As a long-time eBayer myself (both buying and selling), I see several glaring flaws, and a few smaller nit-picks. In (basically) an order of importance, I'd say:
1. Fraud is *way* too high! In some categories, it's not really a big issue. But for customers shopping for higher-ticket, more desirable goods, it's a severe problem! If, for example, you're shopping for new Apple products (from iPods to Macbook Pros), you can find obviously fraudulent auctions practically EVERY time you do a search. Worse yet, there are a lot of not-so-obvious frauds out there. EG. I recently tried to buy a used iPod 20GB from a guy that appeared to own a used book-store of some sort. He claimed he had something like 50 used 20GB iPods for sale, as well as 40-something shuffles. By the look of the photos he displayed, it appeared he had used them as loaners for some kind of audio-book rental program his store ran, and these were just being auctioned off since they were older units. I placed a bid, as did many other people. But then the auction got terminated at the last minute, and his account was suspended for fraud.
2. Too costly to sell some items! If you're trying to use eBay for its intended original purpose (sort of a flea market or garage sale to "recycle" your stuff you'd otherwise throw away), the fees usually eat up all your profits. If, say, I want to auction off a broken CD player for spare parts value - I'm only going to realistcally get maybe $5 or so out of it. That would be fine, except if the buyer pays me via PayPal, PayPal (owned by eBay) gets a chunk. eBay charges me both the listing fee and a final value sale fee too. Not to mention, re-listing fees if the thing doesn't sell the first couple times I put it out there. (And on something like this, heck - it probably won't! It's just something you want to relist until you luck into finding that person who happens to need exactly what you've got.) If you make a small mistkae on estimating your shipping costs on top of that, you can easily end up paying someone to win your auction!
3. Too much abuse in the feedback system. I really like the idea someone else posted here, where a positive feedback (with no comment) would get posted by default after X number of days, unless someone made an effort to do otherwise. I'm tired of the people who email, begging for feedback, or getting upset that you're "taking too long" to get around to it. I'm tired of the retaliation stunts people pull, where leaving a legitimate negative feedback guarantees you'll get an undeserved one in return. And I'm tired of feedback comments only being 1 line long. (On a positive, what are they gonna type anyway? May as well make a macro that says "A++++ Would do business again!" It's always something like that.) You don't get enough space to explain the reason you're giving a negative either. It's hard not to just look like a jerk with only 80 chars. or less to explain yourself.
4. eBay stores are a joke. I looked into them once, for a former employer, and they were *so* unattractive an option for us compared to practically anyone else offering e-commerce web sites with shopping carts. They just look too much like the rest of their site. Sure, the items come up in everybody's regular auction searches - but so what? That's sort of like me starting my own line of new cars, and instead of building my own showrooms, I negotiate a deal with Chevy to sell mine in a portion of their showroom space. Yeah, I get a lot of "exposure" that way - but it still makes my business look "second rate" compared to Chevy. eBay stores look like someone just had a bunch of normal auction listings, and paid to get them put under a different "eBay stores" heading. You can't even really customize the presentation of your listings.
... to more than just a few commercial software developers, they're "the enemy" - simply because the OS is centered around the concept of encouraging contributions of free software to the community.
This "battle" goes on all the time, regardless of the platform being coded for, but Linux is rather unique in the fact that it gives sort of a centralized "scapegoat face" to the issue.
As just one example (from the Windows world), I was at work several weeks ago, and ran into a need to convert a really oddball image file format to something more typical like GIF or JPG. I located a shareware product selling for about $40 that was perfect.... but before paying out the money, I did a little more searching. Just as I was about to give up, I found a free product some guy wrote to solve the same problem at his work.
Now, realistically, who knows if the shareware author was even aware that someone else made a free product that competes with his? But if he did, don't you think he'd probably be at least a little bit annoyed, disappointed, or upset that somebody just cut into his potential revenue stream?
Now, take this to a corporate level... where you hire a whole team of developers to build a piece of software you're planning to get hundreds of dollars a copy for. Some unemployed software developer comes along and codes a Linux equivalent that's completely free, just because he wants the name recognition and the challenge of doing it. Some companies are going to see this and think Linux isn't their friend.
So what? That's traditionally been quite true, but it just proves that we're basically better off doing nothing than letting either party make changes! That's really a sad statement, when you think about it. Our *best bet* is letting opposing parties cancel each other out all the time?
I worked in an environment with the same issues you're describing. The VM route is riddled with the issues many other people here already pointed out - so we never even attempted to go down that path.
We did, however, try implementing Citrix with thin clients (we used Netiers at the time, made by Wyse). From a user's perspective, it generally worked quite well. BUT, from the admin's perspective, I don't think it was a very good solution.
Here's the thing. First off, thin clients have hidden costs. Despite the claims of great reliability, they're still little more than a small form-factor PC with flash memory and stripped of "extras" like hard drives. They can and do fail (defective flash memory is a common problem), and unlike a standard PC, they're hard to get replacement parts for. They tend to have proprietary power adapters, instead of something like an industry-standard ATX power supply. If they include a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, it's a laptop-style drive that costs more and is more effort to get replaced.
Secondly, Citrix licensing is *very* expensive, and the hardware requirements on the server side aren't minor. You typically need a whole "farm" of Citrix servers load-balancing the connections (unless you have, say, 25 users or less), and there's a lot of administration hassle that Citrix brings. It's prone to "blue screen of death" server crashes if you install an unsupported printer driver and someone sends a print job to it. (Most all-in-one HP OfficeJet type printers aren't supported in Windows Server environments at all - making those useless in Citrix.) Roaming profiles occasionally get corrupted, and then you're stuck hunting down and repairing the corruption on every server in the farm that the user might log onto.
Finally, your more advanced "power users" will loathe the thin clients, and the realization that "control" has been taken away from them at the workstation level. There are a number of apps that just aren't appropriate for a Citrix environment, such as AutoCAD and other CAD/CAM packages. Many businesses find they end up having to roll out thin clients for only some users, and still maintain full PC workstations for others.
Given all of that, my recommendation (and what works great for me in my current job) is keeping the full-blown Windows PCs for everybody, but setting up a Ghost imaging server using Ghost Corporate edition. On a staggered basis, it makes images of the hard drives of all the PCs in the company. If a computer crashes or someone gets it all screwed up, I can remotely blast a replacement image back out to it within 20 minutes or less.
Sure, you might have some initial extra work to do if you change hardware around and don't have a suitable image for the new hardware. But so what? Just build the new system configuration once and image it. Then blast that new image to the rest of the similar PCs and go from there.
I see a few comments already from people defending Caps-Lock for reasons such as having a requirement of keying large amounts of data in upper-case only for business systems. (Yes, there are still a lot of "legacy" databases out there that allow people to enter a person's name or street address in upper or lower-case, but subsequent searches are case-sensitive. Therefore, the data entry folks are asked to enter everything in caps to avoid issues.)
While I'd rather see this addressed as a software change, I realize that's not always going to happen. Still, the fact that something like this is becoming the best argument available for a Caps-Lock key illustrates the overall lack of usefulness of it.
I would never suggest that it's somehow an "advantage" to completely eliminate a feature. So I don't advocate removal of a Caps-Lock option. I like the idea of standardizing on moving it to another place. Heck - I'm not even sure it needs to be another typable "key". What about a toggle switch or push-button in the corner of the keyboard someplace where it won't accidently get hit?
Ok... but that policy seems a bit counter-productive for Apple, because buyers always have the ability to return a product within 30 days. (I realize Apple charges a restocking fee in many cases, but with the PowerMacs in the past, they were waiving that. So a user discovering he/she bought it a week too early to qualify could just return the whole thing, and buy it again, getting the newer OS and causing Apple more hassle than it's worth.)
Apple, to the best of my knowledge, has been offering upgrades to OS X for anyone who purchased a new Mac within 30 days before a new OS's release. Typically, they even go to some effort to make sure your newly purchased Mac does, indeed, have the latest OS X version in the box with it. (When I bought my G5 tower, Panther was just announced. Of course, the G5 towers in stock all still had Jaguar bundled with them, so the Apple Stores were slipping Panther install kits in all the boxes before they went out the door.)
But yeah, I don't think there's any other specific "upgrade price plan" for users wanting 10.5. If you're soon to be in the market for a new Mac, it's not a bad deal to just wait and get 10.5 bundled with it. (A lot of people bought Mac Minis right after Tiger started coming bundled with them for that same reason. It wasn't a very expensive computer in the first place, and looked like an even better value if you were otherwise going to go out and spend $129 for a Tiger install DVD.)
Sure, it's great if you can live without credit and get by.... But I occasionally run into someone just like yourself, preaching that the "rest of us" need to stop using credit and achieve "financial freedom" (or some variation on that theme). EG. One of my former bosses that I do some computer work for got that same lecture from his bookkeeper a few months ago. (He was upset that a few incorrect things on his credit report, plus an ex-employee mishandling some bills caused his credit score to drop too low to get a home loan he was seeking for a new investment property.)
I didn't get in the middle of that particular argument -- but if it was me, I would have told the bookkeeper to shut her trap. The fact is, she was only able to live "credit/debt free" because her husband happened to have a really good paying job - and her salary was just "play money" for them.
Credit scores *are* important, if only because a smart individual has more options with a good credit score. Credit is simply a tool, and it can be used well or improperly. But without a decent credit score, you've lost access to that "tool" completely.
People like my former boss leverage their credit to make purchases that help them generate positive cash flow. (He rents out houses after buying them when he sees a good deal on one.)
In circumstances like your ordeal with BellSouth, I can sympathize - except it's a smarter thing to attack the problem directly, rather than just ignore it and let them damage your credit. If you didn't sign their agreement, you have a great lawsuit right there. Force them to produce the paperwork in court, or else they have to release you from the contract (and you could probably claim damages too, and recoup some of those lossses from the lost business due to their errors!).
I think you misinterpret "financial freedom" to an extent.... I'd say financial freedom is the ability to buy anything you want or need, when you want or need it. If you're a Bill Gates, you're there already and the "credit tool" is irrelevant. But most of us don't have that kind of cash in the bank.
I can't name a single one of my friends in their late 20's through mid 30's who has purchased a music CD at a retail store in the last year or two. It's not so much that people are "getting smart about not buying from companies they don't support". With today's mergers, it's practically a full-time job just trying to research that! (EG. Last time I bought a car stereo, I remember thinking "I don't support a lot of Sony's business practices. I'll try to avoid buying any of their products." I ended up with an inexpensive Aiwa MP3 playing car stereo. Shortly afterwards, one of my buddies said "Oh yeah, Aiwas are a pretty good deal. They're really just a subsidiary of Sony, you know!")
Rather, it's the "free market" at work, plain and simple. The record companies aren't offering a product with enough value for the dollar, especially as people's needs change. My primary source of pre-recorded music is now my Apple iPod (with Pioneer car stereo adapter in my car, and DLO "homedock" to attach it to my home stereo). Buying music on audio CD isn't even a matter of getting it in a "ready to use" format for me anymore! I have to "rip" it first to MP3s. And of course, I never liked buying songs I wasn't fond of, just to get 2 or 3 songs I did want on a given album. And with online music purchasing or even p2p downloading, these limitations no longer apply either.
I wouldn't be so quick to claim that it's just a "blip". I have a new Macbook Pro myself, and while my power adapter hasn't been an issue at all yet, I still feel like it's a possible "weak spot" in an otherwise teriffic notebook computer. Yes, the wire is thicker than before - but it was horribly thin before now, on the Powerbooks. It's still nowhere near as thick as the power adapter wire I've seen on many other recently-built laptops. (I just worked on an HP Presario 17" notebook this morning, and while the adapter itself was quite a brick - the cabling from it to the laptop was easily 3x as thick as what Apple uses, and the connector on the end seemed to be of a good, sturdy design too.) Nowhere near the "cool factor" of the mag-safe adapter technology -- but also made so it would come loose from the jack fairly easily if tugged on. Furthermore, it plugged into the back of the notebook - not the side. I think the side is a terrible place to plug in AC power because when people sit indian-style and put the computer in their lap, their legs tend to put upward pressure on the connectors.
There was already a report or two of people with mag-safe type adapters having problems with them shorting and the mag-safe's plastic housing completely melting. (The photos I saw of one of these looked like the wire started pulling loose from the mag-safe connector itself, causing the short.) Did they abuse their adapter in some fashion? Well yeah - quite likely they did. But I don't think they did anything extreme like trying to glue it into the laptop either. IMHO, quality products should be designed to withstand a degree of abuse, as well as careful, regular use. It's not a perfect world out there and people will encounter such things as small kids tugging on cables or pets chewing on cords. It really doesn't cost THAT much more to make cabling a little bit more resistant to these mishaps.
Personally, I think the whole concept might need an advertising boost to give it some more "cool factor" with the general public. I know here in St. Louis, MO - we've got a couple really good and successful LAN gaming events that happen on a regular basis (EG. Laclede's LAN), and people pay upwards of $20 per person entry fees to play all night at them in many cases. (And you've got to remember, you have to haul all your own equipment to these things, and tear it all back down when you leave, too.) So certainly, there are some people out there willing to spend a little money on this as a form of weekend entertainment.
The problem is, you need to draw in a lot more than the 200 or so "regulars" who attend LAN gaming parties like these.... Otherwise, you just won't be able to make it.
How many additional customers can you attract, even if you do supply all the hardware and software? I'm not sure. I think quite a few, if you could get local radio stations to promote it with live remotes and giveaways, get the big gaming stores to let you put stacks of flyers (with discount coupons of some sort, probably) on their counters, and so on.
We've had a few cyber/gaming cafes here that ran for a year or two, lost a bunch of money, and closed up. But I never saw one do squat for advertising beyond "word of mouth". Furthermore, they were always in rather bad parts of the city - so it was common to see some drugged-out bum sitting up against a wall in the winter months and so on. Not really the clientele you want to draw in.
Personally, I don't think a shopping mall setting would do much for me either, though. That just feels a little too commercialized and "stagnant". For starters, a mall is going to close no later than what, 9PM? And this type of place needs to provide late night entertainment, at least on weekends. I think this would do best near a college or university, in a stand-alone building (so a lot of noise wouldn't bother other tenants), in a somewhat affluent neighborhood.
If I had mod points handy, I would have modded you up. I totally agree. I have a Macbook Pro and I can't really imagine the lack of a 64-bit Core2 CPU being a big impediment to its usefulness.
For starters, you can't put more than 2GB of RAM, total, in one of these right now due to motherboard design limitations - so people talking about 64-bit CPUs allowing better use of large chunks of memory seems like a non-issue for this particular machine.
Even if I was all concerned about making "full use" of OS X Leopard and its 64 bit support, I'd be better off waiting until after it comes out, and selling my Macbook Pro then to get credit towards a newer 64-bit capable model, because then it would include a copy of Leopard in the box with it. In the meantime, I've gotten nearly a full year of use out of the Macbook Pro I have - instead of waiting around for a Core2 Duo version of it!
I, too, knew a few short, nerdy kids who did ok in school because they were nice to everyone. But that doesn't guarantee anything. I also remember several like that who got constantly picked on anyway. Maybe it was something as simple as them being cursed with a "squeaky" sounding voice, or kids discovering some of their hobbies/interests were just too tempting to poke fun at?
Growing up, I was picked on all though gradeschool and much of high-school too. In my case, it was mostly because I sucked at competitive sports and consequently, didn't care much for playing them. When you're constantly attacked by your peers, you have to find coping mechanisms that help you convince yourself you're not "all bad/hopeless/worthless". Having an above-average IQ can be one of them. I don't fault the original poster for bringing up his IQ at all. It's part of the overall picture. (People can get picked on for being too "slow" too. At least we're clear that wasn't this guy's particular problem.)
And actually, you know what bugs me? People who dislike intelligence when they see it, just out of pure jealousy. I once ran into a guy who came up to my face and told me he hated me. I was totally confused. I never recalled saying or doing anyting that would have upset him. He was just one of the guys a bunch of us hung out with on weekends. I knew his girlfriend and she was friendly enough... but I never tried to hit on her or anything. So, totally puzzled, I asked him why? He told me it was because I was "too f*cking smart" and people like me just pissed him off.
I think you've missed the point here. Yes, I agree that if an OS offers a useful function, it would be silly for competitors to downplay and ignore it just because they didn't come up with it first.
But here, we're talking about Microsoft, the company with a much bigger budget to spend on R&D, literally sitting back and waiting for Apple to do something innovative. Then they order their developers to implement it, if it looks like it works out well and users like it!
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Apple is taking bigger chances and putting things out there (instead of just talking about them). When they do see a feature from Windows they like but don't yet have, they generally *improve* on it and put a flashier, friendlier version in their next OS release. (EG. XP had multi-user fast switching first. Apple took it further, making it switch users with the cool rotating 3D cube effect, and let users with iSight cameras take their own photos to directly use as their user icons.)
I *completely* disagree. Yes, many people are going with laptops as their new computer purchases, but many of those people ALSO still own a desktop machine. The occasional person I run across who only has a laptop usually uses it for a specific business-related purpose (traveling salesperson for example, or insurance auditor), so they were never part of the audience for gaming to begin with.
Just because Intel includes cheap, low-end video on their motherboards doesn't mean the majority of folks are "perfectly satisfied" with that. Rather, it means the cost of including it has gotten so low, it may as well be thrown in. People interested in better performance/better graphics quality will always purchase video cards for their desktop PCs.
And even laptops are starting to include much better video options (within their power/heat limitations). The Macbook Pro has an ATI Radeon x series chipset with up to 256MB of video RAM on it. That's a far cry from Intel's integrated video!
The next generation of consoles look like they're generally going to include big price-hikes, too. (PS3 coming in at around $1000 by the time you buy the accessories you'd want for it!?) So all the talk of PC gaming dying because of consoles seems like nonsense to me too. People are going to have to "pay to play" if they want the latest technologies - regardless of platform.
Initially, this announcement surprised me and worried me a bit. I think I tend to agree that in reality, it would have little impact on the way most Mac users use MS Office. I, too, work in a smallish company (a little over 50 computer-using employees here, but they're critical to our daily operations), and I doubt a single user even knows anything about editing a VB macro in Excel. We probably have a few misc. spreadsheets that *do* rely on some VB code to work properly - but these would be special-purpose spreadsheets coded by one of our previous systems administrators, or an outside consultant. These would typically be for the purpose of importing data coming from a proprietary Windows app. and presenting it to the user as a report.
These, quite frankly, aren't the types of things that would prevent something like a migration to Apple Macs, should we consider that option in the future. Rather, they'd be headaches that would only rear their heads long after we completed a switch, and would have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. (The fact that I, as our current sysadmin, can't even tell you for sure which spreadsheets these might be should be an indicator of how high these are on our scale of importance!)
The bad part is, especially in larger companies, purchases get denied or put on hold for long periods of time over FUD like this. Some manager of MIS or purchasing hears the news in a trade journal, "Apple to drop VB scripting support in Office 2007!" and panics. "Who knows what problems THAT might cause us!? That's not acceptable. We need 100% compatibility."
Apparently, you haven't been reading all of the comments people already posted in response to this story. Many people have already pointed out the fact that police officers, given the power we grant them in the line of duty, should NOT expect to have the same level of privacy that they'd be entitled to when they're off-duty. It's just like the laws governing the filming of celebrities without their permission. People "in the public eye" have a reduced expectation of privacy because their career choice involves a great deal of public exposure.
Furthermore, most states in the U.S. recognize the concept of "at will employment". If you accept a job in the private sector, your employment is a contract between you and your employer. *Either* one of you reserves the right to terminate the employment contract at any time, for any reason. (EG. Giving "2 weeks' notice" might be the courteous thing to do, but you're under no obligation to do so. You can, if you so choose, wait until the busiest day of the year for your employer, when they're absolutely counting on you to finish your portion of some critically important project, and say "I quit!" and walk out the door, costing them untold amounts of money and problems. By the same token, your employer can fire you "at will", without requirement of so much as giving a reason at all for doing so!)
As we all know, we really put a stop to those illegal drug sales by going after the "heads of the snakes" there. Wanna-be drug users just can't find someone willing to supply them anymore, most of the time!
Oh, wait....
I get the logic, but there's a fundamental flaw. You can't effectively stop the masses from breaking an arbitrary restriction placed on an activity if the masses feel what they're doing is justified.
If LimeWire shuts down tomorrow, a programmer will be out there coding the next replacement for it - only with additional protections to make it harder than before to track the source of the traffic. Shut that down, and another will pop up, and another, and.....
If it finally proves not too effective to do p2p sharing at all, due to the "law" constantly putting a stop to it - people will resort to more "guerrila" tactics (as they've already done many times before). Things can be uploaded with non-obvious filenames and folder names, to random servers (or even web or ftp sites that passwords were hacked on in advance) - and private message forums can provide the short-lived and always rotating links to them.
VPN tunnels can be set up from point to point between trusted parties and files interchanged on their makeshift WANs.
Individuals can offer files through their IM clients.
Of course, Usenet is utilized too, and it doesn't seem practical to successfully put a stop to it.
People might even wish to set up email list servers that distribute attached files to those who know the secret commands to email to get signed up and request them.
Don't forget all the other alternatives, such as running telnet-based BBS software. (Kind of a "retro" solution, but like opting to run Windows 3.1 to use the Internet on your PC and thereby dodging almost all the trojan horse spyware, might be effective through obscurity, at least for a while.)
Huh? I never really got the idea that most people in I.T. went down the self-employment road out of choice, so much as out of desperation!
At least here in the midwest, that's what I've seen, time and time again. Someone with specific talents in an area of I.T. gets laid off from a good-paying job with a large-ish firm, can't find another job in a reasonable time-frame, so they finally decide to venture out on their own.
For example, before my current job, I worked for a couple years for a guy's start-up business doing computer "house-calls". (He had a number of business contracts, largely forged from a lucky break. One of his residential customers turned out to have lots of influence over people in her church, which was in a well-to-do part of town. All the business owners who went to that church started using him for their computer needs.) Anyway - before he started that business up, he spent years as a software developer for IBM. But as we all know, IBM has done a few rounds of "cutbacks" since the dot-com days, and he was a casualty. Luckily for him, he apparently received enough severance pay to invest in his new company.
As for the trend of creating new web content/services, I've seen more crestivity lately than I remember seeing at the height of the "boom". In the 90's, the "great new ideas" were usually just poor attempts to market something via the net instead of "brick and mortar" retail, and it often made no sense to the buyer. (Buy your dog food online? Why?! So you can pay all that shipping and your dog's still stuck with no food for a couple days until the bag arrives? Buy your clothing online, where you can't even try it on to see if it fits first?)
I can't speak for the state of "investors" right now, but I'd think the current offerings bear a much closer look than the silly things they funded in the past!
My own personal "short list" would probably include:
www.meebo.com (These guys have a great litle idea here. Build IM into a web page.)
www.mozy.com (Lots of people want Internet-based backup solutions, but this one looks more promising than most I've seen - and they let you use the basics for FREE.)
www.zoho.com (Haven't looked at this one too closely yet, but it might really fill a niche for small offices. There's often a need for a business owner, his/her receptionist, and several employees to have access to shared calendars and resources for appointment scheduling and so on. Right now, options like MS Exchange and Outlook are overpriced/overkill for it, and it's better to be able to access the data from anywhere, regardless of the apps installed on a given machine.)
If it were my job on the line, I would *hope* I had the foresight to realize that my days working for AOL were going to be numbered. I'm not saying it's a good thing more tech. jobs are being lost in America -- but the majority of these were "bottom of the barrel" jobs doing phone support and sales. It's really only a couple steps above the "bad old days" of telemarketing. Most of 'em are still reading off of scripts, and don't really know much about what they're trying to sell/sign people up for.
I can't say for sure, but I think it's a good guess to say the more skilled people doing systems administration or coding for AOL probably got transferred to other places in the company.
Despite all the AOL bashing, a considerable amount of work had to go into the constant refinements and updates to their interface. I remember when AOL didn't even know how to do a decent job of handling a broadband connection vs. dial-up, and when many types of email attachments weren't handled properly at all. In the latest version, it's obvious they put a lot of work into improving those areas, among many others. That stuff doesn't just code itself.
I do have a question about the Dallas, TX area. One of my friends grew up in Dallas and had nothing but praise for the area. (He lives in St. Louis, Missouri now - and I think inserts a comparison to Dallas at least every other time I talk to him.)
I really never got a chance to spend any time down there until I was sent to some training in Carrolton, TX one week. (This was around 1999-2000.) I tried to drive around and get as much of a "feel" for what it was like to live there as possible, as opposed to just holing up in the motel.
My impression was, the whole area was really void of "culture". Sure, they had a big Hispanic district - but that seemed to be treated as sort of the "ghetto" part of town. Mostly, it was an expanse of highways with chunks of unused, open space between exit ramps - and packed with commercial buildings and retail chain type establishments off the exits. I saw a lot of upscale suburban subdivisions, but they looked pretty "cookie-cutter" to me. Lots of neat little lawns, all in a row, and so forth. If you wanted to do a lot of shopping, it seemed like an *awesome* place to be. There were huge shopping malls and outlets everywhere, willing to sell you anything you could think of. (I fond an amazing video rental store that looked like the size of a WalMart but was just filled with rows and rows of videos and music CDs. Everything was labeled with 2 prices - a rental price and a sale price if you wanted to buy it.) But on the other hand, I went on a quest to find a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and all I found was some lame place in a strip mall that looked like they just took over a 7-11.
Was I just missing something, or does that pretty much sum up the area? I don't think I'd care to live in a place quite that "commercialized".
The original poster has the worst anti-Mac sentiment I've read in years!
Let's look at some facts, shall we?
1. Apple as cut-throat corporation (just like MS, you say?). I can't say I agree. For starters, say you need several copies of your OS for 4 or 5 computers your family owns and uses. Microsoft's way? Buy one for each PC, or buy a PC pre-loaded with our OS, and we'll keep tabs on you with our "genuine advantage" system to make sure you comply! Apple's way? Buy a discounted "family pack" of OS X, legal to install on up to 5 Macs! No phoning-home by the OS or need to call in for a new CD key code if you change your hardware around too much. For that matter, have you ever called in to Apple for technical help before? It's a *vastly* more pleasant experience, on the whole, than practically any other computer company offers today. Last time I dealt with HP or Dell, I was on hold upwards of 30 minutes before I even got to speak with a human! With Apple, never had a hold time over about 5 mins.
2. Macs trouble-free? Well, no - this is obviously just marketing at work. But computers have been around long enough that by now, most people should realize this as the exaggeration it is. What they want you to get from the marketing-speak is the idea that Macs *generally* give a user less headache. I'd say that much is quite true! I've done countless on-site service calls on PCs that "got real slow and started crashing on me all the time" or "starting popping up these weird errors". Ended up being huge messes of trojan horse viruses and spyware. Never had that YET on a Mac. I can also say that many commonly performed tasks are made easier on a Mac with the included applications than on a PC with its included set of apps. EG. Need to email somebody a photo? In Windows, you better know what you're doing to resize that picture that just came off your 8 megapixel camera, or the recipient might not even have enough email storage quota to receive the thing! On the Mac's "Mail" app, the user is asked as soon as he/she drags/drops in a photo if they'd like it resized small, medium or large (original size).
3. Even Microsoft likes the Mac! Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is their most profitable unit, when you factor in the cost they incur running it vs. profit it makes for them! MS Office was initially written not for Windows PCs, but for Macs! So if you simply take a stance that "If Microsoft likes it, it's BAD!" - then I guess you have to stick to using something like Linux. But if you're like most normal people, you realize that Apple is just a business trying to make money, like all others, and what they're offering isn't too shabby.
Interesting, because I ran into that too, in one company I worked at. It was pretty well understood that in order for things to work, *somebody* had to have access to everything. Otherwise, it wasn't going to get backed-up, organized in proper directories, and so forth. So I.T. was "off the hook" for any real hassles there. BUT - they were VERY concerned about salespeople accidently seeing things they shouldn't see, or possibly uploading corporate info to other sources.
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As a long-time eBayer myself (both buying and selling), I see several glaring flaws, and a few smaller nit-picks. In (basically) an order of importance, I'd say:
1. Fraud is *way* too high! In some categories, it's not really a big issue. But for customers shopping for higher-ticket, more desirable goods, it's a severe problem! If, for example, you're shopping for new Apple products (from iPods to Macbook Pros), you can find obviously fraudulent auctions practically EVERY time you do a search. Worse yet, there are a lot of not-so-obvious frauds out there. EG. I recently tried to buy a used iPod 20GB from a guy that appeared to own a used book-store of some sort. He claimed he had something like 50 used 20GB iPods for sale, as well as 40-something shuffles. By the look of the photos he displayed, it appeared he had used them as loaners for some kind of audio-book rental program his store ran, and these were just being auctioned off since they were older units. I placed a bid, as did many other people. But then the auction got terminated at the last minute, and his account was suspended for fraud.
2. Too costly to sell some items! If you're trying to use eBay for its intended original purpose (sort of a flea market or garage sale to "recycle" your stuff you'd otherwise throw away), the fees usually eat up all your profits. If, say, I want to auction off a broken CD player for spare parts value - I'm only going to realistcally get maybe $5 or so out of it. That would be fine, except if the buyer pays me via PayPal, PayPal (owned by eBay) gets a chunk. eBay charges me both the listing fee and a final value sale fee too. Not to mention, re-listing fees if the thing doesn't sell the first couple times I put it out there. (And on something like this, heck - it probably won't! It's just something you want to relist until you luck into finding that person who happens to need exactly what you've got.) If you make a small mistkae on estimating your shipping costs on top of that, you can easily end up paying someone to win your auction!
3. Too much abuse in the feedback system. I really like the idea someone else posted here, where a positive feedback (with no comment) would get posted by default after X number of days, unless someone made an effort to do otherwise. I'm tired of the people who email, begging for feedback, or getting upset that you're "taking too long" to get around to it. I'm tired of the retaliation stunts people pull, where leaving a legitimate negative feedback guarantees you'll get an undeserved one in return. And I'm tired of feedback comments only being 1 line long. (On a positive, what are they gonna type anyway? May as well make a macro that says "A++++ Would do business again!" It's always something like that.) You don't get enough space to explain the reason you're giving a negative either. It's hard not to just look like a jerk with only 80 chars. or less to explain yourself.
4. eBay stores are a joke. I looked into them once, for a former employer, and they were *so* unattractive an option for us compared to practically anyone else offering e-commerce web sites with shopping carts. They just look too much like the rest of their site. Sure, the items come up in everybody's regular auction searches - but so what? That's sort of like me starting my own line of new cars, and instead of building my own showrooms, I negotiate a deal with Chevy to sell mine in a portion of their showroom space. Yeah, I get a lot of "exposure" that way - but it still makes my business look "second rate" compared to Chevy. eBay stores look like someone just had a bunch of normal auction listings, and paid to get them put under a different "eBay stores" heading. You can't even really customize the presentation of your listings.
... to more than just a few commercial software developers, they're "the enemy" - simply because the OS is centered around the concept of encouraging contributions of free software to the community.
... where you hire a whole team of developers to build a piece of software you're planning to get hundreds of dollars a copy for. Some unemployed software developer comes along and codes a Linux equivalent that's completely free, just because he wants the name recognition and the challenge of doing it. Some companies are going to see this and think Linux isn't their friend.
This "battle" goes on all the time, regardless of the platform being coded for, but Linux is rather unique in the fact that it gives sort of a centralized "scapegoat face" to the issue.
As just one example (from the Windows world), I was at work several weeks ago, and ran into a need to convert a really oddball image file format to something more typical like GIF or JPG. I located a shareware product selling for about $40 that was perfect.... but before paying out the money, I did a little more searching. Just as I was about to give up, I found a free product some guy wrote to solve the same problem at his work.
Now, realistically, who knows if the shareware author was even aware that someone else made a free product that competes with his? But if he did, don't you think he'd probably be at least a little bit annoyed, disappointed, or upset that somebody just cut into his potential revenue stream?
Now, take this to a corporate level
So what? That's traditionally been quite true, but it just proves that we're basically better off doing nothing than letting either party make changes! That's really a sad statement, when you think about it. Our *best bet* is letting opposing parties cancel each other out all the time?
Please, someday, let the L.P. gain some traction!
I worked in an environment with the same issues you're describing. The VM route is riddled with the issues many other people here already pointed out - so we never even attempted to go down that path.
We did, however, try implementing Citrix with thin clients (we used Netiers at the time, made by Wyse). From a user's perspective, it generally worked quite well. BUT, from the admin's perspective, I don't think it was a very good solution.
Here's the thing. First off, thin clients have hidden costs. Despite the claims of great reliability, they're still little more than a small form-factor PC with flash memory and stripped of "extras" like hard drives. They can and do fail (defective flash memory is a common problem), and unlike a standard PC, they're hard to get replacement parts for. They tend to have proprietary power adapters, instead of something like an industry-standard ATX power supply. If they include a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, it's a laptop-style drive that costs more and is more effort to get replaced.
Secondly, Citrix licensing is *very* expensive, and the hardware requirements on the server side aren't minor. You typically need a whole "farm" of Citrix servers load-balancing the connections (unless you have, say, 25 users or less), and there's a lot of administration hassle that Citrix brings. It's prone to "blue screen of death" server crashes if you install an unsupported printer driver and someone sends a print job to it. (Most all-in-one HP OfficeJet type printers aren't supported in Windows Server environments at all - making those useless in Citrix.) Roaming profiles occasionally get corrupted, and then you're stuck hunting down and repairing the corruption on every server in the farm that the user might log onto.
Finally, your more advanced "power users" will loathe the thin clients, and the realization that "control" has been taken away from them at the workstation level. There are a number of apps that just aren't appropriate for a Citrix environment, such as AutoCAD and other CAD/CAM packages. Many businesses find they end up having to roll out thin clients for only some users, and still maintain full PC workstations for others.
Given all of that, my recommendation (and what works great for me in my current job) is keeping the full-blown Windows PCs for everybody, but setting up a Ghost imaging server using Ghost Corporate edition. On a staggered basis, it makes images of the hard drives of all the PCs in the company. If a computer crashes or someone gets it all screwed up, I can remotely blast a replacement image back out to it within 20 minutes or less.
Sure, you might have some initial extra work to do if you change hardware around and don't have a suitable image for the new hardware. But so what? Just build the new system configuration once and image it. Then blast that new image to the rest of the similar PCs and go from there.
Yes, this *is* progress. How much control did you ever have over which particular videos you wanted to see at a given time on MTV?
Did you want to view one over again a second time, perhaps? Nice to be able to do so without having to catch it on tape first.
Well, if you buy your Mac from a local CompUSA store, it appears to be a 21 day return policy, as noted on their web site here:
http://www.compusa.com/terms.asp#in-store
I see a few comments already from people defending Caps-Lock for reasons such as having a requirement of keying large amounts of data in upper-case only for business systems. (Yes, there are still a lot of "legacy" databases out there that allow people to enter a person's name or street address in upper or lower-case, but subsequent searches are case-sensitive. Therefore, the data entry folks are asked to enter everything in caps to avoid issues.)
While I'd rather see this addressed as a software change, I realize that's not always going to happen. Still, the fact that something like this is becoming the best argument available for a Caps-Lock key illustrates the overall lack of usefulness of it.
I would never suggest that it's somehow an "advantage" to completely eliminate a feature. So I don't advocate removal of a Caps-Lock option. I like the idea of standardizing on moving it to another place. Heck - I'm not even sure it needs to be another typable "key". What about a toggle switch or push-button in the corner of the keyboard someplace where it won't accidently get hit?
Ok... but that policy seems a bit counter-productive for Apple, because buyers always have the ability to return a product within 30 days. (I realize Apple charges a restocking fee in many cases, but with the PowerMacs in the past, they were waiving that. So a user discovering he/she bought it a week too early to qualify could just return the whole thing, and buy it again, getting the newer OS and causing Apple more hassle than it's worth.)
Apple, to the best of my knowledge, has been offering upgrades to OS X for anyone who purchased a new Mac within 30 days before a new OS's release. Typically, they even go to some effort to make sure your newly purchased Mac does, indeed, have the latest OS X version in the box with it. (When I bought my G5 tower, Panther was just announced. Of course, the G5 towers in stock all still had Jaguar bundled with them, so the Apple Stores were slipping Panther install kits in all the boxes before they went out the door.)
But yeah, I don't think there's any other specific "upgrade price plan" for users wanting 10.5. If you're soon to be in the market for a new Mac, it's not a bad deal to just wait and get 10.5 bundled with it. (A lot of people bought Mac Minis right after Tiger started coming bundled with them for that same reason. It wasn't a very expensive computer in the first place, and looked like an even better value if you were otherwise going to go out and spend $129 for a Tiger install DVD.)
Sure, it's great if you can live without credit and get by.... But I occasionally run into someone just like yourself, preaching that the "rest of us" need to stop using credit and achieve "financial freedom" (or some variation on that theme). EG. One of my former bosses that I do some computer work for got that same lecture from his bookkeeper a few months ago. (He was upset that a few incorrect things on his credit report, plus an ex-employee mishandling some bills caused his credit score to drop too low to get a home loan he was seeking for a new investment property.)
I didn't get in the middle of that particular argument -- but if it was me, I would have told the bookkeeper to shut her trap. The fact is, she was only able to live "credit/debt free" because her husband happened to have a really good paying job - and her salary was just "play money" for them.
Credit scores *are* important, if only because a smart individual has more options with a good credit score. Credit is simply a tool, and it can be used well or improperly. But without a decent credit score, you've lost access to that "tool" completely.
People like my former boss leverage their credit to make purchases that help them generate positive cash flow. (He rents out houses after buying them when he sees a good deal on one.)
In circumstances like your ordeal with BellSouth, I can sympathize - except it's a smarter thing to attack the problem directly, rather than just ignore it and let them damage your credit. If you didn't sign their agreement, you have a great lawsuit right there. Force them to produce the paperwork in court, or else they have to release you from the contract (and you could probably claim damages too, and recoup some of those lossses from the lost business due to their errors!).
I think you misinterpret "financial freedom" to an extent.... I'd say financial freedom is the ability to buy anything you want or need, when you want or need it. If you're a Bill Gates, you're there already and the "credit tool" is irrelevant. But most of us don't have that kind of cash in the bank.
I can't name a single one of my friends in their late 20's through mid 30's who has purchased a music CD at a retail store in the last year or two. It's not so much that people are "getting smart about not buying from companies they don't support". With today's mergers, it's practically a full-time job just trying to research that! (EG. Last time I bought a car stereo, I remember thinking "I don't support a lot of Sony's business practices. I'll try to avoid buying any of their products." I ended up with an inexpensive Aiwa MP3 playing car stereo. Shortly afterwards, one of my buddies said "Oh yeah, Aiwas are a pretty good deal. They're really just a subsidiary of Sony, you know!")
Rather, it's the "free market" at work, plain and simple. The record companies aren't offering a product with enough value for the dollar, especially as people's needs change. My primary source of pre-recorded music is now my Apple iPod (with Pioneer car stereo adapter in my car, and DLO "homedock" to attach it to my home stereo). Buying music on audio CD isn't even a matter of getting it in a "ready to use" format for me anymore! I have to "rip" it first to MP3s. And of course, I never liked buying songs I wasn't fond of, just to get 2 or 3 songs I did want on a given album. And with online music purchasing or even p2p downloading, these limitations no longer apply either.
I wouldn't be so quick to claim that it's just a "blip". I have a new Macbook Pro myself, and while my power adapter hasn't been an issue at all yet, I still feel like it's a possible "weak spot" in an otherwise teriffic notebook computer. Yes, the wire is thicker than before - but it was horribly thin before now, on the Powerbooks. It's still nowhere near as thick as the power adapter wire I've seen on many other recently-built laptops. (I just worked on an HP Presario 17" notebook this morning, and while the adapter itself was quite a brick - the cabling from it to the laptop was easily 3x as thick as what Apple uses, and the connector on the end seemed to be of a good, sturdy design too.) Nowhere near the "cool factor" of the mag-safe adapter technology -- but also made so it would come loose from the jack fairly easily if tugged on. Furthermore, it plugged into the back of the notebook - not the side. I think the side is a terrible place to plug in AC power because when people sit indian-style and put the computer in their lap, their legs tend to put upward pressure on the connectors.
There was already a report or two of people with mag-safe type adapters having problems with them shorting and the mag-safe's plastic housing completely melting. (The photos I saw of one of these looked like the wire started pulling loose from the mag-safe connector itself, causing the short.) Did they abuse their adapter in some fashion? Well yeah - quite likely they did. But I don't think they did anything extreme like trying to glue it into the laptop either. IMHO, quality products should be designed to withstand a degree of abuse, as well as careful, regular use. It's not a perfect world out there and people will encounter such things as small kids tugging on cables or pets chewing on cords. It really doesn't cost THAT much more to make cabling a little bit more resistant to these mishaps.
Personally, I think the whole concept might need an advertising boost to give it some more "cool factor" with the general public. I know here in St. Louis, MO - we've got a couple really good and successful LAN gaming events that happen on a regular basis (EG. Laclede's LAN), and people pay upwards of $20 per person entry fees to play all night at them in many cases. (And you've got to remember, you have to haul all your own equipment to these things, and tear it all back down when you leave, too.) So certainly, there are some people out there willing to spend a little money on this as a form of weekend entertainment.
The problem is, you need to draw in a lot more than the 200 or so "regulars" who attend LAN gaming parties like these.... Otherwise, you just won't be able to make it.
How many additional customers can you attract, even if you do supply all the hardware and software? I'm not sure. I think quite a few, if you could get local radio stations to promote it with live remotes and giveaways, get the big gaming stores to let you put stacks of flyers (with discount coupons of some sort, probably) on their counters, and so on.
We've had a few cyber/gaming cafes here that ran for a year or two, lost a bunch of money, and closed up. But I never saw one do squat for advertising beyond "word of mouth". Furthermore, they were always in rather bad parts of the city - so it was common to see some drugged-out bum sitting up against a wall in the winter months and so on. Not really the clientele you want to draw in.
Personally, I don't think a shopping mall setting would do much for me either, though. That just feels a little too commercialized and "stagnant". For starters, a mall is going to close no later than what, 9PM? And this type of place needs to provide late night entertainment, at least on weekends. I think this would do best near a college or university, in a stand-alone building (so a lot of noise wouldn't bother other tenants), in a somewhat affluent neighborhood.
If I had mod points handy, I would have modded you up. I totally agree. I have a Macbook Pro and I can't really imagine the lack of a 64-bit Core2 CPU being a big impediment to its usefulness.
For starters, you can't put more than 2GB of RAM, total, in one of these right now due to motherboard design limitations - so people talking about 64-bit CPUs allowing better use of large chunks of memory seems like a non-issue for this particular machine.
Even if I was all concerned about making "full use" of OS X Leopard and its 64 bit support, I'd be better off waiting until after it comes out, and selling my Macbook Pro then to get credit towards a newer 64-bit capable model, because then it would include a copy of Leopard in the box with it. In the meantime, I've gotten nearly a full year of use out of the Macbook Pro I have - instead of waiting around for a Core2 Duo version of it!
I, too, knew a few short, nerdy kids who did ok in school because they were nice to everyone. But that doesn't guarantee anything. I also remember several like that who got constantly picked on anyway. Maybe it was something as simple as them being cursed with a "squeaky" sounding voice, or kids discovering some of their hobbies/interests were just too tempting to poke fun at?
Growing up, I was picked on all though gradeschool and much of high-school too. In my case, it was mostly because I sucked at competitive sports and consequently, didn't care much for playing them. When you're constantly attacked by your peers, you have to find coping mechanisms that help you convince yourself you're not "all bad/hopeless/worthless". Having an above-average IQ can be one of them. I don't fault the original poster for bringing up his IQ at all. It's part of the overall picture. (People can get picked on for being too "slow" too. At least we're clear that wasn't this guy's particular problem.)
And actually, you know what bugs me? People who dislike intelligence when they see it, just out of pure jealousy. I once ran into a guy who came up to my face and told me he hated me. I was totally confused. I never recalled saying or doing anyting that would have upset him. He was just one of the guys a bunch of us hung out with on weekends. I knew his girlfriend and she was friendly enough... but I never tried to hit on her or anything. So, totally puzzled, I asked him why? He told me it was because I was "too f*cking smart" and people like me just pissed him off.
I think you've missed the point here. Yes, I agree that if an OS offers a useful function, it would be silly for competitors to downplay and ignore it just because they didn't come up with it first.
But here, we're talking about Microsoft, the company with a much bigger budget to spend on R&D, literally sitting back and waiting for Apple to do something innovative. Then they order their developers to implement it, if it looks like it works out well and users like it!
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Apple is taking bigger chances and putting things out there (instead of just talking about them). When they do see a feature from Windows they like but don't yet have, they generally *improve* on it and put a flashier, friendlier version in their next OS release. (EG. XP had multi-user fast switching first. Apple took it further, making it switch users with the cool rotating 3D cube effect, and let users with iSight cameras take their own photos to directly use as their user icons.)
I *completely* disagree. Yes, many people are going with laptops as their new computer purchases, but many of those people ALSO still own a desktop machine. The occasional person I run across who only has a laptop usually uses it for a specific business-related purpose (traveling salesperson for example, or insurance auditor), so they were never part of the audience for gaming to begin with.
Just because Intel includes cheap, low-end video on their motherboards doesn't mean the majority of folks are "perfectly satisfied" with that. Rather, it means the cost of including it has gotten so low, it may as well be thrown in. People interested in better performance/better graphics quality will always purchase video cards for their desktop PCs.
And even laptops are starting to include much better video options (within their power/heat limitations). The Macbook Pro has an ATI Radeon x series chipset with up to 256MB of video RAM on it. That's a far cry from Intel's integrated video!
The next generation of consoles look like they're generally going to include big price-hikes, too. (PS3 coming in at around $1000 by the time you buy the accessories you'd want for it!?) So all the talk of PC gaming dying because of consoles seems like nonsense to me too. People are going to have to "pay to play" if they want the latest technologies - regardless of platform.
Initially, this announcement surprised me and worried me a bit. I think I tend to agree that in reality, it would have little impact on the way most Mac users use MS Office. I, too, work in a smallish company (a little over 50 computer-using employees here, but they're critical to our daily operations), and I doubt a single user even knows anything about editing a VB macro in Excel. We probably have a few misc. spreadsheets that *do* rely on some VB code to work properly - but these would be special-purpose spreadsheets coded by one of our previous systems administrators, or an outside consultant. These would typically be for the purpose of importing data coming from a proprietary Windows app. and presenting it to the user as a report.
These, quite frankly, aren't the types of things that would prevent something like a migration to Apple Macs, should we consider that option in the future. Rather, they'd be headaches that would only rear their heads long after we completed a switch, and would have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. (The fact that I, as our current sysadmin, can't even tell you for sure which spreadsheets these might be should be an indicator of how high these are on our scale of importance!)
The bad part is, especially in larger companies, purchases get denied or put on hold for long periods of time over FUD like this. Some manager of MIS or purchasing hears the news in a trade journal, "Apple to drop VB scripting support in Office 2007!" and panics. "Who knows what problems THAT might cause us!? That's not acceptable. We need 100% compatibility."
Apparently, you haven't been reading all of the comments people already posted in response to this story. Many people have already pointed out the fact that police officers, given the power we grant them in the line of duty, should NOT expect to have the same level of privacy that they'd be entitled to when they're off-duty. It's just like the laws governing the filming of celebrities without their permission. People "in the public eye" have a reduced expectation of privacy because their career choice involves a great deal of public exposure.
Furthermore, most states in the U.S. recognize the concept of "at will employment". If you accept a job in the private sector, your employment is a contract between you and your employer. *Either* one of you reserves the right to terminate the employment contract at any time, for any reason. (EG. Giving "2 weeks' notice" might be the courteous thing to do, but you're under no obligation to do so. You can, if you so choose, wait until the busiest day of the year for your employer, when they're absolutely counting on you to finish your portion of some critically important project, and say "I quit!" and walk out the door, costing them untold amounts of money and problems. By the same token, your employer can fire you "at will", without requirement of so much as giving a reason at all for doing so!)
As we all know, we really put a stop to those illegal drug sales by going after the "heads of the snakes" there. Wanna-be drug users just can't find someone willing to supply them anymore, most of the time!
Oh, wait....
I get the logic, but there's a fundamental flaw. You can't effectively stop the masses from breaking an arbitrary restriction placed on an activity if the masses feel what they're doing is justified.
If LimeWire shuts down tomorrow, a programmer will be out there coding the next replacement for it - only with additional protections to make it harder than before to track the source of the traffic.
Shut that down, and another will pop up, and another, and.....
If it finally proves not too effective to do p2p sharing at all, due to the "law" constantly putting a stop to it - people will resort to more "guerrila" tactics (as they've already done many times before). Things can be uploaded with non-obvious filenames and folder names, to random servers (or even web or ftp sites that passwords were hacked on in advance) - and private message forums can provide the short-lived and always rotating links to them.
VPN tunnels can be set up from point to point between trusted parties and files interchanged on their makeshift WANs.
Individuals can offer files through their IM clients.
Of course, Usenet is utilized too, and it doesn't seem practical to successfully put a stop to it.
People might even wish to set up email list servers that distribute attached files to those who know the secret commands to email to get signed up and request them.
Don't forget all the other alternatives, such as running telnet-based BBS software. (Kind of a "retro" solution, but like opting to run Windows 3.1 to use the Internet on your PC and thereby dodging almost all the trojan horse spyware, might be effective through obscurity, at least for a while.)
Huh? I never really got the idea that most people in I.T. went down the self-employment road out of choice, so much as out of desperation!
At least here in the midwest, that's what I've seen, time and time again. Someone with specific talents in an area of I.T. gets laid off from a good-paying job with a large-ish firm, can't find another job in a reasonable time-frame, so they finally decide to venture out on their own.
For example, before my current job, I worked for a couple years for a guy's start-up business doing computer "house-calls". (He had a number of business contracts, largely forged from a lucky break. One of his residential customers turned out to have lots of influence over people in her church, which was in a well-to-do part of town. All the business owners who went to that church started using him for their computer needs.) Anyway - before he started that business up, he spent years as a software developer for IBM. But as we all know, IBM has done a few rounds of "cutbacks" since the dot-com days, and he was a casualty. Luckily for him, he apparently received enough severance pay to invest in his new company.
As for the trend of creating new web content/services, I've seen more crestivity lately than I remember seeing at the height of the "boom". In the 90's, the "great new ideas" were usually just poor attempts to market something via the net instead of "brick and mortar" retail, and it often made no sense to the buyer. (Buy your dog food online? Why?! So you can pay all that shipping and your dog's still stuck with no food for a couple days until the bag arrives? Buy your clothing online, where you can't even try it on to see if it fits first?)
I can't speak for the state of "investors" right now, but I'd think the current offerings bear a much closer look than the silly things they funded in the past!
My own personal "short list" would probably include:
www.meebo.com (These guys have a great litle idea here. Build IM into a web page.)
www.mozy.com (Lots of people want Internet-based backup solutions, but this one looks more promising than most I've seen - and they let you use the basics for FREE.)
www.zoho.com (Haven't looked at this one too closely yet, but it might really fill a niche for small offices. There's often a need for a business owner, his/her receptionist, and several employees to have access to shared calendars and resources for appointment scheduling and so on. Right now, options like MS Exchange and Outlook are overpriced/overkill for it, and it's better to be able to access the data from anywhere, regardless of the apps installed on a given machine.)
If it were my job on the line, I would *hope* I had the foresight to realize that my days working for AOL were going to be numbered. I'm not saying it's a good thing more tech. jobs are being lost in America -- but the majority of these were "bottom of the barrel" jobs doing phone support and sales. It's really only a couple steps above the "bad old days" of telemarketing. Most of 'em are still reading off of scripts, and don't really know much about what they're trying to sell/sign people up for.
I can't say for sure, but I think it's a good guess to say the more skilled people doing systems administration or coding for AOL probably got transferred to other places in the company.
Despite all the AOL bashing, a considerable amount of work had to go into the constant refinements and updates to their interface. I remember when AOL didn't even know how to do a decent job of handling a broadband connection vs. dial-up, and when many types of email attachments weren't handled properly at all. In the latest version, it's obvious they put a lot of work into improving those areas, among many others. That stuff doesn't just code itself.
I do have a question about the Dallas, TX area. One of my friends grew up in Dallas and had nothing but praise for the area. (He lives in St. Louis, Missouri now - and I think inserts a comparison to Dallas at least every other time I talk to him.)
I really never got a chance to spend any time down there until I was sent to some training in Carrolton, TX one week. (This was around 1999-2000.) I tried to drive around and get as much of a "feel" for what it was like to live there as possible, as opposed to just holing up in the motel.
My impression was, the whole area was really void of "culture". Sure, they had a big Hispanic district - but that seemed to be treated as sort of the "ghetto" part of town. Mostly, it was an expanse of highways with chunks of unused, open space between exit ramps - and packed with commercial buildings and retail chain type establishments off the exits. I saw a lot of upscale suburban subdivisions, but they looked pretty "cookie-cutter" to me. Lots of neat little lawns, all in a row, and so forth. If you wanted to do a lot of shopping, it seemed like an *awesome* place to be. There were huge shopping malls and outlets everywhere, willing to sell you anything you could think of. (I fond an amazing video rental store that looked like the size of a WalMart but was just filled with rows and rows of videos and music CDs. Everything was labeled with 2 prices - a rental price and a sale price if you wanted to buy it.) But on the other hand, I went on a quest to find a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and all I found was some lame place in a strip mall that looked like they just took over a 7-11.
Was I just missing something, or does that pretty much sum up the area? I don't think I'd care to live in a place quite that "commercialized".
The original poster has the worst anti-Mac sentiment I've read in years!
Let's look at some facts, shall we?
1. Apple as cut-throat corporation (just like MS, you say?). I can't say I agree. For starters, say you need several copies of your OS for 4 or 5 computers your family owns and uses. Microsoft's way? Buy one for each PC, or buy a PC pre-loaded with our OS, and we'll keep tabs on you with our "genuine advantage" system to make sure you comply! Apple's way? Buy a discounted "family pack" of OS X, legal to install on up to 5 Macs! No phoning-home by the OS or need to call in for a new CD key code if you change your hardware around too much. For that matter, have you ever called in to Apple for technical help before? It's a *vastly* more pleasant experience, on the whole, than practically any other computer company offers today. Last time I dealt with HP or Dell, I was on hold upwards of 30 minutes before I even got to speak with a human! With Apple, never had a hold time over about 5 mins.
2. Macs trouble-free? Well, no - this is obviously just marketing at work. But computers have been around long enough that by now, most people should realize this as the exaggeration it is. What they want you to get from the marketing-speak is the idea that Macs *generally* give a user less headache. I'd say that much is quite true! I've done countless on-site service calls on PCs that "got real slow and started crashing on me all the time" or "starting popping up these weird errors". Ended up being huge messes of trojan horse viruses and spyware. Never had that YET on a Mac. I can also say that many commonly performed tasks are made easier on a Mac with the included applications than on a PC with its included set of apps. EG. Need to email somebody a photo? In Windows, you better know what you're doing to resize that picture that just came off your 8 megapixel camera, or the recipient might not even have enough email storage quota to receive the thing! On the Mac's "Mail" app, the user is asked as soon as he/she drags/drops in a photo if they'd like it resized small, medium or large (original size).
3. Even Microsoft likes the Mac! Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is their most profitable unit, when you factor in the cost they incur running it vs. profit it makes for them! MS Office was initially written not for Windows PCs, but for Macs! So if you simply take a stance that "If Microsoft likes it, it's BAD!" - then I guess you have to stick to using something like Linux. But if you're like most normal people, you realize that Apple is just a business trying to make money, like all others, and what they're offering isn't too shabby.
Interesting, because I ran into that too, in one company I worked at. It was pretty well understood that in order for things to work, *somebody* had to have access to everything. Otherwise, it wasn't going to get backed-up, organized in proper directories, and so forth. So I.T. was "off the hook" for any real hassles there. BUT - they were VERY concerned about salespeople accidently seeing things they shouldn't see, or possibly uploading corporate info to other sources.