Sun does benefit from this. Sun will now be able to have included with Windows a correct, complete, modern implementation of Java. This provides a means for competing with Microsoft's web services, VB, etc. If a wide enough Java app userbase is established, there will always be a credible alternative to.NET (it just so happens that servers for this alternative often run Solaris). Anything that helps to build that userbase is a Good Thing for everyone but Microsoft.
BTW, it will be very nice to see Java WebStart included by default with Windows. That should make things interesting.
Alas, I was unable to find Red Hat 8.0 Personal locally. Granted, I didn't check more than a couple stores because I didn't have the time, but all I saw was Pro. I'm building a system for a friend of mine with Win XP and RH 8.0 and really wanted to send some money Red Hat's way for a fine product. Unfortunately, $150 was just too steep.:-( Instead, I picked up a $50 book that included the installation CDs. I hope some portion of that goes to Red Hat, but I doubt it.
Regarding the price decrease, I think it's definitely a good idea. A Win 2k -> Win XP Pro upgrade can be had for $200; it's important for RH8 Pro to beat that. The Win XP Home upgrade is $100, so $60 wasn't too bad, but hopefully the $20 drop will attract more people due to a more favorable perception of value.
As an aside, I always find it amusing to see the "included software" list on the retail Linux distro boxes. It's not bad stuff or anything, and I'm sure a large number of people like to have it all there right away, but the first thing I do with a new Linux installation is to download the latest Mozilla, OpenOffice, NetBeans, jEdit, etc. The boxed versions have to be tested with everything else in the distro, so they're often a minor revision or two behind the latest stable release for most packages. Of course, I typically install these in/opt on a separate partition, so reinstallation of the OS doesn't require anything but a PATH change (I like to use/opt/bin for symlinks to apps on that mountpoint). Beat that, Microsoft.:-)
No kiddin', brotha. I've had the service since August. $50/mo, static IP address, and not a single outage! I've seen some negative comments regarding customer service, but I never even had to contact them, so I'd call it perfect customer service.
Sucks. It sounds like you're an employee. Any idea about being bought out by a particular company? Best of luck to you in your impending job hunt. It's tough here in St. Louis, too, but hopefully some work will be opening up with 2003 project budgets. I'd be happy to send your resume along to my consulting firm's recruiter, if you're open to relocating.
I had to take some simple sociology video course at the 11th hour to satisfy my graduation requirements, and the instructor told a very interesting story...
A small-town politician in Oklahoma (or Nebraska, perhaps?) suddenly got all fired up about increasing the penalties for first-time drug offenders. Of course, there was much posturing about family values, protecting children, etc., and the bill was eagerly sped through the state's legislature by other politicians looking to win points with their constituents. One reporter thought the whole thing strange, that this guy should develop an interest in drug policy overnight. He did a bit of research, and it turns out that some other politician's (can't remember who, but someone powerful) son was arrested for posession of marijuana. Knowing that the public would certainly ask questions if attempts were made to reduce first-offense penalties, these guys decided to--in short order (before the trial)--make the penalties so ridiculously severe that no jury would even consider convicting a clean-cut, college-bound 18-year-old from a good family.
Of course, it worked. I don't know what happened after the story came to light, though.
Sure, customers could install 98/ME or NT/2000 today, but if this was the way the next "major" release of Windows worked, those versions would already be obsolete (assuming a release date around 2004 or 2005). Once these platforms are officially unsupported and don't get new drivers, they become rather unattractive. And installing XP on a second machine (without deactivating the first) is more or less impossible for the casual end user.
I think MS definitely wants to move to a subscription model. The really big advantage in this scheme is that customers have to buck up the cash every month/year/period instead of just once. The result: MS doesn't depend so heavily on the success of each "major" release, and their accountants don't have to massage the numbers so much; the subscription program would generate a steady revenue stream. (BTW, I hardly think MS would notice a handful of people scrapping the default OS on their new PCs if they were actually being paid for each copy of Windows and Office in use.)
Interestingly, with this model, there's no reason they couldn't move to a Red Carpet type of update process (with much less user control, I'm sure). The whole idea of an OS "release" might change as MS moves to a more frequent release schedule. This would also save them a lot of face by giving them plenty of opportunities to roll out security patches surreptitiously.
As far as the OEMs are concerned, they'd probably just tell customers that only systems running Windows are supported for anything other than complete hardware failures.
It would be just as fair for me to say you've obviously spent about 6 minutes working with Struts. If there are a lot of scriptlets in the JSPs, something was designed poorly, and it isn't necessarily the framework. Any business logic should be in the action classes. Complex presentation logic should be in custom tags, which can accept parameters; they make very nice reusable components.
FWIW, I spend several weeks using Tapestry. I will admit, the bulk of my MVC experience is with Struts and not so much Swing or SmallTalk. Tapestry was definitely not my bag.
I think the Struts framework fits the web app model quite nicely. Decoupling the components of your application correctly encourages better design decisions and results in more reusable components.
For example, a problem that comes up in just about any web app I've ever seen is that the user must be able to:
create some kind of record (data object) by completing a form
see this information later in a read-only mode
modify it in an editable mode
To digress briefly, in Struts, the developer defines "actions", which basically comprise a FormBean, Action class, and a JSP (the JSP can be selected from a predefined list at runtime based on a return value from the Action class). The FormBean holds any data needed for the view, which will typically include attributes for any form elements as well as any necessary metadata. When a user requests a view (aka "action"), the Struts engine reads the XML config file (which holds the action definitions) and passes the request along to the appropriate Action class. The Action class can analyze the request, as well as the FormBean, to determine what needs to be done, calls business methods as required, and returns a value to the Struts engine. This value maps to a "forward" entry in the config file, which simply directs the request to a given JSP. (see http://rollerjm.free.fr/pro/Struts.html for more info)
Getting back to our example, the 3 cases mentioned above can be accomodated by 1 action entry in the config file. It would be something like:
(the name, "userForm", is a logical name for the FormBean; it is mapped to the actual Java class elsewhere in the config)
Anyway, the Action class and FormBean together know everything about what represents a User and what can be done with one through this app. The JSPs are responsible for presenting the User information and any options for performing actions on a User (delete, update, etc.). In fact, the "create" and "modify" forwards even map to the same JSP. Presumably, the Action class would set some kind of flag in the FormBean to indicate whether this is a new user or not.
This is the beauty of Struts. Once comfortable with the framework, one can knock out well-designed web apps very quickly...especially if a good set of custom tags have been developed.
Are you serious? I found Tapestry to be the worst framework I've ever used. When developing with it, I constantly felt as if I had to fight the tool to get anything done. I don't see how Tapestry provides anything that Struts and custom tags do not.
I realize that, coming from a MVC background (SmallTalk gui, Swing, and Struts), any component-based framework would require some mental adjustment, but I thought Tapestry was very counterintuitive. Perhaps the Eclipse plugin does all the plumbing for you, but if you need an IDE to make Tapestry usable, there is probably something wrong with the underlying model.
OTOH, if you find Tapestry easy to understand, go for it. Your brain must work quite differently than mine.:-)
Very good points. However, I feel compelled to add:
definite
separate
There are others, which I can't seem to remember right now but "loose" and "definately" make my skin crawl. In less formal communication, of course, I expect rampant misspellings, haphazard capitalization, and generally poor grammar. These reflect poorly on the author in formal communication.
I envision the rest of the world wising up to a smarter method of getting the job done and standardizing on that. Wrapping themselves in the comfortable blanket of isolation and obsolescence are the US and, to a large degree, Great Britain. Sound familiar?
What about when I'm viewing Fark in Moz and middle-clicking (open in new tab) links at a furious pace? Or, even worse, using mouse gestures to drag over 5-10 links and simultaneously open them all in new tabs? In the particular case of Fark, the initial request for each link will go through the fark.com domain (for nav statistics, I suppose), but is immediately forwarded on to another domain.
Really, I guess those requests could be handled at 1 second or, preferably, user-specified intervals. I can't imagine viewing the requested documents (more likely images, if we're being honest here) at a faster pace, anyway.
As long as he's not already using Moz under Windows, it should be an easy sale...unless, of course, his gf resists change like my wife. I swear, I can't get her to understand how useful tabbed browsing is. She does enjoy the popup elimination, though. Fortunately, her biggest problems with Linux are things I can fix:
Can't print (I'm setting the LAN up soon to share the software-driven printer)
Her boss sends a work schedule in stupid Word format every week, which caused problems (fixed already by having Moz send those to OpenOffice)
No silly Pipe Dream game (need to install WINE)
I hope to abandon MS products altogether in the near future. She's still in school, but I think she can get by with OpenOffice for class projects. Next semester could be support-intensive, though.:-)
It is a legitimate loss. A loss is profit's ugly counterpart. In the same way, expenses are the opposite of revenues. When expenses exceed revenues, you have a net "loss."
The fact that it was expected doesn't make it any less of a loss. To illustrate my point, I expect to get my butt kicked in StarCraft every time I play my friend. But I'd still call the result of each encounter a loss. (Really, "a shameful embarrasment" would be more accurate, but my point stands.)
I've found that when I forget to take breaks from the coding, I'm a lot worse off in general: eye strain, neck stiffness, back discomfort, arthritic wrists, etc. The best tool I've found so far is quite simple but very effective: xwrits. It's been mentioned here on slashdot several times before, but I think it's worth repeating for those who haven't seen it before.
xwrits allows you to specify the interval between breaks, duration of breaks, and many other useful things like whether you should get the finger when you ignore the warning.:-) (BTW, has anyone tested it on OSX?)
I had to wear a tie every day when I consulted at Enterprise. The official dress code requires pressed pants and a jacket, with the same ludicrous requirement for wearing the jacket whenever coming to or leaving the building. (St. Louis, while perhaps not as hot as Texas, sees downright miserable temperatures and humidity in the summer.) Fortunately, we were allowed some slack in IT and just had to wear the tie.:-)
Anyway, my point is this: if you are lucky enough to choose between two positions--one with a formal dress code, the other (business) casual--be sure to factor in the cost of shirts, ties, pants, shoes, dry cleaning, and time for ironing. This makes a bit of a dent in the salary. Trust me. Having a tie dry cleaned will cost you almost as much as a new tie (learned the hard way). And don't think for a minute that you can just run it through the machine on "delicate" (also learned the hard way).:-)
My experience has been that a dress code is much more than a dress code. In most cases, it serves as a barometer of management's general attitude toward the staff. (Exceptions apply, of course, in cases where the staff is highly visible to clients, et al.) A formal dress code generally indicates a management structure focused on control. Having the serfs running around in identical dress must be someone's way of getting their jollies because it certainly doesn't make the employees any happier. Management by respect and trust, OTOH, gives the employees much more latitude in getting the job done and doesn't focus so much on silly details. If you hire competent, professional people, you can expect them to behave competently and professionally.
This method was used in an episode of Law & Order. The prosecutors wanted to charge the guilty party but didn't think they had enough evidence to go to trial. The family and lawyer of the victim used a Writ of Mandate to force them to proceed.
Yes, that would be a nice feature. You can also accelerate your pr0n browsing with mouse gestures. For instance, the Right-Up-Left gesture over one or more links (read "thumbnails") will open all those links in new tabs. Very nice.:-)
Heh heh, I *loved* GEOS on our C64! My family went from a Vic-20 to a C-64, and then to a Mac LCII (4MB RAM, 40MB HDD). Seriously, though, I thought GEOS was absolutely revolutionary.
The problem with the current kernel configuration process is not really the interface itself. ``make xconfig'' is not perfect, but it gets the job done well enough. The real problem is that none of the kernel developers really know the syntax used in this configurator. Thus, the code behind xconfig, etc., has become a sloppy mess of cut-and-pasted crap. I imagine the obfuscation is approaching a critical level where maintenance becomes nearly impossible.
There was an article posted here a few months ago, IIRC, that made some interesting points about the XBox endeavor. One such point was that Microsoft would never achieve the low production costs that Sony and Nintendo enjoy because these two companies use purpose-built, specially designed hardware and farm out production of the components. Sony, in particular, has been able to consolidate the GPU and CPU onto a single die, decreasing production costs considerably. MS, however, will never get NVidia and Intel chips consolidated in the same manner, and they don't have as much control over the platform because they're tied to the standard PC architecture.
My opinion is that keeping a resume to a definite page length is ridiculous. Of course, I also feel distributing a resume in a proprietary format like MS Word is presumptuous and a terrible idea. Consider that your resume might make its way to a sysadmin or seasoned software developer who only works on *nix boxes. You could make a really good impression with nothing more than the file format of your resume.
PDF or HTML would be my recommendation. Personally, I write mine in HTML with very clean code, proper use of stylesheets, etc. I even use a little color for headings, but I make sure they will print well in grayscale. The point is, the length of a hardcopy of my resume will depend on the browser rendering it. (I can email you a copy, if you like.)
Oh, if you go with this approach, do be prepared for clueless HR reps who understand nothing but MS Office format. Quite sadly, I've actually had to instruct someone to open my HTML file in a web browser ("Do you use Internet Explorer? That should work fine.").
I think the idea is that AOL (and, possibly, Wal-Mart) will soon begin advertising the hell out of these things as "AOL PCs", so this term could make its way into the vernacular.
I think this is a great idea. AOL can distribute these machines with no software license fees built in, but they don't have to do loads and loads of custom work. An AOL OS wouldn't make sense--why would anyone want to write an entirely new OS to provide a *subset* of the features one can get for free from Linux, FreeBSD, etc? Whether the AOL client uses WINE is irrelevant. It (allegedly) works. 99% of AOL's users would never consider installing Linux. They wouldn't even want to install a new version of Windows. In the mindset that they have created, AOL is the Internet. The PC is an appliance. If they can pull an "AOL PC" out of the box and it Just Works (tm), that's a big selling point...especially if it only costs $200 + their old monitor.
It seems I should have mentioned in my disclaimer that my familiarity with microprocessors starts with the Motorola 68HC11 and ends with the x86-64.:-) I have no PPC or Gx experience, probably because I never had access to Apple hardware after my parents' LC II (68040).
Slashdot Mirror
Sun does benefit from this. Sun will now be able to have included with Windows a correct, complete, modern implementation of Java. This provides a means for competing with Microsoft's web services, VB, etc. If a wide enough Java app userbase is established, there will always be a credible alternative to .NET (it just so happens that servers for this alternative often run Solaris). Anything that helps to build that userbase is a Good Thing for everyone but Microsoft.
BTW, it will be very nice to see Java WebStart included by default with Windows. That should make things interesting.
Alas, I was unable to find Red Hat 8.0 Personal locally. Granted, I didn't check more than a couple stores because I didn't have the time, but all I saw was Pro. I'm building a system for a friend of mine with Win XP and RH 8.0 and really wanted to send some money Red Hat's way for a fine product. Unfortunately, $150 was just too steep. :-( Instead, I picked up a $50 book that included the installation CDs. I hope some portion of that goes to Red Hat, but I doubt it.
/opt on a separate partition, so reinstallation of the OS doesn't require anything but a PATH change (I like to use /opt/bin for symlinks to apps on that mountpoint). Beat that, Microsoft. :-)
Regarding the price decrease, I think it's definitely a good idea. A Win 2k -> Win XP Pro upgrade can be had for $200; it's important for RH8 Pro to beat that. The Win XP Home upgrade is $100, so $60 wasn't too bad, but hopefully the $20 drop will attract more people due to a more favorable perception of value.
As an aside, I always find it amusing to see the "included software" list on the retail Linux distro boxes. It's not bad stuff or anything, and I'm sure a large number of people like to have it all there right away, but the first thing I do with a new Linux installation is to download the latest Mozilla, OpenOffice, NetBeans, jEdit, etc. The boxed versions have to be tested with everything else in the distro, so they're often a minor revision or two behind the latest stable release for most packages. Of course, I typically install these in
No kiddin', brotha. I've had the service since August. $50/mo, static IP address, and not a single outage! I've seen some negative comments regarding customer service, but I never even had to contact them, so I'd call it perfect customer service.
Sucks. It sounds like you're an employee. Any idea about being bought out by a particular company? Best of luck to you in your impending job hunt. It's tough here in St. Louis, too, but hopefully some work will be opening up with 2003 project budgets. I'd be happy to send your resume along to my consulting firm's recruiter, if you're open to relocating.
I had to take some simple sociology video course at the 11th hour to satisfy my graduation requirements, and the instructor told a very interesting story...
A small-town politician in Oklahoma (or Nebraska, perhaps?) suddenly got all fired up about increasing the penalties for first-time drug offenders. Of course, there was much posturing about family values, protecting children, etc., and the bill was eagerly sped through the state's legislature by other politicians looking to win points with their constituents. One reporter thought the whole thing strange, that this guy should develop an interest in drug policy overnight. He did a bit of research, and it turns out that some other politician's (can't remember who, but someone powerful) son was arrested for posession of marijuana. Knowing that the public would certainly ask questions if attempts were made to reduce first-offense penalties, these guys decided to--in short order (before the trial)--make the penalties so ridiculously severe that no jury would even consider convicting a clean-cut, college-bound 18-year-old from a good family.
Of course, it worked. I don't know what happened after the story came to light, though.
Sure, customers could install 98/ME or NT/2000 today, but if this was the way the next "major" release of Windows worked, those versions would already be obsolete (assuming a release date around 2004 or 2005). Once these platforms are officially unsupported and don't get new drivers, they become rather unattractive. And installing XP on a second machine (without deactivating the first) is more or less impossible for the casual end user.
I think MS definitely wants to move to a subscription model. The really big advantage in this scheme is that customers have to buck up the cash every month/year/period instead of just once. The result: MS doesn't depend so heavily on the success of each "major" release, and their accountants don't have to massage the numbers so much; the subscription program would generate a steady revenue stream. (BTW, I hardly think MS would notice a handful of people scrapping the default OS on their new PCs if they were actually being paid for each copy of Windows and Office in use.)
Interestingly, with this model, there's no reason they couldn't move to a Red Carpet type of update process (with much less user control, I'm sure). The whole idea of an OS "release" might change as MS moves to a more frequent release schedule. This would also save them a lot of face by giving them plenty of opportunities to roll out security patches surreptitiously.
As far as the OEMs are concerned, they'd probably just tell customers that only systems running Windows are supported for anything other than complete hardware failures.
It would be just as fair for me to say you've obviously spent about 6 minutes working with Struts. If there are a lot of scriptlets in the JSPs, something was designed poorly, and it isn't necessarily the framework. Any business logic should be in the action classes. Complex presentation logic should be in custom tags, which can accept parameters; they make very nice reusable components.
FWIW, I spend several weeks using Tapestry. I will admit, the bulk of my MVC experience is with Struts and not so much Swing or SmallTalk. Tapestry was definitely not my bag.
For example, a problem that comes up in just about any web app I've ever seen is that the user must be able to:
To digress briefly, in Struts, the developer defines "actions", which basically comprise a FormBean, Action class, and a JSP (the JSP can be selected from a predefined list at runtime based on a return value from the Action class). The FormBean holds any data needed for the view, which will typically include attributes for any form elements as well as any necessary metadata. When a user requests a view (aka "action"), the Struts engine reads the XML config file (which holds the action definitions) and passes the request along to the appropriate Action class. The Action class can analyze the request, as well as the FormBean, to determine what needs to be done, calls business methods as required, and returns a value to the Struts engine. This value maps to a "forward" entry in the config file, which simply directs the request to a given JSP. (see http://rollerjm.free.fr/pro/Struts.html for more info)
Getting back to our example, the 3 cases mentioned above can be accomodated by 1 action entry in the config file. It would be something like:(the name, "userForm", is a logical name for the FormBean; it is mapped to the actual Java class elsewhere in the config)
Anyway, the Action class and FormBean together know everything about what represents a User and what can be done with one through this app. The JSPs are responsible for presenting the User information and any options for performing actions on a User (delete, update, etc.). In fact, the "create" and "modify" forwards even map to the same JSP. Presumably, the Action class would set some kind of flag in the FormBean to indicate whether this is a new user or not.
This is the beauty of Struts. Once comfortable with the framework, one can knock out well-designed web apps very quickly...especially if a good set of custom tags have been developed.
Are you serious? I found Tapestry to be the worst framework I've ever used. When developing with it, I constantly felt as if I had to fight the tool to get anything done. I don't see how Tapestry provides anything that Struts and custom tags do not.
:-)
I realize that, coming from a MVC background (SmallTalk gui, Swing, and Struts), any component-based framework would require some mental adjustment, but I thought Tapestry was very counterintuitive. Perhaps the Eclipse plugin does all the plumbing for you, but if you need an IDE to make Tapestry usable, there is probably something wrong with the underlying model.
OTOH, if you find Tapestry easy to understand, go for it. Your brain must work quite differently than mine.
- definite
- separate
There are others, which I can't seem to remember right now but "loose" and "definately" make my skin crawl. In less formal communication, of course, I expect rampant misspellings, haphazard capitalization, and generally poor grammar. These reflect poorly on the author in formal communication.I envision the rest of the world wising up to a smarter method of getting the job done and standardizing on that. Wrapping themselves in the comfortable blanket of isolation and obsolescence are the US and, to a large degree, Great Britain. Sound familiar?
What about when I'm viewing Fark in Moz and middle-clicking (open in new tab) links at a furious pace? Or, even worse, using mouse gestures to drag over 5-10 links and simultaneously open them all in new tabs? In the particular case of Fark, the initial request for each link will go through the fark.com domain (for nav statistics, I suppose), but is immediately forwarded on to another domain.
Really, I guess those requests could be handled at 1 second or, preferably, user-specified intervals. I can't imagine viewing the requested documents (more likely images, if we're being honest here) at a faster pace, anyway.
- Can't print (I'm setting the LAN up soon to share the software-driven printer)
- Her boss sends a work schedule in stupid Word format every week, which caused problems (fixed already by having Moz send those to OpenOffice)
- No silly Pipe Dream game (need to install WINE)
I hope to abandon MS products altogether in the near future. She's still in school, but I think she can get by with OpenOffice for class projects. Next semester could be support-intensive, though.It is a legitimate loss. A loss is profit's ugly counterpart. In the same way, expenses are the opposite of revenues. When expenses exceed revenues, you have a net "loss."
The fact that it was expected doesn't make it any less of a loss. To illustrate my point, I expect to get my butt kicked in StarCraft every time I play my friend. But I'd still call the result of each encounter a loss. (Really, "a shameful embarrasment" would be more accurate, but my point stands.)
I've found that when I forget to take breaks from the coding, I'm a lot worse off in general: eye strain, neck stiffness, back discomfort, arthritic wrists, etc. The best tool I've found so far is quite simple but very effective: xwrits. It's been mentioned here on slashdot several times before, but I think it's worth repeating for those who haven't seen it before.
:-) (BTW, has anyone tested it on OSX?)
xwrits allows you to specify the interval between breaks, duration of breaks, and many other useful things like whether you should get the finger when you ignore the warning.
I had to wear a tie every day when I consulted at Enterprise. The official dress code requires pressed pants and a jacket, with the same ludicrous requirement for wearing the jacket whenever coming to or leaving the building. (St. Louis, while perhaps not as hot as Texas, sees downright miserable temperatures and humidity in the summer.) Fortunately, we were allowed some slack in IT and just had to wear the tie. :-)
:-)
Anyway, my point is this: if you are lucky enough to choose between two positions--one with a formal dress code, the other (business) casual--be sure to factor in the cost of shirts, ties, pants, shoes, dry cleaning, and time for ironing. This makes a bit of a dent in the salary. Trust me. Having a tie dry cleaned will cost you almost as much as a new tie (learned the hard way). And don't think for a minute that you can just run it through the machine on "delicate" (also learned the hard way).
My experience has been that a dress code is much more than a dress code. In most cases, it serves as a barometer of management's general attitude toward the staff. (Exceptions apply, of course, in cases where the staff is highly visible to clients, et al.) A formal dress code generally indicates a management structure focused on control. Having the serfs running around in identical dress must be someone's way of getting their jollies because it certainly doesn't make the employees any happier. Management by respect and trust, OTOH, gives the employees much more latitude in getting the job done and doesn't focus so much on silly details. If you hire competent, professional people, you can expect them to behave competently and professionally.
This method was used in an episode of Law & Order. The prosecutors wanted to charge the guilty party but didn't think they had enough evidence to go to trial. The family and lawyer of the victim used a Writ of Mandate to force them to proceed.
Yes, that would be a nice feature. You can also accelerate your pr0n browsing with mouse gestures. For instance, the Right-Up-Left gesture over one or more links (read "thumbnails") will open all those links in new tabs. Very nice. :-)
Parent: -1 Redundant Heh heh, j/k. :-P
Heh heh, I *loved* GEOS on our C64! My family went from a Vic-20 to a C-64, and then to a Mac LCII (4MB RAM, 40MB HDD). Seriously, though, I thought GEOS was absolutely revolutionary.
The parent may be a troll, but I'll bite...
The problem with the current kernel configuration process is not really the interface itself. ``make xconfig'' is not perfect, but it gets the job done well enough. The real problem is that none of the kernel developers really know the syntax used in this configurator. Thus, the code behind xconfig, etc., has become a sloppy mess of cut-and-pasted crap. I imagine the obfuscation is approaching a critical level where maintenance becomes nearly impossible.
Good news, IOW.
There was an article posted here a few months ago, IIRC, that made some interesting points about the XBox endeavor. One such point was that Microsoft would never achieve the low production costs that Sony and Nintendo enjoy because these two companies use purpose-built, specially designed hardware and farm out production of the components. Sony, in particular, has been able to consolidate the GPU and CPU onto a single die, decreasing production costs considerably. MS, however, will never get NVidia and Intel chips consolidated in the same manner, and they don't have as much control over the platform because they're tied to the standard PC architecture.
6 2402.html
I searched and found this:
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/0624/xbox0
but I don't know if that's the article I remembered.
My opinion is that keeping a resume to a definite page length is ridiculous. Of course, I also feel distributing a resume in a proprietary format like MS Word is presumptuous and a terrible idea. Consider that your resume might make its way to a sysadmin or seasoned software developer who only works on *nix boxes. You could make a really good impression with nothing more than the file format of your resume.
PDF or HTML would be my recommendation. Personally, I write mine in HTML with very clean code, proper use of stylesheets, etc. I even use a little color for headings, but I make sure they will print well in grayscale. The point is, the length of a hardcopy of my resume will depend on the browser rendering it. (I can email you a copy, if you like.)
Oh, if you go with this approach, do be prepared for clueless HR reps who understand nothing but MS Office format. Quite sadly, I've actually had to instruct someone to open my HTML file in a web browser ("Do you use Internet Explorer? That should work fine.").
I think the idea is that AOL (and, possibly, Wal-Mart) will soon begin advertising the hell out of these things as "AOL PCs", so this term could make its way into the vernacular.
I think this is a great idea. AOL can distribute these machines with no software license fees built in, but they don't have to do loads and loads of custom work. An AOL OS wouldn't make sense--why would anyone want to write an entirely new OS to provide a *subset* of the features one can get for free from Linux, FreeBSD, etc? Whether the AOL client uses WINE is irrelevant. It (allegedly) works. 99% of AOL's users would never consider installing Linux. They wouldn't even want to install a new version of Windows. In the mindset that they have created, AOL is the Internet. The PC is an appliance. If they can pull an "AOL PC" out of the box and it Just Works (tm), that's a big selling point...especially if it only costs $200 + their old monitor.
In summary, I think this is a big deal.
It seems I should have mentioned in my disclaimer that my familiarity with microprocessors starts with the Motorola 68HC11 and ends with the x86-64. :-) I have no PPC or Gx experience, probably because I never had access to Apple hardware after my parents' LC II (68040).