As someone who has been working with older Apple hardware quite a bit recently, I have to say that Apple has only *now* gotten their UI to a respectable level with OSX.
In all the previous verisons of MacOS, I just don't see where all the "user-friendliness" really was?
First and foremost, the older MacOS UI had the really nasty issue of making it too hard to tell which apps were still running. (EG. User double-clicks on a document to read it. SimpleText launches and shows them said document. User closes the document itself, but doesn't realize SimpleText is still running with 0 documents open. Since very little visual indication is given to user that it is indeed running, he/she can easily go about doing other things on the Mac for hours and not notice it's still wasting memory and resources.)
MacOS also made it too confusing to select the proper folder to save/download/install files in. (EG. If you have multiple hard drives and want to save on the one that didn't come up by default, you had to get there in 2 steps. First, select "Desktop", and *then* select the drive you wanted from the dialog box.)
On top of all of this, they never had the foresight to offer an actual file manager. MacOS sorely needed some sort of built-in utility that would show "tree" style folder lists and easily allow copying/moving/deleting groups of files.
Therefore, I'm not sure Linux wants to copy Apple's way of building GUIs. It seems to me it took Apple *far* too long to provide obviously needed functionality and features.
I'm not sure "strict legislation" will solve anything either. That's the typical "knee-jerk reaction" to problems. "There oughta be a law!" No - maybe not.
I really think the spam issue needs to be controlled better at the ISP level. Why allow someone to send out thousands and thousands of emails in bulk to begin with? Spammers only find their methods cost-effective because they aren't getting charged much of anything to "blanket" the net with their messages.
Meanwhile, ISPs bear the burden - and it doesn't appear some of them really mind. Perhaps it's time for automated systems to be put in place which packet-sniff to figure out the types of traffic flowing over the lines, and cut off large amounts of email traffic coming from a single sender? Products like the PacketShaper already seem to be able to do this for MP3s, streaming video, and other types of traffic.
Any normal user shouldn't have spam-like levels of outgoing email.
Yep, my sentiments exactly! I read the article and thought "Ok, perhaps he identified a real problem - but pointing at the I.T. workers to find the solution is pointless." The maintenance nightmares he refers to were created by the people putting out the products and services I.T. workers have to choose from. (Whether your choice is Microsoft, Apple, or Unix/Linux - you're in the same boat. The software doesn't offer you an easy to manage + trouble-free environment.)
Software developers writing the next generation of operating systems and business applications software have the ball in their court.
So far, I think great strides have been made on all fronts. A popular Linux distro used today is much more user-friendly to install and configure than one made 3 years ago. Windows XP or 2000 is *much* less crash-prone than Windows NT 3.51 was, and much more flexible. Apple's OSX is light-years ahead of their OS9.x.
Nonetheless, we're building larger and larger datacenters, and demanding more and more from our computers. Outsourcing is a band-aid fix that simply shifts responsibility around. Many companies thought outsourcing their whole I.T. department was a great cost-savings idea, and now they're re-hiring full-time workers again.
The real answer is, unless we quit making new demands on our computer infrastructure, we'll never see a real net improvement. As soon as the software developers give you a new/improved tool, you're loading 20 new unknown-quality utils and apps on top of it to do new tasks mandated by your bosses - so it's unstable as ever, once again.
Re: laptop users left out?
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The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 3, Informative
The way I usually see a Citrix deployment handled, the laptops are all configured with modem dial-in access to the Citrix server (via VPN). They also have a full installation of the most-used applications (MS Office, for example?) that they'd want to work with "offline".
Then, it's just a matter of training for people to understand that they need to copy their completed work up to their shared disk space on the server when they get a chance. If you keep the versions of software on the server and on the laptops the same, all should go pretty smoothly.
(Of course, this also undermines some of the supposed cost-benefit of Citrix, because you're still buying full software licenses for each laptop, plus all your user licenses for everyone potentially connecting to the Citrix servers.)
Regarding BeOS, I just recently decided to fire up my copy of BeOS 5 Professional (and apply the update patches) on a PowerMac 7600 I inherited.
My hope was, it would run well on this rather limited system - and developers of free/shareware had been plugging along with their Be compatible creations, and there'd be lots of neat stuff to tinker with.
What I discovered was; #1 - barely anything is pre-compiled in a PPC version! I kept finding files on BeBits that I wanted, but it was usually "Intel BeOS only". #2 - the software collection didn't seem noticeably better than back when I last ran BeOS (when it was at its "peak" of popularity). Some of the software I liked best back then had gone through a number of small revisions, but seemed less stable than I remembered it before. (EG. Baxter IRC client, which kept blowing up when I tried the latest PPC version. It was nearly useless.)
It's fine if they get Open-BeOS going, but geez - get the apps and utils. up to snuff, or else there won't be much of anything to run on it!
RAID only as good as the weakest link!
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IDE RAID Examined
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· Score: 2
Personally, I've used RAID (both SCSI and IDE) for a number of systems - and my current workstation is a P4 1.8Ghz i845 board (made by MSI) with integrated Promise EIDE RAID.
Just a few days ago, my system started randomly freezing up - but only when doing lots of disk access on the C: drive. I've seen this behavior once before, when I first built the system; I had a defective IDE drive that was getting read/write errors. I'm pretty sure I have another drive starting to go out.
This type of behavior is disappointing to me, for a system that's supposed to reduce downtime. IDE drive errors while the drive is still mostly functional (EG. spins up ok and works, other than timing out here and there when doing writes) seem to wreak havock with IDE RAID controllers. It only flags a drive as "down" if it's completely unresponsive.
While I haven't seen a higher-end SCSI RAID array behave in this fashion (freezing the whole machine if a drive temporarily malfunctions), I've had plenty of other reliability issues with them.
For example, we had numerous Dell Poweredge servers using their older PERC II RAID cards - and the controllers all started dying off after a couple years of use. The hard drives could be perfectly fine, but if you lost the controller card - you were down until you got it replaced.
It seems like a really worthwhile RAID array would include dual redundant controllers. Otherwise, the controller is your single point of possible failure.
Most IDE RAID setups seem like a gimmick to me, more than a useful feature. People just like to say they have RAID on their home PC.
Hmm.... I'm glad to see you replied, challenging the original assertion that "enterpreneurial drive" was the most important factor in getting one's own business started.
I had a problem with that statement too.
As I think about your reply though, I think the "drive/motivation" is inversely proportional to the access to funding one has (at least in most cases).
The two seem to be tied together. For example, a buddy of mine decided to start his own ISP some years ago. He's a real intelligent guy and certainly had enough financial problems to provide a level of motivation to work, and try to be successful at whatever he did.
Nonetheless, he was also not known to be the hardest of workers. He liked to sleep in late, and spend lots of time reading sci-fi books and playing computer games, rather then concentrate on his business or work at hand.
If he was faced, up front, with all of the usual hurdles to jump in order to obtain financing (bank loan or venture capital, for example), I really think that would have proven to be too much work/effort for him, and his ISP would have never got off the ground.
As it was, his father was pretty well off and loaned him the money to get things started.
In other cases, I've known folks who weren't really very knowledgable about the business they wanted to start, but it never seemed to stop them from becoming successful. I have to attribute that to a brute force will to succeed, and the drive to do whatever it took to secure the needed financing, pull all the long hours to build up the company, etc.
It's not that funding is "simply impossible" for some people to get. If their idea and business plan is sound, and they work hard enough to sell it to the right person, they'll get some funding. It's just that it's damn difficult to do this, deal with all the legal taxes and rules, get the business license(s) needed, and all that stuff. Many folks who would otherwise do well with a new business will fold under that pressure and all those requirements.
I see your point, and for basic applications you're correct. But the real value in upgraded PCs tends to come from new, innovative software that performs tasks that weren't possible before.
EG. Software synthesizers for computer musicians. Before the newer generations of CPUs, a PC simply didn't have the processor power to accurately simulate a real Hammond B3 organ, or a Steinway piano, or you name it. Sure, you could sample in one as a series of.WAV sounds and play them back - but it wasn't the same as mathematically calculating the whole thing and reproducing the instrument in real-time. This new ability allows you to have a nearly perfect simulation of an instrument on stage, without lugging the thing around with you or worrying about it getting out of tune. (Not to mention the cost savings, or instruments you simply can't buy at any price anymore.)
High-end PC sales won't sell in massive numbers to the general public, perhaps -- but they'll still have customers. (Assuming, of course, that software development doesn't stagnate and resign itself to re-inventing the same old apps year after year.)
Ultimately, it all goes back to the principle that "matter is neither created nor destroyed". There's a fixed amount on this planet, and all we can do is move it around and convert it from one form to another.
If it's profitable for parties here and in China for us to transfer some of this matter to their land mass, then that's where you can expect much of it to go.
Back in the days of the industrial revolution, the US wasn't exactly using clean methods of power generation and manufacturing, either. We had cities full of black smog and soot, and probably shortened the life spans of quite a few citizens working in those conditions at the time.
Nonetheless, those same cities seem to be much cleaner today. The black soot wasn't permanent. Perhaps more importantly, the things we learned about manufacturing and technology in that area allowed much progress that still benefits people today.
These environmental concerns always turn out to be "mind games", ultimately. Did the computer help accomplish enough "good" for society while it was in use to justify the pollution it will cause when it's melted down as scrap? What if it was used to teach thousands of college students, or by a charity that helps many people in dire need of assistance? What about energy saved by using newer, more efficient technology instead of continuing to use outdated and power-hungry systems (like old mainframes)?
Sure, I don't have the $'s to blow on a hot new laptop with the latest graphics card, but I've found that a Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop with a fast PIII processor and Trident 3D chipset is good enough for usable gaming with most of the 1st. person shooters.
I used to take it to LAN parties simply because it spared me a need to lug around a bunch of parts including big monitor. I could get their later than most of the other people and still be up and running faster than they were. When it was time to go, it only took minutes to put it all away too.
I can't say for sure if UT2003 will still run ok on it - but games like Age of Mythology do. It ran the old UT just fine, as well as all the Quake games, Half-Life, and others. Frame rates weren't impressive, of course - but playable. To me, that's the main thing.
Yeah, but *proactively* is the key here. You chose, *willingly* to write selective documentation, in an effort to shift undesirable tasks off to other people.
That's a completely different issue than being ordered by management to document how you do what you do.
I'm not against making a few quick notes on how to perform a task that needs to get done on a daily basis. (After all, it's senseless to, say, make users wait to get an account on the corporate VPN simply because you're on vacation for the next 2 weeks.)
I simply caution anyone who gets "ordered" to write step-by-step docs for complex procedures, or for special solutions they created and maintain. It *could* just be a boss trying to keep everything structured and organized, but it's more likely a first move in a strategy to downsize you out of your job.
Speaking of documenting what you do, it's my opinion that employees in I.T. would be wise to limit how much of this documentation they write.
If you're writing lots of documentation for an employer, you should be getting paid as a "technical writer". If you're employed as an I.T. worker and they're demanding lots of documentation - you need to question it.
After all, they should be paying you for your knowledge and expertise. Would you expect your doctor to write up documentation for you so you can self-diagnose future problems?
When they start asking for lots of this, there's usually a boss masterminding it, with a flawed idea that he can "brain drain" you so his other people can perform your job. In reality, they should be hiring people who already possess the skills they need, or are capable of learning them on their own. They shouldn't need *your* documentation to achieve that goal.
Haven't we all discussed this question to death already? It's only the single most common question the Unix/Linux crowd asks themselves just about every day, while trying to justify their use of their OS over Windows, or while trying to make improvements to it.
I think the answers are pretty obvious, really, and there's a laundry list of them (which varies by individual).
If you want to know my *personal* list, this is basically it:
1. Games (I love "Age of Mythology", most of the EA Sports games, and many others that don't run natively, or at all, in a Linux/X environment - or at least require lots of extra work to get them going.)
2. MIDI/Music I like to compose electronic music with software synthesizers (usually VST plug-ins), looping software like Sonic Foundry's ACID Pro, software samplers like Native Instruments Kontakt (that read Akai format sample CDs) and occasional hard disk recording. None of this really gets done very well in Linux.
3. Overall convenience I'm not the only one who ever uses my PC. Friends and relatives occasionally sit down to use my PC. I like not having to walk them through everything when they see an unfamiliar interface, or hassle with small headaches caused by Samba networking support and needing to access resources shared by other PCs in the house running Windows.
Isn't this another "urban legend"?
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Ants Invade iBook
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· Score: 2
I recall reading a story about something quite similar, only years and years ago. Supposedly, a college/university student had one of the original Mac powerbooks, and it suddenly died. Upon inspection, it turned out it was infested with thousands of ants that entered when it was in use outside, on the grass, someplace on the campus.
It just seems suspiciously familiar that this basic story has come back again, only this time with an Apple iBook notebook. (Statistically, you'd think you'd hear about this with a "Wintel" laptop, wouldn't you? Or do ants only like to eat Apple branded notebooks?)
I'm starting to wonder if this one's completely true, or just a rehash of an urban legend.
I think there's a grain of truth to some of the complaints.
You have to look at things over the LONG term though.... not just an isolated batch of complaints from around the same time period.
Honestly, I know relatively few people with complaints about Maxtor drives. Like everyone else, they occasionally released a bad batch. Still, you'll consistently find people relatively satisfied with their products over the years.
Fujitsu, on the other hand, I never had a good feeling about. I heard some good things about their rather pricy SCSI drives, back when they competed with Micropolis and built drives that took 2 full-height 5.25" drive bays. Whenever I looked at their IDE drives though, I just got the idea they weren't striving for "top quality". They cut corners on the little things, like the IDE connector itself. (Instead of surrounding the pins with a plastic guide, they typically went without - making it harder to plug in the ribbon cable properly.)
IBM always had a great hard drive reputation, until they trashed it with the horrible Deskstar issues. It's going to take a lot for them to dig back out of that hole.
Western Digital is probably the one drive vendor that's that hardest to pin down. I've generally liked their drives a lot - yet I can't deny they have a lot of drive failures. From using their products over 10+ years now (in the workplace and at home), I get the idea they generally have a lot of RMA "out of the box". If you get a good drive that doesn't make any weird noises, it'll probably be a good drive for years to come. If it seems a bit "flaky" when you first start using it though, look out. It'll probably be a dud in the long run.
I completely agree that many CEO's are appointing themselves outrageously high salaries - and there's often a huge problem with that.
On the other hand, at least those are private businesses, and theoretically, the stockholders could vote to oust the CEO if he/she was ruining the company.
Public education is considerably different. All of us are paying in to it, yet we have almost no say-so in who runs the schools. Unlike shareholders, we don't get to vote on changes to their policies.
I'm not even saying I really have a problem with a dean of a large school making $100K per year. What I *am* saying is that with that salary, he/she should easily be able to pay for his/her own transportation and house. Furthermore, those positions tend to have strong political tie-ins. They often get much more than their actual salary in "under the table" perks and benefits.
As just one example, there's a state college where I live where I know for a fact the dean has appointed a number of his own relatives and friends to various positions of authority. You can't tell me he did it just to be a "nice guy" to the people he knew. I'm sure it was very much a "I scratch your back, so you scratch mine." situation for him. It's pretty questionable if some of his appointees are even remotely qualified to do the jobs they're doing.
Sorry, but I'm not quite coming to the same conclusions that you apparently are.
(It sounds to me like you're saying universities need to be exclusively funded by a combination of government and tuition - because anything else "taints" their decisions and "pureness" of education provided.)
I do agree that any of these "back door deals" are completely dishonest, yet I don't think more govt. funding is going to be the real "fix" we need.
As has been brought up in many a past Slashdot discussion, universities and colleges have a major problem with overpaying their deans and other high-level faculty members. A good start to budget-cutting would begin by dropping the needless "perks" such as free housing or vehicles for these people, already earning upwards of $100,000 per year to be the political "go between" and figurehead for the schools.
If government is going to provide funds for education, it seems more "focused" if they at least provide them directly to students, for use at the school of their own choosing. By awarding research grants or other such funding to particular universities - they're already "playing favorites", and encouraging wastefulness. If you let the students vote with their dollar for the schools they want to attend, the universities are forced to compete based on their own merits and perceived educational value to students.
If they try to take short-cuts, such as accepting millions/billions from private industry in return for approving products as "best technology" without doing the studies, or outfitting the campus with a single vendor's "gifts" -- they'll eventually lose credibility, and therefore customers (students).
Even though some of us don't seem to like to admit it (probably because the services provided are so important), colleges and universities are nothing more than *businesses*. They should be left to run like businesses.
The thing people are *still* largely missing is that these issues aren't even "party-centric" anymore! Pay attention! Just as much B.S. taking away our privacy rights came into being under the Clinton administration as what's coming down the pike now, with Republicans in the driver's (and co-pilot's) seats.
The drive for "broad new govt. powers" often comes straight from the FBI, NSA, military, or other "arms" of government that perform the same functions no matter who is in Congress or in the "big chair" in the White House.
Remember the old line, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's quite true. This won't stop until government is shrunken back down to a manageable size again.
When Americans were overcharged for govt. services (AKA. tax surplus), did you see *either* party clamoring to figure out how to quickly refund citizens the incorrectly charged fees? Heck no! Both sides were endlessly debating on how they should spend (they prefer the term "appropriate") the excess, instead.
If you're still hung up on arguing whether or not a "Republican president" or "Republican Congress" will push for these new powers, you're wasting everyone's time and helping their larger politcal agenda.
Both "sides" aren't really so far apart anymore. They're both looking out for themselves, first and foremost. After that, they both envision a big, powerful government that they can steer to victory, fame and glory.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are ready to concede that *less* government is what this country sorely needs!
Personally, for most companies using a Windows NT/2000 or XP type environment - I think they should make more use of the concept of the "power users" group (or security groups along those lines).
While it's really not manageable to let users go loading anything and everything they like on their PCs - it's just about as bad when the opposite is true. I worked in that type of environment before, and with only 250 or so total PCs in the whole environment - we often had to waste considerable amounts of time loading special software onto people's PC by "special request". Especially for people like engineers; they receive quite a few "30 day trials" of expensive programs they want to evaluate before making decisions on what to use for a project.
I think the best solution is to grant users software installation privileges on a case-by-case basis, by dropping them into the proper security group. In fact, if you're worried about them abusing it - just add them to the group only for a temporary time-window (say, 1 week from the time they request it). That lets them do whatever they need to do, and still keeps them from abusing their access level months down the road. (Not only that, but as an admin, you know changes made that might be adversely affecting something else had to be done by only certain people, within a certain time-frame -- so you can more quickly isolate/fix them.)
Hey, I'm totally with you -- but not everyone works for an "enlightened" boss (or bosses above your direct boss!). At my last job, I read Slashdot daily. (On slower days, at least once a morning and again in the afternoon.) I really considered it relevant and work-related too. I mean, sure, I skipped anything that was just a movie review or talk of a new arcade game....
But I was always the first to have knowledge of new updates and fixes for new security risks, as well as good suggestions for the occasional software for a special niche need.
Unfortunately, I also took a lot of flack from the "higher-ups" for my appearance of "doing nothing constructive" when people from other departments walked by and saw me "web surfing". I had to justify my usage time and time again, and it seemed like each time only quieted them down for a few weeks at the most.
Eventually, I ended up losing that job. Can't really say it was over reading Slashdot, but I have the sneaky suspicion it didn't help matters any. Given a similar situation at a new job, would I do it all over again though? Yeah, absolutely. The net's biggest problem is a lack of quality sites that cull through the really interesting and relevant news, and put it in one place. Sure, you can go read ZD stuff and get the "party line" opinions on everything - but beyond that, there's Ars Technica, Slashdot, and a handful of respectable sites for hardware benchmarks and reviews. Other than that, though, what do you have? Would a company think it's a better use of time and money to buy those multi-hundred dollar a year "Dr. Dobbs Journal" subscriptions and have you read those??
No, actually, I've already quit buying CDs. The RIAA and their kind have finally irritated me to the point where I simply won't willingly send any more money their direction.
Sure, there are a few things I'd really like to own on CD -- but I can go to one of the many used CD/tape/record stores in town to shop for them, or even buy used on eBay.
There is so much music already floating around on CD, there's really no good reason to buy new product anymore, unless you have to have the latest releases. (And with the poor quality of most new music being released, I'll pass on that.)
If I only have "so so" interest in something, I'll copy it/download it.... I already got tired, long ago, of paying $15+ for a disc just for one or two good songs on it. Since the recording industry refuses to become flexible enough to sell "burnt to order" discs made of your own individual selection of songs - I refuse to give in to their marketing model of buying stuff you don't want, to get the few songs you do want.
Really, I think it's great they cancelled this book. What a waste of tax dollars, trying to justify things they already spent our tax dollars on decades ago!
On the other hand, I'm sure someone will come along and write their own investigative book, attempting to prove the moon landings were real. There are certainly many topics to write about that would be of less interest.... Books are usually written to make money for the author(s); not to cost multiple thousands of dollars.
I agree. The problem is, every new technology that's released and fails becomes doubly hard to re-release the next time, no matter how many refinements are done.
I think "pen computing" is one of those ideas that has such a "gee whiz" factor, people rushed to sell software/hardware using it way before its time.
I know when I think of pen computers, I think of clunky systems running Windows 3.11 for Pen computing with bulky pens on coiled cords. I don't really think of a sleek, high-resolution tablet, with a cordless pen - and the ability dock vertically as a display for a keyboard and mouse on a desk.
So yeah, at this point, who *but* Microsoft is going to spend the advertising dollars to once again try to sell the latest "update" to this decade-old tech?
Apple probably did more for the idea than anyone else with the Newton - but its relative lack of ability to recognize handwriting accurately doomed it to being made fun of in Saturday cartoons. The fact they ditched the whole product line rather than make further attempts at revisions spoke volumes to the masses about their "belief" in the pen computing idea.
There's a lot of "damage" to undo before it'll sell big this time around.
It seems to me that, given a device shaped like an "etch-a-sketch" tablet (with no attached keyboard portion), you'd be able to do some more interesting things with batteries.
You may recall some of the notebooks from companies like Micron, that achieved 10+ hour battery life when a big battery "slab" was snapped onto the bottom of the laptop. It made the latop thicker, all the way around, but it did the job. It seems to me people would find this type of battery much more acceptable if it was on the back of a fairly thin LCD panel/tablet. After all, there's nothing else to carry but the screen portion. When "docked" as a vertical-standing monitor, you wouldn't really notice the big battery on the back. That way, it wouldn't detract from the "sleekness factor" of the overall system.
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As someone who has been working with older Apple hardware quite a bit recently, I have to say that Apple has only *now* gotten their UI to a respectable level with OSX.
In all the previous verisons of MacOS, I just don't see where all the "user-friendliness" really was?
First and foremost, the older MacOS UI had the really nasty issue of making it too hard to tell which apps were still running. (EG. User double-clicks on a document to read it. SimpleText launches and shows them said document. User closes the document itself, but doesn't realize SimpleText is still running with 0 documents open. Since very little visual indication is given to user that it is indeed running, he/she can easily go about doing other things on the Mac for hours and not notice it's still wasting memory and resources.)
MacOS also made it too confusing to select the proper folder to save/download/install files in. (EG. If you have multiple hard drives and want to save on the one that didn't come up by default, you had to get there in 2 steps. First, select "Desktop", and *then* select the drive you wanted from the dialog box.)
On top of all of this, they never had the foresight to offer an actual file manager. MacOS sorely needed some sort of built-in utility that would show "tree" style folder lists and easily allow copying/moving/deleting groups of files.
Therefore, I'm not sure Linux wants to copy Apple's way of building GUIs. It seems to me it took Apple *far* too long to provide obviously needed functionality and features.
I'm not sure "strict legislation" will solve anything either. That's the typical "knee-jerk reaction" to problems. "There oughta be a law!" No - maybe not.
I really think the spam issue needs to be controlled better at the ISP level. Why allow someone to send out thousands and thousands of emails in bulk to begin with? Spammers only find their methods cost-effective because they aren't getting charged much of anything to "blanket" the net with their messages.
Meanwhile, ISPs bear the burden - and it doesn't appear some of them really mind. Perhaps it's time for automated systems to be put in place which packet-sniff to figure out the types of traffic flowing over the lines, and cut off large amounts of email traffic coming from a single sender? Products like the PacketShaper already seem to be able to do this for MP3s, streaming video, and other types of traffic.
Any normal user shouldn't have spam-like levels of outgoing email.
Yep, my sentiments exactly! I read the article and thought "Ok, perhaps he identified a real problem - but pointing at the I.T. workers to find the solution is pointless." The maintenance nightmares he refers to were created by the people putting out the products and services I.T. workers have to choose from. (Whether your choice is Microsoft, Apple, or Unix/Linux - you're in the same boat. The software doesn't offer you an easy to manage + trouble-free environment.)
Software developers writing the next generation of operating systems and business applications software have the ball in their court.
So far, I think great strides have been made on all fronts. A popular Linux distro used today is much more user-friendly to install and configure than one made 3 years ago. Windows XP or 2000 is *much* less crash-prone than Windows NT 3.51 was, and much more flexible. Apple's OSX is light-years ahead of their OS9.x.
Nonetheless, we're building larger and larger datacenters, and demanding more and more from our computers. Outsourcing is a band-aid fix that simply shifts responsibility around. Many companies thought outsourcing their whole I.T. department was a great cost-savings idea, and now they're re-hiring full-time workers again.
The real answer is, unless we quit making new demands on our computer infrastructure, we'll never see a real net improvement. As soon as the software developers give you a new/improved tool, you're loading 20 new unknown-quality utils and apps on top of it to do new tasks mandated by your bosses - so it's unstable as ever, once again.
The way I usually see a Citrix deployment handled, the laptops are all configured with modem dial-in access to the Citrix server (via VPN). They also have a full installation of the most-used applications (MS Office, for example?) that they'd want to work with "offline".
Then, it's just a matter of training for people to understand that they need to copy their completed work up to their shared disk space on the server when they get a chance. If you keep the versions of software on the server and on the laptops the same, all should go pretty smoothly.
(Of course, this also undermines some of the supposed cost-benefit of Citrix, because you're still buying full software licenses for each laptop, plus all your user licenses for everyone potentially connecting to the Citrix servers.)
Regarding BeOS, I just recently decided to fire up my copy of BeOS 5 Professional (and apply the update patches) on a PowerMac 7600 I inherited.
My hope was, it would run well on this rather limited system - and developers of free/shareware had been plugging along with their Be compatible creations, and there'd be lots of neat stuff to tinker with.
What I discovered was; #1 - barely anything is pre-compiled in a PPC version! I kept finding files on BeBits that I wanted, but it was usually "Intel BeOS only". #2 - the software collection didn't seem noticeably better than back when I last ran BeOS (when it was at its "peak" of popularity). Some of the software I liked best back then had gone through a number of small revisions, but seemed less stable than I remembered it before. (EG. Baxter IRC client, which kept blowing up when I tried the latest PPC version. It was nearly useless.)
It's fine if they get Open-BeOS going, but geez - get the apps and utils. up to snuff, or else there won't be much of anything to run on it!
Personally, I've used RAID (both SCSI and IDE) for a number of systems - and my current workstation is a P4 1.8Ghz i845 board (made by MSI) with integrated Promise EIDE RAID.
Just a few days ago, my system started randomly freezing up - but only when doing lots of disk access on the C: drive. I've seen this behavior once before, when I first built the system; I had a defective IDE drive that was getting read/write errors. I'm pretty sure I have another drive starting to go out.
This type of behavior is disappointing to me, for a system that's supposed to reduce downtime. IDE drive errors while the drive is still mostly functional (EG. spins up ok and works, other than timing out here and there when doing writes) seem to wreak havock with IDE RAID controllers. It only flags a drive as "down" if it's completely unresponsive.
While I haven't seen a higher-end SCSI RAID array behave in this fashion (freezing the whole machine if a drive temporarily malfunctions), I've had plenty of other reliability issues with them.
For example, we had numerous Dell Poweredge servers using their older PERC II RAID cards - and the controllers all started dying off after a couple years of use. The hard drives could be perfectly fine, but if you lost the controller card - you were down until you got it replaced.
It seems like a really worthwhile RAID array would include dual redundant controllers. Otherwise, the controller is your single point of possible failure.
Most IDE RAID setups seem like a gimmick to me, more than a useful feature. People just like to say they have RAID on their home PC.
Hmm.... I'm glad to see you replied, challenging the original assertion that "enterpreneurial drive" was the most important factor in getting one's own business started.
I had a problem with that statement too.
As I think about your reply though, I think the "drive/motivation" is inversely proportional to the access to funding one has (at least in most cases).
The two seem to be tied together. For example, a buddy of mine decided to start his own ISP some years ago. He's a real intelligent guy and certainly had enough financial problems to provide a level of motivation to work, and try to be successful at whatever he did.
Nonetheless, he was also not known to be the hardest of workers. He liked to sleep in late, and spend lots of time reading sci-fi books and playing computer games, rather then concentrate on his business or work at hand.
If he was faced, up front, with all of the usual hurdles to jump in order to obtain financing (bank loan or venture capital, for example), I really think that would have proven to be too much work/effort for him, and his ISP would have never got off the ground.
As it was, his father was pretty well off and loaned him the money to get things started.
In other cases, I've known folks who weren't really very knowledgable about the business they wanted to start, but it never seemed to stop them from becoming successful. I have to attribute that to a brute force will to succeed, and the drive to do whatever it took to secure the needed financing, pull all the long hours to build up the company, etc.
It's not that funding is "simply impossible" for some people to get. If their idea and business plan is sound, and they work hard enough to sell it to the right person, they'll get some funding. It's just that it's damn difficult to do this, deal with all the legal taxes and rules, get the business license(s) needed, and all that stuff. Many folks who would otherwise do well with a new business will fold under that pressure and all those requirements.
I see your point, and for basic applications you're correct. But the real value in upgraded PCs tends to come from new, innovative software that performs tasks that weren't possible before.
.WAV sounds and play them back - but it wasn't the same as mathematically calculating the whole thing and reproducing the instrument in real-time. This new ability allows you to have a nearly perfect simulation of an instrument on stage, without lugging the thing around with you or worrying about it getting out of tune. (Not to mention the cost savings, or instruments you simply can't buy at any price anymore.)
EG. Software synthesizers for computer musicians. Before the newer generations of CPUs, a PC simply didn't have the processor power to accurately simulate a real Hammond B3 organ, or a Steinway piano, or you name it. Sure, you could sample in one as a series of
High-end PC sales won't sell in massive numbers to the general public, perhaps -- but they'll still have customers. (Assuming, of course, that software development doesn't stagnate and resign itself to re-inventing the same old apps year after year.)
Ultimately, it all goes back to the principle that "matter is neither created nor destroyed". There's a fixed amount on this planet, and all we can do is move it around and convert it from one form to another.
If it's profitable for parties here and in China for us to transfer some of this matter to their land mass, then that's where you can expect much of it to go.
Back in the days of the industrial revolution, the US wasn't exactly using clean methods of power generation and manufacturing, either. We had cities full of black smog and soot, and probably shortened the life spans of quite a few citizens working in those conditions at the time.
Nonetheless, those same cities seem to be much cleaner today. The black soot wasn't permanent. Perhaps more importantly, the things we learned about manufacturing and technology in that area allowed much progress that still benefits people today.
These environmental concerns always turn out to be "mind games", ultimately. Did the computer help accomplish enough "good" for society while it was in use to justify the pollution it will cause when it's melted down as scrap? What if it was used to teach thousands of college students, or by a charity that helps many people in dire need of assistance? What about energy saved by using newer, more efficient technology instead of continuing to use outdated and power-hungry systems (like old mainframes)?
Sure, I don't have the $'s to blow on a hot new laptop with the latest graphics card, but I've found that a Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop with a fast PIII processor and Trident 3D chipset is good enough for usable gaming with most of the 1st. person shooters.
I used to take it to LAN parties simply because it spared me a need to lug around a bunch of parts including big monitor. I could get their later than most of the other people and still be up and running faster than they were. When it was time to go, it only took minutes to put it all away too.
I can't say for sure if UT2003 will still run ok on it - but games like Age of Mythology do. It ran the old UT just fine, as well as all the Quake games, Half-Life, and others. Frame rates weren't impressive, of course - but playable. To me, that's the main thing.
Yeah, but *proactively* is the key here. You chose, *willingly* to write selective documentation, in an effort to shift undesirable tasks off to other people.
That's a completely different issue than being ordered by management to document how you do what you do.
I'm not against making a few quick notes on how to perform a task that needs to get done on a daily basis. (After all, it's senseless to, say, make users wait to get an account on the corporate VPN simply because you're on vacation for the next 2 weeks.)
I simply caution anyone who gets "ordered" to write step-by-step docs for complex procedures, or for special solutions they created and maintain. It *could* just be a boss trying to keep everything structured and organized, but it's more likely a first move in a strategy to downsize you out of your job.
Speaking of documenting what you do, it's my opinion that employees in I.T. would be wise to limit how much of this documentation they write.
If you're writing lots of documentation for an employer, you should be getting paid as a "technical writer". If you're employed as an I.T. worker and they're demanding lots of documentation - you need to question it.
After all, they should be paying you for your knowledge and expertise. Would you expect your doctor to write up documentation for you so you can self-diagnose future problems?
When they start asking for lots of this, there's usually a boss masterminding it, with a flawed idea that he can "brain drain" you so his other people can perform your job. In reality, they should be hiring people who already possess the skills they need, or are capable of learning them on their own. They shouldn't need *your* documentation to achieve that goal.
Haven't we all discussed this question to death already? It's only the single most common question the Unix/Linux crowd asks themselves just about every day, while trying to justify their use of their OS over Windows, or while trying to make improvements to it.
I think the answers are pretty obvious, really, and there's a laundry list of them (which varies by individual).
If you want to know my *personal* list, this is basically it:
1. Games (I love "Age of Mythology", most of the EA Sports games, and many others that don't run natively, or at all, in a Linux/X environment - or at least require lots of extra work to get them going.)
2. MIDI/Music I like to compose electronic music with software synthesizers (usually VST plug-ins), looping software like Sonic Foundry's ACID Pro, software samplers like Native Instruments Kontakt (that read Akai format sample CDs) and occasional hard disk recording. None of this really gets done very well in Linux.
3. Overall convenience I'm not the only one who ever uses my PC. Friends and relatives occasionally sit down to use my PC. I like not having to walk them through everything when they see an unfamiliar interface, or hassle with small headaches caused by Samba networking support and needing to access resources shared by other PCs in the house running Windows.
I recall reading a story about something quite similar, only years and years ago. Supposedly, a college/university student had one of the original Mac powerbooks, and it suddenly died. Upon inspection, it turned out it was infested with thousands of ants that entered when it was in use outside, on the grass, someplace on the campus.
It just seems suspiciously familiar that this basic story has come back again, only this time with an Apple iBook notebook. (Statistically, you'd think you'd hear about this with a "Wintel" laptop, wouldn't you? Or do ants only like to eat Apple branded notebooks?)
I'm starting to wonder if this one's completely true, or just a rehash of an urban legend.
I think there's a grain of truth to some of the complaints.
You have to look at things over the LONG term though.... not just an isolated batch of complaints from around the same time period.
Honestly, I know relatively few people with complaints about Maxtor drives. Like everyone else, they occasionally released a bad batch. Still, you'll consistently find people relatively satisfied with their products over the years.
Fujitsu, on the other hand, I never had a good feeling about. I heard some good things about their rather pricy SCSI drives, back when they competed with Micropolis and built drives that took 2 full-height 5.25" drive bays. Whenever I looked at their IDE drives though, I just got the idea they weren't striving for "top quality". They cut corners on the little things, like the IDE connector itself. (Instead of surrounding the pins with a plastic guide, they typically went without - making it harder to plug in the ribbon cable properly.)
IBM always had a great hard drive reputation, until they trashed it with the horrible Deskstar issues. It's going to take a lot for them to dig back out of that hole.
Western Digital is probably the one drive vendor that's that hardest to pin down. I've generally liked their drives a lot - yet I can't deny they have a lot of drive failures. From using their products over 10+ years now (in the workplace and at home), I get the idea they generally have a lot of RMA "out of the box". If you get a good drive that doesn't make any weird noises, it'll probably be a good drive for years to come. If it seems a bit "flaky" when you first start using it though, look out. It'll probably be a dud in the long run.
I completely agree that many CEO's are appointing themselves outrageously high salaries - and there's often a huge problem with that.
On the other hand, at least those are private businesses, and theoretically, the stockholders could vote to oust the CEO if he/she was ruining the company.
Public education is considerably different. All of us are paying in to it, yet we have almost no say-so in who runs the schools. Unlike shareholders, we don't get to vote on changes to their policies.
I'm not even saying I really have a problem with a dean of a large school making $100K per year. What I *am* saying is that with that salary, he/she should easily be able to pay for his/her own transportation and house. Furthermore, those positions tend to have strong political tie-ins. They often get much more than their actual salary in "under the table" perks and benefits.
As just one example, there's a state college where I live where I know for a fact the dean has appointed a number of his own relatives and friends to various positions of authority. You can't tell me he did it just to be a "nice guy" to the people he knew. I'm sure it was very much a "I scratch your back, so you scratch mine." situation for him. It's pretty questionable if some of his appointees are even remotely qualified to do the jobs they're doing.
Sorry, but I'm not quite coming to the same conclusions that you apparently are.
(It sounds to me like you're saying universities need to be exclusively funded by a combination of government and tuition - because anything else "taints" their decisions and "pureness" of education provided.)
I do agree that any of these "back door deals" are completely dishonest, yet I don't think more govt. funding is going to be the real "fix" we need.
As has been brought up in many a past Slashdot discussion, universities and colleges have a major problem with overpaying their deans and other high-level faculty members. A good start to budget-cutting would begin by dropping the needless "perks" such as free housing or vehicles for these people, already earning upwards of $100,000 per year to be the political "go between" and figurehead for the schools.
If government is going to provide funds for education, it seems more "focused" if they at least provide them directly to students, for use at the school of their own choosing. By awarding research grants or other such funding to particular universities - they're already "playing favorites", and encouraging wastefulness. If you let the students vote with their dollar for the schools they want to attend, the universities are forced to compete based on their own merits and perceived educational value to students.
If they try to take short-cuts, such as accepting millions/billions from private industry in return for approving products as "best technology" without doing the studies, or outfitting the campus with a single vendor's "gifts" -- they'll eventually lose credibility, and therefore customers (students).
Even though some of us don't seem to like to admit it (probably because the services provided are so important), colleges and universities are nothing more than *businesses*. They should be left to run like businesses.
The thing people are *still* largely missing is that these issues aren't even "party-centric" anymore! Pay attention! Just as much B.S. taking away our privacy rights came into being under the Clinton administration as what's coming down the pike now, with Republicans in the driver's (and co-pilot's) seats.
The drive for "broad new govt. powers" often comes straight from the FBI, NSA, military, or other "arms" of government that perform the same functions no matter who is in Congress or in the "big chair" in the White House.
Remember the old line, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's quite true. This won't stop until government is shrunken back down to a manageable size again.
When Americans were overcharged for govt. services (AKA. tax surplus), did you see *either* party clamoring to figure out how to quickly refund citizens the incorrectly charged fees? Heck no! Both sides were endlessly debating on how they should spend (they prefer the term "appropriate") the excess, instead.
If you're still hung up on arguing whether or not a "Republican president" or "Republican Congress" will push for these new powers, you're wasting everyone's time and helping their larger politcal agenda.
Both "sides" aren't really so far apart anymore. They're both looking out for themselves, first and foremost. After that, they both envision a big, powerful government that they can steer to victory, fame and glory.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are ready to concede that *less* government is what this country sorely needs!
Man, no kidding. I run the old RealPlayer 8.0 or whatever it is - because their newer versions are screen-wasting, bloated crap.
Nonetheless, I want the ability to hear an RA stream - because sometimes, it's just darn useful.
Unfortunately, the stupid RealPlayer keeps blinking to tell me I need to upgrade to their newer software, and I can't find a way to stop it.
Someone oughta write a small patch/hack to de-blink that damn thing!
Personally, for most companies using a Windows NT/2000 or XP type environment - I think they should make more use of the concept of the "power users" group (or security groups along those lines).
While it's really not manageable to let users go loading anything and everything they like on their PCs - it's just about as bad when the opposite is true. I worked in that type of environment before, and with only 250 or so total PCs in the whole environment - we often had to waste considerable amounts of time loading special software onto people's PC by "special request". Especially for people like engineers; they receive quite a few "30 day trials" of expensive programs they want to evaluate before making decisions on what to use for a project.
I think the best solution is to grant users software installation privileges on a case-by-case basis, by dropping them into the proper security group. In fact, if you're worried about them abusing it - just add them to the group only for a temporary time-window (say, 1 week from the time they request it). That lets them do whatever they need to do, and still keeps them from abusing their access level months down the road. (Not only that, but as an admin, you know changes made that might be adversely affecting something else had to be done by only certain people, within a certain time-frame -- so you can more quickly isolate/fix them.)
Hey, I'm totally with you -- but not everyone works for an "enlightened" boss (or bosses above your direct boss!). At my last job, I read Slashdot daily. (On slower days, at least once a morning and again in the afternoon.) I really considered it relevant and work-related too. I mean, sure, I skipped anything that was just a movie review or talk of a new arcade game....
But I was always the first to have knowledge of new updates and fixes for new security risks, as well as good suggestions for the occasional software for a special niche need.
Unfortunately, I also took a lot of flack from the "higher-ups" for my appearance of "doing nothing constructive" when people from other departments walked by and saw me "web surfing". I had to justify my usage time and time again, and it seemed like each time only quieted them down for a few weeks at the most.
Eventually, I ended up losing that job. Can't really say it was over reading Slashdot, but I have the sneaky suspicion it didn't help matters any. Given a similar situation at a new job, would I do it all over again though? Yeah, absolutely. The net's biggest problem is a lack of quality sites that cull through the really interesting and relevant news, and put it in one place. Sure, you can go read ZD stuff and get the "party line" opinions on everything - but beyond that, there's Ars Technica, Slashdot, and a handful of respectable sites for hardware benchmarks and reviews. Other than that, though, what do you have? Would a company think it's a better use of time and money to buy those multi-hundred dollar a year "Dr. Dobbs Journal" subscriptions and have you read those??
No, actually, I've already quit buying CDs. The RIAA and their kind have finally irritated me to the point where I simply won't willingly send any more money their direction.
Sure, there are a few things I'd really like to own on CD -- but I can go to one of the many used CD/tape/record stores in town to shop for them, or even buy used on eBay.
There is so much music already floating around on CD, there's really no good reason to buy new product anymore, unless you have to have the latest releases. (And with the poor quality of most new music being released, I'll pass on that.)
If I only have "so so" interest in something, I'll copy it/download it.... I already got tired, long ago, of paying $15+ for a disc just for one or two good songs on it. Since the recording industry refuses to become flexible enough to sell "burnt to order" discs made of your own individual selection of songs - I refuse to give in to their marketing model of buying stuff you don't want, to get the few songs you do want.
Really, I think it's great they cancelled this book. What a waste of tax dollars, trying to justify things they already spent our tax dollars on decades ago!
On the other hand, I'm sure someone will come along and write their own investigative book, attempting to prove the moon landings were real. There are certainly many topics to write about that would be of less interest.... Books are usually written to make money for the author(s); not to cost multiple thousands of dollars.
I agree. The problem is, every new technology that's released and fails becomes doubly hard to re-release the next time, no matter how many refinements are done.
I think "pen computing" is one of those ideas that has such a "gee whiz" factor, people rushed to sell software/hardware using it way before its time.
I know when I think of pen computers, I think of clunky systems running Windows 3.11 for Pen computing with bulky pens on coiled cords. I don't really think of a sleek, high-resolution tablet, with a cordless pen - and the ability dock vertically as a display for a keyboard and mouse on a desk.
So yeah, at this point, who *but* Microsoft is going to spend the advertising dollars to once again try to sell the latest "update" to this decade-old tech?
Apple probably did more for the idea than anyone else with the Newton - but its relative lack of ability to recognize handwriting accurately doomed it to being made fun of in Saturday cartoons. The fact they ditched the whole product line rather than make further attempts at revisions spoke volumes to the masses about their "belief" in the pen computing idea.
There's a lot of "damage" to undo before it'll sell big this time around.
It seems to me that, given a device shaped like an "etch-a-sketch" tablet (with no attached keyboard portion), you'd be able to do some more interesting things with batteries.
You may recall some of the notebooks from companies like Micron, that achieved 10+ hour battery life when a big battery "slab" was snapped onto the bottom of the laptop. It made the latop thicker, all the way around, but it did the job. It seems to me people would find this type of battery much more acceptable if it was on the back of a fairly thin LCD panel/tablet. After all, there's nothing else to carry but the screen portion. When "docked" as a vertical-standing monitor, you wouldn't really notice the big battery on the back. That way, it wouldn't detract from the "sleekness factor" of the overall system.