Not a day goes by that you don't hear about Laptop's exploding, battery swelling or discoloration. It seems everyone is suffering from defects in product these days. Most recently Apple has been the Victim. But the new Victim these days is Dell. Just in the past week two laptops have exploded, for unknown reasons. And the fact that Dell has outso
urced it's IT support for customers is not going well with certain people. Even when you get hold of someone, they all seem to be idiots. Add to that the mass reacall of 20,000 batteries and Dell has a major headache. But that's not the end of problems just yet. Take the case of one, Renata, who recently replaced an againg Sony machine with an XPS 400, one of Dell's top of the line systems. You'd think that a system like this would adhere tot the highest standards of quality. Apperently not. Renata reports on his blog that he was being BSOD'd daily and the system was crashing on a regular basis. He called up Dell and they sent over an independent service tech. The service tech diagnosed a problem with both the motherboard ant the memory. Now, time for a little clarifaction. Renata had something like 2 GB of memory in his new XPS 400. So what did Dell tell the-honest-to-goodness independent support tech? To replace one of the four memory modules, close the box and then leave. That may not seem like a bad until you consider the fact that Renada has paid for 2 GB not the 512 that Dell wants to replace. You'd think Dell would be more intelligent. Couple this with the fact that notebooks are exploding and the delay of the new XPS 700 which has hundreds of thousands of orders sitting in a factory somewhere in the Far East. But I digres. The fact of the matter is when my parents bought our Demension 4400 back almost 5 years ago now, the fact is we went to Dell for quality. Likewise of my good friends' family is Apple through and through. You go to your company of choice, not for the fact that they sell great hardware, although that is a great thing to have, but for the great service. With Dell, I'm tempted to tell my parents about Dell and suggest that we find hardware provider when we upgrade to out next system. I think that quality at Dell has dropped off the deep end ever since Michael Dell stepped down as CEO and President in 2004. Although I've had few problems with my Dell Demension, I guess other's have and that's why so many people hate Dell. If Dell really want to regain customer confidence they're going to have to do a 180 and fast.
Why DRM Sucks
My brother brought home a Switchfood CD the other night. Okay, fine, I like Switchfoot. Well I did until I realized that the CD has DRM on it. Okay, I'm fine with DRM. All the Music I buy from the iTunes Music Store has FairPlay DRM on it. FairPlay doesn't interfere as long as I adhere to certain guidlines. And so far I've followed those guidelines. This DRM being used by-guess who, Sony is very limiting in what I can do with the Music on the CD. The CD will only be copied in WMA which means that it will not copy into iTunes, which means as well I can't copy it onto my Ipod. This just really ticks me off. If I go out and buy a CD for $10-18 CAN, I expect to be able to make X amount of copies of it (within reason of course) able to put it onto my Ipod and put it onto multiple computers.
In case anyone here is unfarmilliar with the Sony-Rootkit tabackle, I will be you a
brief run through. Back in October of this year, it was disovered that Sony Corp, was using a DRM technology based on Rootkit technology. For those of you who don't know what a rootkit is, it is a program that allows files to be hidden, not just from the user, but from the Operating System itself. This is used commonly as a Hacker Tool and is used to hide things like Trojan Horses while they work. The program was poorly designed as well as securiy was lax and allowed Hackers to construct virus' that exploited the holes the rootkit created. They did and they created at least 2 of them. The Rootkit deleted, without question, any file that contained the extension $sys$.exe. I have nothing against DRM. I don't mind FairPlay, it doesn't get in my way it allows me to do what I wish with it. But when DRM gets into my way (Back to the Switchfoot) it really starts to tick me off. I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to DRM. I'll have to wait and see what happens in the next few months or years.
Jason Calacanis: A Menace to Diggital Society
Digg has become a fixture of the Web 2.0 in the past few years. Started by Kevin Rose in 2004 after he left TechTv it now has well over 8.5 million unique visitors and was seeing 3000+ stories posted a day. Jason Calacanis, another Web 2.0 start up, started Weblogs Inc in 2003. The network consists o
f about 90 blogs that cover a variety of topics, including Gaming and Technology. Most notable amoung these is Engadget. Web Logs Inc. was sold to AOL for a reported $25 in 2005. However, the network retains it's original structure. Now a VP at AOL he was offered a chance to save Netscape.com. Once the Kingpin of Web Browsers Netscape's share slid under the direction of AOL when it was purchased by the former in 1998. Netscape 6 was built around the Mozilla Source code, which, at the time was far from stable. This blunder by AOL was another contributing factor the demise of Netscape. And AOL wants to save it? As Patrick Norton would put it "It's a smoking Crater". Well put Patrick it is and the fact is, that Netscape cannot be resurrected. Weather you redesign it or not, Netscape will never be what it once was and the fact is that the Geek community is not a bunch of idiots and Calacanis implies. Calcanis think's it's all about money. It's not about money. It's about having the respect of the community. It's not about earning $1000 a month by submitting a bunch of stories. I have much more respect for Kevin Rose, who is a much of a Geek's Geek where Calacanis is a white collar who could't tell you the difference between CSS and XHTML. Kevin can. He worked for the Department of Energy, Designed Digg from the ground up. He holds a degree in computer science and can correctly calculate how much Themite it takes to incinerate a Hard Drive. Okay, so maybe that's not that best example but Kevin know's his stuff and Jason may very know some stuff, but the fact is, once you enter the coperate machine, all your individual knowledge goes out the window. The bottom line is Jason is doing more harm then good for Netscape as it just alienates the remaining userbase of Netscape as well as large digg community (over 440,000) and the even larger Geek community. My advice is this: Jason, if you want to create positive spin Think of something new! Don't go around ripping off Digg!
Later,
Nathaniel
urced it's IT support for customers is not going well with certain people. Even when you get hold of someone, they all seem to be idiots. Add to that the mass reacall of 20,000 batteries and Dell has a major headache. But that's not the end of problems just yet. Take the case of one, Renata, who recently replaced an againg Sony machine with an XPS 400, one of Dell's top of the line systems. You'd think that a system like this would adhere tot the highest standards of quality. Apperently not. Renata reports on his blog that he was being BSOD'd daily and the system was crashing on a regular basis. He called up Dell and they sent over an independent service tech. The service tech diagnosed a problem with both the motherboard ant the memory. Now, time for a little clarifaction. Renata had something like 2 GB of memory in his new XPS 400. So what did Dell tell the-honest-to-goodness independent support tech? To replace one of the four memory modules, close the box and then leave. That may not seem like a bad until you consider the fact that Renada has paid for 2 GB not the 512 that Dell wants to replace. You'd think Dell would be more intelligent. Couple this with the fact that notebooks are exploding and the delay of the new XPS 700 which has hundreds of thousands of orders sitting in a factory somewhere in the Far East. But I digres. The fact of the matter is when my parents bought our Demension 4400 back almost 5 years ago now, the fact is we went to Dell for quality. Likewise of my good friends' family is Apple through and through. You go to your company of choice, not for the fact that they sell great hardware, although that is a great thing to have, but for the great service. With Dell, I'm tempted to tell my parents about Dell and suggest that we find hardware provider when we upgrade to out next system. I think that quality at Dell has dropped off the deep end ever since Michael Dell stepped down as CEO and President in 2004. Although I've had few problems with my Dell Demension, I guess other's have and that's why so many people hate Dell. If Dell really want to regain customer confidence they're going to have to do a 180 and fast.Why DRM Sucks
My brother brought home a Switchfood CD the other night. Okay, fine, I like Switchfoot. Well I did until I realized that the CD has DRM on it. Okay, I'm fine with DRM. All the Music I buy from the iTunes Music Store has FairPlay DRM on it. FairPlay doesn't interfere as long as I adhere to certain guidlines. And so far I've followed those guidelines. This DRM being used by-guess who, Sony is very limiting in what I can do with the Music on the CD. The CD will only be copied in WMA which means that it will not copy into iTunes, which means as well I can't copy it onto my Ipod. This just really ticks me off. If I go out and buy a CD for $10-18 CAN, I expect to be able to make X amount of copies of it (within reason of course) able to put it onto my Ipod and put it onto multiple computers.
In case anyone here is unfarmilliar with the Sony-Rootkit tabackle, I will be you a
brief run through. Back in October of this year, it was disovered that Sony Corp, was using a DRM technology based on Rootkit technology. For those of you who don't know what a rootkit is, it is a program that allows files to be hidden, not just from the user, but from the Operating System itself. This is used commonly as a Hacker Tool and is used to hide things like Trojan Horses while they work. The program was poorly designed as well as securiy was lax and allowed Hackers to construct virus' that exploited the holes the rootkit created. They did and they created at least 2 of them. The Rootkit deleted, without question, any file that contained the extension $sys$.exe. I have nothing against DRM. I don't mind FairPlay, it doesn't get in my way it allows me to do what I wish with it. But when DRM gets into my way (Back to the Switchfoot) it really starts to tick me off. I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to DRM. I'll have to wait and see what happens in the next few months or years.Jason Calacanis: A Menace to Diggital Society
Digg has become a fixture of the Web 2.0 in the past few years. Started by Kevin Rose in 2004 after he left TechTv it now has well over 8.5 million unique visitors and was seeing 3000+ stories posted a day. Jason Calacanis, another Web 2.0 start up, started Weblogs Inc in 2003. The network consists o
f about 90 blogs that cover a variety of topics, including Gaming and Technology. Most notable amoung these is Engadget. Web Logs Inc. was sold to AOL for a reported $25 in 2005. However, the network retains it's original structure. Now a VP at AOL he was offered a chance to save Netscape.com. Once the Kingpin of Web Browsers Netscape's share slid under the direction of AOL when it was purchased by the former in 1998. Netscape 6 was built around the Mozilla Source code, which, at the time was far from stable. This blunder by AOL was another contributing factor the demise of Netscape. And AOL wants to save it? As Patrick Norton would put it "It's a smoking Crater". Well put Patrick it is and the fact is, that Netscape cannot be resurrected. Weather you redesign it or not, Netscape will never be what it once was and the fact is that the Geek community is not a bunch of idiots and Calacanis implies. Calcanis think's it's all about money. It's not about money. It's about having the respect of the community. It's not about earning $1000 a month by submitting a bunch of stories. I have much more respect for Kevin Rose, who is a much of a Geek's Geek where Calacanis is a white collar who could't tell you the difference between CSS and XHTML. Kevin can. He worked for the Department of Energy, Designed Digg from the ground up. He holds a degree in computer science and can correctly calculate how much Themite it takes to incinerate a Hard Drive. Okay, so maybe that's not that best example but Kevin know's his stuff and Jason may very know some stuff, but the fact is, once you enter the coperate machine, all your individual knowledge goes out the window. The bottom line is Jason is doing more harm then good for Netscape as it just alienates the remaining userbase of Netscape as well as large digg community (over 440,000) and the even larger Geek community. My advice is this: Jason, if you want to create positive spin Think of something new! Don't go around ripping off Digg!Later,
Nathaniel
1 comment:
We've talked about this for ages... my commenting would be irrelevant... but the Renata you've mentioned... is female. :D (Girl gamers do exist, you know?)
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