I agree with you that paper books are great as they are. Also the concern about paper is somewhat reduced by the re-planting of trees by lumber/paper companies. But in the "would be nice" category I can see the e-book benefits of a more compact form factor, convenient bookmarking, text search, built-in illumination and maybe someday lower cost.
For example, I'm reading a hardcover novel at the moment that's about 600 pages long. It's so big and bulky (1.5 inches thick) that I can't easily carry it on trips in my laptop bag and it cost $25.95. Unfortunately it's not available in e-book format, and the books that are tend to be in proprietary formats, saddled with annoying DRM and don't cost much less than their paper versions.
Also on BusinessWeek there's an interview with Ballmer where he dodges every question he's asked (and re-asked) regarding morale issues at Microsoft, competition, release delays with Longhorn/Vista, etc.
I was really surprised when this came out in 2001:
"Research group Gartner is advising businesses to "immediately" replace their Microsoft Internet Information Server software with a more secure server application, following attacks on IIS by the worms Code Red and Nimda."
Gartner approves of Microsoft more often than not, and this was by far the most negative opinion I've ever seen them express about MS. Too bad hardly anyone took their advice.
Obviously it's a good thing that wireless is getting faster. However, most people use wireless for connecting to the Internet. Even 802.11b is much quicker than most Internet connections. It will be a while before this technology is useful to a lot of people.
Good point, but for some of us there would be a big benefit with higher wireless speeds. My cable modem has a typical download speed of 3Mbps so even the 11Mbps (max) speed of 802.11b isn't being used to its full capacity. But I often need to move large files between my laptop and my PC. If I don't want to wait 10 minutes or more for a file transfer I have to carry my laptop into my home office, plug it into my Ethernet switch and transfer the files there. With faster Wi-Fi I could avoid this minor hassle.
...welcome our robotic Japanese asteroid exploring probe overlords, even if they no longer carry NASA rovers.
C'mon, laugh! At least I didn't mention Beowulf clusters or Soviet Russia.
Mr. Atreides, I was specifically talking about the 100-song limit in the new ROKR phone. I never said that iPods set any restrictions on you. I understand you can't extract mp3 files from an iPod or just drag files directly to it without using iTunes unless you get some 3rd party utilities. But that's is not the issue here.
My statement about contract limitations was based on the article I linked in my original post:
"Our sources at Moto tell us that Apple had originally insisted on a completely ridiculous 25 song cap because of "licensing issues", and that the current 100 song limit was the compromise number they settled on."
As to why not buy an iPod nano -- I thought about it, but decided that I'd rather not carry around yet another device. I might break down someday if future flash memory iPods can hold my entire CD collection. For now I'm happy with a phone that works very well as a simple phone but can switch to a Palm Pilot on steroids at any time.
Besides this phone being bulky and ugly, I think it's silly that they forcibly limited its capacity to 100 songs regardless of memory card size:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000570057877/
I understand Apple's iTunes/iPod efforts are limited by the contracts they sign with the record companies. Lucky for me Palm has no such shackles, and my Treo 650 holds as many songs as I can squeeze into a standard SD card. The 1Gb one I have now handles about 200, and as soon as 2Gb cards get cheaper I'll easily double my storage.
Yeah, but we all know what happens when one of these Domino servers falls over...
Absolutely. When a server "falls over" the user's e-mail fails over to a backup server. You have maybe a few seconds of inconvenience while you switch over if you were in online mode. If you were in offline mode you don't even notice when the switch happens on your next replication.
Nice to know slashdot keeps up its reputation for acuracy. IBM was using Notes long before they bought Lotus.
IBM bought Lotus in 1995. Lotus products were already in use there, but it wasn't until around 98 or 99 that every e-mail account at IBM was transferred to Notes. Before that a lot of people did their e-mail on mainframes (VM) and I think some employees didn't even have their own addresses.
Hyperion/Endymion was a great book series. It was hard work to keep track of the complicated plot (time travel and all) and the cast of thousands, but well worth it. By the way, I think you meant ergs instead of Ents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erg_(disambiguation)
The thing is, a launch doesn't happen only every 3 or 4 years. Besides the space shuttle there are lots of military and commercial satellite launches courtesy of NASA, the US Air Force, the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency and other new members of the club, like the People's Republic of China.
Tons of fumes and other chemicals are expended for successful launches but it's even worse when something goes wrong and rockets fall to the ground in pieces or are lost in the ocean. For a recent example, there was the Ariane 5 rocket that self-destructed soon after launch right over a populated area:
Thanks laxian, good to know I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by that. Now that my employer owns the former Lotus Development Corp, at work everyone just call it Notes. But I have a pet peeve similar to yours. When someone wants a URL or e-mail address sent to them via instant message (we use Lotus Sametime) they say, "ping it to me". Of course most of them have no idea what the original ping is.
Perhaps it should say "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus.... wait... WTF is Lotus?"
Have you noticed how Lotus' company name has typically been used to refer to its products? Happened for years with 1-2-3 and these days many people refer to Notes as Lotus. I wonder if this is because of confused consumers or a less-than-stellar marketing department?
- It runs acroread slowly, instead of loading in my already opened browser quickly
This may be particular to your system. On this P3-800MHz with Windows 2000 Pro I had Adobe Reader 7.0 open in about 2 seconds, with the document loaded. I'm using Firefox 1.0.4 and much prefer having PDFs open in Acrobat reader, leaving the original web page alone in my browser. (the default of opening PDFs in the browser drives me nuts)
- Uses huge ugly fonts
They look fine to me... but I understand that some Linux distros don't have certain fonts.
- Has silly graphics that bring nothing to the point
Fair enough, but it's easy to read the text and ignore the graphics as you go on to the next page.
- Acroread requires two clicks to close (one for the document, one for acroread)
It's been a while since I used Acrobat Reader on Linux, is this 2-click business really required? Why can't you just close the reader itself (as in Windows) with one click, which also closes any PDFs you have open? Or are 2 clicks needed to close if you open PDFs inside the browser?
- Yes, I want a pony
I just hope it doesn't have an "accident" on your carpet...
Yes, the services revenue includes deployment of IBM hardware or software (or both), but it also includes work done on non-IBM products. For example, setting up WebSphere or DB2 components on machines from other vendors. But not all IBM products are installed and maintained by IBM. Customers sometimes choose to hire other consulting companies or the work might be done by vendors who partner with IBM. In that case IBM makes its money on the hardware/software sale and the partners get the services revenue.
IBM is no longer in the PC business and its mainframe business is all but dead. They are now a consulting company that makes a few unix boxes.
You're correct that IBM left the PC business (sold the Personal Systems Group to Lenovo last year) but IBM is still making -- and selling -- plenty of hardware. From page 22 of IBM's 2004 Annual Report,
Systems and Technology Group
2004: $17,916
2003: $16,469
Yr to yr change: 8.8%
zSeries: 14.9%
iSeries: (17.2)%
pSeries: 7.3%
Almost $18 billion in hardware sales sounds pretty decent. A 14.9% increase in mainframe sales from the year before doesn't look "all but dead", and a 7.3% increase in pSeries (AIX/Linux) machines is more than "a few unix boxes." Especially since Gartner reports IBM leading the worldwide Unix server market last year,
You make some very good points in your post and I agree with most of them, but please understand that IBM hasn't completely left the hardware business. We (yes, I work there) are having too much fun kicking Sun and HP around. And by the way, we sold over $15b in software last year, so we're not just a consulting company.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, I'm reading a hardcover novel at the moment that's about 600 pages long. It's so big and bulky (1.5 inches thick) that I can't easily carry it on trips in my laptop bag and it cost $25.95. Unfortunately it's not available in e-book format, and the books that are tend to be in proprietary formats, saddled with annoying DRM and don't cost much less than their paper versions.
And don't forget a Microsoft-approved DRM-compatible monitor, whenever they finally become available.
Also on BusinessWeek there's an interview with Ballmer where he dodges every question he's asked (and re-asked) regarding morale issues at Microsoft, competition, release delays with Longhorn/Vista, etc.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_3Oddly he didn't jump around screaming "Developers, developers, developers!!!" this time around.
http://rush.com/php/home.php?f=0
The inside of the CD booklet has other views of the stone figure and also 3 satellite dishes (or they may be radio telescopes).
http://www.connollyco.com/discography/rush/test.ht ml
Very appropriate for a Canadian band, and also for the album's theme of human interaction as described in the liner notes.
"Research group Gartner is advising businesses to "immediately" replace their Microsoft Internet Information Server software with a more secure server application, following attacks on IIS by the worms Code Red and Nimda."
http://news.com.com/2102-1001_3-273461.html?tag=sGartner approves of Microsoft more often than not, and this was by far the most negative opinion I've ever seen them express about MS. Too bad hardly anyone took their advice.
Good point, but for some of us there would be a big benefit with higher wireless speeds. My cable modem has a typical download speed of 3Mbps so even the 11Mbps (max) speed of 802.11b isn't being used to its full capacity. But I often need to move large files between my laptop and my PC. If I don't want to wait 10 minutes or more for a file transfer I have to carry my laptop into my home office, plug it into my Ethernet switch and transfer the files there. With faster Wi-Fi I could avoid this minor hassle.
...welcome our robotic Japanese asteroid exploring probe overlords, even if they no longer carry NASA rovers. C'mon, laugh! At least I didn't mention Beowulf clusters or Soviet Russia.
Mr. Atreides, I was specifically talking about the 100-song limit in the new ROKR phone. I never said that iPods set any restrictions on you. I understand you can't extract mp3 files from an iPod or just drag files directly to it without using iTunes unless you get some 3rd party utilities. But that's is not the issue here. My statement about contract limitations was based on the article I linked in my original post: "Our sources at Moto tell us that Apple had originally insisted on a completely ridiculous 25 song cap because of "licensing issues", and that the current 100 song limit was the compromise number they settled on." As to why not buy an iPod nano -- I thought about it, but decided that I'd rather not carry around yet another device. I might break down someday if future flash memory iPods can hold my entire CD collection. For now I'm happy with a phone that works very well as a simple phone but can switch to a Palm Pilot on steroids at any time.
Besides this phone being bulky and ugly, I think it's silly that they forcibly limited its capacity to 100 songs regardless of memory card size: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000570057877/ I understand Apple's iTunes/iPod efforts are limited by the contracts they sign with the record companies. Lucky for me Palm has no such shackles, and my Treo 650 holds as many songs as I can squeeze into a standard SD card. The 1Gb one I have now handles about 200, and as soon as 2Gb cards get cheaper I'll easily double my storage.
So much for the "paperless office" of the future. Maybe we should declare trees to be endangered species. ;)
Dude, I got the joke, just wanted to let anybody who didn't get it that we do in fact plan for these contingencies. :-)
Absolutely. When a server "falls over" the user's e-mail fails over to a backup server. You have maybe a few seconds of inconvenience while you switch over if you were in online mode. If you were in offline mode you don't even notice when the switch happens on your next replication.
Nice to know slashdot keeps up its reputation for acuracy. IBM was using Notes long before they bought Lotus. IBM bought Lotus in 1995. Lotus products were already in use there, but it wasn't until around 98 or 99 that every e-mail account at IBM was transferred to Notes. Before that a lot of people did their e-mail on mainframes (VM) and I think some employees didn't even have their own addresses.
Maybe this is what Sir Arthur C. Clarke meant when he said that supernovae are probably industrial accidents.
http://www.kockums.se/Submarines/aipstirling.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine#Probl ems_with_Stirling_engines
Hyperion/Endymion was a great book series. It was hard work to keep track of the complicated plot (time travel and all) and the cast of thousands, but well worth it. By the way, I think you meant ergs instead of Ents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erg_(disambiguation)
The thing is, a launch doesn't happen only every 3 or 4 years. Besides the space shuttle there are lots of military and commercial satellite launches courtesy of NASA, the US Air Force, the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency and other new members of the club, like the People's Republic of China.
Tons of fumes and other chemicals are expended for successful launches but it's even worse when something goes wrong and rockets fall to the ground in pieces or are lost in the ocean. For a recent example, there was the Ariane 5 rocket that self-destructed soon after launch right over a populated area:
http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/960615/pol.htmlThanks laxian, good to know I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by that. Now that my employer owns the former Lotus Development Corp, at work everyone just call it Notes. But I have a pet peeve similar to yours. When someone wants a URL or e-mail address sent to them via instant message (we use Lotus Sametime) they say, "ping it to me". Of course most of them have no idea what the original ping is.
Perhaps it should say "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus.... wait... WTF is Lotus?" Have you noticed how Lotus' company name has typically been used to refer to its products? Happened for years with 1-2-3 and these days many people refer to Notes as Lotus. I wonder if this is because of confused consumers or a less-than-stellar marketing department?
This may be particular to your system. On this P3-800MHz with Windows 2000 Pro I had Adobe Reader 7.0 open in about 2 seconds, with the document loaded. I'm using Firefox 1.0.4 and much prefer having PDFs open in Acrobat reader, leaving the original web page alone in my browser. (the default of opening PDFs in the browser drives me nuts)
- Uses huge ugly fontsThey look fine to me... but I understand that some Linux distros don't have certain fonts.
- Has silly graphics that bring nothing to the pointFair enough, but it's easy to read the text and ignore the graphics as you go on to the next page.
- Acroread requires two clicks to close (one for the document, one for acroread)It's been a while since I used Acrobat Reader on Linux, is this 2-click business really required? Why can't you just close the reader itself (as in Windows) with one click, which also closes any PDFs you have open? Or are 2 clicks needed to close if you open PDFs inside the browser?
- Yes, I want a ponyI just hope it doesn't have an "accident" on your carpet...
Yes, the services revenue includes deployment of IBM hardware or software (or both), but it also includes work done on non-IBM products. For example, setting up WebSphere or DB2 components on machines from other vendors. But not all IBM products are installed and maintained by IBM. Customers sometimes choose to hire other consulting companies or the work might be done by vendors who partner with IBM. In that case IBM makes its money on the hardware/software sale and the partners get the services revenue.
You're correct that IBM left the PC business (sold the Personal Systems Group to Lenovo last year) but IBM is still making -- and selling -- plenty of hardware. From page 22 of IBM's 2004 Annual Report,
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2004/2004($ in billions of US dollars)
Systems and Technology Group 2004: $17,916 2003: $16,469 Yr to yr change: 8.8% zSeries: 14.9% iSeries: (17.2)% pSeries: 7.3%
Almost $18 billion in hardware sales sounds pretty decent. A 14.9% increase in mainframe sales from the year before doesn't look "all but dead", and a 7.3% increase in pSeries (AIX/Linux) machines is more than "a few unix boxes." Especially since Gartner reports IBM leading the worldwide Unix server market last year,
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/newsYou make some very good points in your post and I agree with most of them, but please understand that IBM hasn't completely left the hardware business. We (yes, I work there) are having too much fun kicking Sun and HP around. And by the way, we sold over $15b in software last year, so we're not just a consulting company.