This wouldn't be an issue or topic if people actually just did space-shifting or only made a copy a couple actual friends. The record companies tolerate that. But people started giving copies out to the whole world, while acting all innocent as claiming they just want to space-shift or archive is why prices have never dropped, why so much music is formula crap, and so on. People like to point to record companies and scream they are greedy, but they are reacting to what the public is doing to them. It's a vicious circle.
I would say all this has led to people wanting quantities of music and not quality music. In past when everyone paid for music you listened hard to who you were going to spend your money on. Record companies had to try their best to put out good music so get your money. Now a days people just want to say "I have 10,000 downloads of stuff". How much of that do you actually listen to versus just occupies space on a hard drive and is all that really stuff worth listening to??? I only bring this up because the war between the downloaders and RIAA has many bad side effects and a boatload of crap music is one of those side effects.
First I have been running Leopard on two Mac's since it came and only an install problem on one, but no other problems since.
I've noticed ever since Leopard came out the PC Mag et al authors have been on a Leopard FUD campaign. So you like when listening to Fox or Clearchannel you have to put your BS filter on 10. You could speculate a lot on who's pulling their strings, but basically Vista stumbled coming out of the gate and Apple gadgets and computers are drawing a lot of attention. People are going to use what they want or need to use, but I think there are a lot of people on the fence right now that could hop over to the Apple side and that makes the PC marketplace nervous. Because with Apple it is a hardware sale as well as a OS and app's.
Mac's caters to afluent customers who buying a new computer is no big deal. The thing that kept some of them from moving to Mac was they worked in a Windows world and didn't want to hassle moving things back and forth or not being able to run some software. Now Apple has BootCamp to make dual booting simple, but more important is Parallels and VMWare Fusion to run Windows inside of OS X. So all those issues are no more. Mac's have ease of use like no other and stylist computers that yuppie users like so they are going to start showing up in business in offices of managers. If Apple starts making deals for corporate sales they are going to continue to increase marketshare beyond the Halo effect on home users.
The biggest advantage Apple has is also its weakness that is Steve Jobs. Jobs ability to create products that attract the typical user as been amazing since he returned and introduced the iMac and then on to Apple gadgets. OS X ease of use and stabilty is unequalled another carrot to draw in users. But Jobs doesn't like to discount prices in fact a fanatic about price control. If he keeps that up expanding business sales won't improve. For home users Jobs price controls have created a used Mac market to they can afford to come aboard and learn to love Apple.
I would say Apple has the products to take huge bites out of MS marketshare, if Jobs allow pricing deals to be made.
I agree completely as noted the costs for engineering and other sciences have high costs to maintain and keep current. Also being that so many student choose their major based on starting salaries and business tends, the instructors in those fields demand more money. So make sense to me that you want the high starting salary then your going to have to paid for the education to get it. Also higher fees for popular major will help offset costs of maintaining majors of lessor interest. Like it or not schools are a business and they have to market themselve just like a business. Some do it will sports others on the quality of education in specific fields. When a major or field of education is hot its a sellers market.
Maybe I can afford to go back and get my music performance degree .
Oh duh.... It's the American (GOP) way Profits before People.
I would say if they took a look at the increase in Type II diabetes and switch to fruit sweetners would parallel each other. The the marketing type to Super Size everything. I remember in college (a long, long time ago) that Coke and other soft drinks were getting so expensive due to cost of sugar that beer and wine were cheaper to drink.
I remember when eating healthy was also cheaper, but that's been turned into a major industry and healthy eating costs a fortune and the unhealty over processed stuff is cheaper.
The first time I ran into it was back in the 70's I did a country gig at a huge roadhouse of a place. Above the stage where only the band could see was a big sign saying Please Refrain From Playing ASCAP material. Technically royalities are to be paid and ASCAP has been agressive about it and it is their job. As a songwriter when you get recorded you have sign with ASCAP or BMI they are the companies that track use of your material, collect royalities and pay you. They used to look the other way with small clubs and such, but I guess with the rampant music thieft on internet they are now collecting in places they ignored before.
A vicious cycle the big companies ignore some non-payment and thieft of royalities, but as it gets worse they stop looking ignoring somethings. Then people get ticked and feel justifitied to steal more, the companies ramp up collections more. A nasty cycle and all the time the songwriters are the ones making the least and getting screwed the most.
The overprocessed formalized music is bad enough, but going to single only will really kill the music scene. LONG LIVE OLD SCHOOL!!!
A lot of groups initial releases wasn't their best material so the groups and the public will be losing the opportunity to hear those songs. Plus it was nice to hear a sampler of what a performer or group could do.
Instead of pushing for singles I would be pushing for more music and videos on CD's.
You are correct sir! I have worked for IBM IGS and Siemens SBS and they are where corporate IT is going. Setup a centralized NOC in some low pay rural area. Have a handfull of decent engineer to mentor the rest. Then at customer sites have a manager who will say yes to anything as long as they can bill for the service. Then hire people to be the local hands and feet for the NOC. They don't want skilled staff because they want decent salaries won't work any shift or location at the drop of a hat.
IBM IGS was as bad as Siemens SBS. IBM did try to have resonable staffing and wanted people with good tech skills, then didn't depend on centralized NOC as much. But I hear they are moving that direction. One thing that was good about my experince with IBM IGS the management people had technical backgrounds, some rusty but experince. Siemens SBS is only about making themselve money. The management has little or no tech backgrounds they just focus on cost cutting. They staff at the barest of minimum headcount. Anyone person sick they are screwed. Skill level is bare minimun to keep salary down. They figure the NOC can talk them through anything. ROFL. But they have no trouble getting people main recent college grad's looking for a start so they will work any hours and pay to get started.
From talking to other this is the trend all through IT. It isn't viewed at a profession anymore, but just a skilled trade. Centralize support centers. More and more monitoring software. Hardware with additional sensors. New virtural server system, blade servers, and other ways to turn servers in to appliances continue to roll out. IT is going the same route as the electronics industry did.
This is normal as you note and if Google wants the guy they just have to move him to different assignments. I used to work for Borland and MS was always hiring our Engineers and some very key people. We would joke that we were MS Training Camp. But MS would avoid issues like this guy is having with Goolge by assigning them to different products.
Anyone who say priacy is what Apple wants hasn't looked at how Apple makes its money. Selling hardware is their main source of income not OS X or software in general. Doing everything they can to make OS X only run on Apple boxes makes them money. Having the Intel Apple boxes dual boot Windows will help sell Apple boxes.
I don't think Apple wants to turn into main a software company.
when you look at the MS product line and where the bulk of their money is made Virtual PC is a niche product. For that matter all MS Mac products are niche products done for marketing reasons more than financial.
I look at MS and how they bought Virtual PC and have spent a lot of R&D on the product. They've spent a lot of time and money for a niche product. Maybe emulation is part of the plan. Use an emulation layer to put any MS OS or other software on the PPC chips.
You have so much IT work being outsourced to people willing to work for a third of a U.S. salary. So the attraction of being making the big bucks is gone. Why compete, go to a Biotech or other path where the money is.
Many universities like UCLA have wanted to drop CS as a major saying programming is a trade not a profession. FWIW they want to drop CS and offer Computer Engineering only. I see people on lists complain all the time that most the people they work with don't have CS degrees or any degree. Maybe CS is a more of a trade than a profession.
This isn't the first article I've read on CS major dropping in popularity. It's a good thing there aren't as many jobs and it isn't going to get better. So now CS major's will be those who truly love CS and not doing it for the starting salary. In long run its a good thing.
I picked up one of the Mini's and they are a blast to work on. The great Mac interface, lots of quality software, and Unix under the hood. Been getting up to speed on Apple development and nice free tools. Plus it is a great central box. You can get a MS Remote Desktop Client, then it has ssh for get to my Unix boxes. So one nice place to work from.
Apple stole the Mac GUI from Xerox PARC. Find some picture of the old Xerow Star system that predates the Mac. Xerox waited too long to sue Apple and case was thrown out. If you look Apple is like MS and licenses lots of software and morph's it into their own.
Linux copies everything it sees, so how is it any different.
My first computer job was on a systme running CP/M and it had many ways to bite you in the ass. So DOS learned from CP/M's mistakes and was a good OS for its day.
I don't see how they can say DOS is CP/M. CP/M was for the 8-bit 8080 and Z80 family chips. DOS was for the 16-bit 8086 family. CP/M was written in PL/M and 8080 assembly langauge, I believe DOS was all 8086 assembly language.
Also back then there were lots of clones of CP/M like Turbo DOS the CP/M clone for TRS-80's.
Most software comes with manuals but books like this exist because some people need explainations from a different point of view. Some books like these fill in some of holes in the original doc.
As for OS X manuals you can go to the Apple web site and read or download the manuals. Apple has a lot of good doc on all aspects of OS X available for free.
Veritas is as bad or worse on "Tiered pricing". In past Oracle was worse and they charged on potential CPU's. If you had a eight CPU server, but only four CPU's installed they still charged for eight CPU's. This is what drove many Oracle users to Windows, because Intel based servers tend to be smaller.
Oracle came after the place I was working for being out of license by around a million dollars. After a long negotiations Oracle agreed to charge us per installed CPU. So after signing the agreement with started pulling CPU's and max'ing out RAM. We ended up only owing Oracle a few thousand, and maintained performance with the extra RAM.
Veritas NetBackup is the same thing. Explain to me why it cost more to backup a multi-CPU server.
He forgot to factor in Apple and Novell. Novell has over 80% of the NOS market and Ray Norda was a bigger bullie than MS has ever been. Also Apple with no Windows Macintosh would of attracted a lot of the people who ended up Windows users. Novell would of gained the NT market and Apple the desktop market.
I write and support OS/2 products from its beginning until the around 94. In fact where I work now (banking) they still use OS/2 for some applications. I can't stand it, its SSA? GUI, it architecture was flawed, it was amazing for the late 80's, but after MS pull away from it, IBM just never put enough into it. So no tears from me that OS/2 faded into the sunset.
Without Windows, and a world with Novell, Apple, and OS/2 Linux would probably still be a fun side project for geeks.
>>>> I've read about, are there any employers that would rather have a person who: wants to put in an honest day's work; get to know the job and the people well; and a desire to ultimately be a mentor for the company processes, instead of a here-today-gone-tomorrow programmer, who is interested in actually working there until retirement age?
You find a place like that let me know. I will be out of work in a couple weeks. The company I work for lost the contract and new company is only keeping the young/cheap. The old company is using this opportunity to clear out some people since they are moving a lot of work overseas.
That is what you will be fighting. Outsourcing and young people trying to get a start in the industry willing to work around the clock for half your salary.
Now some companies instead of going out of the country are moving to state with heavy unemployment and low taxes and opening up shop. But others like the big three letter company I work for are opening up center in Brazil to cut costs.
Just look at the marketing coming from the big computer companies they are trying to bring back the glass house approach to computing. Let them supply the computers, SA's, developers, and so on . That way you only play for these skills as you need them, why hire them long term.
So you have a good job hang on to it. If you're as good as you say let other companies know you're looking. Let them recruit you, then you will get a deal worth accepting.
For true IT class hardware you have to buy from HP or IBM. Maybe Dell if you have no self respect.
DIY hardware just don't have all the hot swap, multi-bus, remote access, hardware sensors, and so on a real IT shop need. Plus the support contracts to meet SLAs.
Now if you building server farms you might get away with whitebox computers and keeping spares around.
What users will move to are computer appliances. Its not that they don't want to admin their own machine they just want to flip it on, do what they want and flip it off. Now combine that with the move to more computer multimedia control and you will see the merging of computers and entertainment systems. Watch some TV and with PNP write some email. While watching a DVD take a video call from someone. For the masses that is what they want. In your office a small system for playing music while remoting in to work or school.
At work the old glasshouse approach to computers will slowly return. Who needs a computer on every desk when a terminal and smart card are cheaper and more secure.
Home computers as we know them today will go back to being a thing for hobbyists.
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This wouldn't be an issue or topic if people actually just did space-shifting or only made a copy a couple actual friends. The record companies tolerate that. But people started giving copies out to the whole world, while acting all innocent as claiming they just want to space-shift or archive is why prices have never dropped, why so much music is formula crap, and so on. People like to point to record companies and scream they are greedy, but they are reacting to what the public is doing to them. It's a vicious circle.
I would say all this has led to people wanting quantities of music and not quality music. In past when everyone paid for music you listened hard to who you were going to spend your money on. Record companies had to try their best to put out good music so get your money. Now a days people just want to say "I have 10,000 downloads of stuff". How much of that do you actually listen to versus just occupies space on a hard drive and is all that really stuff worth listening to??? I only bring this up because the war between the downloaders and RIAA has many bad side effects and a boatload of crap music is one of those side effects.
First I have been running Leopard on two Mac's since it came and only an install problem on one, but no other problems since.
I've noticed ever since Leopard came out the PC Mag et al authors have been on a Leopard FUD campaign. So you like when listening to Fox or Clearchannel you have to put your BS filter on 10. You could speculate a lot on who's pulling their strings, but basically Vista stumbled coming out of the gate and Apple gadgets and computers are drawing a lot of attention. People are going to use what they want or need to use, but I think there are a lot of people on the fence right now that could hop over to the Apple side and that makes the PC marketplace nervous. Because with Apple it is a hardware sale as well as a OS and app's.
Good to see Bush et al getting a little taste of what they are doing to us. One of our founding fathers says it best.
Those that give up Liberty to have temporary Security deserve Neither - Benjamin Franklin.
Mac's caters to afluent customers who buying a new computer is no big deal. The thing that kept some of them from moving to Mac was they worked in a Windows world and didn't want to hassle moving things back and forth or not being able to run some software. Now Apple has BootCamp to make dual booting simple, but more important is Parallels and VMWare Fusion to run Windows inside of OS X. So all those issues are no more. Mac's have ease of use like no other and stylist computers that yuppie users like so they are going to start showing up in business in offices of managers. If Apple starts making deals for corporate sales they are going to continue to increase marketshare beyond the Halo effect on home users.
The biggest advantage Apple has is also its weakness that is Steve Jobs. Jobs ability to create products that attract the typical user as been amazing since he returned and introduced the iMac and then on to Apple gadgets. OS X ease of use and stabilty is unequalled another carrot to draw in users. But Jobs doesn't like to discount prices in fact a fanatic about price control. If he keeps that up expanding business sales won't improve. For home users Jobs price controls have created a used Mac market to they can afford to come aboard and learn to love Apple.
I would say Apple has the products to take huge bites out of MS marketshare, if Jobs allow pricing deals to be made.
I agree completely as noted the costs for engineering and other sciences have high costs to maintain and keep current. Also being that so many student choose their major based on starting salaries and business tends, the instructors in those fields demand more money. So make sense to me that you want the high starting salary then your going to have to paid for the education to get it. Also higher fees for popular major will help offset costs of maintaining majors of lessor interest. Like it or not schools are a business and they have to market themselve just like a business. Some do it will sports others on the quality of education in specific fields. When a major or field of education is hot its a sellers market.
Maybe I can afford to go back and get my music performance degree .
Oh duh.... It's the American (GOP) way Profits before People.
I would say if they took a look at the increase in Type II diabetes and switch to fruit sweetners would parallel each other. The the marketing type to Super Size everything. I remember in college (a long, long time ago) that Coke and other soft drinks were getting so expensive due to cost of sugar that beer and wine were cheaper to drink.
I remember when eating healthy was also cheaper, but that's been turned into a major industry and healthy eating costs a fortune and the unhealty over processed stuff is cheaper.
The first time I ran into it was back in the 70's I did a country gig at a huge roadhouse of a place. Above the stage where only the band could see was a big sign saying Please Refrain From Playing ASCAP material. Technically royalities are to be paid and ASCAP has been agressive about it and it is their job. As a songwriter when you get recorded you have sign with ASCAP or BMI they are the companies that track use of your material, collect royalities and pay you. They used to look the other way with small clubs and such, but I guess with the rampant music thieft on internet they are now collecting in places they ignored before.
A vicious cycle the big companies ignore some non-payment and thieft of royalities, but as it gets worse they stop looking ignoring somethings. Then people get ticked and feel justifitied to steal more, the companies ramp up collections more. A nasty cycle and all the time the songwriters are the ones making the least and getting screwed the most.
The overprocessed formalized music is bad enough, but going to single only will really kill the music scene. LONG LIVE OLD SCHOOL!!!
A lot of groups initial releases wasn't their best material so the groups and the public will be losing the opportunity to hear those songs. Plus it was nice to hear a sampler of what a performer or group could do.
Instead of pushing for singles I would be pushing for more music and videos on CD's.
You are correct sir!
I have worked for IBM IGS and Siemens SBS and they are where corporate IT is going. Setup a centralized NOC in some low pay rural area. Have a handfull of decent engineer to mentor the rest. Then at customer sites have a manager who will say yes to anything as long as they can bill for the service. Then hire people to be the local hands and feet for the NOC. They don't want skilled staff because they want decent salaries won't work any shift or location at the drop of a hat.
IBM IGS was as bad as Siemens SBS. IBM did try to have resonable staffing and wanted people with good tech skills, then didn't depend on centralized NOC as much. But I hear they are moving that direction. One thing that was good about my experince with IBM IGS the management people had technical backgrounds, some rusty but experince. Siemens SBS is only about making themselve money. The management has little or no tech backgrounds they just focus on cost cutting. They staff at the barest of minimum headcount. Anyone person sick they are screwed. Skill level is bare minimun to keep salary down. They figure the NOC can talk them through anything. ROFL. But they have no trouble getting people main recent college grad's looking for a start so they will work any hours and pay to get started.
From talking to other this is the trend all through IT. It isn't viewed at a profession anymore, but just a skilled trade. Centralize support centers. More and more monitoring software. Hardware with additional sensors. New virtural server system, blade servers, and other ways to turn servers in to appliances continue to roll out. IT is going the same route as the electronics industry did.
This is normal as you note and if Google wants the guy they just have to move him to different assignments. I used to work for Borland and MS was always hiring our Engineers and some very key people. We would joke that we were MS Training Camp. But MS would avoid issues like this guy is having with Goolge by assigning them to different products.
Anyone who say priacy is what Apple wants hasn't looked at how Apple makes its money. Selling hardware is their main source of income not OS X or software in general. Doing everything they can to make OS X only run on Apple boxes makes them money. Having the Intel Apple boxes dual boot Windows will help sell Apple boxes.
I don't think Apple wants to turn into main a software company.
>>> All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform?"
You mean like Linux.
when you look at the MS product line and where the bulk of their money is made Virtual PC is a niche product. For that matter all MS Mac products are niche products done for marketing reasons more than financial.
I look at MS and how they bought Virtual PC and have spent a lot of R&D on the product. They've spent a lot of time and money for a niche product. Maybe emulation is part of the plan. Use an emulation layer to put any MS OS or other software on the PPC chips.
Hummmmmmmm...
You have so much IT work being outsourced to people willing to work for a third of a U.S. salary. So the attraction of being making the big bucks is gone. Why compete, go to a Biotech or other path where the money is.
Many universities like UCLA have wanted to drop CS as a major saying programming is a trade not a profession. FWIW they want to drop CS and offer Computer Engineering only. I see people on lists complain all the time that most the people they work with don't have CS degrees or any degree. Maybe CS is a more of a trade than a profession.
This isn't the first article I've read on CS major dropping in popularity. It's a good thing there aren't as many jobs and it isn't going to get better. So now CS major's will be those who truly love CS and not doing it for the starting salary. In long run its a good thing.
I picked up one of the Mini's and they are a blast to work on. The great Mac interface, lots of quality software, and Unix under the hood. Been getting up to speed on Apple development and nice free tools. Plus it is a great central box. You can get a MS Remote Desktop Client, then it has ssh for get to my Unix boxes. So one nice place to work from.
Apple stole the Mac GUI from Xerox PARC. Find some picture of the old Xerow Star system that predates the Mac. Xerox waited too long to sue Apple and case was thrown out. If you look Apple is like MS and licenses lots of software and morph's it into their own.
Linux copies everything it sees, so how is it any different.
My first computer job was on a systme running CP/M and it had many ways to bite you in the ass. So DOS learned from CP/M's mistakes and was a good OS for its day.
I don't see how they can say DOS is CP/M. CP/M was for the 8-bit 8080 and Z80 family chips. DOS was for the 16-bit 8086 family. CP/M was written in PL/M and 8080 assembly langauge, I believe DOS was all 8086 assembly language.
Also back then there were lots of clones of CP/M like Turbo DOS the CP/M clone for TRS-80's.
Another useless lawsuit clogging the system.
Most software comes with manuals but books like this exist because some people need explainations from a different point of view. Some books like these fill in some of holes in the original doc.
As for OS X manuals you can go to the Apple web site and read or download the manuals. Apple has a lot of good doc on all aspects of OS X available for free.
Veritas is as bad or worse on "Tiered pricing". In past Oracle was worse and they charged on potential CPU's. If you had a eight CPU server, but only four CPU's installed they still charged for eight CPU's.
This is what drove many Oracle users to Windows, because Intel based servers tend to be smaller.
Oracle came after the place I was working for being out of license by around a million dollars. After a long negotiations Oracle agreed to charge us per installed CPU. So after signing the agreement with started pulling CPU's and max'ing out RAM. We ended up only owing Oracle a few thousand, and maintained performance with the extra RAM.
Veritas NetBackup is the same thing. Explain to me why it cost more to backup a multi-CPU server.
He forgot to factor in Apple and Novell. Novell has over 80% of the NOS market and Ray Norda was a bigger bullie than MS has ever been. Also Apple with no Windows Macintosh would of attracted a lot of the people who ended up Windows users. Novell would of gained the NT market and Apple the desktop market.
I write and support OS/2 products from its beginning until the around 94. In fact where I work now (banking) they still use OS/2 for some applications. I can't stand it, its SSA? GUI, it architecture was flawed, it was amazing for the late 80's, but after MS pull away from it, IBM just never put enough into it. So no tears from me that OS/2 faded into the sunset.
Without Windows, and a world with Novell, Apple, and OS/2 Linux would probably still be a fun side project for geeks.
>>>> I've read about, are there any employers that would rather have a person who: wants to put in an honest day's work; get to know the job and the people well; and a desire to ultimately be a mentor for the company processes, instead of a here-today-gone-tomorrow programmer, who is interested in actually working there until retirement age?
You find a place like that let me know. I will be out of work in a couple weeks. The company I work for lost the contract and new company is only keeping the young/cheap. The old company is using this opportunity to clear out some people since they are moving a lot of work overseas.
That is what you will be fighting. Outsourcing and young people trying to get a start in the industry willing to work around the clock for half your salary.
Now some companies instead of going out of the country are moving to state with heavy unemployment and low taxes and opening up shop. But others like the big three letter company I work for are opening up center in Brazil to cut costs.
Just look at the marketing coming from the big computer companies they are trying to bring back the glass house approach to computing. Let them supply the computers, SA's, developers, and so on . That way you only play for these skills as you need them, why hire them long term.
So you have a good job hang on to it. If you're as good as you say let other companies know you're looking. Let them recruit you, then you will get a deal worth accepting.
For true IT class hardware you have to buy from HP or IBM. Maybe Dell if you have no self respect.
DIY hardware just don't have all the hot swap, multi-bus, remote access, hardware sensors, and so on a real IT shop need. Plus the support contracts to meet SLAs.
Now if you building server farms you might get away with whitebox computers and keeping spares around.
This is like sueing Ford because he can't use GM parts in his Ford. Or sueing Intel becasue the sockets on their mobo's won't fit an AMD Opteron.
What users will move to are computer appliances. Its not that they don't want to admin their own machine they just want to flip it on, do what they want and flip it off. Now combine that with the move to more computer multimedia control and you will see the merging of computers and entertainment systems. Watch some TV and with PNP write some email. While watching a DVD take a video call from someone. For the masses that is what they want. In your office a small system for playing music while remoting in to work or school.
At work the old glasshouse approach to computers will slowly return. Who needs a computer on every desk when a terminal and smart card are cheaper and more secure.
Home computers as we know them today will go back to being a thing for hobbyists.