My big complaint with this supposed economic "turn-around" is that it's leaving a lot of folks behind. Yes, the people who managed to stay with a large company, working with cutting edge technologies this whole time are in good shape. So are recent college C.S. grads. and those entering the program today. But an awful lot of talented computer people fell through the cracks in the early 2000's, forced to take big pay cuts and work in positions well below their potential, just to make ends meet. Now, these folks are the ones who can only claim "4-5 years of experience in technology X" while their peers who were luckier can claim twice that, simply because they didn't get a pink slip in 2001 or 2002.
As technology marches on, the bar keeps rising on everything. Traditionally, the computer field has been great because there was so much potential to be self-taught. Just get your hands on a relatively cheap PC at home, spend a bunch of time with it, and that's pretty much all that's required to become "employable" someplace in the industry. I knew several long-haul truck drivers, for example, who decided to switch careers and became A+ Certified Computer Techs in their spare time. It wasn't going to make them rich or anything, but it used to be they'd get a comparable salary to the truck driving and it gave them a better lifestyle with more time at home.
Nowdays, unless you're independently wealthy, you simply can't afford to play with the technologies most companies expect new hires to be experienced with. (Are you going to set up a Citrix farm at home? How about some networked ERP or CRM software? Have experience with 2-way satellite networking or high-end Cisco switching equipment? Oracle Enterprise database, maybe?) Therefore, the recent college grads. and grads. to be get a shot at a job, because their school probably did invest the money to allow them to work with some of this "hands on". Those who held onto a good job with a biig company have it to. Everyone else is screwed.
Yep! I've always refused to use those automatically printed shipping labels for that very reason. Just last week, I was in a local UPS Store and a frustrated customer came in wanting to know how to receive a credit for a UPS label they tried to print, but were unsuccessful due to printer problems. The UPS Store employees not only claimed to have absolutely no clue, but denied responsibility completely, claiming they were technically "not even UPS employees, but rather, independent agents".
This isn't even just a PayPal issue, really. If you ship straight from the FedEx or UPS web site, they want you to enter the weight of the package (among other items), and they immediately bill you for the delivery, even though you haven't even given them the box yet. If you're incorrect in the weight estimate and the box is actually lighter than you entered, they won't refund you the difference. They just pocket it and rip you off. And if you decide not to ship the package after all, they still leave the credit authorization on your card for at least several days after you cancel the shipment - tying up some of your available credit. All around, I just don't think this Internet shipping stuff is as convenient for the customer as they try to promise.
Yeah, I basically agree - although what are these "enterprise class" hard drives you refer to? Last time I checked, companies like Sun were charging outrageous prices for hard drives that were just your run-of-the-mill Seagate SCSI's in proprietary hot-swap trays.
Sure, you wouldn't build an "enterprise server" with SATA just yet, but I'd say some form of SATA2 (or who knows, maybe SATA3?) will be the future replacement for SCSI. The hard drive makers are consolidating and IMHO, will soon reach a point where everything is either "budget priced" (EG. junk, suitable for PC resellers to use in low-cost systems for consumers and so-ho settings), or "better quality" which is used for everything from the largest enterprise systems to hobbyist PC's built with performance and quality parts in mind.
Right now, you pay a ridiculous premium for all things SCSI, simply because it's a dying standard, only used and respected by those building large servers for people with deep enough pockets to pay the prices without question. SCSI has disadvantages though, including the difficulty in making the high-density cables and connectors. (Ever try crimping a connector onto a SCA-80 cable, for example?)
The drives themselves tend to be built from pretty much the same parts as their SATA counterparts, lately. They can just stick a different type of controler board on the bottom and call it SATA vs. SCSI. We're no longer in the era where companies like Micropolis and Fujitsu built obviously better-constructed and better warrantied drives intended for server use only.
Exactly! I've been out of work for about a full year now, despite having 15 years of experience in I.T. and the computer service industry. I'm glad I took steps to start my own on-site service and consulting business last year, when I did - because it's the only thing keeping food on my table right now.
I've never held one of those "senior" or "management" titles before, because I'm a "down in the trenches, hands-on" type of guy. I don't really want to sit around in a corner office, writing up a bunch of plans and goals for my staff, or spend hours in boring meetings, trying to justify an I.T. budget, or what-not.
Traditionally, this wasn't really an impediment to my career - because in many cases, experienced technical workers were paid more than department managers were. (After all, they're the ones doing the bulk of the real work. The other guys are only providing some guidance and reporting on the progress of projects.) But thanks to outsourcing, off-shoring, and lots of downsizing/cost-cutting - I think we've reached a point where only the "senior management" types are taking home the fat paychecks in I.T. Everyone who really knows the technology intimately and lives/breathes it daily is another "cog" in the machine, and considered pretty much expendable. (H.R. - please fetch me another resume of someone with an MCSE or CCIE. Thanks.)
It's doubly bad if your interest was primarily in "workstation support" roles (as mine was). There's a mentality nowdays in corporate I.T. that the server side is all that matters. If you need "workstation support", grab some kids right out of school and pay them sub $10/hr. pay to help people figure out their printing issues and whatever.... Don't hire "expert quality" staff for that! It's increasingly difficult for me to make the jump to server support as time goes on, because they're constantly raising the bar on the specifics you need to know to qualify for the job. (EG. I was quite familiar with Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 Server support, and dabbled in a mix of Linux and Windows 2000 Server support wherever I could. But since then, I haven't had the chance to work for someone really using Active Directory in Windows 2003 Server, or a more "commercial" Unix like Solaris - so it's a tough sell that I'll be able to just "run with it" if they hire me.)
It all depends... Every situation seems to be different. Take, for example, the fact that at least in the U.S., a bartender and/or drinking establishment can be held liable if they allow a customer to get drunk, drive away, and end up in a car accident, injuring or killing another person. The premise seems to be the idea that the establishment and bartender is responsible for cutting people off before they can get to a stage where they can cause the incident.
So if you view corporate laptops in *that* light, then yes - I can see where they'd hold a company legally responsible for data lost because of a theft of a corporate laptop.
I disagree with you, simply because it's a fallacy that it's always "safer" to pull off the side of the road you're driving on. If you're in an area where there's not a good shoulder on the road, or other drivers have relatively poor visability, pulling off to the side in an unexpected place can be much more dangerous than continuing to drive. It all depends on how capable you are of working your GPS device without it distracting you too much from the task of driving.
I'd also argue that people tend to become less safe drivers when they get lost. Their stress levels increase, and they start doing unsafe things, such as driving the wrong way on a poorly marked one-way street, making U-turns or driving at erratic speeds as they keep slowing down to read all the street signs, trying to find one that sounds familiar. If you weigh that vs. the confidence of having a GPS that's telling you exactly where to go - I'm not sure the momentary increased risk of having an accident while trying to press a few buttons on one is the greater threat?
I've used both the Garmin Streetpilot 2610 and the Lowrance iWay 500c in-car GPS systems pretty extensively while driving. Primarily, I rely on them to locate customers for my on-site service business, but I also used the Lowrance for a brief stint as a courier, plus used both on a couple of longer trips out of state.
Even though I always try to enter my destination info before actually driving off - I often get in situations where I need to make some changes "on the fly". It's not always really practical to pull off to the side of the road someplace, just to tell it about a new stop you found out you need to get to along the way. As other people said, much of the problem with trying to use a GPS while driving is lack of familiarity with the interface. With mine mounted on my dash in just the right place, I can glance at it quickly or press a few buttons on it quickly without really taking my eyes off the road. But my biggest issue with both units I've used has been an imperfect touch-screen. Sometime you press something and it doesn't respond, or it selects the item above or below the one you tried to pick. Distractions like that can really cause problems.
I also wish they had a little more accurate map data in them! Even though I always bought the latest available map updates for both units I've owned, I've always had numerous problems with it not knowing the correct exit numbers for given highway exits, and cases where it indicated an on-ramp was on my left when it was really coming up on my right (or vice-versa).
They also tend to be bad with long highway exit ramps that split off into 2 different directions at the end of them. (EG. It will tell you "Exit right in 1/4th. mile onto exit 96/97A." But if you don't know for sure if the next instruction is going to be taking 97A vs. 96, it won't tell you until the last few seconds if you need to turn "right" or "left" when the exit forks off in two different directions!)
The Lowrance iWay 500c in particular has been unreliable with "points of interest". I've entered names of restaurants I was looking for, only to be led right up to the driveway of someone's house! (My guess is, they somehow mixed up the restaurant owner's home and business addresses, and took me to the owner's home.) This is especially disturbing considering they use Navteq map data, which is pretty much an "industry standard" for MANY in-car GPS systems.
There are always going to be stealthy removeable drive type devices out there that someone can sneak in and out of a company easily and copy files onto. The iPod is just a popular target because millions have been sold and most people are aware of them.
The *real* question is, why would employees have access to file shares on servers containing important documents they weren't supposed to have? If your business throws everything on shares that all users have read (or read/write) access to, they deserve what they get for not implementing some sort of security policy for the shares.
If you're an I.T. person who has full access anyway due to the nature of your job, again - so what? You're already able to burn the stuff off to DVDs at night and sneak them home or download them remotely over your corporate VPN or ??? The point is, companies have to place trust in their people to various extents. If they hired you as a sysadmin, they should have already done the background checking and everything else before hiring you - and believe you can be trusted. If you violate that trust - you screwed them, plain and simple. Implementing some sort of "no Ipod allowed!" policy won't prevent that.
I don't know in the *long* term where Apple will be, but I'd agree that they have a vested interest in getting more involved in digital entertainment/content distribution. They've always been looked at as one of the top providers of the tools to create that content anyway.
But yes, that was my original point. Apple does just use commodity PC components nowdays. That's why they HAVE to cling tightly to OS X. It's the only thing that differentiates their machines from everything else out there, if you strip away the little details (like the "mag-safe" power connector on the upcoming MacBook Pro, or their backlit keyboards).
I think Apple would like to offer a "premium quality" computer, in that you're getting something that looks a lot more elegant than a beige box, and has lots of small innovations in it. But inside, sure, it's just another x86 platform. As long as they make it a software license violation to put OS X on anything else though, and they keep innovating with OS X enough to keep it on top - they can do a nice business long into the future selling you a nice looking computer bundled with OS X.
IMHO, the parent post was VERY well stated. And the people countering that "small improvements are better than no improvements" miss the point too. Convincing people to settle for smaller vehicles does nothing to solve the *real* issue; our dependence on foreign oil. In fact, it just drags it out longer.
The *only* solution we're going to see is a move to alternate forms of energy for our vehicles - and even in a world where we've all moved to driving Priuses around, we're going to run into that need pretty quickly. (Much of the increase in oil consumption has nothing to do with what U.S. drivers own. It has to do with other nations becoming advanced enough to have more energy needs.... so in essence, new customers competing for the supply.)
It's arguable that if all of our vehicles were large SUVs eating up 2 times as much gas, we'd all switch to alternate energy MORE QUICKLY, because we'd collectively feel the "pinch" of the high fuel prices enough to say "Ok... I'll be an early adopter of technology X. The potential hassles and glitches are worth suffering through to save me Y$ per week!"
Your question comes up over and over again. Why won't Apple just start selling OS X for Intel boxes? I think to understand this, you have to look at the big picture. Apple is the very last of the original computer-builders from the 1970's and 80's who offered a computer that wasn't "PC compatible". From the very start, Apple was a company interested in selling you a proprietary system (hardware + software bundled together in what they thought was the ideal configuration), just like Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack, Osbourne, Sinclair, and many others did. One by one, the others died off, unable to compete with the flood of MS-DOS and Windows machines that other companies kept cranking out. (In a few cases, like Radio Shack, they decided "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" and started making PC compatible boxes... and eventually becoming a Compaq reseller.)
If Apple just started selling OS X for any old x86 box, they'd instantly turn into just another PC clone builder. In today's market, a standard PC is just a commodity. Everyone builds them using the same pool of components, so it always comes down to who has the lowest price. This is why you see Gateway computer struggling to survive. They're not big enough to compete head-to-head with someone like Dell, and don't offer enough other products or services to help keep them afloat (unlike HP who has printers and scanners to sell). Apple wouldn't want to become another "Gateway", with nothing profitable in their entire product line besides music players and OS X.
Apple is interested in selling you a complete computing "experience", centered around things like a superior level of customer service and support, pleasant retail shops in most major cities, and elegant computers bundled with OS X. Sure, that means they won't get that $150 from a PC user like you, who just wants the "crown jewel" without taking the rest of the bundle along with it. But I think Apple is probably quite happy to keep it that way. In the near future, Intel based Macs will be able to boot into Windows, OS X, Linux and maybe even another OS or two. So Apple knows they're not selling you something that's totally locked into *only* their OS. They just want to get you to come over to their side of the fence and buy into the whole experience, hardware + software + support, or not bother until you have the financial means to "go all the way" with it.
Re:Second time buyers didn't return to Gateway
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Troubled Times at Gateway
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Yep! I'll throw in my own anecdote.
I was working in I.T. for a mid-sized company that was using exclusively Dell, but got irritated at the long hold times just to get parts replaced under warranty, and some billing mistakes they made. So they asked me to consider alternatives. We opted for Toshiba for some of our laptop purchases, and as an experiment, tried Gateway. They had a number of new slim-line desktop PCs out that they were selling through their "business division", pre-loaded with Windows NT 4.0 (which was what we ran at the time).
The first shipment arrived, and out of the box, they were having issues. When we installed certain software packages on them, they repeatedly crashed with the blue screen of death, and wouldn't reboot properly if you applied one of the NT service packs on them. Calls to Gateway technical support did no good, and I was referred to my local Gateway Country store. So there I was, a corporate customer, expected to hand-deliver these PCs to a consumer-oriented retail store and leave them there for "warranty service". I ended up bringing them just one of them to troubleshoot for us. First, they told me the hard drive was bad and replaced it. (Obviously, that didn't fix anything.) Then they swapped out the motherboard and blamed bad RAM as the problem. Nope! Finally, someone realized Gateway had just released a new BIOS for them that fixed the issue - but the new BIOS version wasn't posted to their web site yet for some reason, so I was told I've have to bring all of the boxes in to the store to let them flash upgrade them. (Umm, no. Not an acceptable answer!) So I just kept combing the web site until the upgrade was finally made publically available and got the systems updated myself.
After that fiasco, we never used Gateway again. Heck, even their web site was difficult to navigate to get drivers and BIOS updates compared to Dell.
And I, on the other hand, could label you one of those left-wing hippie, "Save the Planet" types who can't stand the idea of people actually enjoying technology.
It's just as ridiculous a statement as your generalization was, after all.
I purchased a 3rd. gen. iPod 40GB when it first came out, and hung onto it until this last Xmas, when I sold it (at a big loss - but so it goes) and got a 60GB iPod video. As you might have guessed, more storage capacity is one of the prime reasons that I'm willing to upgrade. But the iPod video opens up whole new uses for the device too. All of a sudden, people are buying them to watch TV shows or even movies ripped from DVDs while they're on the go. The rumored new iPod allows turning the whole unit sideways to get more screen real-estate, which could be a big justification for an upgrade, even for a recent iPod video purchaser.
Personally, no... I'll stick with what I've got, because I still use mine primarily for music. But those upgrading after only a short time are also getting a lot more resale value out of their used iPods than people like myself who hang onto them longer. I don't think you can label people "brainwashed Apple drones" just because they bought into the iPod video, got a taste of how useful portable video could be for them, and are anxious to jump on any update that makes improvements in that area.
I'm not much of a fan of Microsoft products. In fact, I've switched mostly to Mac OS X over the last few years. But nonetheless, your argument is really little more than a thinly veiled attempt to "flame" Microsoft.
Your "3rd. option" isn't realistically possible at all. The problem is, Windows started out as a layer to run on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Over the years, they kept adding to it and adding to it. Then they branched off another direction (Windows NT) when they realized building on the MS-DOS foundation was rather like constructing an office building on top of a sand pit. They already had too many "tenants" who didn't want to move though, so they kept on supporting the original effort as long as they could (Windows ME). Meanwhile, NT still had to look and feel like the "old stuff" and have a mechanism for running as much of the old code as possible.
To their credit, they did a really good job of migrating people off the the MS-DOS based code and over to a heavily upgraded Windows NT based structure (Windows XP). But they've always had to make serious compromises in the interest of "backwards compatibility".
But IMHO, they've been screwed from the start in areas like "security" - because they've incorporated FAR too much "legacy" code over the years, as they've made "backwards compatibility" their primary focus. Even their protocols (NetBIOS, etc.) were a kludgy mess that nobody seems to understand 100%. So how do you really expect their people to wade through the entire mess this late in the game, and successfully patch it up so it's just as secure as a newer OS built from scratch, with priorities like "security" in mind?
Throwing money at problems rarely ensures they're solved efficiently or completely. (Take a look at the Fed. govt. and their budget management if you don't believe this.) Microsoft, obviously, would never want to spend their "40 billion saved up in the bank" on patching Windows. But even if they did/could, I doubt it would ensure a truly secure OS. They didn't build on a Unix skeleton from the start, and the Unix skeleton has proven a better "foundation" for secure OS's so far. (BSD, Linux, Mac OSX, BeOS, etc.)
Apple won't have to do squat with phones like the Treo.... The MP3 capabilities on one suck, to put it mildly. It has issues playing anything in a high bitrate (like 192bit), and you have to buy a special adapter just to use normal headphones with it. Out of the box, it doesn't have enough memory to store more than a few songs. You have to buy a memory card for it (after forking out all that money for the phone to begin with), and it's very SLOW syncing music into it.
I have a Treo 650 and I like the phone, overall. Don't get me wrong. But it's no replacement for an iPod - and THAT probably explains why so many Treo owners also have iPods.
Several years ago, I knew a woman who was finishing up her studies to become an optometrist, and she told me one time that I should be very concerned about the Lasik procedures out there, and didn't recommend having it done at all.
I don't know how much fact there was to it, but she claimed that the "dirty little secret" of Lasik is that it more or less casues eventual legal blindness in around.5% to 1% of patients. They tend not to inform people of the real risk because it's such a profitable business, and they're better off settling the occasional lawsuit than telling people the truth.
If there's truth to this, I imagine they get away with downplaying the risk factors because the vision loss happens over a length of time, and can easily be blamed on other factors, in most cases where someone complains?
Not that it really excuses lying, but you're absolutely right. The underlying problem is the belief that a college degree is some sort of basic requirement for having the ability to do a job. Much to the chagrin of many people paying off huge student loans, it's simply not!
The Slashdot story yesterday about new govt. hiring guidelines going into effect will just make the problem even worse. If resumes are expected to contain every single requirement listed in a "want ad" - guess what? Most of them will end up doing so, whether or not the candidates really know those specific things.
I think in the specific cases cited here, it's mostly a matter of our president appointing these people to their positions because he already knows them and thinks they're in line with his agenda. (Heck, who's to say he didn't talk with them behind closed doors, informing them that "a college degree is, ahem, required, before I can give you this position - so you might want to, uh, put something down just for the sake of completeness...."?)
But you're quite right. There's a lot of discrimination out there towards folks who chose alternate paths to "get out of high-school, jump into college". It seems sometimes, the only ones who manage to overcome it are the ones who build their own big businesses -- and then, all of a sudden, the college-degreed world is very interested in what they have to say. (EG. Bill Gates)
I think that article referred to by the parent poster is simply biased.... Claiming it caused Dell to switch to AMD processors for all of their new laptops? Ridiculous. Michael Dell has never shown himself to be the type to make large product line changes simply to "send a message" that he didn't care for something as petty as a single commercial.
Rather, he's repeatedly stated that he has little interest in doing creative, innovative new things. His business is all about mass production of established products and shaving as many costs as possible in the production and shipping process. If I had to guess, I'd think Michael Dell would grin and say "Yep - that's my business model. Boring little boxes. And I sell at least 10 of 'em for every one of those shiny little Apple boxes!"
AMD has been working hard for years to get some of the "big box" vendors on-board with their latest technologies - and frankly, it's sad that it's taken so long for their adoption. I can see absolutely no harm that would have come from offering Athlon 64 based Dell Optiplexes or Dimensions.... other than Intel not being happy about it.
Bottom line, as always. Profit. How profitable will it be for Apple to undergo another switch? Someone else is always going to come along with the next big thing in CPUs, but the trick for a company Apple's size is to partner with someone who won't leave you hanging with very outdated chips and no long-term roadmap that looks promising compared to the competitors. IBM has already illustrated a relative lack of interest in such things as consumer PCs. (Sold off the Thinkpad division to Lenovo, for example - and heavily invested in intangibles like consulting.) And certainly, Motorola wasn't even on the radar of "competitive" in the consumer PC marketplace for the last few years. So yeah, Intel was still the best gamble, IMHO, with AMD being the only reasonably close second choice.
Good for you, but that won't always cut it. I know... Practically every job I've ever had has been through an "inside connection" too - but I've been unemployed and looking for about 11 months now. I started my own business just to get some kind of cash flow coming in, but it wasn't really my intention or desire to run my own business right now. (I'm a single parent trying to raise a small child, and running my own business is pretty difficult to juggle with everything else.)
So far, I've had at least 3 times where friends of mine already working for places tried to bypass H.R. and recommend me for open positions - and in each case, they were shut down with "We can't even consider your friend until you tell him to fill out an online applicartion and submit his resume to H.R. All new hires must first go through H.R." (And in 2 of the 3 cases, these people were personal friends with their boss who was hiring - so I don't think it had to do with "not having enough pull" inside the company.)
The job market is terrible right now, at least for computers and I.T. If these new "guidelines" really get used by businesses, it will just create a need for applicants to lie on their resumes in order to be considered. (EG. The ad asks for at least 5 years of experience in Citirx? Well, shoot... I have only 4. Normally I'd just explain that during an interview and convince them the extra 1 year isn't a deal-breaker. But now, I just have to lie and claim 5.)
Again, I disagree with you. Sorry, but quitting one's job and suing for minor damages later doesn't sound like a way to effectively send any kind of worthwhile message to a company that's this abusive towards your individual rights and freedom. Sure, he very well might have worked with other people who had 10 kids to raise, were deep in debt, or whatnot. That's true anywhere. There's also nothing saying the competitor might end up hiring those people back later. Considering the company was just a startup business, anyone signing on to work for them should have been well aware that doing so meant a considerable risk of losing one's job anyway. It's not like startups are known for their job security or stability.
Oh please.... It's people like you that *cause* most of these problems in the first place! If you're mistreated like that in your job, you suggest it's best to "shut up and take it" because otherwise, you might affect all of your co-workers? That mentality just allows them to get away with more and more injustice with impunity.
If your co-workers are a bunch of pathetic sheep who think it's just fine to be denied their sick days and timed when they visit the restroom, screw the whole lot of them.... They can fend for themselves.
If they'd just go around stinging the roaches, rather than being efficient enough to lead just one back to the nest to raise more of them for food, you might be able to get rid of roach problems with these wasps. Evacuate a building for a while and drop some of these wasps in there. After a certain length of time, fumigate it to kill the wasps - and voila, no more bug problem!
(Would have loved to mod your comment up, but out of points right now.)
But yeah, precisely. Despite all the hype over 64 bit, it doesn't necessarily make code run any faster than it can on a good 32-bit CPU. The only "tangible" advantage is the ability to manage more system RAM. As developers have said repeatedly, 64-bit applications require shuffling around larger numbers, and only in specific instances does 64-bit give you a speed advantage with your code.
I also predict that before we start seeing the average user wanting/needing more than 4GB of RAM in a computer, flash memory storage will come down in price, and go up in capacity - making the demand for system RAM relatively less than it was before. (If you have a solid-state replacement for your hard drive, it doesn't have to be such a "performance hit" to swap out to "virtual memory".)
As I've commented several times before in previous Symantec-related stories, the company cranks out pure junk. Perhaps even more distastefully, has done so using the name (and for some time, even a head-shot photo!) of Peter Norton, a GOOD developer from back in the MS-DOS days, who has absolutely NOTHING to do with any of the Windows-based anti-virus and disk repair utilities they've been hawking as though he wrote them.
As a few others have occasionally pointed out; anti-virus, anti-spyware or anti-spam type software are perfect examples of cases where open source makes the most sense. There's too much incentive in commercial versions of such products to cheat the end-user. (EG. Who's to say that if you sell an anti-virus product and sales get slow, you wouldn't pay off some hacker in a 3rd. world country to make a new virus that your product can then detect and clean first?) If not open-source, then at least products that are essentially "freeware".
Besides, if you're going to have to add these layers of code to an OS just to keep it running securely, you want them to be as "lean" and unobtrusive as possible. Symantec and most competing commercial products are the exact opposite - because they're very concerned about "flashiness" and "substance" to try to make the user feel like he/she really got something for their money.
I really doubt that many of them spend nearly as much effort on making good, working detection engines as they do on the "control panel" interfaces they have. Just last week, I cleaned up a virus mess on a guy's Windows XP machine. He was running Trend Micro's anti-virus product, but it kept doing full system scans and reporting no viruses found. Something was obviously wrong though. (You could even see several programs running in the task manager that didn't belong.)
I tried running Avast anti-virus on it, and it detected a handful of trojan horse downloader viruses in the WINDOWS directory, all with random filenames starting with things like ABAAA, ABAAB, ABAAC, and so forth.
I looked in the directory and found THOUSANDS of these files, yet Avast was only seeing random sprinklings of them. I then installed the free version of AVG anti-virus and scanned it again. Guess what? It detected over 3,000 of the files and deleted them all! So once again, the *free* product did a MUCH better job than 2 commercial ones.
No, I'd agree with you. I get offers in spam email all the time for counterfeit copies of business applications and utilities at extremely low prices, as have many other people I've worked with or known. None of us have ever placed an order though, even if we wanted one of the programs they offered. Same goes for eBay. The fact is, if I'm not clearly buying a *legal* copy of a piece of software, I may as well get my hands on a free copy instead. The only real *value* in buying legitimate software doesn't come from the fact that you now possess a copy of the bits on a piece of media. It comes from the fact that you're able to get customer support and help with problems/issues using the package. You're (theoretically anyway) among the first to be notified when new updates are released, and won't have too much hassle obtaining patches for bugs.
(EG. I like composing music on my computer in my spare time. Some of the best virtual instruments around are software packages written by a company called Native Instruments. Just about everything they've made is available for free download on Usenet, saving you several hundred bucks per software package. BUT - these things are also notorious about requiring updates. Especially in the case of Mac OS X, new OS updates/upgrades often change details of the way Apple supports audio - breaking your program until N.I. releases an update patch. But only licensed users can access a secure portion of their web site where these patches are made available. So - if you use one of their products in any kind of serious way, it's wise just to buy the legit program. Usenet rarely has the update patches passed around for them in a timely manner.)
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My big complaint with this supposed economic "turn-around" is that it's leaving a lot of folks behind. Yes, the people who managed to stay with a large company, working with cutting edge technologies this whole time are in good shape. So are recent college C.S. grads. and those entering the program today. But an awful lot of talented computer people fell through the cracks in the early 2000's, forced to take big pay cuts and work in positions well below their potential, just to make ends meet. Now, these folks are the ones who can only claim "4-5 years of experience in technology X" while their peers who were luckier can claim twice that, simply because they didn't get a pink slip in 2001 or 2002.
As technology marches on, the bar keeps rising on everything. Traditionally, the computer field has been great because there was so much potential to be self-taught. Just get your hands on a relatively cheap PC at home, spend a bunch of time with it, and that's pretty much all that's required to become "employable" someplace in the industry. I knew several long-haul truck drivers, for example, who decided to switch careers and became A+ Certified Computer Techs in their spare time. It wasn't going to make them rich or anything, but it used to be they'd get a comparable salary to the truck driving and it gave them a better lifestyle with more time at home.
Nowdays, unless you're independently wealthy, you simply can't afford to play with the technologies most companies expect new hires to be experienced with. (Are you going to set up a Citrix farm at home? How about some networked ERP or CRM software? Have experience with 2-way satellite networking or high-end Cisco switching equipment? Oracle Enterprise database, maybe?) Therefore, the recent college grads. and grads. to be get a shot at a job, because their school probably did invest the money to allow them to work with some of this "hands on". Those who held onto a good job with a biig company have it to. Everyone else is screwed.
Yep! I've always refused to use those automatically printed shipping labels for that very reason. Just last week, I was in a local UPS Store and a frustrated customer came in wanting to know how to receive a credit for a UPS label they tried to print, but were unsuccessful due to printer problems. The UPS Store employees not only claimed to have absolutely no clue, but denied responsibility completely, claiming they were technically "not even UPS employees, but rather, independent agents".
This isn't even just a PayPal issue, really. If you ship straight from the FedEx or UPS web site, they want you to enter the weight of the package (among other items), and they immediately bill you for the delivery, even though you haven't even given them the box yet. If you're incorrect in the weight estimate and the box is actually lighter than you entered, they won't refund you the difference. They just pocket it and rip you off. And if you decide not to ship the package after all, they still leave the credit authorization on your card for at least several days after you cancel the shipment - tying up some of your available credit. All around, I just don't think this Internet shipping stuff is as convenient for the customer as they try to promise.
Yeah, I basically agree - although what are these "enterprise class" hard drives you refer to? Last time I checked, companies like Sun were charging outrageous prices for hard drives that were just your run-of-the-mill Seagate SCSI's in proprietary hot-swap trays.
Sure, you wouldn't build an "enterprise server" with SATA just yet, but I'd say some form of SATA2 (or who knows, maybe SATA3?) will be the future replacement for SCSI. The hard drive makers are consolidating and IMHO, will soon reach a point where everything is either "budget priced" (EG. junk, suitable for PC resellers to use in low-cost systems for consumers and so-ho settings), or "better quality" which is used for everything from the largest enterprise systems to hobbyist PC's built with performance and quality parts in mind.
Right now, you pay a ridiculous premium for all things SCSI, simply because it's a dying standard, only used and respected by those building large servers for people with deep enough pockets to pay the prices without question. SCSI has disadvantages though, including the difficulty in making the high-density cables and connectors. (Ever try crimping a connector onto a SCA-80 cable, for example?)
The drives themselves tend to be built from pretty much the same parts as their SATA counterparts, lately. They can just stick a different type of controler board on the bottom and call it SATA vs. SCSI. We're no longer in the era where companies like Micropolis and Fujitsu built obviously better-constructed and better warrantied drives intended for server use only.
Exactly! I've been out of work for about a full year now, despite having 15 years of experience in I.T. and the computer service industry. I'm glad I took steps to start my own on-site service and consulting business last year, when I did - because it's the only thing keeping food on my table right now.
I've never held one of those "senior" or "management" titles before, because I'm a "down in the trenches, hands-on" type of guy. I don't really want to sit around in a corner office, writing up a bunch of plans and goals for my staff, or spend hours in boring meetings, trying to justify an I.T. budget, or what-not.
Traditionally, this wasn't really an impediment to my career - because in many cases, experienced technical workers were paid more than department managers were. (After all, they're the ones doing the bulk of the real work. The other guys are only providing some guidance and reporting on the progress of projects.) But thanks to outsourcing, off-shoring, and lots of downsizing/cost-cutting - I think we've reached a point where only the "senior management" types are taking home the fat paychecks in I.T. Everyone who really knows the technology intimately and lives/breathes it daily is another "cog" in the machine, and considered pretty much expendable. (H.R. - please fetch me another resume of someone with an MCSE or CCIE. Thanks.)
It's doubly bad if your interest was primarily in "workstation support" roles (as mine was). There's a mentality nowdays in corporate I.T. that the server side is all that matters. If you need "workstation support", grab some kids right out of school and pay them sub $10/hr. pay to help people figure out their printing issues and whatever.... Don't hire "expert quality" staff for that! It's increasingly difficult for me to make the jump to server support as time goes on, because they're constantly raising the bar on the specifics you need to know to qualify for the job. (EG. I was quite familiar with Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 Server support, and dabbled in a mix of Linux and Windows 2000 Server support wherever I could. But since then, I haven't had the chance to work for someone really using Active Directory in Windows 2003 Server, or a more "commercial" Unix like Solaris - so it's a tough sell that I'll be able to just "run with it" if they hire me.)
It all depends... Every situation seems to be different. Take, for example, the fact that at least in the U.S., a bartender and/or drinking establishment can be held liable if they allow a customer to get drunk, drive away, and end up in a car accident, injuring or killing another person. The premise seems to be the idea that the establishment and bartender is responsible for cutting people off before they can get to a stage where they can cause the incident.
So if you view corporate laptops in *that* light, then yes - I can see where they'd hold a company legally responsible for data lost because of a theft of a corporate laptop.
I disagree with you, simply because it's a fallacy that it's always "safer" to pull off the side of the road you're driving on. If you're in an area where there's not a good shoulder on the road, or other drivers have relatively poor visability, pulling off to the side in an unexpected place can be much more dangerous than continuing to drive. It all depends on how capable you are of working your GPS device without it distracting you too much from the task of driving.
I'd also argue that people tend to become less safe drivers when they get lost. Their stress levels increase, and they start doing unsafe things, such as driving the wrong way on a poorly marked one-way street, making U-turns or driving at erratic speeds as they keep slowing down to read all the street signs, trying to find one that sounds familiar. If you weigh that vs. the confidence of having a GPS that's telling you exactly where to go - I'm not sure the momentary increased risk of having an accident while trying to press a few buttons on one is the greater threat?
I've used both the Garmin Streetpilot 2610 and the Lowrance iWay 500c in-car GPS systems pretty extensively while driving. Primarily, I rely on them to locate customers for my on-site service business, but I also used the Lowrance for a brief stint as a courier, plus used both on a couple of longer trips out of state.
Even though I always try to enter my destination info before actually driving off - I often get in situations where I need to make some changes "on the fly". It's not always really practical to pull off to the side of the road someplace, just to tell it about a new stop you found out you need to get to along the way. As other people said, much of the problem with trying to use a GPS while driving is lack of familiarity with the interface. With mine mounted on my dash in just the right place, I can glance at it quickly or press a few buttons on it quickly without really taking my eyes off the road. But my biggest issue with both units I've used has been an imperfect touch-screen. Sometime you press something and it doesn't respond, or it selects the item above or below the one you tried to pick. Distractions like that can really cause problems.
I also wish they had a little more accurate map data in them! Even though I always bought the latest available map updates for both units I've owned, I've always had numerous problems with it not knowing the correct exit numbers for given highway exits, and cases where it indicated an on-ramp was on my left when it was really coming up on my right (or vice-versa).
They also tend to be bad with long highway exit ramps that split off into 2 different directions at the end of them. (EG. It will tell you "Exit right in 1/4th. mile onto exit 96/97A." But if you don't know for sure if the next instruction is going to be taking 97A vs. 96, it won't tell you until the last few seconds if you need to turn "right" or "left" when the exit forks off in two different directions!)
The Lowrance iWay 500c in particular has been unreliable with "points of interest". I've entered names of restaurants I was looking for, only to be led right up to the driveway of someone's house! (My guess is, they somehow mixed up the restaurant owner's home and business addresses, and took me to the owner's home.) This is especially disturbing considering they use Navteq map data, which is pretty much an "industry standard" for MANY in-car GPS systems.
There are always going to be stealthy removeable drive type devices out there that someone can sneak in and out of a company easily and copy files onto. The iPod is just a popular target because millions have been sold and most people are aware of them.
The *real* question is, why would employees have access to file shares on servers containing important documents they weren't supposed to have? If your business throws everything on shares that all users have read (or read/write) access to, they deserve what they get for not implementing some sort of security policy for the shares.
If you're an I.T. person who has full access anyway due to the nature of your job, again - so what? You're already able to burn the stuff off to DVDs at night and sneak them home or download them remotely over your corporate VPN or ??? The point is, companies have to place trust in their people to various extents. If they hired you as a sysadmin, they should have already done the background checking and everything else before hiring you - and believe you can be trusted. If you violate that trust - you screwed them, plain and simple. Implementing some sort of "no Ipod allowed!" policy won't prevent that.
I don't know in the *long* term where Apple will be, but I'd agree that they have a vested interest in getting more involved in digital entertainment/content distribution. They've always been looked at as one of the top providers of the tools to create that content anyway.
But yes, that was my original point. Apple does just use commodity PC components nowdays. That's why they HAVE to cling tightly to OS X. It's the only thing that differentiates their machines from everything else out there, if you strip away the little details (like the "mag-safe" power connector on the upcoming MacBook Pro, or their backlit keyboards).
I think Apple would like to offer a "premium quality" computer, in that you're getting something that looks a lot more elegant than a beige box, and has lots of small innovations in it. But inside, sure, it's just another x86 platform. As long as they make it a software license violation to put OS X on anything else though, and they keep innovating with OS X enough to keep it on top - they can do a nice business long into the future selling you a nice looking computer bundled with OS X.
IMHO, the parent post was VERY well stated. And the people countering that "small improvements are better than no improvements" miss the point too. Convincing people to settle for smaller vehicles does nothing to solve the *real* issue; our dependence on foreign oil. In fact, it just drags it out longer.
... I'll be an early adopter of technology X. The potential hassles and glitches are worth suffering through to save me Y$ per week!"
The *only* solution we're going to see is a move to alternate forms of energy for our vehicles - and even in a world where we've all moved to driving Priuses around, we're going to run into that need pretty quickly. (Much of the increase in oil consumption has nothing to do with what U.S. drivers own. It has to do with other nations becoming advanced enough to have more energy needs.... so in essence, new customers competing for the supply.)
It's arguable that if all of our vehicles were large SUVs eating up 2 times as much gas, we'd all switch to alternate energy MORE QUICKLY, because we'd collectively feel the "pinch" of the high fuel prices enough to say "Ok
Your question comes up over and over again. Why won't Apple just start selling OS X for Intel boxes? I think to understand this, you have to look at the big picture. Apple is the very last of the original computer-builders from the 1970's and 80's who offered a computer that wasn't "PC compatible". From the very start, Apple was a company interested in selling you a proprietary system (hardware + software bundled together in what they thought was the ideal configuration), just like Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack, Osbourne, Sinclair, and many others did. One by one, the others died off, unable to compete with the flood of MS-DOS and Windows machines that other companies kept cranking out. (In a few cases, like Radio Shack, they decided "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" and started making PC compatible boxes... and eventually becoming a Compaq reseller.)
If Apple just started selling OS X for any old x86 box, they'd instantly turn into just another PC clone builder. In today's market, a standard PC is just a commodity. Everyone builds them using the same pool of components, so it always comes down to who has the lowest price. This is why you see Gateway computer struggling to survive. They're not big enough to compete head-to-head with someone like Dell, and don't offer enough other products or services to help keep them afloat (unlike HP who has printers and scanners to sell). Apple wouldn't want to become another "Gateway", with nothing profitable in their entire product line besides music players and OS X.
Apple is interested in selling you a complete computing "experience", centered around things like a superior level of customer service and support, pleasant retail shops in most major cities, and elegant computers bundled with OS X. Sure, that means they won't get that $150 from a PC user like you, who just wants the "crown jewel" without taking the rest of the bundle along with it. But I think Apple is probably quite happy to keep it that way. In the near future, Intel based Macs will be able to boot into Windows, OS X, Linux and maybe even another OS or two. So Apple knows they're not selling you something that's totally locked into *only* their OS. They just want to get you to come over to their side of the fence and buy into the whole experience, hardware + software + support, or not bother until you have the financial means to "go all the way" with it.
Yep! I'll throw in my own anecdote.
I was working in I.T. for a mid-sized company that was using exclusively Dell, but got irritated at the long hold times just to get parts replaced under warranty, and some billing mistakes they made. So they asked me to consider alternatives. We opted for Toshiba for some of our laptop purchases, and as an experiment, tried Gateway. They had a number of new slim-line desktop PCs out that they were selling through their "business division", pre-loaded with Windows NT 4.0 (which was what we ran at the time).
The first shipment arrived, and out of the box, they were having issues. When we installed certain software packages on them, they repeatedly crashed with the blue screen of death, and wouldn't reboot properly if you applied one of the NT service packs on them. Calls to Gateway technical support did no good, and I was referred to my local Gateway Country store. So there I was, a corporate customer, expected to hand-deliver these PCs to a consumer-oriented retail store and leave them there for "warranty service". I ended up bringing them just one of them to troubleshoot for us. First, they told me the hard drive was bad and replaced it. (Obviously, that didn't fix anything.) Then they swapped out the motherboard and blamed bad RAM as the problem. Nope! Finally, someone realized Gateway had just released a new BIOS for them that fixed the issue - but the new BIOS version wasn't posted to their web site yet for some reason, so I was told I've have to bring all of the boxes in to the store to let them flash upgrade them. (Umm, no. Not an acceptable answer!) So I just kept combing the web site until the upgrade was finally made publically available and got the systems updated myself.
After that fiasco, we never used Gateway again. Heck, even their web site was difficult to navigate to get drivers and BIOS updates compared to Dell.
And I, on the other hand, could label you one of those left-wing hippie, "Save the Planet" types who can't stand the idea of people actually enjoying technology.
... I'll stick with what I've got, because I still use mine primarily for music. But those upgrading after only a short time are also getting a lot more resale value out of their used iPods than people like myself who hang onto them longer. I don't think you can label people "brainwashed Apple drones" just because they bought into the iPod video, got a taste of how useful portable video could be for them, and are anxious to jump on any update that makes improvements in that area.
It's just as ridiculous a statement as your generalization was, after all.
I purchased a 3rd. gen. iPod 40GB when it first came out, and hung onto it until this last Xmas, when I sold it (at a big loss - but so it goes) and got a 60GB iPod video. As you might have guessed, more storage capacity is one of the prime reasons that I'm willing to upgrade. But the iPod video opens up whole new uses for the device too. All of a sudden, people are buying them to watch TV shows or even movies ripped from DVDs while they're on the go. The rumored new iPod allows turning the whole unit sideways to get more screen real-estate, which could be a big justification for an upgrade, even for a recent iPod video purchaser.
Personally, no
I'm not much of a fan of Microsoft products. In fact, I've switched mostly to Mac OS X over the last few years. But nonetheless, your argument is really little more than a thinly veiled attempt to "flame" Microsoft.
Your "3rd. option" isn't realistically possible at all. The problem is, Windows started out as a layer to run on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Over the years, they kept adding to it and adding to it. Then they branched off another direction (Windows NT) when they realized building on the MS-DOS foundation was rather like constructing an office building on top of a sand pit. They already had too many "tenants" who didn't want to move though, so they kept on supporting the original effort as long as they could (Windows ME). Meanwhile, NT still had to look and feel like the "old stuff" and have a mechanism for running as much of the old code as possible.
To their credit, they did a really good job of migrating people off the the MS-DOS based code and over to a heavily upgraded Windows NT based structure (Windows XP). But they've always had to make serious compromises in the interest of "backwards compatibility".
But IMHO, they've been screwed from the start in areas like "security" - because they've incorporated FAR too much "legacy" code over the years, as they've made "backwards compatibility" their primary focus. Even their protocols (NetBIOS, etc.) were a kludgy mess that nobody seems to understand 100%. So how do you really expect their people to wade through the entire mess this late in the game, and successfully patch it up so it's just as secure as a newer OS built from scratch, with priorities like "security" in mind?
Throwing money at problems rarely ensures they're solved efficiently or completely. (Take a look at the Fed. govt. and their budget management if you don't believe this.) Microsoft, obviously, would never want to spend their "40 billion saved up in the bank" on patching Windows. But even if they did/could, I doubt it would ensure a truly secure OS. They didn't build on a Unix skeleton from the start, and the Unix skeleton has proven a better "foundation" for secure OS's so far. (BSD, Linux, Mac OSX, BeOS, etc.)
Apple won't have to do squat with phones like the Treo.... The MP3 capabilities on one suck, to put it mildly. It has issues playing anything in a high bitrate (like 192bit), and you have to buy a special adapter just to use normal headphones with it. Out of the box, it doesn't have enough memory to store more than a few songs. You have to buy a memory card for it (after forking out all that money for the phone to begin with), and it's very SLOW syncing music into it.
I have a Treo 650 and I like the phone, overall. Don't get me wrong. But it's no replacement for an iPod - and THAT probably explains why so many Treo owners also have iPods.
Several years ago, I knew a woman who was finishing up her studies to become an optometrist, and she told me one time that I should be very concerned about the Lasik procedures out there, and didn't recommend having it done at all.
.5% to 1% of patients. They tend not to inform people of the real risk because it's such a profitable business, and they're better off settling the occasional lawsuit than telling people the truth.
I don't know how much fact there was to it, but she claimed that the "dirty little secret" of Lasik is that it more or less casues eventual legal blindness in around
If there's truth to this, I imagine they get away with downplaying the risk factors because the vision loss happens over a length of time, and can easily be blamed on other factors, in most cases where someone complains?
Not that it really excuses lying, but you're absolutely right. The underlying problem is the belief that a college degree is some sort of basic requirement for having the ability to do a job. Much to the chagrin of many people paying off huge student loans, it's simply not!
The Slashdot story yesterday about new govt. hiring guidelines going into effect will just make the problem even worse. If resumes are expected to contain every single requirement listed in a "want ad" - guess what? Most of them will end up doing so, whether or not the candidates really know those specific things.
I think in the specific cases cited here, it's mostly a matter of our president appointing these people to their positions because he already knows them and thinks they're in line with his agenda. (Heck, who's to say he didn't talk with them behind closed doors, informing them that "a college degree is, ahem, required, before I can give you this position - so you might want to, uh, put something down just for the sake of completeness...."?)
But you're quite right. There's a lot of discrimination out there towards folks who chose alternate paths to "get out of high-school, jump into college". It seems sometimes, the only ones who manage to overcome it are the ones who build their own big businesses -- and then, all of a sudden, the college-degreed world is very interested in what they have to say. (EG. Bill Gates)
I think that article referred to by the parent poster is simply biased.... Claiming it caused Dell to switch to AMD processors for all of their new laptops? Ridiculous. Michael Dell has never shown himself to be the type to make large product line changes simply to "send a message" that he didn't care for something as petty as a single commercial.
Rather, he's repeatedly stated that he has little interest in doing creative, innovative new things. His business is all about mass production of established products and shaving as many costs as possible in the production and shipping process. If I had to guess, I'd think Michael Dell would grin and say "Yep - that's my business model. Boring little boxes. And I sell at least 10 of 'em for every one of those shiny little Apple boxes!"
AMD has been working hard for years to get some of the "big box" vendors on-board with their latest technologies - and frankly, it's sad that it's taken so long for their adoption. I can see absolutely no harm that would have come from offering Athlon 64 based Dell Optiplexes or Dimensions.... other than Intel not being happy about it.
Bottom line, as always. Profit. How profitable will it be for Apple to undergo another switch? Someone else is always going to come along with the next big thing in CPUs, but the trick for a company Apple's size is to partner with someone who won't leave you hanging with very outdated chips and no long-term roadmap that looks promising compared to the competitors. IBM has already illustrated a relative lack of interest in such things as consumer PCs. (Sold off the Thinkpad division to Lenovo, for example - and heavily invested in intangibles like consulting.) And certainly, Motorola wasn't even on the radar of "competitive" in the consumer PC marketplace for the last few years. So yeah, Intel was still the best gamble, IMHO, with AMD being the only reasonably close second choice.
Good for you, but that won't always cut it. I know... Practically every job I've ever had has been through an "inside connection" too - but I've been unemployed and looking for about 11 months now. I started my own business just to get some kind of cash flow coming in, but it wasn't really my intention or desire to run my own business right now. (I'm a single parent trying to raise a small child, and running my own business is pretty difficult to juggle with everything else.)
... I have only 4. Normally I'd just explain that during an interview and convince them the extra 1 year isn't a deal-breaker. But now, I just have to lie and claim 5.)
So far, I've had at least 3 times where friends of mine already working for places tried to bypass H.R. and recommend me for open positions - and in each case, they were shut down with "We can't even consider your friend until you tell him to fill out an online applicartion and submit his resume to H.R. All new hires must first go through H.R." (And in 2 of the 3 cases, these people were personal friends with their boss who was hiring - so I don't think it had to do with "not having enough pull" inside the company.)
The job market is terrible right now, at least for computers and I.T. If these new "guidelines" really get used by businesses, it will just create a need for applicants to lie on their resumes in order to be considered. (EG. The ad asks for at least 5 years of experience in Citirx? Well, shoot
Again, I disagree with you. Sorry, but quitting one's job and suing for minor damages later doesn't sound like a way to effectively send any kind of worthwhile message to a company that's this abusive towards your individual rights and freedom. Sure, he very well might have worked with other people who had 10 kids to raise, were deep in debt, or whatnot. That's true anywhere. There's also nothing saying the competitor might end up hiring those people back later. Considering the company was just a startup business, anyone signing on to work for them should have been well aware that doing so meant a considerable risk of losing one's job anyway. It's not like startups are known for their job security or stability.
Oh please.... It's people like you that *cause* most of these problems in the first place! If you're mistreated like that in your job, you suggest it's best to "shut up and take it" because otherwise, you might affect all of your co-workers? That mentality just allows them to get away with more and more injustice with impunity.
If your co-workers are a bunch of pathetic sheep who think it's just fine to be denied their sick days and timed when they visit the restroom, screw the whole lot of them.... They can fend for themselves.
If they'd just go around stinging the roaches, rather than being efficient enough to lead just one back to the nest to raise more of them for food, you might be able to get rid of roach problems with these wasps. Evacuate a building for a while and drop some of these wasps in there. After a certain length of time, fumigate it to kill the wasps - and voila, no more bug problem!
(Would have loved to mod your comment up, but out of points right now.)
But yeah, precisely. Despite all the hype over 64 bit, it doesn't necessarily make code run any faster than it can on a good 32-bit CPU. The only "tangible" advantage is the ability to manage more system RAM. As developers have said repeatedly, 64-bit applications require shuffling around larger numbers, and only in specific instances does 64-bit give you a speed advantage with your code.
I also predict that before we start seeing the average user wanting/needing more than 4GB of RAM in a computer, flash memory storage will come down in price, and go up in capacity - making the demand for system RAM relatively less than it was before. (If you have a solid-state replacement for your hard drive, it doesn't have to be such a "performance hit" to swap out to "virtual memory".)
As I've commented several times before in previous Symantec-related stories, the company cranks out pure junk. Perhaps even more distastefully, has done so using the name (and for some time, even a head-shot photo!) of Peter Norton, a GOOD developer from back in the MS-DOS days, who has absolutely NOTHING to do with any of the Windows-based anti-virus and disk repair utilities they've been hawking as though he wrote them.
As a few others have occasionally pointed out; anti-virus, anti-spyware or anti-spam type software are perfect examples of cases where open source makes the most sense. There's too much incentive in commercial versions of such products to cheat the end-user. (EG. Who's to say that if you sell an anti-virus product and sales get slow, you wouldn't pay off some hacker in a 3rd. world country to make a new virus that your product can then detect and clean first?) If not open-source, then at least products that are essentially "freeware".
Besides, if you're going to have to add these layers of code to an OS just to keep it running securely, you want them to be as "lean" and unobtrusive as possible. Symantec and most competing commercial products are the exact opposite - because they're very concerned about "flashiness" and "substance" to try to make the user feel like he/she really got something for their money.
I really doubt that many of them spend nearly as much effort on making good, working detection engines as they do on the "control panel" interfaces they have. Just last week, I cleaned up a virus mess on a guy's Windows XP machine. He was running Trend Micro's anti-virus product, but it kept doing full system scans and reporting no viruses found. Something was obviously wrong though. (You could even see several programs running in the task manager that didn't belong.)
I tried running Avast anti-virus on it, and it detected a handful of trojan horse downloader viruses in the WINDOWS directory, all with random filenames starting with things like ABAAA, ABAAB, ABAAC, and so forth.
I looked in the directory and found THOUSANDS of these files, yet Avast was only seeing random sprinklings of them. I then installed the free version of AVG anti-virus and scanned it again. Guess what? It detected over 3,000 of the files and deleted them all! So once again, the *free* product did a MUCH better job than 2 commercial ones.
No, I'd agree with you. I get offers in spam email all the time for counterfeit copies of business applications and utilities at extremely low prices, as have many other people I've worked with or known. None of us have ever placed an order though, even if we wanted one of the programs they offered. Same goes for eBay. The fact is, if I'm not clearly buying a *legal* copy of a piece of software, I may as well get my hands on a free copy instead. The only real *value* in buying legitimate software doesn't come from the fact that you now possess a copy of the bits on a piece of media. It comes from the fact that you're able to get customer support and help with problems/issues using the package. You're (theoretically anyway) among the first to be notified when new updates are released, and won't have too much hassle obtaining patches for bugs.
(EG. I like composing music on my computer in my spare time. Some of the best virtual instruments around are software packages written by a company called Native Instruments. Just about everything they've made is available for free download on Usenet, saving you several hundred bucks per software package. BUT - these things are also notorious about requiring updates. Especially in the case of Mac OS X, new OS updates/upgrades often change details of the way Apple supports audio - breaking your program until N.I. releases an update patch. But only licensed users can access a secure portion of their web site where these patches are made available. So - if you use one of their products in any kind of serious way, it's wise just to buy the legit program. Usenet rarely has the update patches passed around for them in a timely manner.)