Please don't mod me as a troll, from my experience the article is 100% correct.
In 2000-2001 I worked for a company that made telecommunications equipment that's used in phone switches and the servers that tell you "Push 1 to..." Their equipment, (and bundled software,) had to support 99.999% uptime. (It translated to roughly 5 minutes of downtime, per server, per year.) The company had a history of supporting Windows NT, Solaris (both x86 and Sun machines,) and Unixware. (They also supported OS/2 in the past.) The QA lab that I worked in tested both the hardware and software for each operating system.
In 2001 they decided to support Linux, because customers were asking for it. When they asked, "What distro do you want us to support?" the answer was "Linux". The company decided to only support Red Hat, because they couldn't afford to test their products with a zillion distros. (Today they'd probably drop Unixware and support two Linux distros.)
The reality is that, due to the complexity of testing hardware/software that "has to work", each distro needs to be treated as its own operating system. The company that I worked for would probably gladly support the distro of choice from large customers, but a small company wouldn't be able to get much support for "Joe's uberk00l Linux d1str0". Even if the company were to provide source code, there's too much testing (and development) involved.
HTPCs just aren't ready for mainstream yet. What's really holding them back is that they need CableCard v2 to work properly with Cable Television. When you can buy a CableCard v2 HTPC that's just as a good as a Tivo for about $500, I think we'll see them slowly make inroads. When a family shopping for a Tivo, game console, DVD player, ect can buy an all-in-one device for about $500, they might start to get popular.
Looking back at VCRs, it took about 20 years for them to become popular. In the 70s, before VHS & Beta, they weren't practicle. In the 80s, they cost the equivilent of $1000 in today's dollars, and weren't in everybody's home. I'd expect HTPCs to follow the same route.
How do you deal with a customer who is bent on assuming that you are incompetent, and that he or she could never have unreasonable expectations?
Either you're dealing with a customer who isn't worth the effort, or you really aren't trying hard enough to solve the customer's problem.
I've called many tech support desks where the help treated me as if I was being unreasonable, but the tech was being incompetent. Here are some examples:
I was having problems with my cable modem, and according to the manual, it was getting poor reception. The tech didn't believe me, treated me as if I was being unreasonable, and made me re-install TCP-IP and remove my hub. When I called back and got a better tech, she scheduled a service appointment. None of the phone techs ever suggested that I needed to use a different grade coaxial cable between the wall and modem, which was the actual problem.
Whenever my current cable provider has a problem on THEIR network, they always claim it's a problem with my equipment and try and send a tech. The third time it occured, the phone support tech went into "difficult customer" mode with me until I told her that the last two times there was a problem on THEIR network, they attempted to schedule an appointment with me.
Once one of my cable channels went out. The tech claimed that I didn't have the channel. I hung up and got a different tech.
Again, perhaps you really haven't tried hard enough to understand the customer's problem.
I own about 20-25 DVD-Audio disks, and I've ripped 8 of them successfully to MP3s that I can play in my Nomad. The problem with ripping a music album off of DVD is that, unlike a movie, the internal structure of the disk varies. Some disks make each track a seperate program. Other disks come out as one large wave file that you have to cut up manually. To further complicate matters, some DVD-Audio disks confuse DGIndex, which makes them impossible to rip to anything but an ISO.
Some artists, like The Flaming Lips, are nice enough to sell you a seperate CD in the same package, which I use to rip to my Nomad. I'm a fan of NiN's DualDisks, because those are easy to rip as well. Telarc's release of the 1812 overature had DRM-free MP3s on the DVD.
The DVD album would include "preripped" digital tracks of the entire album, ready to be copied onto a user's computer -- a totally separate set of data from the higher-quality, DVD-audio sound that users hear when they slip the DVD in a player. The lower-quality, "preripped" tracks could be copied to a CD.
I'm hopping that "lower-quality" means "CD-quality." (DVDs have higher resolution surround sound, CDs are lower resolution stereo.) As long as they use a scheme like WMA lossless, great-sounding DRM-free MP3s are only a CDRW away. (An 8.7 gig dual-layer DVD can store an entire album in high-fidelity surround, high-fidelity stereo, and WMA lossless.)
Actually, now that I have a better understanding of the big bang and evolution, (after attending a speech given by Steven Hawkings and reading the first half of Darwin's "Origin of Species,") I have a significant amount of respect for the insight in the book of Genisis.
Specifically, I find that Genisis gives insight and opinion that science can not. It tells us that the human race is the keeper of the planet, and it helps explain what makes man different from other animals. (Hint: we wear clothes!) These stories are also some of the oldest known to man, and throwing them away would be a horrible disservice to our culture.
What bothers me are when "religous" people claim that I am some athiest heathen because I believe in the big bang and evolution. Certainly, they overlook the insights of our ancestors.
It seems that worrying about Click Fraud is a waste of time. Why don't the advertisers work fraud into their bids? Google could state that they only garuntee that 75% of all clicks are legit. Also, perhaps Google could switch to a more objective pricing scheme? For example, instead of paying on a per-click model, why not auction blocks of time?
Apple has carved out a nice niche market. The days are gone when Apple can increase market share in any meaningful way.
Wasn't there an article on Slashdot the other day that stated that Apple's sales of notebooks jumped from about 6% to 12%! Yikes!
Ignoring Apple's styling, the real difference between an Apple and a PC is the bundled software. The real reason why an Apple costs more then Best Buy's $350 E-machine is that it has much better bundled software. This is the core of Apple's marketing campagn where they claim that, out-of-the-box, an Apple does much more then a PC. Given that their market share of notebooks is doubling, it appears to work.
I could anticipate Apple creating another brand, similar to how auto makers badge their cars under different brands. For example, Apple could create a "pear" computer that is priced about $150 cheaper then a mac with the same hardware, but has less built-in software.
The problem with modularity is that it always has a tradeoff. The glaring example here is the copious reliability problems present in Windows because it'll run on everything, compared to MacOS, which will only run on a system built by Apple.
In their present state, laptops are already quite modular. Most allow for hard drive upgrades, drive swapping, battery swapping, RAM swapping, PC Card swapping, and have full USB support. There is also the Mini PCI standard. Both Dell and Leveno laptops have a full ecosystem of swappable drives. (On my personal laptop I upgraded the RAM and hard drive, added a Mini PCI wireless card, and added Firewire and USB 2.0 via PC card.)
Some of the things you ask for, are frankly, impracticle. Laptop displays are sized to the physical machine and hinge, and thus can not be interchanged like a desktop display. Keyboards work with milimeters of clearence that vary from vendor to vendor. Laptops without batteries don't sell, (they also double as a high-quality UPS if you're always next to an outlet.) The same applies to integrated pointing, (it must be there to sell the laptop), but you can always pick up a bluetooth mouse.
When SP2 for XP came out, I delayed installing it on my personal laptop as the Windows installation was showing its age. When the time was right, I restored my laptop from its system CD, and re-installed everything. Such a task ended up taking me a few evenings to get everything "right".
A few months later, the laptop's hard drive showed its age and crashed on me. Again, it took me a few evenings to install everything. This time, however, I learned and made a ghost CD before I started copying gigs of personal documents.
I interpreted the interview as saying that 8-core won't help the home user in the next few years or so. This is correct. 8-core only becomes useful when the home user runs programs that are heavily multithreaded. Such programs are a few years away.
Not true! I bought my motorolla phone outright from T-Mobile in November 2005 outright for $100. It uses a pre-paid plan where I buy blocks of $1000 minutes for $100. (When I'm at home, I use VOIP.) The phone is GSM, so I can just pop the chip in whatever cool new phone comes out next year.
What's funny is that the salesperson was shocked that I refused to buy a plan or contract.
Re:Couldn't be worse than some that I've had...
on
The Robot Professor
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· Score: 1
I really have no problem replacing humans with machines. It typically frees us up to do more leasurly careers. Take a look at the farming and automobile industries. Besides, no business is a charity.
Once, when I was playing around with Cygwin, I got KDE to run inside of a window for hosting X applications. Yes, that's right, I got KDE to run under Windows. I looked at it, thought, "That's nice", and put the Windows needle back into my arm.
Re:Couldn't be worse than some that I've had...
on
The Robot Professor
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· Score: 1
I bet this thing would do a better job than some of the professors that I've had. What's really funny, is that general ed. teachers may find themselves out of work as one of these teachs an entire class prerecorded material. The only negative is that it can't answer questions, but then again most teachers don't answer questions. They would just need to fill it with verbal outputs all saying, "find the answer yourself." If these were cheap enough, I could see them replacing some highschool teachers and some college either general ed or freshman level courses. I saw one post about super model versions next. Well, you know this is crafted after a teacher most wouldn't pick. They'd most likely pick a super model or atleast a very attractive person to use as the model for these things if they went into production.
Actually, I think we'll see these in fast food restaurants and any other establishment where cheap labor is desirable. After all, they speak English, are clean, and show up on time.
The *AA's intention is to make as much money as possible. Period.
Really, they are only hurting themselves (and artists who only make money from CD sales, like Wendy Carlos). At this rate, they will sue themselves out of business, because up-and-coming artists will find other ways to make money.
Actually, I'm Pro-DRM, as long as it's not applied to consumable media. Specifically, if I send you an email with naked pictures of my wife, I want to make sure that you can't forward it to her sister. This use of DRM is actually meant for a company to be able to protect trade secrets that are stored in electronic form.
That being said, I'm against DRM on consumable media, such as any music, movie, or book that is available to the general public for purchase. This is why I will never buy DRM-restricted downloads.
I actually bought the first (or second) consumer MP3-CD player on the market back in the summer of 2000. I waited so long for it that, one evening, I logged on to Crutchfield's web site to cancel the order; only to find the box sitting at my front door!
As far as leaving MP3-CDs in the car goes, I find that my Maxells burnt in 1999 held up very well, but my cheapos had errors on them. What really kills CDRs is leaving them loose, as opposed to in a binder.
Today I use a Creative Nomad that I upgraded to have an 80-gigabyte hard drive. I really prefer it to flipping through CDs, because I can literally access my ENTIRE music collection from the palm of my hand. It really is much easier then juggling CDs.
Don't be quick to dismiss these as ways to cash in on the "2.0 buzzword bandwagon"! I actually find that Clusty is good at something that Google isn't. Specifically, ever try searching for something where your search term has many meanings? For example, "apple" could refer to the computer, the fruit, or the Beatles' record company. "record" could mean "a world record", an audio recording, a 12" vinyl platter, the act of "recording" something, ect.
To exemplify my point, take a look at the differences between the results of a Google search for "record" vs. a Clusty search for "record". Clusty's results are much, much, much better:
I've been under the impression that Itanium is really intended for "super-computer" type applications, as opposed to traditional desktop and web serving. For example, Itanium is used to search for oil and model areodynamics.
Comparing Itanium to x86 is like comparing an oil tanker to a personal sailboat, or like comparing apples to oranges. x86 isn't meant for everything.
As for this conventional wisdom regarding why Nintendo didn't release the "real" SMB2 in the USA... I don't buy it. I see the same reason stated repeatedly, but never with attribution. I'd be willing to guess that there was a quote taken out of context and/or badly translated. I'd be much more willing to believe that Nintendo felt that the Japanese SMB2 would be poorly received because the American gaming demographic skewed younger than their japanese demographic and that small children would be turned off by a weak cash-in of a game that was so frustrating that you wanted to bash the cartridge into tiny bits.
Yeah, I played it, and though I'm sure to offend the obscure-japanese-game-title-snobs out there, but the truth is this: The Japanese version of SMB 2 simply wasn't very good.
Another thing to consider is that a poor follow-up to SMB1 would have destroyed the series. It really was a smart move on Nintendo's part; they could have cashed in on the success of SMB by releasing a lame sequel, but instead decided to release a fun game that added value to the "Mario" brand.
Until something replaces Coal power plants as the main method of generating electricity, you're just replacing one evil for the other.
Not really. Compared to the internal combusion engine, electric cars are so efficient that they are still desirable, even if powered by coal. Internal combusion engines waste about 80% of the energy in their fuel. If you read TFA, 1 gallon of gasoline can generate enough electricity to make an electric car go over 100 miles.
Quite frankly, the soot from a coal plant that's outside of a population center is much, much, much less evil then car exhaust.
Not nesessarily. About a year ago I moved across the country in a brand-new Penske moving truck that only had a cassette deck. I ended up using a cassette adaptor for the entire trip.
Also, think of the college student driving a $2000 clunker from the 90s. Why would (s)he drop in a CD player if (s)he mainly uses MP3s?
it's good to see all this 'me too' trendy shit overtaking the iPod. Nothing makes Steve Jobs Enterprises look more like what it really is better than knockoff iPod accessories on the endcap at Dollar General.
I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that the above items actually errode the iPod trademark. How long until the word "iPod" becomes "any portable electronic device that can play music and/or video"?
What bugs me are the "iPod" devices that aren't just for iPods. (IE, iPod cassete adaptors that work with any portable device.) I think everyone who jumped on the "internet-compatible mouspad" bandwagon is jumping on this one as well.
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In 2000-2001 I worked for a company that made telecommunications equipment that's used in phone switches and the servers that tell you "Push 1 to..." Their equipment, (and bundled software,) had to support 99.999% uptime. (It translated to roughly 5 minutes of downtime, per server, per year.) The company had a history of supporting Windows NT, Solaris (both x86 and Sun machines,) and Unixware. (They also supported OS/2 in the past.) The QA lab that I worked in tested both the hardware and software for each operating system.
In 2001 they decided to support Linux, because customers were asking for it. When they asked, "What distro do you want us to support?" the answer was "Linux". The company decided to only support Red Hat, because they couldn't afford to test their products with a zillion distros. (Today they'd probably drop Unixware and support two Linux distros.)
The reality is that, due to the complexity of testing hardware/software that "has to work", each distro needs to be treated as its own operating system. The company that I worked for would probably gladly support the distro of choice from large customers, but a small company wouldn't be able to get much support for "Joe's uberk00l Linux d1str0". Even if the company were to provide source code, there's too much testing (and development) involved.
Looking back at VCRs, it took about 20 years for them to become popular. In the 70s, before VHS & Beta, they weren't practicle. In the 80s, they cost the equivilent of $1000 in today's dollars, and weren't in everybody's home. I'd expect HTPCs to follow the same route.
Either you're dealing with a customer who isn't worth the effort, or you really aren't trying hard enough to solve the customer's problem.
I've called many tech support desks where the help treated me as if I was being unreasonable, but the tech was being incompetent. Here are some examples:
Again, perhaps you really haven't tried hard enough to understand the customer's problem.
Does anyone have any photos to compare side-by-side with a screenshot or two? I'd like to know how similar the game is to the club.
Some artists, like The Flaming Lips, are nice enough to sell you a seperate CD in the same package, which I use to rip to my Nomad. I'm a fan of NiN's DualDisks, because those are easy to rip as well. Telarc's release of the 1812 overature had DRM-free MP3s on the DVD.
I'm hopping that "lower-quality" means "CD-quality." (DVDs have higher resolution surround sound, CDs are lower resolution stereo.) As long as they use a scheme like WMA lossless, great-sounding DRM-free MP3s are only a CDRW away. (An 8.7 gig dual-layer DVD can store an entire album in high-fidelity surround, high-fidelity stereo, and WMA lossless.)
Specifically, I find that Genisis gives insight and opinion that science can not. It tells us that the human race is the keeper of the planet, and it helps explain what makes man different from other animals. (Hint: we wear clothes!) These stories are also some of the oldest known to man, and throwing them away would be a horrible disservice to our culture.
What bothers me are when "religous" people claim that I am some athiest heathen because I believe in the big bang and evolution. Certainly, they overlook the insights of our ancestors.
It seems that worrying about Click Fraud is a waste of time. Why don't the advertisers work fraud into their bids? Google could state that they only garuntee that 75% of all clicks are legit. Also, perhaps Google could switch to a more objective pricing scheme? For example, instead of paying on a per-click model, why not auction blocks of time?
Wasn't there an article on Slashdot the other day that stated that Apple's sales of notebooks jumped from about 6% to 12%! Yikes!
Ignoring Apple's styling, the real difference between an Apple and a PC is the bundled software. The real reason why an Apple costs more then Best Buy's $350 E-machine is that it has much better bundled software. This is the core of Apple's marketing campagn where they claim that, out-of-the-box, an Apple does much more then a PC. Given that their market share of notebooks is doubling, it appears to work.
I could anticipate Apple creating another brand, similar to how auto makers badge their cars under different brands. For example, Apple could create a "pear" computer that is priced about $150 cheaper then a mac with the same hardware, but has less built-in software.
In their present state, laptops are already quite modular. Most allow for hard drive upgrades, drive swapping, battery swapping, RAM swapping, PC Card swapping, and have full USB support. There is also the Mini PCI standard. Both Dell and Leveno laptops have a full ecosystem of swappable drives. (On my personal laptop I upgraded the RAM and hard drive, added a Mini PCI wireless card, and added Firewire and USB 2.0 via PC card.)
Some of the things you ask for, are frankly, impracticle. Laptop displays are sized to the physical machine and hinge, and thus can not be interchanged like a desktop display. Keyboards work with milimeters of clearence that vary from vendor to vendor. Laptops without batteries don't sell, (they also double as a high-quality UPS if you're always next to an outlet.) The same applies to integrated pointing, (it must be there to sell the laptop), but you can always pick up a bluetooth mouse.
A few months later, the laptop's hard drive showed its age and crashed on me. Again, it took me a few evenings to install everything. This time, however, I learned and made a ghost CD before I started copying gigs of personal documents.
I interpreted the interview as saying that 8-core won't help the home user in the next few years or so. This is correct. 8-core only becomes useful when the home user runs programs that are heavily multithreaded. Such programs are a few years away.
What's funny is that the salesperson was shocked that I refused to buy a plan or contract.
I really have no problem replacing humans with machines. It typically frees us up to do more leasurly careers. Take a look at the farming and automobile industries. Besides, no business is a charity.
Once, when I was playing around with Cygwin, I got KDE to run inside of a window for hosting X applications. Yes, that's right, I got KDE to run under Windows. I looked at it, thought, "That's nice", and put the Windows needle back into my arm.
Actually, I think we'll see these in fast food restaurants and any other establishment where cheap labor is desirable. After all, they speak English, are clean, and show up on time.
Really, they are only hurting themselves (and artists who only make money from CD sales, like Wendy Carlos). At this rate, they will sue themselves out of business, because up-and-coming artists will find other ways to make money.
That being said, I'm against DRM on consumable media, such as any music, movie, or book that is available to the general public for purchase. This is why I will never buy DRM-restricted downloads.
As far as leaving MP3-CDs in the car goes, I find that my Maxells burnt in 1999 held up very well, but my cheapos had errors on them. What really kills CDRs is leaving them loose, as opposed to in a binder.
Today I use a Creative Nomad that I upgraded to have an 80-gigabyte hard drive. I really prefer it to flipping through CDs, because I can literally access my ENTIRE music collection from the palm of my hand. It really is much easier then juggling CDs.
To exemplify my point, take a look at the differences between the results of a Google search for "record" vs. a Clusty search for "record". Clusty's results are much, much, much better:
Comparing Itanium to x86 is like comparing an oil tanker to a personal sailboat, or like comparing apples to oranges. x86 isn't meant for everything.
Not really. Compared to the internal combusion engine, electric cars are so efficient that they are still desirable, even if powered by coal. Internal combusion engines waste about 80% of the energy in their fuel. If you read TFA, 1 gallon of gasoline can generate enough electricity to make an electric car go over 100 miles.
Quite frankly, the soot from a coal plant that's outside of a population center is much, much, much less evil then car exhaust.
Also, think of the college student driving a $2000 clunker from the 90s. Why would (s)he drop in a CD player if (s)he mainly uses MP3s?
I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that the above items actually errode the iPod trademark. How long until the word "iPod" becomes "any portable electronic device that can play music and/or video"?
What bugs me are the "iPod" devices that aren't just for iPods. (IE, iPod cassete adaptors that work with any portable device.) I think everyone who jumped on the "internet-compatible mouspad" bandwagon is jumping on this one as well.