I've played the original Fallout 1/2 and enjoyed them immensely. I got the F3, and after a disappointing few weeks before the patch, started really getting into it.. It's my first FPS that I've played extensively. I noticed that it makes me queasy though, almost nauseous. Though I'd love to continue playing the game, it's not possible. Any experienced FPS that have suggestions (yeah, besides taking Rad-X or Radaway)..
It's thought that the Star Trek Enterprise was named after this famous aircraft carrier which was the most-decorated U.S. Navy vessel of World War II.
Indeed... One of my first models was the Enterprise complete with tiny gray aircraft:D
I knew about the aircraft carrier (at least everything that was written on the pamphlet inside the box) long before I'd ever started watching Star Trek...
In 2003 I did some consulting work for a family owned real estate business. The son was taking classes at the local community college. His dad insisted that the kid take part in the coding process because he was very good at it. The computers were running some ancient OS/2 based accounting package written in some REXX-like scripting language. My task was to convert the databases over to something from a recent decade and upgrade the hardware. I got referred from another consultant who couldn't take the job (I wonder why).
Throughout my two weeks there, I had to have this 17-year old kid shadowing me. The father told him to do this so that in the future he wouldn't need to hire an expensive consultant. Plus the kid was "good with computers." At first I didn't mind. Heck, I started in a similar way by shadowing my cousin at Gould. But this kid had no aptitude. He'd nod as if he knew what I was doing, but after three days was still having trouble getting a directory listing right and would mix up the Unix and Windows machine commands (he didn't write anything down either, so repeated lots of questions).
After a while, I tasked him with verifying some output between two files just to keep him busy. Mistake. His dad insisted that I cut my rate because the son was now doing some of the work.
These people smelled oddly. The office was filthy, no air-conditioning, dusty, food stains everywhere. And the attitude of the owners was that I was just trying to steal their money. They griped about everything. They tried to shove in extra work such as bringing in their home PCs. I've worked in more physically uncomfortable places before, but this place was the worst experience of my career.
Serenity is as meaningful as "Enterprise". Hell, the name "Enterprise" is pretty damn boring without the back-history. It conjures visions of boardrooms and suits, "enterprise-wide mandate", "enterprise agreement", "enterprise regulations".
So they institute caps. Now you can download and watch a couple of HD movies from Hulu, but that could eat up your entire month's bandwidth allotment. So you're less likely to use online video and more likely to tune in on your TV. Cable wins.
Probably true for a percentage of the population. In my case (and I'm mind-numbingly average in most of my daily routine), if I can't watch a show online I won't watch it on cable/tv. The simple reason is that the timings of the broadcast never line up with my schedule.
Someone creates some content for a website. Their revenue is based on the number of people visiting the site.
Someone else comes along and aggregates multiple websites. Instead of people visiting the original site, they start to visit the aggregator because it's more convenient. The aggregator gets the views and the advertising money.
The content creators lose out, even though they create the content.
The argument from the aggregator site is that it pushes viewers to sites that they would never normally visit. E.g., a person in Florida may never read an Oklahoma newspaper unless there was a link somewhere on an aggregator.
Sometimes it balances out, but more and more, it's in favor of the aggregator.
I think eventually content will be separated from the presentation. Companies like the AP, like the local Herald, will switch from providing a newspaper or website into providing a standard feed, and charging based on that feed. This is very similar to how other media is shopped around.
There's a danger in that news will also become indistinguishable from entertainment (it's almost there already), but that may be the only way the newspapers can survive.
For those of you who have already discovered Michael 'Rands' Lopp's blog Rands In Repose, I congratulate you, as you are clearly an intelligent audience.
hehe.. +1 if I could...
So does this mean that I am intelligent because I've read it? What if I hated it??
I'm going to do the same and categorize anyone who agrees with me as intelligent. Anyone who does not is evil.
This is so true. In fact, well meaning reporters can inadvertently introduce bias.
For example, say that 95% of all scientists agree on a position. There is a fringe 2% group that thinks alien bunnies are behind it, and 3% undecided. A reporter, trying to show both sides of the issue may publish an article with two viewpoints: the established and the fringe. This makes the fringe group very happy because the journalist has promoted their views from 2% to 50%.
Hehe.. I went throught *EXACTLY* those same problems. Either Superfetch or the virus scanner was causing the machine to become unusable for 20-30 minutes at a time. It was even easy to disable the virus scan at these times because the mouse would become so unresponsive that you had to *slowly* move the mouse, wait until the pointer moved on screen, then pray that it would recognize your clicks.
I'm lucky in that the laptop is fairly powerful, but Vista made it less responsive than a old Inspiron 600M.
Stop this "XP downgrade" madness, at least on non gamer machines. You aren't doing a favour, you are putting the non technical types in huge risk along with the old OS you are installing. Another thing is, they paid for Vista, somehow.
I downgraded my Dell XPS 1530 from Vista to XP a few months ago because of very, very bad problems with the network card disconnecting. Under XP it runs perfectly, but Vista is plagued with random disconnects that require shutting off then restarting the interface before it reconnects. Maybe it's better now, but it was the absolute best thing I did for my sanity when I replaced Vista (I did hedge my bets though and used a separate HD).
Recently I'd noticed that my main laptop (a Dell Inspiron E1505) was not quite as fast as I'd wanted. It is a CentOS 5.2 system running KDE. The main apps I use are Firefox, JEdit, VMWare/VirtualBox, konsole, xine/vlc.
I started with Firefox, since it's always running. First steps were to install NoScript and AdBlocker. With these installed, it seems like a completely different browser.
Next thing was to get rid of KDE. On other systems I use Fluxbox. This time I went with XFCE4. From the GDM screen to a ready system, XFCE4 takes about 4 seconds to load versus about 20s for KDE. Everything also seems a lot more responsive.
A more difficult thing was to get rid of konqueror. I like it as a file manager, but it seems to lag a bit. However, I quickly got used to the xfce4 file manager which is faster by a bit. For one thing, thumbnails appear much quicker with the xfce file manager. This may be because it re-uses other thumbnail caches though.
Then I started tweaking my network setup. From a browsing standpoint, this made a pretty good improvement. I have a local caching DNS server on my LAN. This in itself is worth having since frequently used pages are noticeably faster than hitting my ISPs nameserver. Next was to install squid proxy. This is harder to notice if you just have a single machine (in fact, may hinder performance in that case), but if you have multiple people using the pipe then the bandwidth usage change is significant. I tried adjusting TCP window size and various other tweaks (including those for Firefox), but didn't notice much difference. YMMV.
Of course, I also did away with lots of eye candy. For example, I disabled window manager animations, opaque window moves, etc.. I kept things like sub-pixel font settings because they make the experience better.
All the other things are probably noticeable. E.g., force compression on SSH connections, firefox page preload, disable unused services (gpm, sendmail, etc..). They don't use much resources when inactice, but perhaps the 10M or so of memory here and there can be used elsewhere.
You can do Oracle with just a single machine running multiple VMs; however, if you really want to get serious, you should consider building two physical machines. One each machine, create a virtual or two with 1-2G of RAM. for the shared disk, use DRBD volumes between the two.
My test RAC cluster has two AMD X2 64-bit systems with two gigabit NICs each. CompUSA has a similar machine for about $212 on sale this week. Newegg prices are similar. You'll need to add a couple extra Gig NIC and some more storage. Still should cost under $400 each.
On each physical system I used CentOS 5.2 with Xen. I created LVMs on the physical machines as the root volumes. Also carved out a separate volume to back the shared volume. Then I carved out a xen virtual machine on each with 1.5G each. I put the DRBD network on one pair of NICs. The other pair was used for the network and heartbeat (virtual ethernet devices).
Then I thought maybe they're trying to cram a storage array and a switch into the same box. With the proper virtualization engine, you'd essentially have a data center in a box. Right now we can sort of do this with blades. Need a new server? Just pop in a blade. But with everything virtualized it becomes even easier. Need a new server? Just configure one in the GUI.
I bought my 40D thinking it would last me three years. It's barely 18 months old and I'm thinking of moving up to the 50D, or hopefully, a full frame model... But that's expensive.
My other hobby is video. I picked up a DVC60 thinking it would last a couple years. So far it has, but already I see that another camera will make certain things *easier*...
And that's the problem: It's easier to do things with the newer models. Someone more experienced would be able to capture the same shots with a paper cup, a sharp needle, and a towel, but I'm not at that level and maybe rely on the electronics more often. (Not that either approach is bad..)
Anyway, I'm really tempted by the high-def video of the full frame models. It may allow me to combine my video and still photography in one camera and save a bundle. What worries me is that it won't do it as well as a standalone.
The way I'd tackle this is to setup a central server then install screen. Have each collaborator share the same screen session. That way, every one can collaborate on the same document in real time. The obvious advantage of this is that the fastest typists, which are generally the more experienced coders, will have the best chance of getting edits in place. To tackle the code versioning issue, alias the vi session to something like "cvs commit xxxx". So anytime someone edits a file, it will commit it to CVS.
No man.. It was one of those co-workers of that guy who created the fjords that planted the fossils. Slartifartbast, Slartibartfast... something like that..
Indeed. I can see the convenience of the thing. I do like to read several books during the week, putting each down when I reach my tolerance level.
If all books for the Kindle were $10 (similar to the one price of iTunes) then it would be worthwhile to me, providing that computer books were available. I spend, on average, about $50/month on two to three books.
It would be nice to have my entire computer book collection available (as I do on my laptop). The space savings in my library alone would be awesome.
But the biggest downside is that I can't lend out the books anymore. Of the six books I bought in the past couple months, four of them are now on loan to friends.
I use Firefox on Linux as my primary browser. I'm having a huge problem with random slowdowns, however. It seems to be fairly random, exacerbated when multiple tabs are open, and possibly related to Flash. When the slowdowns start occuring Firefox will start eating 99% of CPU and become unresponsive. A strace will show dozens of gettimeofday() calls every second.
A google search for "firefox getttimeofday" will show many people with similar problems.
This is on CentOS 5.2 with the latest packaged firefox...
I enjoy strong female characters. Wishy-washy girls are damn boring. Give me a woman who can kick my ass when I try to grab hers and I'm hers. She needs to be intellectually and emotionally bad-ass too. Hell, if she can understand the DCTs behind that JPEG and adjust the DoF for optimum bokeh while she takes a picture of her kickboxing team, then I'll make my case to be her man.
It's one thing to be with a gentle little thing just out of college... It's another thing entirely to get down with a woman who knows what she wants. Want to make an unsure adolescent male confident? Don't let him wrestle with rabbits (hah, like the recent Heroes episode).. Give him tigers.
I agree with the rest though. Television has been emasculated. I enjoy Dystopia though... Against the backdrop of crumbling civilization, the gems that are the future of mankind stand out.
A lot of the crap you have to struggle with won't ever have any charm, and increased marked share would make a lot of it go away.
And that's precisely the reason market share should not be the driving force. There's no charm (for me) in using ndiswrappers to get my wireless card to work. All I care about is that it works with minimal effort. Increased market share won't magically get my drivers to work. If I want my wireless to work, I buy hardware that works well with Linux.
Look at something as innocuous as a DVD... I was recently using a CD burner application to copy some homemade videos. I launched the burner utility (CDBurnerXP) and then inserted a blank. After a few moments the OS ejected the DVD. Why? It was set to autoplay and couldn't read the blank. On another machine, inserting a blank DVD will launch a backup utility. If VMWare or iTunes is open, something else might happen entirely. It's not the fault of the OS in this case, just the fault of applications assuming they know what the user wants.
The problem with targeting the masses is that you end up targeting the mode or the median user. You end up removing "power" features because it's dangerous in the wrong hands. Certainly this is needed for some users, but again, this is the problem with striving for market share.
Linux to me is like a great fishing spot. There are few people hanging around. All of them fairly experienced. No one asks, "What's a lure?"
Having millions of clueless newbies flocking to Linux is like building an interstate highway next to my fishing spot. Sure, it makes it easier to get to my fishing spot, but then it's not quite the same.
Of course, it's not a perfect analogy. In the Linux world there can be thousands of fishing spots. Some of them can have interstates and access ramps right along side of them. Some can only be accessed via a mile long spelunk and a hike.
There's room for both. But I think it's misguided to invite users just for the sake of market share. Market share is irrelevant to Linux. Or at least it is to me.
It's fairly trivial to install RedHat/CentOS based clusters, especially for web serving purposes.
There are a few components involved: 1) A heartbeat to let each node know if the other goes out.
2) Some form of shared storage if you need to write to the filesystem.
3) Some methood of bringing up services when it fails over.
A web server with a backend database is one of the canonical examples. You'd install the heartbeaat service on both nodes. Next, install DRBD (distributed replicated block device). Finally, configure the services to bring up during a failure. The whole process takes about an hour following instructions on places like HOWTOFORGE.
But 1000 visitors a day is not much. It's small enough that you could consider virtualizing the nodes and just using virtualization failover.
I left one company that was in trouble for misspending employee 401K funds. One manager was in a barely concealed affair with his subordinate. Another manager showed up to work drunk.
I don't remember the exact words I used, but it was something similar to: The management staff here is remarkable. I remain grateful for my short time employed with xxxx. Thank you and best regards.
As other people have mentioned, in some fields (IT in particular) it may not pay to say what you truly feel.
Python is nice, but hardly installed everywhere. It's available on Linux certainly, but not always on AIX or Solaris. Yes, it is just an installation away, but many of the systems I maintain require change management procedures to even chmod a file.
Shell scripts do have decent error handling for what they need to do. With traps and proper usage of error codes, they are not much different from lower level languages.
I'd agree that I now *prefer* to write longer scripts in Python. However, few of the people I work with know Python, or even Perl. They can get around with korn and bourne as these are the default scripting languages on more traditional Unix systems.
Which comes down to the gist of the issue. Do you write code in a language you prefer or one that can be maintained by the admins? I'd argue that it doesn't matter what language you use. If you write poor code in shell you will likely write poor code in Python too.
My first Linux was downloaded with a 9600Baud modem.. There were newer modems at the time, but I saw no need for it:D. I got most of the floppies working and created, but for some reason, the installation wouldn't quite complete. I posted a message and within a few hours, someone offered to send me a known working set of disks. He did. Within a week I was booting into my first Linux prompt.
That's what I remember most about Linux. Some random stranger spent his time and money to send me disks. That was just unbelievable.
Tinkering with that Linux installation reminded me of the first computers I'd owned.. The TI99/4A, the 800XL, C64... They were so wonderful to tinker with...
It never ends. Before it was a wonder to get dialup access to a shell account working.. then tcp... then the first X session.. Now I'm using Linux to tinker with HDR images, create music, ray trace, re-create experiments that once took million dollar equipment, map Martian images...
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I've played the original Fallout 1/2 and enjoyed them immensely. I got the F3, and after a disappointing few weeks before the patch, started really getting into it.. It's my first FPS that I've played extensively. I noticed that it makes me queasy though, almost nauseous. Though I'd love to continue playing the game, it's not possible. Any experienced FPS that have suggestions (yeah, besides taking Rad-X or Radaway)..
It's thought that the Star Trek Enterprise was named after this famous aircraft carrier which was the most-decorated U.S. Navy vessel of World War II.
Indeed... One of my first models was the Enterprise complete with tiny gray aircraft :D
I knew about the aircraft carrier (at least everything that was written on the pamphlet inside the box) long before I'd ever started watching Star Trek...
In 2003 I did some consulting work for a family owned real estate business. The son was taking classes at the local community college. His dad insisted that the kid take part in the coding process because he was very good at it. The computers were running some ancient OS/2 based accounting package written in some REXX-like scripting language. My task was to convert the databases over to something from a recent decade and upgrade the hardware. I got referred from another consultant who couldn't take the job (I wonder why).
Throughout my two weeks there, I had to have this 17-year old kid shadowing me. The father told him to do this so that in the future he wouldn't need to hire an expensive consultant. Plus the kid was "good with computers." At first I didn't mind. Heck, I started in a similar way by shadowing my cousin at Gould. But this kid had no aptitude. He'd nod as if he knew what I was doing, but after three days was still having trouble getting a directory listing right and would mix up the Unix and Windows machine commands (he didn't write anything down either, so repeated lots of questions).
After a while, I tasked him with verifying some output between two files just to keep him busy. Mistake. His dad insisted that I cut my rate because the son was now doing some of the work.
These people smelled oddly. The office was filthy, no air-conditioning, dusty, food stains everywhere. And the attitude of the owners was that I was just trying to steal their money. They griped about everything. They tried to shove in extra work such as bringing in their home PCs. I've worked in more physically uncomfortable places before, but this place was the worst experience of my career.
Serenity is as meaningful as "Enterprise". Hell, the name "Enterprise" is pretty damn boring without the back-history. It conjures visions of boardrooms and suits, "enterprise-wide mandate", "enterprise agreement", "enterprise regulations".
So they institute caps. Now you can download and watch a couple of HD movies from Hulu, but that could eat up your entire month's bandwidth allotment. So you're less likely to use online video and more likely to tune in on your TV. Cable wins.
Probably true for a percentage of the population. In my case (and I'm mind-numbingly average in most of my daily routine), if I can't watch a show online I won't watch it on cable/tv. The simple reason is that the timings of the broadcast never line up with my schedule.
It works more like this:
Someone creates some content for a website. Their revenue is based on the number of people visiting the site.
Someone else comes along and aggregates multiple websites. Instead of people visiting the original site, they start to visit the aggregator because it's more convenient. The aggregator gets the views and the advertising money.
The content creators lose out, even though they create the content.
The argument from the aggregator site is that it pushes viewers to sites that they would never normally visit. E.g., a person in Florida may never read an Oklahoma newspaper unless there was a link somewhere on an aggregator.
Sometimes it balances out, but more and more, it's in favor of the aggregator.
I think eventually content will be separated from the presentation. Companies like the AP, like the local Herald, will switch from providing a newspaper or website into providing a standard feed, and charging based on that feed. This is very similar to how other media is shopped around.
There's a danger in that news will also become indistinguishable from entertainment (it's almost there already), but that may be the only way the newspapers can survive.
For those of you who have already discovered Michael 'Rands' Lopp's blog Rands In Repose, I congratulate you, as you are clearly an intelligent audience.
hehe.. +1 if I could...
So does this mean that I am intelligent because I've read it? What if I hated it??
I'm going to do the same and categorize anyone who agrees with me as intelligent. Anyone who does not is evil.
This is so true. In fact, well meaning reporters can inadvertently introduce bias.
For example, say that 95% of all scientists agree on a position. There is a fringe 2% group that thinks alien bunnies are behind it, and 3% undecided. A reporter, trying to show both sides of the issue may publish an article with two viewpoints: the established and the fringe. This makes the fringe group very happy because the journalist has promoted their views from 2% to 50%.
Hehe.. I went throught *EXACTLY* those same problems. Either Superfetch or the virus scanner was causing the machine to become unusable for 20-30 minutes at a time. It was even easy to disable the virus scan at these times because the mouse would become so unresponsive that you had to *slowly* move the mouse, wait until the pointer moved on screen, then pray that it would recognize your clicks.
I'm lucky in that the laptop is fairly powerful, but Vista made it less responsive than a old Inspiron 600M.
Stop this "XP downgrade" madness, at least on non gamer machines. You aren't doing a favour, you are putting the non technical types in huge risk along with the old OS you are installing. Another thing is, they paid for Vista, somehow.
I downgraded my Dell XPS 1530 from Vista to XP a few months ago because of very, very bad problems with the network card disconnecting. Under XP it runs perfectly, but Vista is plagued with random disconnects that require shutting off then restarting the interface before it reconnects. Maybe it's better now, but it was the absolute best thing I did for my sanity when I replaced Vista (I did hedge my bets though and used a separate HD).
Recently I'd noticed that my main laptop (a Dell Inspiron E1505) was not quite as fast as I'd wanted. It is a CentOS 5.2 system running KDE. The main apps I use are Firefox, JEdit, VMWare/VirtualBox, konsole, xine/vlc.
I started with Firefox, since it's always running. First steps were to install NoScript and AdBlocker. With these installed, it seems like a completely different browser.
Next thing was to get rid of KDE. On other systems I use Fluxbox. This time I went with XFCE4. From the GDM screen to a ready system, XFCE4 takes about 4 seconds to load versus about 20s for KDE. Everything also seems a lot more responsive.
A more difficult thing was to get rid of konqueror. I like it as a file manager, but it seems to lag a bit. However, I quickly got used to the xfce4 file manager which is faster by a bit. For one thing, thumbnails appear much quicker with the xfce file manager. This may be because it re-uses other thumbnail caches though.
Then I started tweaking my network setup. From a browsing standpoint, this made a pretty good improvement. I have a local caching DNS server on my LAN. This in itself is worth having since frequently used pages are noticeably faster than hitting my ISPs nameserver. Next was to install squid proxy. This is harder to notice if you just have a single machine (in fact, may hinder performance in that case), but if you have multiple people using the pipe then the bandwidth usage change is significant. I tried adjusting TCP window size and various other tweaks (including those for Firefox), but didn't notice much difference. YMMV.
Of course, I also did away with lots of eye candy. For example, I disabled window manager animations, opaque window moves, etc.. I kept things like sub-pixel font settings because they make the experience better.
All the other things are probably noticeable. E.g., force compression on SSH connections, firefox page preload, disable unused services (gpm, sendmail, etc..). They don't use much resources when inactice, but perhaps the 10M or so of memory here and there can be used elsewhere.
You can do Oracle with just a single machine running multiple VMs; however, if you really want to get serious, you should consider building two physical machines. One each machine, create a virtual or two with 1-2G of RAM. for the shared disk, use DRBD volumes between the two.
My test RAC cluster has two AMD X2 64-bit systems with two gigabit NICs each. CompUSA has a similar machine for about $212 on sale this week. Newegg prices are similar. You'll need to add a couple extra Gig NIC and some more storage. Still should cost under $400 each.
On each physical system I used CentOS 5.2 with Xen. I created LVMs on the physical machines as the root volumes. Also carved out a separate volume to back the shared volume. Then I carved out a xen virtual machine on each with 1.5G each. I put the DRBD network on one pair of NICs. The other pair was used for the network and heartbeat (virtual ethernet devices).
Yeah, I couldn't get that either...
Then I thought maybe they're trying to cram a storage array and a switch into the same box. With the proper virtualization engine, you'd essentially have a data center in a box. Right now we can sort of do this with blades. Need a new server? Just pop in a blade. But with everything virtualized it becomes even easier. Need a new server? Just configure one in the GUI.
I bought my 40D thinking it would last me three years. It's barely 18 months old and I'm thinking of moving up to the 50D, or hopefully, a full frame model... But that's expensive.
My other hobby is video. I picked up a DVC60 thinking it would last a couple years. So far it has, but already I see that another camera will make certain things *easier*...
And that's the problem: It's easier to do things with the newer models. Someone more experienced would be able to capture the same shots with a paper cup, a sharp needle, and a towel, but I'm not at that level and maybe rely on the electronics more often. (Not that either approach is bad..)
Anyway, I'm really tempted by the high-def video of the full frame models. It may allow me to combine my video and still photography in one camera and save a bundle. What worries me is that it won't do it as well as a standalone.
The way I'd tackle this is to setup a central server then install screen. Have each collaborator share the same screen session. That way, every one can collaborate on the same document in real time. The obvious advantage of this is that the fastest typists, which are generally the more experienced coders, will have the best chance of getting edits in place. To tackle the code versioning issue, alias the vi session to something like "cvs commit xxxx". So anytime someone edits a file, it will commit it to CVS.
This is agile development at its finest.
No man.. It was one of those co-workers of that guy who created the fjords that planted the fossils. Slartifartbast, Slartibartfast... something like that..
Indeed. I can see the convenience of the thing. I do like to read several books during the week, putting each down when I reach my tolerance level.
If all books for the Kindle were $10 (similar to the one price of iTunes) then it would be worthwhile to me, providing that computer books were available. I spend, on average, about $50/month on two to three books.
It would be nice to have my entire computer book collection available (as I do on my laptop). The space savings in my library alone would be awesome.
But the biggest downside is that I can't lend out the books anymore. Of the six books I bought in the past couple months, four of them are now on loan to friends.
I use Firefox on Linux as my primary browser. I'm having a huge problem with random slowdowns, however. It seems to be fairly random, exacerbated when multiple tabs are open, and possibly related to Flash. When the slowdowns start occuring Firefox will start eating 99% of CPU and become unresponsive. A strace will show dozens of gettimeofday() calls every second.
A google search for "firefox getttimeofday" will show many people with similar problems.
This is on CentOS 5.2 with the latest packaged firefox...
Anyone seeing similar problems?
Uh, yeah.
I enjoy strong female characters. Wishy-washy girls are damn boring. Give me a woman who can kick my ass when I try to grab hers and I'm hers. She needs to be intellectually and emotionally bad-ass too. Hell, if she can understand the DCTs behind that JPEG and adjust the DoF for optimum bokeh while she takes a picture of her kickboxing team, then I'll make my case to be her man.
It's one thing to be with a gentle little thing just out of college... It's another thing entirely to get down with a woman who knows what she wants. Want to make an unsure adolescent male confident? Don't let him wrestle with rabbits (hah, like the recent Heroes episode).. Give him tigers.
I agree with the rest though. Television has been emasculated. I enjoy Dystopia though... Against the backdrop of crumbling civilization, the gems that are the future of mankind stand out.
A lot of the crap you have to struggle with won't ever have any charm, and increased marked share would make a lot of it go away.
And that's precisely the reason market share should not be the driving force. There's no charm (for me) in using ndiswrappers to get my wireless card to work. All I care about is that it works with minimal effort. Increased market share won't magically get my drivers to work. If I want my wireless to work, I buy hardware that works well with Linux.
Look at something as innocuous as a DVD... I was recently using a CD burner application to copy some homemade videos. I launched the burner utility (CDBurnerXP) and then inserted a blank. After a few moments the OS ejected the DVD. Why? It was set to autoplay and couldn't read the blank. On another machine, inserting a blank DVD will launch a backup utility. If VMWare or iTunes is open, something else might happen entirely. It's not the fault of the OS in this case, just the fault of applications assuming they know what the user wants.
The problem with targeting the masses is that you end up targeting the mode or the median user. You end up removing "power" features because it's dangerous in the wrong hands. Certainly this is needed for some users, but again, this is the problem with striving for market share.
Here's my take:
Linux to me is like a great fishing spot. There are few people hanging around. All of them fairly experienced. No one asks, "What's a lure?"
Having millions of clueless newbies flocking to Linux is like building an interstate highway next to my fishing spot. Sure, it makes it easier to get to my fishing spot, but then it's not quite the same.
Of course, it's not a perfect analogy. In the Linux world there can be thousands of fishing spots. Some of them can have interstates and access ramps right along side of them. Some can only be accessed via a mile long spelunk and a hike.
There's room for both. But I think it's misguided to invite users just for the sake of market share. Market share is irrelevant to Linux. Or at least it is to me.
It's fairly trivial to install RedHat/CentOS based clusters, especially for web serving purposes.
There are a few components involved:
1) A heartbeat to let each node know if the other goes out.
2) Some form of shared storage if you need to write to the filesystem.
3) Some methood of bringing up services when it fails over.
A web server with a backend database is one of the canonical examples. You'd install the heartbeaat service on both nodes. Next, install DRBD (distributed replicated block device). Finally, configure the services to bring up during a failure. The whole process takes about an hour following instructions on places like HOWTOFORGE.
But 1000 visitors a day is not much. It's small enough that you could consider virtualizing the nodes and just using virtualization failover.
I left one company that was in trouble for misspending employee 401K funds. One manager was in a barely concealed affair with his subordinate. Another manager showed up to work drunk.
I don't remember the exact words I used, but it was something similar to:
The management staff here is remarkable. I remain grateful for my short time employed with xxxx. Thank you and best regards.
As other people have mentioned, in some fields (IT in particular) it may not pay to say what you truly feel.
Python is nice, but hardly installed everywhere. It's available on Linux certainly, but not always on AIX or Solaris. Yes, it is just an installation away, but many of the systems I maintain require change management procedures to even chmod a file.
Shell scripts do have decent error handling for what they need to do. With traps and proper usage of error codes, they are not much different from lower level languages.
I'd agree that I now *prefer* to write longer scripts in Python. However, few of the people I work with know Python, or even Perl. They can get around with korn and bourne as these are the default scripting languages on more traditional Unix systems.
Which comes down to the gist of the issue. Do you write code in a language you prefer or one that can be maintained by the admins? I'd argue that it doesn't matter what language you use. If you write poor code in shell you will likely write poor code in Python too.
My first Linux was downloaded with a 9600Baud modem.. There were newer modems at the time, but I saw no need for it :D. I got most of the floppies working and created, but for some reason, the installation wouldn't quite complete. I posted a message and within a few hours, someone offered to send me a known working set of disks. He did. Within a week I was booting into my first Linux prompt.
That's what I remember most about Linux. Some random stranger spent his time and money to send me disks. That was just unbelievable.
Tinkering with that Linux installation reminded me of the first computers I'd owned.. The TI99/4A, the 800XL, C64... They were so wonderful to tinker with...
It never ends. Before it was a wonder to get dialup access to a shell account working.. then tcp... then the first X session.. Now I'm using Linux to tinker with HDR images, create music, ray trace, re-create experiments that once took million dollar equipment, map Martian images...