My thoughts too. These "free city-wide wi-fi" roll-outs haven't exactly been smashing successes in too many places. I rarely read about a successful deployment, but by contrast, I regularly read a story about a project getting stalled due to financial issues.
Typically, there is some misunderstanding/disagreement where the city supposedly promised to fund X% of the deployment, while the city claims those costs were supposed to be shouldered by the ISP/provider - and then the whole thing stalls out or gets canned.
In my own municipality, they're in the process of offering city-wide wi-fi, but I noticed "free" doesn't come into play at all, other than a promise of a "free 30 day trial period". They're talking about people paying about $30 a month for access to it. I predict it will fall flat on its face, too. Sure, it'd be nice to be able to go to a local restaurant or park or what-not, and know you have a wi-fi net connection. But how many people would really use this as their ONLY net connection? If not, you're looking at adding $30 a month to an existing plan that's probably costing you at least a similar amount, for the Internet access in your home. And then, it's still going to do nothing for you as soon as you go outside the municipality limits!
I fear this stuff is still too costly to implement well at a city-wide level. It make a lot more sense at the individual establishment level. If you really want "Internet anywhere", you're better off just paying for a cellular modem card for your laptop.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
The candidate I saw leveraging the power of the Internet the most, early in this election, was Ron Paul -- and it looked like most people just used it to smear the guy. EG. "Nobody but spammers and a few computer geeks with loud mouths care about him!"
Yes, the future of politics has much to do with the Internet as a communications medium. Unfortunately, the majority of people using it as a "primary" source of information and content is the younger generation. Folks (like my parents and all of their friends) who are retirement age voters, by contrast, generally pay NO attention to a speech given over YouTube, or what a candidate posts on a FaceBook or MySpace page. And the 40-something and 50-something crowd? It's a "mixed bag" right now. Some are very "net-savvy", while a good percentage of others write it off as "the computer stuff my kids are into".
I think you've got to let a few more election years come and go in this country before the MAJORITY of voters will really be "on-board" with the Internet as their information source, vs. traditional media like television, newspapers and radio.
I agree... and presumably, a company like Comcast would never WANT to try to FORCE it on anybody. The obvious goal of such a thing would revolve around more accurate viewer statistics than they can obtain with current technologies. Nielson ratings require VOLUNTARY participation, for example. They only want data from people willing to voluntarily help them collect it.
Nonetheless, this is disturbing. The cable subscriber him/herself would be aware if he/she opted to use this, but what about unwitting participants in the way of house-guests who sit down to watch a little TV, totally unaware they're on camera? Are they going to issue some type of warning on-screen that the camera is watching? (I'm thinking not.)
And furthermore, it's not out of the realm of possibility that this info being sent from the set-top box back to Comcast couldn't be intercepted by a middle-man, using it for purposes other than its originally intended purpose. That, too, could be a somewhat disturbing proposition.
1. I like your HSA idea. I really do. I have a full time salaried position right now, but the health insurance benefits are costly and just aren't worthwhile for me. Therefore, I opted out of their program and buy my own health insurance plan. It's better, but not by a whole lot. I'll have to see how cheap I can get a high-deductible plan for, and if the cost savings is sufficient, I think that and the HSA might be a better deal for me.
2. While the days of "company job for life" probably are pretty much over, the idea of company loyalty isn't completely dead yet. What I've found is, it still lives on in smaller businesses. When you get employed at the larger firms, your "job security" is pretty much only defined by the level of name recognition the company has. And increasingly, we're seeing that's just a false sense of security with all the mega-mergers, securities fraud, buyouts, etc. Even IF it pretty well ensures the COMPANY will be around for many more years, it doesn't mean they see YOU as part of that picture. At least with the smaller companies, there is often still a measure of loyalty in both directions. As one of a far smaller number of employees, it's easy for everyone to see how your job fits in the big picture of the company's needs/requirements. If you do your job well, instead of some mid-level dept. manager being the last one who realizes it, it maybe the CEO himself who realizes it.
3. The independent contracting work is often a good way to go, but I decided against it myself. For one thing, I'm raising a kid. When it's just me, I feel like I can take a few calculated risks and find a way to "get by" if I'm stuck between contracts for a little while. But I don't want to be in that situation with a kid. A regular salary means I have a much longer stretch between dealing with those stresses of finding the next person to sign my paychecks.
Sure - but you're a special case. Same goes for almost all military sites I'm aware of. The banking industry is highly regulated. They're concerned about more than just some employee using "unauthorized" software and crashing a PC, or creating/saving files on the network share that nobody else can open or view properly. They have a very real concern that someone might slip software in the environment that's designed to steal or leak out financial information.
Even though my g/f is working on her Masters' in psychiatry, I'm utterly convinced that this field is chocked full of "fluff" and occasionally, even pure nonsense. When pressed on the issue, she'll even admit that her main reason for choosing her career path stems from "wanting to get in a field where I can make a lot of money, doing something I find relatively easy".
When you look through the DSM-IV, you see an awful lot of fancy "labeling". It's a massive attempt to label people based on their mental characteristics. Sure, there are quite a few disorders listed that almost all of us can agree are serious problems for those afflicted. But there are also things broken down into numerous sub-categories that even the "experts" can't adequately explain!
EG. Look at the various "types" of bi-polar disorder in there sometime. Is it really clear to YOU what defines a person as "Type 1" or "Type 2"? Look how often "ADD" and "ADHD" are used, practically interchangeably, yet they DO differentiate. (On things as simple as signing my kid up for summer camp, a section exists where they'd like you to list any specific medical conditions your child might have, and they have 2 seperate boxes for both of these.)
It seems to me, they're afraid of being asked to treat someone's perceived "problem" or "addiction" and not having a fancy medical name for it in a book they can look up and point to -- so they're trying to cover all the possibilities. "Hey! People are starting to worry that their kids are addicted to the Internet and they want to pay us $150/hr. to work with them! We better come up with something official that mentions this one!"
Reality check: A person can become addicted to ANYTHING. Maybe they developed a weird habit of tapping out drum beats with a kitchen knife every time they get their hands on one? Maybe they can't resist buying a gumball every time they walk past one of those machines and they have a spare quarter? What determines these things becoming line-items in next revision to the DSM? I'm betting it's all about how often psychiatrists are paid to treat them!
I don't really find the parent post all that "insightful". It may, indeed, be his previous experiences with employment - but it doesn't speak for everyone.
I've worked in computer support AND in a management capacity with I.T. for several smaller companies, and things never really played out like his description claims.
In fact, I can't remember working in an environment where an employee flat-out wasn't allowed to install a piece of software that he/she found aided him/her in doing their job. If you want to use "BozoCAD" and the company officially has "CoolCAD" installed everywhere, ok. A little COMMUNICATION with people in I.T. would get you approved to load a copy of BozoCAD on your PC. (It's cheaper to have you use a product you're efficient using than to waste company time and money training you on an alternative.)
The only problem comes about when someone just assumes they know better than anyone else what should be on their PC, and they take it upon themselves to install and use unofficial software without informing anyone.
And to be totally honest, *I* have always taken the stance of "If I'm familiar with the software I find out you've installed on your own, and I'm fairly confident it's not harmful to the network, I'll opt to leave it alone." This might bend the "letter of the law" a little bit with H.R. people and their policy handbooks.... but we all know they're like lawyers. They write policies to cover ALL possible scenarios, just in case they need to enforce something. They're not even smart enough about matters like I.T. to KNOW you're in violation, if someone in I.T. doesn't take the issue to them and ASK for enforcement.
I think the original point of this whole Slashdot article was more about younger employees insisting on installing "entertainment" type software, though... social networking and chat apps, etc. If you want a chat client on your company PC, you should be prepared to justify its existence to management. (I've worked with software developers who really did use IRC clients and IM because they needed to bounce problems and potential solutions off of other like-minded people over the Internet. But if you just want to talk to your girlfriend while you work, hey --- too bad, so sad.)
First, people figured out that in order to hijack people's PCs for "bot net" purposes, they could try to trick them into installing a program that would slip it in, along with the desired program being loaded. But along came all the "spyware cleaner" packages, that could identify and remove the malware, leaving the originally desired software installed and running.
So the next trick was to try to make removal difficult or impossible by infecting a PC with a "downloader virus". That way, the virus itself would try to avoid detection, but silently download and install spyware from various sites around the world. The user might figure out he/she was infected with the spyware and try to clean it with a remover, but it would keep coming right back, as the original virus kept re-downloading the stuff.
This led to popular anti-virus packages starting to blur the lines between spyware and virii (in cases where the company in question didn't have a specific anti-spyware product ready to sell you). They'd just attempt to clean ALL of the stuff up. Others wanted you to run 2 distinct programs together to protect against both types of threats. In any case, all of this confused a lot of people -- but also made them catch on that a lot of this stuff appeared to be impossible to clean ONLY because of that "downloader trojan horse" trick.
After they started "wising up" and unplugged their Inet connections while doing all the virus and spyware removal... the "evil doers" had to escalate things further.
The current ploy of injecting the stuff from normally benign web sites is pretty much the "next logical step" for them. Doesn't surprise me a bit. I think we'll continue to see more and more of this, too. After all, this attack has several vectors. DNS server entries could be spoofed, redirecting people to fake sites. Web servers with security flaws could be compromised, and modified code loaded directly onto them. Or maybe, legitimate sites will unwittingly host infected ad banners down their pages, paid for by "advertisers" with motives other than really caring if you view the ad's visible content?
I agree to a large extent, but it seems a little ironic to me you (indirectly) implicate devices like the iPhone in your comments (the "iWhatever"?).
Personally, I see Apple products like the iPhone as great examples of *getting* what the public wants, vs. just selling them a "bill of goods" that doesn't live up to its promises.
The "techno-elite" out there can't stop whining that the iPhone lacks feature X or Y compared to some other "smartphone" out there, or Apple didn't do enough to let them write custom code that addresses every last port and function of the device, to make it do things it was NEVER intended to do.
But meanwhile, the phone is a huge success, and people who own them OFTEN say it's the "best cellphone they've ever used". Why? Because Apple tends to aim for a device that's appealing on multiple levels. It looks nice, feels good in one's hand, is gratifying to use, AND generally makes it easy to access the functionality contained in it. Like the guy pointing out the comeback of the "old" idea of car stereos having one big knob instead of a bunch of tiny buttons, user interface ease-of-use and "clarity" is a core value for Apple products. The iPod? One big click-wheel in the front.... not lots of tiny buttons. The iPhone? No buttons to be found on it besides one big "menu" button at the bottom, a sleep/wake type button on the top, and a couple small side buttons for volume up/down.
Quite so! I don't know about ever breaking up with a woman over her belief in astrology, but I've definitely skipped over a few potential dates for this reason. As someone else stated in an earlier post, the topic's main question really boils down to a matter of "How much can you, as an individual, tolerate in a relationship?"
Relationships themselves aren't strictly about "logic". (Honestly, if they were, I think people would only get married only when it made sense from a cost/benefits analysis they ran, working all the financial details. I suppose you'd have to assign numerical values to your level of concern over issues like "growing old alone" too?)
There's the whole "emotional" thing involved with dating. A good friend of mine, for example, is currently seeing a woman who is physically attractive and has a "friendly personality", yet seem the polar opposite of him when it comes to logic and reason. I don't know if she's into astrology, but she makes it quite clear that she prefers a "simple" lifestyle with as little "technology" to deal with as possible. She works in catering, and makes great food dishes, but seems to have almost zero curiosity about the world around her. Politics? No thanks, makes my head hurt! Ever wonder how come X happens when you observe Y and Z? No! Someone else smarter can worry about that stuff! Now, if it were ME, I simply couldn't carry on a meaningful relationship with a woman like that. (Yeah, the sex might be good - but I'd run out of things to say to her REAL fast. I don't like that uncomfortable feeling of having someone hanging around your place when you're out of things to talk to them about.) But obviously, they manage to get along. Perhaps he likes being left alone to do his own thing, and doesn't CARE what she does with her time? Perhaps he doesn't feel the same "need" I feel to bounce intelligent conversation off of a partner and get some in return? Whatever. Everyone has different "wants" and "needs" from a relationship.
That's quite a stretch of logic you just made, and has very little to do with what I actually said.
If Microsoft and Dell went through with this hypothetical merger, their legal troubles would probably continue, because I have yet to see ANY situation where existing legal cases against somebody were just magically dropped when they completed a merger or a change in business practices.
As for what would happen to them after the old legal issues were all resolved? Who knows? They'd likely do new things that would bother some people, and someone out there would criticize their ethics again. All I'm saying is, I don't think it's logical to state that Apple is "more evil" than today's Microsoft, simply because they refuse to sell their operating system to run on generic PC hardware. What's so difficult to comprehend here? I can't buy a title designed for a Sony Playstation 3 game console and expect it to play on my Nintendo Wii either. Is that "ethically wrong" too?
I agree with you that many things can be mapped using modern technology that just weren't feasible or possible to map before. That *ability* is a great option to have at our disposal. But how many of these things make financial sense to do? Which ones have minimal privacy implications? At the very least, I'd be concerned whenever I heard a city was "trying to make everything accessible via the Internet", because it sounds like they're too caught up in the "big picture" to be carefully analyzing the specifics.
Over 10 years ago, I used to work with a guy who developed software for cemeteries to track plot locations and family data associated with them. With his program, someone could visit a cemetery, ask where they could locate a certain person, and get a little map printed out that showed exactly which grave marker was theirs. It wasn't Internet-capable or anything, but realistically, this is public information. Putting it online just saves people a physical trip to the cemetery to get the same info. So this is a case where, sure, I have no big "privacy concern" about putting it on Google Earth.
On the other hand, real-time tracking of emergency personnel and their locations? Not so sure that's wise. What about situations where someone wants to disrupt emergency service for whatever reason? You're just handing them free tools to make it easier to cause problems. What about the fire-truck/ambulance chasers out there who may have good intentions, but ultimately just get in the way at accident scenes - because they make a hobby out of taking pictures at the scenes, or get a thrill out of seeing these events in real life? You're just helping "enable" their behavior.
All that's really clear is that Apple is still in the business of selling a BUNDLED hardware + software computer solution, while Microsoft only sells software.
It has very LITTLE to do with some relative "evilness" of Apple that they don't want people building their own computers to run OS X on. They purposely designed OS X as motivation to sell their machines to people. It's their own product, and their OWN decision if they'd like to openly license it for use on ANY PC out there, or if they'd prefer to keep it only legal for use with THEIR hardware.
Microsoft would undoubtedly do the exact SAME thing, IF they sold Microsoft-branded PCs.
As to the specific issue at-hand, I think it's still premature to get in an uproar over the SDK licensing terms. It seems very likely to me they were written by attorneys who threw together a bunch of "boilerplate" for Apple without realize the full extent of what their limitations would restrict. (Right now, it sounds to me like Sun's plan to bring Java to the iPhone was nothing Apple would have had any issue with, despite the legal details of this SDK appearing to prevent it. They'll probably hash it out and Apple will revise the licensing terms so it's allowed.)
Don't forget, the SDK itself isn't even officially "finished" until some time in June. This stuff was probably cobbled together in a rush, to get something out the door.
Wow! The boss you had who said that illustrates exactly why so much software out there is garbage!
I'd say testing is VERY much a revenue-generating component of a business that sells software! Software inherently contains bugs, because people are not perfect. As my software coding friend used to fondly point out, "If I'm 99% accurate with all the code I write, that means roughly 1 line in every 100 I write needs fixing!"
Back when most software development efforts were 1 man projects, it was a "given" that the person writing the code would also find and fix the bugs in it. But when you develop today's large applications in a team, it makes sense to offload some of that work to another department. You don't need to waste a developer's time going back through their code for days, trying to make sure they've caught as many mistakes as possible. Delegate that out to a testing team, who can flush out the problems (even using automated tools to do repetitious stuff nobody will bother to do manually), and turn in the list of flaws found to the developers, so they're working on more focused problems.
In that perspective, a QA tester really *is* a part of the software development team, and IMHO, should be paid equally well. Both groups are working to accomplish the goal of getting a product released that delivers on what it promises.
Truthfully, as "bogus" as most of these certs. are, I spent my own personal money to go take the A+ certification exam. I didn't waste a dime on "study materials" in advance. I knew that having had years of experience as a service tech., plus my own learning experiences with my computers at home, I'd be ok. All I did was review the free questions or portions of sample exams offered on several web sites, to get a better "feel" for the types of questions I might be asked. Then I took the test and passed it.
One of my good friends just did likewise, as he was unemployed and looking for any angle he could to improve his chances of getting another job. Did it help in his situation? Hard to say, but shortly after he obtained it and added it to his resume, he did get hired on at a company supporting point-of-sale terminals and software.
As stupid as it might seem for companies to turn away experienced people simply for not having the A+, it's really a fairly easy test to pass and get out of the way. It wasn't that costly either, compared to most (only 2 parts to it). In addition, it was fairly platform-neutral compared to most (Cisco certs., MSCA/MSCE, etc.). It asks a few DOS/Windows-centric things, but they're basic enough of items that any decent tech. should comprehend them anyway - even if he/she primarily works in a Mac or Unix environment.
I'm not preaching that Silverlight holds the answers, or anything remotely like that. But in MANY people's opinions, Flash technology has really "dropped the ball" when it comes to keeping up with the times.
When I first remembered it gaining in popularity, people were simply fascinated by the new-found ability to make web sites look more sophisticated and polished. You could do photo-realistic animations with your menus, have 3D fonts moving about the screen without having to render them ahead of time, trying to scale/size them for the page you were going to paste them in, etc.
In the present, most people take a "been there, seen that" attitude towards Flash-heavy web pages. They look for the "skip" button as soon as one opens up, because they know the real "content" isn't going to be found in waiting for the bar graph to finish loading to 100% completion, only to hear some techno music playing behind a big video with the corporate logo spinning around. The places where I see Flash used today tend to be interactive games, such as the children's games developed for sites like pbskids.org or nickjr.com.
In this arena, Flash may still be "king" - but it sure isn't giving a stable experience! I have a 5 year old, so I know! She loves playing the mini-games on these web sites, but I'm constantly hearing, "Dad!! Help! It stopped working!", only to go over to the PC and find it frozen up, or the arrow keys unresponsive in the game. Usually, I have to refresh the whole thing, losing her position in the game. Sometimes, the whole browser has to be closed and restarted.
It's even worse if you're not using the "preferred platform" of a Windows box running Internet Explorer 7.
Adobe long ago dropped support for their Flash player for classic MacOS, for example. Sure, it's an "outdated" platform, but an awful lot of old iMac G3's and G4's are still out there being used as "kid's computers", so this is a place where a current Flash player would still get a lot of use! They still have no Flash player developed for Apple's iPhone either, and that's an example of a NEW device they should have been on top of from the start.
They're certainly making a great case for themselves that somebody ELSE needs to come along with a competing product!
I used to think like you, but then it occurred to me that SMS messaging isn't going anywhere, because it has certain inherent advantages. Most importantly, it uses your own cell carrier as the "post office" for the text message. If your phone is turned off when someone tries to send you that SMS, no problem. Their system knows when your phone is communicating with them again, and can wait to deliver the SMS until you're ready to get it.
With instant messaging, delivery is far less reliable. Typically, I see things like the IM client itself offering an option to "attempt to redeliver when receiver comes back online", but that means if the SENDER'S computer is powered off (or they quit their IM software) before the receiver comes back, then the message STILL doesn't get delivered.
Additionally, cellphones tend to go in and out of areas where they can receive digital data reliably. This can happen very rapidly and often. (At my office, for example, I get a weak signal indoors and it varies from room to room as I walk around the building.) I'm no expert on SMS, but it seems to support some type of acknowledgment protocol. If an SMS is sent to my phone and it only receives part of it before losing signal, it seems to be discarded. Then the carrier retries, not having received confirmation from my phone that it was delivered successfully. IM clients don't seem to have this functionality. (I've often had people tell me they never got the last thing I typed, and I had to copy/paste it to manually re-send it to them.)
Compelling argument, but I'm not sure I agree with it.
With most eBay auctions, a potential buyer is trying to judge more than just the "top price he/she is willing to pay" for an item in a given listing. 9 times out of 10, you can find numerous listings for a specific item desired. Nobody wants to feel like they paid too much for something, and you develop that overall sense of value largely by searching recently completed or auctions still in progress, for the same item you're bidding on. If, say, you want to buy an nVidia 8800GT video card, and you're personally willing to pay up to $250 for it - should you place a $250 max. bid on the first one you find? Probably so, if it's the only one you see listed. But more likely, a search would return 15 or 20 of them, at least, all with various high bids placed on them. So you might, wisely, modify your strategy then - thinking "Well, an awful lot of them only have high bids in the low $100 range right now. I'd hate to win one for $250, only to see 10 more end tomorrow at under $200 -- so I think I'll just place a $180 or so high bid right now."
Sniping, in this scenario, causes problems because when it becomes "the norm" for the "way to win an auction", all the other bid prices no longer help accurately assess what the market, overall, is willing to pay for an item. As a buyer trying to do the research, you're getting flawed numbers - because most things are woefully underbid until the last 20 seconds or so. Furthermore, since eBay auctions are computerized, sniping has gone computerized too - meaning people buying "auction sniping" software packages and using their automation features will have better results than anyone else. Seems like if eBay is going to allow sniping as "ok" - they should at least provide sniping tools as standard-issue on their web site, to level the playing field.
Yes, AND no. I've become a pretty hard-core Apple fan myself, but I also realize that Apple's success lies not so much in "packing our products full of features", but rather, in wisely making choices about what stays and what goes in a given product release.
They do offer lots of new, innovative things first. If they didn't, their product offering would be too "bland" to get people very excited about them.
Nonetheless, they leave a lot out in the interest of "ease of use" and "clarity", often gradually adding a few things in over time, once most of their userbase is comfortable using what they were given in earlier revisions.... Look at their (very successful) iLife suite, for one example. iPhoto started out not even having the ability to remove red-eye from a photograph! That's something you could do in just about ANY Windows package I ever saw that claimed to work with digital cameras and edit/store photos. They eventually did add it, but obviously, Apple's first concern was making a good tool for *downloading* the photos from a large variety of cameras, and storing them efficiently. They (probably correctly) realized if they got the "skeleton" of iPhoto right first, then all the editing tools could be added later. Approaching it the other way wouldn't really allow it to blossom into a "top choice" photo app for consumers.
Yes, yes... people keep repeating this. It's not untrue, but I'd be much more worried about this type of attack working from a regular old PC workstation. If it lets you immediately give yourself administrator rights on a system you're not even supposed to have a valid user account on, that's a huge security hole right there - regardless of if you have physical access to a server room.
How "odd" would it look for, say, a service tech. to come into a typical office carrying a notebook computer (or maybe even a little Smartphone running Linux?), and to sit down at an unoccupied desk for a few minutes? Seems like the ability to hook up a firewire cable to a port on the desktop PC sitting on that desk would be quick and easy enough to do - and he could get in, copy stuff off that workstation's C: drive, and get back out without raising an eyebrow.
Sure, a "properly designed LAN" would have most of the important data on the server... but how many times do you see specific PCs with lots of locally stored data on them? I find plenty of high-level execs and accounting people who feel more comfortable/in control of their critical data if they store it on their PC's C: drive and do their own personal nightly backups with an internal tape backup drive or DVD-R drive.
I think your question really hits the nail on the head, actually. When people buy Apple products, they're almost *always* doing so specifically because they're willing to "pay more for a better UI". And yes, part of that inherently means "fewer features".
Did the iPod become a huge success because it had the "most features for the dollar"? Hardly! It didn't even have a lousy built-in FM radio tuner! The beauty of it, though, was the overall form factor and UI functionality. While China and Korea were cranking out cheap little generic MP3 players with tiny buttons and single line LCD displays, Apple came along with a player that was easy and actually *enjoyable* for people to manipulate. I remember when I first bought a 2nd. generation iPod, I'd hand it to reluctant people who said "I don't know how to use one of these things!" - and within seconds, they'd get a big grin on their face when they realized how that scroll-wheel let them move through the menus. The whole thing just had a "satisfying" feel to operating it, and even to simply holding it in your hand comfortably.
Mac OS X is much the same way. It's a visually satisfying OS, as well as one that most people find relatively "friendly" to use once they give it a chance. If your only (or main) concern is having the most possible options to tweak/modify, then OS X isn't for you. Many aspects of the UI are chosen for you by Apple's designers, and you'll have to buy 3rd. party tools (that often destabilize the system or fail when updates come along) just to force the changes. On the other hand, MOST of us just want an operating system that's stable, looks good out of the box, and does the things we need it to do. OS X seems to accomplish all of this quite well.
I see the iPhone as yet another device in this vein. Some phones really cram in too MANY features, and it just makes the menus hard to navigate. Most cellphone users can't even tell you what some of the options do, or at least how to get to them on their phones. The iPhone does a pretty darn impressive job of making it easy to access the things you really might want to use on your phone, while leaving out a lot of the confusion. (EG. If I want to call forward my number to another number, I don't have to to remember that my carrier uses * and some 2 digit code to turn forwarding on, and another such code to turn it back off. I simply tap the "Call forward" option on the iPhone menu and key in the destination number for it. I then slide the switch to either "On" or "Off" and it's done.) And obviously, the web browsing experience blows away most of the competition. It's the first of many "Smartphones" I've had where I can surf "normal" web sites and actually read the content properly.
Very true, except many times, the consumer has his/her hands tied, because problems with inferior purchases don't always make themselves immediately apparent. There's only so much research before a sale a person can be expected to do. You'd never have time left to USE any of your purchases, if you thoroughly researched EACH purchase.
Most recently, I've run up against this with a co-worker's Compaq Presario M2000 notebook computer. After only a year or so, the hard drive in it failed (right outside the original factory warranty period). The user was out $400 to have it repaired. Now, another year later or so, it refuses to power on at all. At first, I assumed it was just a bad AC adapter, but after testing it, nope... voltage output is just fine. So I started doing some Google searches. I started to discover that numerous people owning this same model of laptop are experiencing the SAME issue. One guy finally traced it down to a connection on the motherboard where a "riser card" attaches, that in turn, has the AC adapter jack soldered on it. This arrangement was used by HP/Compaq because this motherboard was retrofitted to fit the M2000 case. Apparently, after a year or two, the connection on the motherboard deteriorates, until it won't carry current from the riser card to the rest of the system anymore.
All accounts of people calling in to HP and complaining were met with a standard "We've never heard of that being an issue before with this laptop!" type of reply.
Of course, my co-worker (and probably many others this happened to) will chose not to buy another notebook from HP/Compaq. But realistically, how good a "solution" is that to anything? The truth is, engineers at HP/Compaq surely are already well aware of this flaw in that model of machine. That's likely why they have a new part number/revision listed for the motherboard in question, when you do a parts search for it.... There's a pretty good chance you won't run into this same issue again with a new one you buy from them... but who knows about the next Toshiba, or Gateway, or ?? Basically, HP/Compaq got away with this one, by denying knowledge of any real issues, happily and quietly honoring repairs on the ones still under warranty, and by changing things so it didn't come up again on future laptop models.
Well, it sounds like your PIII is quite a bit nicer than the one my mom is stuck using. Hers is a 550Mhz CPU for one thing, and also, it only has 256MB of RAM in it. I'm almost positive the motherboard she has only has 3 DIMM slots which take a maximum of 128MB sticks in each slot... so 384MB is the most it can use properly. Another 128MB stick might help, but as it can't even go as far as 512MB, I'm not thinking it's worth bothering with it.
Sony is just clueless enough to *think* this threatens their business model. In reality, I hardly see how it affects anything BUT a few of their smallest VAIO sub-notebooks (which were really tiny like the Asus offering, but generally sold for nearly $3000).
But no, the majority would NOT be "fine buying a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and big hard drive". I'm reminded of this by my mom, who barely does anything on her computer besides booting it up to get her email in Outlook Express under XP Pro, prints out some attachments people send her as.XLS or.DOC files once in a while, works on her family treee in "Family Tree Maker" software now and then, and occasionally wants to scan things in or print greeting cards. She still plugs along on a PIII class tower I built for her about 6 years ago -- and it's PAINFULLY slow. The anti-virus software (AVG) alone takes nearly 60 seconds to update itself, which it seems to do pretty much daily. Boot times are terrible (especially with all the software bloat for her Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/copier), and the machine is just unpleasant to use, all around.
Yeah, it gets the job done - but not the way the software developers intended.
People are starting to become interested in more and more "digital media". They want to "rip" their movies from DVD and store digital copies on their computer, and maybe even stream them to another device (set-top box, maybe?). This is very much in the "consumer" realm... not a "professional" use of the computer at all. Yet it's very CPU intensive to transcode video. Sure wouldn't want to do it on a PIII.
The Mac Mini was intended to be an "entry level" Mac, for people who just wanted to tinker around with OS X and Apple products. Quite a few of them ended up as special purpose machines, running in-car computer projects, model railroads, or set-top media center boxes.
If you're the type who wants to do more upgrading to your machine, other Apple products are better suited to the task. Any of the current Apple iMacs allow easy installation of memory modules by unscrewing two little screws that hold on a metal plate covering the sockets. Same deal with a Macbook Pro... simply unscrew the door on the bottom of the laptop and there's the memory.
I agree that $150 is pricey for an upgrade, but much of that cost was probably markup on the memory by Apple. Most vendors do this, really. I remember getting stuck paying a HUGE premium from Dell for one of their SCSI controllers and an additional drive for one of their Poweredge servers, for example. HP did the same with an additional P4 CPU for one of their servers. Gateway memory used to cost a lot more than generic stuff you could find on the net, too.
Saying you'll "never buy a Mac again" over a high-price quote on an in-store RAM upgrade? Wow... I don't know what to say to that, except good luck with that one. MOST of us who bought Apple computers found them to be very reliable, nicely constructed machines that run a nice alternative OS to Windows. I wouldn't say ANY of my Macs were "cheap purchases", but they've all been very much worthwhile purchases.
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts too. These "free city-wide wi-fi" roll-outs haven't exactly been smashing successes in too many places. I rarely read about a successful deployment, but by contrast, I regularly read a story about a project getting stalled due to financial issues.
Typically, there is some misunderstanding/disagreement where the city supposedly promised to fund X% of the deployment, while the city claims those costs were supposed to be shouldered by the ISP/provider - and then the whole thing stalls out or gets canned.
In my own municipality, they're in the process of offering city-wide wi-fi, but I noticed "free" doesn't come into play at all, other than a promise of a "free 30 day trial period". They're talking about people paying about $30 a month for access to it. I predict it will fall flat on its face, too. Sure, it'd be nice to be able to go to a local restaurant or park or what-not, and know you have a wi-fi net connection. But how many people would really use this as their ONLY net connection? If not, you're looking at adding $30 a month to an existing plan that's probably costing you at least a similar amount, for the Internet access in your home. And then, it's still going to do nothing for you as soon as you go outside the municipality limits!
I fear this stuff is still too costly to implement well at a city-wide level. It make a lot more sense at the individual establishment level. If you really want "Internet anywhere", you're better off just paying for a cellular modem card for your laptop.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
The candidate I saw leveraging the power of the Internet the most, early in this election, was Ron Paul -- and it looked like most people just used it to smear the guy. EG. "Nobody but spammers and a few computer geeks with loud mouths care about him!"
Yes, the future of politics has much to do with the Internet as a communications medium. Unfortunately, the majority of people using it as a "primary" source of information and content is the younger generation. Folks (like my parents and all of their friends) who are retirement age voters, by contrast, generally pay NO attention to a speech given over YouTube, or what a candidate posts on a FaceBook or MySpace page. And the 40-something and 50-something crowd? It's a "mixed bag" right now. Some are very "net-savvy", while a good percentage of others write it off as "the computer stuff my kids are into".
I think you've got to let a few more election years come and go in this country before the MAJORITY of voters will really be "on-board" with the Internet as their information source, vs. traditional media like television, newspapers and radio.
I agree... and presumably, a company like Comcast would never WANT to try to FORCE it on anybody. The obvious goal of such a thing would revolve around more accurate viewer statistics than they can obtain with current technologies. Nielson ratings require VOLUNTARY participation, for example. They only want data from people willing to voluntarily help them collect it.
Nonetheless, this is disturbing. The cable subscriber him/herself would be aware if he/she opted to use this, but what about unwitting participants in the way of house-guests who sit down to watch a little TV, totally unaware they're on camera? Are they going to issue some type of warning on-screen that the camera is watching? (I'm thinking not.)
And furthermore, it's not out of the realm of possibility that this info being sent from the set-top box back to Comcast couldn't be intercepted by a middle-man, using it for purposes other than its originally intended purpose. That, too, could be a somewhat disturbing proposition.
A couple thoughts:
1. I like your HSA idea. I really do. I have a full time salaried position right now, but the health insurance benefits are costly and just aren't worthwhile for me. Therefore, I opted out of their program and buy my own health insurance plan. It's better, but not by a whole lot. I'll have to see how cheap I can get a high-deductible plan for, and if the cost savings is sufficient, I think that and the HSA might be a better deal for me.
2. While the days of "company job for life" probably are pretty much over, the idea of company loyalty isn't completely dead yet. What I've found is, it still lives on in smaller businesses. When you get employed at the larger firms, your "job security" is pretty much only defined by the level of name recognition the company has. And increasingly, we're seeing that's just a false sense of security with all the mega-mergers, securities fraud, buyouts, etc. Even IF it pretty well ensures the COMPANY will be around for many more years, it doesn't mean they see YOU as part of that picture. At least with the smaller companies, there is often still a measure of loyalty in both directions. As one of a far smaller number of employees, it's easy for everyone to see how your job fits in the big picture of the company's needs/requirements. If you do your job well, instead of some mid-level dept. manager being the last one who realizes it, it maybe the CEO himself who realizes it.
3. The independent contracting work is often a good way to go, but I decided against it myself. For one thing, I'm raising a kid. When it's just me, I feel like I can take a few calculated risks and find a way to "get by" if I'm stuck between contracts for a little while. But I don't want to be in that situation with a kid. A regular salary means I have a much longer stretch between dealing with those stresses of finding the next person to sign my paychecks.
Sure - but you're a special case. Same goes for almost all military sites I'm aware of. The banking industry is highly regulated. They're concerned about more than just some employee using "unauthorized" software and crashing a PC, or creating/saving files on the network share that nobody else can open or view properly. They have a very real concern that someone might slip software in the environment that's designed to steal or leak out financial information.
Even though my g/f is working on her Masters' in psychiatry, I'm utterly convinced that this field is chocked full of "fluff" and occasionally, even pure nonsense. When pressed on the issue, she'll even admit that her main reason for choosing her career path stems from "wanting to get in a field where I can make a lot of money, doing something I find relatively easy".
When you look through the DSM-IV, you see an awful lot of fancy "labeling". It's a massive attempt to label people based on their mental characteristics. Sure, there are quite a few disorders listed that almost all of us can agree are serious problems for those afflicted. But there are also things broken down into numerous sub-categories that even the "experts" can't adequately explain!
EG. Look at the various "types" of bi-polar disorder in there sometime. Is it really clear to YOU what defines a person as "Type 1" or "Type 2"? Look how often "ADD" and "ADHD" are used, practically interchangeably, yet they DO differentiate. (On things as simple as signing my kid up for summer camp, a section exists where they'd like you to list any specific medical conditions your child might have, and they have 2 seperate boxes for both of these.)
It seems to me, they're afraid of being asked to treat someone's perceived "problem" or "addiction" and not having a fancy medical name for it in a book they can look up and point to -- so they're trying to cover all the possibilities. "Hey! People are starting to worry that their kids are addicted to the Internet and they want to pay us $150/hr. to work with them! We better come up with something official that mentions this one!"
Reality check: A person can become addicted to ANYTHING. Maybe they developed a weird habit of tapping out drum beats with a kitchen knife every time they get their hands on one? Maybe they can't resist buying a gumball every time they walk past one of those machines and they have a spare quarter? What determines these things becoming line-items in next revision to the DSM? I'm betting it's all about how often psychiatrists are paid to treat them!
I don't really find the parent post all that "insightful". It may, indeed, be his previous experiences with employment - but it doesn't speak for everyone.
.... but we all know they're like lawyers. They write policies to cover ALL possible scenarios, just in case they need to enforce something. They're not even smart enough about matters like I.T. to KNOW you're in violation, if someone in I.T. doesn't take the issue to them and ASK for enforcement.
... social networking and chat apps, etc. If you want a chat client on your company PC, you should be prepared to justify its existence to management. (I've worked with software developers who really did use IRC clients and IM because they needed to bounce problems and potential solutions off of other like-minded people over the Internet. But if you just want to talk to your girlfriend while you work, hey --- too bad, so sad.)
I've worked in computer support AND in a management capacity with I.T. for several smaller companies, and things never really played out like his description claims.
In fact, I can't remember working in an environment where an employee flat-out wasn't allowed to install a piece of software that he/she found aided him/her in doing their job. If you want to use "BozoCAD" and the company officially has "CoolCAD" installed everywhere, ok. A little COMMUNICATION with people in I.T. would get you approved to load a copy of BozoCAD on your PC. (It's cheaper to have you use a product you're efficient using than to waste company time and money training you on an alternative.)
The only problem comes about when someone just assumes they know better than anyone else what should be on their PC, and they take it upon themselves to install and use unofficial software without informing anyone.
And to be totally honest, *I* have always taken the stance of "If I'm familiar with the software I find out you've installed on your own, and I'm fairly confident it's not harmful to the network, I'll opt to leave it alone." This might bend the "letter of the law" a little bit with H.R. people and their policy handbooks
I think the original point of this whole Slashdot article was more about younger employees insisting on installing "entertainment" type software, though
First, people figured out that in order to hijack people's PCs for "bot net" purposes, they could try to trick them into installing a program that would slip it in, along with the desired program being loaded. But along came all the "spyware cleaner" packages, that could identify and remove the malware, leaving the originally desired software installed and running.
... the "evil doers" had to escalate things further.
So the next trick was to try to make removal difficult or impossible by infecting a PC with a "downloader virus". That way, the virus itself would try to avoid detection, but silently download and install spyware from various sites around the world. The user might figure out he/she was infected with the spyware and try to clean it with a remover, but it would keep coming right back, as the original virus kept re-downloading the stuff.
This led to popular anti-virus packages starting to blur the lines between spyware and virii (in cases where the company in question didn't have a specific anti-spyware product ready to sell you). They'd just attempt to clean ALL of the stuff up. Others wanted you to run 2 distinct programs together to protect against both types of threats. In any case, all of this confused a lot of people -- but also made them catch on that a lot of this stuff appeared to be impossible to clean ONLY because of that "downloader trojan horse" trick.
After they started "wising up" and unplugged their Inet connections while doing all the virus and spyware removal
The current ploy of injecting the stuff from normally benign web sites is pretty much the "next logical step" for them. Doesn't surprise me a bit. I think we'll continue to see more and more of this, too. After all, this attack has several vectors. DNS server entries could be spoofed, redirecting people to fake sites. Web servers with security flaws could be compromised, and modified code loaded directly onto them. Or maybe, legitimate sites will unwittingly host infected ad banners down their pages, paid for by "advertisers" with motives other than really caring if you view the ad's visible content?
I agree to a large extent, but it seems a little ironic to me you (indirectly) implicate devices like the iPhone in your comments (the "iWhatever"?).
Personally, I see Apple products like the iPhone as great examples of *getting* what the public wants, vs. just selling them a "bill of goods" that doesn't live up to its promises.
The "techno-elite" out there can't stop whining that the iPhone lacks feature X or Y compared to some other "smartphone" out there, or Apple didn't do enough to let them write custom code that addresses every last port and function of the device, to make it do things it was NEVER intended to do.
But meanwhile, the phone is a huge success, and people who own them OFTEN say it's the "best cellphone they've ever used". Why? Because Apple tends to aim for a device that's appealing on multiple levels. It looks nice, feels good in one's hand, is gratifying to use, AND generally makes it easy to access the functionality contained in it. Like the guy pointing out the comeback of the "old" idea of car stereos having one big knob instead of a bunch of tiny buttons, user interface ease-of-use and "clarity" is a core value for Apple products. The iPod? One big click-wheel in the front.... not lots of tiny buttons. The iPhone? No buttons to be found on it besides one big "menu" button at the bottom, a sleep/wake type button on the top, and a couple small side buttons for volume up/down.
Quite so! I don't know about ever breaking up with a woman over her belief in astrology, but I've definitely skipped over a few potential dates for this reason.
As someone else stated in an earlier post, the topic's main question really boils down to a matter of "How much can you, as an individual, tolerate in a relationship?"
Relationships themselves aren't strictly about "logic". (Honestly, if they were, I think people would only get married only when it made sense from a cost/benefits analysis they ran, working all the financial details. I suppose you'd have to assign numerical values to your level of concern over issues like "growing old alone" too?)
There's the whole "emotional" thing involved with dating. A good friend of mine, for example, is currently seeing a woman who is physically attractive and has a "friendly personality", yet seem the polar opposite of him when it comes to logic and reason. I don't know if she's into astrology, but she makes it quite clear that she prefers a "simple" lifestyle with as little "technology" to deal with as possible. She works in catering, and makes great food dishes, but seems to have almost zero curiosity about the world around her. Politics? No thanks, makes my head hurt! Ever wonder how come X happens when you observe Y and Z? No! Someone else smarter can worry about that stuff! Now, if it were ME, I simply couldn't carry on a meaningful relationship with a woman like that. (Yeah, the sex might be good - but I'd run out of things to say to her REAL fast. I don't like that uncomfortable feeling of having someone hanging around your place when you're out of things to talk to them about.) But obviously, they manage to get along. Perhaps he likes being left alone to do his own thing, and doesn't CARE what she does with her time? Perhaps he doesn't feel the same "need" I feel to bounce intelligent conversation off of a partner and get some in return? Whatever. Everyone has different "wants" and "needs" from a relationship.
That's quite a stretch of logic you just made, and has very little to do with what I actually said.
If Microsoft and Dell went through with this hypothetical merger, their legal troubles would probably continue, because I have yet to see ANY situation where existing legal cases against somebody were just magically dropped when they completed a merger or a change in business practices.
As for what would happen to them after the old legal issues were all resolved? Who knows? They'd likely do new things that would bother some people, and someone out there would criticize their ethics again. All I'm saying is, I don't think it's logical to state that Apple is "more evil" than today's Microsoft, simply because they refuse to sell their operating system to run on generic PC hardware. What's so difficult to comprehend here? I can't buy a title designed for a Sony Playstation 3 game console and expect it to play on my Nintendo Wii either. Is that "ethically wrong" too?
I agree with you that many things can be mapped using modern technology that just weren't feasible or possible to map before. That *ability* is a great option to have at our disposal. But how many of these things make financial sense to do? Which ones have minimal privacy implications? At the very least, I'd be concerned whenever I heard a city was "trying to make everything accessible via the Internet", because it sounds like they're too caught up in the "big picture" to be carefully analyzing the specifics.
Over 10 years ago, I used to work with a guy who developed software for cemeteries to track plot locations and family data associated with them. With his program, someone could visit a cemetery, ask where they could locate a certain person, and get a little map printed out that showed exactly which grave marker was theirs. It wasn't Internet-capable or anything, but realistically, this is public information. Putting it online just saves people a physical trip to the cemetery to get the same info. So this is a case where, sure, I have no big "privacy concern" about putting it on Google Earth.
On the other hand, real-time tracking of emergency personnel and their locations? Not so sure that's wise. What about situations where someone wants to disrupt emergency service for whatever reason? You're just handing them free tools to make it easier to cause problems. What about the fire-truck/ambulance chasers out there who may have good intentions, but ultimately just get in the way at accident scenes - because they make a hobby out of taking pictures at the scenes, or get a thrill out of seeing these events in real life? You're just helping "enable" their behavior.
Oh, please.... THAT old claim again?
All that's really clear is that Apple is still in the business of selling a BUNDLED hardware + software computer solution, while Microsoft only sells software.
It has very LITTLE to do with some relative "evilness" of Apple that they don't want people building their own computers to run OS X on. They purposely designed OS X as motivation to sell their machines to people. It's their own product, and their OWN decision if they'd like to openly license it for use on ANY PC out there, or if they'd prefer to keep it only legal for use with THEIR hardware.
Microsoft would undoubtedly do the exact SAME thing, IF they sold Microsoft-branded PCs.
As to the specific issue at-hand, I think it's still premature to get in an uproar over the SDK licensing terms. It seems very likely to me they were written by attorneys who threw together a bunch of "boilerplate" for Apple without realize the full extent of what their limitations would restrict. (Right now, it sounds to me like Sun's plan to bring Java to the iPhone was nothing Apple would have had any issue with, despite the legal details of this SDK appearing to prevent it. They'll probably hash it out and Apple will revise the licensing terms so it's allowed.)
Don't forget, the SDK itself isn't even officially "finished" until some time in June. This stuff was probably cobbled together in a rush, to get something out the door.
Wow! The boss you had who said that illustrates exactly why so much software out there is garbage!
I'd say testing is VERY much a revenue-generating component of a business that sells software! Software inherently contains bugs, because people are not perfect. As my software coding friend used to fondly point out, "If I'm 99% accurate with all the code I write, that means roughly 1 line in every 100 I write needs fixing!"
Back when most software development efforts were 1 man projects, it was a "given" that the person writing the code would also find and fix the bugs in it. But when you develop today's large applications in a team, it makes sense to offload some of that work to another department. You don't need to waste a developer's time going back through their code for days, trying to make sure they've caught as many mistakes as possible. Delegate that out to a testing team, who can flush out the problems (even using automated tools to do repetitious stuff nobody will bother to do manually), and turn in the list of flaws found to the developers, so they're working on more focused problems.
In that perspective, a QA tester really *is* a part of the software development team, and IMHO, should be paid equally well. Both groups are working to accomplish the goal of getting a product released that delivers on what it promises.
Truthfully, as "bogus" as most of these certs. are, I spent my own personal money to go take the A+ certification exam. I didn't waste a dime on "study materials" in advance. I knew that having had years of experience as a service tech., plus my own learning experiences with my computers at home, I'd be ok. All I did was review the free questions or portions of sample exams offered on several web sites, to get a better "feel" for the types of questions I might be asked. Then I took the test and passed it.
One of my good friends just did likewise, as he was unemployed and looking for any angle he could to improve his chances of getting another job. Did it help in his situation? Hard to say, but shortly after he obtained it and added it to his resume, he did get hired on at a company supporting point-of-sale terminals and software.
As stupid as it might seem for companies to turn away experienced people simply for not having the A+, it's really a fairly easy test to pass and get out of the way. It wasn't that costly either, compared to most (only 2 parts to it). In addition, it was fairly platform-neutral compared to most (Cisco certs., MSCA/MSCE, etc.). It asks a few DOS/Windows-centric things, but they're basic enough of items that any decent tech. should comprehend them anyway - even if he/she primarily works in a Mac or Unix environment.
I'm not preaching that Silverlight holds the answers, or anything remotely like that. But in MANY people's opinions, Flash technology has really "dropped the ball" when it comes to keeping up with the times.
When I first remembered it gaining in popularity, people were simply fascinated by the new-found ability to make web sites look more sophisticated and polished. You could do photo-realistic animations with your menus, have 3D fonts moving about the screen without having to render them ahead of time, trying to scale/size them for the page you were going to paste them in, etc.
In the present, most people take a "been there, seen that" attitude towards Flash-heavy web pages. They look for the "skip" button as soon as one opens up, because they know the real "content" isn't going to be found in waiting for the bar graph to finish loading to 100% completion, only to hear some techno music playing behind a big video with the corporate logo spinning around. The places where I see Flash used today tend to be interactive games, such as the children's games developed for sites like pbskids.org or nickjr.com.
In this arena, Flash may still be "king" - but it sure isn't giving a stable experience! I have a 5 year old, so I know! She loves playing the mini-games on these web sites, but I'm constantly hearing, "Dad!! Help! It stopped working!", only to go over to the PC and find it frozen up, or the arrow keys unresponsive in the game. Usually, I have to refresh the whole thing, losing her position in the game. Sometimes, the whole browser has to be closed and restarted.
It's even worse if you're not using the "preferred platform" of a Windows box running Internet Explorer 7.
Adobe long ago dropped support for their Flash player for classic MacOS, for example. Sure, it's an "outdated" platform, but an awful lot of old iMac G3's and G4's are still out there being used as "kid's computers", so this is a place where a current Flash player would still get a lot of use! They still have no Flash player developed for Apple's iPhone either, and that's an example of a NEW device they should have been on top of from the start.
They're certainly making a great case for themselves that somebody ELSE needs to come along with a competing product!
I used to think like you, but then it occurred to me that SMS messaging isn't going anywhere, because it has certain inherent advantages. Most importantly, it uses your own cell carrier as the "post office" for the text message. If your phone is turned off when someone tries to send you that SMS, no problem. Their system knows when your phone is communicating with them again, and can wait to deliver the SMS until you're ready to get it.
With instant messaging, delivery is far less reliable. Typically, I see things like the IM client itself offering an option to "attempt to redeliver when receiver comes back online", but that means if the SENDER'S computer is powered off (or they quit their IM software) before the receiver comes back, then the message STILL doesn't get delivered.
Additionally, cellphones tend to go in and out of areas where they can receive digital data reliably. This can happen very rapidly and often. (At my office, for example, I get a weak signal indoors and it varies from room to room as I walk around the building.) I'm no expert on SMS, but it seems to support some type of acknowledgment protocol. If an SMS is sent to my phone and it only receives part of it before losing signal, it seems to be discarded. Then the carrier retries, not having received confirmation from my phone that it was delivered successfully. IM clients don't seem to have this functionality. (I've often had people tell me they never got the last thing I typed, and I had to copy/paste it to manually re-send it to them.)
Compelling argument, but I'm not sure I agree with it.
With most eBay auctions, a potential buyer is trying to judge more than just the "top price he/she is willing to pay" for an item in a given listing. 9 times out of 10, you can find numerous listings for a specific item desired. Nobody wants to feel like they paid too much for something, and you develop that overall sense of value largely by searching recently completed or auctions still in progress, for the same item you're bidding on. If, say, you want to buy an nVidia 8800GT video card, and you're personally willing to pay up to $250 for it - should you place a $250 max. bid on the first one you find? Probably so, if it's the only one you see listed. But more likely, a search would return 15 or 20 of them, at least, all with various high bids placed on them. So you might, wisely, modify your strategy then - thinking "Well, an awful lot of them only have high bids in the low $100 range right now. I'd hate to win one for $250, only to see 10 more end tomorrow at under $200 -- so I think I'll just place a $180 or so high bid right now."
Sniping, in this scenario, causes problems because when it becomes "the norm" for the "way to win an auction", all the other bid prices no longer help accurately assess what the market, overall, is willing to pay for an item. As a buyer trying to do the research, you're getting flawed numbers - because most things are woefully underbid until the last 20 seconds or so. Furthermore, since eBay auctions are computerized, sniping has gone computerized too - meaning people buying "auction sniping" software packages and using their automation features will have better results than anyone else. Seems like if eBay is going to allow sniping as "ok" - they should at least provide sniping tools as standard-issue on their web site, to level the playing field.
Yes, AND no. I've become a pretty hard-core Apple fan myself, but I also realize that Apple's success lies not so much in "packing our products full of features", but rather, in wisely making choices about what stays and what goes in a given product release.
They do offer lots of new, innovative things first. If they didn't, their product offering would be too "bland" to get people very excited about them.
Nonetheless, they leave a lot out in the interest of "ease of use" and "clarity", often gradually adding a few things in over time, once most of their userbase is comfortable using what they were given in earlier revisions.... Look at their (very successful) iLife suite, for one example. iPhoto started out not even having the ability to remove red-eye from a photograph! That's something you could do in just about ANY Windows package I ever saw that claimed to work with digital cameras and edit/store photos. They eventually did add it, but obviously, Apple's first concern was making a good tool for *downloading* the photos from a large variety of cameras, and storing them efficiently. They (probably correctly) realized if they got the "skeleton" of iPhoto right first, then all the editing tools could be added later. Approaching it the other way wouldn't really allow it to blossom into a "top choice" photo app for consumers.
Yes, yes ... people keep repeating this. It's not untrue, but I'd be much more worried about this type of attack working from a regular old PC workstation. If it lets you immediately give yourself administrator rights on a system you're not even supposed to have a valid user account on, that's a huge security hole right there - regardless of if you have physical access to a server room.
... but how many times do you see specific PCs with lots of locally stored data on them? I find plenty of high-level execs and accounting people who feel more comfortable/in control of their critical data if they store it on their PC's C: drive and do their own personal nightly backups with an internal tape backup drive or DVD-R drive.
How "odd" would it look for, say, a service tech. to come into a typical office carrying a notebook computer (or maybe even a little Smartphone running Linux?), and to sit down at an unoccupied desk for a few minutes? Seems like the ability to hook up a firewire cable to a port on the desktop PC sitting on that desk would be quick and easy enough to do - and he could get in, copy stuff off that workstation's C: drive, and get back out without raising an eyebrow.
Sure, a "properly designed LAN" would have most of the important data on the server
I think your question really hits the nail on the head, actually. When people buy Apple products, they're almost *always* doing so specifically because they're willing to "pay more for a better UI". And yes, part of that inherently means "fewer features".
Did the iPod become a huge success because it had the "most features for the dollar"? Hardly! It didn't even have a lousy built-in FM radio tuner! The beauty of it, though, was the overall form factor and UI functionality. While China and Korea were cranking out cheap little generic MP3 players with tiny buttons and single line LCD displays, Apple came along with a player that was easy and actually *enjoyable* for people to manipulate. I remember when I first bought a 2nd. generation iPod, I'd hand it to reluctant people who said "I don't know how to use one of these things!" - and within seconds, they'd get a big grin on their face when they realized how that scroll-wheel let them move through the menus. The whole thing just had a "satisfying" feel to operating it, and even to simply holding it in your hand comfortably.
Mac OS X is much the same way. It's a visually satisfying OS, as well as one that most people find relatively "friendly" to use once they give it a chance. If your only (or main) concern is having the most possible options to tweak/modify, then OS X isn't for you. Many aspects of the UI are chosen for you by Apple's designers, and you'll have to buy 3rd. party tools (that often destabilize the system or fail when updates come along) just to force the changes. On the other hand, MOST of us just want an operating system that's stable, looks good out of the box, and does the things we need it to do. OS X seems to accomplish all of this quite well.
I see the iPhone as yet another device in this vein. Some phones really cram in too MANY features, and it just makes the menus hard to navigate. Most cellphone users can't even tell you what some of the options do, or at least how to get to them on their phones. The iPhone does a pretty darn impressive job of making it easy to access the things you really might want to use on your phone, while leaving out a lot of the confusion. (EG. If I want to call forward my number to another number, I don't have to to remember that my carrier uses * and some 2 digit code to turn forwarding on, and another such code to turn it back off. I simply tap the "Call forward" option on the iPhone menu and key in the destination number for it. I then slide the switch to either "On" or "Off" and it's done.) And obviously, the web browsing experience blows away most of the competition. It's the first of many "Smartphones" I've had where I can surf "normal" web sites and actually read the content properly.
Very true, except many times, the consumer has his/her hands tied, because problems with inferior purchases don't always make themselves immediately apparent. There's only so much research before a sale a person can be expected to do. You'd never have time left to USE any of your purchases, if you thoroughly researched EACH purchase.
... but who knows about the next Toshiba, or Gateway, or ?? Basically, HP/Compaq got away with this one, by denying knowledge of any real issues, happily and quietly honoring repairs on the ones still under warranty, and by changing things so it didn't come up again on future laptop models.
Most recently, I've run up against this with a co-worker's Compaq Presario M2000 notebook computer. After only a year or so, the hard drive in it failed (right outside the original factory warranty period). The user was out $400 to have it repaired. Now, another year later or so, it refuses to power on at all. At first, I assumed it was just a bad AC adapter, but after testing it, nope... voltage output is just fine. So I started doing some Google searches. I started to discover that numerous people owning this same model of laptop are experiencing the SAME issue. One guy finally traced it down to a connection on the motherboard where a "riser card" attaches, that in turn, has the AC adapter jack soldered on it. This arrangement was used by HP/Compaq because this motherboard was retrofitted to fit the M2000 case. Apparently, after a year or two, the connection on the motherboard deteriorates, until it won't carry current from the riser card to the rest of the system anymore.
All accounts of people calling in to HP and complaining were met with a standard "We've never heard of that being an issue before with this laptop!" type of reply.
Of course, my co-worker (and probably many others this happened to) will chose not to buy another notebook from HP/Compaq. But realistically, how good a "solution" is that to anything? The truth is, engineers at HP/Compaq surely are already well aware of this flaw in that model of machine. That's likely why they have a new part number/revision listed for the motherboard in question, when you do a parts search for it.... There's a pretty good chance you won't run into this same issue again with a new one you buy from them
Well, it sounds like your PIII is quite a bit nicer than the one my mom is stuck using. Hers is a 550Mhz CPU for one thing, and also, it only has 256MB of RAM in it. I'm almost positive the motherboard she has only has 3 DIMM slots which take a maximum of 128MB sticks in each slot ... so 384MB is the most it can use properly. Another 128MB stick might help, but as it can't even go as far as 512MB, I'm not thinking it's worth bothering with it.
Sony is just clueless enough to *think* this threatens their business model. In reality, I hardly see how it affects anything BUT a few of their smallest VAIO sub-notebooks (which were really tiny like the Asus offering, but generally sold for nearly $3000).
.XLS or .DOC files once in a while, works on her family treee in "Family Tree Maker" software now and then, and occasionally wants to scan things in or print greeting cards. She still plugs along on a PIII class tower I built for her about 6 years ago -- and it's PAINFULLY slow. The anti-virus software (AVG) alone takes nearly 60 seconds to update itself, which it seems to do pretty much daily. Boot times are terrible (especially with all the software bloat for her Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/copier), and the machine is just unpleasant to use, all around.
... not a "professional" use of the computer at all. Yet it's very CPU intensive to transcode video. Sure wouldn't want to do it on a PIII.
But no, the majority would NOT be "fine buying a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and big hard drive". I'm reminded of this by my mom, who barely does anything on her computer besides booting it up to get her email in Outlook Express under XP Pro, prints out some attachments people send her as
Yeah, it gets the job done - but not the way the software developers intended.
People are starting to become interested in more and more "digital media". They want to "rip" their movies from DVD and store digital copies on their computer, and maybe even stream them to another device (set-top box, maybe?). This is very much in the "consumer" realm
The Mac Mini was intended to be an "entry level" Mac, for people who just wanted to tinker around with OS X and Apple products. Quite a few of them ended up as special purpose machines, running in-car computer projects, model railroads, or set-top media center boxes.
If you're the type who wants to do more upgrading to your machine, other Apple products are better suited to the task. Any of the current Apple iMacs allow easy installation of memory modules by unscrewing two little screws that hold on a metal plate covering the sockets. Same deal with a Macbook Pro... simply unscrew the door on the bottom of the laptop and there's the memory.
I agree that $150 is pricey for an upgrade, but much of that cost was probably markup on the memory by Apple. Most vendors do this, really. I remember getting stuck paying a HUGE premium from Dell for one of their SCSI controllers and an additional drive for one of their Poweredge servers, for example. HP did the same with an additional P4 CPU for one of their servers. Gateway memory used to cost a lot more than generic stuff you could find on the net, too.
Saying you'll "never buy a Mac again" over a high-price quote on an in-store RAM upgrade? Wow... I don't know what to say to that, except good luck with that one. MOST of us who bought Apple computers found them to be very reliable, nicely constructed machines that run a nice alternative OS to Windows. I wouldn't say ANY of my Macs were "cheap purchases", but they've all been very much worthwhile purchases.