Well, the low price of CDRs only came about recently, as sales of the drives reached a "critical mass" that allowed bulk sales of blank CDR media.
It looks like DVD writers are following much the same trend that CDR drives did. Therefore, I'd say DVD writable technology will displace CDR/CDRW by the end of next year. Xmas-time is always a key factor, as the home user typically gets these types of upgrades as gifts around the holiday season.
Last Xmas, DVD-R/RW made its intro. (Xmas provided the excuse to get the units on the shelves of stores like Best Buy and CompUSA at sub $500 pricing.) This Xmas, you can be sure DVD writers will be on a lot of holiday shopping lists, and help make them more "mainstream". By *next* Xmas, they ought to start taking over the world of CDRs.
Honestly, this seems like sort of a non-issue to me. Anyone setting up a free wi-fi network should realize that others may eventually come along and set up networks that "step on" their airspace.
Starbucks, on the other hand, has clearly shown that they choose to take an unfriendly stance towards this competing network. (Coming at it from their point of view, can you blame them? It's obviously in their best interest to eliminate or disrupt the competition - so they can force people to pay that monthly fee to use their own connection instead.)
I tend to agree with you... You can sit here and complain about the principle of it forever, or you can take a simple action that resolves the problem. Personal Telco just needs to use another channel. It's part of the 802.1b standard anyway.
I haven't done a whole lot with any of these packages on a corporate level - so take this with several large grains of salt....
A while back, I was working on a project with a couple Java developers that required a Linux-based web server running a servlet engine.
We went with Tomcat/Apache because it seemed like the most "standardized" option - and it was key that our application run under something fairly common/generic. (We had ideas of possibly selling the technology itself to a company interested in re-purposing it.)
I quickly discovered Resin, and got permission from the author to use it free of charge while we were in this development stage (and not generating any profit). I liked Resin, and noticed it was fast -- but I also had some configuration hassles with it.
We ended up cancelling our project before I had time to really dig into it very far - but it seemed that the resin service was a little bit picky about exactly where it was in the startup sequence on my RedHat server. Sometimes everything would boot, and then I'd discover Resin wasn't running. Launching it manually always worked just fine. If I juggled around what loaded before what in the runlevels, I could usually get it working - until I did some other RedHat upgrades. After that, sometimes it was suddenly "broken" again.
I don't think I was the only one with these issues, as a search of Usenet uncovered several other people confused about errors they got that indicated Resin wasn't running.
Really, my primary point is that the EFF consists of people who are more aware of the issues than at least 95% of the general public. They spend more time analyzing the possible effects of a new law related to one aspect of the Internet than most people have ever spent thinking about *any* single law of the land.
To brush them aside as alarmists who don't really understand the issues they're complaining about is foolish.
My secondary point, however, is that yes - exaggeration is an integral part of politics. Journalists certainly have every right to dig deeper and report unexaggerated versions. In fact, they do this all the time. I don't think the ZDNet article in question attempted to do any of this. They simply tried to argue that the EFF is just as bad as the RIAA, because in their opinion, neither side is presenting the truth.
That's a bold statement to make, and immediately, readers demand that the author back it up with proof. The proof just isn't there.
Well, I think the corporate market is much larger than the home user market for PGP *in its current form*.
Is there a potentially huge market for the individual home user to encrypt their data? Absolutely!!
Problem is, the average home user wants something so "brain-dead simple" to deal with, that it basically becomes invisible. If they can integrate PGP to the point where it feels like part of the OS itself (and doesn't cause a noticeable performance hit, or compatibility/stability issues in the process), then they've really got something.
I envision a product that asks a few basic questions during the initial setup, and then simply runs invisibly in the background afterwards. It should default to encrypting all data saved to my non-removable media, and let me click to encrypt removeable media on a case-by-case basis. Instant messengers like ICQ, AIM, etc. should all be supported, as well as email.
I disagree. He does a terrible job of making the very point you claim he's trying to make.
The EFF is certainly not made up of "activists that don't understand the impact of the laws they're protesting".
I used to be sort of "one friend removed" from one of the original founders of the EFF. When they first started out, they had no interest in becoming another political organization - at least in the traditional sense. They were as disgusted as most other people are with politics and the under-handed/sneaky ways in which they operate.
Unfortunately, they soon learned that you had to "play the game" in order to make changes happen in Washington. If you didn't develop a full-blown non-profit organization that actively campaigned for your causes, you got written off as "extremists" or just another blowhard with no "teeth" to back up your threats and warnings.
Anyone accusing the EFF of exaggerating their causes simply doesn't understand the mechanics of our political system. Especially when you deal with technical issues that the average senator/congressman only vaguely has his/her head wrapped around - you have to hammer your points home. Otherwise, your opposition surely will - and you'll look like you have a very weak argument, by comparison.
Nah - I don't think Intel "deserves to be sued" over this minor issue. Why? Because frankly, all of these frivilous lawsuits tie up our courts and jack up the prices that it costs for an individual to get a decent lawyer when a real need arises.
People have always paid more for Intel CPUs, just as they pay more for many other "name brand" items. If you were to legally pursue every well-known company that produced an item that cost more, yet had inferior quality to competing brands - you'd be in court with just about everyone.
It's *always* up to the buyer to do his/her research. If he/she still decides they prefer Intel just because they like knowing their chip is backed by the largest CPU maker in the world - so be it.
(And anyway, there's more to it than Mhz. Some people, like myself, went with a P4 because we preferred the overall options and quality of the motherboards. AMD had problems getting the "tier 1" motherboard makers to build boards for their CPUs for quite a while.)
Some may flame me for this, but I question why one of the commercial distros hasn't already dealt with this blatantly obvious problem?
It seems to me like RedHat or Mandrake would have already realized that it'd be smart to invest in having someone improve all of the X fonts.
Sure, people could try to put together a donation page for this, and it might have some limited success. I think you'd have much greater success if a well-known distro put out a want-ad saying "Now hiring font specialist for 6 month to 1 year contract project."
If your distro looks much more readable than the others, it gives users one more reason to install your "flavor" of Linux, and to possibly buy support for it and purchase commercial copies of it in the future.
This whole thing reminds me of a rather parallel situation that goes on all the time in the musical instrument sales business.
A small manufacturer develops a great new product, and starts working on building a customer-base for it.
Along comes a music "superstore" such as Guitar Center or Mars. They woo the manufacturer, saying "Hey, we absolutely *love* your new product and want to carry it in all of our stores. We'll make you a really sweet deal, paying you X amount each with a guarantee that we'll buy at least 40,000 units up-front, and thousands per month after that!"
Of course, the little manufacturer thinks "Wow, how can I go wrong? This is the break I was looking for!" They proceed to spend large amounts of investment money to ramp up production to meet the needs of the music superstore and everything looks great.
That is - until the contract comes up for renewal. Then the story changes. "Hey pal, we're not really making much money off this product of yours. If you don't start selling them to us for under price Y, we'll just quit carrying it and go with a competitor." All of a sudden, the small manufacturer realizes he's stuck in a permanent marriage with the music superstore, and pretty much on *their* terms.
Yep! I think you just stated the bottom line in this whole discussion. If you're doing something you really enjoy, don't switch.
It's interesting how many similar discussions have popped up on Slashdot very recently. "I was in I.T. but am thinking about switching to X."
All this does is confirms what I've believed for a while. I.T. is in pretty sorry shape right now. Not only did we collectively get "egg on our faces" after the overblown Y2K issue turned out to be such a non-event, but then we had the silly.com goldrush on top of it.
Now, the pendulum has swung, rather violently, the opposite direction. Companies are sitting down and asking where the real value is in all the I.T. dollars they forked out since the late 90's - and the overall economic slowdown just amplifies all their concerns.
The venture capitalists are afraid to take many chances on anything technology/computer related, so the guys with no formal education, but perhaps great ideas/dreams, are getting left out in the cold.
People with good jobs and salaries for the last 5-10 years are now getting laid off in record numbers. Since the 9/11 incident, background checks have gotten much tougher too. Some of these people can't even get re-hired elsewhere in I.T. because they've got a legal incident from their past permanently coded into some "background check database".
On top of all this, we have all those foreign workers we let into the U.S. during the.com fiasco, because we were so sure I.T. talent was in short supply.
It's no wonder some people are having second thoughts about their career of choice! I still say, if I.T. is what you live and breathe for - don't give up on it. There are too many PCs in service to believe that your skills aren't needed anymore. Eventually, corporate America will come calling for you. Maybe just work a "dead end" job to keep the bills paid until times get a little better....
Personally, I've always suspected that most studies proving what seems incredibly obvious are created primarily to secure some government funding. Government grants are issued for all sorts of research, as long as it meets certain guidelines. If, say, the federal government has some tax dollars allocated for studies related to the improvement of farming - then you might qualify by offering to research whether or not crops taste better when harvested by hand or by machine. (You'd probably also conclude, after "much research", that they taste pretty much the same whether hand or machine picked. You'd also have thousands of dollars to buy yourself that new car or PC or whatever with, disguising it all as tools needed for said research.)
Right! I just picked up the latest issue of the free trade rag, "Bio I.T. World" and in it was an article about a scientist studying a genetic trait found in flies. Apparently, some of them have a tendency to fly low, while others prefer to fly up high, when they're let loose in a fixed maze-type environment.
The reason this had any relevance and interest is because the researcher was able to isolate a set of 3 genes that work together to determine this trait in the fly.
Basically, they hoped that the methods used to isolate the gene group responsible would eventually be usable on humans. They, of course, pointed out that it's far easier to accomplish a task of this type with a fly because the genetic code is relatively simple, and all of it is even available on an Internet web site. (I don't recall the URL, but it's published in the article.)
There's obviously been quite a stumbling block in deciphering most human traits for this very reason.... You can't tell much with a single gene.
Nah, I hear you. I'm just not sure you picked the best message to reply to. I can totally respect what that author was saying. Basically, "Hey, I'm a techie. I'll go back to it again. Right now, I'm just experimenting, trying something completely different that can help me develop people skills I can use in the future as a techie."
I've always worked in I.T. in one form or another. I live and breathe this stuff. It's not just a job for me. Every day when I came home from work, I got on the computer within an hour or two - no matter how much PC stuff I dealt with all day long at work.
Still, I'm starting to entertain thoughts of doing something different myself. I've been out of work since May, and I'm just about out of money. Not sure how I'll make my car payment this month. My wife is trying to start a work-from-home business doing housekeeping, and I've been handling the advertising portion for her. (Handing out flyers, mostly.)
Already, she's getting some business. (Probably a steady 3 or 4 homes to clean each week.) It's typcially about a.5% to 1% return. (It seems like we average 1 or 2 new customers for every 200 flyers I hand out.) Considering we have no other real expenses, other than the cleaning supplies and gas to drive around - this business is already at the break-even point, and should be profitable by next week.
I really feel that if this was me handing out those same flyers to drum up PC on-site service/consulting work, I'd be getting nowhere. Certainly, not this quickly. When you're in hard economic times, it makes sense to pursue work in more concrete areas. I think that's what we're seeing now. People generally have less money to "play with", so they're spending on more necessary things. If you, for example, want to repair cars or do home handyman type work - you'll be real successful right now. By the same token, people always have a desire to keep their dwelling clean. If they earn good money, it makes more economic sense for them pay someone else to do their cleaning, so they can spend that time earning more at their own specialty.
Actually, I read a big article on the science of exhaust systems. I think it may have been in Popular Mechanics magazine, less than a year ago.
Anyway - I think the performance exhaust market does have a need for people who can tune an exhaust so it gives a specific type of "tone" while keeping maximum performance. There's much more involved in getting this right than you'd think.
I agree that people don't usually look for "quiet" as the preferred characteristic of a replacement muffler -- but it really depends on the car, and what you're selling.
EG. Greddy made quite a bundle selling their "Power Extreme" cat-back exhaust systems for the 1993-98 Toyota Supras. They're touted as being among the quietest exhausts on the market for this car, but also hailed for their good performance improvements and physical design. (Unlike 90% of the aftermarket exhausts for the Supra, the Greddy PE was designed to use all of the factory mounting points. Some people really like knowing the new exhaust fits exactly where the original did, with no unused/exposed hangers.) Nonetheless, the Greddy PE has a lot of questionable build-quality issues. (They tend to rust out prematurely, despite supposedly being an all-stainless steel exhaust.)
I think a similar case can likely be made for aftermarket exhausts for upscale German cars. No, the average teen "boy racer" with his Honda CRX covered in stickers just wants something LOUD -- but there are more sophisiticated car owners into performance, too.
Pfft... Sorry I'm so cynical right now, but as someone on the sysadmin/hardware tech. side of things, I'm finding it extremely difficult to find a new job.
Meanwhile, my daily job searches and "search bots" on Monster.com, hotjobs.com, stlouisatwork.com (I live in St. Louis, Missouri), brainbuzz.com, and other such job search sites only bring me hits on jobs requiring software developers.
For every one job asking for a system administrator or support specialist, I find 20 or 30 that want application developers, web developers, Java or C++ programmers, or other similar jobs which I can't perform.
I get the distinct impression that software developers are complaining mostly because they aren't seeing the salaries they'd like... not because the jobs aren't out there.
I started out with a first-generation Philips DVD+RW drive. Totally worthless "standard"... Returned it promptly and bought a Pioneer A03.
I'm somewhat satisfied with the A03 drive (DVD-R), and it looks like the A04 is only incrementally improved. (EG. No reason to spend more money upgrading from A03 to A04.)
I'm quickly starting to see a real problem with all of these current writable DVD standards though. They only support single-sided discs at 4.x gigs.
No matter how illegal it is, one thing in the backs of the minds of quite a few consumer DVD burner purchasers is the ability to make copies of DVD movies. Well over half the time, a movie is too long to fit on a single DVD-R or DVD+R disc, since the commercial DVD is double-sided and holds over 8GB.
It's a major pain to extract everything off the commercial DVD and then go through all the procedures necessary to rip and re-encode the audio streams so you can break it into 2 pieces to burn to 2 seperate single-sided DVD discs. (Not to mention, this makes it cost twice as much to copy the movie, so you might not even want to bother.)
This is probably going to be the #1 (unspoken) reason why a new standard holding 8+ GB per DVD writable disc has the real hope of becoming an official "standard".
I really don't know, but I can say that I never experienced lots of tech-support happiness with Apple.
A while back, I got one of those Apple Quicktake digital cameras. It quit taking pictures... just completely died. I called Apple, trying to find out repair costs and where to take it. That was like pulling teeth! Nobody at Apple seemed to know what to do with the Quicktake. They kept trying to forward me to people in the "Apple imaging dept.", claiming they "believed that was the area that supported those devices". The guys in imaging couldn't help either, though. They said the cameras were really made by Kodak for Apple, and being a non-native Apple product - they had little to offer in the way of assistance for them. Someone gave me a number to Kodak, who in turn, refused to support the Quicktake - and sent me back to Apple.
I finally just went to a local photo store/Apple dealer, thinking that was the ideal place to take the thing. No help there either! They said they never sold the Quicktake at their store, and had no information on it. I finally gave up and threw the thing away!
No, initially, you were probably correct. But now we're entering the era where the vast majority of new computers sold are not being sold as "first systems". The customers they're getting now are mostly repeat customers, back for a second or third PC.
The average person shops primarily based on price, but also, based on past experiences. (EG. A friend of my mom's just decided to buy herself a new PC. She had an old Compaq she was very pleased with. I asked her why she liked it so well. All she talked about is the way their tech. support people always gave her assistance when she had problems using it.) She wanted a notebook this time around, and wanted to buy it locally. I pointed her towards a Toshiba, which she happily bought only after asking me if they had a toll-free number for support, if they offered a reasonably priced extended warranty, and if they were generally good about phone support.
(I knew Compaq has gone downhill on tech. support over the years - and didn't want to see her grab a Compaq notebook, only to be disappointed.)
Yeah, my (rather limited) experience with Gateway is that their phone support reps are very friendly and try their best to be polite and helpful. Unfortunately, this doesn't always translate into problem resolution - since technical know-how comes into play.
EG. We bought a number of their slim desktop systems a few years ago at my work. (It was a trial thing, to see how Gateway stacked up compared to other vendors like Dell we always used in the past.) The systems came pre-loaded with Windows NT 4.0, as we requested. Unfortunately, they had issues booting to a black screen and freezing up when powered-on. Gateway's phone support tried and tried to help, but they just didn't know much about NT, and even less about why it might have issues on that particular system. I was finally directed to take a sample system in to the local Gateway store and let their technician analyze it. This turned into a big fiasco. They swapped out all sorts of irrelevant parts (hard drive, memory, etc.). After 5 trips back there, someone finally figured out it needed a BIOS update to a brand new revision Gateway just released. Problem solved, but this should never have happened in the first place. This was a system they advertised as being "NT ready" before we ordered it.
Thanks for a teriffic reply! Saved me a lot of trouble writing pretty much the same things.
Just for the record though, I've purchased several DVD players in the last few years, and maybe 15 or so DVD movies. I usually just borrow or rent them.
While it's very disturbing and unfortunate that the motion picture industry has decided to make all these efforts to restrict what we can/can't legally do with a DVD, I don't think that means I'm being a hypocrite for continuing to buy the products while complaining.
I think the technology itself is sound, and stands on its own merits. Simply saying "I don't like the FBI warnings or the trailers, so I'm going to refuse to ever buy a DVD player or disc!" only helps kill off a perfectly good technology. (Does Hollywood really know that people aren't buying DVD because they're upset about those restrictions and trailers/warnings? I suspect, instead, they'd simply conclude that DVD technology wasn't offering enough value for consumers to keep purchasing the format. That would leave us with less ability to buy/rent/view movies at home in higher-resolutions.)
It seems better to me to continue to buy the products we like and want to use. Then, pinpoint the issues we have with them and complain, complain, complain! It may or may not fall on deaf ears, but at least they can't say they never understood the problem.
I understand exactly what you're saying, but I feel it's the responsibility and job of the press to interview the appropriate people for the piece they're trying to put together.
If a member of the news media approached me and started asking me for some information about my job, I'd assume they had some sort of valid reason to choose me for the interview, as opposed to upper-level management.
I'd also expect (and even demand) that in the interest of good journalism, they'd properly state my position within the company I worked for. (EG. If they quote me, they don't have to necessarily use my name - but they should at least explain that "One of the employees was quoted as saying....", instead of making it look like I was a mouthpiece for the C.E.O.)
Nobody being interviewed really has the ability to know, in advance, how their interview will be used. All you get is a really rough outline of the type of piece being published or aired. Therefore, you always place a certain level of trust in the reporter or interviewer to use your comments properly/accurately.
If this trust breaks down, people quit volunteering to be interviewed.
I have a strong feeling that even the wealthy won't be able to sway government into allowing them to preserve their wealth after they're cryogenically frozen, *unless* they successfully revive at least one person first.
Since they freely admit they're not technologically able to accomplish that right now, there's no reason to legally consider the frozen participants as anything other than "dead".
I realize this is getting off-topic, but does your friend happen to know any possible causes of her ALS? (By this, I mean, is it possible it was hereditary - or is it pretty much a mystery?)
I just ask because I had an uncle that died of ALS, a number of years ago. His condition deteriorated very rapidly, unfortunately. He started off complaining of some numbing in his arms and legs. Before long, he was having trouble walking and struggled to drive. His work tried to offer some assistance, but it was only a matter of months before he couldn't even get out of bed - and finally, he simply stopped breathing.
There was no history of ALS or anything similar in his family. The only suspicious factor is that he worked as a chemist at DuPont. There's no telling what he might have come into contact with that could have triggered the condition....
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong - but it doesn't change the fact that advancing PC graphics and sound will force console makers to update their units more quickly than in the past.
Don't forget, X-Box is made by Microsoft - a name you *may* be familiar with as having more to do with PCs than console games. X-Box is based on PC technology. It's pretty easy for them to update it and re-release it every year or so, if they like. Practically a no-brainer, R&D wise.
Also, the demographic of people most into playing console games is also attending high school or college. Nowdays, a PC is pretty much a requirement for schooling. Therefore, I don't think you have so much an issue of people saying "Gee, do I fork out all the money for a PC to play games, or do I just use this $400 console with my TV?" as you have "Do I spend the $400 on upgrading my PC I got for school, or do I get the console?"
If you're so computer illiterate that you can't install a new CD-ROM based game on a PC, then fine - you're a good candidate for a game console. Does that mean you absolutely won't replace it if better, newer ones come out quicker than once every 4 or 5 years?
Umm.... wait a minute here. You might think the guy comes across as having a "bad attitude" - but I think there's a very legitimate complaint at the heart of his story.
Why in the world would a company discriminate between which phone support people could and couldn't play with toys?
It sounds to me like management there took the piss-poor attitude that "Level 1 workers are peons who can't be trusted to even be responsible with a Nerf gun toy." If that's so, then one must ask why they were trusted to be the first line of defense when people call in with computer problems?
By the same token, why did they let 2nd. level phone support play around so much? Granted, your first level people take all the calls, and only forward selected ones up the chain - so they'll tend to appear more busy. Still, good managers will hire the correct number of employees at each level so everyone stays more or less equally busy.
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Well, the low price of CDRs only came about recently, as sales of the drives reached a "critical mass" that allowed bulk sales of blank CDR media.
It looks like DVD writers are following much the same trend that CDR drives did. Therefore, I'd say DVD writable technology will displace CDR/CDRW by the end of next year. Xmas-time is always a key factor, as the home user typically gets these types of upgrades as gifts around the holiday season.
Last Xmas, DVD-R/RW made its intro. (Xmas provided the excuse to get the units on the shelves of stores like Best Buy and CompUSA at sub $500 pricing.) This Xmas, you can be sure DVD writers will be on a lot of holiday shopping lists, and help make them more "mainstream". By *next* Xmas, they ought to start taking over the world of CDRs.
Honestly, this seems like sort of a non-issue to me. Anyone setting up a free wi-fi network should realize that others may eventually come along and set up networks that "step on" their airspace.
Starbucks, on the other hand, has clearly shown that they choose to take an unfriendly stance towards this competing network. (Coming at it from their point of view, can you blame them? It's obviously in their best interest to eliminate or disrupt the competition - so they can force people to pay that monthly fee to use their own connection instead.)
I tend to agree with you... You can sit here and complain about the principle of it forever, or you can take a simple action that resolves the problem. Personal Telco just needs to use another channel. It's part of the 802.1b standard anyway.
I haven't done a whole lot with any of these packages on a corporate level - so take this with several large grains of salt....
A while back, I was working on a project with a couple Java developers that required a Linux-based web server running a servlet engine.
We went with Tomcat/Apache because it seemed like the most "standardized" option - and it was key that our application run under something fairly common/generic. (We had ideas of possibly selling the technology itself to a company interested in re-purposing it.)
I quickly discovered Resin, and got permission from the author to use it free of charge while we were in this development stage (and not generating any profit). I liked Resin, and noticed it was fast -- but I also had some configuration hassles with it.
We ended up cancelling our project before I had time to really dig into it very far - but it seemed that the resin service was a little bit picky about exactly where it was in the startup sequence on my RedHat server. Sometimes everything would boot, and then I'd discover Resin wasn't running. Launching it manually always worked just fine. If I juggled around what loaded before what in the runlevels, I could usually get it working - until I did some other RedHat upgrades. After that, sometimes it was suddenly "broken" again.
I don't think I was the only one with these issues, as a search of Usenet uncovered several other people confused about errors they got that indicated Resin wasn't running.
Really, my primary point is that the EFF consists of people who are more aware of the issues than at least 95% of the general public. They spend more time analyzing the possible effects of a new law related to one aspect of the Internet than most people have ever spent thinking about *any* single law of the land.
To brush them aside as alarmists who don't really understand the issues they're complaining about is foolish.
My secondary point, however, is that yes - exaggeration is an integral part of politics. Journalists certainly have every right to dig deeper and report unexaggerated versions. In fact, they do this all the time. I don't think the ZDNet article in question attempted to do any of this. They simply tried to argue that the EFF is just as bad as the RIAA, because in their opinion, neither side is presenting the truth.
That's a bold statement to make, and immediately, readers demand that the author back it up with proof. The proof just isn't there.
Well, I think the corporate market is much larger than the home user market for PGP *in its current form*.
Is there a potentially huge market for the individual home user to encrypt their data? Absolutely!!
Problem is, the average home user wants something so "brain-dead simple" to deal with, that it basically becomes invisible. If they can integrate PGP to the point where it feels like part of the OS itself (and doesn't cause a noticeable performance hit, or compatibility/stability issues in the process), then they've really got something.
I envision a product that asks a few basic questions during the initial setup, and then simply runs invisibly in the background afterwards. It should default to encrypting all data saved to my non-removable media, and let me click to encrypt removeable media on a case-by-case basis. Instant messengers like ICQ, AIM, etc. should all be supported, as well as email.
I disagree. He does a terrible job of making the very point you claim he's trying to make.
The EFF is certainly not made up of "activists that don't understand the impact of the laws they're protesting".
I used to be sort of "one friend removed" from one of the original founders of the EFF. When they first started out, they had no interest in becoming another political organization - at least in the traditional sense. They were as disgusted as most other people are with politics and the under-handed/sneaky ways in which they operate.
Unfortunately, they soon learned that you had to "play the game" in order to make changes happen in Washington. If you didn't develop a full-blown non-profit organization that actively campaigned for your causes, you got written off as "extremists" or just another blowhard with no "teeth" to back up your threats and warnings.
Anyone accusing the EFF of exaggerating their causes simply doesn't understand the mechanics of our political system. Especially when you deal with technical issues that the average senator/congressman only vaguely has his/her head wrapped around - you have to hammer your points home. Otherwise, your opposition surely will - and you'll look like you have a very weak argument, by comparison.
Nah - I don't think Intel "deserves to be sued" over this minor issue. Why? Because frankly, all of these frivilous lawsuits tie up our courts and jack up the prices that it costs for an individual to get a decent lawyer when a real need arises.
People have always paid more for Intel CPUs, just as they pay more for many other "name brand" items. If you were to legally pursue every well-known company that produced an item that cost more, yet had inferior quality to competing brands - you'd be in court with just about everyone.
It's *always* up to the buyer to do his/her research. If he/she still decides they prefer Intel just because they like knowing their chip is backed by the largest CPU maker in the world - so be it.
(And anyway, there's more to it than Mhz. Some people, like myself, went with a P4 because we preferred the overall options and quality of the motherboards. AMD had problems getting the "tier 1" motherboard makers to build boards for their CPUs for quite a while.)
Some may flame me for this, but I question why one of the commercial distros hasn't already dealt with this blatantly obvious problem?
It seems to me like RedHat or Mandrake would have already realized that it'd be smart to invest in having someone improve all of the X fonts.
Sure, people could try to put together a donation page for this, and it might have some limited success. I think you'd have much greater success if a well-known distro put out a want-ad saying "Now hiring font specialist for 6 month to 1 year contract project."
If your distro looks much more readable than the others, it gives users one more reason to install your "flavor" of Linux, and to possibly buy support for it and purchase commercial copies of it in the future.
This whole thing reminds me of a rather parallel situation that goes on all the time in the musical instrument sales business.
A small manufacturer develops a great new product, and starts working on building a customer-base for it.
Along comes a music "superstore" such as Guitar Center or Mars. They woo the manufacturer, saying "Hey, we absolutely *love* your new product and want to carry it in all of our stores. We'll make you a really sweet deal, paying you X amount each with a guarantee that we'll buy at least 40,000 units up-front, and thousands per month after that!"
Of course, the little manufacturer thinks "Wow, how can I go wrong? This is the break I was looking for!" They proceed to spend large amounts of investment money to ramp up production to meet the needs of the music superstore and everything looks great.
That is - until the contract comes up for renewal. Then the story changes. "Hey pal, we're not really making much money off this product of yours. If you don't start selling them to us for under price Y, we'll just quit carrying it and go with a competitor." All of a sudden, the small manufacturer realizes he's stuck in a permanent marriage with the music superstore, and pretty much on *their* terms.
Yep! I think you just stated the bottom line in this whole discussion. If you're doing something you really enjoy, don't switch.
.com goldrush on top of it.
.com fiasco, because we were so sure I.T. talent was in short supply.
It's interesting how many similar discussions have popped up on Slashdot very recently. "I was in I.T. but am thinking about switching to X."
All this does is confirms what I've believed for a while. I.T. is in pretty sorry shape right now. Not only did we collectively get "egg on our faces" after the overblown Y2K issue turned out to be such a non-event, but then we had the silly
Now, the pendulum has swung, rather violently, the opposite direction. Companies are sitting down and asking where the real value is in all the I.T. dollars they forked out since the late 90's - and the overall economic slowdown just amplifies all their concerns.
The venture capitalists are afraid to take many chances on anything technology/computer related, so the guys with no formal education, but perhaps great ideas/dreams, are getting left out in the cold.
People with good jobs and salaries for the last 5-10 years are now getting laid off in record numbers. Since the 9/11 incident, background checks have gotten much tougher too. Some of these people can't even get re-hired elsewhere in I.T. because they've got a legal incident from their past permanently coded into some "background check database".
On top of all this, we have all those foreign workers we let into the U.S. during the
It's no wonder some people are having second thoughts about their career of choice! I still say, if I.T. is what you live and breathe for - don't give up on it. There are too many PCs in service to believe that your skills aren't needed anymore. Eventually, corporate America will come calling for you. Maybe just work a "dead end" job to keep the bills paid until times get a little better....
Personally, I've always suspected that most studies proving what seems incredibly obvious are created primarily to secure some government funding. Government grants are issued for all sorts of research, as long as it meets certain guidelines. If, say, the federal government has some tax dollars allocated for studies related to the improvement of farming - then you might qualify by offering to research whether or not crops taste better when harvested by hand or by machine. (You'd probably also conclude, after "much research", that they taste pretty much the same whether hand or machine picked. You'd also have thousands of dollars to buy yourself that new car or PC or whatever with, disguising it all as tools needed for said research.)
Right! I just picked up the latest issue of the free trade rag, "Bio I.T. World" and in it was an article about a scientist studying a genetic trait found in flies. Apparently, some of them have a tendency to fly low, while others prefer to fly up high, when they're let loose in a fixed maze-type environment.
The reason this had any relevance and interest is because the researcher was able to isolate a set of 3 genes that work together to determine this trait in the fly.
Basically, they hoped that the methods used to isolate the gene group responsible would eventually be usable on humans. They, of course, pointed out that it's far easier to accomplish a task of this type with a fly because the genetic code is relatively simple, and all of it is even available on an Internet web site. (I don't recall the URL, but it's published in the article.)
There's obviously been quite a stumbling block in deciphering most human traits for this very reason.... You can't tell much with a single gene.
Nah, I hear you. I'm just not sure you picked the best message to reply to. I can totally respect what that author was saying. Basically, "Hey, I'm a techie. I'll go back to it again. Right now, I'm just experimenting, trying something completely different that can help me develop people skills I can use in the future as a techie."
.5% to 1% return. (It seems like we average 1 or 2 new customers for every 200 flyers I hand out.) Considering we have no other real expenses, other than the cleaning supplies and gas to drive around - this business is already at the break-even point, and should be profitable by next week.
I've always worked in I.T. in one form or another. I live and breathe this stuff. It's not just a job for me. Every day when I came home from work, I got on the computer within an hour or two - no matter how much PC stuff I dealt with all day long at work.
Still, I'm starting to entertain thoughts of doing something different myself. I've been out of work since May, and I'm just about out of money. Not sure how I'll make my car payment this month. My wife is trying to start a work-from-home business doing housekeeping, and I've been handling the advertising portion for her. (Handing out flyers, mostly.)
Already, she's getting some business. (Probably a steady 3 or 4 homes to clean each week.) It's typcially about a
I really feel that if this was me handing out those same flyers to drum up PC on-site service/consulting work, I'd be getting nowhere. Certainly, not this quickly. When you're in hard economic times, it makes sense to pursue work in more concrete areas. I think that's what we're seeing now. People generally have less money to "play with", so they're spending on more necessary things. If you, for example, want to repair cars or do home handyman type work - you'll be real successful right now. By the same token, people always have a desire to keep their dwelling clean. If they earn good money, it makes more economic sense for them pay someone else to do their cleaning, so they can spend that time earning more at their own specialty.
Actually, I read a big article on the science of exhaust systems. I think it may have been in Popular Mechanics magazine, less than a year ago.
Anyway - I think the performance exhaust market does have a need for people who can tune an exhaust so it gives a specific type of "tone" while keeping maximum performance. There's much more involved in getting this right than you'd think.
I agree that people don't usually look for "quiet" as the preferred characteristic of a replacement muffler -- but it really depends on the car, and what you're selling.
EG. Greddy made quite a bundle selling their "Power Extreme" cat-back exhaust systems for the 1993-98 Toyota Supras. They're touted as being among the quietest exhausts on the market for this car, but also hailed for their good performance improvements and physical design. (Unlike 90% of the aftermarket exhausts for the Supra, the Greddy PE was designed to use all of the factory mounting points. Some people really like knowing the new exhaust fits exactly where the original did, with no unused/exposed hangers.) Nonetheless, the Greddy PE has a lot of questionable build-quality issues. (They tend to rust out prematurely, despite supposedly being an all-stainless steel exhaust.)
I think a similar case can likely be made for aftermarket exhausts for upscale German cars. No, the average teen "boy racer" with his Honda CRX covered in stickers just wants something LOUD -- but there are more sophisiticated car owners into performance, too.
Pfft... Sorry I'm so cynical right now, but as someone on the sysadmin/hardware tech. side of things, I'm finding it extremely difficult to find a new job.
Meanwhile, my daily job searches and "search bots" on Monster.com, hotjobs.com, stlouisatwork.com (I live in St. Louis, Missouri), brainbuzz.com, and other such job search sites only bring me hits on jobs requiring software developers.
For every one job asking for a system administrator or support specialist, I find 20 or 30 that want application developers, web developers, Java or C++ programmers, or other similar jobs which I can't perform.
I get the distinct impression that software developers are complaining mostly because they aren't seeing the salaries they'd like... not because the jobs aren't out there.
I started out with a first-generation Philips DVD+RW drive. Totally worthless "standard"... Returned it promptly and bought a Pioneer A03.
I'm somewhat satisfied with the A03 drive (DVD-R), and it looks like the A04 is only incrementally improved. (EG. No reason to spend more money upgrading from A03 to A04.)
I'm quickly starting to see a real problem with all of these current writable DVD standards though. They only support single-sided discs at 4.x gigs.
No matter how illegal it is, one thing in the backs of the minds of quite a few consumer DVD burner purchasers is the ability to make copies of DVD movies. Well over half the time, a movie is too long to fit on a single DVD-R or DVD+R disc, since the commercial DVD is double-sided and holds over 8GB.
It's a major pain to extract everything off the commercial DVD and then go through all the procedures necessary to rip and re-encode the audio streams so you can break it into 2 pieces to burn to 2 seperate single-sided DVD discs. (Not to mention, this makes it cost twice as much to copy the movie, so you might not even want to bother.)
This is probably going to be the #1 (unspoken) reason why a new standard holding 8+ GB per DVD writable disc has the real hope of becoming an official "standard".
I really don't know, but I can say that I never experienced lots of tech-support happiness with Apple.
A while back, I got one of those Apple Quicktake digital cameras. It quit taking pictures... just completely died. I called Apple, trying to find out repair costs and where to take it. That was like pulling teeth! Nobody at Apple seemed to know what to do with the Quicktake. They kept trying to forward me to people in the "Apple imaging dept.", claiming they "believed that was the area that supported those devices". The guys in imaging couldn't help either, though. They said the cameras were really made by Kodak for Apple, and being a non-native Apple product - they had little to offer in the way of assistance for them. Someone gave me a number to Kodak, who in turn, refused to support the Quicktake - and sent me back to Apple.
I finally just went to a local photo store/Apple dealer, thinking that was the ideal place to take the thing. No help there either! They said they never sold the Quicktake at their store, and had no information on it. I finally gave up and threw the thing away!
No, initially, you were probably correct. But now we're entering the era where the vast majority of new computers sold are not being sold as "first systems". The customers they're getting now are mostly repeat customers, back for a second or third PC.
The average person shops primarily based on price, but also, based on past experiences. (EG. A friend of my mom's just decided to buy herself a new PC. She had an old Compaq she was very pleased with. I asked her why she liked it so well. All she talked about is the way their tech. support people always gave her assistance when she had problems using it.) She wanted a notebook this time around, and wanted to buy it locally. I pointed her towards a Toshiba, which she happily bought only after asking me if they had a toll-free number for support, if they offered a reasonably priced extended warranty, and if they were generally good about phone support.
(I knew Compaq has gone downhill on tech. support over the years - and didn't want to see her grab a Compaq notebook, only to be disappointed.)
Yeah, my (rather limited) experience with Gateway is that their phone support reps are very friendly and try their best to be polite and helpful. Unfortunately, this doesn't always translate into problem resolution - since technical know-how comes into play.
EG. We bought a number of their slim desktop systems a few years ago at my work. (It was a trial thing, to see how Gateway stacked up compared to other vendors like Dell we always used in the past.) The systems came pre-loaded with Windows NT 4.0, as we requested. Unfortunately, they had issues booting to a black screen and freezing up when powered-on. Gateway's phone support tried and tried to help, but they just didn't know much about NT, and even less about why it might have issues on that particular system. I was finally directed to take a sample system in to the local Gateway store and let their technician analyze it. This turned into a big fiasco. They swapped out all sorts of irrelevant parts (hard drive, memory, etc.). After 5 trips back there, someone finally figured out it needed a BIOS update to a brand new revision Gateway just released. Problem solved, but this should never have happened in the first place. This was a system they advertised as being "NT ready" before we ordered it.
Thanks for a teriffic reply! Saved me a lot of trouble writing pretty much the same things.
Just for the record though, I've purchased several DVD players in the last few years, and maybe 15 or so DVD movies. I usually just borrow or rent them.
While it's very disturbing and unfortunate that the motion picture industry has decided to make all these efforts to restrict what we can/can't legally do with a DVD, I don't think that means I'm being a hypocrite for continuing to buy the products while complaining.
I think the technology itself is sound, and stands on its own merits. Simply saying "I don't like the FBI warnings or the trailers, so I'm going to refuse to ever buy a DVD player or disc!" only helps kill off a perfectly good technology. (Does Hollywood really know that people aren't buying DVD because they're upset about those restrictions and trailers/warnings? I suspect, instead, they'd simply conclude that DVD technology wasn't offering enough value for consumers to keep purchasing the format. That would leave us with less ability to buy/rent/view movies at home in higher-resolutions.)
It seems better to me to continue to buy the products we like and want to use. Then, pinpoint the issues we have with them and complain, complain, complain! It may or may not fall on deaf ears, but at least they can't say they never understood the problem.
See, I don't agree though.
I understand exactly what you're saying, but I feel it's the responsibility and job of the press to interview the appropriate people for the piece they're trying to put together.
If a member of the news media approached me and started asking me for some information about my job, I'd assume they had some sort of valid reason to choose me for the interview, as opposed to upper-level management.
I'd also expect (and even demand) that in the interest of good journalism, they'd properly state my position within the company I worked for. (EG. If they quote me, they don't have to necessarily use my name - but they should at least explain that "One of the employees was quoted as saying....", instead of making it look like I was a mouthpiece for the C.E.O.)
Nobody being interviewed really has the ability to know, in advance, how their interview will be used. All you get is a really rough outline of the type of piece being published or aired. Therefore, you always place a certain level of trust in the reporter or interviewer to use your comments properly/accurately.
If this trust breaks down, people quit volunteering to be interviewed.
I have a strong feeling that even the wealthy won't be able to sway government into allowing them to preserve their wealth after they're cryogenically frozen, *unless* they successfully revive at least one person first.
Since they freely admit they're not technologically able to accomplish that right now, there's no reason to legally consider the frozen participants as anything other than "dead".
I realize this is getting off-topic, but does your friend happen to know any possible causes of her ALS? (By this, I mean, is it possible it was hereditary - or is it pretty much a mystery?)
I just ask because I had an uncle that died of ALS, a number of years ago. His condition deteriorated very rapidly, unfortunately. He started off complaining of some numbing in his arms and legs. Before long, he was having trouble walking and struggled to drive. His work tried to offer some assistance, but it was only a matter of months before he couldn't even get out of bed - and finally, he simply stopped breathing.
There was no history of ALS or anything similar in his family. The only suspicious factor is that he worked as a chemist at DuPont. There's no telling what he might have come into contact with that could have triggered the condition....
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong - but it doesn't change the fact that advancing PC graphics and sound will force console makers to update their units more quickly than in the past.
Don't forget, X-Box is made by Microsoft - a name you *may* be familiar with as having more to do with PCs than console games. X-Box is based on PC technology. It's pretty easy for them to update it and re-release it every year or so, if they like. Practically a no-brainer, R&D wise.
Also, the demographic of people most into playing console games is also attending high school or college. Nowdays, a PC is pretty much a requirement for schooling. Therefore, I don't think you have so much an issue of people saying "Gee, do I fork out all the money for a PC to play games, or do I just use this $400 console with my TV?" as you have "Do I spend the $400 on upgrading my PC I got for school, or do I get the console?"
If you're so computer illiterate that you can't install a new CD-ROM based game on a PC, then fine - you're a good candidate for a game console. Does that mean you absolutely won't replace it if better, newer ones come out quicker than once every 4 or 5 years?
Umm.... wait a minute here. You might think the guy comes across as having a "bad attitude" - but I think there's a very legitimate complaint at the heart of his story.
Why in the world would a company discriminate between which phone support people could and couldn't play with toys?
It sounds to me like management there took the piss-poor attitude that "Level 1 workers are peons who can't be trusted to even be responsible with a Nerf gun toy." If that's so, then one must ask why they were trusted to be the first line of defense when people call in with computer problems?
By the same token, why did they let 2nd. level phone support play around so much? Granted, your first level people take all the calls, and only forward selected ones up the chain - so they'll tend to appear more busy. Still, good managers will hire the correct number of employees at each level so everyone stays more or less equally busy.