I'd rather the Dr. have a skilled admin maintain a stable and secure Linux based network for his office. And not be hitting patients with the "the computers are down today" crap or "the computers got infected, your information went to Russian gangs, sorry bout that dude." You talk outta yer ass like there is an option of a foolproof computing platform that doesn't ever require professional help and hold up this strawman as the alternative to Linux.
I was more referring to home PCs, where GUI configuration tools are appropriate.
Proves you haven't actually ran Linux lately. Nowadays we use package managers. RPM packages are explicitly forbidden from interaction during installation.
Which while a good goal, it does not help out with software that requires inane manual configuration steps to get to a usable state after installation.
The problem I have with comparing Linux to Windows on the desktop is that I think Windows stinks on the desktop. I may be in the minority, but I want an operating system that is lean and mean, with no zooming windows, special effects, cute audio cues, or glassy curved "kewl" surfaces. I want an operating system to run applications.
Ok first off, a lot of the visual effects actually serve a purpose. Translucent windows provide depth information about where different windows are in the Z-ordering. Audio cues are, well, audio cues. They alert you that something has happened.
Secondly, none of these things effect your system performance anyway. The vast majority of the "special effects" in Windows are offloaded to the GPU, they aren't consuming RAM, they aren't hitting your CPU, they are essentially free.
Best case you have a minor improvement in UI, worst case, things look pretty and you aren't hitting the CPU anyway.
And of course you can turn all of these effects off. The "Classic" theme is still there in Windows 7. Most ultra-portable laptops come preconfigured with at least some of the Aero visual effects disabled so as to cut back on GPU usage and therefore help battery life (to whatever tiny extent it makes a difference...)
Hell if you want to you can change your shell from Explorer.exe to cmd.exe (or preferably Powershell:) ) and run everything from a CLI.
Slashdot's crappy JS consumes far more CPU cycles than all of Windows' Aero effects combined.
If the price for marketshare is to design a system for idiots then I don't want those users.
Here is a question for you: Do you want your doctor spending his time figuring out which confg files he needs to edit, or researching better ways to keep you alive?
People have lives to live. Those of us who dedicate our lives to computers have chosen to spend a crap ton of our time learning computer systems, but not everyone has the time or the desire to do the same.
That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they have other things to do with their time.
Likewise, good software shouldn't need a ton of messing around with in order to get it working. I hate installation steps that consist of following manual configuration instructions in a rote manner. Odds are if you can write instructions down as "step 1, step 2, step 3..." then you can automate it as part of installation in the first place and save everyone a good bit of time!
You can actually place system folders on different partitions so that 1. fragmentation of cat pictures doesn't slow down the OS, 2. the OS can be wiped while retaining user data.
Hmm.
*looks at the folder structure on his current PC*
Well lets see, Windows is on my SSD drive, my profile folders are on my spinning disk.
User Profiles have been moveable for ages now. It used to break stupid ass software which did dumb stuff like hard code in "C:\Documents and Settings\..." but MS has changed that folder's name enough that now almost everyone uses the apporpriate environment variables.
Maybe it shouldn't, but I can remember before that feature was introduced shutting down my computer and going "oh shit" and having to hurry up and save a file before the app was force quit. Most of the time I made it.
Heck a number of times the "save, don't save, cancel" dialog has come up and I have relaized that actually I forgot to do something (needed to print a documented, etc) and I hit cancel.
From a pure engineering perspective it is correct? Probably not. But it sure is useful.
I have an SSD, shutdowns take less time then pulling the plug.
Actually I almost never shutdown, I prefer to go into hibernate. 10 second or less boot times are awsome, and a good portion of that is at the stupid BIOS splash screen.
Personally, I really like 90% of the ads. The non-gaming ads annoy me, but the game ads are typically for stuff that I want to know about. Many times I turn on my Xbox, see an ad for some game I have been looking forward to, and say to myself "awesome, its out!"
I'm a gamer. I don't count showing me what new games are available as really being advertising at all.
Ads for fast food products are annoying though. Actually I find ads for anything not strictly game related to be annoying, I am on my Xbox to play games, just so long as you are showing me gaming related products, its all good.
You do though! There is a reason the PS3 doesn't have anywhere near the same number of demos available for download that Xbox does. Sony has traditionally made publishers pay to host their demos on Sony's servers (and IIRC it might even have been pay-per-download of the files), whereas Microsoft offers publishers free hosting for demos.
Its also funny how other consoles, and PC systems, have access to that sort of stuff, and multiplayer policing, and matchmaking, and rankings... at no further cost to the end user.
Actually you will find that free PC multiplayer doesn't really have policing. Sure if someone gets enough complaints sent in about them on Steam they might get banned, but that is hardly the same as hiring people to go from game to game spotting asshats and cheaters.
Also look at the number of PC multiplayer match making systems that have gone bankrupt. Steam is, AFAIK, the only large one left that doesn't have any fees, (outside of whatever EA may be doing), but its revenue source is rather obvious.
You are also paying for them to host all the marketplace content. You know how every Xbox Live game has a demo? Those costs money to host.
All those extras (themes, backgrounds, promo vids) which can be downloaded through Xbox Live? Those cost money to host.
Policing multiplayer games? That costs money.
Also the multiplayer match making servers and ranking servers do cost money to host. The servers that push patches out to players cost money to host. Heck just testing those patches costs money.
Now obviously some of the content listed above is accessible to everyone, and in the case of some things, such as demos for highly anticipated games, content is made available earlier to Gold members, but the fact remains that all of the above involve ongoing recurring costs.
An entire new UI, Avatars, the recently canceled game show, and there is a steady stream of content that comes to the Xbox Live platform.
Providing the platform is not free. MS has to run the datacenters that all of the content is served off of, and has to maintain teams of people to support the infrastructure, from the technology side of it to the more mundane stuff like enforcing the terms of service.
Online services do not appear out of the ether, someone has to build, improve, and support them.
I think that one issue might be that a lot of programmers leave the field when they start a family. Programming is a very demanding job that requires a ton of time, effort, and passion be put into it. The exact same can be said for parenting. I have seen a good number of developers leave the field when they get older.
It is also a good thing when highly experienced programmers (those with at least some personal skills) go into architect and manager roles, where they can have a larger impact and help train the next generation of programmers, help keep less experienced programmers from making huge mistakes, and prevent the reinvention of the wheel for the 1000th time.
Of course if your passion IS for writing code, and you have a family situation that allows for that, then companies skepticism about older programmers is very unfortunate.
I think that from a company's perspective, developers over a given age can be broken into two lots:
Those who are too incompetent to have gotten promoted to a senior role during their career
Those who are really passionate about programming
Getting the message across that you are in the second group is really key. The problem (again from a company's perspective) is that a large percentage of the passionate developers have been forced to leave development by the time they get to a certain point in their life. Thus the ratio of incompetent/passionate is out of wack when dealing with older candidates.
All of that said, where I am currently working I am one of 3 people who are under 3, and everyone here who is older (including 1 grey beard) is really passionate about technology.
Really that is what counts. Communicate that you are doing what you love. If programming is really what you love doing, let people know that, and they will hire you.
Heck we are having problems finding experienced candidates who are passionate about technology.
It appears that the only thing they have is an add-on for an open source product and a pocket full of investor cash. Why be tied to a market with one of the most expensive costs of living in the nation when they could maximize investor equity in a cheaper market. But then again, I'm not a PHD candidate in Computer Science. My background is CIS, business, and economics...
From what I understand third person, part of Silicon Valley is the atmosphere you get being around lots of other high tech companies. This extends to the infrastructure necessary to grow a high tech business being in place. People you are going to meet with are going to be located in the same area, and people who have the talents you want to hire are drawn to the area.
Basically the same reason you find a lot of economists and business majors in NYC.
As a data point, I consider myself slightly above average, but not quite Turing or Dijkstra, and I was making their Engineer II level pay in a region of the East Coast with far lower cost of living (but not in the deep sticks either) a few years after high school. I can't imagine those smarter than me are so cavalier about the risk/benefit ratio of jumping to a startup with no product ready to go.
Yah their pay scale sucks if they want to attract "rockstar" talent. Given the stupid high cost of living in the Silicon Valley area, that pay scale sucks. It'd be great almost anywhere else in the country (except for the New York area, or any of the few other stupid high cost of living areas around the nation).
For example, I list Python under my skills even though my knowledge of it is pretty much limited to one course I took.
Meh, I did the same thing then ended up writing a decent program of ~thousand lines of it. Although am hardly a Python expert after only a single in house app.
School teaches you how to learn. If need be, you know how to go about learning Python, that is what counts.
Slashdot Mirror
I was more referring to home PCs, where GUI configuration tools are appropriate.
Which while a good goal, it does not help out with software that requires inane manual configuration steps to get to a usable state after installation.
Ok first off, a lot of the visual effects actually serve a purpose. Translucent windows provide depth information about where different windows are in the Z-ordering. Audio cues are, well, audio cues. They alert you that something has happened.
Secondly, none of these things effect your system performance anyway. The vast majority of the "special effects" in Windows are offloaded to the GPU, they aren't consuming RAM, they aren't hitting your CPU, they are essentially free.
Best case you have a minor improvement in UI, worst case, things look pretty and you aren't hitting the CPU anyway.
And of course you can turn all of these effects off. The "Classic" theme is still there in Windows 7. Most ultra-portable laptops come preconfigured with at least some of the Aero visual effects disabled so as to cut back on GPU usage and therefore help battery life (to whatever tiny extent it makes a difference...)
Hell if you want to you can change your shell from Explorer.exe to cmd.exe (or preferably Powershell :) ) and run everything from a CLI.
Slashdot's crappy JS consumes far more CPU cycles than all of Windows' Aero effects combined.
Here is a question for you: Do you want your doctor spending his time figuring out which confg files he needs to edit, or researching better ways to keep you alive?
People have lives to live. Those of us who dedicate our lives to computers have chosen to spend a crap ton of our time learning computer systems, but not everyone has the time or the desire to do the same.
That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they have other things to do with their time.
Likewise, good software shouldn't need a ton of messing around with in order to get it working. I hate installation steps that consist of following manual configuration instructions in a rote manner. Odds are if you can write instructions down as "step 1, step 2, step 3..." then you can automate it as part of installation in the first place and save everyone a good bit of time!
Hmm.
*looks at the folder structure on his current PC*
Well lets see, Windows is on my SSD drive, my profile folders are on my spinning disk.
User Profiles have been moveable for ages now. It used to break stupid ass software which did dumb stuff like hard code in "C:\Documents and Settings\..." but MS has changed that folder's name enough that now almost everyone uses the apporpriate environment variables.
With just the keyboard now!
(Win7, Win Vista is similar and WinXP is actually a bit simplier)
Winkey-Pause
Tab down to Advanced System Settings
Alt-N
Use arrow up/down to select Path
Alt-E to edit it.
Dude, it can't ID me if my glasses are on or if there is sunlight coming through any of the windows.
For some reason I am not worried. :)
Made sense to me. Granted lines from it are fail:
In other words, have the most successful reproduce.
DEATH HAPPENS.
First you live, then you die.
In that order.
You really need to throw in a recommendation for some sort of antidepressant before your recommend anyone read The Gap Cycle.
The most depressing series of novels...
Dude /. barely supports any browser.
p>I think smartphones need to go back to basics.
So you want a basic cellphone then? :P
Once you use one, you'll never go back. It is like night and day.
17% to 20% is still pretty miserable. Even then those numbers don't show how many children died young, just infants.
It would just raise more funds for the USPTO as companies had to submit multiple patents, wone for each claim.
Problem not solved.
Maybe it shouldn't, but I can remember before that feature was introduced shutting down my computer and going "oh shit" and having to hurry up and save a file before the app was force quit. Most of the time I made it.
Heck a number of times the "save, don't save, cancel" dialog has come up and I have relaized that actually I forgot to do something (needed to print a documented, etc) and I hit cancel.
From a pure engineering perspective it is correct? Probably not. But it sure is useful.
I have an SSD, shutdowns take less time then pulling the plug.
Actually I almost never shutdown, I prefer to go into hibernate. 10 second or less boot times are awsome, and a good portion of that is at the stupid BIOS splash screen.
Personally, I really like 90% of the ads. The non-gaming ads annoy me, but the game ads are typically for stuff that I want to know about. Many times I turn on my Xbox, see an ad for some game I have been looking forward to, and say to myself "awesome, its out!"
I'm a gamer. I don't count showing me what new games are available as really being advertising at all.
Ads for fast food products are annoying though. Actually I find ads for anything not strictly game related to be annoying, I am on my Xbox to play games, just so long as you are showing me gaming related products, its all good.
You do though! There is a reason the PS3 doesn't have anywhere near the same number of demos available for download that Xbox does. Sony has traditionally made publishers pay to host their demos on Sony's servers (and IIRC it might even have been pay-per-download of the files), whereas Microsoft offers publishers free hosting for demos.
Actually you will find that free PC multiplayer doesn't really have policing. Sure if someone gets enough complaints sent in about them on Steam they might get banned, but that is hardly the same as hiring people to go from game to game spotting asshats and cheaters.
Also look at the number of PC multiplayer match making systems that have gone bankrupt. Steam is, AFAIK, the only large one left that doesn't have any fees, (outside of whatever EA may be doing), but its revenue source is rather obvious.
You are also paying for them to host all the marketplace content. You know how every Xbox Live game has a demo? Those costs money to host.
All those extras (themes, backgrounds, promo vids) which can be downloaded through Xbox Live? Those cost money to host.
Policing multiplayer games? That costs money.
Also the multiplayer match making servers and ranking servers do cost money to host. The servers that push patches out to players cost money to host. Heck just testing those patches costs money.
Now obviously some of the content listed above is accessible to everyone, and in the case of some things, such as demos for highly anticipated games, content is made available earlier to Gold members, but the fact remains that all of the above involve ongoing recurring costs.
An entire new UI, Avatars, the recently canceled game show, and there is a steady stream of content that comes to the Xbox Live platform.
Providing the platform is not free. MS has to run the datacenters that all of the content is served off of, and has to maintain teams of people to support the infrastructure, from the technology side of it to the more mundane stuff like enforcing the terms of service.
Online services do not appear out of the ether, someone has to build, improve, and support them.
I think that one issue might be that a lot of programmers leave the field when they start a family. Programming is a very demanding job that requires a ton of time, effort, and passion be put into it. The exact same can be said for parenting. I have seen a good number of developers leave the field when they get older.
It is also a good thing when highly experienced programmers (those with at least some personal skills) go into architect and manager roles, where they can have a larger impact and help train the next generation of programmers, help keep less experienced programmers from making huge mistakes, and prevent the reinvention of the wheel for the 1000th time.
Of course if your passion IS for writing code, and you have a family situation that allows for that, then companies skepticism about older programmers is very unfortunate.
I think that from a company's perspective, developers over a given age can be broken into two lots:
Getting the message across that you are in the second group is really key. The problem (again from a company's perspective) is that a large percentage of the passionate developers have been forced to leave development by the time they get to a certain point in their life. Thus the ratio of incompetent/passionate is out of wack when dealing with older candidates.
All of that said, where I am currently working I am one of 3 people who are under 3, and everyone here who is older (including 1 grey beard) is really passionate about technology.
Really that is what counts. Communicate that you are doing what you love. If programming is really what you love doing, let people know that, and they will hire you.
Heck we are having problems finding experienced candidates who are passionate about technology.
From what I understand third person, part of Silicon Valley is the atmosphere you get being around lots of other high tech companies. This extends to the infrastructure necessary to grow a high tech business being in place. People you are going to meet with are going to be located in the same area, and people who have the talents you want to hire are drawn to the area.
Basically the same reason you find a lot of economists and business majors in NYC.
Yah their pay scale sucks if they want to attract "rockstar" talent. Given the stupid high cost of living in the Silicon Valley area, that pay scale sucks. It'd be great almost anywhere else in the country (except for the New York area, or any of the few other stupid high cost of living areas around the nation).
Meh, I did the same thing then ended up writing a decent program of ~thousand lines of it. Although am hardly a Python expert after only a single in house app.
School teaches you how to learn. If need be, you know how to go about learning Python, that is what counts.
"Microsoft may back off of dynamic .NET languages" would be more appropriate.
Sad to hear though, I just started a project with IronPython.