I wonder if HP is allowed (under the embargo) to provide technical support over the phone, over the web, or via download for customers (direct or indirect) from Iran or other embargoed countries. It would be easy enough to tell if the caller's number is a 011+98+n prefix, if the e-mail address or hostname ends with.ir If that is the case I'd feel bad for the legitimate business who buys a new printer from a reseller and can't get any support for it from the manufacturer (if that is the case).
If they did provide the support, they'd have to admit they knowingly had post-embargo products over there, and I would imagine uncle Sam would find that helping an embargoed state with an IT/Business problem actively is worst than tossing a box of hardware at them and letting them figure it out. Then again, I can't say HP support has ever really been that helpful (or timely; the embargo will probably be over before they actually got some support; but that is a different story).
I think I'm with everyone else in that the embargo is "wishful thinking" on the government's part, and they haven't learned that all the embargo does is drive up the prices (e.g. cuban cigars) and make a middleman (such as canadian tobacco shops) wealthier than their US counterparts. If the dictaror (whose name I can't remember off the top of my head) in Iran wants an iPod to superclusters of linux PCs as a poor mans supercomputer, this isn't going to stop him; but might deny or drive the price up for the average citizen who would love some US medicine or blue jeans.
I don't understand why they need to use GPS? Oregon is Self-serve only. Just have the attendant get the odometer reading and enter it into a wireless handset with the license plate and let the DMV store the data with their last odometer reading, and you'd only need 1 row in the database, which has to be a lot cheaper and a lot less invasive, cheaper to implement and would have a real "reason" for OR to be self-serve only than what this guy is thinking.
All that being said, I still think it is a stupid idea.
You'd be surprised how many shops "want" to go to Vista, particulary in K12 and at the community college level (where I do most of my work), because of the "perception" of being behind-the-times. I'm not talking about the labs where they teach "Intro to Computers 101", but in for faculty machines and for the classified (clerical, operations, etc) folks as well. They were planning (before I left because I can see a sinking ship) to drop $50,000 on RAM alone to bring some 100 or so Dell Dimension 4100 Pentium 3 boxes up to spec that were slated for replacement in the next year or so for the sole purpose of running Vista.
You have rank-and-file IT folks saying "NO", but there are a lot of Business Services (the department IT usually falls under in California education) saying "We want to use feature" or "I read in a in-flight magazine...". You catch a lot of grief from higher ups who don't know, and seem incompetent to the departamental middle-managers when their computer is 2-3 years old and "the world" seems to be leaps and bounds ahead.
Even in a recession and a huge budget crisis where people are losing jobs, people will dump money on a lame dog operating system (because Windows IS the computer in their eyes) simply to feel like they are doing the right thing, or at least look like they are doing the right thing.
I can't imagine anything more painful than running a Windows application designed for full-screen PCs over the air on an iphone where the keyboard is going to take up a big portion of the screen everytime I do text-entry. I've used VNC to get into my home computer to look up a few things, and it is slow and painful to do anything really productive. I could see this being useful for a system admin who gets a page and wants to Citrix in to look at what the problem might be or to bounce a server, but I sincerely "hope" no company is really expecting to have their line-workers out in the field Citrixing in on an iPhone to use some full-featured Windows program. It seems it would be better to rewrite the application for the web, or even in Objective-C if you're really hell bent on using the iPhone than trying this for any day-to-day production work.
On the other hand, what I think would be incredibily useful, would be if you could BUY the Windows Mobile OS off the shelf in a ligthweight emulator to use the iPhone to run Windows Mobile applications that are already designed for the screen size. I would think MS would make a lot more money and get a lot more "bang" out of the platform if they did this and sold the OS for $40-50, which you know is more than the OEMs are paying per console, but would let me run the wierd proprietary apps that my company's.NET guy wrote for in the field sales or service. I think it would tremendously help iPhones get company adoptions and improve the software ecosystem for the Windows mobile platform.
I don't understand why folks are calling this "evil." I see the biggest difference from everything I have read, is that WebKit is better suited for low resource (memory, CPU, power) utilization than Gecko is. Given that the mobile computing is the next "fertile" ground for marketing and capitalization, releasing Chrome as a desktop equivalent of whatever Google plans to do in the mobile arena (maybe in Android) seems like a really "good" idea; particularly if Firefox isn't as ideal for specific environments and platforms they are targeting for their products.
I get that people like Firefox, but I don't understand the mentality that Firefox has some fundamental right to exist and anyone who does anything differently, in competition or cooperation that leads to a decrease in adoption is "evil." Even if Google is being "evil" that is pretty objective, where the legal reality is that Google has a duty to its investors; a legal duty, and if Chromium gets them closer to meeting their goals, then as much as one might not like it, they are doing what is the "least evil" in the eyes of those whose pocketbooks are proping Google up, and the government who has decreed that public companies have this duty. What Google does not have, is a bona fide responsibility to do anything for or against an independent third party, no matter how novel or great anyone or group of people think that 3rd party is.
If Firefox really is as great as many seem to think it is, it should flourish in the open market. I mean, it is already free-as-in-beer which is pretty difficult to compete with.
I don't care what anyone says and I'm willing to deal with being modded down, but a larger part (that most are willing to admit) of what made IE the dominant browser today is that IE4 "was better" in user experience and provided a better platform for developers than Netscape 4.x-n did. I'm not saying Microsoft's underhanded tactics weren't a big part of it... but IE4, for as often as it is bemoanded for ActiveX, made a "good enough" platform for the time, to bring "fat binary applications" to the web/intranet when Javascript/HTML (before flash, before AJAX, before frameworks like.NET or Rails) alone were not up to par to bring the same functionality that a full executable would.
This drove a lot of places I've worked to *require* IE for internal applications, because cross-platform didn't matter because everyone was on PCs or could Citrix into a Terminal server if it was important enough for the few Mac departments.
It could easily be said "no, it was because IE was there and IT didn't want to install Netscape on all those computers", but I have to say, if it provided any functionality IE didn't, the cost would have been negligible if it made our employees more efficient. If Firefox is better, it will survive whatever is trown at it, and if it can't, then the market has deturmined that it "shouldn't."
My wife is a teacher and we were going to try to get a hold of some old surplused computers for her classroom for the 1st graders to do things on. The trouble we found when we considered Linux, was the inavailability of standards-aligned educational software (e.g. companion software from textbook vendors), or early-mid primary school tailored software (aside from maybe some of the features of the XO laptops). Kids at that age given the start requirements benefit more from more structured software to keep them on task and has minimal UI interaction (e.g. the program works and acts like a book). Unfortunately, that software is usually custom to the written material. The second problem was the lack of support from local IT (all Windows/Dell shop, securing desktops with GPO).
Unfortunately, K12 education is not very platform agnostic, though it is better than it used to be with the online-resources, but even most of them require Non-OSS or poorly implemented Linux software (e.g. Flash Player, IE Only Sites, ActiveX) to work properly.
Thirdly, trying to get wireless connectivity configured was a pain given that they change their protocols like most people change their underwear.
All in all, it was a discouraging prospect because I *know* I could get more computers for the kids if I could get them under-spec (therefore less expensive) and run Damn Small Linux or OpenBSD with a trimmed down package list of a simple paint program and internet browser. However, with all the problems we ran into meeting the specific need for early primary kids, we found it just wasn't worth it when Windows isn't that expensive for academia.
When I was in school, we did an experiment that at 65 mph, you're going 95 feet/second. So if you close your eyes for a second, you've gone 95 feet blind. A lot can happen in 95 feet, particularly if you're following too close to the driver in front of you, or changing lanes with drivers in other lanes going variable speeds.
I think the reason the ban has been "less" than effective is as other posters have said, that having a conversation over the phone can be distracting enough to take seconds here where the conversation is particularly charged, or thought provoking or require active memory (such as getting a shopping list for dinner dictated or trying to recall a figure from a staff meeting for a co-worker), which are enough to cause accidents.
I would think the main kinds of events a bluetooth is going to help with are the 5-10 seconds spent fumbling for the phone in the pocket/purse when it rings, fatigue from holding the device to the head for too long, or not being able to make a wide enough turn single-handed to avoid collision. I don't think generally speaking it is going to overcome the situation where true "distraction" is taking place by the call itself, only minimizes particularly hazardous portions of all calls, less seconds means less risk, but depending on the sum of seconds spent distracted in-call, may be more-or-less effective overall.
This is why I'd say cell phones (which require mental dexterity) or makeup (requiring physical dextirity and concentration generally into a mirror) are more dangerous than eating, which is a mindless activity that if done well would have minimal impact.
My point was related to applications that would have otherwise been great; but do not fit into the overall design scheme of the platform. The product looks unpolished and is less enjoyable to use. The fact is that most folks care a lot more about how a tool looks than how it internally looks. When i am developing something, we have an entire department that checks that my UI blends with the rest of the product, and the rest of our products.
Regarding putting my criteria on other phones; I'm simply stating that I think that software that does not blend well, often doesn't "feel right" and is not as enjoyable to use. Whatever the UI style for the system is, applications that are designed in that "style" whatever it may be feel more "native" to the system. However, I also feel that a sizable portion of the population feels that way, which is why CPU manufacturers will redesign an LCD monitor with the exact same specifications to make it match the tower; or that both MS and Apple (and probably some linux distros) have Human Interface Guidelines that they encourage developers to follow.
That astehetic is an important component to any consumer good. Few buy toasters based on mean-lifespan of the coils, they buy what looks good next to the coffee pot.
Regarding my first comment about Windows on 3rd party hardware, I've always found MS drivers to be generally stable (even if they don't have all the functionality), and that the quickest way to get an unstable Windows machine is bad drivers. For instance, I read (wish I had the URL) that up to 40% of Vista crashes were due to bad NVidia drivers. The fact is that most consumers are quick to say "Vista Sucks" when their machine blue screens even though poor drivers are going to quickly cause issues on any operating system. Microsoft takes the hit for this, not nVidia. Just like people will say "Android sucks" if OEMs put it on crappy hardware prone to fail, or they bundle in terribly written apps with the phones that can't be removed and perform poorly.
What on Earth lets you deny other people fully working, functional software which they've written amongst themselves to use on their devices, because you think they're ugly and quirky?
I'm not denying anyone anything. I'm just saying that applications that don't follow the UI spec aren't as well recieved by some users, and if the application is ubiquitous or pre-installed and doesn't follow the UI spec, the average user is not nearly as impressed. I'm not going to stop anyone from putting a neon pink barn in their yard, but I guarantee when they go to sell that most buyers will not like it nearly as much and be less likley to buy the house than if the barn matched.
I think Google is unfortunately in a precarious position with Android if it's primary niche becomes crapware-filled knockoff phones or installed on very uninspired and underpowered hardware. They are in the same boat as MS, where a large majority of criticism of the platform from the average consumer is due to OEM modification, pre-loading, and crappy hardware support (via 3rd party drivers).
Linux thrived in a hobbist environment eventually to the point of corprate adoption, which takes both time, a community, and a willingness to run at a loss for a long time. The real key to success is developers whose goal was a OS that was secure, stable and efficent on legacy hardware, and somewhat "peer reviewed". For Android, the average developer is going to produce $3-$5 applets on their own for consumers who have no sense of style or consistency (UI standard). I cringe; personally when I see applications for my iPhone that have no forethought and look like bastard stepchildren compared to my other apps who follow the UI standards. For a consumer good, it needs to be "excellent" (or "better" than the competition) and not only that, downright "sexy" before it hits the masses or it is going be DOA or lackluster at best.
I fear the same methodology that made Linux "proper" great, will make Andriod a cheap OS for cheap phones developed on by bad developers for companies trying to squeeze every last cent of profit out of a "consumer good" like a toaster or DVR. That being said, I hope I am wrong.
The problem, particularly in the US at the federal level, where it is a strong 2-party system is often our choices are between the lessor of two evils. It is like saying "would you prefer cyanide or rat poison in your soup." The "people" get to pick from a very short list populated by self-interested parties; where the cost of candidacy is so astronomical very very few have much chance without the "blessing" of one of these parties whose goal in life is to gather up earmarks or win a "who can get the most seats" dick measuring contest.
What really sucks is when both guys are into the same thing and you disagree with both of them (e.g. the bailout).
True, but none of the new yorker's comments are *ever* funny. Katz gets some credit for knowing his audience. That in mind, I thought Munroe's last comic (without the text blurb) belonged in the New Yorker more than any of the other submissions. I call a draw. (Though I'd rather, and do read XKCD 99.99999% more than TNY).
I think where they are hurting themselves is the market where "I've got 2 PCs and me and my friend (who may not have ever played it) want to play against each other."
Unfortunately, PC games; in particular in the MMO, RTS, Sim, etc. genres really are not designed for multiplayer action at the same terminal in the same way consoles games generally are. When I was young I remember playing Sim City 2000 with a buddy and we'd switch off every 1/2 hour or so. It worked, but it sucked; and it sucked even more when I got older.
By taking this out, you're limiting your loyal fans ability to expose new customers to the product. I started playing Starcraft this way at a friends' house (mostly us 2 versus 2-6 CPU players), and went out and bought a copy (and the expansion); and would say I got 3-4 more people playing this way; whom all bought copies so we could play on BNet when we weren't around and when I went off to school.
I think the problem here is that someday you might want to send anonymous mail of a religious or political nature and most would agree that there is merit in that not being illegal. For instance, I've sent anonymous e-mail (well, semi-anonymous, from some generic gmail account) complaining to the Health Dept. that facilities on site were not up to health code, but did not want my employer to be able to deturmine from the public records who made the complaint.
I wish that public key signing of e-mail on a massive system was possible and inexpensive (or free!) and massively adopted so that I could filter out unsigned e-mail. Right now, there isn't truly a lot of flexibility in filtering messages based on identity (or lack of identity), instead all we get are very sophisticated pattern matching methods which work well for most cases. Poorly when you monitor public facing mailboxes on an international scale where Contry-origin and english language "correctness"/buzzword filters are all you get.
The problem is that already taxed desktop support teams are going out to fix problems that would have never been caused if the application had never been installed. If there is a bona-fide need for a particular piece of software, it should aquire, test, and support it.
As a state insitution, we had employees go out and buy various smart-devices all of which ran proprietary "push" clients; some of wich worked well, others not, others securely, others non-securely. The issue was we had literally hundreds of configurations to support, and when it worked, the users (mostly middle managers) flat-out expected the entry level techs to get their personally owned piece of equipment to work. I argued it was illegal to use state time to fix personally owned equipment and refused, but other techs weren't so lucky and hundreds of man hours for a small support group was spent supporting devices we'd never touch if management would have enforced a simple guideline of what devices and vendors we'd support. (e.g. we had no coverage on campus for Sprint, period).
At the same college college where someone installed some app similar to Picassa that caused major issues with some proprietary (approved) scanning software to record transcripts. We lost almost 2 days of productivity on that station after a full wipe and reconfigure, while the employee didn't catch any flack over it. I argued the employee violated the policy, the business suffered downtime, and she shoud have been sent home without pay. It was no different than breaking a copy machine by feeding stapled documents into it saying "I don't care what IT says, it SHOULD work!"
There is a big difference working for a place where OT is a "necessary evil" when servers need taken offline or production rolls need to occur; and a place that says "Hey, we give ourselves raises if we can make our IT folks work 80 hours a week with no overtime" Jr. Programmers and Jr. System Analysts are cheaper anyway, out with the old, in with the new!
At the county, this came up when we knew the state was going to try this. The consensus is that the only thing stoping management from setting project goals that would require overtime to even have a chance of meeting the deadline was the knowledge that unless the world was on fire (which it was; literally; at the time) OT was not in the budget and out of the question.
It made me glad that I was in a union shop that even if the state says "Go for it!", it is still in the contract. Now I'm management, but at a place that considers OT a necessary evil, and expects we'll take off that time later.
They first time I read your post I read "Aristophanes" as "Aristocrats" (nsfw) and had a bit of a chuckle when I thought about that joke and the last time I ran Vista.
I think this research should inform how mail clients (in particular those at work) are created, and how mail notifications are displayed to the user. In my own experience; I think that I've become more productive having turned off the audio notification when I get new mail, because when that bell chimes, by instinct if it were, I stop what I am doing and switch to my mail client, which definately upsets my train of thought for at least 60+ seconds. I've found the best method is to use the desktop notification feature with Outlook (we're an Exchange shop). I find I can quickly glance to see if the message is "worthy" of reading immediately, and get back to work without upsetting the thought at hand (I'm a programmer) and paying the penalty.
I have to say; I think the most absolute distracting thing is a phone ringing, beit mine or someone in the cube farm. When I recieve a call, my thought processes are rattled for several minutes and most of the time when I hang up I find I get up to get coffee, etc. Even hearing someone elses phone is is enough to break a train of thought.
I would give anything if there were some way to have a silent, maybe on screen or vibrating FOB or something, notification to pick up the phone; and the office made everyone use them.
At my last gig the helpdesk phone rang to our area incase the HD (2 people) were out or busy and it drove me absolutely nuts; and I am sure it cost me literally weeks worth of productivity.
Our firm won't use GPLed software because of the requirement to include the source with it. If we use some minor utility function (e.g. a compression library) we (as I understand it) would be required to include the source of the derivative work; which is commercial software. We write very-very industry specific software packages.
In order to protect our IP it is more "worth it" to license a commercial component to perform the same functionality; which can often be done for a few thousdand dollars; which seems like a lot, but at 70G/yr for programmers; if someone has a library we can use that would take us a month to write, it is cheaper to license their component. If we do deturmine that an FOSS package would work; we have legal counsel deturmine what our responsibility is under that license in our particular usage; then we deturmine if that is acceptable; but in general these "costs" make FOSS more expensive than comercial royalty-free components.
I'm not advocating this practice; as I think that software should be open source; but that is the reality of the situation. If the parent is refering to his aquaintence not using FOSS software such as Firefox or the GIMP on user workstations, they need to put down the crackpipe. If they are a development shop using pieces of GPL software in commercial work I understand it.
Friends that still work there; said that they hadn't changed anything (mostly because they were frustrated because the upper management didn't deem it worthwhile to change service account uid/pwds.) That and the gig was in a public building and I'd drop in from time to time and go to the IT office to go to lunch with the old crew.
I have been an employee in several unionized shops and have to say; that is isn't the end of an industry like a lot of posters have said. Granted, the unions (Cal School Employees Association; San Bernardino Public Employees Association), are not as overarching as lets say what most people are familar with in the Transport/Manufacturing settings.
In my experience while the union was beneficial in negotiating contracts; etc... the real benefit was having a vocal, accessible body when the entity (in this case; a school or county) was in clear violation of the labor contract or Fair Hiring Processes. The union also had the benefit of ensuring we got OT for work done after hours; which because we were "more expensive" managers set more realistic deadlines and expectations, because they did not want us working more than 40 hours. In essense we worked OT when something critical was down; but not to try to get something to market faster.
Secondly, the union helped establish a system where employees were not constantly worried that one slip up would end up being on their asses. It's bound to happen that someone is accidentally going to stop a service or have a Patch Tuesday go poorly; so it is really nice to know that the PHB can toss you out without a history of negligence.
Not only that but for the most part, hiring was a fair practice (to greater or lesser extents) and IT positions tended to have minimal education/training standards; but required a practical and/or written and oral examination, followed by a 6-9 month probationary/training period to verify you had the ability to do your job. This is wonderful for the self-trained or uncertified employees (e.g. me, who thinks most vendor certifications are a joke) who can demonstrate job worthiness rather than lose out de facto to the applicant with an MS CIS who has no experience to speak of. Thats why I would argue for a union; rather than a trade organization or going it alone. For me; the union was never as powerful as I thought it should be, and some shadyness did still go on, but in the end, they did a lot more good than bad for the IT department; and gov't officials as it did bad.
TFA was very vauge in how they frame "stealing." When I have left (of my own accord) a job, there is invariably a certain amount of information written in my notebooks when I pakc up my cube that probably contain some user/password items, hostnames, door codes, etc. If you call that "stealing" i'd say the statistic is right.
When I am leaving a job, I'm not actively concerned in making sure every piece of knowledge about my tenure is forgotten and every napkin I may have scribbled something on is returned or destroyed, and every backup I've made is destroyed because I use a lot of the scripts/docs/etc... as part of my new job hiring interview. Conversely, most firms I've worked at haven't changed their admin passwords or door codes when I left, so they don't seem particularly concerned either. (Which may or may not be normative.)
I would say that the time when most IT folks are going out of their way to collect information is if they feel like they're being setup for the fall guy. At my last gig my project lead liked to broadcast the whole group when a server went down (blaming me) so I was maticulous to keep a copy of every log, logon time, email from her, so when I was accused, I could defend myself to our supervisor. If you're being laid off for some straight-up BS; and you're acute enough to see it coming, you better bet I'm going to collect as much as I can to clear my name. Beit to that firm or my new employer should I get a bad reference.
It sounds like MS is taking a page out of the IBM playbook. I never know what they are selling but 2 seconds into it I know that it is an IBM pitch. When was the last time except right after a launch have you seen an Exchange Server or SQL Server (where their bread-and-butter is and gives people a reason to run windows).
Maybe they are at the stage of the game where they are giving up on the home user just like IBM (sold to lenovo), in anticipation in Linux and Mac OS X chipping away at their marketshare while they try to maintain 20 year old code full of compatibility hacks and whatnot.
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I wonder if HP is allowed (under the embargo) to provide technical support over the phone, over the web, or via download for customers (direct or indirect) from Iran or other embargoed countries. It would be easy enough to tell if the caller's number is a 011+98+n prefix, if the e-mail address or hostname ends with .ir If that is the case I'd feel bad for the legitimate business who buys a new printer from a reseller and can't get any support for it from the manufacturer (if that is the case).
If they did provide the support, they'd have to admit they knowingly had post-embargo products over there, and I would imagine uncle Sam would find that helping an embargoed state with an IT/Business problem actively is worst than tossing a box of hardware at them and letting them figure it out. Then again, I can't say HP support has ever really been that helpful (or timely; the embargo will probably be over before they actually got some support; but that is a different story).
I think I'm with everyone else in that the embargo is "wishful thinking" on the government's part, and they haven't learned that all the embargo does is drive up the prices (e.g. cuban cigars) and make a middleman (such as canadian tobacco shops) wealthier than their US counterparts. If the dictaror (whose name I can't remember off the top of my head) in Iran wants an iPod to superclusters of linux PCs as a poor mans supercomputer, this isn't going to stop him; but might deny or drive the price up for the average citizen who would love some US medicine or blue jeans.
I don't understand why they need to use GPS? Oregon is Self-serve only. Just have the attendant get the odometer reading and enter it into a wireless handset with the license plate and let the DMV store the data with their last odometer reading, and you'd only need 1 row in the database, which has to be a lot cheaper and a lot less invasive, cheaper to implement and would have a real "reason" for OR to be self-serve only than what this guy is thinking.
All that being said, I still think it is a stupid idea.
You'd be surprised how many shops "want" to go to Vista, particulary in K12 and at the community college level (where I do most of my work), because of the "perception" of being behind-the-times. I'm not talking about the labs where they teach "Intro to Computers 101", but in for faculty machines and for the classified (clerical, operations, etc) folks as well. They were planning (before I left because I can see a sinking ship) to drop $50,000 on RAM alone to bring some 100 or so Dell Dimension 4100 Pentium 3 boxes up to spec that were slated for replacement in the next year or so for the sole purpose of running Vista.
You have rank-and-file IT folks saying "NO", but there are a lot of Business Services (the department IT usually falls under in California education) saying "We want to use feature" or "I read in a in-flight magazine...". You catch a lot of grief from higher ups who don't know, and seem incompetent to the departamental middle-managers when their computer is 2-3 years old and "the world" seems to be leaps and bounds ahead.
Even in a recession and a huge budget crisis where people are losing jobs, people will dump money on a lame dog operating system (because Windows IS the computer in their eyes) simply to feel like they are doing the right thing, or at least look like they are doing the right thing.
I can't imagine anything more painful than running a Windows application designed for full-screen PCs over the air on an iphone where the keyboard is going to take up a big portion of the screen everytime I do text-entry. I've used VNC to get into my home computer to look up a few things, and it is slow and painful to do anything really productive. I could see this being useful for a system admin who gets a page and wants to Citrix in to look at what the problem might be or to bounce a server, but I sincerely "hope" no company is really expecting to have their line-workers out in the field Citrixing in on an iPhone to use some full-featured Windows program. It seems it would be better to rewrite the application for the web, or even in Objective-C if you're really hell bent on using the iPhone than trying this for any day-to-day production work.
.NET guy wrote for in the field sales or service. I think it would tremendously help iPhones get company adoptions and improve the software ecosystem for the Windows mobile platform.
On the other hand, what I think would be incredibily useful, would be if you could BUY the Windows Mobile OS off the shelf in a ligthweight emulator to use the iPhone to run Windows Mobile applications that are already designed for the screen size. I would think MS would make a lot more money and get a lot more "bang" out of the platform if they did this and sold the OS for $40-50, which you know is more than the OEMs are paying per console, but would let me run the wierd proprietary apps that my company's
I don't understand why folks are calling this "evil." I see the biggest difference from everything I have read, is that WebKit is better suited for low resource (memory, CPU, power) utilization than Gecko is. Given that the mobile computing is the next "fertile" ground for marketing and capitalization, releasing Chrome as a desktop equivalent of whatever Google plans to do in the mobile arena (maybe in Android) seems like a really "good" idea; particularly if Firefox isn't as ideal for specific environments and platforms they are targeting for their products.
.NET or Rails) alone were not up to par to bring the same functionality that a full executable would.
I get that people like Firefox, but I don't understand the mentality that Firefox has some fundamental right to exist and anyone who does anything differently, in competition or cooperation that leads to a decrease in adoption is "evil." Even if Google is being "evil" that is pretty objective, where the legal reality is that Google has a duty to its investors; a legal duty, and if Chromium gets them closer to meeting their goals, then as much as one might not like it, they are doing what is the "least evil" in the eyes of those whose pocketbooks are proping Google up, and the government who has decreed that public companies have this duty. What Google does not have, is a bona fide responsibility to do anything for or against an independent third party, no matter how novel or great anyone or group of people think that 3rd party is.
If Firefox really is as great as many seem to think it is, it should flourish in the open market. I mean, it is already free-as-in-beer which is pretty difficult to compete with.
I don't care what anyone says and I'm willing to deal with being modded down, but a larger part (that most are willing to admit) of what made IE the dominant browser today is that IE4 "was better" in user experience and provided a better platform for developers than Netscape 4.x-n did. I'm not saying Microsoft's underhanded tactics weren't a big part of it... but IE4, for as often as it is bemoanded for ActiveX, made a "good enough" platform for the time, to bring "fat binary applications" to the web/intranet when Javascript/HTML (before flash, before AJAX, before frameworks like
This drove a lot of places I've worked to *require* IE for internal applications, because cross-platform didn't matter because everyone was on PCs or could Citrix into a Terminal server if it was important enough for the few Mac departments.
It could easily be said "no, it was because IE was there and IT didn't want to install Netscape on all those computers", but I have to say, if it provided any functionality IE didn't, the cost would have been negligible if it made our employees more efficient.
If Firefox is better, it will survive whatever is trown at it, and if it can't, then the market has deturmined that it "shouldn't."
My wife is a teacher and we were going to try to get a hold of some old surplused computers for her classroom for the 1st graders to do things on. The trouble we found when we considered Linux, was the inavailability of standards-aligned educational software (e.g. companion software from textbook vendors), or early-mid primary school tailored software (aside from maybe some of the features of the XO laptops). Kids at that age given the start requirements benefit more from more structured software to keep them on task and has minimal UI interaction (e.g. the program works and acts like a book). Unfortunately, that software is usually custom to the written material. The second problem was the lack of support from local IT (all Windows/Dell shop, securing desktops with GPO).
Unfortunately, K12 education is not very platform agnostic, though it is better than it used to be with the online-resources, but even most of them require Non-OSS or poorly implemented Linux software (e.g. Flash Player, IE Only Sites, ActiveX) to work properly.
Thirdly, trying to get wireless connectivity configured was a pain given that they change their protocols like most people change their underwear.
All in all, it was a discouraging prospect because I *know* I could get more computers for the kids if I could get them under-spec (therefore less expensive) and run Damn Small Linux or OpenBSD with a trimmed down package list of a simple paint program and internet browser. However, with all the problems we ran into meeting the specific need for early primary kids, we found it just wasn't worth it when Windows isn't that expensive for academia.
When I was in school, we did an experiment that at 65 mph, you're going 95 feet/second. So if you close your eyes for a second, you've gone 95 feet blind. A lot can happen in 95 feet, particularly if you're following too close to the driver in front of you, or changing lanes with drivers in other lanes going variable speeds.
I think the reason the ban has been "less" than effective is as other posters have said, that having a conversation over the phone can be distracting enough to take seconds here where the conversation is particularly charged, or thought provoking or require active memory (such as getting a shopping list for dinner dictated or trying to recall a figure from a staff meeting for a co-worker), which are enough to cause accidents.
I would think the main kinds of events a bluetooth is going to help with are the 5-10 seconds spent fumbling for the phone in the pocket/purse when it rings, fatigue from holding the device to the head for too long, or not being able to make a wide enough turn single-handed to avoid collision. I don't think generally speaking it is going to overcome the situation where true "distraction" is taking place by the call itself, only minimizes particularly hazardous portions of all calls, less seconds means less risk, but depending on the sum of seconds spent distracted in-call, may be more-or-less effective overall.
This is why I'd say cell phones (which require mental dexterity) or makeup (requiring physical dextirity and concentration generally into a mirror) are more dangerous than eating, which is a mindless activity that if done well would have minimal impact.
Regarding putting my criteria on other phones; I'm simply stating that I think that software that does not blend well, often doesn't "feel right" and is not as enjoyable to use. Whatever the UI style for the system is, applications that are designed in that "style" whatever it may be feel more "native" to the system. However, I also feel that a sizable portion of the population feels that way, which is why CPU manufacturers will redesign an LCD monitor with the exact same specifications to make it match the tower; or that both MS and Apple (and probably some linux distros) have Human Interface Guidelines that they encourage developers to follow.
That astehetic is an important component to any consumer good. Few buy toasters based on mean-lifespan of the coils, they buy what looks good next to the coffee pot.
Regarding my first comment about Windows on 3rd party hardware, I've always found MS drivers to be generally stable (even if they don't have all the functionality), and that the quickest way to get an unstable Windows machine is bad drivers. For instance, I read (wish I had the URL) that up to 40% of Vista crashes were due to bad NVidia drivers. The fact is that most consumers are quick to say "Vista Sucks" when their machine blue screens even though poor drivers are going to quickly cause issues on any operating system. Microsoft takes the hit for this, not nVidia. Just like people will say "Android sucks" if OEMs put it on crappy hardware prone to fail, or they bundle in terribly written apps with the phones that can't be removed and perform poorly.
I'm not denying anyone anything. I'm just saying that applications that don't follow the UI spec aren't as well recieved by some users, and if the application is ubiquitous or pre-installed and doesn't follow the UI spec, the average user is not nearly as impressed. I'm not going to stop anyone from putting a neon pink barn in their yard, but I guarantee when they go to sell that most buyers will not like it nearly as much and be less likley to buy the house than if the barn matched.
I think Google is unfortunately in a precarious position with Android if it's primary niche becomes crapware-filled knockoff phones or installed on very uninspired and underpowered hardware. They are in the same boat as MS, where a large majority of criticism of the platform from the average consumer is due to OEM modification, pre-loading, and crappy hardware support (via 3rd party drivers).
Linux thrived in a hobbist environment eventually to the point of corprate adoption, which takes both time, a community, and a willingness to run at a loss for a long time. The real key to success is developers whose goal was a OS that was secure, stable and efficent on legacy hardware, and somewhat "peer reviewed". For Android, the average developer is going to produce $3-$5 applets on their own for consumers who have no sense of style or consistency (UI standard). I cringe; personally when I see applications for my iPhone that have no forethought and look like bastard stepchildren compared to my other apps who follow the UI standards. For a consumer good, it needs to be "excellent" (or "better" than the competition) and not only that, downright "sexy" before it hits the masses or it is going be DOA or lackluster at best.
I fear the same methodology that made Linux "proper" great, will make Andriod a cheap OS for cheap phones developed on by bad developers for companies trying to squeeze every last cent of profit out of a "consumer good" like a toaster or DVR. That being said, I hope I am wrong.
The problem, particularly in the US at the federal level, where it is a strong 2-party system is often our choices are between the lessor of two evils. It is like saying "would you prefer cyanide or rat poison in your soup." The "people" get to pick from a very short list populated by self-interested parties; where the cost of candidacy is so astronomical very very few have much chance without the "blessing" of one of these parties whose goal in life is to gather up earmarks or win a "who can get the most seats" dick measuring contest.
What really sucks is when both guys are into the same thing and you disagree with both of them (e.g. the bailout).
All cows have too many nipples, based on my assumption that two nipples is the ideal number. :)
True, but none of the new yorker's comments are *ever* funny. Katz gets some credit for knowing his audience. That in mind, I thought Munroe's last comic (without the text blurb) belonged in the New Yorker more than any of the other submissions. I call a draw. (Though I'd rather, and do read XKCD 99.99999% more than TNY).
I think where they are hurting themselves is the market where "I've got 2 PCs and me and my friend (who may not have ever played it) want to play against each other."
Unfortunately, PC games; in particular in the MMO, RTS, Sim, etc. genres really are not designed for multiplayer action at the same terminal in the same way consoles games generally are. When I was young I remember playing Sim City 2000 with a buddy and we'd switch off every 1/2 hour or so. It worked, but it sucked; and it sucked even more when I got older.
By taking this out, you're limiting your loyal fans ability to expose new customers to the product. I started playing Starcraft this way at a friends' house (mostly us 2 versus 2-6 CPU players), and went out and bought a copy (and the expansion); and would say I got 3-4 more people playing this way; whom all bought copies so we could play on BNet when we weren't around and when I went off to school.
But does it save you 15% on your car insurance?
I think the problem here is that someday you might want to send anonymous mail of a religious or political nature and most would agree that there is merit in that not being illegal. For instance, I've sent anonymous e-mail (well, semi-anonymous, from some generic gmail account) complaining to the Health Dept. that facilities on site were not up to health code, but did not want my employer to be able to deturmine from the public records who made the complaint.
I wish that public key signing of e-mail on a massive system was possible and inexpensive (or free!) and massively adopted so that I could filter out unsigned e-mail. Right now, there isn't truly a lot of flexibility in filtering messages based on identity (or lack of identity), instead all we get are very sophisticated pattern matching methods which work well for most cases. Poorly when you monitor public facing mailboxes on an international scale where Contry-origin and english language "correctness"/buzzword filters are all you get.
The problem is that already taxed desktop support teams are going out to fix problems that would have never been caused if the application had never been installed. If there is a bona-fide need for a particular piece of software, it should aquire, test, and support it.
As a state insitution, we had employees go out and buy various smart-devices all of which ran proprietary "push" clients; some of wich worked well, others not, others securely, others non-securely. The issue was we had literally hundreds of configurations to support, and when it worked, the users (mostly middle managers) flat-out expected the entry level techs to get their personally owned piece of equipment to work. I argued it was illegal to use state time to fix personally owned equipment and refused, but other techs weren't so lucky and hundreds of man hours for a small support group was spent supporting devices we'd never touch if management would have enforced a simple guideline of what devices and vendors we'd support. (e.g. we had no coverage on campus for Sprint, period).
At the same college college where someone installed some app similar to Picassa that caused major issues with some proprietary (approved) scanning software to record transcripts. We lost almost 2 days of productivity on that station after a full wipe and reconfigure, while the employee didn't catch any flack over it. I argued the employee violated the policy, the business suffered downtime, and she shoud have been sent home without pay. It was no different than breaking a copy machine by feeding stapled documents into it saying "I don't care what IT says, it SHOULD work!"
There is a big difference working for a place where OT is a "necessary evil" when servers need taken offline or production rolls need to occur; and a place that says "Hey, we give ourselves raises if we can make our IT folks work 80 hours a week with no overtime" Jr. Programmers and Jr. System Analysts are cheaper anyway, out with the old, in with the new!
At the county, this came up when we knew the state was going to try this. The consensus is that the only thing stoping management from setting project goals that would require overtime to even have a chance of meeting the deadline was the knowledge that unless the world was on fire (which it was; literally; at the time) OT was not in the budget and out of the question.
It made me glad that I was in a union shop that even if the state says "Go for it!", it is still in the contract. Now I'm management, but at a place that considers OT a necessary evil, and expects we'll take off that time later.
In other news; Kentucky has computers now! Disclaimer: I am an Appalachian-American so it is ok. Seriously. :)
They first time I read your post I read "Aristophanes" as "Aristocrats" (nsfw) and had a bit of a chuckle when I thought about that joke and the last time I ran Vista.
I think this research should inform how mail clients (in particular those at work) are created, and how mail notifications are displayed to the user. In my own experience; I think that I've become more productive having turned off the audio notification when I get new mail, because when that bell chimes, by instinct if it were, I stop what I am doing and switch to my mail client, which definately upsets my train of thought for at least 60+ seconds. I've found the best method is to use the desktop notification feature with Outlook (we're an Exchange shop). I find I can quickly glance to see if the message is "worthy" of reading immediately, and get back to work without upsetting the thought at hand (I'm a programmer) and paying the penalty.
I have to say; I think the most absolute distracting thing is a phone ringing, beit mine or someone in the cube farm. When I recieve a call, my thought processes are rattled for several minutes and most of the time when I hang up I find I get up to get coffee, etc. Even hearing someone elses phone is is enough to break a train of thought.
I would give anything if there were some way to have a silent, maybe on screen or vibrating FOB or something, notification to pick up the phone; and the office made everyone use them.
At my last gig the helpdesk phone rang to our area incase the HD (2 people) were out or busy and it drove me absolutely nuts; and I am sure it cost me literally weeks worth of productivity.
Our firm won't use GPLed software because of the requirement to include the source with it. If we use some minor utility function (e.g. a compression library) we (as I understand it) would be required to include the source of the derivative work; which is commercial software. We write very-very industry specific software packages.
In order to protect our IP it is more "worth it" to license a commercial component to perform the same functionality; which can often be done for a few thousdand dollars; which seems like a lot, but at 70G/yr for programmers; if someone has a library we can use that would take us a month to write, it is cheaper to license their component. If we do deturmine that an FOSS package would work; we have legal counsel deturmine what our responsibility is under that license in our particular usage; then we deturmine if that is acceptable; but in general these "costs" make FOSS more expensive than comercial royalty-free components.
I'm not advocating this practice; as I think that software should be open source; but that is the reality of the situation. If the parent is refering to his aquaintence not using FOSS software such as Firefox or the GIMP on user workstations, they need to put down the crackpipe. If they are a development shop using pieces of GPL software in commercial work I understand it.
Friends that still work there; said that they hadn't changed anything (mostly because they were frustrated because the upper management didn't deem it worthwhile to change service account uid/pwds.) That and the gig was in a public building and I'd drop in from time to time and go to the IT office to go to lunch with the old crew.
I have been an employee in several unionized shops and have to say; that is isn't the end of an industry like a lot of posters have said. Granted, the unions (Cal School Employees Association; San Bernardino Public Employees Association), are not as overarching as lets say what most people are familar with in the Transport/Manufacturing settings.
In my experience while the union was beneficial in negotiating contracts; etc... the real benefit was having a vocal, accessible body when the entity (in this case; a school or county) was in clear violation of the labor contract or Fair Hiring Processes. The union also had the benefit of ensuring we got OT for work done after hours; which because we were "more expensive" managers set more realistic deadlines and expectations, because they did not want us working more than 40 hours. In essense we worked OT when something critical was down; but not to try to get something to market faster.
Secondly, the union helped establish a system where employees were not constantly worried that one slip up would end up being on their asses. It's bound to happen that someone is accidentally going to stop a service or have a Patch Tuesday go poorly; so it is really nice to know that the PHB can toss you out without a history of negligence.
Not only that but for the most part, hiring was a fair practice (to greater or lesser extents) and IT positions tended to have minimal education/training standards; but required a practical and/or written and oral examination, followed by a 6-9 month probationary/training period to verify you had the ability to do your job. This is wonderful for the self-trained or uncertified employees (e.g. me, who thinks most vendor certifications are a joke) who can demonstrate job worthiness rather than lose out de facto to the applicant with an MS CIS who has no experience to speak of. Thats why I would argue for a union; rather than a trade organization or going it alone. For me; the union was never as powerful as I thought it should be, and some shadyness did still go on, but in the end, they did a lot more good than bad for the IT department; and gov't officials as it did bad.
TFA was very vauge in how they frame "stealing." When I have left (of my own accord) a job, there is invariably a certain amount of information written in my notebooks when I pakc up my cube that probably contain some user/password items, hostnames, door codes, etc. If you call that "stealing" i'd say the statistic is right.
When I am leaving a job, I'm not actively concerned in making sure every piece of knowledge about my tenure is forgotten and every napkin I may have scribbled something on is returned or destroyed, and every backup I've made is destroyed because I use a lot of the scripts/docs/etc... as part of my new job hiring interview. Conversely, most firms I've worked at haven't changed their admin passwords or door codes when I left, so they don't seem particularly concerned either. (Which may or may not be normative.)
I would say that the time when most IT folks are going out of their way to collect information is if they feel like they're being setup for the fall guy. At my last gig my project lead liked to broadcast the whole group when a server went down (blaming me) so I was maticulous to keep a copy of every log, logon time, email from her, so when I was accused, I could defend myself to our supervisor. If you're being laid off for some straight-up BS; and you're acute enough to see it coming, you better bet I'm going to collect as much as I can to clear my name. Beit to that firm or my new employer should I get a bad reference.
It sounds like MS is taking a page out of the IBM playbook. I never know what they are selling but 2 seconds into it I know that it is an IBM pitch. When was the last time except right after a launch have you seen an Exchange Server or SQL Server (where their bread-and-butter is and gives people a reason to run windows).
Maybe they are at the stage of the game where they are giving up on the home user just like IBM (sold to lenovo), in anticipation in Linux and Mac OS X chipping away at their marketshare while they try to maintain 20 year old code full of compatibility hacks and whatnot.