Take it as a challenge. Programmers of 70s & 80s did amazing things with limited memory and CPU. We're largely spoiled nowadays and often don't have to pay attention to memory usage or CPU usage. Being forced to pay attention to these details will make you a better programmer in the end.
What about the combo-drive (DVD reader/CD burner)? Apple didn't stop shipping that until this week! For the longest time they've insisted on shipping this in their low-end MacBook models, years after DVD burners have been available at reasonable prices.
This had nothing to do with Firewire being obsolete. Apple's removing it because it's now one of the very few things differentiating the MacBook from their more expensive cousin the MacBook Pro.
What about the combo-drive (DVD reader/CD burner)? Apple didn't stop shipping that until this week! For the longest time they've insisted on shipping this in their low-end MacBook models, years after DVD burners have been available at reasonable prices.
Apple isn't removing the Firewire port from the MacBooks because they're obsolete. They're removing it because it's now one of the very few things differentiating the MacBook from their more expensive cousin the MacBook Pro!
I wonder if part of the reason for larger engines in vehicles in the US and Canada is the proliferation of automatic transmissions as opposed to Europe where the majority of vehicles have manual transmissions. I've found a manual transmission to be vastly superior when driving a vehicle that's a little on the under-powered side because you can downshift when you need the extra power instead of tromping on the accelerator and waiting a few seconds for an automatic to downshift for you. As a result I think my perception of the vehicle is vastly improved over the same vehicle with an automatic.
Well it looks like Solaris 10 is going to have some pretty cool features that don't exist under Linux, or at least probably don't work out of the box under Linux. Do some reading up on the following: ZFS (their new file system/volume manager), zones, DTrace. A number of the Solaris kernel engineers have blogs over at planet sun. Very interesting stuff.
I have both a GMail and Yahoo account right now and I think things are still tilted more in Yahoo's favour than Google's though as GMail is still in beta this could change before they go live.
The Addressbook in GMail is extremely minimal. All you can record is the name (one field, no separate fields for first and last name etc.), a single email address (a lot of people I know have both a personal and work address) and some freeform notes. Yahoo (and Hotmail) have substantially better Addressbooks with Hotmail being the best of the lot in my opinion.
It'll be interesting to see how well less sophisticated (er...less technically inclined) users will adapt to GMail's idea of labels instead of hierarchical folders or if they'll quickly abandon it in favour of what they are used to.
I have not had the courage to install Fedora 2 yet. I'm sitting on the CD's now wondering if I should try it. If you dual-boot Windows XP/2000, some combination of the new 2.6 kernel with Grub will destroy your partition table and disable access to Windows XP.
If Microsoft released an OS that disabled Linux like this there'd sure be a lot of furor around here!
You're being ridiculous. I can only speak for Shell here since I've actually worked for the company. They don't consider themselves an OIL company: they consider themselves an ENERGY company. They are well aware of the fact that we do not have unlimited supplies of fossil fuels and are spending $$ investigating alternative energy sources to capitalize on. This includes solar energy. Shell has a number of factories that manufacture a significant percentage of the world's solar cells. They are not burrying alternative energy sources and research.
Unfortunately, this isn't going to be a solution for "Last Mile" broadband in rural areas. As the article notes this is only being deployed in high population density areas in the city using wireless access points to get from the medium voltage lines to the homes. Of course out in rural areas you would end up with one wireless access point serving one household which is unlikely to be economical...
Yes, in fact, I think I can. It's probably in large part due to the tight job situation in the IT market today. That wasn't the case in the 80s and early 90s...
I really don't think subscribing to a mailing list should have to be a pre-requisite for installing & properly using a modern OS and I think her article reflects that belief as well. I think it's valid to point out that a number of the issues she came across simply worked out of the box with both Windows XP & Mac OS X. If you care about desktop useability one of the things to strive for is to just have things work out of the box without having to refer to google or mailing list archives etc...
I wonder why the fans are under control of the OS instead of being controlled by hardware temperature sensors instead? It would seem more reasonable to me to have the fans controlled via hardware sensors and firmware rather than the OS...
Whoah...the fact that you had to jump through all those hoops including reading source code tells me that Linux has a ways to go before your average musician is going to find it the easy route to go for audio recording...
Apple doesn't have a whole lot of choice except to bundle more and more functionality with their OS/machines. Why? Because Microsoft is doing it. They need to maintain some semblance of feature parity with the competition...
I often see complaints about Microsoft spreading FUD about open source but this appears to be the reverse...spreading FUD about Microsoft. There's no evidence at this point that Microsoft is going to try to prevent the completion of the Mono project. In all likelyhood Mono will do little to threaten Microsoft's dominance anyhow...
Y'know one thing that bugs me is that the Linux GUIs seem to just concentrate on the look. Who cares how good your desktop looks (sure it's nice to have something aesthetically pleasing) if it's a beast to actually use? One place where the Unix GUIs really seem to fall down seems to be keyboard accessibility. Maybe this why so many of the commandline people have such a disdain for GUIs. Ironically enough Windows for all its faults is actually still usable if you unplug the mouse. You can always hit <alt> to get to the menu of your app. You can always hit <ctrl>-<esc> to pull up the start menu. You can rely on <alt>-<tab> to switch between your running apps etc. These little details all matter and they need to be consistent!
I don't want to stare at my GUI all day. I want to use it.
I won't go into whether the compression ratios claimed are possible or not as this has been thrashed to death already. The one thing they do admit is that their technology is extremely compute-intensive. It appears they've only been able to run their algorithms on very small data sets (running on very large computers) due to this problem. Whether this technology proves to be a complete farce or not it doesn't appear that it will ever be practical for live streaming at any rate. I know some oil companies that wouldn't mind finding a way to compress all their seismic data though....
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Take it as a challenge. Programmers of 70s & 80s did amazing things with limited memory and CPU. We're largely spoiled nowadays and often don't have to pay attention to memory usage or CPU usage. Being forced to pay attention to these details will make you a better programmer in the end.
What about the combo-drive (DVD reader/CD burner)? Apple didn't stop shipping that until this week! For the longest time they've insisted on shipping this in their low-end MacBook models, years after DVD burners have been available at reasonable prices.
This had nothing to do with Firewire being obsolete. Apple's removing it because it's now one of the very few things differentiating the MacBook from their more expensive cousin the MacBook Pro.
What about the combo-drive (DVD reader/CD burner)? Apple didn't stop shipping that until this week! For the longest time they've insisted on shipping this in their low-end MacBook models, years after DVD burners have been available at reasonable prices.
Apple isn't removing the Firewire port from the MacBooks because they're obsolete. They're removing it because it's now one of the very few things differentiating the MacBook from their more expensive cousin the MacBook Pro!
When did Slashdot's tag line become "Rumours for Nerds. Stuff that might matter."??
I wonder if part of the reason for larger engines in vehicles in the US and Canada is the proliferation of automatic transmissions as opposed to Europe where the majority of vehicles have manual transmissions. I've found a manual transmission to be vastly superior when driving a vehicle that's a little on the under-powered side because you can downshift when you need the extra power instead of tromping on the accelerator and waiting a few seconds for an automatic to downshift for you. As a result I think my perception of the vehicle is vastly improved over the same vehicle with an automatic.
So that you can escape from a crime scene in which you murdered a police officer?!?
My vote would be for the microwave... home-made fast food! I never would have survived without it.
Well it looks like Solaris 10 is going to have some pretty cool features that don't exist under Linux, or at least probably don't work out of the box under Linux. Do some reading up on the following: ZFS (their new file system/volume manager), zones, DTrace. A number of the Solaris kernel engineers have blogs over at planet sun. Very interesting stuff.
I have both a GMail and Yahoo account right now and I think things are still tilted more in Yahoo's favour than Google's though as GMail is still in beta this could change before they go live.
The Addressbook in GMail is extremely minimal. All you can record is the name (one field, no separate fields for first and last name etc.), a single email address (a lot of people I know have both a personal and work address) and some freeform notes. Yahoo (and Hotmail) have substantially better Addressbooks with Hotmail being the best of the lot in my opinion.
It'll be interesting to see how well less sophisticated (er...less technically inclined) users will adapt to GMail's idea of labels instead of hierarchical folders or if they'll quickly abandon it in favour of what they are used to.
I have not had the courage to install Fedora 2 yet. I'm sitting on the CD's now wondering if I should try it. If you dual-boot Windows XP/2000, some combination of the new 2.6 kernel with Grub will destroy your partition table and disable access to Windows XP.
If Microsoft released an OS that disabled Linux like this there'd sure be a lot of furor around here!
You're being ridiculous. I can only speak for Shell here since I've actually worked for the company. They don't consider themselves an OIL company: they consider themselves an ENERGY company. They are well aware of the fact that we do not have unlimited supplies of fossil fuels and are spending $$ investigating alternative energy sources to capitalize on. This includes solar energy. Shell has a number of factories that manufacture a significant percentage of the world's solar cells. They are not burrying alternative energy sources and research.
Unfortunately, this isn't going to be a solution for "Last Mile" broadband in rural areas. As the article notes this is only being deployed in high population density areas in the city using wireless access points to get from the medium voltage lines to the homes. Of course out in rural areas you would end up with one wireless access point serving one household which is unlikely to be economical...
Yes, in fact, I think I can. It's probably in large part due to the tight job situation in the IT market today. That wasn't the case in the 80s and early 90s...
Well sir, I'd say you just validated all the author's points.
I don't suppose you read the Fedora Objectives page. I quote:
1. Create a complete general-purpose operating system with capabilities equivalent to competing operating systems, built for and by a community...
I think the people involved with Fedora would include Windows XP & Apple Mac OS X in their list of competing OSes although that's not explicit.
6. Emphasize usability and a "just works" philosophy in selecting default configuration and designing features.
Again, the Fedora project actually does appear to be putting an emphasis on usability and the concept of working out of the box.
I believe my comment makes sense as it stands.
I really don't think subscribing to a mailing list should have to be a pre-requisite for installing & properly using a modern OS and I think her article reflects that belief as well. I think it's valid to point out that a number of the issues she came across simply worked out of the box with both Windows XP & Mac OS X. If you care about desktop useability one of the things to strive for is to just have things work out of the box without having to refer to google or mailing list archives etc...
I think it's safe to say they would be using purified water (or some other liquid) which wouldn't conduct electricity...
I wonder why the fans are under control of the OS instead of being controlled by hardware temperature sensors instead? It would seem more reasonable to me to have the fans controlled via hardware sensors and firmware rather than the OS...
Imagine all the energy stored by huge disks turning at 10k rpm.... Imagine if one of those disks disintegrated.
Whoah...the fact that you had to jump through all those hoops including reading source code tells me that Linux has a ways to go before your average musician is going to find it the easy route to go for audio recording...
Actually if you take a closer look they do provide IMAP access to your mail. I wish more of the webmail providers offered this.
Apple doesn't have a whole lot of choice except to bundle more and more functionality with their OS/machines. Why? Because Microsoft is doing it. They need to maintain some semblance of feature parity with the competition...
I often see complaints about Microsoft spreading FUD about open source but this appears to be the reverse...spreading FUD about Microsoft. There's no evidence at this point that Microsoft is going to try to prevent the completion of the Mono project. In all likelyhood Mono will do little to threaten Microsoft's dominance anyhow...
Y'know one thing that bugs me is that the Linux GUIs seem to just concentrate on the look. Who cares how good your desktop looks (sure it's nice to have something aesthetically pleasing) if it's a beast to actually use? One place where the Unix GUIs really seem to fall down seems to be keyboard accessibility. Maybe this why so many of the commandline people have such a disdain for GUIs. Ironically enough Windows for all its faults is actually still usable if you unplug the mouse. You can always hit <alt> to get to the menu of your app. You can always hit <ctrl>-<esc> to pull up the start menu. You can rely on <alt>-<tab> to switch between your running apps etc. These little details all matter and they need to be consistent!
I don't want to stare at my GUI all day. I want to use it.
I won't go into whether the compression ratios claimed are possible or not as this has been thrashed to death already. The one thing they do admit is that their technology is extremely compute-intensive. It appears they've only been able to run their algorithms on very small data sets (running on very large computers) due to this problem. Whether this technology proves to be a complete farce or not it doesn't appear that it will ever be practical for live streaming at any rate. I know some oil companies that wouldn't mind finding a way to compress all their seismic data though....