Hate to say it, but your average Slashdot reader isn't exactly "target market" for RIM. PHBs like Blackberries because you don't need any technical knowledge to work it, just an opposable thumb. IT departments like them because of the server-based control of the device (what an end-user can do with it and what they can install) they're easy to manage and because they "just work". Financial people like them because of the fixed, relatively low, cost.
In the businesses that I visit the real competition seems to be from Windows-based PDAs rather than Palms, and increasingly from GPRS cards.
(for the record I'd better express an interest - I work for a company that, among other things, sells mobile data applications, targetting Blackberry and to a lesser extent Windows Mobile devices. I currently have a PDA (a three-year-old Handspring), a Blackberry (initially foisted on me by my employer that it would now be difficult to do without) and, right now, two VNC sessions to remote servers open).
The 1% figure is clearly rubbish, but your company has new owners and you don't have any immediate reason to jump ship (or anywhere immediately to jump to) it's at least worth trying to start on the right foot with them. Chances are the new owners are trying to work out of the current staff who is capable of doing what in the future - and the fact that you got chosen for "extra responsibilities" is a sign they have confidence in your capabilities. Chances also are that they're look at who may it may be possible to get rid of.
That said, it's essential that you keep track of exactly how much time is spent doing what, so that when your programming boss asks why work isn't getting done you can tell him, and likewise to your sysadmin boss.
Some sort of helpdesk system is essential, to allow basic categorisation of problems and help time tracking.
Try and specify some form of "service level agreement" - if only "1%" of your time is needed then that's 5 minutes a day ish - so users having to wait a day or so for an email reply from you shouldn't be a problem to your new boss. Ensure that he's told them that though!
Be wary of "out of hours" stuff too. If you run any kind of live systems (e.g. for customer interaction) they may need work at odd hours of the day or night. If you specifcally don't want to do this, or get paid X for it, best to try and set expectations (in as polite a way as possible).
It depends how the OS figures are obtained. From a web server I can't think of a truly reliable way of telling that will always work when e.g. Javascript and Java is turned off. What people tend to use are the OS portion of the user agent string, which can get changed just as easily as the rest of it.
Right now my user agent says "Netscape 6.2 on Linux" rather than "Firefox on Windows 2000" because that works better with some nasty web-based software (ironically, running on a Windows server) that I have to use at work.
...there's some that are dubious, to say the least.
"The Singing Detective" for a start. It's good (although I'd have nominated the combination or Karaoke and Cold Lazarus ahead of it), but it's not a film - it's a multi-part drama series. Has anyone ever sat through it in one go?
If you're going to include those then there's a few others that should be in there - quite a bit of Stephen Poliakoff's work, for example.
In GSM markets the old black 5800s are getting replaced with newer models, and some new BB server versions don't support the old handhelds, so you may be able to get some second-hand.
Without a SIM card (so no phone line costs) you may still be able to syncronise "memopad" items with a PC (never tried it though...), and the options include ASCII text as well as MS Outlook.
I'm not sure how "fully VOIP" helps - if you're not somewhere that wires can reach, someone's still got to get a radio signal to you. Whether they then charge on call time, bandwidth or so-called "flat rate" (i.e. a fixed fee but if you use too much we'll kick you off) is up to the market to decide.
Chances are it won't be free, though. All those towers at the side of the M1 to ensure that your signal doesn't drop cost something.
I suspect that the vast majority of Firefox users are on Windows (simply because the majority of computer users are). They don't have the luxury of up2date or an apt-get repository and have to go to each non-Windows vendor to obtain updates. Why should Mozilla wait for someone maintaining a repository for a minority of their users before releasing an update for the majority?
I'm sure that's the offical position, anyway. And of course they want to drive traffic to their site, and make a big deal about counting downloads.
Regardless of the MS Office vs Openoffice question, I'd have to ask why exactly you're spending money every year just in case Microsoft release a new version. Many, if not most, commercial companies don't do this, and if you're not using collaborative features such as Sharepoint it would be hard to justify anything beyond Word / Excel / Access 97 on a "features" basis.
Anyone got a link to the original poll questions? Polling method (e.g. was it self selecting in any way)? Expected error rather than just the headline figures?
Without any of the above we're in still "8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas" territory.
The main site is full of information to help identify and get working "windows" modems under Linux. The list still seems to be active. Before ADSL arrived in my corner of the world I was dependant on them to get connected via inbuilt modems. I can't fault the helpfulness of the people on the list.
It doesn't matter if the modem cards you're getting are unpredictable provided that you know that it's one of a small subset and you know how to get each one (or most of them) to work. When I was last looking at this (over a year ago - but I guess that the kit you're seeing isn't new) the most manufacturer that modems identified themselves as was Agere/Lucent, for which there are various drivers around.
If a notebook or tablet PC is too big, then a Palm or Handspring might be about right. It'll run for ages on rechargeable batteries and it'll should be cheap enough not to worry about losing.
It's also not news because "their business as retail agents" (from the article) is selling motorhomes - they're an agent for the company building it. So it's actually a "press release that the BBC local news ran because there was nothing else happening, which escaped onto the web site".
Why not just get a regular DVR (HDD, DVR, whatever) without the embuggerances of a Tivo?
The initial cost price will be higher because they aren't making anything month-by-month, but no-one can stop that 30-second commercial skip from working or impose adverts on you while you fast-forward.
Like, what you want to do with your "Linux terminal server session" once you've got it? Also, how many users are we talking about. It might be that something as simple as running vncserver as a service with desktops started for a few users might be what you want, or you might want something a bit more complicated
Whilst a flashcard-based approach will work with vocabulary (I wrote a simple one many years ago for the Amiga when I was travelling to new places a lot) it won't help with grammar (you still need to learn the basics the old fashioned way) or pronunciation (you need to hear people talk for that).
So, assuming that you're not talking about dead languages and that you can't visit to immerse yourself in the culture, you're best off grabbing whatever text / spoken media you can find - and on the Internet, it's everywhere. Many countries have streamed radio of one sort or another - low, middle or highbrow, take your pick. In addition to language specific newsgroups the likes of Wikipedia support many, many, languages.
Whilst in the UK they may "look at" your credit card signature, they may not do anything useful with the information.
I recently had a credit card close to expiry, and it was fairly old and manky. Then it was drawn to my attention by a guy in a garage that half the signature was illegible and the other half of the signature strip worn out so that it clearly read "void" all the way down it. It had obvious been like this for some months, and I hadn't noticed, and neither had any UK shop assistants (despite "checking" the signature).
Er - that isn't the Register saying that. It's the Register reporting what someone from the Federation of Small Businesses is saying - and he's hardly an independant party.
With anything new that costs money (technological or not) there's an initial resistance to it. This statement is one side of an ongoing discussion, rather than a "fact".
That's not to say that respected journos don't have issues with chip and pin, though: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17247 (lots of links from the article, BTW)
90% of all statistics are made up on the spot...
on
State-Sponsored Solitaire?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"But research done by the IRS has shown that over 50 percent of the time an IRS employee goes on a computer, he or she also hooks up to the Internet to shop, gamble or play games."
Anyone else wondering where this "research" was published?
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to say it, but your average Slashdot reader isn't exactly "target market" for RIM. PHBs like Blackberries because you don't need any technical knowledge to work it, just an opposable thumb. IT departments like them because of the server-based control of the device (what an end-user can do with it and what they can install) they're easy to manage and because they "just work". Financial people like them because of the fixed, relatively low, cost.
In the businesses that I visit the real competition seems to be from Windows-based PDAs rather than Palms, and increasingly from GPRS cards.
(for the record I'd better express an interest - I work for a company that, among other things, sells mobile data applications, targetting Blackberry and to a lesser extent Windows Mobile devices. I currently have a PDA (a three-year-old Handspring), a Blackberry (initially foisted on me by my employer that it would now be difficult to do without) and, right now, two VNC sessions to remote servers open).
The 1% figure is clearly rubbish, but your company has new owners and you don't have any immediate reason to jump ship (or anywhere immediately to jump to) it's at least worth trying to start on the right foot with them. Chances are the new owners are trying to work out of the current staff who is capable of doing what in the future - and the fact that you got chosen for "extra responsibilities" is a sign they have confidence in your capabilities. Chances also are that they're look at who may it may be possible to get rid of.
That said, it's essential that you keep track of exactly how much time is spent doing what, so that when your programming boss asks why work isn't getting done you can tell him, and likewise to your sysadmin boss.
Some sort of helpdesk system is essential, to allow basic categorisation of problems and help time tracking.
Try and specify some form of "service level agreement" - if only "1%" of your time is needed then that's 5 minutes a day ish - so users having to wait a day or so for an email reply from you shouldn't be a problem to your new boss. Ensure that he's told them that though!
Be wary of "out of hours" stuff too. If you run any kind of live systems (e.g. for customer interaction) they may need work at odd hours of the day or night. If you specifcally don't want to do this, or get paid X for it, best to try and set expectations (in as polite a way as possible).
McAfee have had scanners for Linux for a while. They claim this is the first on-access scanner, though.
It depends how the OS figures are obtained. From a web server I can't think of a truly reliable way of telling that will always work when e.g. Javascript and Java is turned off. What people tend to use are the OS portion of the user agent string, which can get changed just as easily as the rest of it.
Right now my user agent says "Netscape 6.2 on Linux" rather than "Firefox on Windows 2000" because that works better with some nasty web-based software (ironically, running on a Windows server) that I have to use at work.
...there's some that are dubious, to say the least.
"The Singing Detective" for a start. It's good (although I'd have nominated the combination or Karaoke and Cold Lazarus ahead of it), but it's not a film - it's a multi-part drama series. Has anyone ever sat through it in one go?
If you're going to include those then there's a few others that should be in there - quite a bit of Stephen Poliakoff's work, for example.
In GSM markets the old black 5800s are getting replaced with newer models, and some new BB server versions don't support the old handhelds, so you may be able to get some second-hand.
Without a SIM card (so no phone line costs) you may still be able to syncronise "memopad" items with a PC (never tried it though...), and the options include ASCII text as well as MS Outlook.
I'm not sure how "fully VOIP" helps - if you're not somewhere that wires can reach, someone's still got to get a radio signal to you. Whether they then charge on call time, bandwidth or so-called "flat rate" (i.e. a fixed fee but if you use too much we'll kick you off) is up to the market to decide.
Chances are it won't be free, though. All those towers at the side of the M1 to ensure that your signal doesn't drop cost something.
I suspect that the vast majority of Firefox users are on Windows (simply because the majority of computer users are). They don't have the luxury of up2date or an apt-get repository and have to go to each non-Windows vendor to obtain updates. Why should Mozilla wait for someone maintaining a repository for a minority of their users before releasing an update for the majority?
I'm sure that's the offical position, anyway. And of course they want to drive traffic to their site, and make a big deal about counting downloads.
Regardless of the MS Office vs Openoffice question, I'd have to ask why exactly you're spending money every year just in case Microsoft release a new version. Many, if not most, commercial companies don't do this, and if you're not using collaborative features such as Sharepoint it would be hard to justify anything beyond Word / Excel / Access 97 on a "features" basis.
...and turn off that incredibly annoying Search Puppy!
Not sure if you'd be interested in a flash player, but (among many, many others) Creative Muvo players should satisfy your requirements.
i ces/flash.aspx ) but also play "plain old MP3s" (indeed, WMAs are definitely much heavier on the battery than MP3s)
They've been around for a while and so should be fairly cheap.
They do support WMA (if you want a laugh, there's even a picture of one here -
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/dev
The included (Windows) CD ripping software software rips to MP3 or WMA and seemed to work OK when I tried it (although I use "grip" myself).
Battery life with MP3s is > 5 hours on a (newish) 600mAh rechargeable.
When not an MP3 player it is just a flash drive. It was certainly usable without drivers under Windows 2000 and Redhat 7.3.
Anyone got a link to the original poll questions? Polling method (e.g. was it self selecting in any way)? Expected error rather than just the headline figures?
Without any of the above we're in still "8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas" territory.
OK, so the user is root by default but presuably services are still running under service accounts? That, surely has got to be of benefit.
Probably a silly question, but you have checked http://www.linmodems.org/ haven't you?
A pril/001275.html
The main site is full of information to help identify and get working "windows" modems under Linux. The list still seems to be active. Before ADSL arrived in my corner of the world I was dependant on them to get connected via inbuilt modems. I can't fault the helpfulness of the people on the list.
It doesn't matter if the modem cards you're getting are unpredictable provided that you know that it's one of a small subset and you know how to get each one (or most of them) to work. When I was last looking at this (over a year ago - but I guess that the kit you're seeing isn't new) the most manufacturer that modems identified themselves as was Agere/Lucent, for which there are various drivers around.
Some modems will probably just never get Linux drivers - the 3com 3c556 and relatives are examples of that. See:
http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/pipermail/omnibook/2002-
Does the ISP drive a truckload of mag tapes around to the Ministry of Information and say "Off you go chaps, analyse this!"
Caller ID.
If a notebook or tablet PC is too big, then a Palm or Handspring might be about right. It'll run for ages on rechargeable batteries and it'll should be cheap enough not to worry about losing.
For e-book reading software, try:
http://www.plkr.org/
It's also not news because "their business as retail agents" (from the article) is selling motorhomes - they're an agent for the company building it. So it's actually a "press release that the BBC local news ran because there was nothing else happening, which escaped onto the web site".
Must be a really slow news day in North Wales.
I believe that tornados (at least property-damaging ones) are relatively rare in Wales, so this is unlikely to be a concern to him.
Well, not really.
Why not just get a regular DVR (HDD, DVR, whatever) without the embuggerances of a Tivo?
The initial cost price will be higher because they aren't making anything month-by-month, but no-one can stop that 30-second commercial skip from working or impose adverts on you while you fast-forward.
..about what you're trying to acheive?
Like, what you want to do with your "Linux terminal server session" once you've got it? Also, how many users are we talking about. It might be that something as simple as running vncserver as a service with desktops started for a few users might be what you want, or you might want something a bit more complicated
Whilst a flashcard-based approach will work with vocabulary (I wrote a simple one many years ago for the Amiga when I was travelling to new places a lot) it won't help with grammar (you still need to learn the basics the old fashioned way) or pronunciation (you need to hear people talk for that).
So, assuming that you're not talking about dead languages and that you can't visit to immerse yourself in the culture, you're best off grabbing whatever text / spoken media you can find - and on the Internet, it's everywhere. Many countries have streamed radio of one sort or another - low, middle or highbrow, take your pick. In addition to language specific newsgroups the likes of Wikipedia support many, many, languages.
Whilst in the UK they may "look at" your credit card signature, they may not do anything useful with the information.
I recently had a credit card close to expiry, and it was fairly old and manky. Then it was drawn to my attention by a guy in a garage that half the signature was illegible and the other half of the signature strip worn out so that it clearly read "void" all the way down it. It had obvious been like this for some months, and I hadn't noticed, and neither had any UK shop assistants (despite "checking" the signature).
Er - that isn't the Register saying that. It's the Register reporting what someone from the Federation of Small Businesses is saying - and he's hardly an independant party.
With anything new that costs money (technological or not) there's an initial resistance to it. This statement is one side of an ongoing discussion, rather than a "fact".
That's not to say that respected journos don't have issues with chip and pin, though:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17247
(lots of links from the article, BTW)
"But research done by the IRS has shown that over 50 percent of the time an IRS employee goes on a computer, he or she also hooks up to the Internet to shop, gamble or play games."
Anyone else wondering where this "research" was published?