I was at my local Best Buy just last week, and was a little surprised at some of the things I saw there.
1. They no longer had ANY desktop PCs for sale. None! The computer section was filled with nothing but notebooks and netbooks. That's actually a pretty bold change for them, and tells me they're getting more aggressive about focusing only on the product lines that sell the fastest - rather than stocking categories of goods just because "we've always had them", or "people expect to see those here".
2. At the checkout lane, they had a whole wall of pre-paid iTunes music store cards. How could they possibly need a whole WALL for those? Well, apparently, the record labels have started marketing specific albums by specific artists - by selling you a card that auto-downloads that entire album when you enter its code. (This seems like a big step backwards, in one sense, but you also have to realize - this is an interesting tactic by the record labels from the marketing angle. By allowing stores to get rid of all the physical music CDs and going all digital, they risked losing all that advertising/exposure they got by people seeing the albums with cover art right there. This is a way to bring that back, while still taking up relatively little shelf space.)
3. Broadband speeds may be on the rise, but they're still outpaced by the amount of data that can be packed on something like a Blu-Ray disc. That's why people will still go to a store like Best Buy and purchase physical media for their PS3. And indeed, the Best Buy I was at had increased their space devoted to PS3 game titles, since last time I was in there,
It's possible Best Buy will die the same death as Circuit City, but I see them at least TRYING to avoid it. Some of their stores even have music stores inside them now - trying to take a cut of revenue traditionally reserved for chains like Guitar Center. Will that work? Not so sure... but it shows, again, this is a chain that's not afraid to try new strategies.
Actually, there was a particular WD 160GB EIDE drive that was a real "dud" for WD. I remember each and every one of them we had in new Dell Optiplex computers dying on us, as well as one I bought personally for a home computer.
But that said, I'd have to agree that otherwise, WD drives have always been fairly reliable for me. I've had a couple of DOA units, but that happens with any drive (and many times, you wonder if that's to really be blamed on the shipper tossing the box around).
Seagate, I find just like many people say here; they go in cycles of "good" and "bad". They really have produced a lion's share of "known troublesome" drives, along with some great products.
There may also be some truth to them having higher RMA than the norm because they're the first to push performance limits. (The early Barracuda and Cheetah drives spinning at 10K RPM and up would die EASILY if they didn't have really good cooling. If you put one in a standard mini or mid-tower desktop case? You were probably letting it run too hot. They really needed a fan right in front of the drive cage, blowing across them, to run them in the safe zone.)
Seagate may be making the "right moves" now, but IMHO, they should have been more proactive, before this many defective drives were out "in the wild".
The 1.5TB Seagates have been drives to avoid for Apple Mac Pro owners since day 1, since they have all manner of issues in them. (Web sites like xlr8yourmac.com have advised people not to use them due to firmware issues.)
It sounds like in both the case of the 1.5TB and now the troublesome model of the 1TB drive, Seagate was pretty slow to respond to complaints. I've read a number of stories of people who had arrays of 3 or 4 of these new drives fail in a matter of only a couple months, only to send them back for warranty replacements that died quickly too.
A little better QA testing before initial sale seems like it should have caught these problems.
CC left a bad taste in my mouth back when they were still a new chain in my town. I had a friend who "knew a guy who worked in car stereo sales" who could "get me a great deal". So I headed over there, to see what he could do for me.
Well, to make a long story short, they took what should be a pretty simple process of picking out some speakers and turned it into high-pressure sales and haggling, like you were buying the whole car from a shady used car lot!
Much later, when the big deal was their dropping all the commissioned sales staff - I gave them another chance. Nope, still disliked the whole experience. They made you feel like you were already determined to be a shoplifter. Practically everything you wanted, they only had one "floor sample" of, or just an empty box, and you had to ask for someone to go get you the actual product. Not only that, but the way the stores were organized, it felt like you were running around in a big circle if you wanted to look at thing in a few different sections. It had a vibe of "Hurry up and pick out something so we can ring it up and get you back out of here!" instead of an inviting "Stay a while and shop!" feel.
Although I do use and support Windows every day, I don't claim to be an expert on the Windows services and the apps that need them....
But yes, I *do* believe you need to leave the RPC service running in most circumstances. The fact it is called "remote" doesn't imply it only relates to remote computers on a network. Rather, it means separate program modules, even running on the SAME machine. Service Pack 2 for XP turns it on by default, and even grays out the option to disable it - which is a strong hint that you're supposed to leave it running.
A list I found on the net of things that require RPC in Windows include:
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (Used by Windows automatic updates) Cryptographic Services (Used by Windows updates, both automatic and manual) Distributed Link Tracking Client (Maintains links between NTFS files) Help and Support System Logical Disk Manager MS Software Shadow Copy Service (MS Backup requires this) Network Connections Print Spooler Protected Storage Shell Hardware Detection (Do you want to play a music CD? You need this) System Restore Service Task Scheduler TrueVector Internet Monitor (Required by ZoneAlarm, and probably other apps) Volume Shadow Copy (Backup uses this) Windows Audio Windows Installer Windows Management Instrumentation (Many apps depend on this service)
Honestly, users wouldn't feel nearly as much contempt over patches if they were less obtrusive.
The number of times a Windows update patch requires a system restart is ridiculous.
Even with WSUS pushing out all the updates in the middle of the night, and auto rebooting boxes, it irritates people who purposely left a PC logged in, with the screen password-locked, before going home at night for one reason or another. They come in the next morning to find they were forcibly logged out, with work potentially lost or some operation not finished they intended to let run overnight.
(And let's be fair here. This is ALSO a big issue with Mac OS X. Most, if not all, of their required reboots could be eliminated if they'd stop and restart the appropriate services, instead of just doing a restart as an "easy way" to accomplish the same thing.)
So am I the only one who wonders what cool interference patterns we might be able to see if we hang onto our old analog TVs after the switchover, and try tuning in some of the new wireless network data they're going to be transmitting on the same frequencies?
I wouldn't really call it a "half assed" installation, as long as the panel is properly affixed to the roof, all wiring is done properly, etc.
It sounds like you're describing the calculations a person should do if their goal is to make sure their self-generated power eliminates the need to draw power from the grid.
Many people are going to look at that scenario and say "Yeah, great - except I don't have the capital to drop in a wind generator and that many panels!"
This sounds more like a case of trying to keep a solar install within a certain budget, and see how much savings it can provide each year as a supplement. (The guy admits he bought it, as much as anything, just for the "good feelings" he gets from knowing he's doing something "green". Obviously, it will pay for itself EVENTUALLY, as long as it produces at least SOME electricity for him.)
The thing with Dvorak is, one of his articles is fun to read for one of two reasons:
1. It's so patently wrong, readers enjoy putting together long replies to punch as many holes in his flawed ideas as possible.
2. It touches on some valid points, and the "challenge" is for the reader to figure out if his started results are due to reasons Dvorak outlines, or for other reasons entirely.
I just read the article. Although I'm a US citizen myself (so don't have to deal with this particular issue directly anyway), I'm bothered by the fact that this is one more thing going onto Internet-based servers of questionable security, and owned by our government.
The "techie" side of me is fully aware of all the advantages of going "paperless" and getting data into computerized databases. But I'm also well aware of the downsides of letting one entity control too much "personal information" on people, amassed in digital format.
The thing about physical paper forms is, they have a very real cost involved in their retention. They're pretty cheap and easy to use if you have a "one time" need for data collection and verification. But as soon as some entity decides they'd like to keep that info on file, they have to reserve physical space for the file cabinets, spend time and effort putting it in properly labeled and sorted folders, etc.
Eventually, people tend to get motivated to dispose of old paper records. (Even the clerks in charge of filing and retrieving info from the files get irritated when they have to shuffle through 10 years worth of old stuff to find what they need.)
When you put this stuff in a computer, by contrast, it allows an endless variety of "mix and match" to take place. Govt. could suddenly say they'd like to cross reference X with Y out of two distinctly different data collection sources, and as long as they control access to both, voila. They're using the data for purposes never IMAGINED by the people who provided it initially. The stuff can stick around forever too, because as CPU power and disk space increase exponentially, there's really no concern over time of the database getting "too big". It takes more effort to prune out old data than to just leave it in!
I followed the keynote from one of the Mac magazine's own web sites, vs. Engadget.
The problem with Engadget's blogging is, they just ignored parts they were personally uninterested in (software related items).
I don't think they even covered most of the talk about the new iWork '09 suite!
Actually, the new features they're putting in iLife '09 and iWork '09 I thought were the best parts of this keynote. (We already all knew a 17" Macbook Pro was coming, since they updated the 15" and were still selling the old model of the 17", right? Big deal... Only really "interesting" news was the non-replaceable but improved battery, and for some, the fact you can again order it with a matte screen, for $50 extra.)
iWork '09, among other things, finally becomes a serious contender for an MS Office alternative, because it fully supports "OLE" type capabilities. I can finally make a chart in "Numbers" and link it to a Pages doc or Keynote presentation, and have the chart change dynamically when I update figures in the spreadsheet. Without this functionality, it really was kind of "second class" as Office suites go.....
I totally agree. I own the original 60GB model myself, and I'm really happy it has full hardware PS2 compatibility. I actually bought more PS2 titles to play on it than native PS3 titles, for the first few months I owned the system. (The PS2 games were available dirt cheap in the bargain bins at local game stores.)
The only problem I've recently had with my PS3 though (and it's one I've seen referenced on several other web sites) is my HDMI port dying. I had to start connecting it to my plasma TV with a component cable, because it suddenly decided to output no video or audio over HDMI. (Yes, I tried the reset trick with holding down the power button for 10 seconds and so forth. No joy.)
I'm afraid to send it back for repair though, for fear they'd simply swap me for a refurbished newer model, and I'd lose my PS2 support.
(Seems like Sony would be highly motivated to do such things because they know that'd drive more sales of PS2 systems - as people just decide to buy one so they can keep using the games they already bought.)
I, too, was never a user of Technocrat. (As many of us on Slashdot as are saying the same, no wonder it wasn't self-sustaining as a business model!)
But it sounds like I web site I would have enjoyed, actually.
I think you bring up a really interesting point about people tending to become more "vocal and extreme" in their opinions when faced with adversity in their personal lives. If I look in the mirror, I realize I spent more time on the net ranting about political issues while I was going through a divorce. I'm not sure if I was saying more "extreme" things than I really believed though? Possibly... but I think it was more a matter of wanting to get things off my chest. Ideas of mine I may have "watered down" otherwise, in the interest of promoting a more open discussion, I probably tended to speak "exactly as I felt" instead.
In any case though, you can find plenty of places to voice opinions on the Internet. If you want to be verbal about it, you can podcast or create a series of youtube videos. More often, it's put in writing, anyplace from blogs to Slashdot or ArsTechnica, or even anonymous Craigslist forums.
The problem is, most of those places either let you control the direction of the whole discussion (such as making your own podcast or blog), or the political commentary is secondary to the overall "theme" of the site (such as Technology and Science themed web sites where it always creeps in).
Technocrat sounds like the entire theme WAS political discussion, and let's face it - politics is ugly. So I can see how the site would have some "disturbing qualities" to it. It comes with that territory.
Sometimes what you propose can work, but honestly? I don't think so with a "flagship product" like Microsoft Office.
People generally aren't buying it because they think it's the best tool for the job. They buy it because they're afraid using anything else will be less compatible with all the documents out there.
Years after the open source advocates pushed for using OpenOffice instead of MS Office, you still see pretty much every college student buying a copy of MS Office for their new Macbook notebook. That's partially because OpenOffice doesn't deliver on being a clone or "work-alike" to MS Office. People learn how to navigate a Microsoft package, and they want to make use of that knowledge. They don't want to re-learn where things are, or different dialog boxes that come up when certain functions are performed. But more importantly, it's because the "Microsoft" brand on it guarantees it's the "real thing" to people.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with the latest Office for OS X, because they pulled out the Visual Basic macro compatibility. That broke too many complex Excel spreadsheets that used to open in previous Mac versions of Office -- making it a non-option for some people. If they hadn't done that to it, it really would still be the most compatible tool for working with Office documents on the Mac.
Rumors has it they're going to be putting that compatibility back in, next time.
Sure.... but where do you post that stuff, so nobody ever notices it's there before they're supposed to find out about it?
What do you do when someone else audits bandwidth usage and wonders why all the nightly backup data is getting uploaded to some remote site? (Or conversely, do you get to take all that backup data out each night to post it from another location, without anyone ever noticing or caring that the media leaves with you all the time?)
All these things sound good on paper, but there's a good chance it's not feasible.
The idea of "fair and balanced reporting" is something that only really came about relatively recently.
There's a lot of pride taken by (most) newspaper journalists that they do their best to provide balanced reporting. I've worked with a few of those people, and I think on the whole, they really do believe it's the "moral high road" and a worthy goal.
The problem with it is, it reduces you to relative mediocrity when you do it well. You're constantly reduced to talking to members of both sides of a given issue, and regurgitating whatever information they feed you. Even if your "gut" tells you one side is lying through their teeth (and you collect a lot of misc. evidence along the way that points to those people being in the wrong), you have to constantly tune that out - and stick to reporting "just the facts" as given by both sides, equally.
I think it actually provides more in-depth information when you have at least 2 fairly equally-sized news sources that compete directly with each other, and both give you news from their respective reporters' takes on the situations.
Reducing all the opinions, hunches, and discussion of the "circumstantial evidence" seen along the way to "editorial pages" is today's norm, but I think it's weak.
Quickbooks Pro 2009? No Mac version to be found yet.
Quicken? No 2008 or 2009 version for the Mac! 2007 is *still* the latest one they offer! WTF?
They've been promising they're going to replace Quicken for Mac with a whole new financial management product, but it's not even scheduled for release until Summer of 2009!
Personally, I'm looking at switching over to a shareware product called iBank. It can import all your info from Quicken, looks MUCH nicer, and actually has regular updates:
I'm not sure I can think of a single tech-related boycott that was clearly a success, at all?
IMHO, most boycotts amount to "feel good" actions some people can take to say they "did their part" to protest something. But in today's global economy, it's a huge undertaking to convince enough buyers to stop buying for it to have much impact.
It probably works far better at a local level, with some individual retail store people are upset with (not part of a chain).
But to the point of *this* issue -- focusing anger on Apple and iTunes is misdirected. Apple is one of the pioneers of bargaining with the recording industry to make the music legally available online in the FIRST place. I'm pretty sure DRM creates much more expense and hassle for Apple than it benefits them. (Extra time and money spent on software developers coding and debugging DRM issues, customer service calls related to needing a reset of their account, etc. etc.)
For example, I'm hanging onto a lot of out of warranty desktop PCs here. Sure, the users occasionally complain that they're "slow"... but they get the job done just fine. They're all Pentium 4 class systems with at least 512MB of RAM in them, running most application over the network amd using Windows XP Pro as their OS.
If I bought new systems now, I'd likely wind up with Vista, meaning I'd need about double the system to keep apps running as "fast" as they do now. I'd have a fresh 3 year warranty, most likely, too. BUT, I'm saving a lot more money right now by limping along with these systems for another year! So far, my maintenance cost to keep them going out of warranty has included such things as a couple new CPU fans ($15 each or so?), a bad memory stick in one, and 2 or 3 replacement SATA drives. Even factoring in my TIME to do the repair work myself, that's not a big deal.
By the time they *really* get old and start having more failures, Windows 7 will be the standard OS of choice, I suspect, and we'll have managed to skip Vista completely.
I think you found a profitable "niche" because you happen to have enough knowledge of Cisco gear to confirm that used, high-end equipment of theirs works properly.
(It sounds like you're also saying you take care of the initial setup for your customers too? That would be a huge factor in making a sale to small business, I'd think.)
I'm an I.T. manager of a 75 employee (approx.) company, as well as running my own side business that does consulting and on-site service work -- and despite having about 15 years of experience, I can't say I know much about Cisco gear. I think that's true of a lot of us in the field.
We currently use Sonicwall here as our firewall/VPN solution. There are some things I really dislike about it though, including some instability with their web interface, and no native clients for the Mac or Linux platforms. I'm also not at all fond of their licensing. (Essentially, you can have a 5+ year old, outdated little box that appears to be built with about the same components as a $80 Linksys or Netgear - yet you pay hundreds per year just for the right to download firmware upgrades for the thing.)
Not only does the "track record" of Microsoft and the NSA make one suspect "back doors" in Windows products are conceivable -- but the history of US govt. and their paranoia over computer encryption adds further credence to the idea.
When Phil Zimmermann started working on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software back in 1991, it only took a year or so for federal govt. to start harassing him, even filing criminal charges against him for violating the "Arms Export Control Act".
(Never mind the fact he never even released PGP outside the United States. The mere fact that people outside the US decided to download copies and use them on their own was enough to scare the US govt.)
Government, by nature, can't be "trusted" - at least in the sense that individuals allow it to decide what's "best" for them.
I view it as more of a "necessary evil" than anything else. A total lack of government is much like a vacuum on a planet with an atmosphere. It's not going to exist permanently or naturally.
(I've always thought "anarchists" often have the wrong idea about things. Anarchy is a "government changing device", not a sustainable way of life.)
Many nations put together "Constitutions" specifically to outline the duties of their governments (and to ensure they govern in a fair and limited way). Even the USSR had a Constitution (that echos quite a few similar "values" to the U.S. Constitution). Look it up online sometime! The problem is, the lazy and the power-hungry, and sometimes just the misguided, work to ever expand government's "sphere of influence". Given enough time, most "good and just" governments wind up only paying lip-service to their Constitutions, and violate much of it in practice.
I think the "relevance" might have more to do with illustrating the mindset required to make such an endeavor a commercial success.
Who is going to be most successful building a "robotic care worker" or "companion"? Some engineer who works on this project in a lab, during work hours, or an individual who literally makes the project an integral part of his daily life?
It sounds to me like what the guy was *really* saying (if you "read between the lines" a little bit, not getting too caught up in the hype) is that he's seeking an investor to fund a project to make the doll walk in a human-like manner. The rest of this article just tries to sell people on the idea that he's committed to bringing such a task to fruition, if he was given the requested funding.
Yeah.... that was my thought too. If you start throwing ideas out there about "new life forms that would thrive in that temperature range" -- why not postulate about ones that don't require an atmosphere or "breathing" at all? Seems just as possible to me.
I'm thinking this virtual storefront idea would work even BETTER if they bring back the CueCat reader in a virtual form. Let people pull one out of their "inventory", swipe it across the bar-code of a virtual good they're interested in (using a mouse gesture), and let it take them to a relevant web page!
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I was at my local Best Buy just last week, and was a little surprised at some of the things I saw there.
1. They no longer had ANY desktop PCs for sale. None! The computer section was filled with nothing but notebooks and netbooks. That's actually a pretty bold change for them, and tells me they're getting more aggressive about focusing only on the product lines that sell the fastest - rather than stocking categories of goods just because "we've always had them", or "people expect to see those here".
2. At the checkout lane, they had a whole wall of pre-paid iTunes music store cards. How could they possibly need a whole WALL for those? Well, apparently, the record labels have started marketing specific albums by specific artists - by selling you a card that auto-downloads that entire album when you enter its code. (This seems like a big step backwards, in one sense, but you also have to realize - this is an interesting tactic by the record labels from the marketing angle. By allowing stores to get rid of all the physical music CDs and going all digital, they risked losing all that advertising/exposure they got by people seeing the albums with cover art right there. This is a way to bring that back, while still taking up relatively little shelf space.)
3. Broadband speeds may be on the rise, but they're still outpaced by the amount of data that can be packed on something like a Blu-Ray disc. That's why people will still go to a store like Best Buy and purchase physical media for their PS3. And indeed, the Best Buy I was at had increased their space devoted to PS3 game titles, since last time I was in there,
It's possible Best Buy will die the same death as Circuit City, but I see them at least TRYING to avoid it. Some of their stores even have music stores inside them now - trying to take a cut of revenue traditionally reserved for chains like Guitar Center. Will that work? Not so sure ... but it shows, again, this is a chain that's not afraid to try new strategies.
Actually, there was a particular WD 160GB EIDE drive that was a real "dud" for WD. I remember each and every one of them we had in new Dell Optiplex computers dying on us, as well as one I bought personally for a home computer.
But that said, I'd have to agree that otherwise, WD drives have always been fairly reliable for me. I've had a couple of DOA units, but that happens with any drive (and many times, you wonder if that's to really be blamed on the shipper tossing the box around).
Seagate, I find just like many people say here; they go in cycles of "good" and "bad". They really have produced a lion's share of "known troublesome" drives, along with some great products.
There may also be some truth to them having higher RMA than the norm because they're the first to push performance limits. (The early Barracuda and Cheetah drives spinning at 10K RPM and up would die EASILY if they didn't have really good cooling. If you put one in a standard mini or mid-tower desktop case? You were probably letting it run too hot. They really needed a fan right in front of the drive cage, blowing across them, to run them in the safe zone.)
Seagate may be making the "right moves" now, but IMHO, they should have been more proactive, before this many defective drives were out "in the wild".
The 1.5TB Seagates have been drives to avoid for Apple Mac Pro owners since day 1, since they have all manner of issues in them. (Web sites like xlr8yourmac.com have advised people not to use them due to firmware issues.)
It sounds like in both the case of the 1.5TB and now the troublesome model of the 1TB drive, Seagate was pretty slow to respond to complaints. I've read a number of stories of people who had arrays of 3 or 4 of these new drives fail in a matter of only a couple months, only to send them back for warranty replacements that died quickly too.
A little better QA testing before initial sale seems like it should have caught these problems.
CC left a bad taste in my mouth back when they were still a new chain in my town. I had a friend who "knew a guy who worked in car stereo sales" who could "get me a great deal". So I headed over there, to see what he could do for me.
Well, to make a long story short, they took what should be a pretty simple process of picking out some speakers and turned it into high-pressure sales and haggling, like you were buying the whole car from a shady used car lot!
Much later, when the big deal was their dropping all the commissioned sales staff - I gave them another chance. Nope, still disliked the whole experience. They made you feel like you were already determined to be a shoplifter. Practically everything you wanted, they only had one "floor sample" of, or just an empty box, and you had to ask for someone to go get you the actual product. Not only that, but the way the stores were organized, it felt like you were running around in a big circle if you wanted to look at thing in a few different sections. It had a vibe of "Hurry up and pick out something so we can ring it up and get you back out of here!" instead of an inviting "Stay a while and shop!" feel.
Although I do use and support Windows every day, I don't claim to be an expert on the Windows services and the apps that need them....
But yes, I *do* believe you need to leave the RPC service running in most circumstances. The fact it is called "remote" doesn't imply it only relates to remote computers on a network. Rather, it means separate program modules, even running on the SAME machine. Service Pack 2 for XP turns it on by default, and even grays out the option to disable it - which is a strong hint that you're supposed to leave it running.
A list I found on the net of things that require RPC in Windows include:
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (Used by Windows automatic updates)
Cryptographic Services (Used by Windows updates, both automatic and manual)
Distributed Link Tracking Client (Maintains links between NTFS files)
Help and Support System
Logical Disk Manager
MS Software Shadow Copy Service (MS Backup requires this)
Network Connections
Print Spooler
Protected Storage
Shell Hardware Detection (Do you want to play a music CD? You need this)
System Restore Service
Task Scheduler
TrueVector Internet Monitor (Required by ZoneAlarm, and probably other apps)
Volume Shadow Copy (Backup uses this)
Windows Audio
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation (Many apps depend on this service)
Honestly, users wouldn't feel nearly as much contempt over patches if they were less obtrusive.
The number of times a Windows update patch requires a system restart is ridiculous.
Even with WSUS pushing out all the updates in the middle of the night, and auto rebooting boxes, it irritates people who purposely left a PC logged in, with the screen password-locked, before going home at night for one reason or another. They come in the next morning to find they were forcibly logged out, with work potentially lost or some operation not finished they intended to let run overnight.
(And let's be fair here. This is ALSO a big issue with Mac OS X. Most, if not all, of their required reboots could be eliminated if they'd stop and restart the appropriate services, instead of just doing a restart as an "easy way" to accomplish the same thing.)
So am I the only one who wonders what cool interference patterns we might be able to see if we hang onto our old analog TVs after the switchover, and try tuning in some of the new wireless network data they're going to be transmitting on the same frequencies?
I wouldn't really call it a "half assed" installation, as long as the panel is properly affixed to the roof, all wiring is done properly, etc.
It sounds like you're describing the calculations a person should do if their goal is to make sure their self-generated power eliminates the need to draw power from the grid.
Many people are going to look at that scenario and say "Yeah, great - except I don't have the capital to drop in a wind generator and that many panels!"
This sounds more like a case of trying to keep a solar install within a certain budget, and see how much savings it can provide each year as a supplement. (The guy admits he bought it, as much as anything, just for the "good feelings" he gets from knowing he's doing something "green". Obviously, it will pay for itself EVENTUALLY, as long as it produces at least SOME electricity for him.)
The thing with Dvorak is, one of his articles is fun to read for one of two reasons:
1. It's so patently wrong, readers enjoy putting together long replies to punch as many holes in his flawed ideas as possible.
2. It touches on some valid points, and the "challenge" is for the reader to figure out if his started results are due to reasons Dvorak outlines, or for other reasons entirely.
I just read the article. Although I'm a US citizen myself (so don't have to deal with this particular issue directly anyway), I'm bothered by the fact that this is one more thing going onto Internet-based servers of questionable security, and owned by our government.
The "techie" side of me is fully aware of all the advantages of going "paperless" and getting data into computerized databases. But I'm also well aware of the downsides of letting one entity control too much "personal information" on people, amassed in digital format.
The thing about physical paper forms is, they have a very real cost involved in their retention. They're pretty cheap and easy to use if you have a "one time" need for data collection and verification. But as soon as some entity decides they'd like to keep that info on file, they have to reserve physical space for the file cabinets, spend time and effort putting it in properly labeled and sorted folders, etc.
Eventually, people tend to get motivated to dispose of old paper records. (Even the clerks in charge of filing and retrieving info from the files get irritated when they have to shuffle through 10 years worth of old stuff to find what they need.)
When you put this stuff in a computer, by contrast, it allows an endless variety of "mix and match" to take place. Govt. could suddenly say they'd like to cross reference X with Y out of two distinctly different data collection sources, and as long as they control access to both, voila. They're using the data for purposes never IMAGINED by the people who provided it initially. The stuff can stick around forever too, because as CPU power and disk space increase exponentially, there's really no concern over time of the database getting "too big". It takes more effort to prune out old data than to just leave it in!
I followed the keynote from one of the Mac magazine's own web sites, vs. Engadget.
The problem with Engadget's blogging is, they just ignored parts they were personally uninterested in (software related items).
I don't think they even covered most of the talk about the new iWork '09 suite!
Actually, the new features they're putting in iLife '09 and iWork '09 I thought were the best parts of this keynote. (We already all knew a 17" Macbook Pro was coming, since they updated the 15" and were still selling the old model of the 17", right? Big deal... Only really "interesting" news was the non-replaceable but improved battery, and for some, the fact you can again order it with a matte screen, for $50 extra.)
iWork '09, among other things, finally becomes a serious contender for an MS Office alternative, because it fully supports "OLE" type capabilities. I can finally make a chart in "Numbers" and link it to a Pages doc or Keynote presentation, and have the chart change dynamically when I update figures in the spreadsheet. Without this functionality, it really was kind of "second class" as Office suites go.....
I totally agree. I own the original 60GB model myself, and I'm really happy it has full hardware PS2 compatibility. I actually bought more PS2 titles to play on it than native PS3 titles, for the first few months I owned the system. (The PS2 games were available dirt cheap in the bargain bins at local game stores.)
The only problem I've recently had with my PS3 though (and it's one I've seen referenced on several other web sites) is my HDMI port dying. I had to start connecting it to my plasma TV with a component cable, because it suddenly decided to output no video or audio over HDMI. (Yes, I tried the reset trick with holding down the power button for 10 seconds and so forth. No joy.)
I'm afraid to send it back for repair though, for fear they'd simply swap me for a refurbished newer model, and I'd lose my PS2 support.
(Seems like Sony would be highly motivated to do such things because they know that'd drive more sales of PS2 systems - as people just decide to buy one so they can keep using the games they already bought.)
I, too, was never a user of Technocrat. (As many of us on Slashdot as are saying the same, no wonder it wasn't self-sustaining as a business model!)
But it sounds like I web site I would have enjoyed, actually.
I think you bring up a really interesting point about people tending to become more "vocal and extreme" in their opinions when faced with adversity in their personal lives. If I look in the mirror, I realize I spent more time on the net ranting about political issues while I was going through a divorce. I'm not sure if I was saying more "extreme" things than I really believed though? Possibly ... but I think it was more a matter of wanting to get things off my chest. Ideas of mine I may have "watered down" otherwise, in the interest of promoting a more open discussion, I probably tended to speak "exactly as I felt" instead.
In any case though, you can find plenty of places to voice opinions on the Internet. If you want to be verbal about it, you can podcast or create a series of youtube videos. More often, it's put in writing, anyplace from blogs to Slashdot or ArsTechnica, or even anonymous Craigslist forums.
The problem is, most of those places either let you control the direction of the whole discussion (such as making your own podcast or blog), or the political commentary is secondary to the overall "theme" of the site (such as Technology and Science themed web sites where it always creeps in).
Technocrat sounds like the entire theme WAS political discussion, and let's face it - politics is ugly. So I can see how the site would have some "disturbing qualities" to it. It comes with that territory.
Sometimes what you propose can work, but honestly? I don't think so with a "flagship product" like Microsoft Office.
People generally aren't buying it because they think it's the best tool for the job. They buy it because they're afraid using anything else will be less compatible with all the documents out there.
Years after the open source advocates pushed for using OpenOffice instead of MS Office, you still see pretty much every college student buying a copy of MS Office for their new Macbook notebook. That's partially because OpenOffice doesn't deliver on being a clone or "work-alike" to MS Office. People learn how to navigate a Microsoft package, and they want to make use of that knowledge. They don't want to re-learn where things are, or different dialog boxes that come up when certain functions are performed. But more importantly, it's because the "Microsoft" brand on it guarantees it's the "real thing" to people.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with the latest Office for OS X, because they pulled out the Visual Basic macro compatibility. That broke too many complex Excel spreadsheets that used to open in previous Mac versions of Office -- making it a non-option for some people. If they hadn't done that to it, it really would still be the most compatible tool for working with Office documents on the Mac.
Rumors has it they're going to be putting that compatibility back in, next time.
Sure.... but where do you post that stuff, so nobody ever notices it's there before they're supposed to find out about it?
What do you do when someone else audits bandwidth usage and wonders why all the nightly backup data is getting uploaded to some remote site? (Or conversely, do you get to take all that backup data out each night to post it from another location, without anyone ever noticing or caring that the media leaves with you all the time?)
All these things sound good on paper, but there's a good chance it's not feasible.
The idea of "fair and balanced reporting" is something that only really came about relatively recently.
There's a lot of pride taken by (most) newspaper journalists that they do their best to provide balanced reporting. I've worked with a few of those people, and I think on the whole, they really do believe it's the "moral high road" and a worthy goal.
The problem with it is, it reduces you to relative mediocrity when you do it well. You're constantly reduced to talking to members of both sides of a given issue, and regurgitating whatever information they feed you. Even if your "gut" tells you one side is lying through their teeth (and you collect a lot of misc. evidence along the way that points to those people being in the wrong), you have to constantly tune that out - and stick to reporting "just the facts" as given by both sides, equally.
I think it actually provides more in-depth information when you have at least 2 fairly equally-sized news sources that compete directly with each other, and both give you news from their respective reporters' takes on the situations.
Reducing all the opinions, hunches, and discussion of the "circumstantial evidence" seen along the way to "editorial pages" is today's norm, but I think it's weak.
Quickbooks Pro 2009? No Mac version to be found yet.
Quicken? No 2008 or 2009 version for the Mac! 2007 is *still* the latest one they offer! WTF?
They've been promising they're going to replace Quicken for Mac with a whole new financial management product, but it's not even scheduled for release until Summer of 2009!
http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/mac-personal-finance.jsp
Personally, I'm looking at switching over to a shareware product called iBank. It can import all your info from Quicken, looks MUCH nicer, and actually has regular updates:
http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/
I'm not sure I can think of a single tech-related boycott that was clearly a success, at all?
IMHO, most boycotts amount to "feel good" actions some people can take to say they "did their part" to protest something. But in today's global economy, it's a huge undertaking to convince enough buyers to stop buying for it to have much impact.
It probably works far better at a local level, with some individual retail store people are upset with (not part of a chain).
But to the point of *this* issue -- focusing anger on Apple and iTunes is misdirected. Apple is one of the pioneers of bargaining with the recording industry to make the music legally available online in the FIRST place. I'm pretty sure DRM creates much more expense and hassle for Apple than it benefits them. (Extra time and money spent on software developers coding and debugging DRM issues, customer service calls related to needing a reset of their account, etc. etc.)
All depends though....
For example, I'm hanging onto a lot of out of warranty desktop PCs here. Sure, the users occasionally complain that they're "slow" ... but they get the job done just fine. They're all Pentium 4 class systems with at least 512MB of RAM in them, running most application over the network amd using Windows XP Pro as their OS.
If I bought new systems now, I'd likely wind up with Vista, meaning I'd need about double the system to keep apps running as "fast" as they do now. I'd have a fresh 3 year warranty, most likely, too. BUT, I'm saving a lot more money right now by limping along with these systems for another year! So far, my maintenance cost to keep them going out of warranty has included such things as a couple new CPU fans ($15 each or so?), a bad memory stick in one, and 2 or 3 replacement SATA drives. Even factoring in my TIME to do the repair work myself, that's not a big deal.
By the time they *really* get old and start having more failures, Windows 7 will be the standard OS of choice, I suspect, and we'll have managed to skip Vista completely.
I think you found a profitable "niche" because you happen to have enough knowledge of Cisco gear to confirm that used, high-end equipment of theirs works properly.
(It sounds like you're also saying you take care of the initial setup for your customers too? That would be a huge factor in making a sale to small business, I'd think.)
I'm an I.T. manager of a 75 employee (approx.) company, as well as running my own side business that does consulting and on-site service work -- and despite having about 15 years of experience, I can't say I know much about Cisco gear. I think that's true of a lot of us in the field.
We currently use Sonicwall here as our firewall/VPN solution. There are some things I really dislike about it though, including some instability with their web interface, and no native clients for the Mac or Linux platforms. I'm also not at all fond of their licensing. (Essentially, you can have a 5+ year old, outdated little box that appears to be built with about the same components as a $80 Linksys or Netgear - yet you pay hundreds per year just for the right to download firmware upgrades for the thing.)
Not only does the "track record" of Microsoft and the NSA make one suspect "back doors" in Windows products are conceivable -- but the history of US govt. and their paranoia over computer encryption adds further credence to the idea.
When Phil Zimmermann started working on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software back in 1991, it only took a year or so for federal govt. to start harassing him, even filing criminal charges against him for violating the "Arms Export Control Act".
(Never mind the fact he never even released PGP outside the United States. The mere fact that people outside the US decided to download copies and use them on their own was enough to scare the US govt.)
Government, by nature, can't be "trusted" - at least in the sense that individuals allow it to decide what's "best" for them.
I view it as more of a "necessary evil" than anything else. A total lack of government is much like a vacuum on a planet with an atmosphere. It's not going to exist permanently or naturally.
(I've always thought "anarchists" often have the wrong idea about things. Anarchy is a "government changing device", not a sustainable way of life.)
Many nations put together "Constitutions" specifically to outline the duties of their governments (and to ensure they govern in a fair and limited way). Even the USSR had a Constitution (that echos quite a few similar "values" to the U.S. Constitution). Look it up online sometime! The problem is, the lazy and the power-hungry, and sometimes just the misguided, work to ever expand government's "sphere of influence". Given enough time, most "good and just" governments wind up only paying lip-service to their Constitutions, and violate much of it in practice.
I think the "relevance" might have more to do with illustrating the mindset required to make such an endeavor a commercial success.
Who is going to be most successful building a "robotic care worker" or "companion"? Some engineer who works on this project in a lab, during work hours, or an individual who literally makes the project an integral part of his daily life?
It sounds to me like what the guy was *really* saying (if you "read between the lines" a little bit, not getting too caught up in the hype) is that he's seeking an investor to fund a project to make the doll walk in a human-like manner. The rest of this article just tries to sell people on the idea that he's committed to bringing such a task to fruition, if he was given the requested funding.
Yeah.... that was my thought too. If you start throwing ideas out there about "new life forms that would thrive in that temperature range" -- why not postulate about ones that don't require an atmosphere or "breathing" at all? Seems just as possible to me.
I'm thinking this virtual storefront idea would work even BETTER if they bring back the CueCat reader in a virtual form. Let people pull one out of their "inventory", swipe it across the bar-code of a virtual good they're interested in (using a mouse gesture), and let it take them to a relevant web page!