[rescue] Flying Pigs - OT WIN2K speed

[Joshua D Boyd]

I'm clipping the parts I don't care to comment to.

On Mon, Sep 10, 2001 at 02:30:23PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > Exchange Forms
> 
> Usenet-style private groups on NNTP are far superior from what I've
> heard....  (though I guess it depends on your p.o.v. -- some people I
> know swore up and down that notes was better even though it had very
> serious technical flaws to the point where it was almost unmanageable,
> and from what I know lotus' version of notes was no better and I can't
> imagine anything by M$ being any better either)

I'm thinking that web forms would be better still, except we would need a
new for editor tool.  
 
> > Shared Calendering
> 
> Hmmm...  this is one place where there's very little yet in the freeware
> world, and the good unix apps are not usually any more open or better.

It seems to me that it shouldn't be hard to make a web based system to do
it.  I've done stuff that was kinda close before, and I don't think it
would be hard to go all the way and implement everyfeature that Exchange
has, plus doing Exchange better in automating certain things.

Calendering, shared or not, is one of those wheels that seem to just get
reimplemented and reimplemented far more than is really nescesary, but
getting started is so easy that it is tempting to start from scratch when
the one you tried is missing a feature you want.

> > "sticky" notes
> 
> where, on the server?  shared?  an idiot-app by the sounds of it.  There
> are many many many dozens of similar things for unix....

I used the sticky notes when I last used Exchange.  They were stored on
the server, but just sticking them in the profile would have had the same
effect.  I don't think that they were sharable between users.

But this is one of those areas where I think that there is still
significant room for innovation.  For instance, what about sticky notes
that are linked to dates and addresses and todo items?
 
> > physical resource management (like scheduling the use of a company vehicle)
> 
> and that's different from calendaring & scheduling how?  

Think of it as just being inherited from calendaring and scheduling with
extra constraints and options.  Rather than everyone just agreeing to use
one convention for sharing the resources, then convention is configured
and forced on them.  Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.
 
> > Public Folders
> 
> network filesystem?

I thought that they were more like newsgroups with extra access controls.
 
> > Time tracking
> 
> done by calendar functions, no?  (Plan does *excellent* time tracking,
> with quite good reporting.  KDE's calendar thingy is just missing the
> reporting stuff.)
 
True, I think.  

> > Exchange - despite it's problems, is a capable piece of groupware if used to
> > it's full potential.
> 
> Unix, if used to its full potential, *IS* groupware too!
> 
> It's even integrated as long as your programs stick to using simple unix
> text files, etc.

It still takes a good bit of configuration and little glue programs to
integrate the unix tools together.  I think that this is the appeal of
Exchange.  You just install it, and it already has all the pieces stuck
together.  They might not be as flexibile as we would like, and they might
not work well, but they are there, and in theory, and idiot can set it up
with no need hire a real pro, although a real pro is still needed for
stability reasons to my understanding.  Exchange does use Access (well,
Jet) for all of it's datastorage after all.

I bet that many of us could create something superior (though perhaps not
a "scalable") for small workgroups within a year.  A smaller group of us
(I don't claim to be part of the second group) could probably create
something superior on all fronts in another few years, with all the
replications features, etc.

The real fun would be integrating it into things like video survailence,
palm pilots, mapping GPS unit thingies, and all the other day to day
devices that perhaps could be better automatted if they could just know
what we intended to do before hand.

And these are perfect tasks for highly expandable cheap
workstations.  One of these days I'm going to place my alarm clock on my
network so that it can set its wake up time from my palm schedule unless I
tell it otherwise.
 
-- 
Joshua D. Boyd