This article is correct about Linux being, by the numbers, cheaper than windows... but it ignores things that, ultimately, will cost the university even more money.
Specifically, TCODI... Total Cost Of Dealing with Idiots.
Now I mean idiots in the nicest possible sense. Sometimes, computer idiots are just people who don't have the time, effort, or motivation to bother with computers, and view them as a magical source of evil powers which they must fight with on a daily basis.
In the article, he goes on to discuss how a student could easily translate a word document for use in Konquerer, or StarOffice, and back again. Yes, if the student possesses more than a mild understanding of computers. If that student has only a limited experience of using Microsoft Office, in a very limited manner, the cost and the effort to teach this user how to convert their documents to and fro before their 5 minute deadline passes will strain even the most patient of your student lab aides.
Most college students aren't computer enthusiasts. Some, like, I am ashamed to admit, my own sister, view the computer as little more than a calculator. When things go wrong, she promptly turns on her charm on the nearest nerd and thrusts the laptop into their hands... fix it! Make it work like it did before!
As a former network administrator, I think most of the university's students and professors fit this description. I used to administer the computers for the University of M----'s department of Zoology. Most - there were a few tech junkies and I treasured them - just wanted their computers to spit out the data it spat out last week, work exactly like it did last week, and most importantly, look exactly like it did last week. Anything different overwhelms them and gets in the way of doing what is important - to them - their research.
I got constantly called to fix non-working PC's (floppies left in drive), to revive dead hard drives, to find out why the printer wasn't responding. I had students hand me floppy disks with the only surviving copy of their thesis on it... after they had run in and out of the library's magnetic sensors with it in their backpacks.
When we finally did upgrade the administrative department's computers to Windows 95 after years of Windows 3.1 - in 1999, no less - I spent weeks explaining the basics, over and over, to frightened secretaries who were afraid of damaging their computer by clicking the wrong button! I had to explain what a double-click was to a mac user, not once, but three times.
And as for my sister... she's not stupid. She just doesn't want to bother with her computer, so she finds some geek to do it for her. If you try to force her into using Linux, with Konquerer, she'll only turn around and force some poor geek to translate all her papers for her prior to her deadline.
It's easy to get excited about computers. But ultimately, the computer is a tool, and as my father said, you use the best tool for the job. If a professor is getting along fine using a Apple 2 to do his data collection, then my job is to support his Apple 2. Forcing him into Linux, or Windows, or OS2 warp, just wastes his valuable time which could be better spent analyzing the brain chemicals in frozen mice (no, not making that up). Or the guy who analyzed mice breasts in petri dishes. I never did get around to asking him why....
This is why unviersities will continue to be a hodge podge of different operating systems. It works. Mostly. And it gets the job done. And when it doesn't, that's where the IT department is there for. Not to evangilize. But to make it work just like it did before, and get that thesis back, by the time they're done installing wires in that monkey's brain, preferably.
This is getting slightly off topic, but to all of those who say, "I have this great machine and Sim City 4 kicks the snot out of it"... that's not a good thing.
I have two good machines. Both have a gig of memory, decent cpu (one is a p4, I forget the other), one runs a gforce3 and the other ati rad 9000.
And Sim City 4 sucks on both in 1084x746 mode, with even low models/no lighting, sound turned off, fog off, etc.
It runs slow. Real slow.
I don't blame the computers though... I don't think any amount of hardware can compensate for a bloated, non-optimizing ui. The fact that it has major issues scrolling, even while using the cache on the graphics card, indicates a flaw in the design of the game.
Let's face it - if the game is running slowly, such that it is interfering with gameplay (which it does), then you refine your graphics. Use better mipmaps, use better scaling, reduce the size of your textures, decrease the polygon count, whatever. But it is better to be a slightly less "beautiful" game and run slower, than to be an unplayable, but gorgeous, game.
"They may have difficulty blaming themselves when they get laid off, so they direct their anguish at the company."
F- that! So it's my fault I've been laid off from two jobs this year?!? I'm an honest worker, I work 40 solid hours a week, or more. I'm faster, better, stronger than most programmers in the group. I write lean, mean, bug-free code, I learn whatever the f- embedded box or language or API you need to know, in less than a week. I don't take vacation ("stealing from the company"). I only call in sick if I'm on my god damned deathbed. And now it's my fault?!? No f-ing way!
And as for the jackass who complained about us leaving some "cushy" job for a higher pay raise - I never had a stable job. I'm two years out of college, and the only jobs I've had are dot.bombs. And I wasn't making that much either - 65k, after two years, for knowing everything under the sun, getting MCSD certified, and learning C#. When you take into the account the time I have been unemployed - first two months in Feb-Mar, and now since August 1st, I actually don't make much at all.
So f- you, Mr. big shot author. I do my best. I work hard. I learn more in a week than you did in College. And for that, I get kicked in the ass by not only the dot.bombs, but by writers who believe we're all sitting on a pile of riches.
Ok. So the monkey enters a function to start a swing, and sees how long before it can get it's second hand onto the rung.
But is it truely learning?
Or is it just a simple function? Perhaps all it is, besides a heck of alot of expensive equipment, is the following:
int try_swing(int force, int lastForce, int secondLastForce) { if (abs(force) > FORCEMAX) return FALSE;// out of reach if (force == secondLastForce) return FALSE;// We're just swinging between too high and too low and can't ever make the branch; switch (swing_out(force))// Try to grab the branch with this amount of force in his "kick" backwards { case GOT_IT : return TRUE;// caught branch case TOO_HIGH : return try_swing(--force, force, lastForce);// Try a less force case TOO_LOW : return try_swing(++force,force, lastForce);// Try a more force default: return FALSE;// Something happened, we can't do it } }
My point is not to insult the researchers who created the monkey, but instead to point out that just because it can "adapt" enough to swing from branch to branch, that does not mean it thinks! If that is the case, then the thermostat in your house is a thinking robot, because it turns on the heat when it's cold in your house, and turns the heat off when the temperature is too warm.
For this monkey to truely "think", he would need to remember everything he has "learned" in the past and apply it to each new branch, or even to other aspects of its life. For instance, if it ran into a tree, the result should hurt it so much that it would resolve to shy away from trees in the future, rather than run into them again. He should recognize trees that he has already seen before and run them flawlessly, and use skills he learned from one tree on the next.
Notice, I said 'skills'. Anything can be programmed to do one skill. But for it to take that skill and turn it into a new skill, such as taking an unintentional fall and catching the next rung below him, and thus learning how to go from level to level... or to "learn", without ever being programmed, how to catch a branch behind it with its feet...that is learning.
When I was applying for the International Baccalaureate, I had an interesting test.
It looked sort of like this:
a b c b c a c a -
You were supposed to figure out the last - from the matrix. Of course, this is a really easy one. The test started out really easy, and then turned pretty hellish in a matter of minutes. 3x3 turns into 5x5, the shapes change until the answer can be a shape you've never seen before, the location of the - changes, etc. Most of my friends who were applying with me spent ages cursing this test, but I enjoyed it. The reason? I had a video game which had a puzzle like this on every level, called "Secrets of the Ancient Empire" or something like that by the Learning Company. So I was used to it.
My point is, I think this was the best test for gauging someone's "intelligence" that I have ever run across. Or rather, the best test for gauging someone's logical and reasoning skills. It doesn't require math, it doesn't require english, all it requires is the ability to spot patterns, and predict the outcome - skills which are usefull no matter what field you go into.
Besides, it was fun.;) I think it was called a raven matrix, but I'm not sure anymore. No matter what they're called, this test has my vote for replacing the SAT.
I think the author of that column missed the point. Motif on top of commercial un*x implementations never intended to compete with Microsoft's Windows NT/9x. It was instead a robust high-computing server, designed to handle applications which require the heavy artillery (number crunching, file processing, memory usage) which your average PC cannot provide, while still being cheaper and more adaptable than your average mainframe.
This is why commercial Un*x was invented. This is why commercial Un*x OS's, whether they be Ultrix or Irix or Solaris, are still sold at incredibly high rates. There never was a "plan" to replace your average secretary's cpu with a Un*x box running Motif - it's similar to replacing a child's machine with a CRAY.
So there isn't much "new" and "modern" work done on Motif. So what? Motif is a stable platform. It will continue to be used over KDE in it's intended environment - the heavy-duty commercial applications world.
Folks, I'm talking engineering here. I'm talking about the machines which generate special effects for the entertainment biz. I'm talking about the machines run millions of calculations and checks on DNA while trying to crack the genetic code. I'm talking about the machines which monitor the safety conditions in a factory, making sure the bio-hazards remain safe. Do you *really* want these applications to run on top of KDE - a still in development, still unstable, still buggy environment? Would you trust your life on KDE? Or somebody else's?
Most of us love Linux and some of us love KDE. We're willing to forgive it's "growing pains" for the greater good, overlook the occasional crashed kernel and the odd core dump. But what if that machine was mission critical? Would you really suggest Linux and KDE for the job?
I'm all for KDE and I'm all for Linux, but let's call a spade a spade and stop bashing Motif for not being Windows 98. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust my life on Windows 98. And I would trust my life on Motif.
It's the bugs which develop an immunity to the potato and are now resistant to BT. Bt is the best pesticides on the market today, far better than some of the others which can cause nerve and brain damage to the farmers which spray their crops. Whether we like BT or not, without BT America's farmers will suffer another potato famine, similar to or worse than the potato famine of Ireland.
The problem with the BT-potato is that farmers are supposed to rotate their crops - a certain amount of their crops are supposed to be a regular potato designed to fool mother nature. But most of them don't. To my knowledge, there is no regulation to make sure farmers plant the proper quota of non-BT potatos.
So what does this mean? It means mother nature will have this much more incentive to create a BT-resistant bug, which will go and destroy a large portion of America's potatos, whether or not they use BT-genetically bred potato, or just the BT spray. And it will take us years to catch up with the BT-bug plague, years which will destroy potato farming as we know it.
Research jobs are a good start, but they aren't enough to keep a large population of geeks happy. The real success to geek freedom are software companies, doing active development, and lots of them. Branches which do marketing or sales only aren't of any help, besides recruiting young geeks to wherever the real work is done. And you need more than one or two major companies in the area to give geeks the freedom of choice, and make them feel they can walk away from their current job and get rehired without having to move halfway across the country. One thing I have noticed is that the east coast is short of non-consulting programming jobs - and some of us don't want to be flying around the country four days out of five on 60 hour a week jobs (cough, no company names here!). That's why Silicon Valley and Redmond have taken off - you need two or three major companies and a whole slew of new startups to make a geek truely happy - the critical mass of availible work. Just my $.02
Slashdot Mirror
This article is correct about Linux being, by the numbers, cheaper than windows... but it ignores things that, ultimately, will cost the university even more money.
Specifically, TCODI... Total Cost Of Dealing with Idiots.
Now I mean idiots in the nicest possible sense. Sometimes, computer idiots are just people who don't have the time, effort, or motivation to bother with computers, and view them as a magical source of evil powers which they must fight with on a daily basis.
In the article, he goes on to discuss how a student could easily translate a word document for use in Konquerer, or StarOffice, and back again. Yes, if the student possesses more than a mild understanding of computers. If that student has only a limited experience of using Microsoft Office, in a very limited manner, the cost and the effort to teach this user how to convert their documents to and fro before their 5 minute deadline passes will strain even the most patient of your student lab aides.
Most college students aren't computer enthusiasts. Some, like, I am ashamed to admit, my own sister, view the computer as little more than a calculator. When things go wrong, she promptly turns on her charm on the nearest nerd and thrusts the laptop into their hands... fix it! Make it work like it did before!
As a former network administrator, I think most of the university's students and professors fit this description. I used to administer the computers for the University of M----'s department of Zoology. Most - there were a few tech junkies and I treasured them - just wanted their computers to spit out the data it spat out last week, work exactly like it did last week, and most importantly, look exactly like it did last week. Anything different overwhelms them and gets in the way of doing what is important - to them - their research.
I got constantly called to fix non-working PC's (floppies left in drive), to revive dead hard drives, to find out why the printer wasn't responding. I had students hand me floppy disks with the only surviving copy of their thesis on it... after they had run in and out of the library's magnetic sensors with it in their backpacks.
When we finally did upgrade the administrative department's computers to Windows 95 after years of Windows 3.1 - in 1999, no less - I spent weeks explaining the basics, over and over, to frightened secretaries who were afraid of damaging their computer by clicking the wrong button! I had to explain what a double-click was to a mac user, not once, but three times.
And as for my sister... she's not stupid. She just doesn't want to bother with her computer, so she finds some geek to do it for her. If you try to force her into using Linux, with Konquerer, she'll only turn around and force some poor geek to translate all her papers for her prior to her deadline.
It's easy to get excited about computers. But ultimately, the computer is a tool, and as my father said, you use the best tool for the job. If a professor is getting along fine using a Apple 2 to do his data collection, then my job is to support his Apple 2. Forcing him into Linux, or Windows, or OS2 warp, just wastes his valuable time which could be better spent analyzing the brain chemicals in frozen mice (no, not making that up). Or the guy who analyzed mice breasts in petri dishes. I never did get around to asking him why....
This is why unviersities will continue to be a hodge podge of different operating systems. It works. Mostly. And it gets the job done. And when it doesn't, that's where the IT department is there for. Not to evangilize. But to make it work just like it did before, and get that thesis back, by the time they're done installing wires in that monkey's brain, preferably.
So if modchipping your own xbox is illegal....
;)
Does that mean Red Green is going to get arrested for "modding" that dryer into a bread maker?
Or what about the time he "modded" the ducts from his basement into a pontoon boat....
Rats... small typo.
It is better to be a slightly less "beautiful" game and run faster (NOT SLOWER) than to be an unplayable, but gorgeous, game.
Foot, mouth, chew. Yup.
This is getting slightly off topic, but to all of those who say, "I have this great machine and Sim City 4 kicks the snot out of it"... that's not a good thing.
I have two good machines. Both have a gig of memory, decent cpu (one is a p4, I forget the other), one runs a gforce3 and the other ati rad 9000.
And Sim City 4 sucks on both in 1084x746 mode, with even low models/no lighting, sound turned off, fog off, etc.
It runs slow. Real slow.
I don't blame the computers though... I don't think any amount of hardware can compensate for a bloated, non-optimizing ui. The fact that it has major issues scrolling, even while using the cache on the graphics card, indicates a flaw in the design of the game.
Let's face it - if the game is running slowly, such that it is interfering with gameplay (which it does), then you refine your graphics. Use better mipmaps, use better scaling, reduce the size of your textures, decrease the polygon count, whatever. But it is better to be a slightly less "beautiful" game and run slower, than to be an unplayable, but gorgeous, game.
"They may have difficulty blaming themselves when they get laid off, so they direct their anguish at the company."
F- that! So it's my fault I've been laid off from two jobs this year?!? I'm an honest worker, I work 40 solid hours a week, or more. I'm faster, better, stronger than most programmers in the group. I write lean, mean, bug-free code, I learn whatever the f- embedded box or language or API you need to know, in less than a week. I don't take vacation ("stealing from the company"). I only call in sick if I'm on my god damned deathbed. And now it's my fault?!? No f-ing way!
And as for the jackass who complained about us leaving some "cushy" job for a higher pay raise - I never had a stable job. I'm two years out of college, and the only jobs I've had are dot.bombs. And I wasn't making that much either - 65k, after two years, for knowing everything under the sun, getting MCSD certified, and learning C#. When you take into the account the time I have been unemployed - first two months in Feb-Mar, and now since August 1st, I actually don't make much at all.
So f- you, Mr. big shot author. I do my best. I work hard. I learn more in a week than you did in College. And for that, I get kicked in the ass by not only the dot.bombs, but by writers who believe we're all sitting on a pile of riches.
And I never stole anything either.
~Tepp
But is it truely learning?
Or is it just a simple function? Perhaps all it is, besides a heck of alot of expensive equipment, is the following:
int try_swing(int force, int lastForce, int secondLastForce) // out of reach // We're just swinging between too high and too low and can't ever make the branch; // Try to grab the branch with this amount of force in his "kick" backwards // caught branch // Try a less force // Try a more force // Something happened, we can't do it
{
if (abs(force) > FORCEMAX) return FALSE;
if (force == secondLastForce) return FALSE;
switch (swing_out(force))
{
case GOT_IT : return TRUE;
case TOO_HIGH : return try_swing(--force, force, lastForce);
case TOO_LOW : return try_swing(++force,force, lastForce);
default: return FALSE;
}
}
My point is not to insult the researchers who created the monkey, but instead to point out that just because it can "adapt" enough to swing from branch to branch, that does not mean it thinks! If that is the case, then the thermostat in your house is a thinking robot, because it turns on the heat when it's cold in your house, and turns the heat off when the temperature is too warm.
For this monkey to truely "think", he would need to remember everything he has "learned" in the past and apply it to each new branch, or even to other aspects of its life. For instance, if it ran into a tree, the result should hurt it so much that it would resolve to shy away from trees in the future, rather than run into them again. He should recognize trees that he has already seen before and run them flawlessly, and use skills he learned from one tree on the next.
Notice, I said 'skills'. Anything can be programmed to do one skill. But for it to take that skill and turn it into a new skill, such as taking an unintentional fall and catching the next rung below him, and thus learning how to go from level to level... or to "learn", without ever being programmed, how to catch a branch behind it with its feet...that is learning.
After all, who wants to see that water anyway? ;)
It looked sort of like this:
a b c
b c a
c a -
You were supposed to figure out the last - from the matrix. Of course, this is a really easy one. The test started out really easy, and then turned pretty hellish in a matter of minutes. 3x3 turns into 5x5, the shapes change until the answer can be a shape you've never seen before, the location of the - changes, etc. Most of my friends who were applying with me spent ages cursing this test, but I enjoyed it. The reason? I had a video game which had a puzzle like this on every level, called "Secrets of the Ancient Empire" or something like that by the Learning Company. So I was used to it.
My point is, I think this was the best test for gauging someone's "intelligence" that I have ever run across. Or rather, the best test for gauging someone's logical and reasoning skills. It doesn't require math, it doesn't require english, all it requires is the ability to spot patterns, and predict the outcome - skills which are usefull no matter what field you go into.
Besides, it was fun. ;) I think it was called a raven matrix, but I'm not sure anymore. No matter what they're called, this test has my vote for replacing the SAT.
This is why commercial Un*x was invented. This is why commercial Un*x OS's, whether they be Ultrix or Irix or Solaris, are still sold at incredibly high rates. There never was a "plan" to replace your average secretary's cpu with a Un*x box running Motif - it's similar to replacing a child's machine with a CRAY.
So there isn't much "new" and "modern" work done on Motif. So what? Motif is a stable platform. It will continue to be used over KDE in it's intended environment - the heavy-duty commercial applications world.
Folks, I'm talking engineering here. I'm talking about the machines which generate special effects for the entertainment biz. I'm talking about the machines run millions of calculations and checks on DNA while trying to crack the genetic code. I'm talking about the machines which monitor the safety conditions in a factory, making sure the bio-hazards remain safe. Do you *really* want these applications to run on top of KDE - a still in development, still unstable, still buggy environment? Would you trust your life on KDE? Or somebody else's?
Most of us love Linux and some of us love KDE. We're willing to forgive it's "growing pains" for the greater good, overlook the occasional crashed kernel and the odd core dump. But what if that machine was mission critical? Would you really suggest Linux and KDE for the job?
I'm all for KDE and I'm all for Linux, but let's call a spade a spade and stop bashing Motif for not being Windows 98. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust my life on Windows 98. And I would trust my life on Motif.
It's the bugs which develop an immunity to the potato and are now resistant to BT. Bt is the best pesticides on the market today, far better than some of the others which can cause nerve and brain damage to the farmers which spray their crops. Whether we like BT or not, without BT America's farmers will suffer another potato famine, similar to or worse than the potato famine of Ireland.
The problem with the BT-potato is that farmers are supposed to rotate their crops - a certain amount of their crops are supposed to be a regular potato designed to fool mother nature. But most of them don't. To my knowledge, there is no regulation to make sure farmers plant the proper quota of non-BT potatos.
So what does this mean? It means mother nature will have this much more incentive to create a BT-resistant bug, which will go and destroy a large portion of America's potatos, whether or not they use BT-genetically bred potato, or just the BT spray. And it will take us years to catch up with the BT-bug plague, years which will destroy potato farming as we know it.
Just my $0.02
Research jobs are a good start, but they aren't enough to keep a large population of geeks happy. The real success to geek freedom are software companies, doing active development, and lots of them. Branches which do marketing or sales only aren't of any help, besides recruiting young geeks to wherever the real work is done. And you need more than one or two major companies in the area to give geeks the freedom of choice, and make them feel they can walk away from their current job and get rehired without having to move halfway across the country. One thing I have noticed is that the east coast is short of non-consulting programming jobs - and some of us don't want to be flying around the country four days out of five on 60 hour a week jobs (cough, no company names here!). That's why Silicon Valley and Redmond have taken off - you need two or three major companies and a whole slew of new startups to make a geek truely happy - the critical mass of availible work. Just my $.02