The point was more that the telephone companies still in the end route the traffic and have the cut for it. I realize there are multiple telephone companies in exitance. Its an Olygopoly technically and a price-fixing cartel. Very hard for MS/Skype anybody to take the telco's out of the equation at the moment.
Its not a total monopoly, it just takes somebody with a very very long wire and a licence to dig up roads all over the country to enter the market...could try it with satellites I guess but last time I checked that was a bit pricey too and gave a bit of a laggy reception.
Totally agree with this, however in my experience I can't ignore that the combo of POTS, Cellular and ISDN that is used to do most of the telephoning we do today is superior to VoIP when it comes to telephony. It's definately old, it's not a perfect design (especially in the US/Canada/Japan) but it does do phone calls well.
Its just too bad that nearly everywhere, the people with the wires in the ground and the antenna's sticking out of it refuse to compete fairly with eachother on price. Those who own the infrastructure ultimately have all of the control whether you got Cellular->ISDN, POTS->ISDN, Wifi->ADSL over POTS, 3G->Cellular->ISDN etc..
I'm all for this, but at least where I live in the UK most public WAPss are control by telephone companies like BT or T-Mobile, this even includes WAPss that you find in hotels etc.. It would definately be good at home and at work but I think less good on the move unless a bunch more WiFi operators start up and get seriously comptetive.
As it is, I only really use public WAPs when I really need something because they also charge very high rates for short sessions like an hour. The only way to get better rates on the public WAPs is to subscribe to a telco operated service then you end up full circle.
This just isn't true. If you have a jpeg with code embedded inside it, the OS just wont be able to decompress it into a screen image, this is exactly the same as any other operating system. There isn't anything about an image that can alter a stack frame as a result of decompression so you can't force an alternate path of execution.
Am I missing something here or is this just anti-windows FUD?
I'd still do it because Mac's look so great, although OSX is good in honesty its just not useful for me. Windows on the other hand is useful for me, Linux is also useful to me.
So as an overpaid, fickle and vein person I can honestly say "Gimme a lovely white Mac with nice glowy keys with Windows running on it please".
Regarding the Porsche analogy, its more like buying a porsche which is black but actually deciding you need to strip the paint and redo it in hot pink in order to match your hair better.... a pink Porsche is just more useful to me than a black one if I want to pose.
There are essentially 2 ways an organisation can consider an employee, either:
- Asset/Investment therefore a constituant of the value of the business.
- Expense/Commodity item therefore they provide a service to the business as a cost.
Within any organisation both types of employee exist.
Business's strive to commoditize employees by simplifying and documenting processes, this allows the business to be more flexible about its workforce because employees can be replaced with other employees/outsource etc. that provide the same service to the business at either less cost or less risk. A business that can replace employees easily is more flexible and therfore can grow faster and manage expenses better. People in commodity positions will probably only get training if its proven to be more cost effective for the company to train the person than it is to replace them. General thought is that providing training for people in commodity positions on standard skills isn't good for retention of those people because they are just better equipped to work elsewhere.
Most businesses at some level have some categories of valuable knowledge such as visionaries and thought leaders. These people are investments for the business, they command high salaries and actually define the shape of the organisation. In knowledge industries there can be quite a lot of people in this category and the businesses USP is based around these people. As a result such people are an investment for the business with real asset value. Just in the same way as maintaining your house helps retain and increase its value, companies will usually invest in training these assets in order to keep them at maximum effectiveness.
In short if you are a commdity, accept it and keep yourself at maximum value. If you are an asset demand training if you think you can demonstrate that it will provide value to the business.
The underlying technology behind the ActiveX we use is HTML file upload (for actually transporting the file). We needed to feed back to the user the progress of the transfer because they can take a while, there wasn't an open solution to this.
The other thing (and this was a big one) was getting real control over the common dialog box in windows, we don't want users just uploading any files so we use file filters and a custom working directory on the client computer. Put simply some of our users hardly know what a file is, the dialog box that you get with the browse button attached to a file upload control opens in a near random directory with a file filter of *.*, users were just too confused by this.
I work on solution designs for a fairly large ISV, anything that increases browser compatibility is a good thing all around. Most of our end-user interfaces and make use of XML with some XSLT on the client, we also use XMLHTTPRequests..
Due to pure market pressure from our existing userbase we develop for the IE platform. IE isn't for everyone and ideally we'd like to target every browser from a technical standpoint and we know it increases the number of potential customers we have. We move one step closer to genuine cross browser compatibility with this.
Despite this we still need ActiveX right now for a couple of key things:
- File uploading, we used Java already and it went badly. Our customers had real problems with getting correct JRE versions out to their users, the users complained about the lack of standardisation in basic things like the Common Dialog. We've had a lot less problems with ActiveX controls but understandably network admins really don't like it.
- MS Office Automation. Part of our product is business reporting, it has features around automated generation of Powerpoint Presentations and Excel Spreadsheets from the web interface. We can't influence our customers decisions around Office systems but we've never encountered pushback over MS Office from anybody. MS Office automation needs ActiveX and is way outside sandbox (local processes are launched and these have access to all kinds of things).
In short, this helps but we are still a way off from being able to deliver fully functional web-based business systems with this but it helps. As an enthusiast I like it, as a real world solution developer it doesn't quite make a dent.
Re:Here's what's really going on:
on
RFID Cookware
·
· Score: 1
I have an induction hob, its really great, the only downside is the need to buy induction compatible sauce-pans (which are pretty common). Induction hobs have the advantage that they are never hot to the touch, nothing burns onto them. They cook a perfectly even heat moreso than any other type of cooker.
Loosing some voltage from the input really isn't a big deal (voltage regulators are okay), unless they go out of control high spikes aren't a problem. Voltage slumps are a bigger problem and cars have these. My guess is that to run one of these PSU's reliably in a car you would need something with a small 12V Lithium battery (laptop battery) between the car and the PSU and then some kind of charging circuit.
Everything is a commodity these days, its a case of adapting to this mindset and differentiating yourself.
People migrating to australia (or other developed nation with an IT industry) for work will have a much smaller effect overall than work migrating elsewhere from australia.
As cellphone/pda/music-player/tv markets converge MS are obviously going to try get a big chunk of it.
If the market is competetive MS is forced to have some level of support for open standards. If the market isn't competetive then one player can dominate with closed standards (like Apple is doing at the moment).
What would suck more than anything for the consumer is not having a choice of music and video to listen too/watch, in the end the file format, DRM system and device don't really mean much in the overall picture.
Whatever your views on MTV, its not like MS just bought Warner or something like that, if that happened it would seriously challenge what matters in all this which is the art.
Depite all the likely flames about big global beasties taking over the world, what's really so bad about this. Consider what happens if Sony ever succeeds in this area and end up with control of the Artist right through to the device, then there just isn't any consumer choice, Artists are forced to sign up with Sony and consumers are forced to sign up with Sony devices.
On the counter-side you have a big evil software/device multinational (MS) doing a partnership with essentially a large music content provider (MTV). Despite the short term anomaly that Apple is causing it probably takes a partnership like this to actually have some threat to Sony without forcing every artist onto one label and closing the industry completely.
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The point was more that the telephone companies still in the end route the traffic and have the cut for it. I realize there are multiple telephone companies in exitance. Its an Olygopoly technically and a price-fixing cartel. Very hard for MS/Skype anybody to take the telco's out of the equation at the moment.
Its not a total monopoly, it just takes somebody with a very very long wire and a licence to dig up roads all over the country to enter the market...could try it with satellites I guess but last time I checked that was a bit pricey too and gave a bit of a laggy reception.
Totally agree with this, however in my experience I can't ignore that the combo of POTS, Cellular and ISDN that is used to do most of the telephoning we do today is superior to VoIP when it comes to telephony. It's definately old, it's not a perfect design (especially in the US/Canada/Japan) but it does do phone calls well.
Its just too bad that nearly everywhere, the people with the wires in the ground and the antenna's sticking out of it refuse to compete fairly with eachother on price. Those who own the infrastructure ultimately have all of the control whether you got Cellular->ISDN, POTS->ISDN, Wifi->ADSL over POTS, 3G->Cellular->ISDN etc..
I'm all for this, but at least where I live in the UK most public WAPss are control by telephone companies like BT or T-Mobile, this even includes WAPss that you find in hotels etc.. It would definately be good at home and at work but I think less good on the move unless a bunch more WiFi operators start up and get seriously comptetive.
As it is, I only really use public WAPs when I really need something because they also charge very high rates for short sessions like an hour. The only way to get better rates on the public WAPs is to subscribe to a telco operated service then you end up full circle.
This just isn't true. If you have a jpeg with code embedded inside it, the OS just wont be able to decompress it into a screen image, this is exactly the same as any other operating system. There isn't anything about an image that can alter a stack frame as a result of decompression so you can't force an alternate path of execution.
Am I missing something here or is this just anti-windows FUD?
....I wanna make Notepad version 2....
I'd still do it because Mac's look so great, although OSX is good in honesty its just not useful for me. Windows on the other hand is useful for me, Linux is also useful to me. So as an overpaid, fickle and vein person I can honestly say "Gimme a lovely white Mac with nice glowy keys with Windows running on it please". Regarding the Porsche analogy, its more like buying a porsche which is black but actually deciding you need to strip the paint and redo it in hot pink in order to match your hair better.... a pink Porsche is just more useful to me than a black one if I want to pose.
There are essentially 2 ways an organisation can consider an employee, either:
- Asset/Investment therefore a constituant of the value of the business.
- Expense/Commodity item therefore they provide a service to the business as a cost.
Within any organisation both types of employee exist.
Business's strive to commoditize employees by simplifying and documenting processes, this allows the business to be more flexible about its workforce because employees can be replaced with other employees/outsource etc. that provide the same service to the business at either less cost or less risk. A business that can replace employees easily is more flexible and therfore can grow faster and manage expenses better. People in commodity positions will probably only get training if its proven to be more cost effective for the company to train the person than it is to replace them. General thought is that providing training for people in commodity positions on standard skills isn't good for retention of those people because they are just better equipped to work elsewhere.
Most businesses at some level have some categories of valuable knowledge such as visionaries and thought leaders. These people are investments for the business, they command high salaries and actually define the shape of the organisation. In knowledge industries there can be quite a lot of people in this category and the businesses USP is based around these people. As a result such people are an investment for the business with real asset value. Just in the same way as maintaining your house helps retain and increase its value, companies will usually invest in training these assets in order to keep them at maximum effectiveness.
In short if you are a commdity, accept it and keep yourself at maximum value. If you are an asset demand training if you think you can demonstrate that it will provide value to the business.
The underlying technology behind the ActiveX we use is HTML file upload (for actually transporting the file). We needed to feed back to the user the progress of the transfer because they can take a while, there wasn't an open solution to this.
The other thing (and this was a big one) was getting real control over the common dialog box in windows, we don't want users just uploading any files so we use file filters and a custom working directory on the client computer. Put simply some of our users hardly know what a file is, the dialog box that you get with the browse button attached to a file upload control opens in a near random directory with a file filter of *.*, users were just too confused by this.
I work on solution designs for a fairly large ISV, anything that increases browser compatibility is a good thing all around. Most of our end-user interfaces and make use of XML with some XSLT on the client, we also use XMLHTTPRequests..
Due to pure market pressure from our existing userbase we develop for the IE platform. IE isn't for everyone and ideally we'd like to target every browser from a technical standpoint and we know it increases the number of potential customers we have. We move one step closer to genuine cross browser compatibility with this.
Despite this we still need ActiveX right now for a couple of key things:
- File uploading, we used Java already and it went badly. Our customers had real problems with getting correct JRE versions out to their users, the users complained about the lack of standardisation in basic things like the Common Dialog. We've had a lot less problems with ActiveX controls but understandably network admins really don't like it.
- MS Office Automation. Part of our product is business reporting, it has features around automated generation of Powerpoint Presentations and Excel Spreadsheets from the web interface. We can't influence our customers decisions around Office systems but we've never encountered pushback over MS Office from anybody. MS Office automation needs ActiveX and is way outside sandbox (local processes are launched and these have access to all kinds of things).
In short, this helps but we are still a way off from being able to deliver fully functional web-based business systems with this but it helps. As an enthusiast I like it, as a real world solution developer it doesn't quite make a dent.
I have an induction hob, its really great, the only downside is the need to buy induction compatible sauce-pans (which are pretty common). Induction hobs have the advantage that they are never hot to the touch, nothing burns onto them. They cook a perfectly even heat moreso than any other type of cooker.
Loosing some voltage from the input really isn't a big deal (voltage regulators are okay), unless they go out of control high spikes aren't a problem. Voltage slumps are a bigger problem and cars have these. My guess is that to run one of these PSU's reliably in a car you would need something with a small 12V Lithium battery (laptop battery) between the car and the PSU and then some kind of charging circuit.
Everything is a commodity these days, its a case of adapting to this mindset and differentiating yourself. People migrating to australia (or other developed nation with an IT industry) for work will have a much smaller effect overall than work migrating elsewhere from australia.
As cellphone/pda/music-player/tv markets converge MS are obviously going to try get a big chunk of it. If the market is competetive MS is forced to have some level of support for open standards. If the market isn't competetive then one player can dominate with closed standards (like Apple is doing at the moment). What would suck more than anything for the consumer is not having a choice of music and video to listen too/watch, in the end the file format, DRM system and device don't really mean much in the overall picture. Whatever your views on MTV, its not like MS just bought Warner or something like that, if that happened it would seriously challenge what matters in all this which is the art.
Depite all the likely flames about big global beasties taking over the world, what's really so bad about this. Consider what happens if Sony ever succeeds in this area and end up with control of the Artist right through to the device, then there just isn't any consumer choice, Artists are forced to sign up with Sony and consumers are forced to sign up with Sony devices.
On the counter-side you have a big evil software/device multinational (MS) doing a partnership with essentially a large music content provider (MTV). Despite the short term anomaly that Apple is causing it probably takes a partnership like this to actually have some threat to Sony without forcing every artist onto one label and closing the industry completely.