Prediction: Ubuntu and Dell

PLEASE prove me wrong!!!

Dell will half-heartedly role out a few PCs preloaded with Ubuntu. Any possible market share will be diminished by the lack of enthusiasm displayed by Dell. As a marketing ploy they appealed to the voice of public opinion. When sales tank due to lack of their belief in their product the Dell PR guys will stay away in droves.

When, not if, folks start to have questions about 'how to do this' or 'how to fix that' Dell will throw up its collective hands and say, "Well, you know that Linux is Open Source. Go ask the community how to 'do that' or 'fix this'." Without a clear profit incentive Dell will hardly be willing to invest in the necessary support to get their products over the initial bump. When the first report comes back that Dell isn't standing behind their Linux systems customers will join the PR guys, staying away in droves.

People, the few that actually buy the Ubuntu PC, will then raise such a verbal stink AND POINT THE WAGGING FINGER at Linux and say, "This Linux stuff sux!" Gimme back my warm&fuzzy&bloated&addictive Weendoze.

The whole thing should take no longer than 4 months from the date Dell first ships...

I Feel so all alone...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Hmmmmmmmm, I am pretty sure that my son, William Meloney is still alive and living at home and tearing up the bandwidth uploading great stop-motion animation videos to YouTube.

Bad blog, bad blog!

Sit, stay, roll-over... don't put links in your articles.

Bad blog!

Don'tcha just hate it when somebody writes an article about an interesting program and then doesn't include a link to the program's site?

BTW: the link that I was after in the article I was reading is
... Pidgin is the new GAIM

Invisible IT

Joshua Porter cites

Five Principles to Design By

which puts the IT business in very clear perspective.

Technology Serves Humans.

Technology serves humans. Humans do not serve technology.

Design is not Art.

Good Design is something that works well.

The Experience Belongs to the User.

The ultimate experience is something that happens in the user, and it is theirs. They own it.

Great Design is Invisible.

An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted.

Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.

[It] is the highest achievement for a designer.

---

I have long contended that our stated goal in IT is to be[come] invisible. Recent studies published by important folks in the know have stated that IT is not a competitive business practice. (e.g. We won't gain greater market share because we have a bigger IT department than our competition.) In this day and age everybody has an IT department, in house or out-sourced or BILB (Brother-in-Law Bob). So when it comes to customer service, providing the commodity of IT to the end users, our objective is to make it as simple as possible and as invisible as possible.

Let the users, our customers, be about the work of our business not the busy-ness of IT.

Thanks Joshua

Picasso; Before and After...

This is my original rough sketch set design for the Theater Workshop of Owensboro (TWO) production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a comedy by Steve Martin. (Rendered with Microsoft Paint)



SketchUp ROCKZ!

This "rough" rendering was generated using SketchUp from Google. I cannot say enough about it as a design tool. In addition to perspective rendering it is possible to alter the POV (point of view). This allows the viewer to 'sit' anywhere in the audience and see what the set will look like. I used the existing textures and color pallette. I am sure that with more time and effort I could have offered an more exact rendering.




While not fully 'dressed' this is the set. --->

Set Construction (including tables) is the very fine work of Mr. Aaron Brown and his son Austin.