Maybe so but if you're setting up a low cost lab you'll probably go with a cheaper monitor. Probably closer to US$100. If I were going to buy a good monitor I'd go with one of those large flat panel monitors from Apple. You don't need something that fancy to web browse and word process though.:)
Microsoft can afford to gamble on lossing ventures. They have the money. They see the future. That's why they are trying such iffy new directions. Will they find a winning route to nirvana? Who knows.. if not then they'll die. Evolve or fail. That's all any of us can do.
Every program opened benefits the community. In the least it's educational. It's also great for people that like to archieve old games. This way they can do so legally. This way we can still play all of our favorite Duke3D-based games on Linux or Windows XXX or whatever without having to totally recreate the engine from scratch. This way we can port Duke3D to a PDA and avoid purchasing a GameBoy.;)
What I'd really like the code to is the old 2D id, Apogee, and Epic games. Command Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit!
It's not current users that'll switch so much as that new adopters will go with the free alternative. As they do MySQL will develop it's own feature set and reputation until eventually it is challenging Oracle. I think it'll take longer than competition to most of M$'s main product line but it will happen unless Oracle starts to adjust now.
In a way he is right. For lab enviroments thin clients can make life a lot easier and cheaper. The only problem with his prediction is that there is no price benefit to not using a PC as the thin client. I like using bootable Linux cd's (it's a cheap and easily available solution) and leaving out the hdd but you could use a cheap hdd, flash memory, etc to the same purpose. You don't need an especially fast CPU or lots of RAM so it's not hard to put together the whole system for around $100 each. Put a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and maybe speakers on each one and you're all set. Say $250 for each complete system including your time assembling it.
RAM and hdd space is much cheaper to buy in large sizes. You can put together a cheap server with a couple hundred gigs of hdd space and a couple gigs of RAM for $1000. That can usually drive a dozen or more clients at a time without much trouble. You can maintain all your users software for a fraction of the cost of doing so with typical one-install-per-machine configuration. Backups are easy and centralized. Users can move between client machines if needed without trying to find their files and setting things back up. It's easy even for the user to bring up their desktop from a remote location, their laptop during a meeting, or at home and do whatever they need to do. No need for syncing files and such.
I think mesh/P2P computing will also contribute to the trend towards thin clients. The spare resources of each client machine will lessen the servers load while still maintaining the benefits of centralization. Multiple servers will be pluggable together such that the work load is spread among them and if one goes down it's workload is automaticlly moved to another server in the cluster. Something of a hybrid between mainframe/terminal and PC concepts.
MySQL is a lot faster than Oracle on comparable hardware and it's progressing quickly towards including the more useful features of big db suites like Oracle. The majority of the websites that use a db use MySQL. Oracle is way to expensive for small websites and doesn't provide what most large websites need. That's a big market Oracle is missing out on.
PostgreSQL isn't bad either but MySQL tends to be the favorite of web developers. They compete with each other and help drive each other forward.
I don't think either MySQL or Postgres are a challenge to Oracle in the data center but as they mature they will be more so. They have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight too so they can mature much faster than products such as Oracle. They are missing features but they are adding those as demand grows or someone is willing to sponsor the addition.
Everything said about Apache vrs IIS and Linux vrs Windows does also apply to MySQL vrs Oracle. It's all a matter of time. I think Oracle may bite the bullet a lot harder than Microsoft though because they are less diversified. Unless of course they open source Oracle and manage to adapt to the change. They have more time to adapt than Microsoft though sense they are more specialized.
I've been thinking of making a Mozilla-based window manager such that chrome, panels, the root (background) window, etc can be defined with XUL, HTML, XML, CSS, etc. That'd let you manipulate your desktop as easily as you can manipulate Mozilla. You could use CSS or XSL to tweak the look and feel of your desktop.
An optional caching system would be good but you'd need to add a layer between Moz and the proxy because not everyone has a proxy server, not all proxy servers cache, some traffic such as https can't cache properly in a proxy. You could still make it a third party module which would make it easier for developers to experiment with optimized caching.
To your first quote I think they're saying that when it comes to UI design you need somebody in charge.. keeping things from moving back and forth pointlessly or getting schizo. They're moving to a decision structure more like other large opensource projects. You can still make changes, they'll just have to be approved and tweaked before making it into main builds.
To your second quote.. to many cooks spoil the soup. They don't need sudden floods of inexperienced help that will quickly get bored and quit. That does horrible things to a codebase. If you really want to help then jump in and work on something you're interested in. If it holds up to the standards of the project and will be useful to others I'm sure they'd consider adding it to the trunk. Right now might not be a good time for scratching itches though. This big a transition will take some experienced Moz developers and they won't want to start adding features in the middle of such a transition. Familiarize yourself with what they are doing, test for bugs, submit bug reports, submit bug patches.. then they'll ask for your help coding.
Check out my website in Opera, Mozilla, and IE. Only Mozilla renders it properly. Both Opera and IE have CSS problems and fail to render it correctly (although it should still be usable). My knowledge of CSS isn't perfect so some bugs might be my own but you can definately see that Mozilla handles the CSS better.
Mozilla has been stable for me until recently. I added more RAM though so it could be a hardware problem. I need to check. Opera has been pretty stable for me also. IE still seems flakey but a lot of that may be because of lame ass add-on's certain programs have added to it.
Worse.. how long before we start seeing this as a requirement to get software development jobs? Some PHB will see this and fail to see that it's a joke and add it to a buzzword list. Then we'll actually have to learn to program this way in order to get new jobs. Arghhhhh!:)
Funny, I've been shopping online and from online auctions for years and have NEVER had a problem with fraud. If you don't have the common sense to keep yourself from being ripped off then maybe you shouldn't shop online. There are cases where somebody will be legit for a while and suddenly try to rip a bunch of people off and split but that is pretty rare. It's really not to hard to keep from being suckered. Also I suggest not buying a big item from someone you haven't made successful smaller purchases from. For example before I buy $2000 in computer parts from a company I first try a couple $5 or $10 orders to see how they do. I also communicate with the people I buy from both before and after I place my order if I'm not familiar with them or have questions.
Also you are incorrect. You have the option with PayPal transactions to pay for insurance. If you get insurance and get ripped off then you can get your money back. Perfectly fair. That way people who don't need such bullshit aren't paying for your inability to make wise transactions. Do you think fraud protection is actually free? Somebody has to absorb the cost. If you can get a better deal by your bank or credit card company then just use them.. problem solved.:)
I've never had any problem wth PayPal other than them being to careful with my money. They answered my questions at a reasonable rate. A little slow but no worse than most companies and certainly with less run around than most banks have given me. I use PayPal for everything from online auctions to buying my groceries and am perfectly happy with their service.
It doesn't suck ass but it certainly isn't great. Of course if we claimed the state then we could haul in our own bandwidth. If we do it ourselves we don't hafta take orders from so many others.
Why not? Most of them are probably strippers. As long as someone keeps coming to see them perform I doubt they'd care. Most of them are lesbians anyway it seems. At least any time they are interviewed that's what they say.
I'd much rather see geek girls nude though. It's always fun seeing the BSD Demon tattood in naughty places. A girl with a/dev/null tat is one you'll probably want to avoid though. Anything you put in just disappears into the null forever.
I lived in Miami and on any given day I could go to a public beach and see beautiful nude women. Seeing them on the streets was pretty rare but happened from time to time. If only those nude women could be geek girls and not lesbians my life would be perfect.
I wouldn't want to make the wetlands inhabitable. Thus the point of having a good part of the state uninhabited. A nice barrier between me and the rest of the world.
I guess I mean south Florida. I don't really consider north Florida to be Florida. Most of what I saw of north Florida was corporate greed and rednecks. Not my thing.
Farmers and movie studios might be competition but the old folks will die off pretty quickly so I guess they don't matter. I think south Florida also has strong lobbying from greenies, immigrants, and gay/lesbian folk too but I don't really have a beef with any of them so they could stay for all I cared. The only ones that would likely be really anti-geek would be the movie studios and the old folks.
Florida is the smallest state I've lived in. I guess that makes me think of it as small. Mostly I just want to create a geek village in the Miami area. I am a geek and I like Miami. I just want more geek friends around to hang out with.
Dude. Alaska is cold and I doubt they have any naked women at their beaches. That'd suck. I am working on a manmade structure thing but that is so geeky a concept that until it gets further along I'm trying not to admit to being a participate.;)
I still think all the geeks should collect in one state and make their own laws. I like Florida because it has nice beaches, warm weather, nude women, and the majority of it is uninhabited. Any state with few enough current citizens would do though. The only way to stop stupid laws like this is to have a political voice.. and being that we're outnumbered by morons we need to collect in a large enough group in a small enough region of morons so that we can be heard. Having our country controlled by corporate interests and religious fanatics isn't exactly good for our future.
Being my employer can be a lil weird but really I don't ask for much. I don't want to make huge sums of money or get all kinds of benefits that normal employees want. Most of that stuff is utterly useless to me.
First thing I want is leeway of when I come and go. I am not especially good at keeping track of time when I'm thinking so yes I might show up at work 15 minutes late and leave three hours late. I tend to wander around when I'm thinking so I might just wander out for a walk at anytime or maybe take lunch at some weird time or not take lunch at all. As long as my work is getting done don't bitch at me for these things.
Give me vacations when I want them. I don't even ask for paid vacations. I just need the ability to go take a 3 or 4 day weekend sometimes. Don't give all other employees vacations but deny me mine. The worst I had was a travel agency I programmed for.. they sent all new employees to Italy as soon as they were hired.. except for the couple of us that were programmers. That just really sucked. I really liked working there and would work extremely hard for them but things like that really left a sour taste.
Don't lay me off when the project is over. This is probably the worst. I'm so freaking paranoid now because I take jobs that aren't labeled as per project.. then when the project is over.. after working my ass off to get it done well and done quick.. I'm let go. It's hard to be loyal if you can't trust your employer and it's hard to work your ass off for someone you expect to stab you in the back. If the job is only for the length of a project then say so upfront.
Put up with the fact that I'm weird and not especially good at socializing. Yes, I may wear things ranging from neon orange sweat pants and ratty old tshirts to a purple pinstripe suit but it doesn't hurt anyone. Don't think I'm anti-social just because I don't talk a lot over the water cooler or go out drinking with the guys after work. I'm a busy guy - working for you - so appreciate my effort. If you want me to go out after work with the guys then invite me - in person - several times. A lot of times I'll simply forget anyone invited me unless they ask more than once. It gets lost in there some place between lines of source code. Really go look.. I've been known to make notes such as that as comments in the code I'm working on. Don't tell me that everyone hates me and thinks I'm a jerk because I never hang out. Really not very motivational.
This guys idea about letting the employee pick their own furniture is good. Especially the bit about the chairs. I'm a big guy (6'6, 300lbs) and normal chairs just don't cut it. Give me a small budget for office supplies too. I don't like filling out forms because I need a place to hang printouts. Trying to explain my needs to a none programer is to much effort.
Give me a well soundproofed room. Music helps me program - especially loud music. I don't know why but it does and I'm certainly not the only programmer to have noticed. Having my own office is very motivational to me and if it's well designed I can play my music and not bother others.
Keep a kitchen and bathroom nearby. If I have to go out of my way to get a drink or take a leak then I'll probably just wait til after work which isn't good for concentration.
Don't call my desk every five minutes for no real reason. The phone ringing tends to bother me.
If I'm on call then why not give me a cellphone allowance? That way I can pick the one I want and not have to pay for it out of my own pocket. That way I can pay the bills directly so if I use it as my personal phone too I don't have to explain those calls to my boss. Swap my on-call status with somebody else now and then so I can go on short vacations.
If I'm sick or can't get to work because of the weather then let me work from home. Telecommuting is a good way not to miss days I otherwise would. I tend to get sick easily so being able to work even when sick is a big thing for me. Give me an allowance for broadba
The mini-ITX saves you time and effort. It'd all in one neat little package for you. If only they'd add WiFi to the board it'd be damned near perfect.:)
The speed tests I've seen compare the Cyrix chips favorably with Celeron CPU's of the same clock speed. It looks like the CPU itself isn't quite so buff but because of the highly intergrated mobo certain operations that need to be fast still match or exceed the Celeron.
Also these CPU's have almost nothing to do with the Cyrix chips of old.. the name is just about the only part of Cyrix still being used.
I'd still say not to get this if raw speed is what you want but if you just want something competitive then the mini-ITX systems are perfectly okay.
You CAN build a none mini-ITX system of similar specs for less if you work at it but you end up with a nosier, hotter, bigger, power hungry machine. The mini-ITX systems are virtually a complete system in the size of a toaster. For mini-servers they kick ass. For desktop machines they kick ass. I was thinking of trying to make a cluster of them as I think they'd be really cool in that role too. They can also be easily adapted into a laptop or wearable computer. Mine I rip/play DVD's with all the time and it acts as my LAN's gateway, firewall, and proxy server. It runs Linux very well. My only complaint is that the case I have (an iCube) only has room for two hdd's and the dvd drive. That limits me to 240Gb od hdd space in this machine. The mobo itself would allow me to put a third 120Gb hdd in if I could figure out where I could mount it.
My personal list includes Oscar, Undercover Blues, That's the Way I Like It, Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, Clue, UHF, Mrs. Winterbourne, Purgatory, Grosse Pointe Blank, and a lot of others. All really good movies that I think were underappreciated. It's taken me a lot of work to collect them all.
I have a copy on VHS but finding this gem on DVD has proven difficult. This is absolutely the funniest mob movie I've even seen and by far the best movie Stalone has ever done. Tim Curry is just a riot. Anyone that hasn't seen this movie is really missing out.
Amazon has it marked for release on DVD May 6th.
Watch Oscar with My Blue Heaven and Johnny Dangerously.
Probably the best thing to do is to learn to code in both a low level language and a high level language. Write your programs in a language like Python and rewrite the parts that need more speed in C/Asm. I think that the majority of programs could be written that way without a great loss of speed. I don't know if it'd help security by itself but the simplified code would make the code easier to maintain and that can help security.
I do think programs such as the kernel and X should be written in low level languages. That includes print services and such. Those things are heavy duty and need the speed.
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Maybe so but if you're setting up a low cost lab you'll probably go with a cheaper monitor. Probably closer to US$100. If I were going to buy a good monitor I'd go with one of those large flat panel monitors from Apple. You don't need something that fancy to web browse and word process though. :)
True. But a lot of people own a PDA anyway.
Yeah, but some of us already own old copies of the games. For the rest they can create their own data files.
Microsoft can afford to gamble on lossing ventures. They have the money. They see the future. That's why they are trying such iffy new directions. Will they find a winning route to nirvana? Who knows.. if not then they'll die. Evolve or fail. That's all any of us can do.
Every program opened benefits the community. In the least it's educational. It's also great for people that like to archieve old games. This way they can do so legally. This way we can still play all of our favorite Duke3D-based games on Linux or Windows XXX or whatever without having to totally recreate the engine from scratch. This way we can port Duke3D to a PDA and avoid purchasing a GameBoy. ;)
What I'd really like the code to is the old 2D id, Apogee, and Epic games. Command Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit!
It's not current users that'll switch so much as that new adopters will go with the free alternative. As they do MySQL will develop it's own feature set and reputation until eventually it is challenging Oracle. I think it'll take longer than competition to most of M$'s main product line but it will happen unless Oracle starts to adjust now.
In a way he is right. For lab enviroments thin clients can make life a lot easier and cheaper. The only problem with his prediction is that there is no price benefit to not using a PC as the thin client. I like using bootable Linux cd's (it's a cheap and easily available solution) and leaving out the hdd but you could use a cheap hdd, flash memory, etc to the same purpose. You don't need an especially fast CPU or lots of RAM so it's not hard to put together the whole system for around $100 each. Put a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and maybe speakers on each one and you're all set. Say $250 for each complete system including your time assembling it.
RAM and hdd space is much cheaper to buy in large sizes. You can put together a cheap server with a couple hundred gigs of hdd space and a couple gigs of RAM for $1000. That can usually drive a dozen or more clients at a time without much trouble. You can maintain all your users software for a fraction of the cost of doing so with typical one-install-per-machine configuration. Backups are easy and centralized. Users can move between client machines if needed without trying to find their files and setting things back up. It's easy even for the user to bring up their desktop from a remote location, their laptop during a meeting, or at home and do whatever they need to do. No need for syncing files and such.
I think mesh/P2P computing will also contribute to the trend towards thin clients. The spare resources of each client machine will lessen the servers load while still maintaining the benefits of centralization. Multiple servers will be pluggable together such that the work load is spread among them and if one goes down it's workload is automaticlly moved to another server in the cluster. Something of a hybrid between mainframe/terminal and PC concepts.
MySQL is a lot faster than Oracle on comparable hardware and it's progressing quickly towards including the more useful features of big db suites like Oracle. The majority of the websites that use a db use MySQL. Oracle is way to expensive for small websites and doesn't provide what most large websites need. That's a big market Oracle is missing out on.
PostgreSQL isn't bad either but MySQL tends to be the favorite of web developers. They compete with each other and help drive each other forward.
I don't think either MySQL or Postgres are a challenge to Oracle in the data center but as they mature they will be more so. They have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight too so they can mature much faster than products such as Oracle. They are missing features but they are adding those as demand grows or someone is willing to sponsor the addition.
Everything said about Apache vrs IIS and Linux vrs Windows does also apply to MySQL vrs Oracle. It's all a matter of time. I think Oracle may bite the bullet a lot harder than Microsoft though because they are less diversified. Unless of course they open source Oracle and manage to adapt to the change. They have more time to adapt than Microsoft though sense they are more specialized.
I've been thinking of making a Mozilla-based window manager such that chrome, panels, the root (background) window, etc can be defined with XUL, HTML, XML, CSS, etc. That'd let you manipulate your desktop as easily as you can manipulate Mozilla. You could use CSS or XSL to tweak the look and feel of your desktop.
Is that more the kind of project you had in mind?
An optional caching system would be good but you'd need to add a layer between Moz and the proxy because not everyone has a proxy server, not all proxy servers cache, some traffic such as https can't cache properly in a proxy. You could still make it a third party module which would make it easier for developers to experiment with optimized caching.
I think you're misreading them.. mostly at least.
To your first quote I think they're saying that when it comes to UI design you need somebody in charge.. keeping things from moving back and forth pointlessly or getting schizo. They're moving to a decision structure more like other large opensource projects. You can still make changes, they'll just have to be approved and tweaked before making it into main builds.
To your second quote.. to many cooks spoil the soup. They don't need sudden floods of inexperienced help that will quickly get bored and quit. That does horrible things to a codebase. If you really want to help then jump in and work on something you're interested in. If it holds up to the standards of the project and will be useful to others I'm sure they'd consider adding it to the trunk. Right now might not be a good time for scratching itches though. This big a transition will take some experienced Moz developers and they won't want to start adding features in the middle of such a transition. Familiarize yourself with what they are doing, test for bugs, submit bug reports, submit bug patches.. then they'll ask for your help coding.
Mozilla has been stable for me until recently. I added more RAM though so it could be a hardware problem. I need to check. Opera has been pretty stable for me also. IE still seems flakey but a lot of that may be because of lame ass add-on's certain programs have added to it.
My site!
Worse.. how long before we start seeing this as a requirement to get software development jobs? Some PHB will see this and fail to see that it's a joke and add it to a buzzword list. Then we'll actually have to learn to program this way in order to get new jobs. Arghhhhh! :)
Funny, I've been shopping online and from online auctions for years and have NEVER had a problem with fraud. If you don't have the common sense to keep yourself from being ripped off then maybe you shouldn't shop online. There are cases where somebody will be legit for a while and suddenly try to rip a bunch of people off and split but that is pretty rare. It's really not to hard to keep from being suckered. Also I suggest not buying a big item from someone you haven't made successful smaller purchases from. For example before I buy $2000 in computer parts from a company I first try a couple $5 or $10 orders to see how they do. I also communicate with the people I buy from both before and after I place my order if I'm not familiar with them or have questions.
:)
Also you are incorrect. You have the option with PayPal transactions to pay for insurance. If you get insurance and get ripped off then you can get your money back. Perfectly fair. That way people who don't need such bullshit aren't paying for your inability to make wise transactions. Do you think fraud protection is actually free? Somebody has to absorb the cost. If you can get a better deal by your bank or credit card company then just use them.. problem solved.
I've never had any problem wth PayPal other than them being to careful with my money. They answered my questions at a reasonable rate. A little slow but no worse than most companies and certainly with less run around than most banks have given me. I use PayPal for everything from online auctions to buying my groceries and am perfectly happy with their service.
It doesn't suck ass but it certainly isn't great. Of course if we claimed the state then we could haul in our own bandwidth. If we do it ourselves we don't hafta take orders from so many others.
Why not? Most of them are probably strippers. As long as someone keeps coming to see them perform I doubt they'd care. Most of them are lesbians anyway it seems. At least any time they are interviewed that's what they say.
/dev/null tat is one you'll probably want to avoid though. Anything you put in just disappears into the null forever.
I'd much rather see geek girls nude though. It's always fun seeing the BSD Demon tattood in naughty places. A girl with a
I lived in Miami and on any given day I could go to a public beach and see beautiful nude women. Seeing them on the streets was pretty rare but happened from time to time. If only those nude women could be geek girls and not lesbians my life would be perfect.
;)
I wouldn't want to make the wetlands inhabitable. Thus the point of having a good part of the state uninhabited. A nice barrier between me and the rest of the world.
I guess I mean south Florida. I don't really consider north Florida to be Florida. Most of what I saw of north Florida was corporate greed and rednecks. Not my thing.
Farmers and movie studios might be competition but the old folks will die off pretty quickly so I guess they don't matter. I think south Florida also has strong lobbying from greenies, immigrants, and gay/lesbian folk too but I don't really have a beef with any of them so they could stay for all I cared. The only ones that would likely be really anti-geek would be the movie studios and the old folks.
Florida is the smallest state I've lived in. I guess that makes me think of it as small. Mostly I just want to create a geek village in the Miami area. I am a geek and I like Miami. I just want more geek friends around to hang out with.
Dude. Alaska is cold and I doubt they have any naked women at their beaches. That'd suck. I am working on a manmade structure thing but that is so geeky a concept that until it gets further along I'm trying not to admit to being a participate.
I still think all the geeks should collect in one state and make their own laws. I like Florida because it has nice beaches, warm weather, nude women, and the majority of it is uninhabited. Any state with few enough current citizens would do though. The only way to stop stupid laws like this is to have a political voice.. and being that we're outnumbered by morons we need to collect in a large enough group in a small enough region of morons so that we can be heard. Having our country controlled by corporate interests and religious fanatics isn't exactly good for our future.
Being my employer can be a lil weird but really I don't ask for much. I don't want to make huge sums of money or get all kinds of benefits that normal employees want. Most of that stuff is utterly useless to me.
First thing I want is leeway of when I come and go. I am not especially good at keeping track of time when I'm thinking so yes I might show up at work 15 minutes late and leave three hours late. I tend to wander around when I'm thinking so I might just wander out for a walk at anytime or maybe take lunch at some weird time or not take lunch at all. As long as my work is getting done don't bitch at me for these things.
Give me vacations when I want them. I don't even ask for paid vacations. I just need the ability to go take a 3 or 4 day weekend sometimes. Don't give all other employees vacations but deny me mine. The worst I had was a travel agency I programmed for.. they sent all new employees to Italy as soon as they were hired.. except for the couple of us that were programmers. That just really sucked. I really liked working there and would work extremely hard for them but things like that really left a sour taste.
Don't lay me off when the project is over. This is probably the worst. I'm so freaking paranoid now because I take jobs that aren't labeled as per project.. then when the project is over.. after working my ass off to get it done well and done quick.. I'm let go. It's hard to be loyal if you can't trust your employer and it's hard to work your ass off for someone you expect to stab you in the back. If the job is only for the length of a project then say so upfront.
Put up with the fact that I'm weird and not especially good at socializing. Yes, I may wear things ranging from neon orange sweat pants and ratty old tshirts to a purple pinstripe suit but it doesn't hurt anyone. Don't think I'm anti-social just because I don't talk a lot over the water cooler or go out drinking with the guys after work. I'm a busy guy - working for you - so appreciate my effort. If you want me to go out after work with the guys then invite me - in person - several times. A lot of times I'll simply forget anyone invited me unless they ask more than once. It gets lost in there some place between lines of source code. Really go look.. I've been known to make notes such as that as comments in the code I'm working on. Don't tell me that everyone hates me and thinks I'm a jerk because I never hang out. Really not very motivational.
This guys idea about letting the employee pick their own furniture is good. Especially the bit about the chairs. I'm a big guy (6'6, 300lbs) and normal chairs just don't cut it. Give me a small budget for office supplies too. I don't like filling out forms because I need a place to hang printouts. Trying to explain my needs to a none programer is to much effort.
Give me a well soundproofed room. Music helps me program - especially loud music. I don't know why but it does and I'm certainly not the only programmer to have noticed. Having my own office is very motivational to me and if it's well designed I can play my music and not bother others.
Keep a kitchen and bathroom nearby. If I have to go out of my way to get a drink or take a leak then I'll probably just wait til after work which isn't good for concentration.
Don't call my desk every five minutes for no real reason. The phone ringing tends to bother me.
If I'm on call then why not give me a cellphone allowance? That way I can pick the one I want and not have to pay for it out of my own pocket. That way I can pay the bills directly so if I use it as my personal phone too I don't have to explain those calls to my boss. Swap my on-call status with somebody else now and then so I can go on short vacations.
If I'm sick or can't get to work because of the weather then let me work from home. Telecommuting is a good way not to miss days I otherwise would. I tend to get sick easily so being able to work even when sick is a big thing for me. Give me an allowance for broadba
The mini-ITX saves you time and effort. It'd all in one neat little package for you. If only they'd add WiFi to the board it'd be damned near perfect. :)
The speed tests I've seen compare the Cyrix chips favorably with Celeron CPU's of the same clock speed. It looks like the CPU itself isn't quite so buff but because of the highly intergrated mobo certain operations that need to be fast still match or exceed the Celeron.
Also these CPU's have almost nothing to do with the Cyrix chips of old.. the name is just about the only part of Cyrix still being used.
I'd still say not to get this if raw speed is what you want but if you just want something competitive then the mini-ITX systems are perfectly okay.
You CAN build a none mini-ITX system of similar specs for less if you work at it but you end up with a nosier, hotter, bigger, power hungry machine. The mini-ITX systems are virtually a complete system in the size of a toaster. For mini-servers they kick ass. For desktop machines they kick ass. I was thinking of trying to make a cluster of them as I think they'd be really cool in that role too. They can also be easily adapted into a laptop or wearable computer. Mine I rip/play DVD's with all the time and it acts as my LAN's gateway, firewall, and proxy server. It runs Linux very well. My only complaint is that the case I have (an iCube) only has room for two hdd's and the dvd drive. That limits me to 240Gb od hdd space in this machine. The mobo itself would allow me to put a third 120Gb hdd in if I could figure out where I could mount it.
My personal list includes Oscar, Undercover Blues, That's the Way I Like It, Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, Clue, UHF, Mrs. Winterbourne, Purgatory, Grosse Pointe Blank, and a lot of others. All really good movies that I think were underappreciated. It's taken me a lot of work to collect them all.
I have a copy on VHS but finding this gem on DVD has proven difficult. This is absolutely the funniest mob movie I've even seen and by far the best movie Stalone has ever done. Tim Curry is just a riot. Anyone that hasn't seen this movie is really missing out.
Amazon has it marked for release on DVD May 6th.
Watch Oscar with My Blue Heaven and Johnny Dangerously.
Probably the best thing to do is to learn to code in both a low level language and a high level language. Write your programs in a language like Python and rewrite the parts that need more speed in C/Asm. I think that the majority of programs could be written that way without a great loss of speed. I don't know if it'd help security by itself but the simplified code would make the code easier to maintain and that can help security.
I do think programs such as the kernel and X should be written in low level languages. That includes print services and such. Those things are heavy duty and need the speed.