Looking at the control panel there, I'm not sure I like them using Softwa...pdate as the name of an icon. Would two lines have messed the design that much?
Heh, good old marketing. "We made a mistake in removing the apple menu" becomes "Based on feedback from Mac OS X Public Beta users..."
Alas, www.apple.com/darwin seems to be choked (slashdotted?)... not great considering they're running it on OSX server (apache)
For that matter building an Exchange client for Linux. (i.e. a mail client that supports a direct connection to exchange server)
I'm not a programmer, but surely such a thing is do-able? Even as a component in an existing mail client?
I think Linux is a smashing OS, but the OS you run is less important than the applications. When I look at the applications I use most of the time:
Outlook 2000 connected to an exchange server
Internet Explorer 5.5
half-life
Office 2000
various custom database clients, used infrequently
Netsupport (remote control package, like pcanywhere only better)
I would say currently I can make a set-up in Linux that kinda does most of that, but it means a lot of compromises. The first two though, occupy 75% of my time.
I've used one extensivvely. When off on a business trip, packing a full size novel takes room in your bags - your PDA is travelling in your pocket anyhow. I used to read the old "The Shadow" (or try here)and "Doc Savage" pulp books, which are going on the net as fast as they can get scanned. Heh, John and Shevvy are gonna kill me if I've slshdotted them....
Now I use a Psion 5MX PDA it's a little less convenient, due to the increased size, but still handy.
You know, even if it were the case that PC's and other high-tech devices were at fault here, it's not been entirely unpredictable that technology in the home is going to increase over the last 10 years, has it?
That's interesting.... We're having some issues here in the UK with broadband access - BT our telco, is considered by some to be dragging it's heels with allowing competitors access to Exchanges to install their own DSL equipment; but Microsoft haven't amde any comment.
Of course, in 1997 Bill Gates met with Tony Blair...I see an article in The Independent of the time where they claim that Microsoft immediately claimed that he was a special advisor to the UK Govt. on Computers in schools - a claim that the Govt quickly denied after complaints from Oracle, Sun etc.
The point is that someone buying a Powerbook intending to run Linux and hence X on it would find it nicer to have 3 buttons; but since Apple expect people to be running MAcOS they only put one button on the thinkpad.
I'm not sure what is so extraordinary about this. I mean, my Dell Lattitude has the same problem; Dell expect me to be running Windows on it so the trackpad only has 2 buttons.
Look at the positive side - at least you have the possibility of changing Linux so it supports less buttons (as indeed Emulate3Buttons does on my Dell. Try running Windows on a single-button mouse and see how far you get.
c.f. Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics, where alien invaders gather weapons to repel an attack; we see one of them saying "better bring the pea-shooter, it was devastating against the bubble people on planet zz-47"
That's be impossible - at least in the corporate market - as in corporates people with laptops (by definition) move about, and often use local ethernet cards when they visit different offices. This is why of all the Win9x-en I hate 95b the most - because it only lets you have the drivers for 3 ethernet cards installed at any one time.
Of course, corporates usually buy bulk or OEM licenses, but not exclusively-
I went to a MS focus group recently where they were trying to find out why we IT guys buy so much boxed product instead of using bulk licenses.
(The answer BTW is that a) you only get a bulk licnese when you buy a lot of something centrally; if a new guy starts and tells me he needs project 2000 I just buy a boxed copy and charge it to his department and b) l-users buy the stuff themselves on credit cards because blinkered senior management refuse to let us have taser guns.)
Anyways, back on topic.
What's to stop you having an $10 ethernet card in the drawer and registering your OS with that card, and then installing the OS on 1000 machines with that card?
Apart from the fact that I work from a reputable company that is not interested in pirating software. I mean, we're pissed off enough when people pirate the software(or hardware) that we make!
You may have seen the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures for Children this year, where I believe this device was demonstrated.
For those unfamilair with them, the RI lectures are a series of lectures, first started by Michael Farady, given by a distinguished scientist, for children. Even as an adult they continue to fascinate; this year they had Prof. Keven Warwick (one of the few people with "ex-cyborg" written in their CV;-) talking about robots.
I still remember when I was a kid Carl Sagan giving the lectures - hopefully kids today are getting the same inspiration.
Titles mean what you want them to; you need ot work out what jobs need doing, and then the title is almost an afterthought!
Anyhow, to answer your question:
CIO almost always means a very senior IT person reporting direct to the CEO.
CTO sometimes means this as well (but see below).
If both exist it usually reflects the 2 faces of an I.T. team. One is to maintain the exisiting technology (CIO) and one is to look at the business process and hence develop new technology(CTO)
Only in very big companies is IT so big you need 2 people reporting to the CEO; more common is a CIO and then 2 VPs or Directors, one for each side.
Confusingly, CTO can also refer to a completely different role, which is the problem AC has in his research.
In a technology company, someone has to have a long-term vision of where the technology is going. If this is considered a full-time post for someone it is sometimes called CTO
Example: Bill Gates has stopped being CEO and become a CTO role. Although they call him an "architect" which is another popular title for this.
This type of CTO thinks about new directions for the technology to take. He needs to work very closely with R&D,MSS,and probably with customers. She needs to have a good understanding of the CEO's vision of the direction the company should go in.
You need to distinguish between a Macintosh that uses an Intel chip in it and between generic X86 "IBM-compatible" hardware. (When was the last time anyone said IBM comaptible!)
With the former it is Apple propriatary and they make all the money from the hardware. With the latter their hardware sales vanish to the cheap clones; and their OS Sales have to overcome the manufacturer's reluctance to start shipping other OS's. Look how hard it was to get hardware suppliers shipping Linux on their boxes!
The former is also technically easier for Apple as they then have solid control over the hardware of the boxes.
MS's objectives have changed over time. Their vision used to be "A computer on every desktop" (actually this is a misquote, it was a computer on every desktop running Microsoft software)
This though has changed as they come to realise that this is in a sense limiting. They are trying to think of where in the future there will be an OS. The answer is not just on the desktop or in the server.
Now, and more as time goes on, there will be opportunities for Windows (and for Linux, folks!) in places like:
Your PDA (CE of course)
Your mobile phone (they'd like it to be CE but it is totally unsuited...)
(Perhaps) a new class of tablet-style device, very cheap eventually
Your game system (CE on the dreamcast isn't popular - the coders want something lower-level - hence X-Box)
Your super-microwave oven (embedded NT)
Hence their current vision thang: "to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device".
I know, sounds yuck - vision statements always do - but notice the emphasis.
Off-topic, what would Linux's vision statement be?
I like BeOS a lot... give me a free choice of OS and I think I'd probably pick it... but my take has been that OS is rarely important (Unless it has bad problems) - it's the applications that matter.
I like Linux too, although it is important to remember that it's real strengths are at the server level - but my production machine stays on Win2K because that is what runs the most of the apps I need.
Actually Win98 would be the closest fit but I did include a caveat about problems.
Before you reply, yes I know other OS's are stronger in this regard; 2K is the stablest OS that runs the Apps I need.
And I know that I could replace the apps I use with other things, I could switch from Exchange, and I could get different clients to my databases, and I could find some Q3 mods to replace the half-life ones I'm addicted to, etc.etc. but that's a huge job and what I have now works.
Anyhow, dragging back on-topic, BeOS needs better apps; I suspect that opening the OS would probably not change much. The UI is solid, the file system widely considered the best, dunno much about kernels etc. but the thing is damn fast (Start-up time has to be seen to be believed!). What in the OS needs improvement via a Bazzar?
Well, I d/led the Win32 version yesterday, and the add seems to be stuck on a link to Opera.
IT takes about 1/3 of my button bar; that's OK.
One thing about Opera that few have mentioned is the breadth of OS support. Opera for EPOC, for example, is 100 times better thanSymbian's own browser; I seem to recall that they are starting to ship it on new EPOC devices, so must be good.
BeOS version is good too.
In the UK we're having a cyber-squatting case for a clothing company we have over here called French Connection.
They use the initials FCUK as a branding thing "woo-wear our clothes and you'll be sooo cool you'll almost be able to swear" etc.etc. and are trying to get fcuk.co.uk back.
However the judge is having doubts about it on the basis that it's a distasteful name.
Perhaps actually that's a little unfair to the judge - he does have to bear in mind that the ASA here in the UK (who handle complaints about advertisements) have ruled against them in the past as offensive.
Well, here's one instance of an idea MS are kinda taking from Linux:
You will be able to run Whistler "headless", i.e. without any ui at all, without even a video card; you'll just do configs via the serial port of a cosole over the network (telnet? ssh? something wierd of their own design?).
I'm an EPOC user...I use a Psion 5MX. I bought it mostly because of the hardware - it has the best keyboard of any pda - but it's a good little OS. The Psion supplied web browser isn't much good, but Opera is excellent, and it also has a good WAP browser available. The JVM seems good, there are plenty of good apps, and symbian (the OS writers) seem to know what they are doing. My only regret at moving from my Palm is that it is slightly too big to fit in a shirt pocket (although the Psion Revo model does, even with a keyboard)
Fairly effective Linux tools exist as well, and there is some interesting work going on to get Linux running on it.
The Nokia appears to be using EPOC 6, which is very interesting. I recently pulled down the EPOC 6 SDK just for the emulator. They seem to be aiming at a palm sized device with a built in mobile phone.
While you're looking at this the Ericsson R380s might be interesting to compare. This uses th eolder EPOC5, but is only 160g (56x27x158mm in size)
I suppose the point is that WAP sucks, and people see a market in having the PDA built into the phone. What I think I'd prefer, instead, is to have the phone built into the PDA, if you see what I mean.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, good old marketing. "We made a mistake in removing the apple menu" becomes "Based on feedback from Mac OS X Public Beta users..."
Alas, www.apple.com/darwin seems to be choked (slashdotted?)... not great considering they're running it on OSX server (apache)
It's not well expressed but If that's the silliest thing you ever saw on slashdot you're browsing too high. ;-)
I'm not a programmer, but surely such a thing is do-able? Even as a component in an existing mail client?
I think Linux is a smashing OS, but the OS you run is less important than the applications. When I look at the applications I use most of the time:
- Outlook 2000 connected to an exchange server
- Internet Explorer 5.5
- half-life
- Office 2000
- various custom database clients, used infrequently
- Netsupport (remote control package, like pcanywhere only better)
I would say currently I can make a set-up in Linux that kinda does most of that, but it means a lot of compromises. The first two though, occupy 75% of my time.Now I use a Psion 5MX PDA it's a little less convenient, due to the increased size, but still handy.
You know, even if it were the case that PC's and other high-tech devices were at fault here, it's not been entirely unpredictable that technology in the home is going to increase over the last 10 years, has it?
Of course, in 1997 Bill Gates met with Tony Blair...I see an article in The Independent of the time where they claim that Microsoft immediately claimed that he was a special advisor to the UK Govt. on Computers in schools - a claim that the Govt quickly denied after complaints from Oracle, Sun etc.
MacOS is designed for one button
Windows is designed for two buttons
X is designed for three buttons
The point is that someone buying a Powerbook intending to run Linux and hence X on it would find it nicer to have 3 buttons; but since Apple expect people to be running MAcOS they only put one button on the thinkpad.
I'm not sure what is so extraordinary about this. I mean, my Dell Lattitude has the same problem; Dell expect me to be running Windows on it so the trackpad only has 2 buttons.
Look at the positive side - at least you have the possibility of changing Linux so it supports less buttons (as indeed Emulate3Buttons does on my Dell. Try running Windows on a single-button mouse and see how far you get.
Not much. Plenty of PC's these days coming out with plastic cases instead of metal.
;-)
Of course, corporates usually buy bulk or OEM licenses, but not exclusively- I went to a MS focus group recently where they were trying to find out why we IT guys buy so much boxed product instead of using bulk licenses.
(The answer BTW is that a) you only get a bulk licnese when you buy a lot of something centrally; if a new guy starts and tells me he needs project 2000 I just buy a boxed copy and charge it to his department and b) l-users buy the stuff themselves on credit cards because blinkered senior management refuse to let us have taser guns.)
Anyways, back on topic. What's to stop you having an $10 ethernet card in the drawer and registering your OS with that card, and then installing the OS on 1000 machines with that card?
Apart from the fact that I work from a reputable company that is not interested in pirating software. I mean, we're pissed off enough when people pirate the software(or hardware) that we make!
It is, of course, an arbritary definition, other OEM licenses sometimes associate with other things. And OEM licenses are very restrictive in general.
What I always wondered is, if I buy a Quad-CPU box and split them up.... ;-)
For those unfamilair with them, the RI lectures are a series of lectures, first started by Michael Farady, given by a distinguished scientist, for children. Even as an adult they continue to fascinate; this year they had Prof. Keven Warwick (one of the few people with "ex-cyborg" written in their CV ;-) talking about robots.
I still remember when I was a kid Carl Sagan giving the lectures - hopefully kids today are getting the same inspiration.
Anyhow, to answer your question:
CIO almost always means a very senior IT person reporting direct to the CEO.
CTO sometimes means this as well (but see below).
If both exist it usually reflects the 2 faces of an I.T. team. One is to maintain the exisiting technology (CIO) and one is to look at the business process and hence develop new technology(CTO)
Only in very big companies is IT so big you need 2 people reporting to the CEO; more common is a CIO and then 2 VPs or Directors, one for each side.
Confusingly, CTO can also refer to a completely different role, which is the problem AC has in his research.
In a technology company, someone has to have a long-term vision of where the technology is going. If this is considered a full-time post for someone it is sometimes called CTO
Example: Bill Gates has stopped being CEO and become a CTO role. Although they call him an "architect" which is another popular title for this.
This type of CTO thinks about new directions for the technology to take. He needs to work very closely with R&D,MSS,and probably with customers. She needs to have a good understanding of the CEO's vision of the direction the company should go in.
With the former it is Apple propriatary and they make all the money from the hardware. With the latter their hardware sales vanish to the cheap clones; and their OS Sales have to overcome the manufacturer's reluctance to start shipping other OS's. Look how hard it was to get hardware suppliers shipping Linux on their boxes!
The former is also technically easier for Apple as they then have solid control over the hardware of the boxes.
More appropriate for the docking scene surely - "Captain, fire the Zara-thrusta's"
This though has changed as they come to realise that this is in a sense limiting. They are trying to think of where in the future there will be an OS. The answer is not just on the desktop or in the server.
Now, and more as time goes on, there will be opportunities for Windows (and for Linux, folks!) in places like:
Your PDA (CE of course)
Your mobile phone (they'd like it to be CE but it is totally unsuited...)
(Perhaps) a new class of tablet-style device, very cheap eventually
Your game system (CE on the dreamcast isn't popular - the coders want something lower-level - hence X-Box)
Your super-microwave oven (embedded NT)
Hence their current vision thang: "to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device".
I know, sounds yuck - vision statements always do - but notice the emphasis.
Off-topic, what would Linux's vision statement be?
Perhaps a subscribable web-zine then? Although I guess one of their USP's was that it was in paper format.
I like Linux too, although it is important to remember that it's real strengths are at the server level - but my production machine stays on Win2K because that is what runs the most of the apps I need.
Actually Win98 would be the closest fit but I did include a caveat about problems.
Before you reply, yes I know other OS's are stronger in this regard; 2K is the stablest OS that runs the Apps I need.
And I know that I could replace the apps I use with other things, I could switch from Exchange, and I could get different clients to my databases, and I could find some Q3 mods to replace the half-life ones I'm addicted to, etc.etc. but that's a huge job and what I have now works.
Anyhow, dragging back on-topic, BeOS needs better apps; I suspect that opening the OS would probably not change much. The UI is solid, the file system widely considered the best, dunno much about kernels etc. but the thing is damn fast (Start-up time has to be seen to be believed!). What in the OS needs improvement via a Bazzar?
Perhaps they're not very..er...wired.
Well, I d/led the Win32 version yesterday, and the add seems to be stuck on a link to Opera. IT takes about 1/3 of my button bar; that's OK. One thing about Opera that few have mentioned is the breadth of OS support. Opera for EPOC, for example, is 100 times better thanSymbian's own browser; I seem to recall that they are starting to ship it on new EPOC devices, so must be good. BeOS version is good too.
Mind you, this story was in the Sunday Times, which is....less intellectualy rigorous than The Times. Hey - that puts this message on-topic!
In the UK we're having a cyber-squatting case for a clothing company we have over here called French Connection. They use the initials FCUK as a branding thing "woo-wear our clothes and you'll be sooo cool you'll almost be able to swear" etc.etc. and are trying to get fcuk.co.uk back. However the judge is having doubts about it on the basis that it's a distasteful name. Perhaps actually that's a little unfair to the judge - he does have to bear in mind that the ASA here in the UK (who handle complaints about advertisements) have ruled against them in the past as offensive.
The trouble with being a fan of Space:1999 is the sickening realisation that we aren't all wearing junpsuits,etc....
But on the other hand according to Start Trek we've already had the Third World War, so we should be thankful I suppose...
But, on the third hand, the Whovians can point to the Dalek invasion due next year...nasty!
You will be able to run Whistler "headless", i.e. without any ui at all, without even a video card; you'll just do configs via the serial port of a cosole over the network (telnet? ssh? something wierd of their own design?).
Fairly effective Linux tools exist as well, and there is some interesting work going on to get Linux running on it.
The Nokia appears to be using EPOC 6, which is very interesting. I recently pulled down the EPOC 6 SDK just for the emulator. They seem to be aiming at a palm sized device with a built in mobile phone.
While you're looking at this the Ericsson R380s might be interesting to compare. This uses th eolder EPOC5, but is only 160g (56x27x158mm in size)
I suppose the point is that WAP sucks, and people see a market in having the PDA built into the phone. What I think I'd prefer, instead, is to have the phone built into the PDA, if you see what I mean.