi dial up, that a bit improvement. He says it works well in most areas, but it has trouble if you're moving, such as while on the train. He said he does get the burst speeds in many situations, but the average speed is quite acceptable (and he's used to a oc-3). Cingular has this too, as well as, Sprint and At&t wireless. The nextel specs cliam to be high, as the other web sites I cites also make their claims, and they all charge premium prices for this service. Given Nextel's pricing, this will also be at a premium rate.
I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.
The reason I still use them is for remote management through a console server. Its WAY worth it. I've been using OpenBSD on sparcs for servers and routers and firewalls for some time, with GREAT results. I use obsd mainly b/c I'm lazy; I don't want to be patching or worrying about patchs and fixes all the time. I also LOVE the minimalist install, but it's easy and quick to make usable. I do use solaris at work for different reasons. But obsd gives new life to old systems. I STILL use my ye old sparc 2 as a great filewall, but with ssh, squid, clamav, and ipsec, it's time to upgrade. As for desktop, I still use solaris (9) with a PCi card in it.
Sersiously, I have a garage full of these waiting for use or parts. email me if ya wanna pick up some stuff, we'll see if we can work sometime out. I'll even consider trades, but I've come to prefer them for all of my needs. Cheap, reliable and usable.
Look, I'm a long time solaris admin and I actually like to run most of my home systems on sun hardware with openbsd (can't wait to try freebsd soon; linux just doesn't work right on it yet). I love to remote console in. In the end, I have to agree with some of the author's disappointment.
First, it should be noted, you're a newbie or sucker if you're paying the retail price listed on the web site. Start your negotionations for the price by knocking of 1/3rd. This applys more for bigger systems, but it's close for small ones too. About support, skip it if this is your only system. I've found their warrenty support just fine and very helpful. However, if you're a medium sized shop, consider getting the platinum support. I've called all the big boys under super-boffo support accounts. HP has trouble just picking up the phone. IBM: we'll call you back when we found someone whom we think is who you want. Cisco: we sell that? Sun: two rings, serial number, knowledgable person opens case and starts working on it while getting [storage|OS|kernel|hardware|etc] expert on the phone, and in the mean time, the field engineer has already contacted to courier to get the new hardware there in under and hour, at three in the morning. I'm not exagerating either. Yes, this level is support is DAMN expensive, but it's comparatively cheaper than their competitors. The difference is that when you buy sun's deluxe support, they really mean it. For every other vendor, it's the same support faster.
Second, I am tired of them selling low quality workstations to their loyal users. The blade150 is flimsy and flakey; especially to those who remember the sparc2s. They were like armored pizze boxes! This new blade just looks like more of the same. The 150 has no normal way to play cds (for example). Why, oh WHY did you go with USB ports if you don't fully want to suport usb devices. The authors right about the keyboard and mouse quality. Well, it's not THAT bad - I consider the apple ones worse. But for the price, it should be much much better. Or better yet, fully support standard keyboards and mice. Map the sun keys to something else. Help bolthole.com make the mouse wheel work better. I just got the lowest end hp-ux workstation. It comes with dual scsi, and it could be considered similarly priced. IDE has always been chinzy. Serial ata would have been a great comprimse. My next work station? Mac.
Third, you're not SGI, and stop making your hardware look like it. Get over it. Frankly, pixar and other grapics outlets aren't in love with you anymore. Let it go. Move on. All the bioinfomatics I talk to are going apple.
Forth, clean up your packages, and MAKE PATCHING WORK RIGHT!!! HP and AIX - stick in a cd, reboot. BSD - painless. MS - automated. Even linux is better. Anyone running a large installation sun shop will tell you; sun patching sucks. Take a clue from bsd, linux or aix or even MS; make your systems easy to set up and administer, and you gain the respect and approval of the geeks who sign off on the tech side of the decision. I've lost trust and trust my solutions to patching much better than live update (at this point).
Last, what the hell is it with your cheap ass sales people. Is the sun logo so expensive that you can't afford to give out tshirts, cups and other good will crap to your biggest customers. Pizza?!? WTF! HP gave the whole department some of the best vendor shirts we've ever had. IBM gets us drinks and cigars. EMC tooks us to the matrix the day BEFORE it opened. I can go on and on. Instead, as one of your biggest clients in the region we get bad pizza and bad patches?!?
There's been lots of good talk about market saturation (cpu, db & os) scaring marketing drones, the desire to lower labor costs (outsourcing), software getting smarter and so on... The thing I haven't seen mentioned is how the real commodity will be networking and the need for shared information (storage). I don't think the next big thing will really be about cpu. I think this is going to be more about information "discovery". I think that's the next big wave they should be for which we should be prepared. More CPU cycles are use for collecting, saving, distributing and presenting information than actually "doing" things with a system (such as interactive entertainment, analysis, etc). Credit agencies make far more than ANY asp EVER has.
If the network is everywhere, easy and economic - outsourcing storage is perfect. Outsourcing CPU takes much more work (as we've pointed out). What will become profitable is not what can you do with a computer, but though the internet it is now, what can you know through a computer. It will become VERY profitable to make masses of information meaningful (information discovery). Take for example google. Or how about big brother... er, I mean Tom Ridge's TSA/Homeland Stupidity initative to link your grades, credit score and medical records together to determine if you're a terrorist. Yes, it's aweful, but this is what the powers that be want. And it's what you want judging from the popularity of google.
They are expecting networking to get better and better to make this happen so that information and its software is more interesting. The problem is politics. The FCC and the varrious state public utility commissions are all bribed by big telecom, and have NO interest in doing something innovative that might help its citizens and break the business monopoly of build it, sit on your rear, make money. You want to know who will? China. No infrastructure in place, slave labor, easy government bribery... it's the perfect business growth environment.
Ya, the network will make it happen, but the pessimist in me says it's not going to be here.
"...article that says that the chip is to be sampled internally this month."
Perhaps I'm up too late, but when I read the above, this image of a windows developer flashed in my mind. He's frustrated with a child-proof cap and resorts to reading the side of this bottle from Intel: "For marketing use only. Do note mix with alcohol or windows. New buffer exploits are inevitable. May cause loss of market share if ingested."
It's true the infrastucture isn't there (as noted in other post). However, the reason it isn't implimented, and the reason we have this assinine async billing (egress costs a hundred times more than ingress) is so close, it's about to bit you. Do you really think "the media types" want the ability for anyone to broadcast be able to broadcast to the world? Follow the money my friend.
Do I have Kids? Check. Do you? Doubtful.
At the minimum, your arguements fail to support your point.
Just because they know more about computers does not mean they know more how to take care of material items, to watch out for scams, theft, etc. They are afterall [insert blinding flash of the obvious], youth. That is not a put down, but meerly a statement that they aren't quite there yet. As such, in our culture, we protect them from themselves and their own actions. If they lose or break a laptop, they certianly won't pay for that.
Yes kids (and other people) are smart, and people need to be given a break that will allow them to build responsibility. Of course, as a wise parent who will feel the consequenses of their actions, you build up their responsibilities. You just don't blindly say, "Here's the a matches kid; be good." That would be cruel. Rather, you teach them over time how to use powerful tools responsibly. Upon reaching the age of the majority, we take in on faith that parents have fullfilled their responsibility. Even parents who, as you suggest, just blindly assume their kids are self-taught beings of light.
And why not use technology in the classroom? Because it is not fullfilling the educational mission. Learning how to use word is far more self-evident than linear algrebra or spanish is even reading. Sure it's good to have a computer lab and have occassional training sessions. However, that's just TRAINING, NOT EDUCATION. Computer would do EVERYTHING to distract easily dstracted kids away from the focus on learning. IMHO, it appears from your example, you missed out on education to. pen/paper and chalk/slate are different ways to do the same thing. No one has ever been downloading material while chatting to people in singapore using pen and paper during class. In addition, pen & paper is proven in education. Wireless laptops are wildly different and have been proven to be a HUGE failure. Of course, with your smarts, you already did the research. It is convient of your arguement to forget that the burden of proff rests on those who challenge the status quo (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).
Last, it does sounds like you have too much money. You'll support it with your tax dollars, eh? Well that's fine, but don't take my money. I need it for such silly things as paying for my families needs. Don't take my money for your hairbrained ideas.
EEK! I did this too when I was living in Montana. Beware the Subarus made from 1986 to 1988. They had a strong tendency to overheat and had all sorts of problems because of this. Check out consumer reports from the library if you want a credible reference (you did do this before car shopping, right?) In addition, I also found out that Subarus are very expensive to repair. I love the form factor of a subaru wagon and you get a lot for the price. But those subarus are just money pits.
Slashdot Mirror
I HIGHLY doubt this is a win for the abused... er, I mean, consumer. I properly filed for a free copy of my credit report from experian (NOT those rape you FreeCreditReport.moreSpam places) and started recieving specific junk mail and telemarketing which I was free of before.
So, what does "free" mean? Free from cost? Free from marketing? Free from being spied on?
The link in the story just looks like another phishing scam to me. Nothing about the site says, "No really, we're the official one that's not gonna sell all your information to whomever wants it." What's "official" about it?
What would be a consumer win is that the credit agencies automatically send out annual credit reports along with a report of who looked at your credit during the last year and EXACTLY what they saw.
Between big business and big goverment, the little guy has no hope.
Heck ya. I do so all the time. I don't favor MySql except for quick and sloppy stuff. Heck, I do OpenBSD, Apache 1, PostGresql, php/perl. You want extreme pain? Trying doing any thing simple with oracle. Never try and do anything simple with oracle - NEVER.
However, the "extreme pain" your are probably reffering to is most of the free server software we all install is mainly for LAMP. Using another db is probably the least tested item. In addition to so MANY of these projects are haphazard in documentation and are only mostly portable. So, you end up becoming a co-developer instead of simple user. That is painful, but it's not the fault of the db so much as the cost of free software.
You can be skeptical all you want. Someone at Walmart made the call, and they were right.
They were right on this one thing that they let a reporter know. I'm sure their mistakes aren't getting quite the same coverage.
I'm sure they right more than they are wrong, but this is (in some ways) the same sort of idea as the old story "my tivo thinks I'm gay" covered. Yes, they are more sophisticated, but I bet you there is still room for adult supervision.
But it STILL not internet service. The internet was meant to be syncronous. Almost all services are tcp based. The internet was meant to be a mechinism to share. The internet IS P2P. I get wildly pissed off at this crap the corporations shove at us and expect us to thank them for their pricing. We shouldn't be looking to south korea and canada for leadership in networking the nation.
If you don't have a "always on", syncronous connection with static ip where you can do what ever you want on any port, it is NOT an internet service.
Not that the public utility comissions of the world ever care about actual people.
From the end of the article...
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
There's only one issue that matters: How good the canidate is in bed. I learned this, of course, during the Clinton years. You see, no matter which party gets elected, you get screwed. If you're going to get screwed, you might as well make it good.
> Keep in mind that with a Mac, you're still locked in to a single vendor.
You mean, like microsoft?
Once you get to a certian high stadard of living, entertianment becomes a commodity. And I mean commodity in the economic sense of the word: no matter how much you charge, you will make more money, even at the loss of volume. People will pay their cable bill before their water bill. Iraqis went to extrodinary measures for satalite tv, and it was/is the biggest growth segment of their current economy.
Stupid narrow minded partisam politics. Call me once you've taken the red pill.
I can understand the BBC making this mistake, but slashdot?! I'm sure this was also noted in the dupe.
Apple has, overall, been steadily selling more computers every year. The issue is that over the last 20 years, the PC market has grown insanely fast. Thus, to look at market share of new computer sales is interesting for some things. But for apple investors, they see a steady and predicable increase in sales and (even better) higher margins for each sale.
... everone else under the sun, they would get a good boost in sales. But they don't need to, to keep the current sales going; macs sell themselves. If you really want to increase sales, you got to start telling people one by one about the value of a mac. Most pc sales are businesses. Business people will buy value. Long life, security, upgradeable, powerful, FAR more managable, easy, friendly, etc. How can you NOT sell that stuff?!
Another thing, how is market share measured? Are you counting all of the die hard mac fans that STILL use their old systems? No one mentions this, but it was one of the biggest selling points in my apple purchase: macs last. Consumer reports gave apple the best ratings for support, satisfaction and durabiliy. Take a look at ebay prices. All computers depreciate fast, but my 1/2 year old powerbook is still being sold in the local papers and ebay for the same price that I bought it. When you buy your next laptop, shop for the extended warrenties and good luck on finding a three year warrenty one that even compares to the apple care version.
When it comes down to it, apple make good computers. If they wanted to expand their market share, I think they could EASILY take over the workstation market that sgi and sun used to service. They have every technicial thing in place to really make great inroads into business and education (again). Why isn't it happening?
Their image and sales staff. Stuffy executives have seen the stupid apple ads and apple stores. Would you trust your 2 million dollar upgrade budget and future bonus to some slacker hippie wearing a black t-shirt with a target... er apple on his chest, stinking of pachouli and calls you "suit dude"? I only slight exagerate to make my point. Ya, ya, ya... creative professionals... blahh, blahh. With minor design changes and just a few (very few) extra software offerings, they could easily compete in the business world. I believe the issue really is, that they don't want to. That powerbook easily outperforms the latest and greatest company thinkpad I was given (really). I can the same programs on my virtual pc as fast as on the thinkpad. If they'd just get over their mouse button phobia and add a nice docking solution like
Apple has some of the best value out there right now and shit for brains in sales.
Ya know, in the 30 seconds I took to follow the above link, I didn't see any mention of exchange or mapi any where obvious. And if you can replace exchange, that's something to brag about.
I've been saying this since CD's really hit the market. I was working in top 40 radio at the time we switched from vinyl to CDs. What I noticed is that CDs do degrade over time. It's like they lose their dynamic headroom, but not their fidelity. In other words, frequently played CDs had to be turned up a little more than others. I attributed this to the cheap alluminum (sp?) or the plastic oxidizing (or something) in the prescence of light.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm sure I can reproduce this and it is easily measurable.
I can remember reading articles six years ago begging M$ to change this policy. What did they do? Nothing. For those of us, subject to the law, that's negligence or endagerment or at the least, gross irresponsibility. So, at this rate maybe we'll be able to disable html and active scripts on outlook before the next ice age.
Jerks! So much for we listen to our customers.
I wonder if the dual core prediction to to help licensing sales? Oracle, in it's infinate ego, charges you for TWO cpu licenses and makes you upgrade to enterprise edition if you have a dual core cpu (like the power4). Check it out
Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a Processor basis may be accessed by your internal users (including agents and contractors) and by your third party users. For the purposes of counting the number of processors which require licensing, a multicore chip with "n" processor cores shall be counted as "n" processors.
As M$ and oracle a jointly proven, there is not limit to greed.
While I think this article exagerates, it reveals something else, which the parent post and the MS streaming patch server post hints at. Your pc will be 0wned by MS. If you own 95% of the pc's in the world, what would you do? If you're M$, you'd set up the worlds largest grid computer to crush you competitors. Those competitors right now are 1) linux and 2) google. The linux angle is well covered here, but everyone's forgot google. Remember, longhorn will not have a hierarchicial file system, but an object relational file system. This is a feature to let you just save stuff and smart sql queries are supposed to index it so you can find it or make sense of it later. Of course, if your stuff is already indexed, it would make it awfully easy to add pointers to it from another computer on the net. Heck, that computer could even index the index making it oh so easy to find neat information on 95% of the worlds computers. The google index will look tiny compared to that. And the upside to all of this? You'll have to pay M$ (in some way) to use any of this, including your own system. ...and you thought passport was for secure remote authentication.
Sure, I may have the details wrong, but I believe the stategy is right. If google show ANY sign of weakness (such as selling out to IPO and feeling pressure from a million investors with the planning capacity of a fruit fly), M$ will kill them. I also predict M$ will win, google will fail, no one will be able to catch up in the search martket after that happens, and innovation and creativity will grind to a halt. Yet one more nail to go into the coffin of the western world.
Secondly, I love how you just waive off the current issues with "a certian class of jobs will be destroyed" and your above example of the disapperence of farm and factory work. Farm work: basic hard labor, not much specialization and it has on the job training and it's not hard to switch to. Factory work: about the same thing, but more training, and often better conditions. Programming: all mental, VERY specialized, large experience and education requirements, not easy to get into. What you're saying to the experinced programmer is all of that time and engergy that was expended in their vocation (and a part of their life's meaning) was pointless. All of their work was for nothing, and now they need to start all over again.
I've noticed the popular economics doesn't care at all for people or humanity, just money. It reminds me of a quote from Stalin: "When 5 people die, it's a tragedy. When 50,000 die, it's a statistic."
I know a guy working through his MBA, sitting in class hooked up to the net wireless through through Verizon Wireless. He's getting a minumum of 144kbps both ways most of the time. Considering that most of the US and world is connected vi dial up, that a bit improvement. He says it works well in most areas, but it has trouble if you're moving, such as while on the train. He said he does get the burst speeds in many situations, but the average speed is quite acceptable (and he's used to a oc-3). Cingular has this too, as well as, Sprint and At&t wireless. The nextel specs cliam to be high, as the other web sites I cites also make their claims, and they all charge premium prices for this service. Given Nextel's pricing, this will also be at a premium rate.
I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.
The reason I still use them is for remote management through a console server. Its WAY worth it. I've been using OpenBSD on sparcs for servers and routers and firewalls for some time, with GREAT results. I use obsd mainly b/c I'm lazy; I don't want to be patching or worrying about patchs and fixes all the time. I also LOVE the minimalist install, but it's easy and quick to make usable. I do use solaris at work for different reasons. But obsd gives new life to old systems. I STILL use my ye old sparc 2 as a great filewall, but with ssh, squid, clamav, and ipsec, it's time to upgrade. As for desktop, I still use solaris (9) with a PCi card in it.
Sersiously, I have a garage full of these waiting for use or parts. email me if ya wanna pick up some stuff, we'll see if we can work sometime out. I'll even consider trades, but I've come to prefer them for all of my needs. Cheap, reliable and usable.
Look, I'm a long time solaris admin and I actually like to run most of my home systems on sun hardware with openbsd (can't wait to try freebsd soon; linux just doesn't work right on it yet). I love to remote console in. In the end, I have to agree with some of the author's disappointment.
First, it should be noted, you're a newbie or sucker if you're paying the retail price listed on the web site. Start your negotionations for the price by knocking of 1/3rd. This applys more for bigger systems, but it's close for small ones too. About support, skip it if this is your only system. I've found their warrenty support just fine and very helpful. However, if you're a medium sized shop, consider getting the platinum support. I've called all the big boys under super-boffo support accounts. HP has trouble just picking up the phone. IBM: we'll call you back when we found someone whom we think is who you want. Cisco: we sell that? Sun: two rings, serial number, knowledgable person opens case and starts working on it while getting [storage|OS|kernel|hardware|etc] expert on the phone, and in the mean time, the field engineer has already contacted to courier to get the new hardware there in under and hour, at three in the morning. I'm not exagerating either. Yes, this level is support is DAMN expensive, but it's comparatively cheaper than their competitors. The difference is that when you buy sun's deluxe support, they really mean it. For every other vendor, it's the same support faster.
Second, I am tired of them selling low quality workstations to their loyal users. The blade150 is flimsy and flakey; especially to those who remember the sparc2s. They were like armored pizze boxes! This new blade just looks like more of the same. The 150 has no normal way to play cds (for example). Why, oh WHY did you go with USB ports if you don't fully want to suport usb devices. The authors right about the keyboard and mouse quality. Well, it's not THAT bad - I consider the apple ones worse. But for the price, it should be much much better. Or better yet, fully support standard keyboards and mice. Map the sun keys to something else. Help bolthole.com make the mouse wheel work better. I just got the lowest end hp-ux workstation. It comes with dual scsi, and it could be considered similarly priced. IDE has always been chinzy. Serial ata would have been a great comprimse. My next work station? Mac.
Third, you're not SGI, and stop making your hardware look like it. Get over it. Frankly, pixar and other grapics outlets aren't in love with you anymore. Let it go. Move on. All the bioinfomatics I talk to are going apple.
Forth, clean up your packages, and MAKE PATCHING WORK RIGHT!!! HP and AIX - stick in a cd, reboot. BSD - painless. MS - automated. Even linux is better. Anyone running a large installation sun shop will tell you; sun patching sucks. Take a clue from bsd, linux or aix or even MS; make your systems easy to set up and administer, and you gain the respect and approval of the geeks who sign off on the tech side of the decision. I've lost trust and trust my solutions to patching much better than live update (at this point).
Last, what the hell is it with your cheap ass sales people. Is the sun logo so expensive that you can't afford to give out tshirts, cups and other good will crap to your biggest customers. Pizza?!? WTF! HP gave the whole department some of the best vendor shirts we've ever had. IBM gets us drinks and cigars. EMC tooks us to the matrix the day BEFORE it opened. I can go on and on. Instead, as one of your biggest clients in the region we get bad pizza and bad patches?!?
Ok... I got it out of my system. Thank for that.
There's been lots of good talk about market saturation (cpu, db & os) scaring marketing drones, the desire to lower labor costs (outsourcing), software getting smarter and so on... The thing I haven't seen mentioned is how the real commodity will be networking and the need for shared information (storage). I don't think the next big thing will really be about cpu. I think this is going to be more about information "discovery". I think that's the next big wave they should be for which we should be prepared. More CPU cycles are use for collecting, saving, distributing and presenting information than actually "doing" things with a system (such as interactive entertainment, analysis, etc). Credit agencies make far more than ANY asp EVER has.
If the network is everywhere, easy and economic - outsourcing storage is perfect. Outsourcing CPU takes much more work (as we've pointed out). What will become profitable is not what can you do with a computer, but though the internet it is now, what can you know through a computer. It will become VERY profitable to make masses of information meaningful (information discovery). Take for example google. Or how about big brother... er, I mean Tom Ridge's TSA/Homeland Stupidity initative to link your grades, credit score and medical records together to determine if you're a terrorist. Yes, it's aweful, but this is what the powers that be want. And it's what you want judging from the popularity of google.
They are expecting networking to get better and better to make this happen so that information and its software is more interesting. The problem is politics. The FCC and the varrious state public utility commissions are all bribed by big telecom, and have NO interest in doing something innovative that might help its citizens and break the business monopoly of build it, sit on your rear, make money. You want to know who will? China. No infrastructure in place, slave labor, easy government bribery... it's the perfect business growth environment.
Ya, the network will make it happen, but the pessimist in me says it's not going to be here.
Perhaps I'm up too late, but when I read the above, this image of a windows developer flashed in my mind. He's frustrated with a child-proof cap and resorts to reading the side of this bottle from Intel: "For marketing use only. Do note mix with alcohol or windows. New buffer exploits are inevitable. May cause loss of market share if ingested."
It's true the infrastucture isn't there (as noted in other post). However, the reason it isn't implimented, and the reason we have this assinine async billing (egress costs a hundred times more than ingress) is so close, it's about to bit you. Do you really think "the media types" want the ability for anyone to broadcast be able to broadcast to the world? Follow the money my friend.
Do I have Kids? Check.
Do you? Doubtful.
At the minimum, your arguements fail to support your point.
Just because they know more about computers does not mean they know more how to take care of material items, to watch out for scams, theft, etc. They are afterall [insert blinding flash of the obvious], youth. That is not a put down, but meerly a statement that they aren't quite there yet. As such, in our culture, we protect them from themselves and their own actions. If they lose or break a laptop, they certianly won't pay for that.
Yes kids (and other people) are smart, and people need to be given a break that will allow them to build responsibility. Of course, as a wise parent who will feel the consequenses of their actions, you build up their responsibilities. You just don't blindly say, "Here's the a matches kid; be good." That would be cruel. Rather, you teach them over time how to use powerful tools responsibly. Upon reaching the age of the majority, we take in on faith that parents have fullfilled their responsibility. Even parents who, as you suggest, just blindly assume their kids are self-taught beings of light.
And why not use technology in the classroom? Because it is not fullfilling the educational mission. Learning how to use word is far more self-evident than linear algrebra or spanish is even reading. Sure it's good to have a computer lab and have occassional training sessions. However, that's just TRAINING, NOT EDUCATION. Computer would do EVERYTHING to distract easily dstracted kids away from the focus on learning. IMHO, it appears from your example, you missed out on education to. pen/paper and chalk/slate are different ways to do the same thing. No one has ever been downloading material while chatting to people in singapore using pen and paper during class. In addition, pen & paper is proven in education. Wireless laptops are wildly different and have been proven to be a HUGE failure. Of course, with your smarts, you already did the research. It is convient of your arguement to forget that the burden of proff rests on those who challenge the status quo (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).
Last, it does sounds like you have too much money. You'll support it with your tax dollars, eh? Well that's fine, but don't take my money. I need it for such silly things as paying for my families needs. Don't take my money for your hairbrained ideas.
EEK! I did this too when I was living in Montana. Beware the Subarus made from 1986 to 1988. They had a strong tendency to overheat and had all sorts of problems because of this. Check out consumer reports from the library if you want a credible reference (you did do this before car shopping, right?) In addition, I also found out that Subarus are very expensive to repair. I love the form factor of a subaru wagon and you get a lot for the price. But those subarus are just money pits.