I think "it takes money to make money" is still as valid a saying as ever. The problem David Harris has is shared by MANY software developers out there. They initially get motivated to "build a better mousetrap", and they succeed. Their product is adopted by millions of users (often because it costs them nothing to use it, but has obvious benefits worth the switch and learning curve). Over time, the author feels that he/she deserves financial compensation for the now highly-regarded product and becomes disenchanted with the situation. Development stagnates, and new products overtake it.
To overcome this, I think the real answer is to invest some money in advertising a newer, more advanced version of the software product. (The old one can then serve as a "lite" version, maintained simply to help keep your "brand" alive, and to introduce new people to the product's existence.) Otherwise, you can't really break free of the "development/ascent/decline" lifecycle that all products undergo.
Agreed... but then there's another way of looking at it. If you're a Tivo user, you're probably already shelling out $15 or so a month just to keep your unit usable.
I used to have a Tivo, back when units could still be purchased with a "lifetime subscription". But that unit broke down, and I decided to build a MythTV box instead. Now I pay nothing in monthly subscription fees, and have a much more flexible, customizable system too. (Can't run old arcade games via MAME emulation on a Tivo, nor can you pull down RSS newsfeeds, or use video teleconferencing features with an attached webcam, or.....)
So in my estimation, those buying a new Tivo today are just doing so for the convenience (plug it in and go, vs. rolling one's own PC with MythTV software). Its current success proves the business model works, even though people are paying more for less functionality than they'd get by going the MythTV route. So why wouldn't they pay another one-time $99 or so for a copy of Roxio with TivoToGo in it?
I've said for years and years now, Sony is pretty good at "walking the thin line" of how much the average consumer will tolerate and still keep buying their products.
The "techies" have been complaining about them and their proprietary, incompatible product releases since at least the era of the Sony "minidisc" format. But the public doesn't really care. If a Sony product turns out to be a "dud", it sort of fades away into non-existence, and their more successful products are still all over the store shelves, regularly recommended by magazine reviewers, store salespeople, and satisfied consumers.
"Techies" had nothing good to say about Sony's proprietary "memory stick" technology either. Yet I bought one of their camcorders (a TRV-730) which has proven to be an excellent buy as the years have passed, and it uses a memory stick for the still photo feature in it. Truthfully, when it was new, I preferred the physical format of the memory stick to the alternatives. The "SD" format is pretty darn similar in thickness, weight, and overall size... but back then, you didn't really see SD media around. You had mostly CompactFlash, which was noticeably bigger/bulkier, and those "Smartmedia" cards which always seemed flimsy, like they'd accidently snap in half in your pocket.
They're also a major motion picture studio, releasing quite a few films the public wants to watch and purchase, and some of the slimmer, ultraportable Sony Vaio laptops are among the "best in class". Of course, the PS2 wasn't exactly a marketing failure either - and I maintain that the PS3 has plenty of time to enjoy a good success too, if the right game titles start coming out for it and the price comes down a bit. (And why wouldn't it? PS2 prices had several significant drops over the years.)
That's debatable. I don't think we've really reached a point where Microsoft Word is the only "viable" product for word processing tasks in a large corporate environment, have we?
IBM still sells SmartSuite with WordPro. WordPerfect is still available. There are even shareware and freeware solutions out there like OpenOffice.
It constantly amazes me how where I work, everyone goes into "panic mode" as soon as they receive an email attachment that can't be opened by MS Office with a double-click. Typically, they end up being WordPerfect documents or something, where actually, Word *can* open it, but just isn't associated as the default app to open files with that extension on them. It's this same fear that leads people to upgrade their Office suites, because otherwise, they might receive a document created with MS Office that they can't easily open up.
I'd argue that with either an older version of Word, or a competing product, you could be completely productive and functional in almost any business setting. You'd simply need to ask some people to resend files in alternate formats for you, and/or learn to use some conversion utilities here and there.
I remember many years ago, when my buddy and I both owned Tandy Color Computers and 300 baud external modems. His modem was some weird Hayes-compatible model with the serial cable permanently attached to it, and it died. He borrowed my modem to get online, but I forgot to bring my serial cable - and it was too late at night to go buy one.
We ended up soldering wires to partially straightened paper-clips, and sticking the straightened ends of the paperclips in the proper holes on the RS-232C ports to serve as our data cable!
Not disagreeing, except if your company opts to do an upgrade like this, they should have already factored in the knowledge of a temporary loss in productivity as their employees learn the new interface.
So yes, you will have to "stop what you're doing and relearn something else". But apparently, your I.T. department and management decided that was a worthwhile task. (If they didn't think so, they'd opt not to upgrade, or would consider a different product, right?)
Well, really, most people who sign up for credit cards in order to get the free handouts are doing so because they already know their credit is sub-par, so they feel they've got nothing to lose.
I remember back when I was in college, I basically had no credit info on file. I was a "ghost" in the machine, essentially. I was living in an apartment with a roommate who got the place under their name and info, so there was no record of me paying rent. I bought my first car, used, with a personal check - so again, no car loan. Nobody would issue me a credit card, because I was too uncertain of a risk. Therefore, when I went to a hockey game and was offered the "free t-shirt" with the team logo on it for applying for some VISA card, sure - I did it! Who cares? I knew I'd get turned down, but I got a free shirt for 2 minutes of my time filling out the form.
I used to think the same thing about robots... that the military would be the economic driver, advancing the technology, because they'd eventually like to use them to replace human soldiers in wars.
It just occurred to me, though, that this may not help with human casualties at all. I think one of the main premises to having a war is injuring the opposing side so badly that both the leaders and the general population are finally willing to give in to the demands of the opposition.
If you're just blowing up a bunch of the enemy's robots, you're doing little more than costing them money to build replacements. Don't you think that long before you bankrupted a country into submission this way, they'd decide to do something "more effective", and start directly bombing/killing the factories and people responsible for their construction? And as soon as that started, all bets would be off on killing humans. So back to a "standard" war we'd go.
I think you'd have to ask a cross-section of workers under the *same* boss what they thought of him/her, and only given the boss a "bad mark" for lying, shifting blame, or whatnot if the *majority* made the same complaint.
Like you said, it's easy to find someone who feels he/she was lied to once about such things as upcoming raises or thinks his/her pet project was undermined by a boss at some point. The REAL question is, is this sort of behavior a pattern with a certain boss, or are they recording isolated incidents?
Umm... yes. The list price for the PS3 60GB model is $599. If you're implying that I should have gotten it for the exact price the *store* paid for the unit from Sony, well... no, I didn't get that pricing. But who would? Toys 'R Us won't even give employees their 10% employee discount on anything related to electronic gaming or baby diapers.
I concluded the same thing. My first objective was to get as large a screen as possible within my budget. That pretty much knocked out both plasma and LCD sets as contenders - because a 52" projection set sells for as little as $900 or so, and a DLP or LCD projector can be obtained for as little as around $500-600.
I got a 120" manual pull-down screen for around $90 plus shipping from provantage.com, and a BenQ projector from Newegg for about $600. Found an all steel, universal ceiling projector mount from mountsdirect.com for around $40, and was all set!
My naysayer friends who bought plasma TVs this Xmas are quick to argue that they don't have to buy "$200-300 bulbs every year"... but I think that's a slight exaggeration. On economy mode, which still looks fine to me with my setup, I should get around 3000 hours of life from the bulb. Since I'm only going to be using this to watch a movie or two on the weekends, or maybe for some console video gaming here and there on a weeknight, I think 3000 hours of life will go a pretty long way. And I can buy at least 3 spare bulbs before reaching the price they paid for their plasma TVs that still only show an image about half the size of what I've got, at best.
The only real disadvantage I see with a projector is the space needed in a room to make it work. It's ideal for me, because the lower level of my house was largely unused space - which I can now utilize. But for those with limited space, I'd think a front-projection TV set would be a good alternative. They might be rather large/heavy, but many are on rolling casters, making them easy to move around a room.
Since so few here seem to actually *own* a PS3 though, I thought I'd chime in. I actually did get a 60GB model (at cost, because my brother worked a holiday retail job and got first pick when some units came in the door). So far, mine hasn't frozen/locked up once, but it does create a fair amount of heat. I can't see how anyone could think such a device would be "ok" sealed inside some non ventilated container and left on all day long in a store?
In a typical home environment though? It should work ok, as far as I can tell.
And as far as all the general PS3 bashing is concerned? My impression is, this isn't such a bad value after all (if you're paying the listed price and not some eBay inflated price). In my own case, I used to own a PS2 but sold it a couple years ago because I needed the money. This gives me back about 98% of what I had back then, for starters. Factor in the ability to play HD BlueRay movie discs, the fact it can do video slideshows of photos right off your camera's memory cards, and the fact that it will play the latest PS titles in all their graphically-improved glory, plus no more need for separate memory cards and 3rd. party controllers to get wireless versions - and I'm satisfied for my $599.
Yes, but if you follow some of the "rumor" sites, there's growing evidence that Apple is redoing the overall "look" of OS X and its related apps. They seem to be going for more of a "glossy black" look - and part of the change will likely include pulling the inconsistent styles of apps like iTunes, Mail and Safari together with the new appearance.
As they've been releasing 10.5 beta updates to developers, they've been simultaneously releasing even newer builds for internal use only. Why do that unless you have some UI changes you're trying to keep a secret? (Presumably, the developers are finding bugs and issues in the main code, and Apple is just implementing those on top of each "internal build" they release with the graphics appearance differences.)
Yep! I remember the HERO1 robot! When I was in grade school, I eyed one in a Heathkit catalog, and immediately wanted it. (I vaguely recall it selling for somewhere around the $7000-8000 price range in the early 80's?) I also recall that the arm on the top of it was sold as an option, costing a considerable amount extra.
One guy I knew in grade school told me his brother's school actually purchased a HERO1 robot, and they learned to do some simple programming of it in one of their classes.
One Xmas, my mom took me to a local department store called Goldie's (long since gone out of business), and they had an RB5X wheeling around the store, telling people "Merry Christmas!" and offering to take your picture with a Polaroid camera. I thought that was the coolest thing!
Despite all of these large, high-profile security breaches of late, you don't hear a whole lot about people who actually became victims of fraud right afterwards. I'm sure it's happening, but it seems to be in the "best interest" of practically everyone EXCEPT the consumers owning the info to sweep it under the rug. (EG. "No problem sir! Just mail back the form we send you, detailing all the charges you didn't actually make on your VISA, and we'll take care of it. A new card is on its way out to you right away.")
You'd think that at some point, just about everyone in the U.S. will need to put "fraud alerts" on their credit profiles!
As bad as it sounds, I think it's going to take real financial losses of an almost unmanageable sort for the lenders and credit agencies to say "Enough!" and find new ways to protect consumer info.
This technology was recently promised as a way to help eliminate long boot-times for operating systems, and I think it's coming really soon, as a "stop gap" between traditional hard drives and entirely flash memory based drives.
Yeah... not to mention, anyone making something brand new can easily "shoot fish in a barrel" by pointing at a design that's years older, complaining it's "boring" or "unoriginal" by comparison.
Are the latest changes coming out for OS X Leopard "boring and unoriginal"? Heck, we don't even know about half of them yet!
Nonetheless, many of these "unoriginal" ideas are actually "conventions" adopted by all major OS's because there was some agreement that they were "best of breed" ways to illustrate or accomplish something. That's not always a "bad" thing!
The "depreciation" argument is somewhat compelling, but when it comes to computers and software, I think it's too simplistic. Yes, I.T. is always a "cost" for business. But many businesses have an I.T. dept. because they realize it's a cost that produces a net benefit for the business as a whole.
If leases were really as great a deal for people as they promise, few people would ever want to offer them. (What are the sellers doing with the off-lease items? Obviously, they've found ways to recoup the depreciation, and likely a little extra too.)
Sure, there are tasks for which farming out the app makes perfect sense. (EG. Internet search related tasks requiring a pre-existing large search engine's database.) But in examples like Microsoft Office, I don't see the sensibility in "leasing" at all. You add too many additional "points of failure" to what should be a straightforward application to run. A router goes out? You can't work on your documents. Your Internet provider has an outage? Same problem. You run into a need for a non-networked, stand-alone PC to do some spreadsheet or word processing tasks? Sorry, no can do. H.R. says they have sensitive documents they're required by law not to share with anyone? How are they going to feel about Microsoft hosting/storing all of those on *their* systems, and only accessible by H.R. as long as they keep paying their monthly or annual renewal fees?
I agree! Ever since I first heard Sun use that slogan, I thought it was dumb. If you ask me, "The Network is FOR the Computer" - and that's all there is to it!
All of these large corporations (IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc.) envision making a fortune by renting you your software (by serving it to you over the Internet). Like everything else in life though, you've got a LARGE number of folks who'd much rather own than rent. Renting has historically only made sense in the short-term, usually as a "stop gap" measure. You rent a car for a weekend trip, or because the car you own is in the shop for major repairs. You rent an apartment or house because you need someplace to stay, but you aren't in a position, financially, where you can buy a house yet. You likely rent furniture or appliances from a "rent a center" type of establishment because you want to live above your means, and don't have the patience to save up to buy it. So tell me again why I'd want to continuously RENT my applications rather then buy software licenses and install/run the stuff on my OWN equipment?
I've noticed that my AT&T/SBC/Yahoo email spam filter seems to be fairly effective at filtering out junk mail. However, sometimes messages slip through that seem much more "spam-like" in nature than some of the sneakier ones it catches.
That leads me to wonder... Does anyone know if their filter intelligently marks new, incoming mail as "spam" if it knows identical matches to it already exist in more than X number of user's junk mail folder on their servers?
Especially for a larger ISP, this would seem like one of the most effective methods of spam control. Let users mark mail as spam, and then block all future occurrences of the same message as spam for everyone else. Unfortunately, that seems to require the use of a web mail interface right now, but maybe they could develop little plug-ins for common mail clients like Outlook to do the same thing?
I'd agree with you to a point, but I think OS X *does* have a lot more room to advance, unlike Windows XP/Vista, and largely for the exact reason you're stating.
Mac OS X has added various "core" support extensions with each revision, (core audio, core video, core animation), which really means little to nothing to end-users, but caters squarely to developers. And features they added in 10.4 like Spotlight search functionality can be extended by applications too.
Right now, OS X needs to concentrate on OS revisions that make better/more flexible use of multiple processor cores - and it sounds like that's one item we'll get in 10.5 "Leopard".
But considering they've yet again linked to useless Dvorak drivel, I guess I'll comment on the topic.
John is treading in pretty "safe" territory with these comments. Vista really isn't exciting very many people. But at this point in the game, does it make any difference? Microsoft could release practically anything as a new OS update, and within 2-3 years, the majority of computer users will be running it - even if absolutely *none* of them voluntarily purchased it as an upgrade. As long as it comes preloaded on the vast majority of new computers purchased (and it does), they're keeping users on their migration path.
I just got out of a technical meeting at my workplace this morning, and one of our discussions topics was the I.T. budget for 2007. It was universally agreed (with very little debate) that there's nothing compelling about spending money to upgrade our computer hardware (all Pentium 4 class systems with between 512MB and 1GB of RAM). We also agreed that it would be wasteful to spend money upgrading to Vista in 2007, since we're currently on XP Pro and it does everything we need. In the case of Office 2007, the only reason we'd upgrade to it is in response to receiving too many documents from our customers that were created in Office '07. Until that happens, it's a total waste of money for us to move to it.
I can't see how many businesses out there would conclude otherwise? With the migration from Windows 2000 to XP, there were a few "drivers" that compelled people. One big one was better, more user-friendly wireless networking support. That, alone, made my laptop upgrade from 2000 to XP a big improvement. (You still can't even use WPA type wireless encryption in Win2K without 3rd. party software add-ons.)
But with Vista, you've got new toolbars and eye-candy (some of which costs extra in terms of higher-end gaphics hardware to make use of it), and apparently a more complicated and restrictive EULA to boot. The things that would have cost-justified the product, at least in the eyes of corporate customers, were largely canned (such as the initially promised "revolutionary new file system"), and instead, we get things like more restrictive DRM for digital music. This makes it an upgrade you're forced to accept, rather than one you *want*.
Yep... Even when you have people come in from a firm you *did* call for service, you have to keep a close eye on them.
I used to work for a mid-sized company that occasionally called different vendors in the Yellow Pages for printer service. (Our networked laser printers broke down too infrequently to justify a costly maintenance agreement on them, so we were a little better off just calling someone to fix them on a case-by-case basis.) One of the firms we called did a good job the first couple times we used them, but when we called them a 3rd. time, a different repair tech showed up. The office manager caught the guy snooping around in our supply closet, apparently trying to steal some of our toner cartridges and other printer/office supplies!
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I think "it takes money to make money" is still as valid a saying as ever. The problem David Harris has is shared by MANY software developers out there. They initially get motivated to "build a better mousetrap", and they succeed. Their product is adopted by millions of users (often because it costs them nothing to use it, but has obvious benefits worth the switch and learning curve). Over time, the author feels that he/she deserves financial compensation for the now highly-regarded product and becomes disenchanted with the situation. Development stagnates, and new products overtake it.
To overcome this, I think the real answer is to invest some money in advertising a newer, more advanced version of the software product. (The old one can then serve as a "lite" version, maintained simply to help keep your "brand" alive, and to introduce new people to the product's existence.) Otherwise, you can't really break free of the "development/ascent/decline" lifecycle that all products undergo.
Agreed... but then there's another way of looking at it. If you're a Tivo user, you're probably already shelling out $15 or so a month just to keep your unit usable.
I used to have a Tivo, back when units could still be purchased with a "lifetime subscription". But that unit broke down, and I decided to build a MythTV box instead. Now I pay nothing in monthly subscription fees, and have a much more flexible, customizable system too. (Can't run old arcade games via MAME emulation on a Tivo, nor can you pull down RSS newsfeeds, or use video teleconferencing features with an attached webcam, or.....)
So in my estimation, those buying a new Tivo today are just doing so for the convenience (plug it in and go, vs. rolling one's own PC with MythTV software). Its current success proves the business model works, even though people are paying more for less functionality than they'd get by going the MythTV route. So why wouldn't they pay another one-time $99 or so for a copy of Roxio with TivoToGo in it?
I've said for years and years now, Sony is pretty good at "walking the thin line" of how much the average consumer will tolerate and still keep buying their products.
... but back then, you didn't really see SD media around. You had mostly CompactFlash, which was noticeably bigger/bulkier, and those "Smartmedia" cards which always seemed flimsy, like they'd accidently snap in half in your pocket.
The "techies" have been complaining about them and their proprietary, incompatible product releases since at least the era of the Sony "minidisc" format. But the public doesn't really care. If a Sony product turns out to be a "dud", it sort of fades away into non-existence, and their more successful products are still all over the store shelves, regularly recommended by magazine reviewers, store salespeople, and satisfied consumers.
"Techies" had nothing good to say about Sony's proprietary "memory stick" technology either. Yet I bought one of their camcorders (a TRV-730) which has proven to be an excellent buy as the years have passed, and it uses a memory stick for the still photo feature in it. Truthfully, when it was new, I preferred the physical format of the memory stick to the alternatives. The "SD" format is pretty darn similar in thickness, weight, and overall size
They're also a major motion picture studio, releasing quite a few films the public wants to watch and purchase, and some of the slimmer, ultraportable Sony Vaio laptops are among the "best in class". Of course, the PS2 wasn't exactly a marketing failure either - and I maintain that the PS3 has plenty of time to enjoy a good success too, if the right game titles start coming out for it and the price comes down a bit. (And why wouldn't it? PS2 prices had several significant drops over the years.)
That's debatable. I don't think we've really reached a point where Microsoft Word is the only "viable" product for word processing tasks in a large corporate environment, have we?
IBM still sells SmartSuite with WordPro. WordPerfect is still available. There are even shareware and freeware solutions out there like OpenOffice.
It constantly amazes me how where I work, everyone goes into "panic mode" as soon as they receive an email attachment that can't be opened by MS Office with a double-click. Typically, they end up being WordPerfect documents or something, where actually, Word *can* open it, but just isn't associated as the default app to open files with that extension on them. It's this same fear that leads people to upgrade their Office suites, because otherwise, they might receive a document created with MS Office that they can't easily open up.
I'd argue that with either an older version of Word, or a competing product, you could be completely productive and functional in almost any business setting. You'd simply need to ask some people to resend files in alternate formats for you, and/or learn to use some conversion utilities here and there.
I remember many years ago, when my buddy and I both owned Tandy Color Computers and 300 baud external modems. His modem was some weird Hayes-compatible model with the serial cable permanently attached to it, and it died. He borrowed my modem to get online, but I forgot to bring my serial cable - and it was too late at night to go buy one.
We ended up soldering wires to partially straightened paper-clips, and sticking the straightened ends of the paperclips in the proper holes on the RS-232C ports to serve as our data cable!
Not disagreeing, except if your company opts to do an upgrade like this, they should have already factored in the knowledge of a temporary loss in productivity as their employees learn the new interface.
So yes, you will have to "stop what you're doing and relearn something else". But apparently, your I.T. department and management decided that was a worthwhile task. (If they didn't think so, they'd opt not to upgrade, or would consider a different product, right?)
Well, really, most people who sign up for credit cards in order to get the free handouts are doing so because they already know their credit is sub-par, so they feel they've got nothing to lose.
I remember back when I was in college, I basically had no credit info on file. I was a "ghost" in the machine, essentially. I was living in an apartment with a roommate who got the place under their name and info, so there was no record of me paying rent. I bought my first car, used, with a personal check - so again, no car loan. Nobody would issue me a credit card, because I was too uncertain of a risk. Therefore, when I went to a hockey game and was offered the "free t-shirt" with the team logo on it for applying for some VISA card, sure - I did it! Who cares? I knew I'd get turned down, but I got a free shirt for 2 minutes of my time filling out the form.
I used to think the same thing about robots... that the military would be the economic driver, advancing the technology, because they'd eventually like to use them to replace human soldiers in wars.
It just occurred to me, though, that this may not help with human casualties at all. I think one of the main premises to having a war is injuring the opposing side so badly that both the leaders and the general population are finally willing to give in to the demands of the opposition.
If you're just blowing up a bunch of the enemy's robots, you're doing little more than costing them money to build replacements. Don't you think that long before you bankrupted a country into submission this way, they'd decide to do something "more effective", and start directly bombing/killing the factories and people responsible for their construction? And as soon as that started, all bets would be off on killing humans. So back to a "standard" war we'd go.
I think you'd have to ask a cross-section of workers under the *same* boss what they thought of him/her, and only given the boss a "bad mark" for lying, shifting blame, or whatnot if the *majority* made the same complaint.
Like you said, it's easy to find someone who feels he/she was lied to once about such things as upcoming raises or thinks his/her pet project was undermined by a boss at some point. The REAL question is, is this sort of behavior a pattern with a certain boss, or are they recording isolated incidents?
Umm... yes. The list price for the PS3 60GB model is $599. If you're implying that I should have gotten it for the exact price the *store* paid for the unit from Sony, well ... no, I didn't get that pricing. But who would? Toys 'R Us won't even give employees their 10% employee discount on anything related to electronic gaming or baby diapers.
I concluded the same thing. My first objective was to get as large a screen as possible within my budget. That pretty much knocked out both plasma and LCD sets as contenders - because a 52" projection set sells for as little as $900 or so, and a DLP or LCD projector can be obtained for as little as around $500-600.
... but I think that's a slight exaggeration. On economy mode, which still looks fine to me with my setup, I should get around 3000 hours of life from the bulb. Since I'm only going to be using this to watch a movie or two on the weekends, or maybe for some console video gaming here and there on a weeknight, I think 3000 hours of life will go a pretty long way. And I can buy at least 3 spare bulbs before reaching the price they paid for their plasma TVs that still only show an image about half the size of what I've got, at best.
I got a 120" manual pull-down screen for around $90 plus shipping from provantage.com, and a BenQ projector from Newegg for about $600. Found an all steel, universal ceiling projector mount from mountsdirect.com for around $40, and was all set!
My naysayer friends who bought plasma TVs this Xmas are quick to argue that they don't have to buy "$200-300 bulbs every year"
The only real disadvantage I see with a projector is the space needed in a room to make it work. It's ideal for me, because the lower level of my house was largely unused space - which I can now utilize. But for those with limited space, I'd think a front-projection TV set would be a good alternative. They might be rather large/heavy, but many are on rolling casters, making them easy to move around a room.
Since so few here seem to actually *own* a PS3 though, I thought I'd chime in. I actually did get a 60GB model (at cost, because my brother worked a holiday retail job and got first pick when some units came in the door). So far, mine hasn't frozen/locked up once, but it does create a fair amount of heat. I can't see how anyone could think such a device would be "ok" sealed inside some non ventilated container and left on all day long in a store?
In a typical home environment though? It should work ok, as far as I can tell.
And as far as all the general PS3 bashing is concerned? My impression is, this isn't such a bad value after all (if you're paying the listed price and not some eBay inflated price). In my own case, I used to own a PS2 but sold it a couple years ago because I needed the money. This gives me back about 98% of what I had back then, for starters. Factor in the ability to play HD BlueRay movie discs, the fact it can do video slideshows of photos right off your camera's memory cards, and the fact that it will play the latest PS titles in all their graphically-improved glory, plus no more need for separate memory cards and 3rd. party controllers to get wireless versions - and I'm satisfied for my $599.
In many cases, I've found this shareware program to be an excellent, inexpensive way to get drawings converted into other formats:
http://www.freefirestudio.com/cadconvert.htm
Yes, but if you follow some of the "rumor" sites, there's growing evidence that Apple is redoing the overall "look" of OS X and its related apps. They seem to be going for more of a "glossy black" look - and part of the change will likely include pulling the inconsistent styles of apps like iTunes, Mail and Safari together with the new appearance.
As they've been releasing 10.5 beta updates to developers, they've been simultaneously releasing even newer builds for internal use only. Why do that unless you have some UI changes you're trying to keep a secret? (Presumably, the developers are finding bugs and issues in the main code, and Apple is just implementing those on top of each "internal build" they release with the graphics appearance differences.)
Yep! I remember the HERO1 robot! When I was in grade school, I eyed one in a Heathkit catalog, and immediately wanted it. (I vaguely recall it selling for somewhere around the $7000-8000 price range in the early 80's?) I also recall that the arm on the top of it was sold as an option, costing a considerable amount extra.
e x.html) They STILL make it, apparently!
One guy I knew in grade school told me his brother's school actually purchased a HERO1 robot, and they learned to do some simple programming of it in one of their classes.
I also remember a competing product, the RB5X. (Found info on it here: http://www.robotswanted.com/robotgallery/rb5x/ind
One Xmas, my mom took me to a local department store called Goldie's (long since gone out of business), and they had an RB5X wheeling around the store, telling people "Merry Christmas!" and offering to take your picture with a Polaroid camera. I thought that was the coolest thing!
Despite all of these large, high-profile security breaches of late, you don't hear a whole lot about people who actually became victims of fraud right afterwards. I'm sure it's happening, but it seems to be in the "best interest" of practically everyone EXCEPT the consumers owning the info to sweep it under the rug. (EG. "No problem sir! Just mail back the form we send you, detailing all the charges you didn't actually make on your VISA, and we'll take care of it. A new card is on its way out to you right away.")
You'd think that at some point, just about everyone in the U.S. will need to put "fraud alerts" on their credit profiles!
As bad as it sounds, I think it's going to take real financial losses of an almost unmanageable sort for the lenders and credit agencies to say "Enough!" and find new ways to protect consumer info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive
This technology was recently promised as a way to help eliminate long boot-times for operating systems, and I think it's coming really soon, as a "stop gap" between traditional hard drives and entirely flash memory based drives.
Yeah... not to mention, anyone making something brand new can easily "shoot fish in a barrel" by pointing at a design that's years older, complaining it's "boring" or "unoriginal" by comparison.
Are the latest changes coming out for OS X Leopard "boring and unoriginal"? Heck, we don't even know about half of them yet!
Nonetheless, many of these "unoriginal" ideas are actually "conventions" adopted by all major OS's because there was some agreement that they were "best of breed" ways to illustrate or accomplish something. That's not always a "bad" thing!
The "depreciation" argument is somewhat compelling, but when it comes to computers and software, I think it's too simplistic. Yes, I.T. is always a "cost" for business. But many businesses have an I.T. dept. because they realize it's a cost that produces a net benefit for the business as a whole.
If leases were really as great a deal for people as they promise, few people would ever want to offer them. (What are the sellers doing with the off-lease items? Obviously, they've found ways to recoup the depreciation, and likely a little extra too.)
Sure, there are tasks for which farming out the app makes perfect sense. (EG. Internet search related tasks requiring a pre-existing large search engine's database.) But in examples like Microsoft Office, I don't see the sensibility in "leasing" at all. You add too many additional "points of failure" to what should be a straightforward application to run. A router goes out? You can't work on your documents. Your Internet provider has an outage? Same problem. You run into a need for a non-networked, stand-alone PC to do some spreadsheet or word processing tasks? Sorry, no can do. H.R. says they have sensitive documents they're required by law not to share with anyone? How are they going to feel about Microsoft hosting/storing all of those on *their* systems, and only accessible by H.R. as long as they keep paying their monthly or annual renewal fees?
I agree! Ever since I first heard Sun use that slogan, I thought it was dumb. If you ask me, "The Network is FOR the Computer" - and that's all there is to it!
All of these large corporations (IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc.) envision making a fortune by renting you your software (by serving it to you over the Internet). Like everything else in life though, you've got a LARGE number of folks who'd much rather own than rent. Renting has historically only made sense in the short-term, usually as a "stop gap" measure. You rent a car for a weekend trip, or because the car you own is in the shop for major repairs. You rent an apartment or house because you need someplace to stay, but you aren't in a position, financially, where you can buy a house yet. You likely rent furniture or appliances from a "rent a center" type of establishment because you want to live above your means, and don't have the patience to save up to buy it. So tell me again why I'd want to continuously RENT my applications rather then buy software licenses and install/run the stuff on my OWN equipment?
But if they started losing 9 out of every 10 letters you mailed, how long would you keep using them?
I've noticed that my AT&T/SBC/Yahoo email spam filter seems to be fairly effective at filtering out junk mail. However, sometimes messages slip through that seem much more "spam-like" in nature than some of the sneakier ones it catches.
That leads me to wonder... Does anyone know if their filter intelligently marks new, incoming mail as "spam" if it knows identical matches to it already exist in more than X number of user's junk mail folder on their servers?
Especially for a larger ISP, this would seem like one of the most effective methods of spam control. Let users mark mail as spam, and then block all future occurrences of the same message as spam for everyone else. Unfortunately, that seems to require the use of a web mail interface right now, but maybe they could develop little plug-ins for common mail clients like Outlook to do the same thing?
I'd agree with you to a point, but I think OS X *does* have a lot more room to advance, unlike Windows XP/Vista, and largely for the exact reason you're stating.
Mac OS X has added various "core" support extensions with each revision, (core audio, core video, core animation), which really means little to nothing to end-users, but caters squarely to developers. And features they added in 10.4 like Spotlight search functionality can be extended by applications too.
Right now, OS X needs to concentrate on OS revisions that make better/more flexible use of multiple processor cores - and it sounds like that's one item we'll get in 10.5 "Leopard".
But considering they've yet again linked to useless Dvorak drivel, I guess I'll comment on the topic.
John is treading in pretty "safe" territory with these comments. Vista really isn't exciting very many people. But at this point in the game, does it make any difference? Microsoft could release practically anything as a new OS update, and within 2-3 years, the majority of computer users will be running it - even if absolutely *none* of them voluntarily purchased it as an upgrade. As long as it comes preloaded on the vast majority of new computers purchased (and it does), they're keeping users on their migration path.
I just got out of a technical meeting at my workplace this morning, and one of our discussions topics was the I.T. budget for 2007. It was universally agreed (with very little debate) that there's nothing compelling about spending money to upgrade our computer hardware (all Pentium 4 class systems with between 512MB and 1GB of RAM). We also agreed that it would be wasteful to spend money upgrading to Vista in 2007, since we're currently on XP Pro and it does everything we need. In the case of Office 2007, the only reason we'd upgrade to it is in response to receiving too many documents from our customers that were created in Office '07. Until that happens, it's a total waste of money for us to move to it.
I can't see how many businesses out there would conclude otherwise? With the migration from Windows 2000 to XP, there were a few "drivers" that compelled people. One big one was better, more user-friendly wireless networking support. That, alone, made my laptop upgrade from 2000 to XP a big improvement. (You still can't even use WPA type wireless encryption in Win2K without 3rd. party software add-ons.)
But with Vista, you've got new toolbars and eye-candy (some of which costs extra in terms of higher-end gaphics hardware to make use of it), and apparently a more complicated and restrictive EULA to boot. The things that would have cost-justified the product, at least in the eyes of corporate customers, were largely canned (such as the initially promised "revolutionary new file system"), and instead, we get things like more restrictive DRM for digital music. This makes it an upgrade you're forced to accept, rather than one you *want*.
Yep... Even when you have people come in from a firm you *did* call for service, you have to keep a close eye on them.
I used to work for a mid-sized company that occasionally called different vendors in the Yellow Pages for printer service. (Our networked laser printers broke down too infrequently to justify a costly maintenance agreement on them, so we were a little better off just calling someone to fix them on a case-by-case basis.) One of the firms we called did a good job the first couple times we used them, but when we called them a 3rd. time, a different repair tech showed up. The office manager caught the guy snooping around in our supply closet, apparently trying to steal some of our toner cartridges and other printer/office supplies!