I strongly disagree. Ideas are the seeds that spark the flames of product development. Without a good, original idea - you have nothing.
Also, I challenge your assertion that "everyone has an idea for a great game, TV show or book".
Do they really? I don't! Seriously, if I came up with a good idea for one of these things, I'd be a fool not to pursue it. The fact is, most things have been done already. Look at the new game shows on television. One person comes up with a good concept, and then you have 20 copycat shows for the next 5 years until everyone's completely tired of it. If it's so easy to come up with original ideas for these things, why can't anyone do it who works in that industry?
They said in the.PDF document that PalmOS 5 will support "multiples of 160x160 resolution screens". Sounds to me like it will scale up to any size display a manufacturer wants to use, assuming it is a multiple of 160x160.
As for what Palm wants to be, I think they're aiming pretty squarely at being your provider of a hand-held device that offers all the tools you really need, and none of the frills and fancy stuff that you don't.
The problem is, the general public always gets suckered in by the frills. (Palm already made a big concession to this audience when they released a color Palm device.) Ultimately, I think Palm will lose out because they believe in "keeping it simple". Their customers want full-blown PCs, shrunk down to pocket-size. Palm keeps telling them "No, you don't want that at all! You want a device with good connectivity, that complements your PC back at home/work."
As long as you keep the environment simple enough, who really cares about "32-bit addressing" and "memory protection"? A Palm device is intended to be a "temporary holding place for the information contained primarily in your PC"! If it crashes, it shouldn't be a big issue. If you're using it properly, you hotsync it often with the PC - and the most you should lose is a note or two entered remotely, before you had a chance to return to said PC.
I made some other comments about Sony and quality just recently, in another Slashdot thread -- but I'll say it again here.
Sony makes so many different electronics products, it's really hard to avoid them completely. They have a few poor products out there (their portable CD Discman players come immediately to mind), but at any given time, they also make some really good stuff. Every review I've seen rates their camcorders as the best value on the market. (Canon usually comes in a close second.) The rule of thumb for their car audio has been "only buy the ES stuff, or else it'll be junk". 90% of the people complaining about problems with a Sony car stereo went with a cheaper (not ES designated) model. I have a pair of Sony home theater speakers I really like. I listened to quite a few, and these were the ones I liked the sound of best (within my budget, anyway).
Their warranties are way too short, and apparently, not well honored anyway. That is a downside -- but I'd be a fool to boycott everything Sony over it. I've got my money's worth out of my PS2 so far, and had no issues. If it does break and they won't fix it free, oh well. I can deal with it. It wasn't a multi-thousand dollar purchase or anything.
I never said *all* of their stuff is good quality. In fact, I too was burned on a Sony Discman walkman. I paid about $150 for one of their "car" Discman's. Stupid thing skipped worse than any other CD player I've ever owned! The "anti skip" feature seemed to only delay skips by whatever the length of its memory buffer was. (You'd hit a bump and not hear a skip, but 2.5 seconds later, there goes the skip that it buffered earlier!)
I think the jury's still out on the quality of the Playstation. I hear all sorts of horror stories about broken PS2's, but when I see how they're treated - it all starts to make sense. People let the cooling fans gets all clogged up with cat/dog hair and dust, and then wonder why it died. (These are often the same people who leave their PS2 running all the time, instead of only powering it on when they want to play it. Of course the CD-ROM drive is going to wear out spinning a disc for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!) The bottom line for any Playstation is, the thing only cost $200 or so, tops, to begin with. Just how much build quality do you expect? I think they're reasonably built for what you pay for them. Apparently, so do a *lot* of other people, judging by the number of sales.
It seems we think alike!
In fact, I just bought a Kyocera smartphone. Let me tell you, if you get one - you'll be very happy with it!
First and foremost should always be the fact that these things are telephones. I can't stand when they do things like drawing the keypad on a flat screen (can't dial without looking at it first)!
But I agree, an integrated GPS would be icing on the cellphone cake. I suspect the only limiting factor is battery life. I've owned several portable GPS devices, and all of them ate through AA batteries in only a few hours of operation.
If you have to power a phone in standby + some actual talk time, and still run a GPS in the background, today's small batteries just aren't going to last.
You can't really just power on a GPS "as needed" either. They take as long as 10 minutes to calibrate themselves to satellites on initial power-up. You can cut this time down to maybe 2-3 minutes by giving it a rough idea of your current location, so it knows which satellites to listen for; but that's still pretty inconvenient. If you're in front of a house and want it to fetch the number, it'll suck to key in your city and state from a list, and then wait 3 minutes for the GPS to sync.
Ehh... as a Verizon customer myself (for a cellphone only, mind you), I have to say they seem to be the lesser of the evils that are cellphone providers.
Oh sure, I've had a lot of customer service screw-ups with them. (Most recently, I tried to request a copy of my packing slip or receipt for a new phone they shipped me, so I could send it in for a mail-in rebate. It took 3 cust. service reps before someone had a clue - and even then, she took 3 days to figure out how to get that sent out to me before calling me back.)
These days, this kind of thing will happen with any large company though. When it comes down to it, Verizon provides better coverage and reception than most of the competition. Their pricing plan fit my needs more closely than most of the others, too. I've been using them for close to 4 years straight - and still think they're the best choice for my purposes.
I'd agree with much of what you said, but I think the Dell representative you spoke with was misinformed.
Our company has been using Dell PCs (Optiplex models) for over 6 years now - and we often bought them with Windows '95/'98 on them, only to immediately wipe the hard drive and install a "Ghost" drive image of a Windows NT 4.0 installation on them instead. That's never once affected our warranty on the hardware.
I can see where Dell might not provide software/OS assistance if you change it from the pre-installed OS, but the warranty on the system itself is still good no matter what you install on it.
The main reason this "suspend" feature works relatively well for a laptop is because the hardware is a "given". The laptop has to have a certain video card and motherboard chipset, specific type of hard drive, floppy, CD-ROM and sound device. (In fact, when laptops fail to come back up properly from a suspend, it's almost always the one "add-on" card people have in laptops, the PCMCIA network adapter, that causes the problem.)
3Com PCMCIA cards are about the only ones I've used that allow the laptop to power them down and back up again, and resume network activity without a complete machine reboot.
Actually, the headhunter alternative isn't always so great. I personally know of several respectable, smaller, companies that avoid hiring people who went through a headhunter/recruiter whenever possible. They don't like paying all the additional fees they get hit with upon hiring the candidate. Some of these places may, in fact, prefer contacting you directly after you post a resume on Monster or another job-search site.
Also, in my past experiences, most headhunters are out for themselves, and care very little about your long-term success in a new position. Sure, they'll call all the time and try to prep you for a new job - but if they know the place has high turnover or generates a lot of complaints, they'll hide that from you.
Sony has *always* been big on proprietary devices! What they're doing now with PS2 is pretty consistent with what they've always done.
Look at their digital cameras, for example. While everyone else in the market standardized on one of two memory cards, Sony had to be different and require their own "Sony memory stick" instead.
When it comes to camcorders, they do things differently too. Everyone else sells DV capable camcorders that use "DV tape". Not Sony. Instead, they sell DV camcorders using Hi8 tape, and write to it in a proprietary fashion to achieve the same results. (Granted, they allow backwards compatibility *playing* normal Hi8 tape, so you don't feel too non-standard.)
People who used to sell home and car audio can attest to their tactics too. Quite often, Sony will go out of their way to use a proprietary connector or cable to attempt to lock you into using only Sony authorized accessories.
They get away with all of this for one big reason; the stuff is good quality. When it comes down to it, Sony sells all manner of electronics and does a damn good job of it. If you try to boycott Sony, you only shoot yourself in the foot at some point. Often-times, they have the best product for a particular item and price-point.
Right - I tend to agree. What purpose does a ban of about 1 1/2 months on new Inet cafes really serve, in the overall picture? They've got to have another motive, and the motive is most likely to A) raise awareness that these places are breeding violence, and B) to make it easier to place a permanent ban. (It's always easier to suggest the people extend an existing rule, by showing some slanted evidence that the temp. rule did some measure of good. It looks worse to slap down an outright ban....)
Actually, I find it hard to believe violent gangs are really so attracted to coffee and computer games/geeks. In reality, they'll just move along to some other random facility that lets minors in....
I don't wonder at all. For one thing, eBay is the equivalent of a virtual world-wide garage sale/discount goods expo. It's exactly the type of shopping people want to do most when the economy is depressed.
(If you're making lots of cash, you don't want to settle for someone's used stuff. When money is tight or future money is unsure, those cheaper used items start to look like real good options.)
As for other sites like Amazon not benefiting like eBay is - that's really a no-brainer too.
eBay got into the game "early and often". They attained a critical mass of regular buyers and sellers. For a while, I used both eBay and Amazon auctions - but I gave up on Amazon auctions as they just weren't worth my listing fees anymore. (For every 1 item I'd successfully sell there, I'd sell 3 or 4 on eBay - and usually for higher bids.) You have to go where the "eyeballs" are when you want to sell. That starts a chain reaction, since the buyers want to go where the most items are to bid on.
Amazon never really pushed hard enough to win back the users migrating to eBay auctions. I think they had (maybe still have?) a chance to do it because they're another well-recognized Internet name. They'd need to take a loss for a while though, like offer all listings free for 9 months or so, and advertise it in magazines, etc.
Then, they'd also have to ensure they offered every single feature eBay does (dutch auctions, non-paying bidder alerts, easy online payment system, etc. etc.) if they want to keep those people.
Well, yeah - I basically agree with you.
I've been into computers long before the Internet became popular, and I've invested far too much time and effort in this field to just give up on it because of a digital version of the California gold rush.
As long as those of us truly interested in and dedicated to I.T. stick out these "knee-jerk reaction" times, I think things will get back on track sooner, rather than later.
It's the big investors who got burned on the dot-com fiasco, so of course they're the ones out there now proclaiming that "The new economy didn't exist!" and "The next 10 years of the stock market will be driven by industry, brick-and-mortar stores, and traditional service providers." In their minds, it's the only outcome they're comfortable seeing.
The fact is, the Internet is growing up. We're quickly moving from the "wild, wild west" of Cyberspace to a more governed and commercialized space, where the "real world" reaches out and hangs a virtual hat. This also means that after the fallout from the craziness ends, we probably won't see fast growth like we used to see. Instead, we'll see small profits here and there, and a lot of failed commercial sites - paralleling the real business world.
Although I used to criticize Amazon.com for "dabbling" too much (seemed like Bezos wanted to sell everything under the sun, until of course, a particular item didn't pan out so well for him), I think his persistence at selling his core line of products (books and media) is starting to pan out.
Yeah, I'm starting to see it as a situation where Palm's hardware served the purpose of getting a "critical mass" of users interested in the whole PDA concept, and sold on PalmOS as a good OS for them to run. But now, the very idea of a handheld Palm PDA is becoming dated, because it makes much more sense to incorporate it into another device.
If Palm was really smart about their hardware, they'd be selling Palm cellphones, instead of letting Kyocera do it for them with the QPC-6035 (and coming soon, color display version 6055).
I sold my Palm VIIx recently so I could switch to one of these combo devices, and am I ever glad I did! Instead of paying all the monthly charges for Palm.net and being limited to only running Palm.PQA applications and email - I can run anything that uses the standard TCP/IP stack. They dial up and establish a standard PPP connection via an internal modem built into the digital phone! Not only that, but I was already carrying around a cellphone everywhere. It gets annoying to have to remember that and a Palmpilot, and then to juggle the two of them if you want to call someone that's in your Palm's phonebook.
I think one of the big trends, in this economy, is to discount only through mail-in rebates. That way, the store gets the full price for the product they sell, and the manufacturer can defer taking the hit of selling at discount. (Think of all the extra interest they earn on their money if they stall sending out all those rebate checks, instead of selling at a loss to the stores, up-front.)
Furthermore, it seems to be popular to "hide" the rebate notices and forms, so only the truly savvy shopper can take advantage of them. I just bought an Epson Stylus Photo printer, only to discover there was a $50 mail-in rebate on it when I looked around on Epson's web site. The Officemax store I bought the printer at had no knowledge of the rebate. Then, I got a new cellphone last week, and found out from a message forum on the Inet that Kyocera was doing a $50 rebate on it, too. Unfortunately, the only known place to get this rebate form was in the back of a particular issue of a mobile computing magazine! I had to run to CompUSA and buy the magazine to get the form.
I guess my point is this: Bargains are still out there, expecially on computers and electronics. It's just that now, you have to use the net as more of a research tool to find out where and how to get the discounts. It's not so much that a web-based store will sell you something dirt cheap, outright.
I can think of a couple good examples right now, related directly to photography equipment, where you're not quite correct.
1. I've been researching a good DV capable camcorder to purchase. (Got a kid on the way, and I think it makes sense to get something to film the baby.) I limited myself to camcorders in the "under $1000" range, because I simply can't afford more than that. Basically, I concluded that Sony makes some of the best DV camcorders, but current models are $1200+ each. The PRC-730 happens to be a last year's model that's in my price range (when you can find one), and meets all of my qualifications. I keep seeing them on eBay with starting bids in the $400 range, but bid to around $700-800 by the close of the auction. I thought maybe eBayers were just over-paying for this thing, until I checked pricewatch.com and called around. The camera stores advertising clearance pricing on this camcorder want around $690-790 which sounds better *until* you find out they're typically selling the Japanese version. It's "grey market" in the U.S. so has no warranty, and the manuals are in Japanese! All of them I've seen on eBay have been the real U.S. version with 1 year factory warranty, so score one for eBay being superior!
2. I have a Sony Mavica FD-81 digital camera I'm ready to sell. It's in like-new condition with real light use. Paid about $700 for it when it was new, only a year or so ago. I can see letting it go for about half what I paid, new. On eBay, nobody's bidding over $130 or so for these things right now! What the h*ll?? I'd be really pissed if someone bought my FD-81 for less than the cheapest of the clearance megapixel cameras sells for at the store! For under $200, I'd rather just hang onto it. I sure don't see these "dumb eBay bidders" bidding 20% over retail on the FD-81!
Yeah, and what really gets me is the difficulty in implementing basic levels of security in the wireless devices, even when it's "supported" in their firmware!
EG. I have a Dell-branded residential gateway over here. It's really a Lucent RG-1000 though.
Despite reading for quite a while now that "Lucent supports the ability to restrict wireless access based on MAC address of the wireless NIC attempting to connect to it." - I couldn't ever find this option in any of my setup software.
Knowing that Dell might not have the best setup software around, I went to Lucent's site and downloaded their latest firmware and setup program. Got the firmware updated ok, but nope - still no MAC address options anywhere. Waited a few months, and saw yet another new firmware update. Tried again, but nope - still no MAC option.
Finally, I grabbed a freeware utility called "FreeBase" for Windows, which said it could program all Lucent wireless gateways. At last, there was the option to add MAC addresses!
Judging by all the searching and experimenting I had to do to add a security option to my own gateway at home, it's no wonder the airports are having problems.
"a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule."
By the mere fact that this animated porn is *animated* and taking ideas from the Star Wars movies, for use in a completely different context - I'd say that it qualifies autoamtically!
As it was already pointed out, "comic effect" doesn't necessarily mean you personally find it humorous. It only means that it's potentially humorous to some people.
In almost every case I can think of where a work is imitated by another work, with the storyline changed enough that it makes the viewer look at what's taking place in a different light - it's done at least partially for comic effect. (Might not be hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny, but at least it makes people snicker to themselves, because they're smart enough to understand where the original came from and what's being done to it.)
Nah - I don't see it quite that way in this case.
Yes, they screwed up in the sense that they tried pressing charges far in excess of what was sensible for the situation. (Prison time makes no sense at all for an offense of this sort.)
Still, I think it makes sense to give the guy some community service and perhaps a small fine (which I'll leave up to others to argue the dollar amount on). It's not a case of the guy being completely innocent. The big dispute was over the severity of the punishment.
It sounds to me like it turned out pretty much how it should have turned out. If he went to trial, I disagree with his lawyer that he'd be found innocent. It's one thing to load software on company machines because you believe it will aid in doing your job. It's another to load distributed network clients that secretly run in the background, merely to try to win online contests for providing the most processor time or hours of computing.....
First of all, HP is far from being free of the proprietary noose. I've dealt with a number of people who bought HP Pavillions, only to have all sorts of compatibility problems when they tried to add an upgraded video board and disable on-board video. In fact, some models barely allow *any* expansion cards at all. You have to take what you get with the computer, and that's about it.
IMO, any PC that can't be easily expanded with upgrade cards is defective and worthless. The PC as "endlessly upgradable and reconfigurable white box" is one of the main reasons we still deal with so many PC architecture headaches today (IRQ conflicts, I/O addresses, DMA channels). If you're going to skip the compatibility with 3rd. party hardware, why even use the Intel platform anymore? Otherwise, you have all the bad without any of the good.
Actually, I think you bring up an interesting point. The industry got driven away from "generic clone" PCs due to the big vendors getting unbeatable pricing on quantity assembly.
Now, they're suffering from the very strategy that originally let them take over the market.
I wouldn't mind at all if all these big players decided mass-marketed PCs were worthless and got back out of the business. Then, the little guys could get back in and build hand-assembled PCs again. The mass-marketed "name brand" PC has really turned it into a commodity purchase, just like an appliance or box of office supplies. I don't think that turned out to be such a good thing for anyone who really likes computers.
It served the (quite useful) purpose of putting PCs in the hands of "average Joes" and offices everywhere. Now, this has been accomplished to the point of market saturation, and it's time to go back to hand-assembled custom PCs, made to order, for the people who care enough to have better quality computers.
Yeah, I agree, except they're still unequaled for a plain old high-volume black and white laser printer. (Forget HP for color lasers though! Ick!)
The rest of their printing and imaging division could vaporize tomorrow, and the world would be better off for it. They haven't made a solid, quality scanner since the days of the ScanJet 3 and 4 series, and all the HP inkjet printers use print head technology that's 3 generations old.
Doesn't HP still have a pretty healthy medical products division that they haven't even mentioned?
I'm not sure if they're still building dedicated hardware for hospitals or not, but I know I've seen quite a few systems in hospitals and doctor's offices with HP on them.
I tend to agree with you, except for one thing.
The Linux developer community has been promising the elimination of the need to recompile a custom kernel for quite a while now - and I don't think it'll ever really happen.
I say this primarily because Linux keeps getting used for niche purposes (think dedicated hardware like firewalls or routers, MP3 players in cars, etc.). In these situations, people need an OS that can be trimmed down to the bare essentials.
It's cleaner to compile a small kernel that has exactly what's needed in it. Otherwise, you have to have all the seperate little module files stored someplace on the device - and the storage device may be severely restrictive as to how much and how many files can be put on it.
Not only that, but compiling all the modules seems to be the slowest part of a recompile process. If I know my kernel is only going to work with specific hardware, in an appliance type setting, I'd rather skip the whole step of compiling modules.
Hmmm... Thanks for posting that. That's really the first time I've heard all of that negative info about the unit, and it makes me glad I didn't buy one after all.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't have paid $1600 for one even when it first came out. Seems ridiculous to me to pay over $500 or so for any car audio device, honestly. I guess some people spend a *lot* of time in the car, or just earn a lot more than I do -- but I can't cost-justify it for the hour or so per day I spend in my car, max.
My thinking was this: Auto PC's (even new in the box) go for around $400-500 on eBay all the time, and that's including the optional GPS device and map CDs. Therefore, you get an in-car GPS system, a CD player stereo, and an MP3 player, all for around $450. People are spending more than that for Kenwood MP3 CD car stereos, and not getting any GPS functionality with those.
The ability to read the car's diagnostic info is another "free bonus" for those of us (like me) who own foreign cars.
Now, if you're saying the tuner and CD player itself are poor quality (sound bad) - then *that's* a really good reason to skip one of these things. That, after all, is the *primary* function of a car stereo. Some of the other stuff, like lack of cellphone support, I couldn't care less about. None of my previous car stereos interfaced with my cellphones, and it's never been an issue for me. (Wow - I hit one "mute" button to silence the thing if my phone rings... I can handle it.)
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I strongly disagree. Ideas are the seeds that spark the flames of product development. Without a good, original idea - you have nothing.
Also, I challenge your assertion that "everyone has an idea for a great game, TV show or book".
Do they really? I don't! Seriously, if I came up with a good idea for one of these things, I'd be a fool not to pursue it. The fact is, most things have been done already. Look at the new game shows on television. One person comes up with a good concept, and then you have 20 copycat shows for the next 5 years until everyone's completely tired of it. If it's so easy to come up with original ideas for these things, why can't anyone do it who works in that industry?
They said in the .PDF document that PalmOS 5 will support "multiples of 160x160 resolution screens". Sounds to me like it will scale up to any size display a manufacturer wants to use, assuming it is a multiple of 160x160.
As for what Palm wants to be, I think they're aiming pretty squarely at being your provider of a hand-held device that offers all the tools you really need, and none of the frills and fancy stuff that you don't.
The problem is, the general public always gets suckered in by the frills. (Palm already made a big concession to this audience when they released a color Palm device.) Ultimately, I think Palm will lose out because they believe in "keeping it simple". Their customers want full-blown PCs, shrunk down to pocket-size. Palm keeps telling them "No, you don't want that at all! You want a device with good connectivity, that complements your PC back at home/work."
As long as you keep the environment simple enough, who really cares about "32-bit addressing" and "memory protection"? A Palm device is intended to be a "temporary holding place for the information contained primarily in your PC"! If it crashes, it shouldn't be a big issue. If you're using it properly, you hotsync it often with the PC - and the most you should lose is a note or two entered remotely, before you had a chance to return to said PC.
I made some other comments about Sony and quality just recently, in another Slashdot thread -- but I'll say it again here.
Sony makes so many different electronics products, it's really hard to avoid them completely. They have a few poor products out there (their portable CD Discman players come immediately to mind), but at any given time, they also make some really good stuff. Every review I've seen rates their camcorders as the best value on the market. (Canon usually comes in a close second.) The rule of thumb for their car audio has been "only buy the ES stuff, or else it'll be junk". 90% of the people complaining about problems with a Sony car stereo went with a cheaper (not ES designated) model. I have a pair of Sony home theater speakers I really like. I listened to quite a few, and these were the ones I liked the sound of best (within my budget, anyway).
Their warranties are way too short, and apparently, not well honored anyway. That is a downside -- but I'd be a fool to boycott everything Sony over it. I've got my money's worth out of my PS2 so far, and had no issues. If it does break and they won't fix it free, oh well. I can deal with it. It wasn't a multi-thousand dollar purchase or anything.
I never said *all* of their stuff is good quality. In fact, I too was burned on a Sony Discman walkman. I paid about $150 for one of their "car" Discman's. Stupid thing skipped worse than any other CD player I've ever owned! The "anti skip" feature seemed to only delay skips by whatever the length of its memory buffer was. (You'd hit a bump and not hear a skip, but 2.5 seconds later, there goes the skip that it buffered earlier!)
I think the jury's still out on the quality of the Playstation. I hear all sorts of horror stories about broken PS2's, but when I see how they're treated - it all starts to make sense. People let the cooling fans gets all clogged up with cat/dog hair and dust, and then wonder why it died. (These are often the same people who leave their PS2 running all the time, instead of only powering it on when they want to play it. Of course the CD-ROM drive is going to wear out spinning a disc for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!) The bottom line for any Playstation is, the thing only cost $200 or so, tops, to begin with. Just how much build quality do you expect? I think they're reasonably built for what you pay for them. Apparently, so do a *lot* of other people, judging by the number of sales.
It seems we think alike!
In fact, I just bought a Kyocera smartphone. Let me tell you, if you get one - you'll be very happy with it!
First and foremost should always be the fact that these things are telephones. I can't stand when they do things like drawing the keypad on a flat screen (can't dial without looking at it first)!
But I agree, an integrated GPS would be icing on the cellphone cake. I suspect the only limiting factor is battery life. I've owned several portable GPS devices, and all of them ate through AA batteries in only a few hours of operation.
If you have to power a phone in standby + some actual talk time, and still run a GPS in the background, today's small batteries just aren't going to last.
You can't really just power on a GPS "as needed" either. They take as long as 10 minutes to calibrate themselves to satellites on initial power-up. You can cut this time down to maybe 2-3 minutes by giving it a rough idea of your current location, so it knows which satellites to listen for; but that's still pretty inconvenient. If you're in front of a house and want it to fetch the number, it'll suck to key in your city and state from a list, and then wait 3 minutes for the GPS to sync.
Ehh... as a Verizon customer myself (for a cellphone only, mind you), I have to say they seem to be the lesser of the evils that are cellphone providers.
Oh sure, I've had a lot of customer service screw-ups with them. (Most recently, I tried to request a copy of my packing slip or receipt for a new phone they shipped me, so I could send it in for a mail-in rebate. It took 3 cust. service reps before someone had a clue - and even then, she took 3 days to figure out how to get that sent out to me before calling me back.)
These days, this kind of thing will happen with any large company though. When it comes down to it, Verizon provides better coverage and reception than most of the competition. Their pricing plan fit my needs more closely than most of the others, too. I've been using them for close to 4 years straight - and still think they're the best choice for my purposes.
I'd agree with much of what you said, but I think the Dell representative you spoke with was misinformed.
Our company has been using Dell PCs (Optiplex models) for over 6 years now - and we often bought them with Windows '95/'98 on them, only to immediately wipe the hard drive and install a "Ghost" drive image of a Windows NT 4.0 installation on them instead. That's never once affected our warranty on the hardware.
I can see where Dell might not provide software/OS assistance if you change it from the pre-installed OS, but the warranty on the system itself is still good no matter what you install on it.
The main reason this "suspend" feature works relatively well for a laptop is because the hardware is a "given". The laptop has to have a certain video card and motherboard chipset, specific type of hard drive, floppy, CD-ROM and sound device. (In fact, when laptops fail to come back up properly from a suspend, it's almost always the one "add-on" card people have in laptops, the PCMCIA network adapter, that causes the problem.)
3Com PCMCIA cards are about the only ones I've used that allow the laptop to power them down and back up again, and resume network activity without a complete machine reboot.
Actually, the headhunter alternative isn't always so great. I personally know of several respectable, smaller, companies that avoid hiring people who went through a headhunter/recruiter whenever possible. They don't like paying all the additional fees they get hit with upon hiring the candidate. Some of these places may, in fact, prefer contacting you directly after you post a resume on Monster or another job-search site.
Also, in my past experiences, most headhunters are out for themselves, and care very little about your long-term success in a new position. Sure, they'll call all the time and try to prep you for a new job - but if they know the place has high turnover or generates a lot of complaints, they'll hide that from you.
Sony has *always* been big on proprietary devices! What they're doing now with PS2 is pretty consistent with what they've always done.
Look at their digital cameras, for example. While everyone else in the market standardized on one of two memory cards, Sony had to be different and require their own "Sony memory stick" instead.
When it comes to camcorders, they do things differently too. Everyone else sells DV capable camcorders that use "DV tape". Not Sony. Instead, they sell DV camcorders using Hi8 tape, and write to it in a proprietary fashion to achieve the same results. (Granted, they allow backwards compatibility *playing* normal Hi8 tape, so you don't feel too non-standard.)
People who used to sell home and car audio can attest to their tactics too. Quite often, Sony will go out of their way to use a proprietary connector or cable to attempt to lock you into using only Sony authorized accessories.
They get away with all of this for one big reason; the stuff is good quality. When it comes down to it, Sony sells all manner of electronics and does a damn good job of it. If you try to boycott Sony, you only shoot yourself in the foot at some point. Often-times, they have the best product for a particular item and price-point.
Right - I tend to agree. What purpose does a ban of about 1 1/2 months on new Inet cafes really serve, in the overall picture? They've got to have another motive, and the motive is most likely to A) raise awareness that these places are breeding violence, and B) to make it easier to place a permanent ban. (It's always easier to suggest the people extend an existing rule, by showing some slanted evidence that the temp. rule did some measure of good. It looks worse to slap down an outright ban....)
Actually, I find it hard to believe violent gangs are really so attracted to coffee and computer games/geeks. In reality, they'll just move along to some other random facility that lets minors in....
I don't wonder at all. For one thing, eBay is the equivalent of a virtual world-wide garage sale/discount goods expo. It's exactly the type of shopping people want to do most when the economy is depressed.
(If you're making lots of cash, you don't want to settle for someone's used stuff. When money is tight or future money is unsure, those cheaper used items start to look like real good options.)
As for other sites like Amazon not benefiting like eBay is - that's really a no-brainer too.
eBay got into the game "early and often". They attained a critical mass of regular buyers and sellers. For a while, I used both eBay and Amazon auctions - but I gave up on Amazon auctions as they just weren't worth my listing fees anymore. (For every 1 item I'd successfully sell there, I'd sell 3 or 4 on eBay - and usually for higher bids.) You have to go where the "eyeballs" are when you want to sell. That starts a chain reaction, since the buyers want to go where the most items are to bid on.
Amazon never really pushed hard enough to win back the users migrating to eBay auctions. I think they had (maybe still have?) a chance to do it because they're another well-recognized Internet name. They'd need to take a loss for a while though, like offer all listings free for 9 months or so, and advertise it in magazines, etc.
Then, they'd also have to ensure they offered every single feature eBay does (dutch auctions, non-paying bidder alerts, easy online payment system, etc. etc.) if they want to keep those people.
Well, yeah - I basically agree with you.
I've been into computers long before the Internet became popular, and I've invested far too much time and effort in this field to just give up on it because of a digital version of the California gold rush.
As long as those of us truly interested in and dedicated to I.T. stick out these "knee-jerk reaction" times, I think things will get back on track sooner, rather than later.
It's the big investors who got burned on the dot-com fiasco, so of course they're the ones out there now proclaiming that "The new economy didn't exist!" and "The next 10 years of the stock market will be driven by industry, brick-and-mortar stores, and traditional service providers." In their minds, it's the only outcome they're comfortable seeing.
The fact is, the Internet is growing up. We're quickly moving from the "wild, wild west" of Cyberspace to a more governed and commercialized space, where the "real world" reaches out and hangs a virtual hat. This also means that after the fallout from the craziness ends, we probably won't see fast growth like we used to see. Instead, we'll see small profits here and there, and a lot of failed commercial sites - paralleling the real business world.
Although I used to criticize Amazon.com for "dabbling" too much (seemed like Bezos wanted to sell everything under the sun, until of course, a particular item didn't pan out so well for him), I think his persistence at selling his core line of products (books and media) is starting to pan out.
Yeah, I'm starting to see it as a situation where Palm's hardware served the purpose of getting a "critical mass" of users interested in the whole PDA concept, and sold on PalmOS as a good OS for them to run. But now, the very idea of a handheld Palm PDA is becoming dated, because it makes much more sense to incorporate it into another device.
.PQA applications and email - I can run anything that uses the standard TCP/IP stack. They dial up and establish a standard PPP connection via an internal modem built into the digital phone! Not only that, but I was already carrying around a cellphone everywhere. It gets annoying to have to remember that and a Palmpilot, and then to juggle the two of them if you want to call someone that's in your Palm's phonebook.
If Palm was really smart about their hardware, they'd be selling Palm cellphones, instead of letting Kyocera do it for them with the QPC-6035 (and coming soon, color display version 6055).
I sold my Palm VIIx recently so I could switch to one of these combo devices, and am I ever glad I did! Instead of paying all the monthly charges for Palm.net and being limited to only running Palm
I think one of the big trends, in this economy, is to discount only through mail-in rebates. That way, the store gets the full price for the product they sell, and the manufacturer can defer taking the hit of selling at discount. (Think of all the extra interest they earn on their money if they stall sending out all those rebate checks, instead of selling at a loss to the stores, up-front.)
Furthermore, it seems to be popular to "hide" the rebate notices and forms, so only the truly savvy shopper can take advantage of them. I just bought an Epson Stylus Photo printer, only to discover there was a $50 mail-in rebate on it when I looked around on Epson's web site. The Officemax store I bought the printer at had no knowledge of the rebate. Then, I got a new cellphone last week, and found out from a message forum on the Inet that Kyocera was doing a $50 rebate on it, too. Unfortunately, the only known place to get this rebate form was in the back of a particular issue of a mobile computing magazine! I had to run to CompUSA and buy the magazine to get the form.
I guess my point is this: Bargains are still out there, expecially on computers and electronics. It's just that now, you have to use the net as more of a research tool to find out where and how to get the discounts. It's not so much that a web-based store will sell you something dirt cheap, outright.
I can think of a couple good examples right now, related directly to photography equipment, where you're not quite correct.
1. I've been researching a good DV capable camcorder to purchase. (Got a kid on the way, and I think it makes sense to get something to film the baby.) I limited myself to camcorders in the "under $1000" range, because I simply can't afford more than that. Basically, I concluded that Sony makes some of the best DV camcorders, but current models are $1200+ each. The PRC-730 happens to be a last year's model that's in my price range (when you can find one), and meets all of my qualifications. I keep seeing them on eBay with starting bids in the $400 range, but bid to around $700-800 by the close of the auction. I thought maybe eBayers were just over-paying for this thing, until I checked pricewatch.com and called around. The camera stores advertising clearance pricing on this camcorder want around $690-790 which sounds better *until* you find out they're typically selling the Japanese version. It's "grey market" in the U.S. so has no warranty, and the manuals are in Japanese! All of them I've seen on eBay have been the real U.S. version with 1 year factory warranty, so score one for eBay being superior!
2. I have a Sony Mavica FD-81 digital camera I'm ready to sell. It's in like-new condition with real light use. Paid about $700 for it when it was new, only a year or so ago. I can see letting it go for about half what I paid, new. On eBay, nobody's bidding over $130 or so for these things right now! What the h*ll?? I'd be really pissed if someone bought my FD-81 for less than the cheapest of the clearance megapixel cameras sells for at the store! For under $200, I'd rather just hang onto it. I sure don't see these "dumb eBay bidders" bidding 20% over retail on the FD-81!
Yeah, and what really gets me is the difficulty in implementing basic levels of security in the wireless devices, even when it's "supported" in their firmware!
EG. I have a Dell-branded residential gateway over here. It's really a Lucent RG-1000 though.
Despite reading for quite a while now that "Lucent supports the ability to restrict wireless access based on MAC address of the wireless NIC attempting to connect to it." - I couldn't ever find this option in any of my setup software.
Knowing that Dell might not have the best setup software around, I went to Lucent's site and downloaded their latest firmware and setup program. Got the firmware updated ok, but nope - still no MAC address options anywhere. Waited a few months, and saw yet another new firmware update. Tried again, but nope - still no MAC option.
Finally, I grabbed a freeware utility called "FreeBase" for Windows, which said it could program all Lucent wireless gateways. At last, there was the option to add MAC addresses!
Judging by all the searching and experimenting I had to do to add a security option to my own gateway at home, it's no wonder the airports are having problems.
Let's look at the definition again:
"a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule."
By the mere fact that this animated porn is *animated* and taking ideas from the Star Wars movies, for use in a completely different context - I'd say that it qualifies autoamtically!
As it was already pointed out, "comic effect" doesn't necessarily mean you personally find it humorous. It only means that it's potentially humorous to some people.
In almost every case I can think of where a work is imitated by another work, with the storyline changed enough that it makes the viewer look at what's taking place in a different light - it's done at least partially for comic effect. (Might not be hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny, but at least it makes people snicker to themselves, because they're smart enough to understand where the original came from and what's being done to it.)
Nah - I don't see it quite that way in this case.
Yes, they screwed up in the sense that they tried pressing charges far in excess of what was sensible for the situation. (Prison time makes no sense at all for an offense of this sort.)
Still, I think it makes sense to give the guy some community service and perhaps a small fine (which I'll leave up to others to argue the dollar amount on). It's not a case of the guy being completely innocent. The big dispute was over the severity of the punishment.
It sounds to me like it turned out pretty much how it should have turned out. If he went to trial, I disagree with his lawyer that he'd be found innocent. It's one thing to load software on company machines because you believe it will aid in doing your job. It's another to load distributed network clients that secretly run in the background, merely to try to win online contests for providing the most processor time or hours of computing.....
First of all, HP is far from being free of the proprietary noose. I've dealt with a number of people who bought HP Pavillions, only to have all sorts of compatibility problems when they tried to add an upgraded video board and disable on-board video. In fact, some models barely allow *any* expansion cards at all. You have to take what you get with the computer, and that's about it.
IMO, any PC that can't be easily expanded with upgrade cards is defective and worthless. The PC as "endlessly upgradable and reconfigurable white box" is one of the main reasons we still deal with so many PC architecture headaches today (IRQ conflicts, I/O addresses, DMA channels). If you're going to skip the compatibility with 3rd. party hardware, why even use the Intel platform anymore? Otherwise, you have all the bad without any of the good.
Actually, I think you bring up an interesting point. The industry got driven away from "generic clone" PCs due to the big vendors getting unbeatable pricing on quantity assembly.
Now, they're suffering from the very strategy that originally let them take over the market.
I wouldn't mind at all if all these big players decided mass-marketed PCs were worthless and got back out of the business. Then, the little guys could get back in and build hand-assembled PCs again. The mass-marketed "name brand" PC has really turned it into a commodity purchase, just like an appliance or box of office supplies. I don't think that turned out to be such a good thing for anyone who really likes computers.
It served the (quite useful) purpose of putting PCs in the hands of "average Joes" and offices everywhere. Now, this has been accomplished to the point of market saturation, and it's time to go back to hand-assembled custom PCs, made to order, for the people who care enough to have better quality computers.
Yeah, I agree, except they're still unequaled for a plain old high-volume black and white laser printer. (Forget HP for color lasers though! Ick!)
The rest of their printing and imaging division could vaporize tomorrow, and the world would be better off for it. They haven't made a solid, quality scanner since the days of the ScanJet 3 and 4 series, and all the HP inkjet printers use print head technology that's 3 generations old.
Doesn't HP still have a pretty healthy medical products division that they haven't even mentioned?
I'm not sure if they're still building dedicated hardware for hospitals or not, but I know I've seen quite a few systems in hospitals and doctor's offices with HP on them.
I tend to agree with you, except for one thing.
The Linux developer community has been promising the elimination of the need to recompile a custom kernel for quite a while now - and I don't think it'll ever really happen.
I say this primarily because Linux keeps getting used for niche purposes (think dedicated hardware like firewalls or routers, MP3 players in cars, etc.). In these situations, people need an OS that can be trimmed down to the bare essentials.
It's cleaner to compile a small kernel that has exactly what's needed in it. Otherwise, you have to have all the seperate little module files stored someplace on the device - and the storage device may be severely restrictive as to how much and how many files can be put on it.
Not only that, but compiling all the modules seems to be the slowest part of a recompile process. If I know my kernel is only going to work with specific hardware, in an appliance type setting, I'd rather skip the whole step of compiling modules.
Hmmm... Thanks for posting that. That's really the first time I've heard all of that negative info about the unit, and it makes me glad I didn't buy one after all.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't have paid $1600 for one even when it first came out. Seems ridiculous to me to pay over $500 or so for any car audio device, honestly. I guess some people spend a *lot* of time in the car, or just earn a lot more than I do -- but I can't cost-justify it for the hour or so per day I spend in my car, max.
My thinking was this: Auto PC's (even new in the box) go for around $400-500 on eBay all the time, and that's including the optional GPS device and map CDs. Therefore, you get an in-car GPS system, a CD player stereo, and an MP3 player, all for around $450. People are spending more than that for Kenwood MP3 CD car stereos, and not getting any GPS functionality with those.
The ability to read the car's diagnostic info is another "free bonus" for those of us (like me) who own foreign cars.
Now, if you're saying the tuner and CD player itself are poor quality (sound bad) - then *that's* a really good reason to skip one of these things. That, after all, is the *primary* function of a car stereo. Some of the other stuff, like lack of cellphone support, I couldn't care less about. None of my previous car stereos interfaced with my cellphones, and it's never been an issue for me. (Wow - I hit one "mute" button to silence the thing if my phone rings... I can handle it.)