Re:It's not the standard, stupids
on
RTF Vs. OOXML
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If you filter the A/C's rant, there's a point of view in there which essentially says "just follow what Microsoft wants you to do". That's fine if you want stagnation of capabilities and to pay through the nose for the privilege.
Example, the Browser War was more than just a browser - it was hijacking the Internet Ecosystem which was supposed to be open and available to all. Microsoft saw open standard browsers and servers, particularly with Java, as a mortal threat to their platform.
To counteract, Microsoft developed IE and IIS to be a client-server relationship instead of a stateless browser as intended. Tools were widely distributed to create web sites for that system which were wholly incompatible with anything else. The goal was for anyone NOT using a complete Microsoft chain of technology to see a blank page on the Internet.
They almost pulled it off. The result was IE gained market dominance and, with the exception of exploits and treachery of completely hijacked computers, no other technical advances in browsers came about for many years. The fly in the ointment was they didn't have server dominance. Had they been able to overcome Apache, you can bet we'd be paying Microsoft for every page view on the Internet.
That's why we shouldn't just do what Microsoft says.
Even more likely, the actual RFIDs will not be broadcasting anything, until the passport is opened. I'll hack mine to play "Happy Birthday" when they open the passport.
The name iPod wasn't unexpected because iMac, iMovie, iTunes etc were already out as marketable names. It was less alien than half the GNU, GNOME and KDE based names. Really, when Joe Consumer browses the software menu, something with an upbeat, descriptive name that costs money may look more attractive, competent and mature than some "I'd like to buy a vowel" named software.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what something is called. A great name won't save a shitty product and a good product will usually overcome most naming handicaps. So far, only a handful of Linux apps have done well on Joe Consumer's radar; Firefox... possibly Thunderbird... or not... maybe I'm being optimistic. Even "Windows" which had "Win" attached to half the products a decade ago looks like a loser now.
all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications Abiword, Cinepaint, Gimp, Inkscape, Open Office, Scribus, Firefox... please give me a klingon lesson and tell me exactly which names you're referring too.
You picked a few names that showed SOME thought. Tell someone using Photoshop on a Mac that you're going to replace it with Gimp on Ubuntu and they'll give you a shot in the chops just for the names. GnuCash? Kopete? Pdftk? Xournal? nGhost? GnoTime? PyCoCuMa? Feisty Fawn? Gentoo? (ok, that's a breed of Penguin)... pyBackPack? Kdissert? Zune?.... oh wait.
No 2nd monitor out? If you're using a MacBook or iBook, the 2nd output will only mirror the display but the PowerBooks and MacBook Pros will certainly drive a second independent monitor.
The biggest drawback for Linux isn't the platform or OS, it's all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications. Fix that - and for god sake don't make people use a perl script to install it - and you might be able to claim more inroads into general public market share. People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows because they've realized how treacherous it is. The iron is hot.
For that reason, your instincts are good for OS X because I've seen many people switch off the Windows platform in 2007 and never look back. They love their Macs mostly because the OS leaves them alone to work plus they've discovered all the software that comes with it. If you are the kind of person who can install any Linux flavor and be able to answer the question "ok, now what?" then Linux is for you. That excludes the vast majority of people who just want to use a computer.
They failed to sell it because Xerox' main business was photocopiers, and Head Office saw the prospect of a paperless office as a threat, not an opportunity.
Yes, Xerox feared the paperless office somewhat but they were also ready to invent it before someone else did. Xerox's main competitor was the ink and press printer manufacturers. Out of the development to attack that market came some remarkable (for the day) products like the Alto, 8010 Star, 820 (the CP/M personal computer with 10MB hard drive, not the daisy wheel typewriter with cassette memory) and the 9700 laser printer, which actually sported a PDP-11 inside. The idea of tight computer data to printed paper integration with networkable small computer terminals lead to a real revolution. The idea that a paper form could be customized from a terminal and printed with all the data already on it was revolutionary in 1977.
I did television production at the Xerox Training Center back in that timeframe. One program showed several people in a room with their 820-II computers silently typing. The narration said something like "someday, this is how we'll all communicate in the paperless office". At the time (1982), I thought that was really really dumb. Boy, was I wrong. They saw it all coming but they couldn't sell it. Even though the Altos in our office could message people up in Rochester, it never really hit me that it could possibly become globally mainstream.
P.S. - The only reason Xerox started making computers was because IBM started making copiers. Xerox was hedging their bets and rattling swords all at the same time but didn't want to just reinvent the mainframe.
Windows '95. Microsoft invented the taskbar / start menu / system tray model that almost every other modern desktop OS copied and still uses.
This A/C needs to get out more. That's all eyecandy relative to the function. Dressing a function in a colorful clown suit is hardly innovation. I had menus more or less like that [crudely] on my Alto when I worked for Xerox. The only thing Microsoft did was move it to the bottom and give it names.
The only problem with the Apple store is the cultish atmosphere. This might previously have been a problem for Apple, but now it's anything but. Any sort of "cult" feel (I'd venture to say more like "club" feel) works to their advantage. People on the outside want to know what's so special.
I'll buy "Club" feel way before "Cultish". They seem bright and inviting to me. As an accused cultist (stop calling me that!), I can say that from the inside of the Apple Store, the feeling is "why would people keep torturing themselves with that other kind of computer?" Lately, it's OK to look inside and find there's not much of a cult.
Seems pretty novel to me. Who is doing this already with mobile apps?
Go to Japan or other advanced Asian country. They're very wired in like this between cell phones and walkup commerce. Maybe not exactly like this but close enough for this to be obvious over there. Still, glad SOMEONE is bringing it to the States since our current wireless providers enjoy keeping us like mushrooms and charging us as much as they possibly can.
the system still eats system ram even if you don't have a monitor. Roger that. I'll rephrase - real servers don't need monitors. Although, I do have a several minis tirelessly doing DNS work.
Did Kodak fund this excercise? No way in hell does it cost that much to store all the elements digitally as opposed to film - if you're competent. And NASA not able to read the Viking Data is just incompetence of whoever is archiving it. That's just a scare tactic. Now, you do need to assess the quality of the storage and roll the assets to new media but that's just getting a lot cheaper, robust and more compact per TB every year.
The biggest difference between old films and new is they often didn't keep all the old elements. The "cutting room floor" got swept every night. Of course, if you keep all that stuff it's going to cost more to store than if you didn't. You're lucky to find a print of a finished film, much less the cut negative. Cutting negative means destroying the original so there is no original - and not much for outs.
You're not far from wrong on the storage assessment. Some movies are shooting more like 40:1 ratios but the original data may be compressed, saving some storage space if you choose. Much of that (depending on the film) also gets lots of digital effects; lots more elements within the same finished frames. Add to that all the audio work, screen tests, outs, behind the scenes stuff, deleted scenes... However, when you do several versions of a scene, you're only drawing from the same image pool with a different recipe for how it gets assembled so you aren't really adding data bulk except for an ASCII description file for a different version.
I have successfully made a warranty claim on a Maxtor OEM drive directly with Maxtor.
I've also done that with a Maxtor from a dead LaCie external drive (LaCie=1 year, drive inside=3 year). Tried to do that with a Fujitsu from an Apple laptop and the Fujitsu web site said it was an OEM serial number - go talk to the computer maker.
I've had several hard drives returned to me from Apple because I ASKED FOR THEM. Even if they were replaced under warranty, I was able to "borrow" them back for a day or two to recover data. They want the ones under warranty back.
Although a computer warranty may be a year or so, the hard drives inside may have a 3-5 year warranty, so yes, they get sent back for a new one by the OEM. Hard drive makers only let the OEM do that if it's an OEM drive. Us civilians can't claim anything other than the warranty to the computer manufacturer.
What do you suppose the Chinese are doing with all those returned hard drives [pronounced "goldmines"]?
Open? More like chaotic. Microsoft and these manufacturers often worked at cross purposes which quite often made for a miserable PC experience. Calling bullshit on the previous post may have been a little strong but I'd say Dan absolutely does have a clue - just from a different angle.
The landscape of commodity hardware "back in the day" was a hundred manufacturers beating each other to death for that 1% profit margin, most of them beholden to Microsoft. Manufacturing PCs was a game that Microsoft wisely stayed away from. They were (and still are) first and foremost a software company. I'll take that back and say they are:
A Marketing company
A Patent and Rights Trolling Lawyer Pool
A Software Company
A Hardware Company - and not a very good one
Microsoft had absolutely no reason to make PC hardware since they had all these manufacturers eating out of their hand. Their hardware was worth nothing without Microsoft's support. Both parties knew that which allowed Microsoft to manipulate and abuse most anyone they liked. Let any manufacturer or developer step out of line and the enormous foot of Bill Gates came down from Heaven to squash you. Both parties knew that, too.
Apple, on the other hand, is a company that essentially has made enormously flexible appliances which includes the software and hardware. Nothing magical about it and fairly meager compared to all the activity surrounding Microsoft. Still, the products were similar enough to the PC market to invite comparison - except the chaos was mostly absent from the Apple products. I recall standing in a CompUSA a dozen years ago listening to two guys proudly describing their weekend of installing a hard drive on their PC. I bought a hard drive and plugged it into my Mac - there, installed in 10 seconds. That's the difference Apple's control made for the user. Installing sound cards, CD-ROM drives and getting the software for your mouse to work was completely foreign to Apple users.
This also explains the deep investment PC users have developed against Apple's success. The mantra that "if it's easy, it can't be any good" just doesn't hold water. The simpler machine to use is actually the more advanced one but PC users had so much invested in keeping their machines running, anything different was threatening. The fact that Wintel PCs were so needy and fidgety gave rise to thousands of computer experts and developers looking to improve on that platform - something which ultimately worked against Apple. The world was puzzled as to why Apple appeared to choose the back seat to all this. They were quite happy building the simple to use appliance which didn't need much fidgeting.
This approach has expanded to gadgetry in the last several years. Apple has demonstrated successful multi-gadget ecosystems which can (apparently) only be done with full cooperation of all the hardware and software makers - right on their own campus. That's something which Microsoft (apparently) can't replicate with their giant pool of outboard manufacturers, most of which they've pissed off over the years. Microsoft can't even get a consistent message about a stupid music player to market.
The result is a much overall better experience with Apple products which Microsoft can only dream of at this point. Being the user benefitting from that experience, I'd say controlling the entire PC experience was indeed noble.
That's the last time I buy something from Circuit City. If that's where my money is going, then (1) I KNEW there was more margin in that sale and (2) I'll buy from the same sales people when they move to a different place.
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If you filter the A/C's rant, there's a point of view in there which essentially says "just follow what Microsoft wants you to do". That's fine if you want stagnation of capabilities and to pay through the nose for the privilege.
Example, the Browser War was more than just a browser - it was hijacking the Internet Ecosystem which was supposed to be open and available to all. Microsoft saw open standard browsers and servers, particularly with Java, as a mortal threat to their platform.
To counteract, Microsoft developed IE and IIS to be a client-server relationship instead of a stateless browser as intended. Tools were widely distributed to create web sites for that system which were wholly incompatible with anything else. The goal was for anyone NOT using a complete Microsoft chain of technology to see a blank page on the Internet.
They almost pulled it off. The result was IE gained market dominance and, with the exception of exploits and treachery of completely hijacked computers, no other technical advances in browsers came about for many years. The fly in the ointment was they didn't have server dominance. Had they been able to overcome Apache, you can bet we'd be paying Microsoft for every page view on the Internet.
That's why we shouldn't just do what Microsoft says.
The name iPod wasn't unexpected because iMac, iMovie, iTunes etc were already out as marketable names. It was less alien than half the GNU, GNOME and KDE based names. Really, when Joe Consumer browses the software menu, something with an upbeat, descriptive name that costs money may look more attractive, competent and mature than some "I'd like to buy a vowel" named software.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what something is called. A great name won't save a shitty product and a good product will usually overcome most naming handicaps. So far, only a handful of Linux apps have done well on Joe Consumer's radar; Firefox... possibly Thunderbird... or not... maybe I'm being optimistic. Even "Windows" which had "Win" attached to half the products a decade ago looks like a loser now.
The slashdot mods from Nigeria have responded favorably!
You picked a few names that showed SOME thought. Tell someone using Photoshop on a Mac that you're going to replace it with Gimp on Ubuntu and they'll give you a shot in the chops just for the names. GnuCash? Kopete? Pdftk? Xournal? nGhost? GnoTime? PyCoCuMa? Feisty Fawn? Gentoo? (ok, that's a breed of Penguin)... pyBackPack? Kdissert? Zune?.... oh wait.
No 2nd monitor out? If you're using a MacBook or iBook, the 2nd output will only mirror the display but the PowerBooks and MacBook Pros will certainly drive a second independent monitor.
Just send them weapons.
The biggest drawback for Linux isn't the platform or OS, it's all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications. Fix that - and for god sake don't make people use a perl script to install it - and you might be able to claim more inroads into general public market share. People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows because they've realized how treacherous it is. The iron is hot.
For that reason, your instincts are good for OS X because I've seen many people switch off the Windows platform in 2007 and never look back. They love their Macs mostly because the OS leaves them alone to work plus they've discovered all the software that comes with it. If you are the kind of person who can install any Linux flavor and be able to answer the question "ok, now what?" then Linux is for you. That excludes the vast majority of people who just want to use a computer.
Yes, Xerox feared the paperless office somewhat but they were also ready to invent it before someone else did. Xerox's main competitor was the ink and press printer manufacturers. Out of the development to attack that market came some remarkable (for the day) products like the Alto, 8010 Star, 820 (the CP/M personal computer with 10MB hard drive, not the daisy wheel typewriter with cassette memory) and the 9700 laser printer, which actually sported a PDP-11 inside. The idea of tight computer data to printed paper integration with networkable small computer terminals lead to a real revolution. The idea that a paper form could be customized from a terminal and printed with all the data already on it was revolutionary in 1977.
I did television production at the Xerox Training Center back in that timeframe. One program showed several people in a room with their 820-II computers silently typing. The narration said something like "someday, this is how we'll all communicate in the paperless office". At the time (1982), I thought that was really really dumb. Boy, was I wrong. They saw it all coming but they couldn't sell it. Even though the Altos in our office could message people up in Rochester, it never really hit me that it could possibly become globally mainstream.
P.S. - The only reason Xerox started making computers was because IBM started making copiers. Xerox was hedging their bets and rattling swords all at the same time but didn't want to just reinvent the mainframe.
This A/C needs to get out more. That's all eyecandy relative to the function. Dressing a function in a colorful clown suit is hardly innovation. I had menus more or less like that [crudely] on my Alto when I worked for Xerox. The only thing Microsoft did was move it to the bottom and give it names.
I'll await the impending flood of software... and 3G... and GPS, I suppose... and Video recording... then I'll buy in.
OK, if the SDK is for real and apps come forth, I could be convinced.
I'm not a developer, but I'm really thinking this Walled Garden thing is for the birds - which makes me want one of these less and less.
I'll buy "Club" feel way before "Cultish". They seem bright and inviting to me. As an accused cultist (stop calling me that!), I can say that from the inside of the Apple Store, the feeling is "why would people keep torturing themselves with that other kind of computer?" Lately, it's OK to look inside and find there's not much of a cult.
Wal-Mart got squished by doing what the studios wanted, not what the consumers wanted.
Blu-ray 1x data rate = 36 Mbits/sec
Don't be too surprised if the Blu-ray drive in a VAIO is made by Panasonic. It's all made by Japan Inc.
Go to Japan or other advanced Asian country. They're very wired in like this between cell phones and walkup commerce. Maybe not exactly like this but close enough for this to be obvious over there. Still, glad SOMEONE is bringing it to the States since our current wireless providers enjoy keeping us like mushrooms and charging us as much as they possibly can.
Did Kodak fund this excercise? No way in hell does it cost that much to store all the elements digitally as opposed to film - if you're competent. And NASA not able to read the Viking Data is just incompetence of whoever is archiving it. That's just a scare tactic. Now, you do need to assess the quality of the storage and roll the assets to new media but that's just getting a lot cheaper, robust and more compact per TB every year.
The biggest difference between old films and new is they often didn't keep all the old elements. The "cutting room floor" got swept every night. Of course, if you keep all that stuff it's going to cost more to store than if you didn't. You're lucky to find a print of a finished film, much less the cut negative. Cutting negative means destroying the original so there is no original - and not much for outs.
You're not far from wrong on the storage assessment. Some movies are shooting more like 40:1 ratios but the original data may be compressed, saving some storage space if you choose. Much of that (depending on the film) also gets lots of digital effects; lots more elements within the same finished frames. Add to that all the audio work, screen tests, outs, behind the scenes stuff, deleted scenes... However, when you do several versions of a scene, you're only drawing from the same image pool with a different recipe for how it gets assembled so you aren't really adding data bulk except for an ASCII description file for a different version.
I've also done that with a Maxtor from a dead LaCie external drive (LaCie=1 year, drive inside=3 year). Tried to do that with a Fujitsu from an Apple laptop and the Fujitsu web site said it was an OEM serial number - go talk to the computer maker.
I've had several hard drives returned to me from Apple because I ASKED FOR THEM. Even if they were replaced under warranty, I was able to "borrow" them back for a day or two to recover data. They want the ones under warranty back.
Although a computer warranty may be a year or so, the hard drives inside may have a 3-5 year warranty, so yes, they get sent back for a new one by the OEM. Hard drive makers only let the OEM do that if it's an OEM drive. Us civilians can't claim anything other than the warranty to the computer manufacturer.
What do you suppose the Chinese are doing with all those returned hard drives [pronounced "goldmines"]?
Open? More like chaotic. Microsoft and these manufacturers often worked at cross purposes which quite often made for a miserable PC experience. Calling bullshit on the previous post may have been a little strong but I'd say Dan absolutely does have a clue - just from a different angle.
The landscape of commodity hardware "back in the day" was a hundred manufacturers beating each other to death for that 1% profit margin, most of them beholden to Microsoft. Manufacturing PCs was a game that Microsoft wisely stayed away from. They were (and still are) first and foremost a software company. I'll take that back and say they are:
Microsoft had absolutely no reason to make PC hardware since they had all these manufacturers eating out of their hand. Their hardware was worth nothing without Microsoft's support. Both parties knew that which allowed Microsoft to manipulate and abuse most anyone they liked. Let any manufacturer or developer step out of line and the enormous foot of Bill Gates came down from Heaven to squash you. Both parties knew that, too.
Apple, on the other hand, is a company that essentially has made enormously flexible appliances which includes the software and hardware. Nothing magical about it and fairly meager compared to all the activity surrounding Microsoft. Still, the products were similar enough to the PC market to invite comparison - except the chaos was mostly absent from the Apple products. I recall standing in a CompUSA a dozen years ago listening to two guys proudly describing their weekend of installing a hard drive on their PC. I bought a hard drive and plugged it into my Mac - there, installed in 10 seconds. That's the difference Apple's control made for the user. Installing sound cards, CD-ROM drives and getting the software for your mouse to work was completely foreign to Apple users.
This also explains the deep investment PC users have developed against Apple's success. The mantra that "if it's easy, it can't be any good" just doesn't hold water. The simpler machine to use is actually the more advanced one but PC users had so much invested in keeping their machines running, anything different was threatening. The fact that Wintel PCs were so needy and fidgety gave rise to thousands of computer experts and developers looking to improve on that platform - something which ultimately worked against Apple. The world was puzzled as to why Apple appeared to choose the back seat to all this. They were quite happy building the simple to use appliance which didn't need much fidgeting.
This approach has expanded to gadgetry in the last several years. Apple has demonstrated successful multi-gadget ecosystems which can (apparently) only be done with full cooperation of all the hardware and software makers - right on their own campus. That's something which Microsoft (apparently) can't replicate with their giant pool of outboard manufacturers, most of which they've pissed off over the years. Microsoft can't even get a consistent message about a stupid music player to market.
The result is a much overall better experience with Apple products which Microsoft can only dream of at this point. Being the user benefitting from that experience, I'd say controlling the entire PC experience was indeed noble.
That's the last time I buy something from Circuit City. If that's where my money is going, then (1) I KNEW there was more margin in that sale and (2) I'll buy from the same sales people when they move to a different place.