What Brittanica should do is contribute its most polished articles to Wikipedia (or integrate the content) and then periodically, check on those articles or other "good" ones on Wikipedia and do whatever "fact-checking", copy-editing, and the like that they do already and produce better articles in both encyclopedias and still sell their dead-tree version.
The biggest problem both are facing are the questions of "what should an enyclopedia be" or put, "how broad should a general-purpose encyclopedia be", and "to what audience should it be." For example, with a B-Tree Algorithm; should it be in here, and if so, to what level of detail should we go? For Wikipedia, having the ability to have near limitless time and space, articles can be as indepth as contributors wish, and given the near limitless time and space their encyclopedia can have intesive breadth. Brittanica has a cyclical publishing nature, high quality requirements (e.g. Wikipedia can "get away" with articles in development, incomplete, uncited, etc... for a while, where the prior can not), no easy way to remedy inaccuracies; in other words, very limited time and space.
However, Wikipedia is running into issues where certain moderators are under the impression that they too must "trim the fat" and delete articles who need a little TLC; to get the same respectability of Brittanica. The major problem is they are in two totally different situations. Brittanica is trying to be too much like Wikipedia (which might not be a bad thing) and Wikipedia (at least parts of it) are trying to be a little too much like Brittanica; when their delivery mechanisms, editorial/community structure, and ultimately purpose is completely different.
I just hope the government doesn't swing too far, and start exposing all that mountains of data programs produced under prgrams started by Bush; without first doing a real through check to see what kind of data is actually there. I'm only afraid the new cabinet will steamroll this EO to make Obama "look" effective without considering the true risk(s) associated with some of that information.
However, I've always felt it is the right for a citizen (or consumer) to aquire data from any agency which collects data about him/her self in unfiltered form, regardless of the risk(s).
Notebooks are getting smaller, and have longer battery life, and tend to break more often and often cost more than they are worth to fix, and WiFi is becoming pretty standard everywhere. Desktops are easy to fix (e.g. no need to buy a new one when I can just swap out the defective part), have been more powerful than the casual user has needed for a while now, and consumer confidence is very shaken with Windows Vista (which most users won't upgrade their 4-5 year old computer to use, or specifically is holding on to the old one to not "have" to upgrade), and linux tends to run very well on older hardware (sometimes even better than the latest and greatest if the driver support from the vendor sucks). I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, but has been slumping for quite a while now. The only one appearing to kick ass is Apple, and that is only because they are taking customers away from Dell/HP by having compelling features, Not Vista, more PC compatible, trendy, and if they have to upgrade anyway, might as well get what they want.
I read an article by Michael Dell (lost the URL) saying that the market is saturated in the US; as in there are no "first time buyers" except maybe for the kid going off to college and a lot are going Apple. Everyone who wants a PC already has one, and the manufacturers have done nothing to convince buyers they need a new box. Instead, they've made the machines suck more though inferior integrated parts, made them more difficult to upgrade, and loaded them with crapware to try to make a profit on a product that is already razor thin.
The second problem is that the "Windows" bundled applications like Windows Movie Maker are crappy compared to the iMovie/iDVD bundles on Macs, and the manufactuer ones like Dell-Movie Maker (or Dell DVD Player) are even worse than the Windows default ones. Users get "box shock" when they attempt to buy Off-the-Shelf software so they are really looking for a box that "does stuff" and is "known" for "doing stuff" not just being faster. On Apple, the bundled apps are either very simple to remove, or are fully-functional "free as in beer" includes; here PC manufactures to often include crippled, hard to remove, ugly, slow applications.
Saavy PC buyers remove all that crap and put a clean Windows install or Linux on there. The base consumer has no idea how to do that, and get a piece of crap for their hard earned money. The OEMs should really work to either make Linux ready for desktop primetime, or invest in OSS projects to produce, very good, very simple, portable to Windows if need be, very user friendly, very attractive, free desktop software rather than put together a crappy version, and get rid of all the crap running in the system tray for a clean, snappy system and stop blaming the economy for no one buying there stuff.
Netbooks are doing exactly this; running very efficent OS installs where if feels like the system was designed like a velvet glove over the hardware. Lowering the price and giving the buyer the features they want "size, power usage, WiFi, price." Not more GHz and more ram simply to feed a more hungry, more restrictive, more lackluster OS.
I think you are absoultely right; however, the major difference is that with Disney, you're producing a single animated feature one-at-a-time that when the project is over; unless you're talking sequels or toy-tie-is (which they do, but eventually fizzle out by a market obsessed with the latest and greatest); you're having to develop from start to finish a brand new product, almost constantly. Disney had a huge advantage by being among the first to do so, and chosing to do films that were americanized versions of fairy-tales ages old known to be successful and already have mindshare.
Apple on the other hand has made a hugely successful business model out of taking the same lines they've had for years and making incremental updates to them. If Jobs died tomorrow, their stock would take a hit, but if they simply kept with the small increments they have been doing to thair major line up (OS, Mac, iPhone/iPod) and kept quality, they could persist for a very long time without having any new ideas; assuming they don't have any long term goals which is probably not the case. It would give them long enough to get the right people in place without Steve; and develop a post-Steve culture and strategy. If the management has the perfect blend of "What would Steve Do" and "What Can we do better without him" while holding to the core principals that have made them successful today (but being willing to change them if the market demands) they will be OK. Economically, Apple has enough cash on hand to weather than storm where buyer confidence is shaken, or if they do botch some things or don't respond to the market.
If they had to create brand new 1-shot products every year where only a portion developed their own peripheral ecosystem or sequals (2.0's) I think they'd have a much harder time and be susceptable to not taking risks after 1-2 flops, like Disney did.
If someone is willing to pay $20/unit (community college) to $100-200/unit (public university) and hundreds of dollars for books, she could have either forked up the $90 or so bucks they charge for Windows, taken it somewhere and let them do it, or taken CIS 100 "Intro to the Internet" or CIS 101 "Computer Applications" and figured how to do it herself. With all the money it costs to attend school at some of the most affordable colleges, getting her computer fixed (even though it didn't need "fixing") is a drop in the bucket. Granted, I know some folks are pretty against the wall financially, but she should have developed better problem solving and critical thinking skills than what she obviously has not seemed to developed, well before university.
It makes sense to use a digital camera since 99.99% of the use of that picture is going to be put on.gov websites or sent to post offices so they can change the picture in the frame, or in publications that are probably made with something like InDesign. I'd imagine whatever advantages you got out of the film photo (which I was never a believer in until out wedding photos were done on an antique camera with the crank and everything out of a 50's period movie), would be lost in the scanning process.
If I was president I'd just have them take a picture with a polaroid. I can just see the huge ornate frame with a tiny polaroid taped in the center. All the other world leaders would either find it humorous and say "this guy is cool" or think I'm crazy enough not to mess with.
Seems like a good idea for Steve to take some time. It gives him a chance to see how well Cook handles the shop when no major new products are shipping and seems to indicate that he is at least semi-comfortable that he's got the right management to oversee day-to-day operations, and gives them a chance to fine-tune anything should he want to retire or passes away pre-maturely. As die-hard as he is, I can't imagine him doing the keynotes if he is too frail (physically) to "wow" the crowd.
Since the major aesthetic overhall in the iMac, MBP and MB lines in the past year or two, and OS X 10.6 shaping up to be a smaller update (aesthetically and technically) to 10.5 than the 10.4->10.5 jump was; it doesn't appear that there is going to be much "new business" from now to then. Maybe some hardware line updates to faster chips, and some 10.5.x updates; but nothing major. I'd imagine 10.6 won't even ship until summer; just in time for the WWDC in June.
That is why whenever I've been somewhere; I've always tried to get time set aside for Jr. programmers or new hires or interns to do simple automations or workflows. it really boosts the public perception of IT if we appear to be closing a lot of incidents and the rank-and-file workers and low-level supervisors see we take their business processes seriously. It goes a long way to have a "wish list" from supervisors/users that can be submitted in a page or less. Big tasks with a large scope get turned into incidents for the larger system (enhancements); little ones get added to a queue. I'm of the thought I'd rather have my Jr Programmers or new hires or interns not familar with the larger systems pump out small solutions which sometimes are just a scheduled task, a script, a report or some sort or a small web application so at least we're ensuring it is done correctly, is documented, and is a great way to see what their skills are and put on a good public face. It gives them some face time with the users and shows me their coding skill, design skills, communications, indepdent work skills, self motivation (grab the next one when you are done) and gives them time to get to know the teams, learn how they work, learn their standards rather than just tossing them in and being dead weight until they get up to speed.
At Ohio State (where I did my undergrad work), we did a lecture/recitation model where you went to a lecture by a full-time faculty in a large lecture hall 600-2000 seats where he/she lectured and assigned the homework/reading. The class would on other days be split into 40-60 student sections where a GA would lead any discussions, answer questions to problems, collect and grade assignments, etc.
I found it really nice in that it allowed FT Faculty to lecture in 100-200 level classes taken by a lot of non-majors, to get a feel if that program was for you, and tended to be pretty good at it and had accomplishments in the field. It would be impossible at a school of 50-60K students to have tenured faculty teach 50-100 students in smaller settings when the General Ed courses had 20-30 sections per quarter throught the day and evening. It also gave the TAs an opportunity to develop their teaching skills independently, but on a rather short leash.
The nicest part was that in some courses, if the lecture wasn't very useful and had no depth beyond what I could read on my own (which is usually pretty easy to discern early in the class) no one cared that I wasn't at lecture. In some courses, the recitation was primarily a more public form of "office hours" with the TA, and attendance was encouraged but never required, depending on the lecture size, where tests were administered and other things.
I think the lecture attendance is below 50% when the material is identical to the text and there isn't much anecdote, exposition or discussion relating to the reading. Secondly is when the instructor is nearly impossible to understand (like my MATH 152 Calc 2 class). As a teacher now, I don't particularly care if my students come to class and if they can pass my exams which are based heavily on in-class lecture and lab, then why waste their time. Students are adults and are busy people, particularly if they work and can't see why some instructors look down on a student other than pure ego; if they are making the grade in a more independent manner. I treat school like a buffet; a lot is offered, but you'll only benefit by what you take; and the more you take the better you'll be. However if you take little or nothing, all you've done is pay a huge fee for a degree and missed out on a lot of value behind it. In that case though, it is the student's loss but not me. Everyone has opportunity cost and all I can do is encourage them to see the value in being there as it really is and let them decide if alternative options are truly more worthy to them. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't, but it is no sweat off my back in either case.
Yeah but if an 11 in^2 is $2500 and most folks are 2 m^2 in surface area, it would cost about $17,875 for the displays alone and at that point would be pretty skin tight, more like a leotard than a cloak.
I'd be happy to see an invisible tie so I could wear that and get one over on the man, or randomly turn it from invisible to a disturbing picture for microseconds to mess with friends and co-workers.
This is absolutely true. Spreadsheets are notorious for holding important business functions that are often designed by end users who may/may not have the best coding/design (VBA or formula) skills, that are typically never put through a QA/peer review process, and many times exist on a sole employee's desktop computer and have risen to the point that the business rules have bene forgotten over time and that sheet is necessary for some calculation for some function. These are the cases when IT gets raked over the coals when that desktop fails when responsibility lies on the user, and the user has really put the department in a precarious position. Word documents are just as bad. I've literally seen staff take a print out from the ERP system of a list of contacts who were past due for an event or account recievable take that list and manually edit the "gray boxes" in a word document that was write protected with a password that has been lost in staff turnover making it very difficult for IT to make changes when they ask for it, and then enter the same contact info in a second word document rigged to print a single label on a desktop label printer. With a Crystal or SQL report, we could have automated the process and saved time/resources for the staff and cut down our support of esoteric business processes. However, rather than work with us, one of their own rigged up something we had no idea was in practice had I not headed over there to help a technican with a connection to a server.
This is my same objection to having important business functions being run out of Access databases often developed by the most computer-able person in the department but whose skills are completely lacking. At the community college I used to work for, we had our standard ERP/student info system, but rather than approach IT to add some tracking for special programs into the system one of the student services staff started writing lame Access databases (without a single relationship mind you) to track student attendance in some program offices. What it ended up doing was causing the users to do double entry, made useful information exist outside of the insitution wide data source, and when it failed, it had become such an important part of business, IT was expected to fix a resource that was effed up from the beginning.
For the small business with 1-10 employees it is a great, in expensive way to work electronically. For anything bigger, it is trying to fish with a stick, shoestring, and bubble gum. It costs far more money to have workers working inefficiently and even worse, allowing them to stick with the skills they learned in a high school computer apps class than thinking critically, than ponying up the dough for a server or two and a more robust information system with a programmer/dept liaison to help them work more effectively. (Keeping in mind that it is possible to go into overkill mode.)
If companies are losing credit due to newspaper articles instead of semi-reliable sources such as credit history or earnings reports (for public companies) then there is a bigger problem than telling writers to "Shoosh." If the company is profitable and current on its debts, only a foolish lender would turn down their business. Now, if a company is already millions in the hole, and SHOULDN'T be credit worthy, if a newspaper expose about their board of directors droping millions on yachts, hookers and blow; I'd say the media is doing what it is really "supposed" to do... that is give the public truthful information to make us all make better decisions. In either case, the fault lies on the part of the lenders for having previously extending credit to the unworthy, or for being foolish lenders in trusting an Op-Ed piece over emperical data.
However, I could see PHBs reluctant to purchase their products if they believe they will be sold out and potentially have a sharp decrease in product lines, quality or most-importantly, support quality on their existing purchases. However, there is nothing to say that any company at the drop of the hat won't see off a division or exit a market, and I'd do a little more research before changing a vendor... particularly a one we've had good experience.
If we made all medical records the same "format" or made all Health systems capable of exporting data into a common format, the major problem is that those records are going to be missing valuable meta-data that is used by different providers to facilitate all kinds of functions such as billing, referals, preventative care pre-screening. The second problem is that even if the data is in a common format the problem is transferability; how to facilitate transfers between providers without a central database, in a timely manner, at a reasonable cost. fourth problem is that often times, I don't want records transfered from specific providers. I had a doctor make a really bone-head annotation in my records (I'm a Kaiser patient) and I still hear about it everytime I go into the office. I'd hate to go to some dollar-store urgent care facility when I am sick to get some antibiotics or some cough syrup and have them put that I have TB or something in my file and constantly have that one bad diagnosis by a glorified P.A. skew the view of all the doctors in the future.
The current process accomodates doctors that still use paper records, and allows me to control which providers get access to particilar data. When I go to a new provider, i can get my entire record printed out where I can work with my new doctor to establish which records I believe are accurate and discuss why we (my doctor and I) came to the treatment plan we did.
I have a friend who got a "Drunk in Public" charge (after having gone to a club) and the court made him to to Addicticion medicine for n hours of drug and alcohol counseling, who also has (unrelated) back problems. Having that one flag in his records makes doctors at urgent care very very skidish about giving him cough syrup with codiene that they pass out like candy to folks like me or even giving him anything more powerful than ibuprofen when his back flairs up.
The problem with any centralized datasource like an arrest record, the credit scoring system, the DMV records, etc... is that any one provider, lender, billing firm or police department can make an honest (or intentional) mistake in those records and there can be almost no recourse to getting that data ammended that would have been a local problem, but is now a national problem. Even if the data can be ammended, it is a long difficult process that might take "years" to trickle down to the agencies using the data.
I've always thought the problem with the OLPC project was that it developed a product for very young children, when computer literacy is a afterthought for early primary students in the developed world (at least in the US) and in contries where classrooms may not have books or basic utilities, having computers for these kids is simply not worth the cost, and for older children the platform is severely lacking what a "normal" computer is capable of.
From spending time with teachers in early primary ed, non-computer alternatives such as the Leap Pad is specifically designed to teach children to read or do math and are very easy to "plug" into the state cirriculm. When students do go to the computer lab, they either need to buy specialized software, which is expensive to teach them the cirriculm, or just have the kids goof off in MS paint or playing web-games (which is not entirely bad, but less important and effective than other teaching methods). When you can't read and can't do subtraction, being able to draw pictures on a computer is very low on the list of priorities. Because of this, it makes me think the OLPC product out of the box isn't going to be sufficent for real learning, in particular where web access is non-existent or slow/hap-hazard or not in the native language; particularly for young children whom the project seems to be aimed at.
I think the project would have done much more good by producting computers with a standard Linux desktop, OO.org, Firefox, etc... (maybe toned-down versions to run on less RAM/HD space) and marketed them to middle-and-high school age students, particularly those academic performance would make them able to potentially go to university or have a "office job". When I see employees and students (when I am teaching) who can barely use OO.org because they "learned on Word" or can't find their files "on a PC because I have a Mac", it leads me to believe having the Sugar UI, as neat as it is, makes it so different from a computer they'll use in higher-ed or in the workplace that what they are learning isn't going to be nearly as effective. If Windows is the only way to turn an OLPC into a "normal" computer then it seems worth it, even though I'd rather see it loaded with OSS to save the schools money and give them exposure to Linux which is becoming a very popular desktop OS in the developing world in particular. I know some will say "keep it Sugar and let them dump Linux on it", but can you imagine what it would take to re-configure thousands of these machines, let alone creating an install that meets its hardware available? It would be cheaper to buy the machines preloaded with Windows versus all that effort, particularly if MS is practically giving it away. Sometimes ideology is only worth so much when you're strapped to make it happen.
$100 for a machine that is a glorified chat client when the participants are in the same room or an electronic coloring book seems very wasteful when you think of how many crayons, texts, papers and pens that machine is worth to the poorest of poor students. $100 for a real computer to teach college bound students how to be successful and familar with the workplaces requirements, seems like a deal, so long as it is implemented wisely and at a time in the students development where it is going to be worth it. It feels like giving an OLPC to a kid before 4th grade is like giving a violin to a baby.
In California we already pay an Electronic Waste Disposal Fee whenever we purchase a new TV that varies based on the price of the TV, but was $20-30 last time I purchased one. Yet another example of the state trying to control its citizens, and those of other US states given that California is such a large segment of the US economy, and manufacturers will be less likley to export units that meet environmental standards in other states. When I lived back in Ohio I always got a card in the package when I purcased solder that said "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.", and often see links on websites for "Your California Privicy Rights."
All it really does is hurt retailers whom are going to loose out on sales in border cities where consumers have more choice in other states (such as Nevada, Oregon or Arizona), and making life difficult for online sellers to keep track of what units they can/can not sell to CA residents. All the while, most Californians are probably watching TV on their old CRTs that are burning up energy and are probably going to be dumped in the desert somewhere when they quit working. Southern California (where energy is hardest to come by) has literally millions of square miles of desert and lots of folks moving there to find affordable housing but still commute to the LA area to find reasonable paying jobs. If they built a power plant or two up there and some manufacturing they could cut down on transportation costs, improve the quality of life of residents in the desert and the valley and not be so desperate to save power that they're going to restrict tvs and non CFL lightbulbs (wish I still had the URL for that nonsense someone was proposing about a year ago).
The products folks are clamoring for to be green are because "going green" saves them money; which is really what consumers are concerned about. CFLs are huge right now because in some markets (e.g. Southern California) they are cheaper than incandescent lighting and reduce ones electric bill, even if only by a small margin. "Green" cars were in when gas was $4.00/gal, but now that prices have fallen, I'm seeing more and more 07-08 Priuses having been traded in. Those buyers weren't "true believer" green purchasers, they just felt being "green" would be cheaper in the form of lower engergy costs. When driving a 17mpg car became cheaper than the car payments on a hybrid or the maintainence (having to go to the dealer for service) folks are now unloading them (I'm car shopping and have seen a big raise in the number of used hybrids available; part of which may be that they are just becoming more common and the 3-year/car dirvers are now starting to move to their next purchase).
I think the however that a small part of them that feels like they are doing the "right thing", because it does seem when two products are the same in price and quality the green one is chosen; but it is definately secondary for most people. I'd say the best test for that was to see how many consumers would but the more expensive product that was identical except the "green" bottle was $.10 or $.50 or $1.00 more; particularly for consumer goods that don't have other buying decision reasons such as being "organic" like food.
Companies love it because like the consumer, it saves them money, particularly when they can sell the product for more money "because it is green" when it cost them less to make it, or pass the savings on to the customer and beat their competitor at the price game. It is a win-win in either scenario; and gets their foot in the door with the truly eco-conscience consumer who may never have bought form X vendor due to their environmental history. In this case, lip-service is still service.
It can be really difficult to deturmine exactly what any action "prohibits" unless you've got a lot of data where you can at least begin establish corelational data between TSA/DHS and airbore terrorist attacks. This is kind of difficult to do when you only have one, or a small handful of this sort of thing happening ever to compare against. Since the mandate is "Don't let terrorists blow up our planes" we won't know if it is working until we either catch a terrorist with a bomb on a plane or attempting to board a plane and stop him or we have enough data to deturmine there is a marked-drop in attempted attacks; which I see as being difficult to come up with because I don't think there are that many, and even if there is, so few have been successful you're going to get a lot of new arrests due to increased enforcement, but never have anyway of truly knowing what the individuals intent was for comparison to historical data. If terrorists were regularly blowing up 1 per 1000 flights and after the advent of the TSA the rate dropped to 1 per 1 000 000 or rose to 1 per 10 flights, you'd be able to say they that something is making terrorism easier/more difficult. Just like the bank... if it has only been robbed one time and that was in 1957, it is hard to say if the additional gaurd is the factor that has caused it to not be robbed in 2008.
One DHS program (US Border & Customs) could more redily be tested for effectiveness in how it alters illegal immigration or the transfer of illegal and or dangerous materials into or out of the country (e.g. # attempting to enter, vs those stopped, percentage over time.)
Granted, I don't find the TSA extremely effective per-se, as they let a caught a relative with a pair of 4" scissors who accidentally left them in her sewing bag, but then let her on the plane with them anyway; but it is a stretch to say authoritatively what the real threat has ever been over time. Than also being said, it is more of a mater of personal philosophy if their level of interference, data collection, etc... has been worth the hastle and invasion of privacy that is worth the risk they may/may not have reduced if it could be numericly deturmined. Some would say that no amount of privacy violation is worth total loss of all aircraft and some would say the book is open if it has the potential to save one aircraft; and I'd say most folks are somewhere in the middle.
TVs have always been one of the most reliable appliances in ones homes specifically because they don't have updatable components and had "better be right" out the door. Firmware upgrading has allowed companies selling hardware to control what users do with their devices, prohibit legal modification, introduce poorly developed products with a promise that 1.1 will be better, and introduce planned obselescence when 2.0 requires hardware rev. 2.0. HDTV has already had a hard enough time gaining widespread adoption in the US; the single most TV obsessed nation with a high per-capita income in the world. One of the few things that inspire consumer confidence is that TVs are built-to-last and they are a zero-maintainence piece of equipment. Even a stove requires more maintainence.
Most folks I know have the ugly wooden console set that is almost 25 years old, and won't replace it until it breaks or bit the bullet on a 27"-32" when their console died. They aren't going to go out and drop $2,000 for a set that has feature X,Y,Z to have features suddenly drop because Sony or Universal decide to take their ball and go home; or have it bricked by a hack programmer trying to patch a DRM flaw before his boss fires him because Big Content is going to walk if they don't fix it.
They should work with cable/sat providers to include the software in their boxes because most folks have digital cable or satellite and need some kind of reciever box anyway, and other than the TiVo loyal; the market has proven folks would much rather rent than buy these boxes, and if bricked they can take it back to their Cable Co for a new one and let them worry about getting it fixed. I would think this would only drive acceptance of PPV purchases for those not on NetFix yet if people can be swayed from the physical media and/or physical video store habit of entertainment. This way no TVs are harmed or depreciated while those displays still work, and I can let the provider worry about getting the content to my screen... whatever that form takes or changes in the 10-20 I've got this display.
I think we'll see spammers start to attack social networks as vastly improving spam filters make e-mail less and less viable. If a social networking site sends all "messages" on the site as e-mail or texts to the user and the user whitelists *.myspace.com or *.twitter.com (or whatever domain it sends as) all they need is to get an open pipe on that service and they've blasted both their screen, inbox and mobile.
Networks are huge blocks of users often with similar, or easily deturmined interests making the marketing more effective and development to exploit their native openness or a security flaw more profitable than spamming huge blocks of @yahoo.com addresses via e-mail only as many have good spam filters, are spam-only accounts or have gone fallow when XX69sExYbUnNiE69XXHOLLA realizes that might not be the best addy for her college admission papers or her resume.
IANAL but it would be interesting to see if using a social network as a proxy would give one any sheilding from CAN-SPAM or other state statutes since their is no protection on social networking sites, and users did opt-in to reiceve emails from the social network site.
The trouble with making a game multiplatform isn't "necessarily" the cost/time/effort/skill of using abstracted code or having to train DX programmers to use OpenGL. One large problem is that in the past, you could relatively easy put a game on 1 piece of physical media and have both the Mac and Windows tracks on the CD-ROM.
Now that games are coming close to filling DVDs or spanning multiple CDs, it isn't nearly as simple to provide a single disc that is Windows+Mac. Now you must provide either a box with two CDs and unless you're doing online play and some serious key-validation; you've essentially given the buyer two copies of the same game. If you split it up into a boxed sale of a "PC version" and a "Mac version" you're either going to have the big stores like Wal*mart or Target or Best Buy only buying the PC version; or getting pissed when they have shelves and shelves of Mac versions, or returned/pissed off customers when grandma buys the Mac version for Timmy and he returns it, or can't return it because he opened it before he noticed. It just isn't worth the overhead of mastering multiple DVDs and producing/shipping the packaging when the margins on games are already pretty razor thin for publishers and for the retailers.
Secondly, you have to consider it can quite difficult to provide "good" technical support (I'm talking about more than forums here...) for more esoteric distros or providing support to OS9 and OSX clients (at a time in history when PC games were really coming into their own). Can you imagine the backlash of Game Company X said they'd only support their new hot title on Fedora because they had to draw the line in the sand somewhere on what is a "supported" configuration, and left all Ubuntu users in the dark? The bigest problem with purchased software; particularly entertainment/gaming software is that the market has little patience for a product that doesn't install and run on a single double-click. So support is an absolute necessity.
Thirdly due to differences in APIs, available hardware (Mac) and quality drivers (linux) you're going to have widely varying system requirements and user experiences. Where if the Linux version is inferior to the Windows version, users are going to say it is a "half-assed" port, and drive down sales, which is going to further decrease the profitability of development for the platform citing reasons #1 and #2 (more unsold boxes and more technical support staff). You see this on consoles now; where the Wii version has weaker graphics and poor controller implementation, the PS3 has poor online play than XBox, and the XBox is generally not as "polished" as the PS3 version graphically. In each case the user base thinks their version is "crippled" and bitches about it to no end.
If you're not into the trenches of hardcore coding all day and have good customer service/documentation skills, maybe consider System Design (often called Business System Analysts in places I've been). You'll probably need to be good at Visio or other charting tool. In my experience you're taking the customers goals and designing the structures to meet their spec and some screen layouts and passing them to the software developers to implement them. You'll probably have some QA/testing responsibilities too. This can incude the database structures, hardware resources, visual/UI, etc. I haven't gone down this path because I am infinitely better at reading scribbled code off a napkin than a use-case or anything like that. I have friends that like it and are gunning for Project Management gigs in the long run.
If you're really good at desktop support and have any experience or are a fast learner, a Jr. system administrator role is a good choice too; managing mail servers; SANS, etc... other more traditional operations/IT gigs. You'll have minimal programming generally other than some scripting which you'll do mostly out of trying to minimize repeatitive tasks.
The biggest thing is that there is no right-or-wrong answer, and you're not married to it forever. I started in desktop/helpdesk to may my way though school, then went to system administration and quickly realized I don't like getting screammed at when poorly written IBM software we purchased doesn't give us 100% uptime on aging hardware with poorly written integration by hack programmers. I've always liked programming and had done enough "on the side" to land a programming gig and am much happier though my code isn't landing spacecraft or anything. Whatever you do, don't settle for something you're not happy with; and if you find a really good working situation (stable, good boss, good co-workers, not too bad of a commute) think long and hard before jumping ship for an extra 10K a year.
I had a friend with a Micron PC way back in the day and I'm not sure where he got it but I never-ever saw one sitting on a shelf anywhere at the big box stores, nor have I ever seen one advertised in a place where non-geeks frequent (on TV on the big 4, Newsweek/Time magazines, sporting events).
For the average consumer; they would have had very little way of knowing why they'd want a Micron over a Dell (if there is a reason; didn't seem any different than any other beige-box late 90's PC) and secondly, no convienient avenue to get one if they did decide it was what they wanted.
The major companies provide a end-to-end sales/service/support model where I have a "Dell shop", "IBM shop" or "HP shop" where every computer is made by them and has convienent tools for central purchasing and quick repair/warranty service. Extended warranties with next day parts are huge for "medium" size businesses who explicity buy one PC per seat and don't have much in the way of part inventory except for outdated salvaged parts or are in an environment where departments are very independent and retain their equipment and aren't keen on sharing with other departments/business units. (e.g. if a computer is sitting idle in accounting I can't physically take it and install it in R&D until I get the broken one in R&D back online.)
As smaller companies like Gateway started to let quality slip, and couldn't get replacement parts or onsite service in 24 hours, and weren't any cheaper than Dell or HP, there is no reason to buy from them. Eventually, you get to the point where you can't even find them unless you're looking real hard, which is where I think Micron was. I've seen this happen to Gateway, Acer, Packard Bell/NEC and others when I used to do desktop support, and it always seems to be when the company decides to go "consumer" grade and expect that the buyer is going to go to geek squad or throw the thing away like any other consumer good; and lets them sales/support/service go down the toilet where no business buys them; and most folks buy what they see on TV or what they have at work (if they are happy with their machine at work.)
You don't want to know how hard it is to get replacement motherboards for an Acer tablet PCs versus getting anything from Dell when you've got 1000 of their boxes on site with gold support.
There have been a lot of good comments; but if I can offer some unsolicited (well; maybe it is solicited) is to start slow, taking on 1-2 clients in the beginning to gauge how the extra work is going to affect your family and other parts of your life. I'm a PT Adjunct Instructor for a technical school here, totally psyched to do 25hr/wk for 20-30 grand more a year, but quickly found that it took so much of my time, that it really isn't worth it to me. I had very little time with my wife, very little time to exercsise (not to mention another 25 hrs with very little physical activity), very little time to pursue other hobbies. The bad news is anything with consistency is going to be just that, consistent. Good for the bank roll, bad when you want some time off from your day job and the second gig just can't accomodate that schedule.
I don't know if it is what you are looking for, but I have found some success doing small informal websites for local businesses; mostly from refferals for a reasonable price. (Usually $300-$500 for a 5 page site + $100/year hosting) The nice part is that it is fairly simple work, and opens the door for higher-wage projects if they decide to do anything more advanced such as CRM or online sales from the site. The other advantage is that the customers are local; so if they screw you, you aren't trying to get money from a voice over the phone you've never met states away, and can often settle a dispute in the local small claims court.
The great part is its usually 1 sit down session where you give the speil, usually during my lunch hour, maybe a second to get all the facutal/content information you need and the rest of the time I send design proposals on a "beta" site for them to approve/disapprove. I get to control how much time I put into it by taking on as many clients as I want (and am willing to service), and for the remainder of the time, I just let the site chug along. It has been really nice where teaching was 25hr/wk or nothing, and was very inflexible, and made it almost impossible to take vacation.
All that being said, don't box yourself into a corner where the second job will be a black mark on your work performance if you decide the second gig is just too much and are tempted to quit at a bad place in the project or when they won't give you vacation times that line up with your 9-5 (or give you less time than your 9-5). Be wary of burnout, and I'd say start small on a contract basis for a short term contract and see if you are willing (and even able) to keep your life in check. For me, 25 was way too much to still enjoy living.
I figure if it works for the Highway Patrol, it can work for the RIAA. Their business model is to harass the states consumers (citizens) to achieve the kind of behavior that they want. Which is exactly what the RIAA gets though MediaSentry or any other company they hire to do their dirty work. The reality is that their direct activity stops maybe very very few violators a year per capita; but the fear they create due to the fallout of getting caught does 100 or 1000 fold. The CHP costs California $1.9 billion annually, which funds 11,195 positions, which is 1 trooper for every 3000 or so citizens. (2007 est 36,553,215) so your chances of getting caught are rather slim, but the risk (fines, harassment, taking off work for court) is enough to detur some from speeding, and most from recklessly speeding (20+ over the limit).
That being said, the only two differences I see, is that consumers have a little bit (though not much more than) citizens of a government; and secondly, that public opinion could really harm the recording industry... well, the CHP has guns and everyone already hates them.
That being said, since they've instilled enough fear, and no amount of press is going to convince the technical illiterate that they don't still have that one guy doing his computer voodoo that causes them to figure out who you are and take your house away; there really is no purpose in keeping them around. If the state didn't have the ability to demand taxation, I can sure bet they'd try to find a way to instill the maximum amount of fear for the customer for the least amount of postions they could.
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What Brittanica should do is contribute its most polished articles to Wikipedia (or integrate the content) and then periodically, check on those articles or other "good" ones on Wikipedia and do whatever "fact-checking", copy-editing, and the like that they do already and produce better articles in both encyclopedias and still sell their dead-tree version.
The biggest problem both are facing are the questions of "what should an enyclopedia be" or put, "how broad should a general-purpose encyclopedia be", and "to what audience should it be." For example, with a B-Tree Algorithm; should it be in here, and if so, to what level of detail should we go? For Wikipedia, having the ability to have near limitless time and space, articles can be as indepth as contributors wish, and given the near limitless time and space their encyclopedia can have intesive breadth. Brittanica has a cyclical publishing nature, high quality requirements (e.g. Wikipedia can "get away" with articles in development, incomplete, uncited, etc... for a while, where the prior can not), no easy way to remedy inaccuracies; in other words, very limited time and space.
However, Wikipedia is running into issues where certain moderators are under the impression that they too must "trim the fat" and delete articles who need a little TLC; to get the same respectability of Brittanica. The major problem is they are in two totally different situations. Brittanica is trying to be too much like Wikipedia (which might not be a bad thing) and Wikipedia (at least parts of it) are trying to be a little too much like Brittanica; when their delivery mechanisms, editorial/community structure, and ultimately purpose is completely different.
I just hope the government doesn't swing too far, and start exposing all that mountains of data programs produced under prgrams started by Bush; without first doing a real through check to see what kind of data is actually there. I'm only afraid the new cabinet will steamroll this EO to make Obama "look" effective without considering the true risk(s) associated with some of that information.
However, I've always felt it is the right for a citizen (or consumer) to aquire data from any agency which collects data about him/her self in unfiltered form, regardless of the risk(s).
Notebooks are getting smaller, and have longer battery life, and tend to break more often and often cost more than they are worth to fix, and WiFi is becoming pretty standard everywhere. Desktops are easy to fix (e.g. no need to buy a new one when I can just swap out the defective part), have been more powerful than the casual user has needed for a while now, and consumer confidence is very shaken with Windows Vista (which most users won't upgrade their 4-5 year old computer to use, or specifically is holding on to the old one to not "have" to upgrade), and linux tends to run very well on older hardware (sometimes even better than the latest and greatest if the driver support from the vendor sucks). I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, but has been slumping for quite a while now. The only one appearing to kick ass is Apple, and that is only because they are taking customers away from Dell/HP by having compelling features, Not Vista, more PC compatible, trendy, and if they have to upgrade anyway, might as well get what they want.
I read an article by Michael Dell (lost the URL) saying that the market is saturated in the US; as in there are no "first time buyers" except maybe for the kid going off to college and a lot are going Apple. Everyone who wants a PC already has one, and the manufacturers have done nothing to convince buyers they need a new box. Instead, they've made the machines suck more though inferior integrated parts, made them more difficult to upgrade, and loaded them with crapware to try to make a profit on a product that is already razor thin.
The second problem is that the "Windows" bundled applications like Windows Movie Maker are crappy compared to the iMovie/iDVD bundles on Macs, and the manufactuer ones like Dell-Movie Maker (or Dell DVD Player) are even worse than the Windows default ones. Users get "box shock" when they attempt to buy Off-the-Shelf software so they are really looking for a box that "does stuff" and is "known" for "doing stuff" not just being faster. On Apple, the bundled apps are either very simple to remove, or are fully-functional "free as in beer" includes; here PC manufactures to often include crippled, hard to remove, ugly, slow applications.
Saavy PC buyers remove all that crap and put a clean Windows install or Linux on there. The base consumer has no idea how to do that, and get a piece of crap for their hard earned money. The OEMs should really work to either make Linux ready for desktop primetime, or invest in OSS projects to produce, very good, very simple, portable to Windows if need be, very user friendly, very attractive, free desktop software rather than put together a crappy version, and get rid of all the crap running in the system tray for a clean, snappy system and stop blaming the economy for no one buying there stuff.
Netbooks are doing exactly this; running very efficent OS installs where if feels like the system was designed like a velvet glove over the hardware. Lowering the price and giving the buyer the features they want "size, power usage, WiFi, price." Not more GHz and more ram simply to feed a more hungry, more restrictive, more lackluster OS.
I think you are absoultely right; however, the major difference is that with Disney, you're producing a single animated feature one-at-a-time that when the project is over; unless you're talking sequels or toy-tie-is (which they do, but eventually fizzle out by a market obsessed with the latest and greatest); you're having to develop from start to finish a brand new product, almost constantly. Disney had a huge advantage by being among the first to do so, and chosing to do films that were americanized versions of fairy-tales ages old known to be successful and already have mindshare.
Apple on the other hand has made a hugely successful business model out of taking the same lines they've had for years and making incremental updates to them. If Jobs died tomorrow, their stock would take a hit, but if they simply kept with the small increments they have been doing to thair major line up (OS, Mac, iPhone/iPod) and kept quality, they could persist for a very long time without having any new ideas; assuming they don't have any long term goals which is probably not the case. It would give them long enough to get the right people in place without Steve; and develop a post-Steve culture and strategy. If the management has the perfect blend of "What would Steve Do" and "What Can we do better without him" while holding to the core principals that have made them successful today (but being willing to change them if the market demands) they will be OK. Economically, Apple has enough cash on hand to weather than storm where buyer confidence is shaken, or if they do botch some things or don't respond to the market.
If they had to create brand new 1-shot products every year where only a portion developed their own peripheral ecosystem or sequals (2.0's) I think they'd have a much harder time and be susceptable to not taking risks after 1-2 flops, like Disney did.
If someone is willing to pay $20/unit (community college) to $100-200/unit (public university) and hundreds of dollars for books, she could have either forked up the $90 or so bucks they charge for Windows, taken it somewhere and let them do it, or taken CIS 100 "Intro to the Internet" or CIS 101 "Computer Applications" and figured how to do it herself. With all the money it costs to attend school at some of the most affordable colleges, getting her computer fixed (even though it didn't need "fixing") is a drop in the bucket. Granted, I know some folks are pretty against the wall financially, but she should have developed better problem solving and critical thinking skills than what she obviously has not seemed to developed, well before university.
It makes sense to use a digital camera since 99.99% of the use of that picture is going to be put on .gov websites or sent to post offices so they can change the picture in the frame, or in publications that are probably made with something like InDesign. I'd imagine whatever advantages you got out of the film photo (which I was never a believer in until out wedding photos were done on an antique camera with the crank and everything out of a 50's period movie), would be lost in the scanning process.
If I was president I'd just have them take a picture with a polaroid. I can just see the huge ornate frame with a tiny polaroid taped in the center. All the other world leaders would either find it humorous and say "this guy is cool" or think I'm crazy enough not to mess with.
Seems like a good idea for Steve to take some time. It gives him a chance to see how well Cook handles the shop when no major new products are shipping and seems to indicate that he is at least semi-comfortable that he's got the right management to oversee day-to-day operations, and gives them a chance to fine-tune anything should he want to retire or passes away pre-maturely. As die-hard as he is, I can't imagine him doing the keynotes if he is too frail (physically) to "wow" the crowd.
Since the major aesthetic overhall in the iMac, MBP and MB lines in the past year or two, and OS X 10.6 shaping up to be a smaller update (aesthetically and technically) to 10.5 than the 10.4->10.5 jump was; it doesn't appear that there is going to be much "new business" from now to then. Maybe some hardware line updates to faster chips, and some 10.5.x updates; but nothing major. I'd imagine 10.6 won't even ship until summer; just in time for the WWDC in June.
That is why whenever I've been somewhere; I've always tried to get time set aside for Jr. programmers or new hires or interns to do simple automations or workflows. it really boosts the public perception of IT if we appear to be closing a lot of incidents and the rank-and-file workers and low-level supervisors see we take their business processes seriously. It goes a long way to have a "wish list" from supervisors/users that can be submitted in a page or less. Big tasks with a large scope get turned into incidents for the larger system (enhancements); little ones get added to a queue. I'm of the thought I'd rather have my Jr Programmers or new hires or interns not familar with the larger systems pump out small solutions which sometimes are just a scheduled task, a script, a report or some sort or a small web application so at least we're ensuring it is done correctly, is documented, and is a great way to see what their skills are and put on a good public face. It gives them some face time with the users and shows me their coding skill, design skills, communications, indepdent work skills, self motivation (grab the next one when you are done) and gives them time to get to know the teams, learn how they work, learn their standards rather than just tossing them in and being dead weight until they get up to speed.
At Ohio State (where I did my undergrad work), we did a lecture/recitation model where you went to a lecture by a full-time faculty in a large lecture hall 600-2000 seats where he/she lectured and assigned the homework/reading. The class would on other days be split into 40-60 student sections where a GA would lead any discussions, answer questions to problems, collect and grade assignments, etc.
I found it really nice in that it allowed FT Faculty to lecture in 100-200 level classes taken by a lot of non-majors, to get a feel if that program was for you, and tended to be pretty good at it and had accomplishments in the field. It would be impossible at a school of 50-60K students to have tenured faculty teach 50-100 students in smaller settings when the General Ed courses had 20-30 sections per quarter throught the day and evening. It also gave the TAs an opportunity to develop their teaching skills independently, but on a rather short leash.
The nicest part was that in some courses, if the lecture wasn't very useful and had no depth beyond what I could read on my own (which is usually pretty easy to discern early in the class) no one cared that I wasn't at lecture. In some courses, the recitation was primarily a more public form of "office hours" with the TA, and attendance was encouraged but never required, depending on the lecture size, where tests were administered and other things.
I think the lecture attendance is below 50% when the material is identical to the text and there isn't much anecdote, exposition or discussion relating to the reading. Secondly is when the instructor is nearly impossible to understand (like my MATH 152 Calc 2 class). As a teacher now, I don't particularly care if my students come to class and if they can pass my exams which are based heavily on in-class lecture and lab, then why waste their time. Students are adults and are busy people, particularly if they work and can't see why some instructors look down on a student other than pure ego; if they are making the grade in a more independent manner. I treat school like a buffet; a lot is offered, but you'll only benefit by what you take; and the more you take the better you'll be. However if you take little or nothing, all you've done is pay a huge fee for a degree and missed out on a lot of value behind it. In that case though, it is the student's loss but not me. Everyone has opportunity cost and all I can do is encourage them to see the value in being there as it really is and let them decide if alternative options are truly more worthy to them. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't, but it is no sweat off my back in either case.
Yeah but if an 11 in^2 is $2500 and most folks are 2 m^2 in surface area, it would cost about $17,875 for the displays alone and at that point would be pretty skin tight, more like a leotard than a cloak.
I'd be happy to see an invisible tie so I could wear that and get one over on the man, or randomly turn it from invisible to a disturbing picture for microseconds to mess with friends and co-workers.
This is absolutely true. Spreadsheets are notorious for holding important business functions that are often designed by end users who may/may not have the best coding/design (VBA or formula) skills, that are typically never put through a QA/peer review process, and many times exist on a sole employee's desktop computer and have risen to the point that the business rules have bene forgotten over time and that sheet is necessary for some calculation for some function. These are the cases when IT gets raked over the coals when that desktop fails when responsibility lies on the user, and the user has really put the department in a precarious position. Word documents are just as bad. I've literally seen staff take a print out from the ERP system of a list of contacts who were past due for an event or account recievable take that list and manually edit the "gray boxes" in a word document that was write protected with a password that has been lost in staff turnover making it very difficult for IT to make changes when they ask for it, and then enter the same contact info in a second word document rigged to print a single label on a desktop label printer. With a Crystal or SQL report, we could have automated the process and saved time/resources for the staff and cut down our support of esoteric business processes. However, rather than work with us, one of their own rigged up something we had no idea was in practice had I not headed over there to help a technican with a connection to a server.
This is my same objection to having important business functions being run out of Access databases often developed by the most computer-able person in the department but whose skills are completely lacking. At the community college I used to work for, we had our standard ERP/student info system, but rather than approach IT to add some tracking for special programs into the system one of the student services staff started writing lame Access databases (without a single relationship mind you) to track student attendance in some program offices. What it ended up doing was causing the users to do double entry, made useful information exist outside of the insitution wide data source, and when it failed, it had become such an important part of business, IT was expected to fix a resource that was effed up from the beginning.
For the small business with 1-10 employees it is a great, in expensive way to work electronically. For anything bigger, it is trying to fish with a stick, shoestring, and bubble gum. It costs far more money to have workers working inefficiently and even worse, allowing them to stick with the skills they learned in a high school computer apps class than thinking critically, than ponying up the dough for a server or two and a more robust information system with a programmer/dept liaison to help them work more effectively. (Keeping in mind that it is possible to go into overkill mode.)
If companies are losing credit due to newspaper articles instead of semi-reliable sources such as credit history or earnings reports (for public companies) then there is a bigger problem than telling writers to "Shoosh." If the company is profitable and current on its debts, only a foolish lender would turn down their business. Now, if a company is already millions in the hole, and SHOULDN'T be credit worthy, if a newspaper expose about their board of directors droping millions on yachts, hookers and blow; I'd say the media is doing what it is really "supposed" to do... that is give the public truthful information to make us all make better decisions. In either case, the fault lies on the part of the lenders for having previously extending credit to the unworthy, or for being foolish lenders in trusting an Op-Ed piece over emperical data.
However, I could see PHBs reluctant to purchase their products if they believe they will be sold out and potentially have a sharp decrease in product lines, quality or most-importantly, support quality on their existing purchases. However, there is nothing to say that any company at the drop of the hat won't see off a division or exit a market, and I'd do a little more research before changing a vendor... particularly a one we've had good experience.
If we made all medical records the same "format" or made all Health systems capable of exporting data into a common format, the major problem is that those records are going to be missing valuable meta-data that is used by different providers to facilitate all kinds of functions such as billing, referals, preventative care pre-screening. The second problem is that even if the data is in a common format the problem is transferability; how to facilitate transfers between providers without a central database, in a timely manner, at a reasonable cost. fourth problem is that often times, I don't want records transfered from specific providers. I had a doctor make a really bone-head annotation in my records (I'm a Kaiser patient) and I still hear about it everytime I go into the office. I'd hate to go to some dollar-store urgent care facility when I am sick to get some antibiotics or some cough syrup and have them put that I have TB or something in my file and constantly have that one bad diagnosis by a glorified P.A. skew the view of all the doctors in the future.
The current process accomodates doctors that still use paper records, and allows me to control which providers get access to particilar data. When I go to a new provider, i can get my entire record printed out where I can work with my new doctor to establish which records I believe are accurate and discuss why we (my doctor and I) came to the treatment plan we did.
I have a friend who got a "Drunk in Public" charge (after having gone to a club) and the court made him to to Addicticion medicine for n hours of drug and alcohol counseling, who also has (unrelated) back problems. Having that one flag in his records makes doctors at urgent care very very skidish about giving him cough syrup with codiene that they pass out like candy to folks like me or even giving him anything more powerful than ibuprofen when his back flairs up.
The problem with any centralized datasource like an arrest record, the credit scoring system, the DMV records, etc... is that any one provider, lender, billing firm or police department can make an honest (or intentional) mistake in those records and there can be almost no recourse to getting that data ammended that would have been a local problem, but is now a national problem. Even if the data can be ammended, it is a long difficult process that might take "years" to trickle down to the agencies using the data.
I've always thought the problem with the OLPC project was that it developed a product for very young children, when computer literacy is a afterthought for early primary students in the developed world (at least in the US) and in contries where classrooms may not have books or basic utilities, having computers for these kids is simply not worth the cost, and for older children the platform is severely lacking what a "normal" computer is capable of.
From spending time with teachers in early primary ed, non-computer alternatives such as the Leap Pad is specifically designed to teach children to read or do math and are very easy to "plug" into the state cirriculm. When students do go to the computer lab, they either need to buy specialized software, which is expensive to teach them the cirriculm, or just have the kids goof off in MS paint or playing web-games (which is not entirely bad, but less important and effective than other teaching methods). When you can't read and can't do subtraction, being able to draw pictures on a computer is very low on the list of priorities. Because of this, it makes me think the OLPC product out of the box isn't going to be sufficent for real learning, in particular where web access is non-existent or slow/hap-hazard or not in the native language; particularly for young children whom the project seems to be aimed at.
I think the project would have done much more good by producting computers with a standard Linux desktop, OO.org, Firefox, etc... (maybe toned-down versions to run on less RAM/HD space) and marketed them to middle-and-high school age students, particularly those academic performance would make them able to potentially go to university or have a "office job". When I see employees and students (when I am teaching) who can barely use OO.org because they "learned on Word" or can't find their files "on a PC because I have a Mac", it leads me to believe having the Sugar UI, as neat as it is, makes it so different from a computer they'll use in higher-ed or in the workplace that what they are learning isn't going to be nearly as effective. If Windows is the only way to turn an OLPC into a "normal" computer then it seems worth it, even though I'd rather see it loaded with OSS to save the schools money and give them exposure to Linux which is becoming a very popular desktop OS in the developing world in particular. I know some will say "keep it Sugar and let them dump Linux on it", but can you imagine what it would take to re-configure thousands of these machines, let alone creating an install that meets its hardware available? It would be cheaper to buy the machines preloaded with Windows versus all that effort, particularly if MS is practically giving it away. Sometimes ideology is only worth so much when you're strapped to make it happen.
$100 for a machine that is a glorified chat client when the participants are in the same room or an electronic coloring book seems very wasteful when you think of how many crayons, texts, papers and pens that machine is worth to the poorest of poor students. $100 for a real computer to teach college bound students how to be successful and familar with the workplaces requirements, seems like a deal, so long as it is implemented wisely and at a time in the students development where it is going to be worth it. It feels like giving an OLPC to a kid before 4th grade is like giving a violin to a baby.
In California we already pay an Electronic Waste Disposal Fee whenever we purchase a new TV that varies based on the price of the TV, but was $20-30 last time I purchased one. Yet another example of the state trying to control its citizens, and those of other US states given that California is such a large segment of the US economy, and manufacturers will be less likley to export units that meet environmental standards in other states. When I lived back in Ohio I always got a card in the package when I purcased solder that said "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.", and often see links on websites for "Your California Privicy Rights."
All it really does is hurt retailers whom are going to loose out on sales in border cities where consumers have more choice in other states (such as Nevada, Oregon or Arizona), and making life difficult for online sellers to keep track of what units they can/can not sell to CA residents. All the while, most Californians are probably watching TV on their old CRTs that are burning up energy and are probably going to be dumped in the desert somewhere when they quit working. Southern California (where energy is hardest to come by) has literally millions of square miles of desert and lots of folks moving there to find affordable housing but still commute to the LA area to find reasonable paying jobs. If they built a power plant or two up there and some manufacturing they could cut down on transportation costs, improve the quality of life of residents in the desert and the valley and not be so desperate to save power that they're going to restrict tvs and non CFL lightbulbs (wish I still had the URL for that nonsense someone was proposing about a year ago).
The products folks are clamoring for to be green are because "going green" saves them money; which is really what consumers are concerned about. CFLs are huge right now because in some markets (e.g. Southern California) they are cheaper than incandescent lighting and reduce ones electric bill, even if only by a small margin. "Green" cars were in when gas was $4.00/gal, but now that prices have fallen, I'm seeing more and more 07-08 Priuses having been traded in. Those buyers weren't "true believer" green purchasers, they just felt being "green" would be cheaper in the form of lower engergy costs. When driving a 17mpg car became cheaper than the car payments on a hybrid or the maintainence (having to go to the dealer for service) folks are now unloading them (I'm car shopping and have seen a big raise in the number of used hybrids available; part of which may be that they are just becoming more common and the 3-year/car dirvers are now starting to move to their next purchase).
I think the however that a small part of them that feels like they are doing the "right thing", because it does seem when two products are the same in price and quality the green one is chosen; but it is definately secondary for most people. I'd say the best test for that was to see how many consumers would but the more expensive product that was identical except the "green" bottle was $.10 or $.50 or $1.00 more; particularly for consumer goods that don't have other buying decision reasons such as being "organic" like food.
Companies love it because like the consumer, it saves them money, particularly when they can sell the product for more money "because it is green" when it cost them less to make it, or pass the savings on to the customer and beat their competitor at the price game. It is a win-win in either scenario; and gets their foot in the door with the truly eco-conscience consumer who may never have bought form X vendor due to their environmental history. In this case, lip-service is still service.
It can be really difficult to deturmine exactly what any action "prohibits" unless you've got a lot of data where you can at least begin establish corelational data between TSA/DHS and airbore terrorist attacks. This is kind of difficult to do when you only have one, or a small handful of this sort of thing happening ever to compare against. Since the mandate is "Don't let terrorists blow up our planes" we won't know if it is working until we either catch a terrorist with a bomb on a plane or attempting to board a plane and stop him or we have enough data to deturmine there is a marked-drop in attempted attacks; which I see as being difficult to come up with because I don't think there are that many, and even if there is, so few have been successful you're going to get a lot of new arrests due to increased enforcement, but never have anyway of truly knowing what the individuals intent was for comparison to historical data. If terrorists were regularly blowing up 1 per 1000 flights and after the advent of the TSA the rate dropped to 1 per 1 000 000 or rose to 1 per 10 flights, you'd be able to say they that something is making terrorism easier/more difficult. Just like the bank... if it has only been robbed one time and that was in 1957, it is hard to say if the additional gaurd is the factor that has caused it to not be robbed in 2008.
One DHS program (US Border & Customs) could more redily be tested for effectiveness in how it alters illegal immigration or the transfer of illegal and or dangerous materials into or out of the country (e.g. # attempting to enter, vs those stopped, percentage over time.)
Granted, I don't find the TSA extremely effective per-se, as they let a caught a relative with a pair of 4" scissors who accidentally left them in her sewing bag, but then let her on the plane with them anyway; but it is a stretch to say authoritatively what the real threat has ever been over time. Than also being said, it is more of a mater of personal philosophy if their level of interference, data collection, etc... has been worth the hastle and invasion of privacy that is worth the risk they may/may not have reduced if it could be numericly deturmined. Some would say that no amount of privacy violation is worth total loss of all aircraft and some would say the book is open if it has the potential to save one aircraft; and I'd say most folks are somewhere in the middle.
TVs have always been one of the most reliable appliances in ones homes specifically because they don't have updatable components and had "better be right" out the door. Firmware upgrading has allowed companies selling hardware to control what users do with their devices, prohibit legal modification, introduce poorly developed products with a promise that 1.1 will be better, and introduce planned obselescence when 2.0 requires hardware rev. 2.0. HDTV has already had a hard enough time gaining widespread adoption in the US; the single most TV obsessed nation with a high per-capita income in the world. One of the few things that inspire consumer confidence is that TVs are built-to-last and they are a zero-maintainence piece of equipment. Even a stove requires more maintainence.
Most folks I know have the ugly wooden console set that is almost 25 years old, and won't replace it until it breaks or bit the bullet on a 27"-32" when their console died. They aren't going to go out and drop $2,000 for a set that has feature X,Y,Z to have features suddenly drop because Sony or Universal decide to take their ball and go home; or have it bricked by a hack programmer trying to patch a DRM flaw before his boss fires him because Big Content is going to walk if they don't fix it.
They should work with cable/sat providers to include the software in their boxes because most folks have digital cable or satellite and need some kind of reciever box anyway, and other than the TiVo loyal; the market has proven folks would much rather rent than buy these boxes, and if bricked they can take it back to their Cable Co for a new one and let them worry about getting it fixed. I would think this would only drive acceptance of PPV purchases for those not on NetFix yet if people can be swayed from the physical media and/or physical video store habit of entertainment. This way no TVs are harmed or depreciated while those displays still work, and I can let the provider worry about getting the content to my screen... whatever that form takes or changes in the 10-20 I've got this display.
I think we'll see spammers start to attack social networks as vastly improving spam filters make e-mail less and less viable. If a social networking site sends all "messages" on the site as e-mail or texts to the user and the user whitelists *.myspace.com or *.twitter.com (or whatever domain it sends as) all they need is to get an open pipe on that service and they've blasted both their screen, inbox and mobile.
Networks are huge blocks of users often with similar, or easily deturmined interests making the marketing more effective and development to exploit their native openness or a security flaw more profitable than spamming huge blocks of @yahoo.com addresses via e-mail only as many have good spam filters, are spam-only accounts or have gone fallow when XX69sExYbUnNiE69XXHOLLA realizes that might not be the best addy for her college admission papers or her resume.
IANAL but it would be interesting to see if using a social network as a proxy would give one any sheilding from CAN-SPAM or other state statutes since their is no protection on social networking sites, and users did opt-in to reiceve emails from the social network site.
The trouble with making a game multiplatform isn't "necessarily" the cost/time/effort/skill of using abstracted code or having to train DX programmers to use OpenGL. One large problem is that in the past, you could relatively easy put a game on 1 piece of physical media and have both the Mac and Windows tracks on the CD-ROM.
Now that games are coming close to filling DVDs or spanning multiple CDs, it isn't nearly as simple to provide a single disc that is Windows+Mac. Now you must provide either a box with two CDs and unless you're doing online play and some serious key-validation; you've essentially given the buyer two copies of the same game. If you split it up into a boxed sale of a "PC version" and a "Mac version" you're either going to have the big stores like Wal*mart or Target or Best Buy only buying the PC version; or getting pissed when they have shelves and shelves of Mac versions, or returned/pissed off customers when grandma buys the Mac version for Timmy and he returns it, or can't return it because he opened it before he noticed. It just isn't worth the overhead of mastering multiple DVDs and producing/shipping the packaging when the margins on games are already pretty razor thin for publishers and for the retailers.
Secondly, you have to consider it can quite difficult to provide "good" technical support (I'm talking about more than forums here...) for more esoteric distros or providing support to OS9 and OSX clients (at a time in history when PC games were really coming into their own). Can you imagine the backlash of Game Company X said they'd only support their new hot title on Fedora because they had to draw the line in the sand somewhere on what is a "supported" configuration, and left all Ubuntu users in the dark? The bigest problem with purchased software; particularly entertainment/gaming software is that the market has little patience for a product that doesn't install and run on a single double-click. So support is an absolute necessity.
Thirdly due to differences in APIs, available hardware (Mac) and quality drivers (linux) you're going to have widely varying system requirements and user experiences. Where if the Linux version is inferior to the Windows version, users are going to say it is a "half-assed" port, and drive down sales, which is going to further decrease the profitability of development for the platform citing reasons #1 and #2 (more unsold boxes and more technical support staff). You see this on consoles now; where the Wii version has weaker graphics and poor controller implementation, the PS3 has poor online play than XBox, and the XBox is generally not as "polished" as the PS3 version graphically. In each case the user base thinks their version is "crippled" and bitches about it to no end.
If you're not into the trenches of hardcore coding all day and have good customer service/documentation skills, maybe consider System Design (often called Business System Analysts in places I've been). You'll probably need to be good at Visio or other charting tool. In my experience you're taking the customers goals and designing the structures to meet their spec and some screen layouts and passing them to the software developers to implement them. You'll probably have some QA/testing responsibilities too. This can incude the database structures, hardware resources, visual/UI, etc. I haven't gone down this path because I am infinitely better at reading scribbled code off a napkin than a use-case or anything like that. I have friends that like it and are gunning for Project Management gigs in the long run.
If you're really good at desktop support and have any experience or are a fast learner, a Jr. system administrator role is a good choice too; managing mail servers; SANS, etc... other more traditional operations/IT gigs. You'll have minimal programming generally other than some scripting which you'll do mostly out of trying to minimize repeatitive tasks.
The biggest thing is that there is no right-or-wrong answer, and you're not married to it forever. I started in desktop/helpdesk to may my way though school, then went to system administration and quickly realized I don't like getting screammed at when poorly written IBM software we purchased doesn't give us 100% uptime on aging hardware with poorly written integration by hack programmers. I've always liked programming and had done enough "on the side" to land a programming gig and am much happier though my code isn't landing spacecraft or anything. Whatever you do, don't settle for something you're not happy with; and if you find a really good working situation (stable, good boss, good co-workers, not too bad of a commute) think long and hard before jumping ship for an extra 10K a year.
I had a friend with a Micron PC way back in the day and I'm not sure where he got it but I never-ever saw one sitting on a shelf anywhere at the big box stores, nor have I ever seen one advertised in a place where non-geeks frequent (on TV on the big 4, Newsweek/Time magazines, sporting events).
For the average consumer; they would have had very little way of knowing why they'd want a Micron over a Dell (if there is a reason; didn't seem any different than any other beige-box late 90's PC) and secondly, no convienient avenue to get one if they did decide it was what they wanted.
The major companies provide a end-to-end sales/service/support model where I have a "Dell shop", "IBM shop" or "HP shop" where every computer is made by them and has convienent tools for central purchasing and quick repair/warranty service. Extended warranties with next day parts are huge for "medium" size businesses who explicity buy one PC per seat and don't have much in the way of part inventory except for outdated salvaged parts or are in an environment where departments are very independent and retain their equipment and aren't keen on sharing with other departments/business units. (e.g. if a computer is sitting idle in accounting I can't physically take it and install it in R&D until I get the broken one in R&D back online.)
As smaller companies like Gateway started to let quality slip, and couldn't get replacement parts or onsite service in 24 hours, and weren't any cheaper than Dell or HP, there is no reason to buy from them. Eventually, you get to the point where you can't even find them unless you're looking real hard, which is where I think Micron was. I've seen this happen to Gateway, Acer, Packard Bell/NEC and others when I used to do desktop support, and it always seems to be when the company decides to go "consumer" grade and expect that the buyer is going to go to geek squad or throw the thing away like any other consumer good; and lets them sales/support/service go down the toilet where no business buys them; and most folks buy what they see on TV or what they have at work (if they are happy with their machine at work.)
You don't want to know how hard it is to get replacement motherboards for an Acer tablet PCs versus getting anything from Dell when you've got 1000 of their boxes on site with gold support.
There have been a lot of good comments; but if I can offer some unsolicited (well; maybe it is solicited) is to start slow, taking on 1-2 clients in the beginning to gauge how the extra work is going to affect your family and other parts of your life. I'm a PT Adjunct Instructor for a technical school here, totally psyched to do 25hr/wk for 20-30 grand more a year, but quickly found that it took so much of my time, that it really isn't worth it to me. I had very little time with my wife, very little time to exercsise (not to mention another 25 hrs with very little physical activity), very little time to pursue other hobbies. The bad news is anything with consistency is going to be just that, consistent. Good for the bank roll, bad when you want some time off from your day job and the second gig just can't accomodate that schedule.
I don't know if it is what you are looking for, but I have found some success doing small informal websites for local businesses; mostly from refferals for a reasonable price. (Usually $300-$500 for a 5 page site + $100/year hosting) The nice part is that it is fairly simple work, and opens the door for higher-wage projects if they decide to do anything more advanced such as CRM or online sales from the site. The other advantage is that the customers are local; so if they screw you, you aren't trying to get money from a voice over the phone you've never met states away, and can often settle a dispute in the local small claims court.
The great part is its usually 1 sit down session where you give the speil, usually during my lunch hour, maybe a second to get all the facutal/content information you need and the rest of the time I send design proposals on a "beta" site for them to approve/disapprove. I get to control how much time I put into it by taking on as many clients as I want (and am willing to service), and for the remainder of the time, I just let the site chug along. It has been really nice where teaching was 25hr/wk or nothing, and was very inflexible, and made it almost impossible to take vacation.
All that being said, don't box yourself into a corner where the second job will be a black mark on your work performance if you decide the second gig is just too much and are tempted to quit at a bad place in the project or when they won't give you vacation times that line up with your 9-5 (or give you less time than your 9-5). Be wary of burnout, and I'd say start small on a contract basis for a short term contract and see if you are willing (and even able) to keep your life in check. For me, 25 was way too much to still enjoy living.
I figure if it works for the Highway Patrol, it can work for the RIAA. Their business model is to harass the states consumers (citizens) to achieve the kind of behavior that they want. Which is exactly what the RIAA gets though MediaSentry or any other company they hire to do their dirty work. The reality is that their direct activity stops maybe very very few violators a year per capita; but the fear they create due to the fallout of getting caught does 100 or 1000 fold. The CHP costs California $1.9 billion annually, which funds 11,195 positions, which is 1 trooper for every 3000 or so citizens. (2007 est 36,553,215) so your chances of getting caught are rather slim, but the risk (fines, harassment, taking off work for court) is enough to detur some from speeding, and most from recklessly speeding (20+ over the limit).
That being said, the only two differences I see, is that consumers have a little bit (though not much more than) citizens of a government; and secondly, that public opinion could really harm the recording industry... well, the CHP has guns and everyone already hates them.
That being said, since they've instilled enough fear, and no amount of press is going to convince the technical illiterate that they don't still have that one guy doing his computer voodoo that causes them to figure out who you are and take your house away; there really is no purpose in keeping them around. If the state didn't have the ability to demand taxation, I can sure bet they'd try to find a way to instill the maximum amount of fear for the customer for the least amount of postions they could.