When
· Naughties
· · 2005
· · · January
· · · · 07 (3 entries)
Bye, NCD · Via the Reg, I see NCD is going away. Kind of sad; I feel I have a personal relationship with the company. I saw their first product at a 1989 Usenix and liked it enough to buy it and posted a review which generated storms of email and Usenet traffic and many thank-yous from NCD and, I immodestly think, significantly helped get them launched. Obviously, our Sun Ray is a direct descendant of the original NCD idea, and the people here who use ’em generally love ’em. I think it’s the nifty Java Card trick that makes them fly; go anywhere, plug in the card, and there’s your desktop. The notion, in an enterprise of any size, that you should have independently managed standalone computers, one per person, is obviously nuts. There are some job functions and personality types that call for a real computer of one’s own, but to the extent we can avoid that, business is going to run smoother.
TechWikiDoc · Jon Udell suggests a new documentation strategy for technology vendors; rather than going on publishing incomplete, out-of-date, poorly written manuals, they could just set up a per-product Wiki and let the customer base fill it up with problems, fixes, workarounds, tips & tricks. As he points out, most of us have gotten used to searching the Web for user reports, rather than cracking product docs, to help us solve problems. He suggests doing it at the Wikipedia, but I don’t think it matters that much where the thing lives. Like many great ideas, it’s obvious once you think of it. I’m quite sure it’ll happen.
