He's such a wuss. I just want to get my porn collection laser etched into big metal plates that'll last forever. Have to get the important stuff first.
And then maybe a copy of the latest source for my choice Linux distro. Mmmmm source code written on metal. How geeky would that be?
Exactly why the redesign I've been doing for the hot tub company I now work for I'm trying to make it look nicer and make it less busy. The old site (the one you'd see if you follow the link) was ugly, busy looking, and empty looking all at once. Not a good combination. The new site which should be up within a week or so is carefully designed to make navigation and searching easy, to be nice looking, and to make a good first impression. The owners have been fighting me as they think the new website isn't busy enough looking but I think I've finally got them convinced that users need to be able to process the information on the pages quickly.
Having some skill in both user-interface design and graphic design should be a must for every website team. I don't think any experienced web designers or programmers would find this article surprising at all. When you're looking through search results you look through at most the top ten (top three is more common) and if you don't see what you're looking for you try a different search. At each website you tend to glance for a very small time to see if they look professional and if they look like they have what you're looking for. If not then users tend to leave without investigating further.
Exactly. By not using alternative energy these people are lowering worldwide land values (making it all uglier and less healthy). How is that better than lowering land values in a small area by putting up simple structures like windmills and solar panels. It's okay for their 5% against the program to tell the 85% of people for the program that they can't do it?
Was there OpenDocument formats when Apple created it's tools? That could be one issue. However, Apple has ego issues IMO. Sometimes their ego is justified and sometimes not. This is one of those issues where I think they'd be much better off playing nicely with everyone else. With Apple-quality products supporting OpenDocument standards they could stand to seriously reshape the office suite market. That move combined with a move to lower their prices (for government contracts at least) could very possibly create a mass exodus from Windows if they timed it to land just as Vista is released - especially if they put their support behind the push for requiring all government documents to be in OpenDocument formats and maybe toss out some free tools to automate converting old formats to OpenDocument.
This is something they could do fairly easily to grab a nice chunk of market share quickly. They might have to cut their profit margin on software to do it (for a while at least) but they could grab this huge market. If people have to buy new computers anyway then why not switch to OS X if it's in the same price range, has less security issues, and supports government mandated file formats that Vista and Office don't support. Sounds like a coup just waiting a few smart moves to make it happen. Damn near every company and government in the world fears Microsoft so why not create an alternative.
If I'm going to use Microsoft software then I may as well use a Microsoft OS because otherwise I know I can't really count on that Microsoft product continuing to be supported. The last thing I need is to have support for a tool required to get my job done phased out.
To bad OpenOffice can't get itself organized like Firefox. A FireFox-like version of OpenOffice (lean and mean with extensions) would make Linux (and other free OS's) a viable alternative for most office users. Web, email, and an office suite are probably the most used apps by far for office workers.
I try to be thrifty of my energy use (to the point of annoying others) but I still think alternative energy is a good idea. Wind farms in rural areas is a good idea. They are not ugly if not packed to tightly but they are noisy which is why I think they should not be to close to homes. Solar coupled with the wind farms is an even better idea. If every home had solar panels just on the roof (grid tied) it could really help the problem by softening the problems associated with peak hour usage. Peak sunlight hours tend to overlap with peak electrical usage hours so it's a good way to counter balance the problem. Of course NY has some shore lines too so I wonder if they couldn't use some wave based power or some sort of sea-based thermal power.
I really hate the shitheads that worry more about their land values than about the world they are leaving behind. They want to have their cute little yards and attractive houses while they ship all the trash they produce off to somewhere else. I think the boyscout rule of leaving an area as good as you found it should apply to the whole world. When you die the world should be no worse for your having lived. Grid-tied alternative energy is really good for most people. It reduces your monthly electrical bill and you can have free electricity or even make a profit if you use less electricity than you produce (of course if the state funds the systems they should keep the profits). Using alternative power should be a civic responsibility like not commiting crimes and voting. Don't use more than you produce.
If Apple were to push OpenOffice or any other suite that supported Open Document Format it'd create a real alternative to the Windows/Office pair. So long as Mac users stay in the MS Office camp it keeps Apple from adding strength to a dangerous rival. I think if anything Apple is foolish to agree. They'd be better off to create a real alternative. OS X has enough support that throwing their weight behind ODF and their own office suite would be unlikely to hurt them much in the short-term (since they could still read/write MS files) and could have major long-term benefits.
I have valid reasons, other than the license, for not being an OS X fan but if I mention those it means getting flamed. Questioning the quality of OS X's UI is about as deadly as questioning Linux's development model (which I am a fan of but recognize it isn't perfect). It seems Windows is only safe OS to be critical of though even it has it's defenders (twisted sad souls that they are).
Last time I checked unemployment stats don't count people who are considered outside the usual job market (students, retirees, etc) and also only count you for a short period of time - you can still be unemployed but you're no longer in the numbers.
My father probably doesn't count as he is almost to retiree age and has medical problems. He can't work anymore because with his health problems he can't do manual labor and the skilled labor (inventory control and a mechanic of factory machines) he was doing no longer exists because the company he worked for for twenty years moved to Mexico. Not only that but the government let the company screw him out of his unemployment money - he was laid off for more than six months so he tried to get a new job which didn't work out and the company he'd worked at all those years found out and filed to have his unemployment taken away - a whole complicated mess that ended up in him getting screwed.
Which is why I like to not use Windows either. I'm against all software that isn't opensource. If OS X was opensourced I'd be more interested in it but would still probably not use it until other desktops were available - I really am not a fan of the GUI in OS X. Just not my style.
I know a lot of people in the rust belt that used to hold down jobs that are now living off a mix of odd jobs and welfare because there are simply not enough jobs to go around and they are to old to start over with a new skill set. Even if they were retrained I don't know if it'd help much as ever greater ranges of jobs are being moved out of the US. If I wasn't flexible my IT skills would be easily replacable - it's only by mixing my computer skills with skill and experience in other areas that I manage to stay in IT at all. Certainly most my skills can be purchased cheaper elsewhere and that's even after I've lowered my wage expectations quite a bit. If there isn't something done to stop the job drain the US (and probably other Western countries) is in serious risk of collapse or at least a major depression.
Once they come here and earn enough money they can help their family and friends that weren't able to come here so we aren't supporting the whole world. It doesn't hurt us much for them to come and earn money where as it does hurt us to just be giving money away. Foreigners that come here and earn money are also coming here and becoming consumers so they are in fact creating new jobs even as they fill jobs. All in all open immigration is good for our countries. In the US anyway we have plenty of room. I've lived on both coasts, in the midwest, and in general all over the US. There is a lot of open space and resources just going to waste.
I hope Linux is quickly made to work on this Mac Intel hardware. Apple makes good hardware but I don't like Mac OS. It'd be good to be able to get an Intel based iBook and put Linux on it.
Capitalism, like socialism or damn near any other system, in it's pure form will self destruct. A totally free market isn't that great an idea. Corporations and consumers care about short term gains with little thought to long term results. That only works for so long before the whole system crashes and has to be painfully rebooted.
As an American (white male - lower middle class) I just want people to realize that immigrants aren't the real problem - foreign workers are the main problem. The best solution is to make it easier for those foreign workers to migrate here and get decent jobs here. We have minimum wage laws and free competition that other countries don't have. A large number of foreigners working for $2/hr would move here where they can make $20/hr. I'd sure as hell rather compete locally where all workers are under similar laws and living expenses than with someone that lives in a dirt hut and gets dirt pay. There would be a dip in wages as competition grew but it'd be much less drastic than the dip from jobs moving out of the country. What do we really think is going to be left as a source of income for us as companies keep migrating jobs? Blue collar jobs have been leaving us for years, white collar jobs have been following - what is going to be left?
Make it easier for those workers to move into our western countries and encourage buying products produced within our own countries. That's how to keep wages high. Not by slowing migration. We want to force foreign countries to raise their minimum wage, improve their working and living conditions, etc and compete on a level ground with us. Pretty simple.
Ever used Unix? Lack of documentation is absolutely not the problem. Actually over documentation is a bigger problem. Trying to dive into something new is like trying to swallow an elephant. I like to try to par down documentation into easier to swallow bites as I work my way through it so that later I can come back to it with less of a relearning curve - and by posting my notes online it helps others too.
There are lots of Linux admins in the wild that can be had cheap. They might not be the experts but they are better than their Windows counterparts and much cheaper.
Sounds like a fun patch except I think GTA is more into the hetro stuff. Might be sort of funny to merge GTA and The Sims and make everyone gay. Sort of a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy thing with a violent twist.
Great, I now have my scripts bitch slapping their server 24/7. Nothing these dick wads don't deserve. I hope someone donates a lawyer to the kids cause.
Expensive but no doubt the prices will continue dropping as they become more mainstream. Standard flash memory has came crashing down in price thanks to the popularity of things like MP3 players, digital cameras, and thumb drives. Even at $3/GB I'd go with a flash drive if they could hit that price range in a unit that offered at least 100GB of space in a normal hdd form factor. I figure that on average I pay about $.50/GB for hdd space now so that'd be a fair increase in price for me but worth it if the drive was reliable even under a work load.
Most of my file space is write-once and then read-only so I'd not even mind some sort of massive optical drive. I remember talk of write-once holocube systems that could hold terabytes of data in a 1 inch cube - that'd rock.
Slashdot Mirror
700GB w/ RAID for $700 isn't bad at all. $1/GB is fair and you've got some reliability that a drive won't die and lose everything for you.
Tera Station
Everything you need probably. I saw a 1TB version for $700 at Fry's the other day.
He's such a wuss. I just want to get my porn collection laser etched into big metal plates that'll last forever. Have to get the important stuff first.
And then maybe a copy of the latest source for my choice Linux distro. Mmmmm source code written on metal. How geeky would that be?
I love that brand name. I wanted to put some smoke curling around the logo. Maybe for April Fools Day. ;)
Exactly why the redesign I've been doing for the hot tub company I now work for I'm trying to make it look nicer and make it less busy. The old site (the one you'd see if you follow the link) was ugly, busy looking, and empty looking all at once. Not a good combination. The new site which should be up within a week or so is carefully designed to make navigation and searching easy, to be nice looking, and to make a good first impression. The owners have been fighting me as they think the new website isn't busy enough looking but I think I've finally got them convinced that users need to be able to process the information on the pages quickly.
Having some skill in both user-interface design and graphic design should be a must for every website team. I don't think any experienced web designers or programmers would find this article surprising at all. When you're looking through search results you look through at most the top ten (top three is more common) and if you don't see what you're looking for you try a different search. At each website you tend to glance for a very small time to see if they look professional and if they look like they have what you're looking for. If not then users tend to leave without investigating further.
Exactly. By not using alternative energy these people are lowering worldwide land values (making it all uglier and less healthy). How is that better than lowering land values in a small area by putting up simple structures like windmills and solar panels. It's okay for their 5% against the program to tell the 85% of people for the program that they can't do it?
Was there OpenDocument formats when Apple created it's tools? That could be one issue. However, Apple has ego issues IMO. Sometimes their ego is justified and sometimes not. This is one of those issues where I think they'd be much better off playing nicely with everyone else. With Apple-quality products supporting OpenDocument standards they could stand to seriously reshape the office suite market. That move combined with a move to lower their prices (for government contracts at least) could very possibly create a mass exodus from Windows if they timed it to land just as Vista is released - especially if they put their support behind the push for requiring all government documents to be in OpenDocument formats and maybe toss out some free tools to automate converting old formats to OpenDocument.
This is something they could do fairly easily to grab a nice chunk of market share quickly. They might have to cut their profit margin on software to do it (for a while at least) but they could grab this huge market. If people have to buy new computers anyway then why not switch to OS X if it's in the same price range, has less security issues, and supports government mandated file formats that Vista and Office don't support. Sounds like a coup just waiting a few smart moves to make it happen. Damn near every company and government in the world fears Microsoft so why not create an alternative.
If I'm going to use Microsoft software then I may as well use a Microsoft OS because otherwise I know I can't really count on that Microsoft product continuing to be supported. The last thing I need is to have support for a tool required to get my job done phased out.
To bad OpenOffice can't get itself organized like Firefox. A FireFox-like version of OpenOffice (lean and mean with extensions) would make Linux (and other free OS's) a viable alternative for most office users. Web, email, and an office suite are probably the most used apps by far for office workers.
I try to be thrifty of my energy use (to the point of annoying others) but I still think alternative energy is a good idea. Wind farms in rural areas is a good idea. They are not ugly if not packed to tightly but they are noisy which is why I think they should not be to close to homes. Solar coupled with the wind farms is an even better idea. If every home had solar panels just on the roof (grid tied) it could really help the problem by softening the problems associated with peak hour usage. Peak sunlight hours tend to overlap with peak electrical usage hours so it's a good way to counter balance the problem. Of course NY has some shore lines too so I wonder if they couldn't use some wave based power or some sort of sea-based thermal power.
I really hate the shitheads that worry more about their land values than about the world they are leaving behind. They want to have their cute little yards and attractive houses while they ship all the trash they produce off to somewhere else. I think the boyscout rule of leaving an area as good as you found it should apply to the whole world. When you die the world should be no worse for your having lived. Grid-tied alternative energy is really good for most people. It reduces your monthly electrical bill and you can have free electricity or even make a profit if you use less electricity than you produce (of course if the state funds the systems they should keep the profits). Using alternative power should be a civic responsibility like not commiting crimes and voting. Don't use more than you produce.
If Apple were to push OpenOffice or any other suite that supported Open Document Format it'd create a real alternative to the Windows/Office pair. So long as Mac users stay in the MS Office camp it keeps Apple from adding strength to a dangerous rival. I think if anything Apple is foolish to agree. They'd be better off to create a real alternative. OS X has enough support that throwing their weight behind ODF and their own office suite would be unlikely to hurt them much in the short-term (since they could still read/write MS files) and could have major long-term benefits.
I have valid reasons, other than the license, for not being an OS X fan but if I mention those it means getting flamed. Questioning the quality of OS X's UI is about as deadly as questioning Linux's development model (which I am a fan of but recognize it isn't perfect). It seems Windows is only safe OS to be critical of though even it has it's defenders (twisted sad souls that they are).
Last time I checked unemployment stats don't count people who are considered outside the usual job market (students, retirees, etc) and also only count you for a short period of time - you can still be unemployed but you're no longer in the numbers.
My father probably doesn't count as he is almost to retiree age and has medical problems. He can't work anymore because with his health problems he can't do manual labor and the skilled labor (inventory control and a mechanic of factory machines) he was doing no longer exists because the company he worked for for twenty years moved to Mexico. Not only that but the government let the company screw him out of his unemployment money - he was laid off for more than six months so he tried to get a new job which didn't work out and the company he'd worked at all those years found out and filed to have his unemployment taken away - a whole complicated mess that ended up in him getting screwed.
Which is why I like to not use Windows either. I'm against all software that isn't opensource. If OS X was opensourced I'd be more interested in it but would still probably not use it until other desktops were available - I really am not a fan of the GUI in OS X. Just not my style.
Cool. I might pick up a couple for playing. Great for hobby projects that need a small footprint.
The license is the first thing that comes to mind. ;)
I know a lot of people in the rust belt that used to hold down jobs that are now living off a mix of odd jobs and welfare because there are simply not enough jobs to go around and they are to old to start over with a new skill set. Even if they were retrained I don't know if it'd help much as ever greater ranges of jobs are being moved out of the US. If I wasn't flexible my IT skills would be easily replacable - it's only by mixing my computer skills with skill and experience in other areas that I manage to stay in IT at all. Certainly most my skills can be purchased cheaper elsewhere and that's even after I've lowered my wage expectations quite a bit. If there isn't something done to stop the job drain the US (and probably other Western countries) is in serious risk of collapse or at least a major depression.
Once they come here and earn enough money they can help their family and friends that weren't able to come here so we aren't supporting the whole world. It doesn't hurt us much for them to come and earn money where as it does hurt us to just be giving money away. Foreigners that come here and earn money are also coming here and becoming consumers so they are in fact creating new jobs even as they fill jobs. All in all open immigration is good for our countries. In the US anyway we have plenty of room. I've lived on both coasts, in the midwest, and in general all over the US. There is a lot of open space and resources just going to waste.
I hope Linux is quickly made to work on this Mac Intel hardware. Apple makes good hardware but I don't like Mac OS. It'd be good to be able to get an Intel based iBook and put Linux on it.
Capitalism, like socialism or damn near any other system, in it's pure form will self destruct. A totally free market isn't that great an idea. Corporations and consumers care about short term gains with little thought to long term results. That only works for so long before the whole system crashes and has to be painfully rebooted.
As an American (white male - lower middle class) I just want people to realize that immigrants aren't the real problem - foreign workers are the main problem. The best solution is to make it easier for those foreign workers to migrate here and get decent jobs here. We have minimum wage laws and free competition that other countries don't have. A large number of foreigners working for $2/hr would move here where they can make $20/hr. I'd sure as hell rather compete locally where all workers are under similar laws and living expenses than with someone that lives in a dirt hut and gets dirt pay. There would be a dip in wages as competition grew but it'd be much less drastic than the dip from jobs moving out of the country. What do we really think is going to be left as a source of income for us as companies keep migrating jobs? Blue collar jobs have been leaving us for years, white collar jobs have been following - what is going to be left?
Make it easier for those workers to move into our western countries and encourage buying products produced within our own countries. That's how to keep wages high. Not by slowing migration. We want to force foreign countries to raise their minimum wage, improve their working and living conditions, etc and compete on a level ground with us. Pretty simple.
Ever used Unix? Lack of documentation is absolutely not the problem. Actually over documentation is a bigger problem. Trying to dive into something new is like trying to swallow an elephant. I like to try to par down documentation into easier to swallow bites as I work my way through it so that later I can come back to it with less of a relearning curve - and by posting my notes online it helps others too.
There are lots of Linux admins in the wild that can be had cheap. They might not be the experts but they are better than their Windows counterparts and much cheaper.
Sounds like a fun patch except I think GTA is more into the hetro stuff. Might be sort of funny to merge GTA and The Sims and make everyone gay. Sort of a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy thing with a violent twist.
So long as the movies have DRM and that DRM hasn't been broken I won't be buying their movies.
Great, I now have my scripts bitch slapping their server 24/7. Nothing these dick wads don't deserve. I hope someone donates a lawyer to the kids cause.
Expensive but no doubt the prices will continue dropping as they become more mainstream. Standard flash memory has came crashing down in price thanks to the popularity of things like MP3 players, digital cameras, and thumb drives. Even at $3/GB I'd go with a flash drive if they could hit that price range in a unit that offered at least 100GB of space in a normal hdd form factor. I figure that on average I pay about $.50/GB for hdd space now so that'd be a fair increase in price for me but worth it if the drive was reliable even under a work load.
Most of my file space is write-once and then read-only so I'd not even mind some sort of massive optical drive. I remember talk of write-once holocube systems that could hold terabytes of data in a 1 inch cube - that'd rock.