Hold on, Hold on. The iPod is NOT a prosecutable monopoly.
This whole line of thinking is silly. iPod is not a monopoly to begin with and faces stiff competition from other music players ranging from digital media players to your dad's CD player to your granddad's cassette player to great grandpa's Vinyl. iPod is successful, but last I looked CD players sitll outsell MP3 players by a few orders of magnitude.
But if you're considering Linux, then that argument against Macs is gone.
There is that little freedom thing that RMS keeps carping about... and then there's also hardware lock in... and that pesky little trecherous computing thing of which the Mac is the first standard bearer.
The iPod is designed for urbanites.
With batteries avaialbe at every gas station and corner convenience store, how would accepting batteries not be an improvement?
The battery is perfectly adequate for people who don't go more than a few hours away from an outlet most of the time.
Zelots crack me up - you just attacked a poster because he pointed out a real deficiency in my precious video Ipod. One that really, really, really sucks. One day that deficiency will force me to buy another iPod, or at least something like it, because the battery will eventually fail to hold a charge.
Over the years, I've owned about a dozen handsets. The best (modern ones):
Blackberry 7100t - easy to use, great phone, just worked. You could easily use the phone features one handed while driving.
Kyocera SmartPhone - firt generation Palm/phone. Was slow, would crash, but easy to dial and the huge 8mb speed dial was useful.
Motorola V70 - The simplest to use flip phone ever, and built like a tank. Was as easy to use as my old Moto StarTAC, but had modern features.
The wost:
T-Mobile MDA (Windows Mobile PDA/Phone)- Every feature known to man - MP3, Video, camera, pda, full keyboard, touchscreen, swiss army can opener etc... but the human interface is terrible. You can't dial and drive (unless you set voice tags for everyone... and then you run out of memory). The phone is 1/2 the quality it needs to be. Typical Microsoft killer spreadsheet, but everything else is me-too at best. You can see legacy 1998 windows CE legacy shining through.
Treo 2* series - So bad (chintzy, broke four of them) I'll never buy anything that says Treo on it again. Also, was a step back from the first genereration Kyocera in usability and features.
The issue with most cell phones isn't that they are too complicated it's that vendors lock up features - or mod them. So you go browse the web and find a really cool jme app - and try to download... it doesn't work because the carrier wants to extort a dime out of the site distributing the
Most of the people here on slashdot couldn't do their job for a week without running home and crying into their huggy pillow.
Most people, untrained for a job, would struggle to do it. So what. I think what you are trying to say is have sympathy for teachers - their job is tough. So is yours, so is mine. I also don't get summers off and a cush 7:45-3:30 work day with an incredible array of days off. My wife, a teacher, does. Come to think of it, when you factor days off into pay, teachers do OK there too. That said, most teachers are great human beings who achieve incredible results despite working in quite possible the worst environment ouside your local maximum secruity penitentary.Blame the curriculum, or blame the bad teachers, but please don't lump all teachers into that category. Seeing posts saying all teachers suck get moderated high makes those of us here who are mature just sorta shake our heads
I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that the/. community thinks all teachers suck. I think people are highly critical of school administrators and the culture in most schools where kids can't use computers that other taxpayers pay for as the public resource that they are. People are also highly critical of the education system as every year costs go up, results go down. People are also critical when their taxes go up because some administrator got his panties in a knot over someone calling him a petty dictator on MySpace and drags the school into a lawsuit they lose. People get tired of seeing where kids get expelled for bringing cell phones, ipods, wifi detectors, toy guns and swiss army pocketknives to school. We also tire of seeing the student shoots up school story of the week. People are sick of educators behaving like power crazed, egotistical nit-wits. We're also sick of seeing our kids treated like inmates.
O think we need to take a long hard look at the mindset of some of these people in charge of schools these days. Perhaps they are taking things a bit more seriously than they really need to.
The problem is how do you deal with a system that has more in comment with the penal system than the education system. My solution has been simple, send the kids to private school. The last thing I need is one of my kids lives being ruined over a spat in the cafeteria or by calling the wrong teacher a name. School has always been preparation for life - and I think we've given the schools way too much power over the kids. These people can't touch your kids if they are not enrolled.
If you look at the competiton, you'll understand why the design won. It's actually not bad... It's just not corporate looking. And that's why it's actually likable.
I tell VPs and CEOs "No" often, I had a Director ask me for an Thinkpad because he didn't like Dells, once again my answer was no.
Just make sure your "no" isn't a career limiting decision. Back in the day, before I started my own company, I saw more than one situation where the IT flunkie told the CEO they couldn't have what they wanted. It was followed by a quiet call to the CFO who the CIO worked for that went like this, "Bob - can you have Frank (CIO) get me a thinkpad T9000? Also - I'm not sure that that guy Phil (IT flunkie) should be around our sensitive information. He seems to not understand how our organization's controls work." This conversation is usually completed with a call from the CFO to the CIO that goes like this: "Frank (CIO), I just got off the phone with Jack (CEO). Seems like he has a problem with Phil's understanding of how our company works and his role. Unless you feel otherwise, I'd like to replace him." If you are lucky, and things are going right for your boss, you might survive this. If not, you are going to get to read your job description on monster in about 48 hours.
I work really hard, I work at 2 in the morning, not because that's when I'm most creative, but simply beecause I have to. I respond to pages while driving to go boarding with my wife not for the $100k+ I make (yeah right!), but simply because I have to.
I can assure you no matter what you do in IT that your work, even if done at 2 in the morning is not as important to the company and your own future as what most VPs and C level officers do on the golf course. That's why those guys do make $100K plus and even more if things are going well for your company. If you are going to try to enforce policy, it's much better to let the executive do it for you. Don't say no, simply ask if the exec has cleared it with your boss. Tell them that you can't do the favor unless it's approved and then volunteer to take it to your boss on their behalf - even if you know the answer in advance.
So after months of trial-and-error with Google we decided it might be time to hire someone. The first thing we decided is to approach every prospective company with two simultaneous requests, from seperate subsidiaries. One RFQ for our "high profile" site that we needed a quote on, and another RFQ for a seperate website without an Alexa ranking.
So basically, you lied to the sales guy to get pricing. Hopefully your customers at Custom Silicon Bracelets don't approach you on pretense to get pricing intelligence like you did the SEO guy. Glad you have so much time to burn over $1000-$1,500 per month (which is probably a fraction of what your self-seo effort cost you).
These people are scum.
You really have no room to talk about ethics after how you treated other businesses. What you did in milking salespersons and sending out fake RFPs (where you had no intent to buy) is as deplorable as some of the practices in the SEO business. This is one reason why no salesperson in their right mind should ever entertain RFPs or RFQs except from established clients or from the government. It also gets salespeople fired when they pin their hopes on an RFP that turns out to be a troll.
Time after time, the quote was 2, 3, 4, even once 10x higher for the site with an alexa ranking in the top 250,000.
Low traffic sites are easier to optimize than high traffic sites. More links, more external factors and more customer handholding (probably the biggest expense) is needed to make things happen. At the end of the day I do totally agree with you that SEO is not beyond the abilities of most web masters or web developers. The question is, is it the right thing for them to spend their time and money on relative to everything else. What is right for you may not be right for everyone. But we did this without SPENDING A DIME. And, I admit, we had a little help from Jagger. Especially Jagger 3. All my love to Matt Cutts and his family this glorius season.
You've succeeded in optimizing for terms that are not all that competitive. Anyone who downloads the free version of Web CEO could likely done as well.
No, Microsoft is providing a user base, and Time Warner is providing the advertisements..
Ok, and who is going to supply the page views? People have to want to look at content to have ads work. Where google is eons ahead is the size of their network and size of their engine's traffic. MSN+AOL=Paper Tiger.
Google ads rely on advertisers (the person with the ad, and the person with the ad space) trusting them to put the right ads in the right place. Google does - and everyone makes money. Trust, trust trust - the foundation stone of trade.
But who would trust Microsoft and Time Warner to do that?
All I see is MS making a land grab at someone else's success. Perhaps they could go back and do some real innovating and come out with an operating system or office software or other platform that really is revolutionary and worth paying big bucks for instead of trying to shave pennies?
If you want your extensions to common protocols to succeed, I suggest you leave your corporations name out of the protocol name. And also leave out anything that resembles a copyright claim or license agreement. Web professionals are still dealing with the mess you made of HTML, Java and JavaScript.
The article is really unfair to EFF, but the kernel of truth is that the EFF has lost several really important cases that have led to tremendously bad precident. To be fair, they win more than they lose and they often go in with fewer resources than their corporately powered opponents.
Reality is the deCSS case and Eldred vs. Ashcroft were very serious cases that established precidents that have been used to whittle away at the freedom available to all on the internet. The EFF was represented very well but took a risky strategy of setting up the trial court decision for appeal and reversal not at the appealate court level, but at the supreme court level. It's a lot like going to vegas and betting the house on a single blackjack hand. If your first card is a 10 or higher you feel like you have a shot. Unfortunately, they had a
At the end of the day, I'm glad the EFF is there and they absolutely deserve your continued support. They also need reminded that the margin for error in their endevour is very slim. That is why I'm glad to see the Register provide that reminder - so next time they make it to the super bowl, they remember to play to win.
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This whole line of thinking is silly. iPod is not a monopoly to begin with and faces stiff competition from other music players ranging from digital media players to your dad's CD player to your granddad's cassette player to great grandpa's Vinyl. iPod is successful, but last I looked CD players sitll outsell MP3 players by a few orders of magnitude.
But if you're considering Linux, then that argument against Macs is gone.
There is that little freedom thing that RMS keeps carping about... and then there's also hardware lock in... and that pesky little trecherous computing thing of which the Mac is the first standard bearer.
The iPod is designed for urbanites.
With batteries avaialbe at every gas station and corner convenience store, how would accepting batteries not be an improvement?
The battery is perfectly adequate for people who don't go more than a few hours away from an outlet most of the time.
Zelots crack me up - you just attacked a poster because he pointed out a real deficiency in my precious video Ipod. One that really, really, really sucks. One day that deficiency will force me to buy another iPod, or at least something like it, because the battery will eventually fail to hold a charge.
- T-Mobile MDA (Windows Mobile PDA/Phone)- Every feature known to man - MP3, Video, camera, pda, full keyboard, touchscreen, swiss army can opener etc... but the human interface is terrible. You can't dial and drive (unless you set voice tags for everyone... and then you run out of memory). The phone is 1/2 the quality it needs to be. Typical Microsoft killer spreadsheet, but everything else is me-too at best. You can see legacy 1998 windows CE legacy shining through.
- Treo 2* series - So bad (chintzy, broke four of them) I'll never buy anything that says Treo on it again. Also, was a step back from the first genereration Kyocera in usability and features.
The issue with most cell phones isn't that they are too complicated it's that vendors lock up features - or mod them. So you go browse the web and find a really cool jme app - and try to download... it doesn't work because the carrier wants to extort a dime out of the site distributing theMost of the people here on slashdot couldn't do their job for a week without running home and crying into their huggy pillow. Most people, untrained for a job, would struggle to do it. So what. I think what you are trying to say is have sympathy for teachers - their job is tough. So is yours, so is mine. I also don't get summers off and a cush 7:45-3:30 work day with an incredible array of days off. My wife, a teacher, does. Come to think of it, when you factor days off into pay, teachers do OK there too. That said, most teachers are great human beings who achieve incredible results despite working in quite possible the worst environment ouside your local maximum secruity penitentary. Blame the curriculum, or blame the bad teachers, but please don't lump all teachers into that category. Seeing posts saying all teachers suck get moderated high makes those of us here who are mature just sorta shake our heads I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that the /. community thinks all teachers suck. I think people are highly critical of school administrators and the culture in most schools where kids can't use computers that other taxpayers pay for as the public resource that they are. People are also highly critical of the education system as every year costs go up, results go down. People are also critical when their taxes go up because some administrator got his panties in a knot over someone calling him a petty dictator on MySpace and drags the school into a lawsuit they lose. People get tired of seeing where kids get expelled for bringing cell phones, ipods, wifi detectors, toy guns and swiss army pocketknives to school. We also tire of seeing the student shoots up school story of the week. People are sick of educators behaving like power crazed, egotistical nit-wits. We're also sick of seeing our kids treated like inmates.
O think we need to take a long hard look at the mindset of some of these people in charge of schools these days. Perhaps they are taking things a bit more seriously than they really need to. The problem is how do you deal with a system that has more in comment with the penal system than the education system. My solution has been simple, send the kids to private school. The last thing I need is one of my kids lives being ruined over a spat in the cafeteria or by calling the wrong teacher a name. School has always been preparation for life - and I think we've given the schools way too much power over the kids. These people can't touch your kids if they are not enrolled.
If you look at the competiton, you'll understand why the design won. It's actually not bad... It's just not corporate looking. And that's why it's actually likable.
I tell VPs and CEOs "No" often, I had a Director ask me for an Thinkpad because he didn't like Dells, once again my answer was no. Just make sure your "no" isn't a career limiting decision. Back in the day, before I started my own company, I saw more than one situation where the IT flunkie told the CEO they couldn't have what they wanted. It was followed by a quiet call to the CFO who the CIO worked for that went like this, "Bob - can you have Frank (CIO) get me a thinkpad T9000? Also - I'm not sure that that guy Phil (IT flunkie) should be around our sensitive information. He seems to not understand how our organization's controls work." This conversation is usually completed with a call from the CFO to the CIO that goes like this: "Frank (CIO), I just got off the phone with Jack (CEO). Seems like he has a problem with Phil's understanding of how our company works and his role. Unless you feel otherwise, I'd like to replace him." If you are lucky, and things are going right for your boss, you might survive this. If not, you are going to get to read your job description on monster in about 48 hours. I work really hard, I work at 2 in the morning, not because that's when I'm most creative, but simply beecause I have to. I respond to pages while driving to go boarding with my wife not for the $100k+ I make (yeah right!), but simply because I have to. I can assure you no matter what you do in IT that your work, even if done at 2 in the morning is not as important to the company and your own future as what most VPs and C level officers do on the golf course. That's why those guys do make $100K plus and even more if things are going well for your company. If you are going to try to enforce policy, it's much better to let the executive do it for you. Don't say no, simply ask if the exec has cleared it with your boss. Tell them that you can't do the favor unless it's approved and then volunteer to take it to your boss on their behalf - even if you know the answer in advance.
So after months of trial-and-error with Google we decided it might be time to hire someone. The first thing we decided is to approach every prospective company with two simultaneous requests, from seperate subsidiaries. One RFQ for our "high profile" site that we needed a quote on, and another RFQ for a seperate website without an Alexa ranking.
So basically, you lied to the sales guy to get pricing. Hopefully your customers at Custom Silicon Bracelets don't approach you on pretense to get pricing intelligence like you did the SEO guy. Glad you have so much time to burn over $1000-$1,500 per month (which is probably a fraction of what your self-seo effort cost you).
These people are scum.
You really have no room to talk about ethics after how you treated other businesses. What you did in milking salespersons and sending out fake RFPs (where you had no intent to buy) is as deplorable as some of the practices in the SEO business. This is one reason why no salesperson in their right mind should ever entertain RFPs or RFQs except from established clients or from the government. It also gets salespeople fired when they pin their hopes on an RFP that turns out to be a troll.
Time after time, the quote was 2, 3, 4, even once 10x higher for the site with an alexa ranking in the top 250,000.
Low traffic sites are easier to optimize than high traffic sites. More links, more external factors and more customer handholding (probably the biggest expense) is needed to make things happen. At the end of the day I do totally agree with you that SEO is not beyond the abilities of most web masters or web developers. The question is, is it the right thing for them to spend their time and money on relative to everything else. What is right for you may not be right for everyone.
But we did this without SPENDING A DIME. And, I admit, we had a little help from Jagger. Especially Jagger 3. All my love to Matt Cutts and his family this glorius season.
You've succeeded in optimizing for terms that are not all that competitive. Anyone who downloads the free version of Web CEO could likely done as well.
No, Microsoft is providing a user base, and Time Warner is providing the advertisements.. Ok, and who is going to supply the page views? People have to want to look at content to have ads work. Where google is eons ahead is the size of their network and size of their engine's traffic. MSN+AOL=Paper Tiger.
Google ads rely on advertisers (the person with the ad, and the person with the ad space) trusting them to put the right ads in the right place. Google does - and everyone makes money. Trust, trust trust - the foundation stone of trade. But who would trust Microsoft and Time Warner to do that? All I see is MS making a land grab at someone else's success. Perhaps they could go back and do some real innovating and come out with an operating system or office software or other platform that really is revolutionary and worth paying big bucks for instead of trying to shave pennies?
If you want your extensions to common protocols to succeed, I suggest you leave your corporations name out of the protocol name. And also leave out anything that resembles a copyright claim or license agreement. Web professionals are still dealing with the mess you made of HTML, Java and JavaScript.
The article is really unfair to EFF, but the kernel of truth is that the EFF has lost several really important cases that have led to tremendously bad precident. To be fair, they win more than they lose and they often go in with fewer resources than their corporately powered opponents. Reality is the deCSS case and Eldred vs. Ashcroft were very serious cases that established precidents that have been used to whittle away at the freedom available to all on the internet. The EFF was represented very well but took a risky strategy of setting up the trial court decision for appeal and reversal not at the appealate court level, but at the supreme court level. It's a lot like going to vegas and betting the house on a single blackjack hand. If your first card is a 10 or higher you feel like you have a shot. Unfortunately, they had a At the end of the day, I'm glad the EFF is there and they absolutely deserve your continued support. They also need reminded that the margin for error in their endevour is very slim. That is why I'm glad to see the Register provide that reminder - so next time they make it to the super bowl, they remember to play to win.