This ignores the larger issue; are ISP's going to be granted "common carrier" status or not? I think it's absolutely insane to say they're not - when they're in the exact same business as the telcos (except they help push around data instead of voice)... and these days, even those lines are getting blurry (VoIP).
IMHO, the courts are trying to ignore this issue completely, because it's easier for them to convict people of other crimes (child porn, etc.) if they can twist ISP's arms to hand over records. It's going to take a big court case (probably by a big name nation-wide ISP) to press this *real* issue, and get a determination on "common carrier" status once and for all.
The biggest objection to "spam" mail in the first place is the time it wastes. People have too much email to reply to. The last thing most of us will do is spend additional time on spam, sending out fake replies.
Yes, I realize this could be automated, but that still means people have to install the extra software on their computers and get in the habit of using it. It also might not always fills forms out properly or completely - wasting still more time when the pages come back telling you to "Please fill in all of the blanks."
I forsee this type of thing only being undertaken by a few "anti-spam diehards", and some of us techno-geeks. That won't get the number of replies up to where it's putting anyone out of business.
Well, maybe it wasn't directly stated that "a family should share a single computer" - but realistically, how many computers will the typical family be willing to set up in the public areas of the house?
Usually, insistence on the computer being out where everyone in the family can see what you're doing on it means the family is going to buy only one machine, and try to share it. The living room or family room starts looking too much like a computer lab otherwise.
Yep, you're absolutely on target here, and yet, most employees at ISP's still tell me I'm wrong about this one.
The secret has always been to operate in such a way so you're not snooping on anything your customers are doing. You simply provide the connection to the Internet, and ensure your servers are properly providing the services they're supposed to be providing.
As soon as you start selectively filtering out the "alt.binaries" newsgroups because you're concerned about the "pirated files" going through them, or start sniffing packets looking for customers running p2p file sharing programs, you're illustrating that you do, indeed have the ability to monitor and control the traffic.
IMHO, a smart ISP will not attempt to monitor or log any specific information about the content being sent/received by customers. Then, there's a strong legal defense of claiming "It's unrealistic to expect us to be able to keep track of exactly what our users do when they're online." (And honestly, with the shoestring budgets most smaller ISPs run on - I'd think this would be the complete and utter truth anyway. It blows my mind that some of them still waste time sifting through logs and trying to censor things out, when they can't even seem to answer their phones for tech. support, or call people back in a timely manner.)
Simple.... resell those heavily discounted printer ink cartridge refills. Surely, you'll profit enough from that and the cheap vacation offers so you can afford to challenge the AT&T patent!
If not, check your inbox for some great deals on debt consolidation/refinancing loans.
I disagree, actually. As a kid/teen growing up, one of the most important things to me was having a little space I had some control over. Sure, my folks had the "nice, big" TV set out in the living room - and so I often came out there to watch movies or really good TV shows that were on. But I wanted my own stereo, computer, and a few other items in my room.
As I keep reminding people, they don't call them "personal computers" for nothing. The idea of some "shared, family computer system" basically sucks. Every time I see this scenario, everyone's unhappy with it. The parents are griping about not having time to use the computer themselves when they need it to do work (and they're often writing up silly charts telling everyone when their "computer time" begins and ends each day), and the kids are all trying to scrape together the money to buy their own system - so they can finally get free of having to use the shared machine.
Even with just me and my wife trying to share a single computer, it didn't work out. I tried all the tools (such as Windows XP's support of multiple user profiles), but it's not the same. You get irritated at the things the other person fills your hard drive space with, or even the way they like the keyboard, monitor and mouse positioned on the desk.... I built my wife her own PC and it's the best money I've spent in a long time. Now we can play network games together once in a while if we want, and she's free to set her computer up any way she wishes (and same for me). Our daughter will definitely get her own computer as soon as she's old enough to get much use out of one.
Eh... it's a 2 way street. Yeah, on one hand, it's a fair comment to say "Hey, if you don't like the deal you're getting working for someone else, start your own business!" But on the other hand, there's the reality that 1. The economy will only support so many businesses at a time, and 2. Many people who started their own businesses had some of the start-up funding pretty much handed to them.
For every successful business that literally began with great product ideas by a couple people working out of a garage, there's at least 10 that began when someone inherited a bunch of cash and needed something to invest some of it in. I don't care what some folks preach about you being guaranteed to be a success if you only work hard and have enough "drive" to succeed.... Reality is, you need things like advertising in the Yellow Pages ($$$'s!), money to keep filling your vehicle with gas when you travel around promoting your product or service, and so on. Many a perfectly good business has failed because the owners simply didn't have the funds put aside to get them through that first year or two of not being profitable yet....
Yeah, exactly right... As just one recent example, my boss just had his IP address blacklisted for running an "open relay" on his mail server. He runs an on-site PC service business and worked as a software developer for IBM for years. He even wrote some anti-spam filtering software and other add-on tools for the mail server product he uses. The problem is, about a week ago, he did an upgrade to the software. As best we can tell, the upgrade changed some of his settings back to defaults, and created an open relay where there wasn't one before. (This is a Windows based package, BTW.)
He has several customers of his who rely on his mail server as their backup server, as well as a few others who use it as their primary - so this blacklisting really interfered with his business.
As soon as he realized there was a problem, he went in and corrected it - but it may be a little while before he gets removed from the blacklists again....
This made me think how similar a problem it is to becoming liable for attacks launched from your system. Can people really be expected to *always* catch and fix these potential configuration/security issues when they're busy doing all the other things involved in running their company? Not everyone has the luxury of hiring a "security expert" to do everything for them (and assume any blame that arises!).
Personally, I never found Kaaza even remotely "compelling", considering all the spyware/adware it loads your PC up with as part of the install.
Furthermore, if you *are* going to engage in "illegal MP3 file trading" over the Internet - it only makes sense to use the most obscure product and network possible for the activity. I wouldn't choose a tool like Morpheus or Kaaza that *everyone* seems to be well aware of!
Yes, I was a big proponent of FreeDOS, even a couple years ago. FreeDOS was still a little rough around the edges when I last dealt with it - but I was impressed that someone took charge and attempted to keep DOS "alive".
I think many people might be surprised to find some of the places DOS still turns up. A prime example is older NEC "NEAX" phone PBX's. They all run MS-DOS (or variants), and as such, are rock solid stable. I've never seen a NEAX phone system "freeze up" with no explanation, as many of the newer and more feature-packed Windows NT/2000 based counterparts do.
Ultimately, I don't think Microsoft has any real use for DOS anymore. They got their value out of it long ago. In that sense, it really is "dead" (to them). The fact is, though, DOS is still pretty much optimal for older hardware that is dedicated to performing a single task reliably and consistently. (In the days of the BBS, the DOS based boards always ran the best. Even for multi-line boards, people generally had better luck using Desqview on top of DOS to multitask than trying to run under Windows, OS/2, or anything else.)
Right! I always make sure UPNP is disabled on every XP box I set up. I can't really see good reasons for the service to be there - and I recall people complaining about the security holes it created back when it was first released to the public.
I'm just a little bit surprised routers are actually making use of it now. I guess it's all about pressure put on them to make it easier for people to run special services from multiple computers (since NAT firewalls make you redirect traffic to one specific IP otherwise).
Ultimately, it's a matter of convenience vs. security, and to me, UPNP compromises too much security for "ease of use". It's like setting your home alarm system up with an easy to remember code like 1-2-3, for the sake of convenience.
Most places running COBOL apps are doing so largely because the stuff "just works" and they have the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude about it.
In many cases, the biggest concern is that their legacy hardware will become so obsolete that they can't get service contracts or replacement parts for it anymore. If/when it reaches that point, they're probably going to consider it time to redo *everything* from scratch -- implementing new software along with new hardware to run it on.
I don't think there's really much of a market out there saying "Gee.... if only I could migrate all of these COBOL apps on our mainframes over to Windows and.NET!" Still, you can't blame Microsoft for trying. They're the experts at finding untapped markets and selling to them. They may even have moderate success, selling complete migration solutions to govt. agencies. "We'll contract out developers to move all those apps over to our new server farm and sell you the whole thing for price X!"
Actually, it's rare to find a Microsoft titled game that's a "dud", IMHO - so your analogy is sorely flawed right there.
Microsoft started out WAY back with "Flight Simulator" - a great simulation series that still gets updated pretty much every year and sells quite well. They brought us "Halo" (for X-Box, but now available for PC and even Mac OS X), and Dungeon Seige, which was quite respectable for a D&D type RPG game. I also recall them selling "Terminal Velocity" - a pretty cool shooter game. What, exactly, did MS bring to the gaming world that really sucked, anyway? Off the top of my head, I can't even think of a single title!
So it is with Disney too. I think where Disney really falls down is when they crank out the non-animated children's movies. These generally seem like excuses to let some young kids and pre-teens do some acting on the "big screen", rather than memorable, high quality movies. The worst of their animated movies is still better than 75% of the other crap Hollywood puts out in theaters each week. Pixar is teriffic too. But my point is, both companies are giants in the animation industry in the U.S. -- and I think we can expect great things to come from either one.
IMHO, don't expect a miracle. Don't forget, long-standing, legitimate graphics card makers (such as Matrox, or years ago - Hercules) all tried to get into the high-end 3D type accelerator card market and failed miserably. Even lately, you hear some rumbling coming from Matrox every once in a while about some new "killer 3D card", and it always turns out to effectively mean nothing.
ATI and nVidia being the only 2 real competitors in the 3D gaming card market isn't such a horrible thing. (Yes, things would be MUCH worse if we only had ONE major player.) As long as there are two, it keeps innovation and competition alive between them - and it reduces the support headaches for software developers.
It wasn't THAT long ago, you almost had to select your 3D card purchase based on how much you liked the "special edition" titles bundled in the box - because you never knew how many future games would actually be written to support the thing! (I recall buying a Matrox Mystique like this, for example. It came with a Mystique-accelerated version of MechWarrior and a few other decent games - but I barely found anything else that supported it afterwards.)
The old line about "too many cooks spoiling the soup" holds true for too many competing brands on the video card marketplace, too.
Yep! Once, I mail ordered a 100-pack of generic, cheap CDRs, only to find that the foil layer was practically painted on the top of the plastic CDR, with no protective coating over it at all! You could literally wipe out hundreds of megs. of data with one little scratch of the fingernail anyplace on the top of the disc!
Needless to say, that whole spindle got returned immediately. In fact, this story seems a bit ironic, because when I encountered that issue - I remember thinking "You know, I could probably make these cheap discs usable if I was only printing labels to stick on the top of each one as soon as I finished burning ir!" Guess a gummed label turns out not to be such a good protective covering after all....
But as other readers have mentioned, I always thought the old Kodak gold CDRs were about the best money could buy (and they did cost a lot of money). I pulled a few out that we burnt data onto back when the first 1x CDR drives first came out from Phillips, and they still read great. The discs also feel heavier and appear to be a bit thicker than others. TDK discs never felt quite this "solid", but they seem to have held up well over the years too. I used to buy TDKs almost exclusively, but in the last few years - started buying any recognizable brand that was on sale (Verbatim, Sony, Memorex, etc.) I recently had a horrible 50-pack of Maxell's though. They had a silver-ish dye, and seemed to be a bad production run or something. Almost all of them looked like they hadn't even been burnt yet after writing data to them. (You could hold them up to a bright light at just the right angle and see where data was recorded, but it was so faint - I was sure they'd give me trouble.) Sure enough, many of them only read properly once or twice after burning. Then they became coasters within 1 week....
People always point out that "there are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture blank CDR's - so most major brands you see in stores are made by someone else anyway". This is probably true, I suspect large companies (like Kodak) have the ability to request that their blanks be made for them to certain specs. Therefore, I might order direct from Mitsui (who supposedly makes the CDRs for Kodak) and still not get something identical to what's sold under the Kodak brand.
In some ways, isn't the "Q-Factor" really just a measurement of the public's overall appreciation for a particular actor/actress? If so, that's really just indirectly paying people more based on how good of an actor/actress they are.
For example, I think Patrick Stewart always does a respectable job when acting, and I have a good idea of the qualities he's likely to bring to any movie he stars in. (I know he's not the type to play a role of some blithering idiot, a la "Dumb and Dumber", and he can usually be counted on to bring some intelligent humor to a film, while still delivering serious and thought-provoking lines.) Therefore, I'll be relatively likely to watch a movie he stars in.
By the same token, I'm just as concerned by who is producing a movie as who is starring in it. Do I skip movies with "no-name" actors in them, favoring the well-recognized names? Not necessarily. Films produced by "Artisan" tend to feature no-name actors and low-budget production, yet often turn out to be very enjoyable movies (Blair Witch being their best-known exception to that rule). I didn't know a single actor or actress staring in "The Cube", yet I thought they all did an excellent job.
CGI actors/actresses could certainly develop their own following, just like real, live ones do. That's happened for years and years with cartoon characters already, and arguably with make-believe TV characters like "Max Headroom" in the 80's. Still, in these cases, I think people just appreciate the genius behind the AI. (EG. You can say you love "Popeye" cartoons, but it all boils down to an appreciation for the life Mel Blanc gave to him.)
I haven't yet seen the 3rd. part - and am REALLY bummed to read all of these early negative reviews. Despite being a huge fan of the first one, I didn't get a chance to see the second one in the theater. First time I watched it was a couple weeks ago on DVD. (And in some ways, I felt like this worked out for the best - because the 3rd. part was just about released, and I was freshly done enjoying part 2 - and chomping at the bit for part 3.)
I agree that these movies meant "a lot of different things to different people" - but much of that was because there was so many loose threads that still needed tying up. Eventually, things *do* need a single explanation for how they got to be, and if that upsets those that interpreted all the signs and unclear messages incorrectly, so be it.
I really liked part 2, but I also found it unsettling the way it seemed to be shaping up into a nihlistic film about hopes dashed and humanity unable to ultimately triumph over machines. (Of course, enough was left wide open for it to have a complete turn-around in part 3.)
Now, it sounds like part 3 took the movie exactly the direction I feared it was headed - which has got to be the *worst* possible outcome for everything. Morpheus really was just a "crazy, misguided prophet" - because although his heart was in the right place, he had no idea that the entire Matrix had fallen (and been rebuilt) many times before. He was just a pawn in the "game", so to speak. In reality, folks like Neo and Morpheus were there to "stress test" the software, so bugs could be squashed in future reincarnations of the Matrix, leading to an eventual "perfect" simulation.
Not only do I dislike an explanation along these lines because the ending is unsatisfying to me personally - but it doesn't work to seal up any of the holes in the logic of the whole thing. (Most notably, IMHO - why are the machines finding so much value in imprisoning all the humans inside this ongoing simulation? We already agree that the original explanation of "using their bodies as an energy source" is utter crap, and assumed it was just a lie fed to people that we'd eventually uncover the truth about. Here we are at part 3 though, and nobody seems to have a better answer.)
Yeah, you make a good point - but in some ways, a little bit of segmentation happens because it actually makes the most sense.
EG. The stereotype of the Mac getting used for "media" is really no accident. I just got the latest issue of Macworld, and even in their comparisons of the new G5's vs. the top-end WinTel offerings, they decided that the Mac had a big lead in such things as video editing and graphics manipulation, while in apps like MS Office, the PC trounced it in performance. The Mac is superior at these media-related tasks, so it's the best tool for those jobs.
Still, the whole racket of heavily discounting software and/or hardware for students seems to be more effective than one might at first think. Maybe it cashes in on the optimism of most students. ("I may as well take advantage of this great deal on these MS products now - and after 4 or 5 years, I'll get a job making enough money that paying full price for upgrades won't be a big deal by then....")
I see no reason for anyone to get excited over the second coming of Napster. Fact is, everyone knows the first one was all about making music trading easy and FREE. Now, mention Napster 2 and almost everyone either says "Huh? Did they win a court case and manage to come back again, offering free music?" or "Oh yeah, the guys that got busted over piracy the first time around, so now they're trying to sell music, cashing in on their old name."
Meanwhile, Napster's founder is on to other projects (most notably, Ryze - the business contact network).
Apple has clout and respect with the masses, because when they offer a music store, people simply think "Cool, online music purchasing brought to us by the guys that gave us the way cool iPod portable music player!" There's no negative "baggage" like a Napster has.
BTW - has anyone used www.ryze.com and found it useful/worthwhile? I gave it a shot, and personally, I found it mostly annoying. The concept was great.... but it seems to draw "wanna-bes", "psychics/mystics/religious zealots" and loads of hucksters trying to sell you their self-help or getting-started type books/videos. I was hoping to do some serious business networking with people, like myself, doing computer consulting/upgrading/etc. Instead, I got invites to join message forums run by people doing motivational seminars and selling insurance.
I'm happy to hear about the "Fedora Project" and all, but at the same time, corporate financial support is what advanced Linux to the doorsteps of businesses all over the world.
When a vendor selling a popular Linux distro publically announces that "It's just not worth our money to keep pouring money into development of our free version of our Linux product!", that's sending a strong, negative message. What are companies like IBM supposed to think, when they've believed enough in the indirect rewards of Linux to pour millions into it -- and they don't even make their own distros!
I don't know.... I understand RedHat's move from a "bean counter" perspective, but I still think it's short-sighted. Nobody ever suggested making a profitable business model selling Linux distros was going to be easy. For a long time, I wasn't sure it was even going to be possible. Companies like RedHat proved it can be done - but now they're "cutting corners" in the wrong area, trying to save money, and I think it may upset the balance they achieved that worked so well for them up till now.
Like many people already pointed out, you need the free product to keep momentum up, so a "critical mass" of users recommend buying the more expensive "Enterprise edition", when and where it can be installed by folks that will pay for it.
Re:They always say it...
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Bleah.... I call pure B.S. on this one!
Yes, you want to treat the body in a healthy manner. By that, I think it just means using good common sense. If you're a smoker, stop smoking. Don't drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or anything else. (Even too much water can kill a person.) Eat a variety of foods in moderation, and the law of averages will be on your side. (With enough food variety, you're bound to be ingesting some of each of the minerals and vitamins your body needs to function properly.)
Where I disagree is the "serious amounts of exercise". This will certainly help a person lose weight, but like a car that's constantly raced (instead of driven normally), parts just wear out faster and break more often.
In our distant past, we might have been out running around all day, hunting, but our lifespans were MUCH shorter than what they are today too.
Exercise, like everything else, is good - but in MODERATION. Too much of a good thing quickly becomes a bad thing. Just ask any ex pro-athlete, and they'll have plenty of stories and gripes about their bad joints, torn ligaments/tendons, and permanent injuries that are luckily paid for because they earned so much money while playing the sport. If you ask too much of your body, things will fail on you eventually.
I tend to agree. It's a fact of life that the Chinese are always "stealing" good ideas of other countries and figuring out how to turn them into profit for themselves, by manufacturing comparable products at more attractive prices.
Just recently, I was looking for some blue LEDs. All of the local stores (including electronics part suppliers in town) wanted prices from $1.75 to $3.50 *each* for them.
I ended up finding an LED manufacturer out of Hong Kong, advertising on eBay, who was willing to ship me 50 blue LEDs *with* resistors (so you can use them on 12 volt power, like your computer's power supply or a car battery would provide), all for about $10.00.
Were these LEDs inferior to the more costly counterparts? Possibly to some extent only measurable with instruments - but to me, they look and work great.
Yes, there's a lot of "cheap junk" out of China too - but as a rule, that stuff only has a brief success (until a critical mass of buyers learn to avoid it), and then the Chinese have to up the quality - or lose the sales.
I can't blame the Etrema folks for trying anything in their power to stop the Chinese from competing with them, but in the end - I think their smartest move is what they already admitted as an option: Try to partner up with them as suppliers.
Yeah, when I worked at my previous job, I spent lots of time trying to cut down on incoming spam email. (We had loads of complaints, and when you're using Exchange Server 5.5 for your email with Microsoft's Internet Mail Connector, you don't have all the filtering options of a Unix box....)
I religiously reported problem emails to Spamcop, for about a year straight, and only *once* did an ISP actually write me back to report that they removed someone's account, and thanked me for reporting the issue. On the other hand, the amount of new spam I received seemed to roughly double. I can't prove it, but I have a suspicion that somehow, some of the spammers figure out where Spamcop reports against them originate from (we had a static IP) and launch spam campaigns on these folks, personally.
Actually, I was a little surprised to see how heavy-duty the Apple PowerMac G5 tower's case is. I knew it was all aluminum construction and all that... but when you actually get to play around with one first-hand and open it up, you realize everything is heavy, and feels quite solid. Reminds me of the way systems *used* to be built - when people really thought they'd be in use for 10+ years before getting swapped out for something new.....
Besides the new G5 though, I haven't seen any PCs in current production with really good quality of construction in their cases. Many are "cool looking" and some are very cleverly engineered to make them easy to open and/or fit lots of drives in a given amount of space -- but everything's thin sheet metal and plastic.
To be honest, I'm not so sure it matters much.... I still have an old AT style full-tower case that originally housed a 386 motherboard, back when that was the fastest thing on the market. The case is the typical plastic front, screwed onto typical gauge metal casing, with flimsy painted sheet metal cover that screws on with 6 screws. It still looks almost like new, except for the white plastic starting to "yellow" a bit.
Most PCs just sit in one place for years, unless you're hauling them around to LAN parties or something. I don't see why people should pay hundreds more for it to be built like a tank....
Umm... no, certainly not. I think the reality is, it's not *anyone's* responsibility to ensure upgrade cards keep working with new OS's designed for newer machines.
Apple had a pretty well defined set of rules of which systems supported which OS products of theirs. Anyone trying to bend those rules by purchasing 3rd. party hardware that puts CPUs in boxes never originally designed to run those CPUs is taking a chance.
The vendors of the upgrade boards probably have some interest in making them compatible with as much new Apple software as possible - so they can keep their sales up. But ultimately, the only thing I see them really *needing* to support is their compatibility with MacOS 9.1 and earlier.
Except for folks trying to do things a machine was never meant to do, just because they won't pay for/can't afford the right tools for the job -- the G3/G4 upgrade cards are really designed to boost the speed of a given, older Mac, running the OS's it was intended to run before the upgrade was installed.
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This ignores the larger issue; are ISP's going to be granted "common carrier" status or not? I think it's absolutely insane to say they're not - when they're in the exact same business as the telcos (except they help push around data instead of voice) ... and these days, even those lines are getting blurry (VoIP).
IMHO, the courts are trying to ignore this issue completely, because it's easier for them to convict people of other crimes (child porn, etc.) if they can twist ISP's arms to hand over records. It's going to take a big court case (probably by a big name nation-wide ISP) to press this *real* issue, and get a determination on "common carrier" status once and for all.
The biggest objection to "spam" mail in the first place is the time it wastes. People have too much email to reply to. The last thing most of us will do is spend additional time on spam, sending out fake replies.
Yes, I realize this could be automated, but that still means people have to install the extra software on their computers and get in the habit of using it. It also might not always fills forms out properly or completely - wasting still more time when the pages come back telling you to "Please fill in all of the blanks."
I forsee this type of thing only being undertaken by a few "anti-spam diehards", and some of us techno-geeks. That won't get the number of replies up to where it's putting anyone out of business.
Well, maybe it wasn't directly stated that "a family should share a single computer" - but realistically, how many computers will the typical family be willing to set up in the public areas of the house?
Usually, insistence on the computer being out where everyone in the family can see what you're doing on it means the family is going to buy only one machine, and try to share it. The living room or family room starts looking too much like a computer lab otherwise.
Yep, you're absolutely on target here, and yet, most employees at ISP's still tell me I'm wrong about this one.
The secret has always been to operate in such a way so you're not snooping on anything your customers are doing. You simply provide the connection to the Internet, and ensure your servers are properly providing the services they're supposed to be providing.
As soon as you start selectively filtering out the "alt.binaries" newsgroups because you're concerned about the "pirated files" going through them, or start sniffing packets looking for customers running p2p file sharing programs, you're illustrating that you do, indeed have the ability to monitor and control the traffic.
IMHO, a smart ISP will not attempt to monitor or log any specific information about the content being sent/received by customers. Then, there's a strong legal defense of claiming "It's unrealistic to expect us to be able to keep track of exactly what our users do when they're online." (And honestly, with the shoestring budgets most smaller ISPs run on - I'd think this would be the complete and utter truth anyway. It blows my mind that some of them still waste time sifting through logs and trying to censor things out, when they can't even seem to answer their phones for tech. support, or call people back in a timely manner.)
Simple.... resell those heavily discounted printer ink cartridge refills. Surely, you'll profit enough from that and the cheap vacation offers so you can afford to challenge the AT&T patent!
If not, check your inbox for some great deals on debt consolidation/refinancing loans.
I disagree, actually. As a kid/teen growing up, one of the most important things to me was having a little space I had some control over. Sure, my folks had the "nice, big" TV set out in the living room - and so I often came out there to watch movies or really good TV shows that were on. But I wanted my own stereo, computer, and a few other items in my room.
As I keep reminding people, they don't call them "personal computers" for nothing. The idea of some "shared, family computer system" basically sucks. Every time I see this scenario, everyone's unhappy with it. The parents are griping about not having time to use the computer themselves when they need it to do work (and they're often writing up silly charts telling everyone when their "computer time" begins and ends each day), and the kids are all trying to scrape together the money to buy their own system - so they can finally get free of having to use the shared machine.
Even with just me and my wife trying to share a single computer, it didn't work out. I tried all the tools (such as Windows XP's support of multiple user profiles), but it's not the same. You get irritated at the things the other person fills your hard drive space with, or even the way they like the keyboard, monitor and mouse positioned on the desk.... I built my wife her own PC and it's the best money I've spent in a long time. Now we can play network games together once in a while if we want, and she's free to set her computer up any way she wishes (and same for me). Our daughter will definitely get her own computer as soon as she's old enough to get much use out of one.
Eh... it's a 2 way street. Yeah, on one hand, it's a fair comment to say "Hey, if you don't like the deal you're getting working for someone else, start your own business!" But on the other hand, there's the reality that 1. The economy will only support so many businesses at a time, and 2. Many people who started their own businesses had some of the start-up funding pretty much handed to them.
For every successful business that literally began with great product ideas by a couple people working out of a garage, there's at least 10 that began when someone inherited a bunch of cash and needed something to invest some of it in. I don't care what some folks preach about you being guaranteed to be a success if you only work hard and have enough "drive" to succeed.... Reality is, you need things like advertising in the Yellow Pages ($$$'s!), money to keep filling your vehicle with gas when you travel around promoting your product or service, and so on. Many a perfectly good business has failed because the owners simply didn't have the funds put aside to get them through that first year or two of not being profitable yet....
Yeah, exactly right... As just one recent example, my boss just had his IP address blacklisted for running an "open relay" on his mail server. He runs an on-site PC service business and worked as a software developer for IBM for years. He even wrote some anti-spam filtering software and other add-on tools for the mail server product he uses. The problem is, about a week ago, he did an upgrade to the software. As best we can tell, the upgrade changed some of his settings back to defaults, and created an open relay where there wasn't one before. (This is a Windows based package, BTW.)
He has several customers of his who rely on his mail server as their backup server, as well as a few others who use it as their primary - so this blacklisting really interfered with his business.
As soon as he realized there was a problem, he went in and corrected it - but it may be a little while before he gets removed from the blacklists again....
This made me think how similar a problem it is to becoming liable for attacks launched from your system. Can people really be expected to *always* catch and fix these potential configuration/security issues when they're busy doing all the other things involved in running their company? Not everyone has the luxury of hiring a "security expert" to do everything for them (and assume any blame that arises!).
Personally, I never found Kaaza even remotely "compelling", considering all the spyware/adware it loads your PC up with as part of the install.
Furthermore, if you *are* going to engage in "illegal MP3 file trading" over the Internet - it only makes sense to use the most obscure product and network possible for the activity. I wouldn't choose a tool like Morpheus or Kaaza that *everyone* seems to be well aware of!
Yes, I was a big proponent of FreeDOS, even a couple years ago. FreeDOS was still a little rough around the edges when I last dealt with it - but I was impressed that someone took charge and attempted to keep DOS "alive".
I think many people might be surprised to find some of the places DOS still turns up. A prime example is older NEC "NEAX" phone PBX's. They all run MS-DOS (or variants), and as such, are rock solid stable. I've never seen a NEAX phone system "freeze up" with no explanation, as many of the newer and more feature-packed Windows NT/2000 based counterparts do.
Ultimately, I don't think Microsoft has any real use for DOS anymore. They got their value out of it long ago. In that sense, it really is "dead" (to them). The fact is, though, DOS is still pretty much optimal for older hardware that is dedicated to performing a single task reliably and consistently. (In the days of the BBS, the DOS based boards always ran the best. Even for multi-line boards, people generally had better luck using Desqview on top of DOS to multitask than trying to run under Windows, OS/2, or anything else.)
Right! I always make sure UPNP is disabled on every XP box I set up. I can't really see good reasons for the service to be there - and I recall people complaining about the security holes it created back when it was first released to the public.
I'm just a little bit surprised routers are actually making use of it now. I guess it's all about pressure put on them to make it easier for people to run special services from multiple computers (since NAT firewalls make you redirect traffic to one specific IP otherwise).
Ultimately, it's a matter of convenience vs. security, and to me, UPNP compromises too much security for "ease of use". It's like setting your home alarm system up with an easy to remember code like 1-2-3, for the sake of convenience.
Most places running COBOL apps are doing so largely because the stuff "just works" and they have the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude about it.
.NET!" Still, you can't blame Microsoft for trying. They're the experts at finding untapped markets and selling to them. They may even have moderate success, selling complete migration solutions to govt. agencies. "We'll contract out developers to move all those apps over to our new server farm and sell you the whole thing for price X!"
In many cases, the biggest concern is that their legacy hardware will become so obsolete that they can't get service contracts or replacement parts for it anymore. If/when it reaches that point, they're probably going to consider it time to redo *everything* from scratch -- implementing new software along with new hardware to run it on.
I don't think there's really much of a market out there saying "Gee.... if only I could migrate all of these COBOL apps on our mainframes over to Windows and
Actually, it's rare to find a Microsoft titled game that's a "dud", IMHO - so your analogy is sorely flawed right there.
Microsoft started out WAY back with "Flight Simulator" - a great simulation series that still gets updated pretty much every year and sells quite well. They brought us "Halo" (for X-Box, but now available for PC and even Mac OS X), and Dungeon Seige, which was quite respectable for a D&D type RPG game. I also recall them selling "Terminal Velocity" - a pretty cool shooter game. What, exactly, did MS bring to the gaming world that really sucked, anyway? Off the top of my head, I can't even think of a single title!
So it is with Disney too. I think where Disney really falls down is when they crank out the non-animated children's movies. These generally seem like excuses to let some young kids and pre-teens do some acting on the "big screen", rather than memorable, high quality movies. The worst of their animated movies is still better than 75% of the other crap Hollywood puts out in theaters each week. Pixar is teriffic too. But my point is, both companies are giants in the animation industry in the U.S. -- and I think we can expect great things to come from either one.
IMHO, don't expect a miracle. Don't forget, long-standing, legitimate graphics card makers (such as Matrox, or years ago - Hercules) all tried to get into the high-end 3D type accelerator card market and failed miserably. Even lately, you hear some rumbling coming from Matrox every once in a while about some new "killer 3D card", and it always turns out to effectively mean nothing.
ATI and nVidia being the only 2 real competitors in the 3D gaming card market isn't such a horrible thing. (Yes, things would be MUCH worse if we only had ONE major player.) As long as there are two, it keeps innovation and competition alive between them - and it reduces the support headaches for software developers.
It wasn't THAT long ago, you almost had to select your 3D card purchase based on how much you liked the "special edition" titles bundled in the box - because you never knew how many future games would actually be written to support the thing! (I recall buying a Matrox Mystique like this, for example. It came with a Mystique-accelerated version of MechWarrior and a few other decent games - but I barely found anything else that supported it afterwards.)
The old line about "too many cooks spoiling the soup" holds true for too many competing brands on the video card marketplace, too.
Yep! Once, I mail ordered a 100-pack of generic, cheap CDRs, only to find that the foil layer was practically painted on the top of the plastic CDR, with no protective coating over it at all! You could literally wipe out hundreds of megs. of data with one little scratch of the fingernail anyplace on the top of the disc!
Needless to say, that whole spindle got returned immediately. In fact, this story seems a bit ironic, because when I encountered that issue - I remember thinking "You know, I could probably make these cheap discs usable if I was only printing labels to stick on the top of each one as soon as I finished burning ir!" Guess a gummed label turns out not to be such a good protective covering after all....
But as other readers have mentioned, I always thought the old Kodak gold CDRs were about the best money could buy (and they did cost a lot of money). I pulled a few out that we burnt data onto back when the first 1x CDR drives first came out from Phillips, and they still read great. The discs also feel heavier and appear to be a bit thicker than others. TDK discs never felt quite this "solid", but they seem to have held up well over the years too. I used to buy TDKs almost exclusively, but in the last few years - started buying any recognizable brand that was on sale (Verbatim, Sony, Memorex, etc.) I recently had a horrible 50-pack of Maxell's though. They had a silver-ish dye, and seemed to be a bad production run or something. Almost all of them looked like they hadn't even been burnt yet after writing data to them. (You could hold them up to a bright light at just the right angle and see where data was recorded, but it was so faint - I was sure they'd give me trouble.) Sure enough, many of them only read properly once or twice after burning. Then they became coasters within 1 week....
People always point out that "there are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture blank CDR's - so most major brands you see in stores are made by someone else anyway". This is probably true, I suspect large companies (like Kodak) have the ability to request that their blanks be made for them to certain specs. Therefore, I might order direct from Mitsui (who supposedly makes the CDRs for Kodak) and still not get something identical to what's sold under the Kodak brand.
In some ways, isn't the "Q-Factor" really just a measurement of the public's overall appreciation for a particular actor/actress? If so, that's really just indirectly paying people more based on how good of an actor/actress they are.
For example, I think Patrick Stewart always does a respectable job when acting, and I have a good idea of the qualities he's likely to bring to any movie he stars in. (I know he's not the type to play a role of some blithering idiot, a la "Dumb and Dumber", and he can usually be counted on to bring some intelligent humor to a film, while still delivering serious and thought-provoking lines.) Therefore, I'll be relatively likely to watch a movie he stars in.
By the same token, I'm just as concerned by who is producing a movie as who is starring in it. Do I skip movies with "no-name" actors in them, favoring the well-recognized names? Not necessarily. Films produced by "Artisan" tend to feature no-name actors and low-budget production, yet often turn out to be very enjoyable movies (Blair Witch being their best-known exception to that rule). I didn't know a single actor or actress staring in "The Cube", yet I thought they all did an excellent job.
CGI actors/actresses could certainly develop their own following, just like real, live ones do. That's happened for years and years with cartoon characters already, and arguably with make-believe TV characters like "Max Headroom" in the 80's. Still, in these cases, I think people just appreciate the genius behind the AI. (EG. You can say you love "Popeye" cartoons, but it all boils down to an appreciation for the life Mel Blanc gave to him.)
I haven't yet seen the 3rd. part - and am REALLY bummed to read all of these early negative reviews. Despite being a huge fan of the first one, I didn't get a chance to see the second one in the theater. First time I watched it was a couple weeks ago on DVD. (And in some ways, I felt like this worked out for the best - because the 3rd. part was just about released, and I was freshly done enjoying part 2 - and chomping at the bit for part 3.)
I agree that these movies meant "a lot of different things to different people" - but much of that was because there was so many loose threads that still needed tying up. Eventually, things *do* need a single explanation for how they got to be, and if that upsets those that interpreted all the signs and unclear messages incorrectly, so be it.
I really liked part 2, but I also found it unsettling the way it seemed to be shaping up into a nihlistic film about hopes dashed and humanity unable to ultimately triumph over machines. (Of course, enough was left wide open for it to have a complete turn-around in part 3.)
Now, it sounds like part 3 took the movie exactly the direction I feared it was headed - which has got to be the *worst* possible outcome for everything. Morpheus really was just a "crazy, misguided prophet" - because although his heart was in the right place, he had no idea that the entire Matrix had fallen (and been rebuilt) many times before. He was just a pawn in the "game", so to speak. In reality, folks like Neo and Morpheus were there to "stress test" the software, so bugs could be squashed in future reincarnations of the Matrix, leading to an eventual "perfect" simulation.
Not only do I dislike an explanation along these lines because the ending is unsatisfying to me personally - but it doesn't work to seal up any of the holes in the logic of the whole thing. (Most notably, IMHO - why are the machines finding so much value in imprisoning all the humans inside this ongoing simulation? We already agree that the original explanation of "using their bodies as an energy source" is utter crap, and assumed it was just a lie fed to people that we'd eventually uncover the truth about. Here we are at part 3 though, and nobody seems to have a better answer.)
Yeah, you make a good point - but in some ways, a little bit of segmentation happens because it actually makes the most sense.
EG. The stereotype of the Mac getting used for "media" is really no accident. I just got the latest issue of Macworld, and even in their comparisons of the new G5's vs. the top-end WinTel offerings, they decided that the Mac had a big lead in such things as video editing and graphics manipulation, while in apps like MS Office, the PC trounced it in performance. The Mac is superior at these media-related tasks, so it's the best tool for those jobs.
Still, the whole racket of heavily discounting software and/or hardware for students seems to be more effective than one might at first think. Maybe it cashes in on the optimism of most students. ("I may as well take advantage of this great deal on these MS products now - and after 4 or 5 years, I'll get a job making enough money that paying full price for upgrades won't be a big deal by then....")
I see no reason for anyone to get excited over the second coming of Napster. Fact is, everyone knows the first one was all about making music trading easy and FREE. Now, mention Napster 2 and almost everyone either says "Huh? Did they win a court case and manage to come back again, offering free music?" or "Oh yeah, the guys that got busted over piracy the first time around, so now they're trying to sell music, cashing in on their old name."
Meanwhile, Napster's founder is on to other projects (most notably, Ryze - the business contact network).
Apple has clout and respect with the masses, because when they offer a music store, people simply think "Cool, online music purchasing brought to us by the guys that gave us the way cool iPod portable music player!" There's no negative "baggage" like a Napster has.
BTW - has anyone used www.ryze.com and found it useful/worthwhile? I gave it a shot, and personally, I found it mostly annoying. The concept was great.... but it seems to draw "wanna-bes", "psychics/mystics/religious zealots" and loads of hucksters trying to sell you their self-help or getting-started type books/videos. I was hoping to do some serious business networking with people, like myself, doing computer consulting/upgrading/etc. Instead, I got invites to join message forums run by people doing motivational seminars and selling insurance.
I'm happy to hear about the "Fedora Project" and all, but at the same time, corporate financial support is what advanced Linux to the doorsteps of businesses all over the world.
When a vendor selling a popular Linux distro publically announces that "It's just not worth our money to keep pouring money into development of our free version of our Linux product!", that's sending a strong, negative message. What are companies like IBM supposed to think, when they've believed enough in the indirect rewards of Linux to pour millions into it -- and they don't even make their own distros!
I don't know.... I understand RedHat's move from a "bean counter" perspective, but I still think it's short-sighted. Nobody ever suggested making a profitable business model selling Linux distros was going to be easy. For a long time, I wasn't sure it was even going to be possible. Companies like RedHat proved it can be done - but now they're "cutting corners" in the wrong area, trying to save money, and I think it may upset the balance they achieved that worked so well for them up till now.
Like many people already pointed out, you need the free product to keep momentum up, so a "critical mass" of users recommend buying the more expensive "Enterprise edition", when and where it can be installed by folks that will pay for it.
Bleah.... I call pure B.S. on this one!
Yes, you want to treat the body in a healthy manner. By that, I think it just means using good common sense. If you're a smoker, stop smoking. Don't drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or anything else. (Even too much water can kill a person.) Eat a variety of foods in moderation, and the law of averages will be on your side. (With enough food variety, you're bound to be ingesting some of each of the minerals and vitamins your body needs to function properly.)
Where I disagree is the "serious amounts of exercise". This will certainly help a person lose weight, but like a car that's constantly raced (instead of driven normally), parts just wear out faster and break more often.
In our distant past, we might have been out running around all day, hunting, but our lifespans were MUCH shorter than what they are today too.
Exercise, like everything else, is good - but in MODERATION. Too much of a good thing quickly becomes a bad thing. Just ask any ex pro-athlete, and they'll have plenty of stories and gripes about their bad joints, torn ligaments/tendons, and permanent injuries that are luckily paid for because they earned so much money while playing the sport. If you ask too much of your body, things will fail on you eventually.
I tend to agree. It's a fact of life that the Chinese are always "stealing" good ideas of other countries and figuring out how to turn them into profit for themselves, by manufacturing comparable products at more attractive prices.
Just recently, I was looking for some blue LEDs. All of the local stores (including electronics part suppliers in town) wanted prices from $1.75 to $3.50 *each* for them.
I ended up finding an LED manufacturer out of Hong Kong, advertising on eBay, who was willing to ship me 50 blue LEDs *with* resistors (so you can use them on 12 volt power, like your computer's power supply or a car battery would provide), all for about $10.00.
Were these LEDs inferior to the more costly counterparts? Possibly to some extent only measurable with instruments - but to me, they look and work great.
Yes, there's a lot of "cheap junk" out of China too - but as a rule, that stuff only has a brief success (until a critical mass of buyers learn to avoid it), and then the Chinese have to up the quality - or lose the sales.
I can't blame the Etrema folks for trying anything in their power to stop the Chinese from competing with them, but in the end - I think their smartest move is what they already admitted as an option: Try to partner up with them as suppliers.
Yeah, when I worked at my previous job, I spent lots of time trying to cut down on incoming spam email. (We had loads of complaints, and when you're using Exchange Server 5.5 for your email with Microsoft's Internet Mail Connector, you don't have all the filtering options of a Unix box....)
I religiously reported problem emails to Spamcop, for about a year straight, and only *once* did an ISP actually write me back to report that they removed someone's account, and thanked me for reporting the issue. On the other hand, the amount of new spam I received seemed to roughly double. I can't prove it, but I have a suspicion that somehow, some of the spammers figure out where Spamcop reports against them originate from (we had a static IP) and launch spam campaigns on these folks, personally.
Actually, I was a little surprised to see how heavy-duty the Apple PowerMac G5 tower's case is. I knew it was all aluminum construction and all that... but when you actually get to play around with one first-hand and open it up, you realize everything is heavy, and feels quite solid. Reminds me of the way systems *used* to be built - when people really thought they'd be in use for 10+ years before getting swapped out for something new.....
Besides the new G5 though, I haven't seen any PCs in current production with really good quality of construction in their cases. Many are "cool looking" and some are very cleverly engineered to make them easy to open and/or fit lots of drives in a given amount of space -- but everything's thin sheet metal and plastic.
To be honest, I'm not so sure it matters much.... I still have an old AT style full-tower case that originally housed a 386 motherboard, back when that was the fastest thing on the market. The case is the typical plastic front, screwed onto typical gauge metal casing, with flimsy painted sheet metal cover that screws on with 6 screws. It still looks almost like new, except for the white plastic starting to "yellow" a bit.
Most PCs just sit in one place for years, unless you're hauling them around to LAN parties or something. I don't see why people should pay hundreds more for it to be built like a tank....
Umm... no, certainly not. I think the reality is, it's not *anyone's* responsibility to ensure upgrade cards keep working with new OS's designed for newer machines.
Apple had a pretty well defined set of rules of which systems supported which OS products of theirs. Anyone trying to bend those rules by purchasing 3rd. party hardware that puts CPUs in boxes never originally designed to run those CPUs is taking a chance.
The vendors of the upgrade boards probably have some interest in making them compatible with as much new Apple software as possible - so they can keep their sales up. But ultimately, the only thing I see them really *needing* to support is their compatibility with MacOS 9.1 and earlier.
Except for folks trying to do things a machine was never meant to do, just because they won't pay for/can't afford the right tools for the job -- the G3/G4 upgrade cards are really designed to boost the speed of a given, older Mac, running the OS's it was intended to run before the upgrade was installed.