It seems to me that it's just as much of a problem of having a "chronic need to escape reality" if you're blowing all your money at the strip clubs or nightclubs, going out to the movies every single night, taking recreational drugs to escape, or spending most of your waking hours inside an MMORPG.
The way "reality" works in our world, entertainment = escape. The entertainment industry probably prefers you not equate the two so starkly, but I think it's just the facts. All of us have a need to disconnect from our daily lives (the "daily grind" as we so often call it), so we crave some "entertainment" to whisk us away from all those worries and stress for a while. But some people live for the escape itself, not for their lives as a whole. And that spells trouble.
Just because while playing an MMORPG, one might have a real connection to the "social aspects" of the game and so on doesn't mean it's any more "real" than other forms of "escape". Most people hooked on cocaine, heroin, or other drugs tell you that all their friends are doing it, and it's "cool" and so on and so forth, too. It does let them become a part of a particular "social circle" and attain a level of "popularity" they might not otherwise have had... But again, all of it is ultimately "false", because those "friends" are only connecting because of the common addiction they share.
I'm not going to try to argue that people have "no right to be angry" about practically anything. That's patently ridiculous, since emotions are a basic part of being human.
But "nobody is seeking to ban SUVs"? Are you sure about that? I'd call the environmentalist actions of the folks on the west coast who were smearing human feces on the door handles of every SUV they found parked in a lot, or dumping cans of paint on them pretty darn close. Groups like Greenpeace have continually battled with auto-makers to try to convince them to stop building SUVs too. They've done their best to bad-mouth them and get a boycott going on their purchase.
Who are these people to profess to know better than I as an SUV owner what *my* needs are for a vehicle? And not only that, but the people getting "offended" by seeing SUVs in service probably need to educate themselves a little bit more on the "big picture".
At least the typical SUV driver is doing something useful with his/her vehicle when you see him/her driving around. Meanwhile, we have literally hundreds of auto races held each year with cars much less fuel eficient than any SUV, not to mention burning through brakes, tires, and everything else at an incredibly fast rate - and you don't see anyone picketing out in front of the Indy or NASCAR races, do you? This is, technically, a needless waste of precious resources for nothing more than entertainment purposes.
My point is, it's all relative.... And if someone gets enough enjoyment and perceived usefulness out of driving their SUV that only gets >18 MPG, well - so be it. As I said before, they're being taxed proportionally higher than anyone driving a more fuel efficient car or truck anyway.
Look, the biggest factor to "wearing out the roads faster" has practically nothing to do with people driving around SUVs, and MUCH more to do with big 18-wheelers and the ones with double trailers attached. If a vehicle the size of a Suburban or even a Cadillac Escalade can do physical damage to our paved roads and highways, then we're really in trouble when the UPS or FedEx guy comes around, aren't we?
(Maybe you better stop ordering anything mail order, huh?)
At least here in the midwest, the REAL culprit for wearing out roads is ice and snow, and the rock salt they put down to combat it each winter..... but I digress.
The real point is, all of this SUV hatred is completely misplaced, and completely ignores people's rights to purchase and use whichever product they'd prefer to own. If you use an SUV and it gets poor gas mileage, then you purchase more gas - which is taxed at quite a high rate, so you *do* contribute more than others to funding govt. programs. Since SUVs generally aren't especially cheap vehicles, you ALSO get socked wtih high "personal property taxes" for the life of ownership in some states.
As for myself, I actually still have a 1985 Pontiac station wagon, which was a hand-me-down from my folks, who only used it for a few vacation trips and kept it garaged all the time. It's still in excellent shape. But my other vehicle is a Mitsubishi Montero Sport SUV, and you know what? That wagon gets FAR worse gas mileage than the SUV does. My friend used to drive around a small van that got worse gas mileage than my SUV does, too. Yet these environmentalist assholes who run around dumping paint on people's SUVs and so forth seem to think a station wagon or van is "more accpetable".
Whatever.... In any case, the trend is moving away from buying SUVs anyway. The problem is, whenever a vehicle is discovered as very useful for taking kids around to school and such, it eventually gets labeled a "soccer mom" vehicle and becomes "uncool" to own. That's why you saw everyone go from station wagons to minivans, and from minivans to SUVs. Now, SUVs are "uncool" - so I don't know what's next? Chrysler is trying to bring back the station wagon in a re-invented form, so maybe it's coming full circle?
Well, for starters, not everyone wants to run cat5 through a wall or floor so it comes out wherever they happen to have their TV set at in the house. Wireless makes a lot of sense for this type of device.
And the fact that "all ethernet functionality was a hack or technically unsupported" until recently just illustrates what I'm saying. Tivo didn't go far enough or think far enough ahead with their product, and the "innovations" we're left waiting on are all basic things people *expect* to be in a box of this type already.
Tivo selling the boxes "at a loss" means nothing to me. How much is a 10/100 ethernet adapter these days? I can buy a compete PCI card one for about $7 on Pricewatch. Tivo only needs the chips themselves, since it'll be integrated onto an existing motherboard.. so under $5 for them. If they added $5 to the price to cover that, how much of an issue do you see that being for sales? And these prices have been around quite a while on 10/100 ethernet.... It isn't like this price drop just happened.
Heh... I have a MS SideWinder joystick over (original model with the 15-pin gameport connector on it, and convertable to USB with a little "dongle" adapter), as well as an MS SideWinder gamepad.
I actually wanted to sell one or both of these a while back. Had 'em on eBay and got no bidders, even at $1 plus postage. So I figured nobody wanted used joysticks anymore or something?
Seriously, if you're seeking one out - I'd be happy to sell you one of mine. I got a couple Logitech wireless gamepads I use now.
I really *tried* to be a big Tivo fan. And heck, the concept is darn good overall. But I went back to my home-brew MythTV box for a while.
For starters, my Series 2 stand-alone Tivo suddenly died on me. It was fine one night, and the next day I turned on my TV to see a black screen with a line of text at the top that simply said "Unexpected CPU Detected!". (Huh? What CPU *were* you expecting anyway??) A couple reboots didn't fix a thing. Just got the intial couple splash screens followed by the black screen and odd message. I can only assume the CPU went bad in it?
Being out of warranty, I have to pay Tivo $79 to swap it for another unit. (Irritating, too, because plenty of people would sell me a used/working Series 2 Tivo for much less - but then my lifetime channel subscription would be lost, since they tie those to the *box*.)
But beyond all that... Tivo has far too slow of a network connection for such things as downloading live programming from the net! I couldn't ever get it to find my wi-fi 802.11g USB interfaces. Had to settle for an old Linksys wireless b interface, and it takes almost 45-50 minutes to download a single movie from it to my PC using "Tivo2Go". The same xfer would take only 5-6 minutes between 2 PCs on my LAN over my 100mbit ethernet connection. Why in the world didn't these boxes come with wired 10/100 ethernet RJ-45 ports on them? At least in their later revisions....
In fact, as a Mac user myself, I'd say you're quite incorrect on Apple "not even requiring an authentication code" for many of their products.
Every last one of their "Pro" apps I've seen forces you to enter a fairly long and nasty registration key during installation. So did Keynote and Pages. And it looked to me like they went even further than that for products like Logic Pro. (Though I have no intention of ever really using it, because for my "hobby" music needs, even Logic Express is more than enough... I experimented with installing a warez version of Logic Pro 7.1 I grabbed off Usenet. Despite having a valid registration key and the ISO image of the original disc - the app refused to run after installation, complaining I didn't have the "original CD" in the drive.)
So no, I don't think for a minute that Steve Jobs is "learning" anything new by observing people making OS X for Intel work on platforms other than his own test machines right now. I'm sure it was fully expected, hence his strict rules enforcing the idea that the test systems were only "loaners" - not purchasable computers, and the strict NDA slapped down on everyone receiving one.
The very idea that Mac users, by nature, are somehow more "trustworthy" or "less likely to pirate" than Windows PC users is just more elitist B.S. The reality is, there's not nearly as much software out there for a Mac - so there's much less "need" for piracy. It's financially possible to buy every single native Mac commerical app you'd ever really use with your computer! By contrast, in Windows, there may be 40 or 50 competing apps that do the *same job*. So there's a much stronger tendency to pirate a few here and there, to see if one is really better than what you're already using, etc.
Apple hasn't done "product activation" like MS did with XP, but I have little doubt they'd move to it if they thought it would increase their profits. As you pointed out though, they've been in a position where it's a non-issue, because you pay for the OS in the purchase price of your Mac - and your Mac ultimately has to come from Apple. Apple has no qualmns about doing the same basic thing already when it comes to music purchased from their music store for use in iTunes, right?
First of all, I think Burlington Northern proabably selected Carpal Tunnel as the "guinea pig" to genetically test against because it's one of the injuries taken less seriously by the general public.
It may cost them a lot in workers' comp. claims, but except for those already suffering from it, most people remain pretty unconcerned about getting it.
If you want to picture why genetic testing without permnission by an employer might be viewed as "troubling" or having a "profound" impact - all you need to do is substitute carpal tunnel for any number of other possibilites, like cancer or heart disease or alzheimer's. You name it....
Ultimately, I agree with most of your assertions. Employers aren't always bad/in the wrong. It's reasonable for an "at will" employer to want to avoid workers who won't be able to effectively perform tasks. And people don't have a "right to work for a particular employer". But none of this really changes this particular issue, IMHO.
The real issue is; do we, as a society, really think it will be beneficial to allow employers to screen their workers for *potential* problems, effectively marking a large percentage of our population as "unemployable" due to genetic tendencies to develop a disease or disorder?
I understand Burlington Northern wasn't doing this testing on potential hires.... Rather, merely trying to find a way out of paying for injuries that arguably had little to do with their work environment. But it's that "slippery slope" in effect here. If you allow them to test without permission for this, it's MUCH easier for a company to justify similar testing for other things.
On top of all of that, is it even really such a *bad* thing that one's employer takes responsibility for an employee's injuries anyway? If you have a good, productive worker (say, software developer or even data entry person) and they do get carpal tunnel - why, as an employer, do you think you're automatically in a much better position if you can get out of paying to fix it for them? If you have a machine you rely on in your business and it breaks, do you not pay to have it repaired in many cases? When you figure in the costs involved in hiring and training someone new, not to mention all the experience that walks off when you let the old employee go, it seems to me that can add up to a lot more than the cost of your health insurance on them.
You can't just do a study or survey and determine that "7th. grade is the exact, right time to buy a laptop for your kid" or whatnot.
Each situation is unique, and some people mature more quickly than others too.
I agree with the comment in the original article about laptops generally seeming more appropriate or useful for high-schoolers when their school already uses them in a structured way.
But even then, it all depends.... Do you really still only have one PC at home that the whole family is trying to share? Many people do, but with the plummeting prices of computers, many people already own 2 or 3 of them. Your teen begging for a new laptop may just want it to take to friends' houses and copy the latest games - rather than a legitimate school-related need.
I recently talked to the I.T. director of a local private high-school, and he said they're under some pressure lately to start issuing laptops to their students (mainly because a couple other private schools in the area already do). But his take on it was, they can do a much better job by purchasing 50 or 60 laptops, putting them on rolling carts with chargers integrated into them, and letting teachers dole them out to students for use during a course. Then, put them back away again when they're done with them. This solves the complaint about students having to "go to a computer lab" any time a teacher wants to include the computer in a course - while ending concerns of students having their laptops stolen or broken taking them to or from class, having adequate places to plug them in to charge up during school, etc. Plus, the I.T. dept. can efficiently roll out software updates to all of them at once, when needed - instead of having to struggle to get their hands on each and every student laptop at some point or other, to get people up-to-date.
I'm definitely seeing where in corporate I.T., it's almost *entirely* about who you know, plus "to the biggest B.S.er go the spoils".
Where does "formal education" come into play? It's pretty much a "key" that turns the "lock" of the H.R. department. They typically don't understand a thing about what the company is really looking for in a technical position like an I.T. opening. So they serve as "gatekeeper", screening for what basics they know how to screen for. If the hiring manager told them he specifically wanted a certain certification, then they toss aside all resumes not listing that one. Otherwise, they ignore that stuff entirely and they look for a "4 year college degree".
If you want to bypass that, you have to know somebody on the inside who can push your name to the top of the hiring manager's stack of resumes. (In larger companies, you can't really "sidestep" H.R. yourself, but the hiring manager can always inform them to "stop looking" because he "found what he's looking for".)
But short of knowing somebody who can try to get that door open for you someplace, I think the most important factors for getting hired become all the wrong things. EG. Maybe a place is all gung-ho on the whole "team player" concept, so they're judging how well you generally seem to "fit in" with whatever their department's "corporate culture" is. You might be perfect for what they need, but you didn't happen to talk about going golfing on the weekends or seem enthused enough to go introduce yourself and shake hands with random employees you walked by during the little "tour" of the place someone gave you. Who knows?
It seems to me that the people telling us how "Many times, companies just pay the hackers off to avoid embarassment." have little or no real facts to back up those claims.
In other words, it's just sensationalist writing.
In any nation with reasonably well enforced laws protecting a company's I.P. - I would think it's pointless for an extortionist to even attempt this. Sure, you might have the technical means to steal the proprietary info (especially if the company has unsecured or poorly secured wi-fi networks), but then what?
Even the guy in this story got caught after unsuccessfully trying to scam money out of just one company. And today, it would seem to be much more difficult to get away with than it was even a few years ago. The government and law enforcement are getting more knowledgable about Internet-based crime all the time, and since 9-11, the U.S. at least has enacted more laws giving feds the ability to "spy" on net traffic and trace things back to their source.
I really don't believe any legitimate business would think it made sense to pay some hacker millions of dollars in extortion money. This is MUCH more effective in situations like the one discussed in a Slashdot story a while back... where someone threatens a denial of service attack on an online gambling/betting or porn site that's already running "beneath the radar" of legislation in nations that would prefer to shut them down.
Perhaps so, but seems like a native OpenGL layer could easily be added to the OS as sort of a "plugged in component". If this became an issue preventing MS from making too many sales in the global marketplace, I'm sure they'd just suddenly produce an "OpenGL option" that you download via Windows Update or receive on CD for a few bucks, for those who "have special circumstances requiring it". Lots of folks would never know or care the difference, but they'd legally be covered since they provided the alternative... and they'd still get the leverage of convincing more new game/graphics developers to just code for Direct-X instead so there was one less "requirement" for end-users to have installed to make the product work.
Nah, I don't think so. Seriously, the sit-ins, the protest marches, etc. etc. What did they *really* accomplish, other than a lot of "feel good/I did my part!" stuff for those involved in all of it?
Back in the days of Vietnam, the country still went to war and got all those folks killed anyway. All that high-profile protesting and burning of draft cards didn't change a thing in the govt. policy of the day.
They only quit when they decided for themselves, as military leaders and political figures that they had no way of winning and it wasn't accomplishing any "good" for them anymore.
The best you can do is educate as many people as possible about what's going on around them, so at least they don't let things slip past them, completely unaware. In the case of technical concepts, your most receptive audience is the minority of people who write the software, use the software, and follow technology trends. That means, web sites like Slashdot, Ars Technica, etc.
I've said time and time again, short of election of an independent political party with fresh, radically different ideas of a direction to take the nation - everything else amounts to little more than "going through the motions" anyway. Do I expect the Bush presidency to pay a lick of attention to me if I gather up even 50,000 people interested in p2p sharing rights and march on the lawn in D.C.? Nope... because we're not the ones lining the pocketbooks of the senators, congressmen, and other political figures like the companies are that fund the opposing viewpoints.
But seriously, pretty much all current computer tech is just a "combintion of other people's technology and ideas". Trying to point that out as a Microsoft-specific problem is ridiculous.
The key is, how well does a company *implement* this combining of ideas and technologies into desireable products? Xerox had a *research* facility where all those early ideas like the GUI and the mouse came from. Scientists doing research don't try to market final products based on their findings. That's not their area of expertise.
Sometimes, to enable someone's good product idea to flourish, it needs to be bought out by someone with much deeper pockets, who can re-brand it and give it the marketing push it deserves. Microsoft is great at doing this - and to me, that's not a bad thing at all. And when they buy something and re-brand it, and that financial "push" wasn't really needed - it usually fails on them. (EG. Microsoft's failed experiment selling wireless routers, NICs, etc.)
It only became a "federal issue" because of the claims that abortion was potentially violating the Constitutional rights of the unborn children. Viewed from that perspective, I it's just as easy to ask "Why is murder a state issue, and not a federal one?"
I suppose murder was left for states to handle because of the convoluted nature of each case. (EG. There's an understood difference between murdering someone because they broke into your house at night and you were afraid they might kill you first, and the stalker who decides to murder an innocent victim for the pleasure of it.) In one case, it's much easier to argue that the person murdered had their fundamental Constitutional rights violated in the ultimate way - while in the other, perhaps not, since they brought it about by their own (illegal) actions.
Well, yes and no. In some aspects, computers have become more critical to business operations over time - to the point where sometimes the I.T. staff really *is* the company. (At least, in the sense that if the systems go down for even a few minutes, the business loses hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.)
For example, I have a couple friends who work for a major news and financial information distribution firm. The ability to keep the data constantly streaming to the customers is really the "core" of the whole business. I'm sure some of the management types would argue that "No, the people gathering our information are the most important ones!", but what good is the info if the computer systems aren't feeding it to the people who want to pay for it?
I think one reason I.T. staff feels "undervalued" is exactly the mentality you describe, where folks view them as glorified "air conditioning repair people". Last I checked, heating and cooling repair might require some skill and trainning, but it required very little in the way of imagination or creativity. It doesn't typically require lots of continuous research either. (You don't see your HVAC guy surfing the HVAC "news sites" on the net each day, trying to keep up with the latest updates and fixes for things.) Half of I.T. is keeping on top of what's changing, so you're aware of all of your options when it comes time to implement a new solution. Otherwise, you may be paying way too much for a relatively poor software/hardware solution, just because it's the "only one you were familiar with".
This article might be complete "fliuff", but I will say - eBay *does* at least occasionally take some proactive steps to reduce fraud.
Several months ago, my eBay account was hijacked by someone in another country. In under 24 hours after it happened, I received a phone call from someone in "eBay security" about my account, asking me to verify whether or not I was really selling a particular, expensive telephoto lens for a Canon 35mm camera and a couple other similar items. This was before I had even realized anything was amiss.
eBay immediately cancelled the fraudulent auctions, put my account on "inactive" status, sent me an email link to a special page that would let me confirm that I was the true account-holder, and then let me select a new password and reinstate it. (Good, because I was worried I'd lose all of my positive feedback and start over at 0 if I had to make a whole new account.)
Actually, at times, I wish they'd be less intrusive about cancelling auctions. As it stands now, they're quite strict on cancelling auctions for OEM versions of name-brand software, siding with the very questonable stance by companies like Microsoft that it's somehow "illegal" to resell even shrink-wrapped, unopened programs without bundling them with the PC they originally shipped with. (Nevermind the fact that you might only be selling it as replacement media for legal license-holders who had their original CDs/DVDs scratched or lost.)
I bought one of them as soon as I could get my hands on one from the first batch that arrived at the St. Louis Apple store.
I agree that it's a very cool little box, and inspires people to make projects around it due to the small size and silent nature of it.
But really, I'm less than impressed with the majority of these projects I see posted to web sites and blogs. For starters, if you imbed your Mini in a wall so the back is exposed, you've just made it impossible to use the CD/DVD combo drive or writer since it slot-loads from the *front*.
And how much work is really involved in most of these "I installed a Mac Mini in my new car/van/SUC/truck!" projects? So far, they've all been about the same. They slap a 12 volt to 120 volt inverter on a cigarette lighter/accessory power plug in the vehicle and plug the Mini into that. Then they hide all the wires under the carpeting and buy some type of VGA compatible LCD display or touchscreen, and lastly use some sort of compact-sized keyboard that they tuck under a seat or in a compartment someplace when they're not typing on it. A Mini is so small, it takes practically no effort to "install" it in a vehicle. Just stick it somewhere in the trunk or in a glove box or whatever....
On the downside, the Mac Mini has relatively lousy video (only 32MB RAM and a Radeon 9200 that can't even support Apple's "core image" features of OS X 10.4). This makes it kind of a drag for gaming, which would arguably be a major benefit of having an in-car computer otherwise. (Get some wireless joysticks and let the kids play video games on it from the back seats of your van, for example.)
Actually, you make very sound arguments that I hadn't even completely considered before. But I will say this:
1. If you *are* going to offer wi-fi net access, I'm with the people who think it should be a free "bonus" of patronizing the shop. Considering the offering of reasonably high speed data networks by cellular services - the days are really numbered where anyone would even see any point to paying $6.00/hour or more to use the net. With my Treo 650 phone, not only can I pick up and send email and do basic web browsing right on the phone - but if I need more than that, I can establish a dial-up networking connection via bluetooth and use my cellphone as a wireless modem for my laptop. If I already pay for an "unlimited data" package on my cellphone, I'm not going to pay again for wi-fi at some coffee house!
2. Maybe it depends on the area, but my previous coffee house experiences tell me that they're usually kind of "dead" around lunchtime. If free wi-fi draws in a bunch of busy businesspeople during their lunch break, so what if they're not your "ideal patrons"? They're coming in at a time when you may as well take any customer you can get. Just offer some good *food* so it's worth their time to eat lunch there, like Panera Bread does - and you'll get some money out of their pockets even if they're not really into coffee.
3. As a corrolary to my last item; your coffee house should cater to the idea that different times of day and night, you can attract different crowds. Your late evening crowd probably *is* a bunch of students who want to socialize and "hang out", so why not run things a little more "business-like" during the day, and change gears to a more "fun, social" atmosphere after dark? If wi-fi is hurting this, set it up so it's automatically disabled after a certain time of night until the next morning.
As far as I understand it, this need to bake tapes to resuce them was only an issue because of a specific type of "binder" glue used in their original production. I believe Maxell was one of the companies responsible for using what turned out to be poor binder, between a certain set of production years, for example.
That's why you'll see plenty of people having no problem playing back 20+ year old tapes, yet others have huge problems.
Re:And all of your points have fallacies....
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 1
I think we're talking about two different situations. I thought the main point to the original story was how RAID is becoming a solution for "the masses".... EG. Home users and so-ho users.
Dell is the #1 seller of computer systems, and therefore, there are a LOT of Poweredge servers out there - especially in smaller businesses. So simply discounting them all as "junk" is ridiculous. As you said yourself, they don't even really build anything themselves - so you're just as likely to run across things like their RAID controllers in other systems made by HP/Compaq, IBM, etc. - because they're all sourcing their parts from the same controller builders.
As far as my hot-swap drive tray comment, I'm talking about what the average consumer can by off the shelf at a local computer store. Last time I checked, you simply couldn't get a good quality hot-swap tray for a clone PC case at CompUSA or any of the smaller computer dealers in town. Like anything, pay enough and search enough and you can find quality - but we're talking about the "typical" product you'd run across here. And they typically suck!
Wow, a whole story I disagree with! Hmm....
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 1
At one time, I thought RAID was teriffic. But honestly, I think it's way over-rated and exists primarily for the benefits of systems builders and manufacturers to sell people additional hardware and increase their profits.
1. RAID implementations on most consumer-grade motherboards (EIDE RAID with Promise controllers on-board, and so on) are cheezy. I've tried using them for several years now, and I ran into lots of unexplainable "glitches" that never occured when I took RAID out of the equation. (EG. The RAID array would suddenly report a failed drive, yet when I'd pull the drive out and try reformatting/reusing it on another machine as a stand-alone C: drive, it would have no problems at all and S.M.A.R.T. reported it was fine too.)
2. As others pointed out, the RAID controller is the new "single point of failure" - and amazingly, they do seem to go bad far more often than I'd expect for an expansion card on "better quality" RAID setups. I used to work for a place that slowly had every last one of their Dell "PERC II" RAID controllers die off, one by one, on their Poweredge servers - causing all kinds of hassle. (The card was no longer in production so finding identical matches for all the dead ones wasn't so quick or easy.)
3. If you buy both of your drives at the same time, from the same place, they likely came from the same production run - so if one drive gives out, there's quite a good chance your other one(s) in your array will follow within a short period of time. After all, both have been running for the exact same number of hours of operation, at identical temperatures inside the system. More than once, I've seen a drive fail in a mirrored set, and then the spare died before the user got a chance to swap out the first one. So much for the data....
4. If you actually get "hot swap" drive trays for your RAID system on a home-built PC, good luck with those too. Most of the ones I've purchased locally or over the net have been poor quality - creating yet another "point of failure". The cheap, little cooling fans in them usually wear out quickly, and I've had the little circuit/switch break on a couple that lets you put the key in and turn it to power the drive on/off to prepare it for removal/re-insertion.
Honestly, I think the only solution is a good backup to off-site media if you have really important data to keep. For many home users, this probably isn't even a huge deal. Throw your resume and important documents on a flash drive or CD-R/DvD-R disc, and if the rest ever crashes - it's a good excuse to do a fresh, clean OS re-install anyway.
Really, it depends on the hardware you've got at your disposal, as much as anything else.
EG. Even if you own an older "vintage" mac, like a PowerMac 7300 or 7600 series, or one of the original "beige G3 towers" - you can use Linux to breathe some new life into it. You *could* force OS X onto one of these too, using xpostfacto, in most cases - but then you'd be running an OS designed for a system much more powerful than the one you're running it on, instead of an OS typically used by people with that type of hardware.
In the case of WinTel PC owners, you're not going to get OS X to run on one of those right now, and definitely not in a legal manner (even if Apple is going to Intel CPUs in upcoming Macs). So despite being an OS X fan, you still might have to step over to Linux to find anything remotely comparable that works on the equipment you already have.
Absolutely.... Your post is dead on. I'm just surprised someone hasn't already caught on that a real competitive business move would be selling a nice inkjet printer with big ink tanks that only cost about $10 each. At those prices, you could surely still make a reasonable profit on the ink sales - and you'd have an inkjet you could justify selling in the $200+ price range, even if it really wasn't much different feature and function-wise than the $99-149 Epson/HP/Canon of the month.
I actually expected Dell to take this idea and run with it when they first announced they were going to get into printers. But I guess the lure of selling $1500-2000 a gallon ink to people is just too strong. Their popular "all in one" printer they bundled with loads of Dimension systems uses the most costly ink cartridges of all: Lexmark. Often around $54-55 per cartridge.
It also strikes me as a little odd that everyone seems utterly convinced that the PC *must* go the way of the appliance, and there's "no more room for innovation" in that market sector. Apple, honestly, does fairly little in the way of true computer "innovation". Their cornerstone is really their operating system, and "sweating the details" on their hardware designs. (Sure, the styling is pretty unique, and they may do a few fancy things with "cooling zones" and multiple fans in a G5 tower, etc. But they're largely just like everyone else as far as using parts from Taiwan and China, standard PCI type expansion slots on their boards, off the shelf memory and hard drives, and so forth.) But nonethless, even those relatively "small things" put Apple head and shoulders above the rest of the PC hardware vendors and earn them continuous praise as "innovators!". Seems to me there's a LOT of room to do more - if a company was motivated and willing to focus on the *long term* instead of the "here and now".
Seriously, I'm wondering.... Did any of you who graduated with a Comp. Sci. degree actually feel like the majority of courses you took helped you do your job better once you found one? Or was it more a matter of just wanting the degree so it looked good on a resume/unlocked the gates of H.R. depts.?
When I was in college (back around '91 - '93), I started out thinking I should work towards a major in computers, because that had been my interest since I was a kid. I quickly discovered that my only real options were "data processing" (glorified typist, basically), or "Computer Science", which was very heavy on math courses and didn't seem to cover much about computing itself at all. I ended up just taking general, basic required courses and then went for an A.D. in Communication Arts. After that, I had enough of college and started working as a tech. for a computer store a buddy was just starting up, and I haven't really looked back since then.
I see lots of jobs out there today that I'm pretty sure I could do just fine if they hired me, but (especially in the cases of the larger corporations) they won't, because I don't have a "Bachelors in Comp. Sci." or equivalent degree. But again, that seems to just be a "tool" to make it easy to cut back on the number of resumes they have to go through. Throw in a "filter" of that type so H.R. can throw away half the submissions up-front.... It strikes me as rather sad if I'm expected to spend all that money on courses and learn relatively useless information (for my field, at least), just to get that "line item" on a resume....
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that it's just as much of a problem of having a "chronic need to escape reality" if you're blowing all your money at the strip clubs or nightclubs, going out to the movies every single night, taking recreational drugs to escape, or spending most of your waking hours inside an MMORPG.
... But again, all of it is ultimately "false", because those "friends" are only connecting because of the common addiction they share.
The way "reality" works in our world, entertainment = escape. The entertainment industry probably prefers you not equate the two so starkly, but I think it's just the facts. All of us have a need to disconnect from our daily lives (the "daily grind" as we so often call it), so we crave some "entertainment" to whisk us away from all those worries and stress for a while. But some people live for the escape itself, not for their lives as a whole. And that spells trouble.
Just because while playing an MMORPG, one might have a real connection to the "social aspects" of the game and so on doesn't mean it's any more "real" than other forms of "escape". Most people hooked on cocaine, heroin, or other drugs tell you that all their friends are doing it, and it's "cool" and so on and so forth, too. It does let them become a part of a particular "social circle" and attain a level of "popularity" they might not otherwise have had
I'm not going to try to argue that people have "no right to be angry" about practically anything. That's patently ridiculous, since emotions are a basic part of being human.
But "nobody is seeking to ban SUVs"? Are you sure about that? I'd call the environmentalist actions of the folks on the west coast who were smearing human feces on the door handles of every SUV they found parked in a lot, or dumping cans of paint on them pretty darn close. Groups like Greenpeace have continually battled with auto-makers to try to convince them to stop building SUVs too. They've done their best to bad-mouth them and get a boycott going on their purchase.
Who are these people to profess to know better than I as an SUV owner what *my* needs are for a vehicle? And not only that, but the people getting "offended" by seeing SUVs in service probably need to educate themselves a little bit more on the "big picture".
At least the typical SUV driver is doing something useful with his/her vehicle when you see him/her driving around. Meanwhile, we have literally hundreds of auto races held each year with cars much less fuel eficient than any SUV, not to mention burning through brakes, tires, and everything else at an incredibly fast rate - and you don't see anyone picketing out in front of the Indy or NASCAR races, do you? This is, technically, a needless waste of precious resources for nothing more than entertainment purposes.
My point is, it's all relative.... And if someone gets enough enjoyment and perceived usefulness out of driving their SUV that only gets >18 MPG, well - so be it. As I said before, they're being taxed proportionally higher than anyone driving a more fuel efficient car or truck anyway.
Look, the biggest factor to "wearing out the roads faster" has practically nothing to do with people driving around SUVs, and MUCH more to do with big 18-wheelers and the ones with double trailers attached. If a vehicle the size of a Suburban or even a Cadillac Escalade can do physical damage to our paved roads and highways, then we're really in trouble when the UPS or FedEx guy comes around, aren't we?
(Maybe you better stop ordering anything mail order, huh?)
At least here in the midwest, the REAL culprit for wearing out roads is ice and snow, and the rock salt they put down to combat it each winter..... but I digress.
The real point is, all of this SUV hatred is completely misplaced, and completely ignores people's rights to purchase and use whichever product they'd prefer to own. If you use an SUV and it gets poor gas mileage, then you purchase more gas - which is taxed at quite a high rate, so you *do* contribute more than others to funding govt. programs. Since SUVs generally aren't especially cheap vehicles, you ALSO get socked wtih high "personal property taxes" for the life of ownership in some states.
As for myself, I actually still have a 1985 Pontiac station wagon, which was a hand-me-down from my folks, who only used it for a few vacation trips and kept it garaged all the time. It's still in excellent shape. But my other vehicle is a Mitsubishi Montero Sport SUV, and you know what? That wagon gets FAR worse gas mileage than the SUV does. My friend used to drive around a small van that got worse gas mileage than my SUV does, too. Yet these environmentalist assholes who run around dumping paint on people's SUVs and so forth seem to think a station wagon or van is "more accpetable".
Whatever.... In any case, the trend is moving away from buying SUVs anyway. The problem is, whenever a vehicle is discovered as very useful for taking kids around to school and such, it eventually gets labeled a "soccer mom" vehicle and becomes "uncool" to own. That's why you saw everyone go from station wagons to minivans, and from minivans to SUVs. Now, SUVs are "uncool" - so I don't know what's next? Chrysler is trying to bring back the station wagon in a re-invented form, so maybe it's coming full circle?
Well, for starters, not everyone wants to run cat5 through a wall or floor so it comes out wherever they happen to have their TV set at in the house. Wireless makes a lot of sense for this type of device.
.. so under $5 for them. If they added $5 to the price to cover that, how much of an issue do you see that being for sales? And these prices have been around quite a while on 10/100 ethernet.... It isn't like this price drop just happened.
And the fact that "all ethernet functionality was a hack or technically unsupported" until recently just illustrates what I'm saying. Tivo didn't go far enough or think far enough ahead with their product, and the "innovations" we're left waiting on are all basic things people *expect* to be in a box of this type already.
Tivo selling the boxes "at a loss" means nothing to me. How much is a 10/100 ethernet adapter these days? I can buy a compete PCI card one for about $7 on Pricewatch. Tivo only needs the chips themselves, since it'll be integrated onto an existing motherboard
Heh... I have a MS SideWinder joystick over (original model with the 15-pin gameport connector on it, and convertable to USB with a little "dongle" adapter), as well as an MS SideWinder gamepad.
I actually wanted to sell one or both of these a while back. Had 'em on eBay and got no bidders, even at $1 plus postage. So I figured nobody wanted used joysticks anymore or something?
Seriously, if you're seeking one out - I'd be happy to sell you one of mine. I got a couple Logitech wireless gamepads I use now.
I really *tried* to be a big Tivo fan. And heck, the concept is darn good overall. But I went back to my home-brew MythTV box for a while.
... Tivo has far too slow of a network connection for such things as downloading live programming from the net! I couldn't ever get it to find my wi-fi 802.11g USB interfaces. Had to settle for an old Linksys wireless b interface, and it takes almost 45-50 minutes to download a single movie from it to my PC using "Tivo2Go". The same xfer would take only 5-6 minutes between 2 PCs on my LAN over my 100mbit ethernet connection. Why in the world didn't these boxes come with wired 10/100 ethernet RJ-45 ports on them? At least in their later revisions....
For starters, my Series 2 stand-alone Tivo suddenly died on me. It was fine one night, and the next day I turned on my TV to see a black screen with a line of text at the top that simply said "Unexpected CPU Detected!". (Huh? What CPU *were* you expecting anyway??) A couple reboots didn't fix a thing. Just got the intial couple splash screens followed by the black screen and odd message. I can only assume the CPU went bad in it?
Being out of warranty, I have to pay Tivo $79 to swap it for another unit. (Irritating, too, because plenty of people would sell me a used/working Series 2 Tivo for much less - but then my lifetime channel subscription would be lost, since they tie those to the *box*.)
But beyond all that
In fact, as a Mac user myself, I'd say you're quite incorrect on Apple "not even requiring an authentication code" for many of their products.
... I experimented with installing a warez version of Logic Pro 7.1 I grabbed off Usenet. Despite having a valid registration key and the ISO image of the original disc - the app refused to run after installation, complaining I didn't have the "original CD" in the drive.)
Every last one of their "Pro" apps I've seen forces you to enter a fairly long and nasty registration key during installation. So did Keynote and Pages. And it looked to me like they went even further than that for products like Logic Pro. (Though I have no intention of ever really using it, because for my "hobby" music needs, even Logic Express is more than enough
So no, I don't think for a minute that Steve Jobs is "learning" anything new by observing people making OS X for Intel work on platforms other than his own test machines right now. I'm sure it was fully expected, hence his strict rules enforcing the idea that the test systems were only "loaners" - not purchasable computers, and the strict NDA slapped down on everyone receiving one.
The very idea that Mac users, by nature, are somehow more "trustworthy" or "less likely to pirate" than Windows PC users is just more elitist B.S. The reality is, there's not nearly as much software out there for a Mac - so there's much less "need" for piracy. It's financially possible to buy every single native Mac commerical app you'd ever really use with your computer! By contrast, in Windows, there may be 40 or 50 competing apps that do the *same job*. So there's a much stronger tendency to pirate a few here and there, to see if one is really better than what you're already using, etc.
Apple hasn't done "product activation" like MS did with XP, but I have little doubt they'd move to it if they thought it would increase their profits. As you pointed out though, they've been in a position where it's a non-issue, because you pay for the OS in the purchase price of your Mac - and your Mac ultimately has to come from Apple. Apple has no qualmns about doing the same basic thing already when it comes to music purchased from their music store for use in iTunes, right?
First of all, I think Burlington Northern proabably selected Carpal Tunnel as the "guinea pig" to genetically test against because it's one of the injuries taken less seriously by the general public.
It may cost them a lot in workers' comp. claims, but except for those already suffering from it, most people remain pretty unconcerned about getting it.
If you want to picture why genetic testing without permnission by an employer might be viewed as "troubling" or having a "profound" impact - all you need to do is substitute carpal tunnel for any number of other possibilites, like cancer or heart disease or alzheimer's. You name it....
Ultimately, I agree with most of your assertions. Employers aren't always bad/in the wrong. It's reasonable for an "at will" employer to want to avoid workers who won't be able to effectively perform tasks. And people don't have a "right to work for a particular employer". But none of this really changes this particular issue, IMHO.
The real issue is; do we, as a society, really think it will be beneficial to allow employers to screen their workers for *potential* problems, effectively marking a large percentage of our population as "unemployable" due to genetic tendencies to develop a disease or disorder?
I understand Burlington Northern wasn't doing this testing on potential hires.... Rather, merely trying to find a way out of paying for injuries that arguably had little to do with their work environment. But it's that "slippery slope" in effect here. If you allow them to test without permission for this, it's MUCH easier for a company to justify similar testing for other things.
On top of all of that, is it even really such a *bad* thing that one's employer takes responsibility for an employee's injuries anyway? If you have a good, productive worker (say, software developer or even data entry person) and they do get carpal tunnel - why, as an employer, do you think you're automatically in a much better position if you can get out of paying to fix it for them? If you have a machine you rely on in your business and it breaks, do you not pay to have it repaired in many cases? When you figure in the costs involved in hiring and training someone new, not to mention all the experience that walks off when you let the old employee go, it seems to me that can add up to a lot more than the cost of your health insurance on them.
You can't just do a study or survey and determine that "7th. grade is the exact, right time to buy a laptop for your kid" or whatnot.
Each situation is unique, and some people mature more quickly than others too.
I agree with the comment in the original article about laptops generally seeming more appropriate or useful for high-schoolers when their school already uses them in a structured way.
But even then, it all depends.... Do you really still only have one PC at home that the whole family is trying to share? Many people do, but with the plummeting prices of computers, many people already own 2 or 3 of them. Your teen begging for a new laptop may just want it to take to friends' houses and copy the latest games - rather than a legitimate school-related need.
I recently talked to the I.T. director of a local private high-school, and he said they're under some pressure lately to start issuing laptops to their students (mainly because a couple other private schools in the area already do). But his take on it was, they can do a much better job by purchasing 50 or 60 laptops, putting them on rolling carts with chargers integrated into them, and letting teachers dole them out to students for use during a course. Then, put them back away again when they're done with them. This solves the complaint about students having to "go to a computer lab" any time a teacher wants to include the computer in a course - while ending concerns of students having their laptops stolen or broken taking them to or from class, having adequate places to plug them in to charge up during school, etc. Plus, the I.T. dept. can efficiently roll out software updates to all of them at once, when needed - instead of having to struggle to get their hands on each and every student laptop at some point or other, to get people up-to-date.
But anyway, yes, yes and yes!
I'm definitely seeing where in corporate I.T., it's almost *entirely* about who you know, plus "to the biggest B.S.er go the spoils".
Where does "formal education" come into play? It's pretty much a "key" that turns the "lock" of the H.R. department. They typically don't understand a thing about what the company is really looking for in a technical position like an I.T. opening. So they serve as "gatekeeper", screening for what basics they know how to screen for. If the hiring manager told them he specifically wanted a certain certification, then they toss aside all resumes not listing that one. Otherwise, they ignore that stuff entirely and they look for a "4 year college degree".
If you want to bypass that, you have to know somebody on the inside who can push your name to the top of the hiring manager's stack of resumes. (In larger companies, you can't really "sidestep" H.R. yourself, but the hiring manager can always inform them to "stop looking" because he "found what he's looking for".)
But short of knowing somebody who can try to get that door open for you someplace, I think the most important factors for getting hired become all the wrong things. EG. Maybe a place is all gung-ho on the whole "team player" concept, so they're judging how well you generally seem to "fit in" with whatever their department's "corporate culture" is. You might be perfect for what they need, but you didn't happen to talk about going golfing on the weekends or seem enthused enough to go introduce yourself and shake hands with random employees you walked by during the little "tour" of the place someone gave you. Who knows?
It seems to me that the people telling us how "Many times, companies just pay the hackers off to avoid embarassment." have little or no real facts to back up those claims.
... where someone threatens a denial of service attack on an online gambling/betting or porn site that's already running "beneath the radar" of legislation in nations that would prefer to shut them down.
In other words, it's just sensationalist writing.
In any nation with reasonably well enforced laws protecting a company's I.P. - I would think it's pointless for an extortionist to even attempt this. Sure, you might have the technical means to steal the proprietary info (especially if the company has unsecured or poorly secured wi-fi networks), but then what?
Even the guy in this story got caught after unsuccessfully trying to scam money out of just one company. And today, it would seem to be much more difficult to get away with than it was even a few years ago. The government and law enforcement are getting more knowledgable about Internet-based crime all the time, and since 9-11, the U.S. at least has enacted more laws giving feds the ability to "spy" on net traffic and trace things back to their source.
I really don't believe any legitimate business would think it made sense to pay some hacker millions of dollars in extortion money. This is MUCH more effective in situations like the one discussed in a Slashdot story a while back
Perhaps so, but seems like a native OpenGL layer could easily be added to the OS as sort of a "plugged in component". If this became an issue preventing MS from making too many sales in the global marketplace, I'm sure they'd just suddenly produce an "OpenGL option" that you download via Windows Update or receive on CD for a few bucks, for those who "have special circumstances requiring it". Lots of folks would never know or care the difference, but they'd legally be covered since they provided the alternative ... and they'd still get the leverage of convincing more new game/graphics developers to just code for Direct-X instead so there was one less "requirement" for end-users to have installed to make the product work.
Nah, I don't think so. Seriously, the sit-ins, the protest marches, etc. etc. What did they *really* accomplish, other than a lot of "feel good/I did my part!" stuff for those involved in all of it?
Back in the days of Vietnam, the country still went to war and got all those folks killed anyway. All that high-profile protesting and burning of draft cards didn't change a thing in the govt. policy of the day.
They only quit when they decided for themselves, as military leaders and political figures that they had no way of winning and it wasn't accomplishing any "good" for them anymore.
The best you can do is educate as many people as possible about what's going on around them, so at least they don't let things slip past them, completely unaware. In the case of technical concepts, your most receptive audience is the minority of people who write the software, use the software, and follow technology trends. That means, web sites like Slashdot, Ars Technica, etc.
I've said time and time again, short of election of an independent political party with fresh, radically different ideas of a direction to take the nation - everything else amounts to little more than "going through the motions" anyway. Do I expect the Bush presidency to pay a lick of attention to me if I gather up even 50,000 people interested in p2p sharing rights and march on the lawn in D.C.? Nope... because we're not the ones lining the pocketbooks of the senators, congressmen, and other political figures like the companies are that fund the opposing viewpoints.
Microsoft Actimates Barney!
; en-us;172657)
(And true to Microsoft form, it has a few "glitches". http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
But seriously, pretty much all current computer tech is just a "combintion of other people's technology and ideas". Trying to point that out as a Microsoft-specific problem is ridiculous.
The key is, how well does a company *implement* this combining of ideas and technologies into desireable products? Xerox had a *research* facility where all those early ideas like the GUI and the mouse came from. Scientists doing research don't try to market final products based on their findings. That's not their area of expertise.
Sometimes, to enable someone's good product idea to flourish, it needs to be bought out by someone with much deeper pockets, who can re-brand it and give it the marketing push it deserves. Microsoft is great at doing this - and to me, that's not a bad thing at all. And when they buy something and re-brand it, and that financial "push" wasn't really needed - it usually fails on them. (EG. Microsoft's failed experiment selling wireless routers, NICs, etc.)
It only became a "federal issue" because of the claims that abortion was potentially violating the Constitutional rights of the unborn children. Viewed from that perspective, I it's just as easy to ask "Why is murder a state issue, and not a federal one?"
I suppose murder was left for states to handle because of the convoluted nature of each case. (EG. There's an understood difference between murdering someone because they broke into your house at night and you were afraid they might kill you first, and the stalker who decides to murder an innocent victim for the pleasure of it.) In one case, it's much easier to argue that the person murdered had their fundamental Constitutional rights violated in the ultimate way - while in the other, perhaps not, since they brought it about by their own (illegal) actions.
Well, yes and no. In some aspects, computers have become more critical to business operations over time - to the point where sometimes the I.T. staff really *is* the company. (At least, in the sense that if the systems go down for even a few minutes, the business loses hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.)
For example, I have a couple friends who work for a major news and financial information distribution firm. The ability to keep the data constantly streaming to the customers is really the "core" of the whole business. I'm sure some of the management types would argue that "No, the people gathering our information are the most important ones!", but what good is the info if the computer systems aren't feeding it to the people who want to pay for it?
I think one reason I.T. staff feels "undervalued" is exactly the mentality you describe, where folks view them as glorified "air conditioning repair people". Last I checked, heating and cooling repair might require some skill and trainning, but it required very little in the way of imagination or creativity. It doesn't typically require lots of continuous research either. (You don't see your HVAC guy surfing the HVAC "news sites" on the net each day, trying to keep up with the latest updates and fixes for things.) Half of I.T. is keeping on top of what's changing, so you're aware of all of your options when it comes time to implement a new solution. Otherwise, you may be paying way too much for a relatively poor software/hardware solution, just because it's the "only one you were familiar with".
This article might be complete "fliuff", but I will say - eBay *does* at least occasionally take some proactive steps to reduce fraud.
Several months ago, my eBay account was hijacked by someone in another country. In under 24 hours after it happened, I received a phone call from someone in "eBay security" about my account, asking me to verify whether or not I was really selling a particular, expensive telephoto lens for a Canon 35mm camera and a couple other similar items. This was before I had even realized anything was amiss.
eBay immediately cancelled the fraudulent auctions, put my account on "inactive" status, sent me an email link to a special page that would let me confirm that I was the true account-holder, and then let me select a new password and reinstate it. (Good, because I was worried I'd lose all of my positive feedback and start over at 0 if I had to make a whole new account.)
Actually, at times, I wish they'd be less intrusive about cancelling auctions. As it stands now, they're quite strict on cancelling auctions for OEM versions of name-brand software, siding with the very questonable stance by companies like Microsoft that it's somehow "illegal" to resell even shrink-wrapped, unopened programs without bundling them with the PC they originally shipped with. (Nevermind the fact that you might only be selling it as replacement media for legal license-holders who had their original CDs/DVDs scratched or lost.)
I bought one of them as soon as I could get my hands on one from the first batch that arrived at the St. Louis Apple store.
I agree that it's a very cool little box, and inspires people to make projects around it due to the small size and silent nature of it.
But really, I'm less than impressed with the majority of these projects I see posted to web sites and blogs. For starters, if you imbed your Mini in a wall so the back is exposed, you've just made it impossible to use the CD/DVD combo drive or writer since it slot-loads from the *front*.
And how much work is really involved in most of these "I installed a Mac Mini in my new car/van/SUC/truck!" projects? So far, they've all been about the same. They slap a 12 volt to 120 volt inverter on a cigarette lighter/accessory power plug in the vehicle and plug the Mini into that. Then they hide all the wires under the carpeting and buy some type of VGA compatible LCD display or touchscreen, and lastly use some sort of compact-sized keyboard that they tuck under a seat or in a compartment someplace when they're not typing on it. A Mini is so small, it takes practically no effort to "install" it in a vehicle. Just stick it somewhere in the trunk or in a glove box or whatever....
On the downside, the Mac Mini has relatively lousy video (only 32MB RAM and a Radeon 9200 that can't even support Apple's "core image" features of OS X 10.4). This makes it kind of a drag for gaming, which would arguably be a major benefit of having an in-car computer otherwise. (Get some wireless joysticks and let the kids play video games on it from the back seats of your van, for example.)
Actually, you make very sound arguments that I hadn't even completely considered before. But I will say this:
1. If you *are* going to offer wi-fi net access, I'm with the people who think it should be a free "bonus" of patronizing the shop. Considering the offering of reasonably high speed data networks by cellular services - the days are really numbered where anyone would even see any point to paying $6.00/hour or more to use the net. With my Treo 650 phone, not only can I pick up and send email and do basic web browsing right on the phone - but if I need more than that, I can establish a dial-up networking connection via bluetooth and use my cellphone as a wireless modem for my laptop. If I already pay for an "unlimited data" package on my cellphone, I'm not going to pay again for wi-fi at some coffee house!
2. Maybe it depends on the area, but my previous coffee house experiences tell me that they're usually kind of "dead" around lunchtime. If free wi-fi draws in a bunch of busy businesspeople during their lunch break, so what if they're not your "ideal patrons"? They're coming in at a time when you may as well take any customer you can get. Just offer some good *food* so it's worth their time to eat lunch there, like Panera Bread does - and you'll get some money out of their pockets even if they're not really into coffee.
3. As a corrolary to my last item; your coffee house should cater to the idea that different times of day and night, you can attract different crowds. Your late evening crowd probably *is* a bunch of students who want to socialize and "hang out", so why not run things a little more "business-like" during the day, and change gears to a more "fun, social" atmosphere after dark? If wi-fi is hurting this, set it up so it's automatically disabled after a certain time of night until the next morning.
As far as I understand it, this need to bake tapes to resuce them was only an issue because of a specific type of "binder" glue used in their original production. I believe Maxell was one of the companies responsible for using what turned out to be poor binder, between a certain set of production years, for example.
That's why you'll see plenty of people having no problem playing back 20+ year old tapes, yet others have huge problems.
I think we're talking about two different situations. I thought the main point to the original story was how RAID is becoming a solution for "the masses".... EG. Home users and so-ho users.
Dell is the #1 seller of computer systems, and therefore, there are a LOT of Poweredge servers out there - especially in smaller businesses. So simply discounting them all as "junk" is ridiculous. As you said yourself, they don't even really build anything themselves - so you're just as likely to run across things like their RAID controllers in other systems made by HP/Compaq, IBM, etc. - because they're all sourcing their parts from the same controller builders.
As far as my hot-swap drive tray comment, I'm talking about what the average consumer can by off the shelf at a local computer store. Last time I checked, you simply couldn't get a good quality hot-swap tray for a clone PC case at CompUSA or any of the smaller computer dealers in town. Like anything, pay enough and search enough and you can find quality - but we're talking about the "typical" product you'd run across here. And they typically suck!
At one time, I thought RAID was teriffic. But honestly, I think it's way over-rated and exists primarily for the benefits of systems builders and manufacturers to sell people additional hardware and increase their profits.
1. RAID implementations on most consumer-grade motherboards (EIDE RAID with Promise controllers on-board, and so on) are cheezy. I've tried using them for several years now, and I ran into lots of unexplainable "glitches" that never occured when I took RAID out of the equation. (EG. The RAID array would suddenly report a failed drive, yet when I'd pull the drive out and try reformatting/reusing it on another machine as a stand-alone C: drive, it would have no problems at all and S.M.A.R.T. reported it was fine too.)
2. As others pointed out, the RAID controller is the new "single point of failure" - and amazingly, they do seem to go bad far more often than I'd expect for an expansion card on "better quality" RAID setups. I used to work for a place that slowly had every last one of their Dell "PERC II" RAID controllers die off, one by one, on their Poweredge servers - causing all kinds of hassle. (The card was no longer in production so finding identical matches for all the dead ones wasn't so quick or easy.)
3. If you buy both of your drives at the same time, from the same place, they likely came from the same production run - so if one drive gives out, there's quite a good chance your other one(s) in your array will follow within a short period of time. After all, both have been running for the exact same number of hours of operation, at identical temperatures inside the system. More than once, I've seen a drive fail in a mirrored set, and then the spare died before the user got a chance to swap out the first one. So much for the data....
4. If you actually get "hot swap" drive trays for your RAID system on a home-built PC, good luck with those too. Most of the ones I've purchased locally or over the net have been poor quality - creating yet another "point of failure". The cheap, little cooling fans in them usually wear out quickly, and I've had the little circuit/switch break on a couple that lets you put the key in and turn it to power the drive on/off to prepare it for removal/re-insertion.
Honestly, I think the only solution is a good backup to off-site media if you have really important data to keep. For many home users, this probably isn't even a huge deal. Throw your resume and important documents on a flash drive or CD-R/DvD-R disc, and if the rest ever crashes - it's a good excuse to do a fresh, clean OS re-install anyway.
Really, it depends on the hardware you've got at your disposal, as much as anything else.
EG. Even if you own an older "vintage" mac, like a PowerMac 7300 or 7600 series, or one of the original "beige G3 towers" - you can use Linux to breathe some new life into it. You *could* force OS X onto one of these too, using xpostfacto, in most cases - but then you'd be running an OS designed for a system much more powerful than the one you're running it on, instead of an OS typically used by people with that type of hardware.
In the case of WinTel PC owners, you're not going to get OS X to run on one of those right now, and definitely not in a legal manner (even if Apple is going to Intel CPUs in upcoming Macs). So despite being an OS X fan, you still might have to step over to Linux to find anything remotely comparable that works on the equipment you already have.
Absolutely.... Your post is dead on. I'm just surprised someone hasn't already caught on that a real competitive business move would be selling a nice inkjet printer with big ink tanks that only cost about $10 each. At those prices, you could surely still make a reasonable profit on the ink sales - and you'd have an inkjet you could justify selling in the $200+ price range, even if it really wasn't much different feature and function-wise than the $99-149 Epson/HP/Canon of the month.
I actually expected Dell to take this idea and run with it when they first announced they were going to get into printers. But I guess the lure of selling $1500-2000 a gallon ink to people is just too strong. Their popular "all in one" printer they bundled with loads of Dimension systems uses the most costly ink cartridges of all: Lexmark. Often around $54-55 per cartridge.
It also strikes me as a little odd that everyone seems utterly convinced that the PC *must* go the way of the appliance, and there's "no more room for innovation" in that market sector. Apple, honestly, does fairly little in the way of true computer "innovation". Their cornerstone is really their operating system, and "sweating the details" on their hardware designs. (Sure, the styling is pretty unique, and they may do a few fancy things with "cooling zones" and multiple fans in a G5 tower, etc. But they're largely just like everyone else as far as using parts from Taiwan and China, standard PCI type expansion slots on their boards, off the shelf memory and hard drives, and so forth.) But nonethless, even those relatively "small things" put Apple head and shoulders above the rest of the PC hardware vendors and earn them continuous praise as "innovators!". Seems to me there's a LOT of room to do more - if a company was motivated and willing to focus on the *long term* instead of the "here and now".
Seriously, I'm wondering.... Did any of you who graduated with a Comp. Sci. degree actually feel like the majority of courses you took helped you do your job better once you found one? Or was it more a matter of just wanting the degree so it looked good on a resume/unlocked the gates of H.R. depts.?
When I was in college (back around '91 - '93), I started out thinking I should work towards a major in computers, because that had been my interest since I was a kid. I quickly discovered that my only real options were "data processing" (glorified typist, basically), or "Computer Science", which was very heavy on math courses and didn't seem to cover much about computing itself at all. I ended up just taking general, basic required courses and then went for an A.D. in Communication Arts. After that, I had enough of college and started working as a tech. for a computer store a buddy was just starting up, and I haven't really looked back since then.
I see lots of jobs out there today that I'm pretty sure I could do just fine if they hired me, but (especially in the cases of the larger corporations) they won't, because I don't have a "Bachelors in Comp. Sci." or equivalent degree. But again, that seems to just be a "tool" to make it easy to cut back on the number of resumes they have to go through. Throw in a "filter" of that type so H.R. can throw away half the submissions up-front.... It strikes me as rather sad if I'm expected to spend all that money on courses and learn relatively useless information (for my field, at least), just to get that "line item" on a resume....