Especially since eBay added the feature to click one button to leave feedback for all transactions done in the last 30 days, many people do "mass feedback writing" every so often - rather than leaving immediate feedback when funds are received for each item.
I simply don't have the time to leave feedback to buyers right away, sometimes. It bothers me when people get after me because I'm not fast enough in leaving them feedback. I'm not purposely waiting around to see what they say. I'm simply trying to do things as efficiently as possible for me!
Yes, quite true. Pixar was a great success. I never said Jobs wasn't a creative, intelligent man. Obviously, he is both, in droves.
I simply feel he exhibits many of the same qualities as our current crop of politicians, which we're largely disgusted with. (EG. Sneakiness, bad temper at times, a "my way or the highway" mentality that gets him in as much trouble as it gets him out of.)
Pixar was a perfect business for Jobs. It lets him sell pure creativitiy. If you can dream it, you can do it (at least virtually), and the expenses are pretty much the same no matter what virtual movie would you go about creating.
Jobs seemed to be making his biggest mistakes when he was spending millions and millons of dollars on designing physical products that were borne of his imagination, rather than from market research (and a discovery that there was a desire/need for the products).
Actually, I figured it was only a matter of time before this happened. I believe eBay does caution you to state your complaints concisely and accurately, without letting it reflect negatively on the individual themself. (I don't recall the exact wording, but they do try to warn you about it right before you leave a feedback comment.)
I can see how it could be taken as libel/slander if a negative comment was left in a certain manner.
Generaly, it's been my observation that the feedback feature is very useful, but needs to be taken with a few grains of salt, too. I know I've had times where I wanted to warn others of a problem with a produce being sold, but didn't want to completely "slam" the seller - so I left neutral feedback. Sometimes, this seems to anger the sellers so they retaliate by leaving me negative feedback for no good reason.
(EG. I recently bought 4 sticks of memory for a PowerMac 7600. The eBay seller said the memory being sold would work in a 7500, 7600, or several other Mac models. When the RAM arrived, it was not the right type for my 7600. I was able to get an RMA for a quick refund of my money (good!), but the inflated shipping price I initially paid was *not* refunded. In essence, I was out over $20 because of an incorrect statement on the auction listing.) I left a neutral feedback to warn others that it didn't really work in 7600's - and the seller left me negative feedback saying "Don't use feedback for this! Use our RMA process." (Duh!)
Ok, obviously, this whole issue is moot if Jobs isn't actually trying to run for President in the first place.... but just for the sake of argument:
1. This is the guy who believed America would buy the $10,000 Lisa computer in droves. When that failed miserably, he ended up having the remaining inventory bulldozed into a Utah landfill. (So much for his ex-hippie, eco-friendly image, eh?)
2. This is the guy who, after that major mishap, went on to create another of the world's largest computer failures with the NeXT systems. (Granted, these were cool machines - but he burnt through something like 50 million in investors' money, again making the mistakes that doomed the Lisa. Namely, charging far too much money for a system that didn't have the software/applications behind it to sell it. In fact, I believe he blew about 15 million of Ross Perot's own investment money on NeXT.)
3. This is now the guy who, despite putting on a good show and illustrating good public speaking skills, enjoys keeping secrets from the public (used the "Keynote" software for a year before telling anyone the product existed, for example). I don't think America really wants a leader who keeps things completely secret from the people.
4. This is also a guy who seems to have a constant problem with exaggeration. Most of his "insanely great!" new things are more what I'd just call "good ideas". His bragging about the new Safari web browser being 2x to 3x faster than IE on the Mac is another exaggeration. I've timed it on several different Mac systems, and it's *maybe* 1.4x as fast as IE on *some* pages. Other times, it's actually slower or right about equal speed.
Nah, many things may be "f'd up" in the world, but the items you cite aren't quite accurate.
The shoes and clothing we're wearing may indeed be stitched together in a foreign country, using foreign labor - but the old complaint about "the workers getting almost nothing" isn't fair.
Do you realize how much buying power the American dollar has in many 3rd. world countries, or how different the level of inflation is? In many of these poorer countries, practically nobody is earning more than a few cents per day. Considering that's the norm for the country, how do you think it's sensible for a shoe or clothing maker to start paying those same people wages more like what U.S. workers expect? You'd create virtual millionaires out of every 3rd. world, uneducated laborer working for that company!
It's pretty much like the "When in Rome...." saying. You work within the framework of the country you set up shop in.
As for the record labels and publishers holding all the copyrights, yeah - they do, but only because the artist was willing to turn those over, taking a calculated risk, in return for possible fame and profit.
Those who actually create things of value (not those who assemble said things, in robotic fashion), do hold a type of "power". They have new inventions/creations of great potential value. Unfortunately, sometimes, these people aren't very "street smart" or "business savvy", and they let others make the lion's share of profit from their work. It certainly isn't automatically this way, though.
This reminds me of something funny I heard on a local FM "modern rock" station about a week ago.
They just started playing a song, when it suddenly stopped playing. After 15 seconds or so of dead air, the DJs came on, complaning about the computer crashing and screwing things up. They tried to get it to play again, without success. Then, one of the DJ's started complaining about a "PCI bus device failure error" on a blue and white screen, and asking what the heck that meant.
After another reboot, they seemed to get things going again - but wow, I didn't know they ran the whole music collection off a Windows NT/2000 box! Scary.
Yeah, I remember the stink that was raised when MS brought this tidbit to light a couple years ago. I was working in a corporate I.T. dept. at the time, and we were already rolling out our system images using Ghost - all from the same license key. (We figured we were technically "ok" as long as we kept all the paper licenses in our fire safe, so we could pull them out and present them to an investigator, if we were ever questioned about our licensing.)
Anyway, I recall several lawyers going on the record as saying the rule against cloning for OEM licenses was unenforceable, and the last thing I heard was Microsoft backing down on that whole argument.
MS's official stance was (is?), a CD license key is supposed to travel with the original PC it shipped with, in the case of any OEM edition of a Windows or MS application product. If you purchase the (costly) Enterprise licenes, or any volume licenses, those are "portable" - for use with any "X" number of computers you hold licenses for.
Retail purchases of Windows are intended for installation on one, single PC - but if that PC's hard drive gets reformatted or the machine gets trashed, it's ok to reinstall on a single, replacement PC.
The counter to Microsoft's stance is that "a Windows license is a Windows license, is a Windows license". Corporations who paid for a PC bundled with Windows shouldn't have to pay for Windows twice, simply because they want to roll out identically configured systems via Ghost.
Re:FUD and MISINFORMATION ABOUND!! see link
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Maine School & Linux
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Well, the setting up the firewall and redirecting web traffic through Squid part isn't really so tough, if you know where to look.
If he downloaded an ISO image of one of the dedicated firewall products based on Linux (either Smoothwall GPL or IP-Cop, for example), these functions would be built-in and as easy to activate as checking a couple boxes on the web-based interface in them.
If, however, he really did *everything* in Mandrake, it sounds a little less likely.
No, I can't quite say I agree with you. Democracy is failing because it's a fundamentally flawed idea. It promotes a mob-mentality "majority rules" type of government, without regard to a minority (which might be advocating a much better solution to a given problem).
The United States was supposed to be a Republic, *not* a Democracy. People (myself included) often interchange those terms, forgetting the important differences between them.
Anyway, under the current political system, the people we get to vote for are always pared down to a small subset of the possibilities we might really want to see leading our nation.
Let's face it, if you don't have a LOT of money, you're not going to become president. The stakes are just too high. To make matters worse, we designed things so becoming a senator or congressman/woman is a "career choice", rather than a volunteer position. That's a *huge* mistake. Those positions should be able to be held by the "common man", as a part-time, volunteer type of activity -- with only small compensation paid (to offset any expenses incurred performing the task).
Well, one must also remember that at the time of the founding fathers, the United States was quite a bit smaller than it is today. If we had 50 states to deal with, I'm not sure the Constitution would ever have been ratified.
It's easier to get "dramatic new ideas" through when the group making the decision is smaller. You can see this all the time in the corporate world, in fact. Someone has a great idea and a company gets formed around it. Eventually, the company grows and becomes complacent -- and then a new start-up type business with better, fresher ideas suddenly snatches up a big piece of their market share.
The bigger a company is, the more slowly it moves, entangled in red tape and pointless meetings where nobody can agree on big changes. Government today is in that same boat.
Shrink government by slashing its budget, and then maybe you'll see improvement. I don't expect any to come about any other way.
I totally disagree with the original poster on this. Everyone I know who bought a Palm did so without giving a lot of thought to how they'd get data entered. Sure, they probably heard it used something called grafitti for handwriting, but they assumed it wasn't too difficult to master, so was largely a non-issue.
If anything, I heard a few grumbles about it being too hard to remember how to write characters not often used (say, the & or % or ^). I *rarely* heard people say it was superior to regular handwriting.
Furthermore, the Jot software was available for Palm for about $30 for quite a while. (I even bought a copy myself.) So at least some of us were using Jot with a Palm device all along. It's just that now, new devices will have it built in.
Sure, people have those stories - but it seems to be the result of ignorant store employees who don't understand the rules/policies of the store.
I know Office Depot, Best Buy, and most other chain stores are supposed to only price-match prices offered by other retail outlets. Internet-based advertisements and mail order deals don't count.
(I've tried several times, and never met with any success.)
I think the recent rash of specific drive makes/models being defective has caused most of this perception.
We had the IBM Deskstar (Deathstar?) fiasco, for example - followed by the news about Fujitsu drives failing due to faulty capacitors used on their boards.
Western Digital has had their share of questionable drives too. (I bought a couple of the 100 gig. WD1000BB drives recently. One was DOA, and the other developed errors after only 3 months of use. A friend of mine had similar problems with one he bought, too, from a completely different vendor at a different time.) Then, their decision to charge extra for the 3 year warranty (except for the 8MB cache "special edition" models) just adds the appearance that they're not confident about the reliability of their products.
What's with technology companies out of Canada, anyway?
A while back, I applied for a job at Optimal Robotics, another Canadian firm that seems pretty successful at selling robotic/automated checkout systems.
Not only was the pay pretty sub-par for an on-site service tech. job of that type (basically, you're on call 24 hours a day, just like a doctor - and you have to provide a 1 hour response time), but the recruiter informed me that it took them a LONG time to even agree to compensate people for mileage. He even commented that it was a "Canadian thing".
Yeah, I do already own 2 UPS systems. One is a "personal" size unit on my workstation in my bedroom. There's also a large capacity unit (big marine battery inside) that my web/file server is attached to in the basement.
Upgrading the wiring in my home is obviously the proper solution - except it's also quite expensive. If I can keep my total current usage down to safe levels, I should be able to get by with what I've got - and save thousands on a new circuit breaker box, etc.
An electrical service upgrade may indeed be in my future - but I'd prefer to use less power to begin with, if it's at all possible. Fuse boxes never really were "safe" - and some insurance companies won't even write homeowner's policies on homes still using them. Nonetheless, I try to keep a close eye on things and occasionally check for problems like warm wires.
For what it's worth, I filed my taxes using the online web-based version of TurboTax for the last 2 years in a row. Both times, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
I'd certainly use it over installing the software on a computer. (It seems sort of pointless to load a program that you'll only use once, and then it's outdated and needs uninstalling again.)
If they're enforcing limitations on functionality based on which PC it is installed on first, that's all the more reason to do the web-based version instead. They can't stop you from signing on wherever, whenever - and printing your tax forms.
I do agree that I'd be pissed if Intuit Corp. lost $320 due to their own error.... but that can happen with any 3rd. party you let do your taxes. I'm not sure it'd be a "deal breaker" keeping me from using TurboTax ever again.
I think you make a valid point, to an extent, but I also think there's another factor at work here. Apple computers are purchased by many people with a "style #1, functionality #2" set of priorities.
For example, despite the very original looks of the iMac, it's very impractical from an upgradability standpoint. Due to the round base, it's not possible to install expansion cards in it. The LCD panel would have been much more useful in the long run if Apple had the foresight to make it snap on and off the arm. (Want a larger monitor on your iMac? Just buy the bigger one and swap it for the old one, and sell your old one on eBay.)
Most iMac buyers I've talked to justify their purchase with the sentiment that "It does everything I need out of the box. I'll just buy a new computer when I need something more." That's fine, but it's neither long-term logical thinking, nor is it the usual sentiment of the "power user" of a computer.
As another example, the iPod. Sure, the menus are nice and it's well constructed, etc. On the flip-side, it's very pricy and doesn't even use a standard-sized notebook hard drive, preventing the average user from doing his/her own upgrades to it. I have to wonder how many sales are really to people who evaluated and compared all the hand-held MP3 players out there and decided iPod was the best value? I suspect, instead, more are sold to Apple loyalists who merely like the fact that iTunes integrates with it and it has a higher "coolness factor" to show off to friends.
Well, I live in the midwest, so at least I'm currently free from the power headaches CA is suffering. Nonetheless, I have serious power usage concerns because I live in an older home (built in the mid 1950's) that has the smallest capacity electrical service they offer.
My old fuse panel has seperate sub-panels with circuit breakers for the electric dryer and central air - but everything else in the house runs through one of 8 screw-in type fuses.
I have 6 computers running pretty much all the time (1 as a dedicated firewall/router for my DSL), and so I'm right up against the maximum power load I can use without blowing the main fuses on the panel.
One way I freed up quite a few spare watts was swapping all my regular light-bulbs with the flourescent replacements. They typically use about 14 watts while giving off as much light as a 60 watt bulb. When you consider most of my light fixtures take 2 bulbs each, the savings really starts to add up.
Actually, I think some of this depends on the situation. I did some temp. work recently for ExpressScripts (mail order pharmacy), and worked on one of their drug programs that issues some medications for free to the poor/needy.
In this particular program, we certainly would send the doctors prescriptions that came in pre-packaged bottles. (Typically, 100 count bottles, but sometimes 50 count.) We only filled 3 month (90 day) prescriptions at a time, but if a doctor specifically asked for 90 pills (1 a day for a 3 month supply), we'd send off the bottle of 100.
For my first message post of the year, I'll have to say I'm in agreement with you. Despite all the nostalgia for the days of Veronica, Gopher, etc. - those were the tools used because they made the most of the commonly available hardware of the day.
When graphics cards and processor speeds started making multimedia viable - it just made sense things would evolve beyond plain text-based tools.
"A picture's worth a thousand words." has much truth to it. By extension, a well-done animation/movie has the power of 1,000 still pictures.
Maybe one of these dual-screen notebooks is "just the thing" for somebody out there -- but it doesn't strike me as very functional at all.
For quite a while now, most decent notebooks allow a dual-display mode where you can use both the LCD display on the notebook, and an external monitor simultaneously. If you need extra screen real-estate for a presentation, it seems like it would usually be given where it's not that tough to set up/plug in a spare monitor.
If I was someone who really needed a large display screen more than the extra portability, but still had to have a notebook - I'd rather have a larger single display screen. For one thing, you'd think this would be more cost-effective than having two seperate backlit panels with all the duplication of electronics. For another, I never cared for trying to view a single image spread across seperate displays. You have to learn to ignore the physical borders splitting it in half - and that sucks, IMHO.
Sure, if you're reading a virtual book with left and right displays simulating "pages", it might be more natural - but I suspect people aren't buying these with that as their primary use. Everyone I know using dual-displays is working with CAD design and wants their diagrams drawn across both displays as though it was a single, large one.
Hmm... Well, here's the thing. Right now, I'm working with a group of folks who are trying to refurbish old Macs for use in daycare/childcare facilities.
What I've observed is that both the kids (who have no real previous computer experience at all) and the teachers/faculty (who may or may not be "computer literate" at all) are struggling with the MacOS UI problems I pointed out.
They often run into low-memory situations where the machines freeze up and have to be rebooted, all because of shareware games (such as Mackman - a PacMan clone) that get launched, and then are believed not to have run because they didn't notice the menu bar at the top changing to offer "Play new game" options and the like.
The Windows method of encapsulating apps within panes makes it more obvious that the user has run the app. To me, that's more important for beginners than someone's theory of operation that says it's best to keep things on the edge of the work-surface.
Sure, anyone with some knowledge of the UI can learn the MacOS hot-keys (aka. Command-D). That's great - but it doesn't come naturally to the absolute beginner - and that's who Apple claimed their systems were designed for.
Why is it I hear so much about Microsoft's UI "sucking" here on Slashdot, yet few others seem to hold a similar view?
Microsoft interface design surely is considered a priority in the company. Otherwise, they probably would have stuck with the horrible Windows 3.1 style GUI, instead of doing the total revamp they did for Windows '95 and beyond.
Just because MS isn't actively suing everyone who imitates their interface doesn't mean they don't consider their interface valuable or important. They simply know they're the de-facto standard everyone else is trying to copy - so they're satisfied.
Apple, on the other hand, is a company with much more to lose. Don't forget, they're in the computer hardware business, as well as software. Their interface design is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to moving product. (EG. If you can run a good OSX clone on regular PC hardware, why buy the Mac hardware? Their UI is "leverage" to drive Apple Mac system sales.)
Now, before people get their panties in a bunch over my statements, let me clarify. I do *not* think Microsoft is the "holy grail" of interface design. I certainly agree that Excel isn't the ultimate best design for a spreadsheet, for example. On the flip-side, though, it's really not half-bad. Millions of people are very productive with the product every day - and it looks and works well enough that open-source developers often attempt to emulate it.
For all of Microsoft's failures and flaws, I really see the look and feel of their UI as being one of the lesser issues (if an issue at all). Even in an MS vs. Apple comparison, don't forget - MS was doing background full-screen wallpaper long before Apple. They had superior file management (no 3rd. party tools needed to get a tree-structure display of your drive contents). They had multitasking working much better than Apple too. (Could you even format a floppy in the background on MacOS until version 8 or so?) Even Microsoft's "shortcuts" in Windows seem more functional than Apple's "aliases" were. (Even through MacOS 9.x, I don't believe you could make an alias point to anything on a networked drive. It only allowed an alias to a file on a physical, local device.)
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Especially since eBay added the feature to click one button to leave feedback for all transactions done in the last 30 days, many people do "mass feedback writing" every so often - rather than leaving immediate feedback when funds are received for each item.
I simply don't have the time to leave feedback to buyers right away, sometimes. It bothers me when people get after me because I'm not fast enough in leaving them feedback. I'm not purposely waiting around to see what they say. I'm simply trying to do things as efficiently as possible for me!
Yes, quite true. Pixar was a great success. I never said Jobs wasn't a creative, intelligent man. Obviously, he is both, in droves.
I simply feel he exhibits many of the same qualities as our current crop of politicians, which we're largely disgusted with. (EG. Sneakiness, bad temper at times, a "my way or the highway" mentality that gets him in as much trouble as it gets him out of.)
Pixar was a perfect business for Jobs. It lets him sell pure creativitiy. If you can dream it, you can do it (at least virtually), and the expenses are pretty much the same no matter what virtual movie would you go about creating.
Jobs seemed to be making his biggest mistakes when he was spending millions and millons of dollars on designing physical products that were borne of his imagination, rather than from market research (and a discovery that there was a desire/need for the products).
Actually, I figured it was only a matter of time before this happened. I believe eBay does caution you to state your complaints concisely and accurately, without letting it reflect negatively on the individual themself. (I don't recall the exact wording, but they do try to warn you about it right before you leave a feedback comment.)
I can see how it could be taken as libel/slander if a negative comment was left in a certain manner.
Generaly, it's been my observation that the feedback feature is very useful, but needs to be taken with a few grains of salt, too. I know I've had times where I wanted to warn others of a problem with a produce being sold, but didn't want to completely "slam" the seller - so I left neutral feedback. Sometimes, this seems to anger the sellers so they retaliate by leaving me negative feedback for no good reason.
(EG. I recently bought 4 sticks of memory for a PowerMac 7600. The eBay seller said the memory being sold would work in a 7500, 7600, or several other Mac models. When the RAM arrived, it was not the right type for my 7600. I was able to get an RMA for a quick refund of my money (good!), but the inflated shipping price I initially paid was *not* refunded. In essence, I was out over $20 because of an incorrect statement on the auction listing.) I left a neutral feedback to warn others that it didn't really work in 7600's - and the seller left me negative feedback saying "Don't use feedback for this! Use our RMA process." (Duh!)
Ok, obviously, this whole issue is moot if Jobs isn't actually trying to run for President in the first place.... but just for the sake of argument:
1. This is the guy who believed America would buy the $10,000 Lisa computer in droves. When that failed miserably, he ended up having the remaining inventory bulldozed into a Utah landfill. (So much for his ex-hippie, eco-friendly image, eh?)
2. This is the guy who, after that major mishap, went on to create another of the world's largest computer failures with the NeXT systems. (Granted, these were cool machines - but he burnt through something like 50 million in investors' money, again making the mistakes that doomed the Lisa. Namely, charging far too much money for a system that didn't have the software/applications behind it to sell it. In fact, I believe he blew about 15 million of Ross Perot's own investment money on NeXT.)
3. This is now the guy who, despite putting on a good show and illustrating good public speaking skills, enjoys keeping secrets from the public (used the "Keynote" software for a year before telling anyone the product existed, for example). I don't think America really wants a leader who keeps things completely secret from the people.
4. This is also a guy who seems to have a constant problem with exaggeration. Most of his "insanely great!" new things are more what I'd just call "good ideas". His bragging about the new Safari web browser being 2x to 3x faster than IE on the Mac is another exaggeration. I've timed it on several different Mac systems, and it's *maybe* 1.4x as fast as IE on *some* pages. Other times, it's actually slower or right about equal speed.
Nah, many things may be "f'd up" in the world, but the items you cite aren't quite accurate.
The shoes and clothing we're wearing may indeed be stitched together in a foreign country, using foreign labor - but the old complaint about "the workers getting almost nothing" isn't fair.
Do you realize how much buying power the American dollar has in many 3rd. world countries, or how different the level of inflation is? In many of these poorer countries, practically nobody is earning more than a few cents per day. Considering that's the norm for the country, how do you think it's sensible for a shoe or clothing maker to start paying those same people wages more like what U.S. workers expect? You'd create virtual millionaires out of every 3rd. world, uneducated laborer working for that company!
It's pretty much like the "When in Rome...." saying. You work within the framework of the country you set up shop in.
As for the record labels and publishers holding all the copyrights, yeah - they do, but only because the artist was willing to turn those over, taking a calculated risk, in return for possible fame and profit.
Those who actually create things of value (not those who assemble said things, in robotic fashion), do hold a type of "power". They have new inventions/creations of great potential value. Unfortunately, sometimes, these people aren't very "street smart" or "business savvy", and they let others make the lion's share of profit from their work. It certainly isn't automatically this way, though.
This reminds me of something funny I heard on a local FM "modern rock" station about a week ago.
They just started playing a song, when it suddenly stopped playing. After 15 seconds or so of dead air, the DJs came on, complaning about the computer crashing and screwing things up. They tried to get it to play again, without success. Then, one of the DJ's started complaining about a "PCI bus device failure error" on a blue and white screen, and asking what the heck that meant.
After another reboot, they seemed to get things going again - but wow, I didn't know they ran the whole music collection off a Windows NT/2000 box! Scary.
Yeah, I remember the stink that was raised when MS brought this tidbit to light a couple years ago. I was working in a corporate I.T. dept. at the time, and we were already rolling out our system images using Ghost - all from the same license key. (We figured we were technically "ok" as long as we kept all the paper licenses in our fire safe, so we could pull them out and present them to an investigator, if we were ever questioned about our licensing.)
Anyway, I recall several lawyers going on the record as saying the rule against cloning for OEM licenses was unenforceable, and the last thing I heard was Microsoft backing down on that whole argument.
MS's official stance was (is?), a CD license key is supposed to travel with the original PC it shipped with, in the case of any OEM edition of a Windows or MS application product. If you purchase the (costly) Enterprise licenes, or any volume licenses, those are "portable" - for use with any "X" number of computers you hold licenses for.
Retail purchases of Windows are intended for installation on one, single PC - but if that PC's hard drive gets reformatted or the machine gets trashed, it's ok to reinstall on a single, replacement PC.
The counter to Microsoft's stance is that "a Windows license is a Windows license, is a Windows license". Corporations who paid for a PC bundled with Windows shouldn't have to pay for Windows twice, simply because they want to roll out identically configured systems via Ghost.
Well, the setting up the firewall and redirecting web traffic through Squid part isn't really so tough, if you know where to look.
If he downloaded an ISO image of one of the dedicated firewall products based on Linux (either Smoothwall GPL or IP-Cop, for example), these functions would be built-in and as easy to activate as checking a couple boxes on the web-based interface in them.
If, however, he really did *everything* in Mandrake, it sounds a little less likely.
No, I can't quite say I agree with you. Democracy is failing because it's a fundamentally flawed idea. It promotes a mob-mentality "majority rules" type of government, without regard to a minority (which might be advocating a much better solution to a given problem).
The United States was supposed to be a Republic, *not* a Democracy. People (myself included) often interchange those terms, forgetting the important differences between them.
Anyway, under the current political system, the people we get to vote for are always pared down to a small subset of the possibilities we might really want to see leading our nation.
Let's face it, if you don't have a LOT of money, you're not going to become president. The stakes are just too high. To make matters worse, we designed things so becoming a senator or congressman/woman is a "career choice", rather than a volunteer position. That's a *huge* mistake. Those positions should be able to be held by the "common man", as a part-time, volunteer type of activity -- with only small compensation paid (to offset any expenses incurred performing the task).
Well, one must also remember that at the time of the founding fathers, the United States was quite a bit smaller than it is today. If we had 50 states to deal with, I'm not sure the Constitution would ever have been ratified.
It's easier to get "dramatic new ideas" through when the group making the decision is smaller. You can see this all the time in the corporate world, in fact. Someone has a great idea and a company gets formed around it. Eventually, the company grows and becomes complacent -- and then a new start-up type business with better, fresher ideas suddenly snatches up a big piece of their market share.
The bigger a company is, the more slowly it moves, entangled in red tape and pointless meetings where nobody can agree on big changes. Government today is in that same boat.
Shrink government by slashing its budget, and then maybe you'll see improvement. I don't expect any to come about any other way.
I totally disagree with the original poster on this. Everyone I know who bought a Palm did so without giving a lot of thought to how they'd get data entered. Sure, they probably heard it used something called grafitti for handwriting, but they assumed it wasn't too difficult to master, so was largely a non-issue.
If anything, I heard a few grumbles about it being too hard to remember how to write characters not often used (say, the & or % or ^). I *rarely* heard people say it was superior to regular handwriting.
Furthermore, the Jot software was available for Palm for about $30 for quite a while. (I even bought a copy myself.) So at least some of us were using Jot with a Palm device all along. It's just that now, new devices will have it built in.
So, wait? Is this fact mentioned on the eBay auction itself?
If not, buy this sucker on your American Express card and do a charge-back later, claiming it was damaged!
Heh.
Sure, people have those stories - but it seems to be the result of ignorant store employees who don't understand the rules/policies of the store.
I know Office Depot, Best Buy, and most other chain stores are supposed to only price-match prices offered by other retail outlets. Internet-based advertisements and mail order deals don't count.
(I've tried several times, and never met with any success.)
I think the recent rash of specific drive makes/models being defective has caused most of this perception.
We had the IBM Deskstar (Deathstar?) fiasco, for example - followed by the news about Fujitsu drives failing due to faulty capacitors used on their boards.
Western Digital has had their share of questionable drives too. (I bought a couple of the 100 gig. WD1000BB drives recently. One was DOA, and the other developed errors after only 3 months of use. A friend of mine had similar problems with one he bought, too, from a completely different vendor at a different time.) Then, their decision to charge extra for the 3 year warranty (except for the 8MB cache "special edition" models) just adds the appearance that they're not confident about the reliability of their products.
Ever since the dot-bomb, that's pretty much all I drink too!
(Well, sometimes I can't afford the Aqua Velva, but.....)
What's with technology companies out of Canada, anyway?
A while back, I applied for a job at Optimal Robotics, another Canadian firm that seems pretty successful at selling robotic/automated checkout systems.
Not only was the pay pretty sub-par for an on-site service tech. job of that type (basically, you're on call 24 hours a day, just like a doctor - and you have to provide a 1 hour response time), but the recruiter informed me that it took them a LONG time to even agree to compensate people for mileage. He even commented that it was a "Canadian thing".
Yeah, I do already own 2 UPS systems. One is a "personal" size unit on my workstation in my bedroom. There's also a large capacity unit (big marine battery inside) that my web/file server is attached to in the basement.
Upgrading the wiring in my home is obviously the proper solution - except it's also quite expensive. If I can keep my total current usage down to safe levels, I should be able to get by with what I've got - and save thousands on a new circuit breaker box, etc.
An electrical service upgrade may indeed be in my future - but I'd prefer to use less power to begin with, if it's at all possible. Fuse boxes never really were "safe" - and some insurance companies won't even write homeowner's policies on homes still using them. Nonetheless, I try to keep a close eye on things and occasionally check for problems like warm wires.
For what it's worth, I filed my taxes using the online web-based version of TurboTax for the last 2 years in a row. Both times, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
I'd certainly use it over installing the software on a computer. (It seems sort of pointless to load a program that you'll only use once, and then it's outdated and needs uninstalling again.)
If they're enforcing limitations on functionality based on which PC it is installed on first, that's all the more reason to do the web-based version instead. They can't stop you from signing on wherever, whenever - and printing your tax forms.
I do agree that I'd be pissed if Intuit Corp. lost $320 due to their own error.... but that can happen with any 3rd. party you let do your taxes. I'm not sure it'd be a "deal breaker" keeping me from using TurboTax ever again.
I think you make a valid point, to an extent, but I also think there's another factor at work here. Apple computers are purchased by many people with a "style #1, functionality #2" set of priorities.
For example, despite the very original looks of the iMac, it's very impractical from an upgradability standpoint. Due to the round base, it's not possible to install expansion cards in it. The LCD panel would have been much more useful in the long run if Apple had the foresight to make it snap on and off the arm. (Want a larger monitor on your iMac? Just buy the bigger one and swap it for the old one, and sell your old one on eBay.)
Most iMac buyers I've talked to justify their purchase with the sentiment that "It does everything I need out of the box. I'll just buy a new computer when I need something more." That's fine, but it's neither long-term logical thinking, nor is it the usual sentiment of the "power user" of a computer.
As another example, the iPod. Sure, the menus are nice and it's well constructed, etc. On the flip-side, it's very pricy and doesn't even use a standard-sized notebook hard drive, preventing the average user from doing his/her own upgrades to it. I have to wonder how many sales are really to people who evaluated and compared all the hand-held MP3 players out there and decided iPod was the best value? I suspect, instead, more are sold to Apple loyalists who merely like the fact that iTunes integrates with it and it has a higher "coolness factor" to show off to friends.
Well, I live in the midwest, so at least I'm currently free from the power headaches CA is suffering. Nonetheless, I have serious power usage concerns because I live in an older home (built in the mid 1950's) that has the smallest capacity electrical service they offer.
My old fuse panel has seperate sub-panels with circuit breakers for the electric dryer and central air - but everything else in the house runs through one of 8 screw-in type fuses.
I have 6 computers running pretty much all the time (1 as a dedicated firewall/router for my DSL), and so I'm right up against the maximum power load I can use without blowing the main fuses on the panel.
One way I freed up quite a few spare watts was swapping all my regular light-bulbs with the flourescent replacements. They typically use about 14 watts while giving off as much light as a 60 watt bulb. When you consider most of my light fixtures take 2 bulbs each, the savings really starts to add up.
Actually, I think some of this depends on the situation. I did some temp. work recently for ExpressScripts (mail order pharmacy), and worked on one of their drug programs that issues some medications for free to the poor/needy.
In this particular program, we certainly would send the doctors prescriptions that came in pre-packaged bottles. (Typically, 100 count bottles, but sometimes 50 count.) We only filled 3 month (90 day) prescriptions at a time, but if a doctor specifically asked for 90 pills (1 a day for a 3 month supply), we'd send off the bottle of 100.
For my first message post of the year, I'll have to say I'm in agreement with you. Despite all the nostalgia for the days of Veronica, Gopher, etc. - those were the tools used because they made the most of the commonly available hardware of the day.
When graphics cards and processor speeds started making multimedia viable - it just made sense things would evolve beyond plain text-based tools.
"A picture's worth a thousand words." has much truth to it. By extension, a well-done animation/movie has the power of 1,000 still pictures.
Maybe one of these dual-screen notebooks is "just the thing" for somebody out there -- but it doesn't strike me as very functional at all.
For quite a while now, most decent notebooks allow a dual-display mode where you can use both the LCD display on the notebook, and an external monitor simultaneously. If you need extra screen real-estate for a presentation, it seems like it would usually be given where it's not that tough to set up/plug in a spare monitor.
If I was someone who really needed a large display screen more than the extra portability, but still had to have a notebook - I'd rather have a larger single display screen. For one thing, you'd think this would be more cost-effective than having two seperate backlit panels with all the duplication of electronics. For another, I never cared for trying to view a single image spread across seperate displays. You have to learn to ignore the physical borders splitting it in half - and that sucks, IMHO.
Sure, if you're reading a virtual book with left and right displays simulating "pages", it might be more natural - but I suspect people aren't buying these with that as their primary use. Everyone I know using dual-displays is working with CAD design and wants their diagrams drawn across both displays as though it was a single, large one.
Hmm... Well, here's the thing. Right now, I'm working with a group of folks who are trying to refurbish old Macs for use in daycare/childcare facilities.
What I've observed is that both the kids (who have no real previous computer experience at all) and the teachers/faculty (who may or may not be "computer literate" at all) are struggling with the MacOS UI problems I pointed out.
They often run into low-memory situations where the machines freeze up and have to be rebooted, all because of shareware games (such as Mackman - a PacMan clone) that get launched, and then are believed not to have run because they didn't notice the menu bar at the top changing to offer "Play new game" options and the like.
The Windows method of encapsulating apps within panes makes it more obvious that the user has run the app. To me, that's more important for beginners than someone's theory of operation that says it's best to keep things on the edge of the work-surface.
Sure, anyone with some knowledge of the UI can learn the MacOS hot-keys (aka. Command-D). That's great - but it doesn't come naturally to the absolute beginner - and that's who Apple claimed their systems were designed for.
Why is it I hear so much about Microsoft's UI "sucking" here on Slashdot, yet few others seem to hold a similar view?
Microsoft interface design surely is considered a priority in the company. Otherwise, they probably would have stuck with the horrible Windows 3.1 style GUI, instead of doing the total revamp they did for Windows '95 and beyond.
Just because MS isn't actively suing everyone who imitates their interface doesn't mean they don't consider their interface valuable or important. They simply know they're the de-facto standard everyone else is trying to copy - so they're satisfied.
Apple, on the other hand, is a company with much more to lose. Don't forget, they're in the computer hardware business, as well as software. Their interface design is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to moving product. (EG. If you can run a good OSX clone on regular PC hardware, why buy the Mac hardware? Their UI is "leverage" to drive Apple Mac system sales.)
Now, before people get their panties in a bunch over my statements, let me clarify. I do *not* think Microsoft is the "holy grail" of interface design. I certainly agree that Excel isn't the ultimate best design for a spreadsheet, for example. On the flip-side, though, it's really not half-bad. Millions of people are very productive with the product every day - and it looks and works well enough that open-source developers often attempt to emulate it.
For all of Microsoft's failures and flaws, I really see the look and feel of their UI as being one of the lesser issues (if an issue at all). Even in an MS vs. Apple comparison, don't forget - MS was doing background full-screen wallpaper long before Apple. They had superior file management (no 3rd. party tools needed to get a tree-structure display of your drive contents). They had multitasking working much better than Apple too. (Could you even format a floppy in the background on MacOS until version 8 or so?) Even Microsoft's "shortcuts" in Windows seem more functional than Apple's "aliases" were. (Even through MacOS 9.x, I don't believe you could make an alias point to anything on a networked drive. It only allowed an alias to a file on a physical, local device.)