Well, it seems to me that was his right - crazy or not. The developers were getting paid for their time, whether or not he wiped out their work....
It's no big secret the "old days" of computing were full of hostile work environments though. I remember reading about the old Atari corp. actually keeping their programmers locked up inside their buildings when they were nearing release of major game titles on cartridge. They were afraid of information leaking out and a competitor using it against them, so programmers became prisoners.
I think there's a LOT to be learned from analyzing this combination of personalities.
While it's true that the techies seem to "have all the fun" in these scenarios - it's also equally true that the techies needed the business-oriented/business-building personalities of their partners, in order to get themselves into a situation where their contributions became valuable enough to allow them to leave with a big "wad of cash".
Really, after reading the Hayes/Heatherton article, it appeared to me that Hayes' biggest reason for eventual disaster was a lack of any inventive/R&D motivated people working for him after Heatherton bailed out. Certainly, Hayes achieved all the brand name recognition and marketplace respect a tech. company could ever want. Properly run, his company could have been building, say, the #1 most popular DSL and/or cable modems used today.
I think Apple Computer thrives for exactly this reason. Steve Jobs is acutely aware that his company has to innovate -- never imitate. He may not be the mastermind behind any of the ideas, but he hires the types of people who can create cool looking and working devices/software.
The trick is, if you're going to be a "Hayes", keep hiring new "Heathertons" as your earlier ones get burnt out or want to move on.
So if someone released a new Linux distro where the kernel was customized to the point where it wasn't monolithic, governing everything from networking to disk access internally - it would no longer be a Unix variant??
I think not, myself. That's sort of like stepping back in time to the Windows 3.1 era, and making a claim that "Windows is a 16-bit operating system that runs on top of MS-DOS. Anything that runs completely independently of MS-DOS and doesn't stick to the 16-bit model is no longer Windows."
I think the Palm games probably just seem to "suck" more to people nowdays because they're only experienced on that small screen, with limited user input devices.
At least the C64 had the advantage of displaying to a normal sized TV screen (or monitor, if you were lucky).
I've actually run quite a few Palm games that I thought were impressively well done, yet I don't ever play them more than a few times. The user experience just isn't that great on a little PDA.
I understand the frustration with insufficient budgets for education - but aren't these funds for new computers often coming from different places than, say, the funding required to increase teacher salaries, or funding for after-school programs/activities?
I don't think the average person either understands, or wants to understand the complexity of school funding. If Cisco or Microsoft comes along and gives a grant for new PCs for a school - it's not an option to redirect those funds for anything other than what they're intended for.
Not only that, but even if we *are* talking about actual tax money, usable for anything a school district wishes, being put towards new PCs -- it may make good sense. Some of the gradeschools I've seen are still trying to get by with 10+ year old Macintosh systems in serious need of repair. Teachers are losing valuable classtime waiting for these slow computers to run software, reboot after crashes (often due to bad RAM or failing hard drives), and losing their own student projects to worn out floppy disks, etc.
While it may be true that the vague argument about "giving kids access to computers at a young age helps prepare them for tomorrow" is worthless, it's NOT true that gradeschools can't make good teaching tools out of computers. There are some excellent programs out there to teach basic math, reading/alphabet/phonics, and spelling skills - as well as geography, science and even basic foreign language skills. If a gradeschool isn't using the computer as an additional teaching aid to teach the core skills they're supposed to be teaching already, they're simply misusing it.
I'd even go as far as to say using the Internet in a gradeschool evironment is largely unnecessary. Sure, there are SOME creative and valid ways to use it, but it's far from required. If a teacher is telling gradeschoolers to "go look everything up on the net", that's just a cop-out. Instead, he/she should be locating the best learning software possible to teach the curriculum.
I'd much rather see a school using carefully selected, top quality learning programs on their new PC in a classroom than funneling the funds into some "school band program", with the vague goal of "nurturing an appreciation of music in youngsters". Most kids grow up enjoying music with or without band/music classes, and the vast majority won't ever turn an enjoyment of school band/music class into a profitable career down the road.
Well, I did think to try adding an IDE controller card - but the card I added didn't allow booting from CD, which I needed to get Windows 2000 or XP loaded on the box. (The existing install of 2000 refused to start up after the motherboard was swapped, since the incorrect HAL was on the drive.)
My point is, PC's are designed to be a "box of slots". This concept is what initally made them dominate the marketplace. (If you didn't buy a PC or clone, it used to be, your other choices were systems that gave you a specific set of features which were largely non-upgradable. You wanted an upgrade? You sold the whole computer and got a newer model.) Now, we're going back to the "old model", where the PC has everything on-board, and most of the expansions slots are sacrificed in the name of "saving space".
Micro ATX boards with everything integrated have their place - but it's not appropriate for the standard PC desktop, IMHO.
Yes, but it sounds to me like this would be purely optional to support, based on how you configured your DNS server. In any case though, a.torrent file is only about 1.5K to 4K in size, as far as I've ever seen. We're talking about little more than a file containing URL type information inside of it.
I might be wrong, but I don't think the original poster was trying to argue that companies have no business ever developing products superior to what's already on the market!?
I think his point was, companies are wise to stick with their strengths, and not to venture into areas that over-extend their reach.
With the flood of complete wi-fi solutions out there, does it really make sense for Intel to start offering a partial wi-fi solution like this, integrated into their chipsets?
For starters, many people like the idea of keeping the wi-fi router physically seperate from the PC. It's a good bet that almost none of these independent wi-fi hubs/routers/residential gateways will start using full-blown Intel chipset-based motherboards inside of them. Therefore, Intel's not going to capture any of that market.
They're probably hoping to make some money at the expense of vendors selling PCI or USB cards to add into workstations, though. Will it work? Probably so, to an extent. But IMHO, this has potential to be the wireless version of the software-based "winmodem". It's a cheaper solution, but also an inferior one. People selling radios that integrate with Intel's wi-fi chipset are locked into whatever technology Intel has. Meanwhile, competitors are free to build complete solutions that out-perform Intel's setup, because they control the entire wi-fi package inside their cards. (Already, some vendors have wi-fi setups that adhere to the standards with competitor's products, but talk at higher speeds with their own products.)
Personally, I'm not really convinced all these integrated parts do us any favors.
Just last week, for example, I installed a new Pentium 4 motherboard and CPU in a standard ATX case that was formerly running a PII system. This was done for a law firm, and was upgraded on-site, because they couldn't afford to have much downtime.
Well, as luck would have it, the integrated EIDE controller was faulty. I kept getting "data corrupt" type messages when it tried to boot Win2K on the drive that just worked in the other system. I tried a different hard drive with a fresh format, and had the same issue. Even the secondary channel had problems.
If it hadn't been intergated, I could have simply swapped a $15 or $20 controller card and gotten everything back up and running for them.
The more devices Intel can integrate into motherboards using their chipsets, the more often they get to sell people an entire new board when they only need one small part.
On-board video has been a disaster since day 1, for both PC and Mac users. What seems "high end" when a machine is new turns into "mediocre" within a year or two. Then come all the conflicts trying to get the on-board video disabled when you add a new, add-in video card. (I'm sure many long-time Mac users can remember the dislike for the "Performa" towers like the 6400/6500, largely due to the on-board video only allowing up to 2MB of video RAM.)
Integrated NICs may work fine when they work, but again - I've seen many a blown NIC card due to power surges/spikes. I'd rather swap a card and have a fully functional machine again than have a dead port permanently soldered onto the back of my computer....
Personally, I think the single most effective "leverage" game makers have found in recent years to combat piracy is the creation of multiplayer titles that require a server-verified key in order to allow online play.
To be perfectly honest about it, that's what made me go out and purchase both Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne expansion. I really have a problem with Blizzard's legal attack on people creating freeware alternatives to their "Battle.net" servers, yet I was really looking forward to playing WC3. If it was as easy as just downloading a "warez" copy, I probably would have done so (justifying it in my mind as better than the alternative of contributing more funds to Blizzard). But alas, the "key generators" don't seem to make keys that their Battle.net server thinks are real, valid key codes. So to ensure I could play it against other people online, I had to go buy it.
That said, though, lowering game prices would certainly help improve sales and fight piracy. The people "cheap" enough to keep wasting time downloading programs they could buy for $10 or less aren't really the "target customer base" to begin with. Eventually, they'll go out and get jobs - and start realizing that "time is money". Then, they'll become customers for the reasonably priced game titles too.
Thanks for the link about bzboyz.com and Pricewatch!
A while back, I bought a couple motherboards from them - and I thought they had excellent prices. They took a little longer than I liked to ship my items, but I get that with most of the bargain-priced vendors on Pricewatch anyway. (I think they purposely take their time getting shipments out the door for anyone who only pays for "standard" shipping. I suspect they make a tidy profit on overcharging for priority/express type shipping....)
With a name like "bzboyz", though, I was afraid I was dealing with some wanna-be gangster computer dealers or something. It doesn't exactly inspire trust. After hearing about your situation with them, I'll skip them in the future. I've had good luck with a few other vendors like KRexx (in Illinois) and even a place in Ohio called Target-USA.
Re:thanks for clarifying
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Project Plex-Box
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· Score: 2, Informative
The first thought that came to my mind was, "Oh, I guess this must be the *first* publicized X-Box mod - making it an automatic most ultimate." There's no way it rates even a "most mediocre" in my book, otherwise.... It's a downright waste of time and materials, really.
I thought the fascination with transparent cases ended somewhere around the time Radio Shack stoppe selling those see-through "Princess style" telephones and Motorola quit making the transparent pagers?
I'm in total agreement about the added hassle of Windows registries, active directories, and so forth. But your argument about backup/restore of data applies equally to *any* OS a person chooses to run on their PC!
There are pretty good tools out there to do a complete Windows backup too, you know. "BackUpMyPC" comes to mind. It's a no-brainer to use, yet it's based on the fairly full-featured "Backup Exec" software that's been around and enhanced for years now, as it changed hands from Conner/Seagate to Veritas to ???. It makes a complete backup of the system registry with a single mouse-click in a check-box, and knows how to back up open files. It works with tape drives, DVD burners, or CDR/CDRW drives.
Sure, you'll have to buy and maintain a few more things in a Windows environment - but the people who chose to use it over Linux already seem to be willing to spend the additional $'s for it anyway.
The current discussion centers around being hacked - and this can happen in Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, or practically any environment - whether you run virus scanners and do all the service packs/fixed or not.
This is a "straw dummy" arguement, really. Most people I know using a PC are using an environment based on "proprietary systems". The OS and software is mostly Microsoft, and your peripherals may become instant, expensive doorstops the next time MS does an OS upgrade and the vendors decide not to write updated drivers for them.
Granted, Apple controls both the hardware and the OS - but their current OS is based on BSD Unix, which means much more opportunity for free or low-cost software alternatives than you have with the Microsoft solutions. You can always dump OS X entirely and run a PPC version of Linux, if you like, too.
Besides, Apple has such a niche market-share (and always has, really) - they're much less likely to really screw you over than a dominant player in the market (like Dell, Microsoft or HP). They're less able to afford bad publicity.
In my experience, Mac owners are much more picky and demanding than the average PC owner. Some of the anti-Apple rants I've heard are about Apple's failure to rectify situations that you'd be laughed right off the support hotline for bringing up to most PC makers. (Things like "My cooling fan isn't quiet enough! I shouldn't have to hear it at all in my dead silent room!")
*Anything* in excess is not good. Nonetheless, I think you greatly overstate the problem in this case.
If anything, America's biggest problem related to goods and the desire of goods is that we're not willing to put forth the effort to build the highest quality goods possible. With few exceptions, Americans consider foreign, imported products as the "best of breed". We'll pay much more for an "oriental rug" than we'll ever consider paying for a domestic carpet. It's common knowledge that the best luxury and sports cars come from Germany, Japan, or Italy. Our favorite electronics and computer products come from companies like Mitsubishi, Sony or Samsung. We even pay big bucks for imported chocolate, but consider the American equivalents as nothing more than "staple goods". (Which one's more prestigious, Hershey's or Godiva?)
For these reasons, the more money we earn and spend on the "most desireable" products, the more of our money funnels itself out of the United States. This is fine if we're exporting roughly the same amount as we're importing - but I don't see that happening. Besides our farm produce, I'm not sure what America's really good at producing these days - and that's rather sad!
This isn't limited to Dell. In fact, poor as Dell's home user support is - they're *still* better than most.
Try buying an e-Machines sometime, or maybe a Gateway or an HP, and see what you get!
The PC has become a commodity item, and manufacturers don't care to give you any more tech. support on them than you'd get from your next microwave oven or cordless phone purchase.
This is why "buy a Mac" still makes some real sense. The Mac is about the only "non-comodity" machine geared for home/small business users. Apple considers their products a "premium, niche market alternative", and it shows in the increased build quality, engineering, and customer support.
Unfortunately, most folks want to "have their cake and eat it too", so they refuse to pay more for a Mac, up-front, and keep searching for the non-existant "holy grail" of bargain-basement priced PCs with awesome customer support and quality.
I'm going to "third" this suggestion! I just got home from a LONG day of doing on-site PC service, and the last 3 calls I've struggled with were the same old story. Clueless family orders high-speed Internet access and plugs cable/DSL modem straight into the back of the computer. A month or two later, system has slowed to a crawl and loses connection constantly. Web pages often produce "DNS error" messages. Pop up ads are out of control.
Say what you will about the Mac, but none of this crap happens in the "Mac world". Not only that, but you get photo software that actually downloads images off their digital camera with zero pain and hassle (just plug the thing in and away it goes). You get easy web site creation via.Mac. You get iTunes and the Apple music store (start them out right, instead of trying to pirate music of questionable quality off Kaaza, Morpheus, etc.). And lastly, you get (at least in many major cities) a nice clean, store you can walk into and get a respectable amount of customer service and assistance. (Before you flame me on this one, I'm well aware of some of the horror stories. But *in general*, you're talking about a place that offers regular free training on their popular products, a "genius bar" that's there just so you can ask questions/get help, and more. Beats calling some 800# and waiting on hold for 40 mins.)
Heh... yeah. I actually had a neighbor who owned a Model 16. Supposedly, he purchased it for his heating and cooling business, but I never saw him use it for much of anything.
His son and I tried playing around with it a little bit, but ultimately, both of us had a lot more fun with other home computers of that era. (Another neighbor kid had a TI99/4A he won in a Cheerios cereal contest, for example.) The Model 16 may have been WAY powerful for its day, but it didn't offer much in the way of games and "fun" stuff to do with it.
Re:Plextor's 708A works just fine at 8X
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DVD-Rs go 8x
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· Score: 1
Yeah, if anyone can do this right, it's Plextor. Yet your "1 week of testing" doesn't give me much confidence.
Studies on CDR media are just now deciding that quite a few recordables burnt as little as 2 or 3 years ago have become unreadable already.
Especially in cases where people used generic spindles of CDR blanks, the dyes of some break down quite rapidly.
The problem with faster writing speeds (whether it's CDR or DVD-R/+R) is you're keeping the laser focused on any given point during the burn for less time. Dyes that respond more quickly seem liable to have less "staying power" than dyes needing more laser energy focused on them.
I don't think there's much incentive for media manufacturers to try too hard to ensure you get good quality discs that last for 10 or 20 (or more) years. By the time you find out the stuff you were buying has "bit rotted away" - you'll be on to buying the next "latest thing" in storage media anyway.... Therefore, I'd rather not push my luck by using the "cutting edge" in high speed writers, and hoping the newest media on the market that claims to handle it will actually hold my data for the long-term.
I actually thought it was a very well done list, but the "Tandy Sensation"?? I vaguely recall the initial hype when that model came out - and ultimately, nobody considered it a really "sensational" turning-point in home computing. If you're going to list the most significant Radio Shack/Tandy computer product, I think you'd be much smarter to list the Model 3 or Model 4. Those were among the first personal computers to offer networking, with a designated "server" system (and everything interconnected via serial cables). This made them very popular in school computer labs, where lots of middle schoolers and high-schoolers got their first real opportunity to use a computer. A huge (5 megabyte!) external hard drive could be attached to them, as well as external 300 baud modems, daisy wheel or dot matrix printers, and many other accessories. (For a while, they even offered a punch-card reader add-on for the Model 3.)
My first computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000, so I would have loved to see it make the list too... but as the author said, making a cut-off point of "top 10" always forces you to leave out some good stuff. The Timex/Sinclair, great as it was, didn't really seem like it helped hook "the masses" on computing. It started out being sold in kit form as the ZX-81, and that model only appealed to hard-core electronics enthusiasts. Even when the TS1000 was selling in K-Mart for $99.95, the tiny, flat membrane keyboard kept lots of people away from it.
Actually, I'd be interested to see if handwriting recognition improved (and if so, by how much), by improving the writing surface/input device.
When I write on my PDA, I find that the touchscreen seems to be a limiting factor. Even when you tap on it with the stylus to do something as simple as select a menu, it doesn't always register on the first tap. It seems to me that most Palm devices are more responsive near the middle of their screens than out toward the edges. (Most likely because it allows a little less "flex" when you press down near a corner.) If you can't even get it to choose a menu selection each time you tap the stylus, how can you expect it to do a nearly-perfect job of interpreting your scribbling?
I can't believe I'm gonna "troll" too, but....
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iPod-Jacked
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· Score: 1
Upon reading this, it struck me that it's just a case of some folks trying too hard to do something "cool" and "trendy".
Here's the thing.... We talk about this being a great example of technology bringing people closer together and all that. But all in all, the idea of walking around in public with your ears plugged up with earbud headphones seems pretty anti-social to begin with. You're basically showing the world that you'd rather hear the music you brought with you, piped into your head, than hear anything else happening around you.
Honestly, when I see someone listening to headphones, I automatically try my best not to interrupt them. It's just like someone deeply engrossed in reading a book.
Not only that, but I'd presume that most people "techno-savvy" enough to purchase an iPod and able to download music to it also have a good handle on where to go on the net to download/preview all sorts of interesting and different music.
It's not that likely that some stranger on the bus is going to "blow my mind" by giving me a 30 second listen to their choice of iPod music. I have much better chances of discovering something new by doing some browsing around for it online.
RE: on I.T. budgets and returns
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Does IT Matter?
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· Score: 1
Actually, I worry a bit when I hear people say that "the I.T. budget has to be looked at the exact same way as any other departmental budget".
IMHO, this is an over-generalization.
When you're talking about the budget for accounting, sales staff, or most other departments commonly found in companies - you're dealing with fairly concrete issues. You already know (or should know), for example, the average amount of revenue your sales force generates on a monthly basis. Most of their expenses are fairly fixed. (Perhaps you compensate them for the mileage they put on their vehicles, and that's going to roughly stay within certain parameters - since a given salesperson can only travel so many miles per day, week or month. You get the idea....) If you invest in something new for these people, you can watch the change in revenue they bring in over the months that follow, and get a good idea if the new addition helped them be more efficient, or if it was just "fluff".
In I.T. - things are pretty nebulous, and often inter-twined with other departments. I.T. provides a service to the other parts of the company, so fretting too much over whether or not I.T. is directly adding to the bottom line isn't beneficial to anyone. I.T. may, in fact, be a big, continuous liability for a company - but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. In fact, it might not be valuable - *but* it depends largely on how well they're helping the other departments do their jobs.
Say the sales force I mentioned above decides to go with a new "CRM" software package, to more efficiently work with customers. This, initially, might be seen as an example of "I.T. adding to the company's bottom line", if the package works out well and sales are up. But eventually, that same package will be forgotten about and taken for granted UNTIL it starts breaking down. When I.T. puts in long hours and spends money on updates for the package to fix bugs and keep the CRM database from getting corrupt, or when the RAID array storing it crashes and money is spend to repair it - THEN, I.T. is seen as "hurting the bottom line".
This is why it's just not a great idea to over-analyze I.T.'s supposed "return on investment".
This seems like govt. come full-circle to me, in some ways. After all, the Internet as we know it today was built/funded by the govt. (as Arpanet, initially) - and eventually became privatized.
Now, these plans are popping up to create govt. funded high-speed networks? It's just going back to the roots of the net, but on a state or city instead of federal level.
Of course, the telecom companies would be expected to whine and complain - but their selfish motives aside, I think it is legitimate to ask why government feels this is a necessary function for them to perform. Sure, any of us "computer geeks" would love to have a net connection running 100x the current speed - but there's no free lunch here. This eventually means you're going to be paying for it in taxes, and as is the norm for government spending - you can bet they won't shift around existing funds to pay for this. Instead, they'll waste just as much money on other projects as ever, and demand a tax increase to cover this new one....
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Well, it seems to me that was his right - crazy or not. The developers were getting paid for their time, whether or not he wiped out their work....
It's no big secret the "old days" of computing were full of hostile work environments though. I remember reading about the old Atari corp. actually keeping their programmers locked up inside their buildings when they were nearing release of major game titles on cartridge. They were afraid of information leaking out and a competitor using it against them, so programmers became prisoners.
I think there's a LOT to be learned from analyzing this combination of personalities.
While it's true that the techies seem to "have all the fun" in these scenarios - it's also equally true that the techies needed the business-oriented/business-building personalities of their partners, in order to get themselves into a situation where their contributions became valuable enough to allow them to leave with a big "wad of cash".
Really, after reading the Hayes/Heatherton article, it appeared to me that Hayes' biggest reason for eventual disaster was a lack of any inventive/R&D motivated people working for him after Heatherton bailed out. Certainly, Hayes achieved all the brand name recognition and marketplace respect a tech. company could ever want. Properly run, his company could have been building, say, the #1 most popular DSL and/or cable modems used today.
I think Apple Computer thrives for exactly this reason. Steve Jobs is acutely aware that his company has to innovate -- never imitate. He may not be the mastermind behind any of the ideas, but he hires the types of people who can create cool looking and working devices/software.
The trick is, if you're going to be a "Hayes", keep hiring new "Heathertons" as your earlier ones get burnt out or want to move on.
So if someone released a new Linux distro where the kernel was customized to the point where it wasn't monolithic, governing everything from networking to disk access internally - it would no longer be a Unix variant??
I think not, myself. That's sort of like stepping back in time to the Windows 3.1 era, and making a claim that "Windows is a 16-bit operating system that runs on top of MS-DOS. Anything that runs completely independently of MS-DOS and doesn't stick to the 16-bit model is no longer Windows."
I think the Palm games probably just seem to "suck" more to people nowdays because they're only experienced on that small screen, with limited user input devices.
At least the C64 had the advantage of displaying to a normal sized TV screen (or monitor, if you were lucky).
I've actually run quite a few Palm games that I thought were impressively well done, yet I don't ever play them more than a few times. The user experience just isn't that great on a little PDA.
I understand the frustration with insufficient budgets for education - but aren't these funds for new computers often coming from different places than, say, the funding required to increase teacher salaries, or funding for after-school programs/activities?
I don't think the average person either understands, or wants to understand the complexity of school funding. If Cisco or Microsoft comes along and gives a grant for new PCs for a school - it's not an option to redirect those funds for anything other than what they're intended for.
Not only that, but even if we *are* talking about actual tax money, usable for anything a school district wishes, being put towards new PCs -- it may make good sense. Some of the gradeschools I've seen are still trying to get by with 10+ year old Macintosh systems in serious need of repair. Teachers are losing valuable classtime waiting for these slow computers to run software, reboot after crashes (often due to bad RAM or failing hard drives), and losing their own student projects to worn out floppy disks, etc.
While it may be true that the vague argument about "giving kids access to computers at a young age helps prepare them for tomorrow" is worthless, it's NOT true that gradeschools can't make good teaching tools out of computers. There are some excellent programs out there to teach basic math, reading/alphabet/phonics, and spelling skills - as well as geography, science and even basic foreign language skills. If a gradeschool isn't using the computer as an additional teaching aid to teach the core skills they're supposed to be teaching already, they're simply misusing it.
I'd even go as far as to say using the Internet in a gradeschool evironment is largely unnecessary. Sure, there are SOME creative and valid ways to use it, but it's far from required. If a teacher is telling gradeschoolers to "go look everything up on the net", that's just a cop-out. Instead, he/she should be locating the best learning software possible to teach the curriculum.
I'd much rather see a school using carefully selected, top quality learning programs on their new PC in a classroom than funneling the funds into some "school band program", with the vague goal of "nurturing an appreciation of music in youngsters". Most kids grow up enjoying music with or without band/music classes, and the vast majority won't ever turn an enjoyment of school band/music class into a profitable career down the road.
Well, I did think to try adding an IDE controller card - but the card I added didn't allow booting from CD, which I needed to get Windows 2000 or XP loaded on the box. (The existing install of 2000 refused to start up after the motherboard was swapped, since the incorrect HAL was on the drive.)
My point is, PC's are designed to be a "box of slots". This concept is what initally made them dominate the marketplace. (If you didn't buy a PC or clone, it used to be, your other choices were systems that gave you a specific set of features which were largely non-upgradable. You wanted an upgrade? You sold the whole computer and got a newer model.) Now, we're going back to the "old model", where the PC has everything on-board, and most of the expansions slots are sacrificed in the name of "saving space".
Micro ATX boards with everything integrated have their place - but it's not appropriate for the standard PC desktop, IMHO.
Yes, but it sounds to me like this would be purely optional to support, based on how you configured your DNS server. In any case though, a .torrent file is only about 1.5K to 4K in size, as far as I've ever seen. We're talking about little more than a file containing URL type information inside of it.
I might be wrong, but I don't think the original poster was trying to argue that companies have no business ever developing products superior to what's already on the market!?
I think his point was, companies are wise to stick with their strengths, and not to venture into areas that over-extend their reach.
With the flood of complete wi-fi solutions out there, does it really make sense for Intel to start offering a partial wi-fi solution like this, integrated into their chipsets?
For starters, many people like the idea of keeping the wi-fi router physically seperate from the PC. It's a good bet that almost none of these independent wi-fi hubs/routers/residential gateways will start using full-blown Intel chipset-based motherboards inside of them. Therefore, Intel's not going to capture any of that market.
They're probably hoping to make some money at the expense of vendors selling PCI or USB cards to add into workstations, though. Will it work? Probably so, to an extent. But IMHO, this has potential to be the wireless version of the software-based "winmodem". It's a cheaper solution, but also an inferior one. People selling radios that integrate with Intel's wi-fi chipset are locked into whatever technology Intel has. Meanwhile, competitors are free to build complete solutions that out-perform Intel's setup, because they control the entire wi-fi package inside their cards. (Already, some vendors have wi-fi setups that adhere to the standards with competitor's products, but talk at higher speeds with their own products.)
Personally, I'm not really convinced all these integrated parts do us any favors.
Just last week, for example, I installed a new Pentium 4 motherboard and CPU in a standard ATX case that was formerly running a PII system. This was done for a law firm, and was upgraded on-site, because they couldn't afford to have much downtime.
Well, as luck would have it, the integrated EIDE controller was faulty. I kept getting "data corrupt" type messages when it tried to boot Win2K on the drive that just worked in the other system. I tried a different hard drive with a fresh format, and had the same issue. Even the secondary channel had problems.
If it hadn't been intergated, I could have simply swapped a $15 or $20 controller card and gotten everything back up and running for them.
The more devices Intel can integrate into motherboards using their chipsets, the more often they get to sell people an entire new board when they only need one small part.
On-board video has been a disaster since day 1, for both PC and Mac users. What seems "high end" when a machine is new turns into "mediocre" within a year or two. Then come all the conflicts trying to get the on-board video disabled when you add a new, add-in video card. (I'm sure many long-time Mac users can remember the dislike for the "Performa" towers like the 6400/6500, largely due to the on-board video only allowing up to 2MB of video RAM.)
Integrated NICs may work fine when they work, but again - I've seen many a blown NIC card due to power surges/spikes. I'd rather swap a card and have a fully functional machine again than have a dead port permanently soldered onto the back of my computer....
Personally, I think the single most effective "leverage" game makers have found in recent years to combat piracy is the creation of multiplayer titles that require a server-verified key in order to allow online play.
To be perfectly honest about it, that's what made me go out and purchase both Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne expansion. I really have a problem with Blizzard's legal attack on people creating freeware alternatives to their "Battle.net" servers, yet I was really looking forward to playing WC3. If it was as easy as just downloading a "warez" copy, I probably would have done so (justifying it in my mind as better than the alternative of contributing more funds to Blizzard). But alas, the "key generators" don't seem to make keys that their Battle.net server thinks are real, valid key codes. So to ensure I could play it against other people online, I had to go buy it.
That said, though, lowering game prices would certainly help improve sales and fight piracy. The people "cheap" enough to keep wasting time downloading programs they could buy for $10 or less aren't really the "target customer base" to begin with. Eventually, they'll go out and get jobs - and start realizing that "time is money". Then, they'll become customers for the reasonably priced game titles too.
Thanks for the link about bzboyz.com and Pricewatch!
A while back, I bought a couple motherboards from them - and I thought they had excellent prices. They took a little longer than I liked to ship my items, but I get that with most of the bargain-priced vendors on Pricewatch anyway. (I think they purposely take their time getting shipments out the door for anyone who only pays for "standard" shipping. I suspect they make a tidy profit on overcharging for priority/express type shipping....)
With a name like "bzboyz", though, I was afraid I was dealing with some wanna-be gangster computer dealers or something. It doesn't exactly inspire trust. After hearing about your situation with them, I'll skip them in the future. I've had good luck with a few other vendors like KRexx (in Illinois) and even a place in Ohio called Target-USA.
The first thought that came to my mind was, "Oh, I guess this must be the *first* publicized X-Box mod - making it an automatic most ultimate." There's no way it rates even a "most mediocre" in my book, otherwise.... It's a downright waste of time and materials, really.
I thought the fascination with transparent cases ended somewhere around the time Radio Shack stoppe selling those see-through "Princess style" telephones and Motorola quit making the transparent pagers?
I'm in total agreement about the added hassle of Windows registries, active directories, and so forth. But your argument about backup/restore of data applies equally to *any* OS a person chooses to run on their PC!
There are pretty good tools out there to do a complete Windows backup too, you know. "BackUpMyPC" comes to mind. It's a no-brainer to use, yet it's based on the fairly full-featured "Backup Exec" software that's been around and enhanced for years now, as it changed hands from Conner/Seagate to Veritas to ???. It makes a complete backup of the system registry with a single mouse-click in a check-box, and knows how to back up open files. It works with tape drives, DVD burners, or CDR/CDRW drives.
Sure, you'll have to buy and maintain a few more things in a Windows environment - but the people who chose to use it over Linux already seem to be willing to spend the additional $'s for it anyway.
The current discussion centers around being hacked - and this can happen in Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, or practically any environment - whether you run virus scanners and do all the service packs/fixed or not.
It turns out fish are deathly afraid of nets.
This is a "straw dummy" arguement, really.
Most people I know using a PC are using an environment based on "proprietary systems". The OS and software is mostly Microsoft, and your peripherals may become instant, expensive doorstops the next time MS does an OS upgrade and the vendors decide not to write updated drivers for them.
Granted, Apple controls both the hardware and the OS - but their current OS is based on BSD Unix, which means much more opportunity for free or low-cost software alternatives than you have with the Microsoft solutions. You can always dump OS X entirely and run a PPC version of Linux, if you like, too.
Besides, Apple has such a niche market-share (and always has, really) - they're much less likely to really screw you over than a dominant player in the market (like Dell, Microsoft or HP). They're less able to afford bad publicity.
In my experience, Mac owners are much more picky and demanding than the average PC owner. Some of the anti-Apple rants I've heard are about Apple's failure to rectify situations that you'd be laughed right off the support hotline for bringing up to most PC makers. (Things like "My cooling fan isn't quiet enough! I shouldn't have to hear it at all in my dead silent room!")
*Anything* in excess is not good. Nonetheless, I think you greatly overstate the problem in this case.
If anything, America's biggest problem related to goods and the desire of goods is that we're not willing to put forth the effort to build the highest quality goods possible. With few exceptions, Americans consider foreign, imported products as the "best of breed". We'll pay much more for an "oriental rug" than we'll ever consider paying for a domestic carpet. It's common knowledge that the best luxury and sports cars come from Germany, Japan, or Italy. Our favorite electronics and computer products come from companies like Mitsubishi, Sony or Samsung. We even pay big bucks for imported chocolate, but consider the American equivalents as nothing more than "staple goods". (Which one's more prestigious, Hershey's or Godiva?)
For these reasons, the more money we earn and spend on the "most desireable" products, the more of our money funnels itself out of the United States. This is fine if we're exporting roughly the same amount as we're importing - but I don't see that happening. Besides our farm produce, I'm not sure what America's really good at producing these days - and that's rather sad!
This isn't limited to Dell. In fact, poor as Dell's home user support is - they're *still* better than most.
Try buying an e-Machines sometime, or maybe a Gateway or an HP, and see what you get!
The PC has become a commodity item, and manufacturers don't care to give you any more tech. support on them than you'd get from your next microwave oven or cordless phone purchase.
This is why "buy a Mac" still makes some real sense. The Mac is about the only "non-comodity" machine geared for home/small business users. Apple considers their products a "premium, niche market alternative", and it shows in the increased build quality, engineering, and customer support.
Unfortunately, most folks want to "have their cake and eat it too", so they refuse to pay more for a Mac, up-front, and keep searching for the non-existant "holy grail" of bargain-basement priced PCs with awesome customer support and quality.
I'm going to "third" this suggestion!
.Mac. You get iTunes and the Apple music store (start them out right, instead of trying to pirate music of questionable quality off Kaaza, Morpheus, etc.). And lastly, you get (at least in many major cities) a nice clean, store you can walk into and get a respectable amount of customer service and assistance. (Before you flame me on this one, I'm well aware of some of the horror stories. But *in general*, you're talking about a place that offers regular free training on their popular products, a "genius bar" that's there just so you can ask questions/get help, and more. Beats calling some 800# and waiting on hold for 40 mins.)
I just got home from a LONG day of doing on-site PC service, and the last 3 calls I've struggled with were the same old story. Clueless family orders high-speed Internet access and plugs cable/DSL modem straight into the back of the computer. A month or two later, system has slowed to a crawl and loses connection constantly. Web pages often produce "DNS error" messages. Pop up ads are out of control.
Say what you will about the Mac, but none of this crap happens in the "Mac world". Not only that, but you get photo software that actually downloads images off their digital camera with zero pain and hassle (just plug the thing in and away it goes). You get easy web site creation via
Heh... yeah. I actually had a neighbor who owned a Model 16. Supposedly, he purchased it for his heating and cooling business, but I never saw him use it for much of anything.
His son and I tried playing around with it a little bit, but ultimately, both of us had a lot more fun with other home computers of that era. (Another neighbor kid had a TI99/4A he won in a Cheerios cereal contest, for example.) The Model 16 may have been WAY powerful for its day, but it didn't offer much in the way of games and "fun" stuff to do with it.
Yeah, if anyone can do this right, it's Plextor. Yet your "1 week of testing" doesn't give me much confidence.
Studies on CDR media are just now deciding that quite a few recordables burnt as little as 2 or 3 years ago have become unreadable already.
Especially in cases where people used generic spindles of CDR blanks, the dyes of some break down quite rapidly.
The problem with faster writing speeds (whether it's CDR or DVD-R/+R) is you're keeping the laser focused on any given point during the burn for less time. Dyes that respond more quickly seem liable to have less "staying power" than dyes needing more laser energy focused on them.
I don't think there's much incentive for media manufacturers to try too hard to ensure you get good quality discs that last for 10 or 20 (or more) years. By the time you find out the stuff you were buying has "bit rotted away" - you'll be on to buying the next "latest thing" in storage media anyway.... Therefore, I'd rather not push my luck by using the "cutting edge" in high speed writers, and hoping the newest media on the market that claims to handle it will actually hold my data for the long-term.
I actually thought it was a very well done list, but the "Tandy Sensation"?? I vaguely recall the initial hype when that model came out - and ultimately, nobody considered it a really "sensational" turning-point in home computing. If you're going to list the most significant Radio Shack/Tandy computer product, I think you'd be much smarter to list the Model 3 or Model 4. Those were among the first personal computers to offer networking, with a designated "server" system (and everything interconnected via serial cables). This made them very popular in school computer labs, where lots of middle schoolers and high-schoolers got their first real opportunity to use a computer. A huge (5 megabyte!) external hard drive could be attached to them, as well as external 300 baud modems, daisy wheel or dot matrix printers, and many other accessories. (For a while, they even offered a punch-card reader add-on for the Model 3.)
... but as the author said, making a cut-off point of "top 10" always forces you to leave out some good stuff. The Timex/Sinclair, great as it was, didn't really seem like it helped hook "the masses" on computing. It started out being sold in kit form as the ZX-81, and that model only appealed to hard-core electronics enthusiasts. Even when the TS1000 was selling in K-Mart for $99.95, the tiny, flat membrane keyboard kept lots of people away from it.
My first computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000, so I would have loved to see it make the list too
Actually, I'd be interested to see if handwriting recognition improved (and if so, by how much), by improving the writing surface/input device.
When I write on my PDA, I find that the touchscreen seems to be a limiting factor. Even when you tap on it with the stylus to do something as simple as select a menu, it doesn't always register on the first tap. It seems to me that most Palm devices are more responsive near the middle of their screens than out toward the edges. (Most likely because it allows a little less "flex" when you press down near a corner.) If you can't even get it to choose a menu selection each time you tap the stylus, how can you expect it to do a nearly-perfect job of interpreting your scribbling?
Upon reading this, it struck me that it's just a case of some folks trying too hard to do something "cool" and "trendy".
Here's the thing.... We talk about this being a great example of technology bringing people closer together and all that. But all in all, the idea of walking around in public with your ears plugged up with earbud headphones seems pretty anti-social to begin with. You're basically showing the world that you'd rather hear the music you brought with you, piped into your head, than hear anything else happening around you.
Honestly, when I see someone listening to headphones, I automatically try my best not to interrupt them. It's just like someone deeply engrossed in reading a book.
Not only that, but I'd presume that most people "techno-savvy" enough to purchase an iPod and able to download music to it also have a good handle on where to go on the net to download/preview all sorts of interesting and different music.
It's not that likely that some stranger on the bus is going to "blow my mind" by giving me a 30 second listen to their choice of iPod music. I have much better chances of discovering something new by doing some browsing around for it online.
Actually, I worry a bit when I hear people say that "the I.T. budget has to be looked at the exact same way as any other departmental budget".
IMHO, this is an over-generalization.
When you're talking about the budget for accounting, sales staff, or most other departments commonly found in companies - you're dealing with fairly concrete issues. You already know (or should know), for example, the average amount of revenue your sales force generates on a monthly basis. Most of their expenses are fairly fixed. (Perhaps you compensate them for the mileage they put on their vehicles, and that's going to roughly stay within certain parameters - since a given salesperson can only travel so many miles per day, week or month. You get the idea....)
If you invest in something new for these people, you can watch the change in revenue they bring in over the months that follow, and get a good idea if the new addition helped them be more efficient, or if it was just "fluff".
In I.T. - things are pretty nebulous, and often inter-twined with other departments. I.T. provides a service to the other parts of the company, so fretting too much over whether or not I.T. is directly adding to the bottom line isn't beneficial to anyone. I.T. may, in fact, be a big, continuous liability for a company - but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. In fact, it might not be valuable - *but* it depends largely on how well they're helping the other departments do their jobs.
Say the sales force I mentioned above decides to go with a new "CRM" software package, to more efficiently work with customers. This, initially, might be seen as an example of "I.T. adding to the company's bottom line", if the package works out well and sales are up. But eventually, that same package will be forgotten about and taken for granted UNTIL it starts breaking down. When I.T. puts in long hours and spends money on updates for the package to fix bugs and keep the CRM database from getting corrupt, or when the RAID array storing it crashes and money is spend to repair it - THEN, I.T. is seen as "hurting the bottom line".
This is why it's just not a great idea to over-analyze I.T.'s supposed "return on investment".
This seems like govt. come full-circle to me, in some ways. After all, the Internet as we know it today was built/funded by the govt. (as Arpanet, initially) - and eventually became privatized.
Now, these plans are popping up to create govt. funded high-speed networks? It's just going back to the roots of the net, but on a state or city instead of federal level.
Of course, the telecom companies would be expected to whine and complain - but their selfish motives aside, I think it is legitimate to ask why government feels this is a necessary function for them to perform. Sure, any of us "computer geeks" would love to have a net connection running 100x the current speed - but there's no free lunch here. This eventually means you're going to be paying for it in taxes, and as is the norm for government spending - you can bet they won't shift around existing funds to pay for this. Instead, they'll waste just as much money on other projects as ever, and demand a tax increase to cover this new one....