maybe i should say that in your 40s, for men, it feels as if all the good women are taken. and that the available ones are either desperate loosers looking for their meal ticket, or wingnut 40year-old virgins incapable of a relationship.
i know it's not always like this, but as i said, it gets harder to find a new partner as you get older.
and, no, i'm no Sheldon or Howard-like character, i really had a wife before (sh*t happened). there *are* women that can deal living with a geek and don't mind having "a nerd in residence" as she put it. but they are hard to find...
i hope i will be able to articulate this in a coherent fashion. (typing quickly) never post to slashdot when your supper is cooking. but this thread touches something that "hits very close to home".
this is not a comment on the amd blog about dating, but more a comment on the dating thing (and maybe some venting of some frustration about it).
i haven't read all the posts, but all those i read did not mention the "age thing". dating is way simpler when you are 20-something, compared to dating in your 40s.
in your 20s, it's easy for a man to meet a woman that does not have a child, does not own a house and does not have a long personal history (etc.). both of you are still flexible, can still change & adapt fairly easily.
in your 40s, it's no longer the same. rare are the women that haven't been in a commited relationship (married, common-law, etc.), don't come with kids attached, don't have their own house, condo, whatever. (the "instant grandfather" thing just freaks me out.) people are not as light traveling as they once were. let's not forget the accumulated baggage (bad relationships, bad events like spouse or spousal-equivalents that died, career upsets, etc.), the acquired habits and the career obligations. both partners in the dating game are no longer blank slates and that can complicate matters.
but the worst is for the men and apparently even more for north-american middle-aged men. the expectation is for us to have our career firmly on track, to have achieved great success professionaly, to have our mortgages paid off, to still be in perfect health and so on and so forth. these expectation are even worse when it comes to newly-immigrant women, especially oriental ones, in my experience. it's as if many women in their 40s want a 40something virgin that never did anything but sit in an empty appartment, stashing away their paycheques, waiting to meet them.
whilst it seems that men are more flexible about a woman's background, a majority of women can't deal with the fact that the men they meet had a life before them. or that circumstances made it so that this middle-aged guy is still dealing with a mortgage. or that he has hobbies and interests of his own -- many women don't like dating geeks, it appears.
so the point is that dating as you get older does not get easier, and that too often, it seems (from my and colleague's experiences) that the fault lies with women that are just being unreasonable, some being f*cking insane. it is frustrating to know that you can share your life with a woman, that you can be in a commited relationship because you were before she died... only to not be able to find that new "someone special" because they are not giving you a chance.
If the Chinese exploit the natural resources found in the Sea of China the same way they are exploiting them in Africa or even inside their own territory, then it will be a ecological disaster like no other. The stuff that brings an ELE upon us. The way they operate, they make the traditional colonial powers (i.e., Europe) and the USA (no angels themselves) look like, well, angels.
Greed can make people do some very, very bad things and the Chinese are not immune to it, trust me. The horror stories my chinese ex-girlfriend told me about chinese farming & mining, numerous anecdotes from chinese co-workers, along with what some newly arrived african acquaintances talked over coffee (the results, at so many levels, of chinese fishing techniques resemble more a neutron bomb on steroids than proper fishing, and that's just what goes on at sea), do not inspire confidence, to say the least.
If you think BP did badly in the gulf of Mexico, you haven't seen anything yet.
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
bzzt! wrong!
to say that apple "used only internally developed hardware" is very inaccurate. the ignorance still displayed about anything apple astounds me (like saying the ipod does not support mp3).
apple did use externally designed hardware (nubus, scsi, etc.), though they did tweak it (scsi) to, er, "make it fit" (wedging scsi into a smaller db-25 connector). you better check your facts first, ok?
you might think that with the arrival of "new competition" (bell getting into tv, various cable companies getting into residential phone, etc.) we might be able to get better deals & service......well, no. not a chance. rates & service still suck and are getting worse (bell canada offshoring customer service to india, etc.) in cable, telephone, cell phone, internet... etc.
my best chance right now for "improved customer service" is to look into ota hdtv, but for now, "outlook hazy, better chance next time" (i live in the ottawa region, which sucks for ota hdtv).
whilst people in the us complain tv / radio / cell phones, they don't know how good they have it compared to canada.
you better get your facts straight before repeating the same anti-catholic bullsh*t and making things up (priests for aids?!).
many, here on/. and elsewhere, have pointed out repeatedly that the catholic church has been overall far less anti-science than the protestants have been. in fact, many of the things Rome has been accused of have been just gross exaggerations and down-right lies. the western church (a.k.a. roman catholic) is not perfect, far from it, but it is not as dark as the standard anti-catholic rap makes it to be. in fact, the average neo-protestant cults that are spreading from the usa are far more damaging to science **right now and for the foreseeable future** than the catholic church has ever been.
well, this is nice to jack up the number of cores, but what about access to memory and other system resources? is hyper-transport getting "fatter" to allow more concurrent access to ram and such, i.e. will each core have a dedicated access to memory, for example?
maybe i'm just not getting it ("you're too old, go back to your punched cards", yada yada yada), but what's the point of upping the number of cores on a die if too many of them have to wait in line to access resources?
we're still dealing with micros, here, not mainframes. there are still echoes of the original bone-headed ibm 5150 design that have to be maintained for software to run. it's not as if we can go with a radical re-architecturing of the "wintel" microcomputer to accommodate these new multi-core cpus. so how do "they" go about it to ensure we are indeed getting more performance and not some hobbled design pretending it is faster?
i know apple never brought it to market (it was just some concept thingie that only existed in a video and in sculley's book), but nonetheless... feels like microsoft copied apple again.
"...Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted...."
I am appalled. This individual is clearly a unilingual-never-left-his-neighbourhood-right-winger who 99% probability watches only Fox News and listens only to Limbaugh, Savage and other far-right wing-nuts. Has this individual ever traveled abroad, watched/read foreign media, even just talked to people from outside the USA?
People across the globe are already living the consequences of climate change, the landscape is changing and, yes, glaciers are melting (amongst other things).
It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, it doesn't matter how much money you are making, the size of your house or its location, your life will be, sooner or later, impacted by climate change. Mother Nature does not give a flying f**k who you are, and will not leave you unaffected by extreme weather or floods or... because you're a right-wing Jzeebus-lovin', bible-thumping "murkan". She's a bitch. And anyone denying it won't change that fact.
This individual should travel and see the world for himself. Maybe then he'd stop making such stupid statements.
I think this quote I once read on/. should be read and reflected upon by as many people as possible:
(ack! where's the "edit" button when you need it?)
instead of "oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it" i meant "oh, we can add the original mac lc to the list whilst we're at it". sorry about that.
funny as you only see some typos and such *after* you click "submit"...
if this is "the list", then it is badly chosen (to be polite).
the powerpc was not a bad product. in fact, at first, it beat intel's offerings easily (faster, etc.). it is only moto's incapability to get its act together, along with ibm's unwillingness to continue developing the product that prevented the powerpc from staying competitive.
os9 was a perfectly serviceable version of "macos classic".
two turkeys (imnsho) that should have been there instead are: the 1990 mac classic and the mac iisi. two products made by cost-cutting and hobbling existing designs to prevent them to compete with existing "better" products (the iici, in this case). oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it.
i guess it was too much work to improve the "mainstream" machine of the time (the iici) so that the new low-cost offerings could be feature competitive with what the pc crowd were seeing on their side of the fence. but what can you expect when bean-counting marketroids run the show?
just like intel that joined the ieee1394 (firewire) committee......just to undermine the standardization process of firewire.
bill's people will use the same shenanigans that intel used (maybe we'll support it, maybe we won't... etc.) in order to get its own technology out and established before svg can get a real foothold in the market, if it ever becomes more than a marginal oddity like ogg.
or they will use the same "embrace, extend & extinguish" tactics they used with java.
how can microsoft be kept in check (on a tight leash?) to ensure they don't corrupt the svg standard?
you can't change *decades* of nasty, predatorial behaviour overnight. i strongly doubt ms' intentions are honest.
tmp31416
p.s.: taco, the new (current) slashot is awful. could there be a way to view it in "usable" mode (i.e., pre-2004 or thereabout) without having to log in?
"If you don't believe anyone who says so, it's because of your ignorance and bias, (...)"
ah, yes. *rolls eyes*
re. bias: maybe *you* don't, but I remember a world before Microsoft. I remember heavy iron, punched cards & paper tape. I remember a world when you had a *choice* of platforms, word processors and so forth. My bias would err towards "use the right tool for the right job" and "M$ is not always the answer". I think you confused me with a pizza-faced, mother's-basement dwelling script-kiddie that knows only micro-computers and never worked in a *real* enterprise environment.
re. ignorance: see above. I could probably spout more computer brand-names and software platforms than you, WITHOUT HAVING TO GOOGLE THEM because I used more bloody technologies than I can remember.
My scepticism towards those who claim to be using only FLOSS and Free DEs comes from my own personal experience. I'm getting to old to have to fight with my computer(s) to get the simplest of things done. Yeah, it was fun at the time to hack that PDP-11 I scored from surplus into printing my reports from home and to do other basic tasks. But I don't have the patience nor the will to do so any more. My time is limited. On top of the usual house maintenance & chores, I'm knee-deep in renovations. I have family responsibilities. And so forth. My computers are now *TOOLS* that have to do what I need them to do. I should not have to be a Uber-geek to get printing to work satisfactorily. And right now, FLOSS can't do that simply and reliably.
(A perfect example of what is wrong with FLOSS is a recent experience of mine: I was able to set up a lightweight Ubuntu-based NAS that uses AoE and iSCSI at home for archiving and file sharing way quicker & cheaper than it would have possible for me to do the same with Windows. (Ouch. Previous sentence was awkward.) But for the life of me, the client-side of AoE & iSCSI truly sucked on FLOSS but was brain-dead easy to set up on XP. Go figure.)
If there are "lots of people" that use FLOSS and their main DEs, I wonder how much fighting they have to do to get basic tasks done. How quickly and easily can they get their stuff done. If they have the time and patience to get their machine to fulfil their requirements, more power to them. But not all of us can.
And their are some that claim to be FLOSS-only who are simply lying, because it makes them look L33T. There are a lot of poseurs out there.
...but from what the summary tells me, TFA seems to cover something I've been complaining about for some time.
Free DE developers seem to concentrate on new whiz-bang features and seem to forget the basics.
Things like integrated font+layout+printing management/support.
Too often, WYSINWYG from screen to paper. And too often, in Free DEs, I'll get microscopic fonts on the screen from pages that display just fine with Windows or OS-X based programmes. And don't get me going on simple font management
These are just two and a half of the "basics" that the Free DEs should concentrate on before getting new obscure "plasmoids" (or whatever). It's as if FLOSS developers don't use KDE/GNOME/XFCE/etc. for their daily, huh, chores and only use GNOME/XFCE/KDE/etc. as some sort of "grown-up playground" and nothing more.
I am now at the point when I do not believe anyone that says they only use {(Linux distro)|(one of the BSDs)} as their desktop. I know I could not, and it's not just because of web content. Guys, I beg of you: please make sure all the basics necessities are covered, THEN go for the bells and whistles.
Oops. Never type whilst trying to do your weekly chores at the same time (I should stop doing my laundry when I run out of clean underwear...).
Anyway, I should have said that whatever ails the education system in the USA (if there is "a system" instead of a hodge-podge of disjointed schooling arragements) is not the typically targeted superficial factoids favoured by the right, that the causes might be a bit deeper.
Or, like someone else pointed out, maybe the school principals (or directors or whatever you Yanks call them) are just too lazy to follow The Process to terminate those unfit for teaching. You could be a PhD in your field and yet be a abysmal teacher...
The right-wingers will blame unions, "tenure" and every other typical right-wing target.
They will forget the fact that in the USA, teaching & education appears to be not very well valued. Nor is it viewed as a basic right (yes, I will be branded a "leftist", or as you Yanks like to call people you consider criminally insane traitors, a "liberal"). For quite some time now, in the USA, people haven't been going in teaching for the money or because it is a well-considered profession. So the best & brightest are not generally attracted to the profession.
And then, there is the generally negative attitude towards " book learnin' " generally found in the USA, an attitude that seems to go back to the late sixties. Contrast this with the attitude that you had to go to school if you wanted to elevate yourself & better your life, attitude that seemed to be somewhat prevalent before the sixties (or is it the fifties?). What brought about this, I have no clue, but then I do not live in the USA.
For a country that likes to view itself more civilized & enlightened that the rest of the world, the USA seems to have an odd relationship with what enables that: education...
p.s.: I'm not saying there are no bad teachers in the USA, or anywhere else in the world. There are. But if "The System" is built in such a way that achievement or even just the will to learn & succeed are not correctly encouraged and rewarded, maybe you're just reaping what you sowed (sp?).
As a old time jack-of-all-trades/sometimes DBA, I have been seeing Oracle sitting on its fat a** for quite some time, content to gouge customers with, by now, over-priced & over-engineered software. The vast majority of my colleagues (full-time DBAs and such) have been stating for just as long that Oracle support is not worth the price you pay for licensing. Larry & co. are now taking their market share for granted, like Novell & WordPerfect used to (to give two easy examples).
From where I stand, Oracle is basically giving the market away to M$. I used to laugh at the very notion of this, but too many recent events I cannot talk about (the joys of working for the MIBs... (ok, the suits are not all black, but you get the idea)) have lead me to this conclusion. I am not happy about this, but I can't deny it any more. Oracle should revise their pricing structure and the way their products work: we are no longer in the 1980s, Larry! What was acceptable then is not any more!
And, to make matters worse, Oracle has turned into the new CA (Computer Associates): too many software that was acquired by them have simply disappeared out of sight. Like 99.999% of what CA has bought, that used to be good sellers and had good visibility, but that disappeared overnight when CA got their slimy tentacles on it.
Finally, to add insult to injury, Oracle, like Sun, still does not grok what FLOSS is.
No, Oracle should not buy any Linux distro or anything resembling a Free *nix. In the case of Red Hat, that would be the absolute worst thing that has happened to them. It would be just as bad as if M$ would have bought them out.
Some time ago, it would have been an intriguing concept. Not any more.
Considering how badly Sun is handling OpenOffice & MySQL (and any other FLOSS projects they might be involved with), they should start by trying to *truly* understand what FLOSS is and how be be good citizens of the FLOSS "universe" before they do anything else. I mean, ensuring OO code is purposely obfuscated and almost discouraging external help on the project?
They make Apple, IBM and even Intel look very good as FLOSS developers/contributors.
Maybe there are some good intentions behind this, but... Oh, dear, I can only see this being used for bad jokes. I mean, remember how people would get their jollies by repeatedly pouncing on cars with the "this car has an alarm system, your are too close, please stand back" car alarm? Hey, let's try to beat on this guy to make him jolt around!
This sounds like a very bad idea to me. But I might be wrong.
"It's supposed to be a temporary crutch, something to fall back on, not a chosen way of life."
i totally agree with you. be also aware that when whatever social net was designed and implemented in north america, it was assumed that everyone wanted to work, that no self-respecting individual would choose not to work. in other words, pan-handling, mendicity was a last resort. if you were begging, you were in extreme deep sh*t.
these days, well, there seems to be some individuals that prefer to abuse 'the system', and such occurences give 'the system' a bad reputation, a bad image. sadly, these questionable individuals are used by others to justify destroying 'the system'.
maybe north-american countries should take a hint from some european countries where people making use of the social net have to do something in return... actually, they have to do 'something' that keeps them in the loop: i.e. they have to do some work to earn their unemployment or welfare cheque.
maybe the system in north-america might work better if people making use of it were encouraged and showed they could earn more, much more money by working. i mean, why not find a way to not penalize working whilst receiving welfare (or u.i.), with these cheques being gradually cut off after a certain earning milestone so that the receipient is never stuck at a specific income point, and could actually better his/her financial situation by working and 'getting back in the groove'?
those who would not want to work would then be stuck doing the mandatory work assignments (what you need to do to receive those cheques) and be stuck at the same income bracket, whilst the others would increase the work they do, seeing their pocket more filled and not be penalized because they wanted to work, but could not find work that could sustain them -- yet.
i hope i got my point across. anyone would could express this better, be my guest (esp. if you could identify which country (countries) in europe have such a system in place)
i'm sorry, but it is not because the system's implementation is broken that there is no need for some form of social net.
i, too, had a close brush (? i'm not a north-american anglophone, so bare with me, please) with 'the system' a few years ago during the high-tech meltdown. and it was very obvious to me that welfare (because i had exhausted unemployment insurance) was, at that point, implemented in a way that it created & enforced poverty. for example, how could i get a job in my area if i have no car (long story, but most potential employers were not within mass transit range) or a computer, or 'too many suits'?
thank ${deity} that a 'short term' contract (it went from 20 working days to 3 or 4 months, because of an error from the supplier) landed on me two weeks before i would have been in a very uncomfortable spot (evicted from my app., etc.), but this showed me that some form of social net is needed and whatever i got helped me. maybe our social net is somewhat broken too around the edges, but it has prevented many unlucky souls ending in the streets.
voting republican will not help you or make things more fair. don't fall prey to the canard they like to spread, that the down-trodden (right word? sp?) are poor because they want it and like it. and if you got the wrong end of the stick, have you considered that maybe you talked to the wrong people, that maybe the proverbial 'next cubicle' might have been more helpful? (i hope i got my point across)
and if the system is broken in the us, maybe you might want to let president obama know. afaik, he has dealt with these kinds of issues before, though maybe he has not encountered a scenario such like yours. 'the system' cannot be fixed if the powers that be don't know which parts of it are broken. let obama know, try even emailing him. maybe he reads his e-mails like steve jobs does.
Slashdot Mirror
vinyl, "lossy format"?
you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
please stop talking and go in the corner of the classroom. now.
post-scriptum --
maybe i should say that in your 40s, for men, it feels as if all the good women are taken.
and that the available ones are either desperate loosers looking for their meal ticket, or wingnut 40year-old virgins incapable of a relationship.
i know it's not always like this, but as i said, it gets harder to find a new partner as you get older.
and, no, i'm no Sheldon or Howard-like character, i really had a wife before (sh*t happened).
there *are* women that can deal living with a geek and don't mind having "a nerd in residence" as she put it.
but they are hard to find...
i hope i will be able to articulate this in a coherent fashion.
(typing quickly)
never post to slashdot when your supper is cooking.
but this thread touches something that "hits very close to home".
this is not a comment on the amd blog about dating, but more a comment on the dating thing (and maybe some venting of some frustration about it).
i haven't read all the posts, but all those i read did not mention the "age thing". dating is way simpler when you are 20-something, compared to dating in your 40s.
in your 20s, it's easy for a man to meet a woman that does not have a child, does not own a house and does not have a long personal history (etc.). both of you are still flexible, can still change & adapt fairly easily.
in your 40s, it's no longer the same. rare are the women that haven't been in a commited relationship (married, common-law, etc.), don't come with kids attached, don't have their own house, condo, whatever. (the "instant grandfather" thing just freaks me out.) people are not as light traveling as they once were. let's not forget the accumulated baggage (bad relationships, bad events like spouse or spousal-equivalents that died, career upsets, etc.), the acquired habits and the career obligations. both partners in the dating game are no longer blank slates and that can complicate matters.
but the worst is for the men and apparently even more for north-american middle-aged men. the expectation is for us to have our career firmly on track, to have achieved great success professionaly, to have our mortgages paid off, to still be in perfect health and so on and so forth. these expectation are even worse when it comes to newly-immigrant women, especially oriental ones, in my experience. it's as if many women in their 40s want a 40something virgin that never did anything but sit in an empty appartment, stashing away their paycheques, waiting to meet them.
whilst it seems that men are more flexible about a woman's background, a majority of women can't deal with the fact that the men they meet had a life before them. or that circumstances made it so that this middle-aged guy is still dealing with a mortgage. or that he has hobbies and interests of his own -- many women don't like dating geeks, it appears.
so the point is that dating as you get older does not get easier, and that too often, it seems (from my and colleague's experiences) that the fault lies with women that are just being unreasonable, some being f*cking insane. it is frustrating to know that you can share your life with a woman, that you can be in a commited relationship because you were before she died... only to not be able to find that new "someone special" because they are not giving you a chance.
oh, well.
If the Chinese exploit the natural resources found in the Sea of China the same way they are exploiting them in Africa or even inside their own territory, then it will be a ecological disaster like no other. The stuff that brings an ELE upon us. The way they operate, they make the traditional colonial powers (i.e., Europe) and the USA (no angels themselves) look like, well, angels.
Greed can make people do some very, very bad things and the Chinese are not immune to it, trust me. The horror stories my chinese ex-girlfriend told me about chinese farming & mining, numerous anecdotes from chinese co-workers, along with what some newly arrived african acquaintances talked over coffee (the results, at so many levels, of chinese fishing techniques resemble more a neutron bomb on steroids than proper fishing, and that's just what goes on at sea), do not inspire confidence, to say the least.
If you think BP did badly in the gulf of Mexico, you haven't seen anything yet.
bzzt! wrong!
to say that apple "used only internally developed hardware" is very inaccurate.
the ignorance still displayed about anything apple astounds me (like saying the ipod does not support mp3).
apple did use externally designed hardware (nubus, scsi, etc.), though they did tweak it (scsi) to, er, "make it fit" (wedging scsi into a smaller db-25 connector). you better check your facts first, ok?
you might think that with the arrival of "new competition" (bell getting into tv, various cable companies getting into residential phone, etc.) we might be able to get better deals & service... ...well, no. not a chance. rates & service still suck and are getting worse (bell canada offshoring customer service to india, etc.) in cable, telephone, cell phone, internet... etc.
my best chance right now for "improved customer service" is to look into ota hdtv, but for now, "outlook hazy, better chance next time" (i live in the ottawa region, which sucks for ota hdtv).
whilst people in the us complain tv / radio / cell phones, they don't know how good they have it compared to canada.
you better get your facts straight before repeating the same anti-catholic bullsh*t and making things up (priests for aids?!).
many, here on /. and elsewhere, have pointed out repeatedly that the catholic church has been overall far less anti-science than the protestants have been. in fact, many of the things Rome has been accused of have been just gross exaggerations and down-right lies. the western church (a.k.a. roman catholic) is not perfect, far from it, but it is not as dark as the standard anti-catholic rap makes it to be. in fact, the average neo-protestant cults that are spreading from the usa are far more damaging to science **right now and for the foreseeable future** than the catholic church has ever been.
well, this is nice to jack up the number of cores, but what about access to memory and other system resources? is hyper-transport getting "fatter" to allow more concurrent access to ram and such, i.e. will each core have a dedicated access to memory, for example?
maybe i'm just not getting it ("you're too old, go back to your punched cards", yada yada yada), but what's the point of upping the number of cores on a die if too many of them have to wait in line to access resources?
we're still dealing with micros, here, not mainframes. there are still echoes of the original bone-headed ibm 5150 design that have to be maintained for software to run. it's not as if we can go with a radical re-architecturing of the "wintel" microcomputer to accommodate these new multi-core cpus. so how do "they" go about it to ensure we are indeed getting more performance and not some hobbled design pretending it is faster?
i can't believe no one brought up what this thing looks like.
really, go back roughly 25 years.
think. the 80's aren't that far back. ...no one remembers?
for those who can't remember or, most probably, weren't born in the 80s, this thing is a copy of apple's knowledge navigator.
(link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Navigator)
i know apple never brought it to market (it was just some concept thingie that only existed in a video and in sculley's book), but nonetheless... feels like microsoft copied apple again.
When I read about Sheldon Whatsisface's comment:
"...Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. ..."
I am appalled. This individual is clearly a unilingual-never-left-his-neighbourhood-right-winger who 99% probability watches only Fox News and listens only to Limbaugh, Savage and other far-right wing-nuts. Has this individual ever traveled abroad, watched/read foreign media, even just talked to people from outside the USA?
People across the globe are already living the consequences of climate change, the landscape is changing and, yes, glaciers are melting (amongst other things).
It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, it doesn't matter how much money you are making, the size of your house or its location, your life will be, sooner or later, impacted by climate change. Mother Nature does not give a flying f**k who you are, and will not leave you unaffected by extreme weather or floods or... because you're a right-wing Jzeebus-lovin', bible-thumping "murkan". She's a bitch. And anyone denying it won't change that fact.
This individual should travel and see the world for himself. Maybe then he'd stop making such stupid statements.
I think this quote I once read on /. should be read and reflected upon by as many people as possible:
"Earth is a production system without backups"
(ack! where's the "edit" button when you need it?)
instead of "oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it" i meant "oh, we can add the original mac lc to the list whilst we're at it". sorry about that.
funny as you only see some typos and such *after* you click "submit"...
if this is "the list", then it is badly chosen (to be polite).
the powerpc was not a bad product. in fact, at first, it beat intel's offerings easily (faster, etc.). it is only moto's incapability to get its act together, along with ibm's unwillingness to continue developing the product that prevented the powerpc from staying competitive.
os9 was a perfectly serviceable version of "macos classic".
two turkeys (imnsho) that should have been there instead are: the 1990 mac classic and the mac iisi. two products made by cost-cutting and hobbling existing designs to prevent them to compete with existing "better" products (the iici, in this case). oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it.
i guess it was too much work to improve the "mainstream" machine of the time (the iici) so that the new low-cost offerings could be feature competitive with what the pc crowd were seeing on their side of the fence. but what can you expect when bean-counting marketroids run the show?
ahem.
quote:
"Wait a damn minute -- I invented Windows" - Xerox PARC
you should rather say:
"Wait a damn minute -- I invented Windows" - Douglas Engelbart
(Xerox did not invent as much as people like to say. They just continued Engelbart's unsung work. Period.)
tmp31416
oh, microsoft wants to join in svg development.
right.
just like intel that joined the ieee1394 (firewire) committee... ...just to undermine the standardization process of firewire.
bill's people will use the same shenanigans that intel used (maybe we'll support it, maybe we won't... etc.) in order to get its own technology out and established before svg can get a real foothold in the market, if it ever becomes more than a marginal oddity like ogg.
or they will use the same "embrace, extend & extinguish" tactics they used with java.
how can microsoft be kept in check (on a tight leash?) to ensure they don't corrupt the svg standard?
you can't change *decades* of nasty, predatorial behaviour overnight. i strongly doubt ms' intentions are honest.
tmp31416
p.s.: taco, the new (current) slashot is awful. could there be a way to view it in "usable" mode (i.e., pre-2004 or thereabout) without having to log in?
"If you don't believe anyone who says so, it's because of your ignorance and bias, (...)"
ah, yes. *rolls eyes*
re. bias: maybe *you* don't, but I remember a world before Microsoft. I remember heavy iron, punched cards & paper tape. I remember a world when you had a *choice* of platforms, word processors and so forth. My bias would err towards "use the right tool for the right job" and "M$ is not always the answer". I think you confused me with a pizza-faced, mother's-basement dwelling script-kiddie that knows only micro-computers and never worked in a *real* enterprise environment.
re. ignorance: see above. I could probably spout more computer brand-names and software platforms than you, WITHOUT HAVING TO GOOGLE THEM because I used more bloody technologies than I can remember.
My scepticism towards those who claim to be using only FLOSS and Free DEs comes from my own personal experience. I'm getting to old to have to fight with my computer(s) to get the simplest of things done. Yeah, it was fun at the time to hack that PDP-11 I scored from surplus into printing my reports from home and to do other basic tasks. But I don't have the patience nor the will to do so any more. My time is limited. On top of the usual house maintenance & chores, I'm knee-deep in renovations. I have family responsibilities. And so forth. My computers are now *TOOLS* that have to do what I need them to do. I should not have to be a Uber-geek to get printing to work satisfactorily. And right now, FLOSS can't do that simply and reliably.
(A perfect example of what is wrong with FLOSS is a recent experience of mine: I was able to set up a lightweight Ubuntu-based NAS that uses AoE and iSCSI at home for archiving and file sharing way quicker & cheaper than it would have possible for me to do the same with Windows. (Ouch. Previous sentence was awkward.) But for the life of me, the client-side of AoE & iSCSI truly sucked on FLOSS but was brain-dead easy to set up on XP. Go figure.)
If there are "lots of people" that use FLOSS and their main DEs, I wonder how much fighting they have to do to get basic tasks done. How quickly and easily can they get their stuff done. If they have the time and patience to get their machine to fulfil their requirements, more power to them. But not all of us can.
And their are some that claim to be FLOSS-only who are simply lying, because it makes them look L33T. There are a lot of poseurs out there.
...but from what the summary tells me, TFA seems to cover something I've been complaining about for some time.
Free DE developers seem to concentrate on new whiz-bang features and seem to forget the basics.
Things like integrated font+layout+printing management/support.
Too often, WYSINWYG from screen to paper. And too often, in Free DEs, I'll get microscopic fonts on the screen from pages that display just fine with Windows or OS-X based programmes. And don't get me going on simple font management
These are just two and a half of the "basics" that the Free DEs should concentrate on before getting new obscure "plasmoids" (or whatever). It's as if FLOSS developers don't use KDE/GNOME/XFCE/etc. for their daily, huh, chores and only use GNOME/XFCE/KDE/etc. as some sort of "grown-up playground" and nothing more.
I am now at the point when I do not believe anyone that says they only use {(Linux distro)|(one of the BSDs)} as their desktop. I know I could not, and it's not just because of web content. Guys, I beg of you: please make sure all the basics necessities are covered, THEN go for the bells and whistles.
Oops. Never type whilst trying to do your weekly chores at the same time (I should stop doing my laundry when I run out of clean underwear...).
Anyway, I should have said that whatever ails the education system in the USA (if there is "a system" instead of a hodge-podge of disjointed schooling arragements) is not the typically targeted superficial factoids favoured by the right, that the causes might be a bit deeper.
Or, like someone else pointed out, maybe the school principals (or directors or whatever you Yanks call them) are just too lazy to follow The Process to terminate those unfit for teaching. You could be a PhD in your field and yet be a abysmal teacher...
The right-wingers will blame unions, "tenure" and every other typical right-wing target.
They will forget the fact that in the USA, teaching & education appears to be not very well valued. Nor is it viewed as a basic right (yes, I will be branded a "leftist", or as you Yanks like to call people you consider criminally insane traitors, a "liberal"). For quite some time now, in the USA, people haven't been going in teaching for the money or because it is a well-considered profession. So the best & brightest are not generally attracted to the profession.
And then, there is the generally negative attitude towards " book learnin' " generally found in the USA, an attitude that seems to go back to the late sixties. Contrast this with the attitude that you had to go to school if you wanted to elevate yourself & better your life, attitude that seemed to be somewhat prevalent before the sixties (or is it the fifties?). What brought about this, I have no clue, but then I do not live in the USA.
For a country that likes to view itself more civilized & enlightened that the rest of the world, the USA seems to have an odd relationship with what enables that: education...
p.s.: I'm not saying there are no bad teachers in the USA, or anywhere else in the world. There are. But if "The System" is built in such a way that achievement or even just the will to learn & succeed are not correctly encouraged and rewarded, maybe you're just reaping what you sowed (sp?).
As a old time jack-of-all-trades/sometimes DBA, I have been seeing Oracle sitting on its fat a** for quite some time, content to gouge customers with, by now, over-priced & over-engineered software. The vast majority of my colleagues (full-time DBAs and such) have been stating for just as long that Oracle support is not worth the price you pay for licensing. Larry & co. are now taking their market share for granted, like Novell & WordPerfect used to (to give two easy examples).
From where I stand, Oracle is basically giving the market away to M$. I used to laugh at the very notion of this, but too many recent events I cannot talk about (the joys of working for the MIBs... (ok, the suits are not all black, but you get the idea)) have lead me to this conclusion. I am not happy about this, but I can't deny it any more. Oracle should revise their pricing structure and the way their products work: we are no longer in the 1980s, Larry! What was acceptable then is not any more!
And, to make matters worse, Oracle has turned into the new CA (Computer Associates): too many software that was acquired by them have simply disappeared out of sight. Like 99.999% of what CA has bought, that used to be good sellers and had good visibility, but that disappeared overnight when CA got their slimy tentacles on it.
Finally, to add insult to injury, Oracle, like Sun, still does not grok what FLOSS is.
No, Oracle should not buy any Linux distro or anything resembling a Free *nix. In the case of Red Hat, that would be the absolute worst thing that has happened to them. It would be just as bad as if M$ would have bought them out.
Some time ago, it would have been an intriguing concept. Not any more.
Considering how badly Sun is handling OpenOffice & MySQL (and any other FLOSS projects they might be involved with), they should start by trying to *truly* understand what FLOSS is and how be be good citizens of the FLOSS "universe" before they do anything else. I mean, ensuring OO code is purposely obfuscated and almost discouraging external help on the project?
They make Apple, IBM and even Intel look very good as FLOSS developers/contributors.
Maybe there are some good intentions behind this, but... Oh, dear, I can only see this being used for bad jokes. I mean, remember how people would get their jollies by repeatedly pouncing on cars with the "this car has an alarm system, your are too close, please stand back" car alarm? Hey, let's try to beat on this guy to make him jolt around!
This sounds like a very bad idea to me. But I might be wrong.
"It's supposed to be a temporary crutch, something to fall back on, not a chosen way of life."
i totally agree with you. be also aware that when whatever social net was designed and implemented in north america, it was assumed that everyone wanted to work, that no self-respecting individual would choose not to work. in other words, pan-handling, mendicity was a last resort. if you were begging, you were in extreme deep sh*t.
these days, well, there seems to be some individuals that prefer to abuse 'the system', and such occurences give 'the system' a bad reputation, a bad image. sadly, these questionable individuals are used by others to justify destroying 'the system'.
maybe north-american countries should take a hint from some european countries where people making use of the social net have to do something in return... actually, they have to do 'something' that keeps them in the loop: i.e. they have to do some work to earn their unemployment or welfare cheque.
maybe the system in north-america might work better if people making use of it were encouraged and showed they could earn more, much more money by working. i mean, why not find a way to not penalize working whilst receiving welfare (or u.i.), with these cheques being gradually cut off after a certain earning milestone so that the receipient is never stuck at a specific income point, and could actually better his/her financial situation by working and 'getting back in the groove'?
those who would not want to work would then be stuck doing the mandatory work assignments (what you need to do to receive those cheques) and be stuck at the same income bracket, whilst the others would increase the work they do, seeing their pocket more filled and not be penalized because they wanted to work, but could not find work that could sustain them -- yet.
i hope i got my point across. anyone would could express this better, be my guest (esp. if you could identify which country (countries) in europe have such a system in place)
ac
what kind of reasonning is that?
i'm sorry, but it is not because the system's implementation is broken that there is no need for some form of social net.
i, too, had a close brush (? i'm not a north-american anglophone, so bare with me, please) with 'the system' a few years ago during the high-tech meltdown. and it was very obvious to me that welfare (because i had exhausted unemployment insurance) was, at that point, implemented in a way that it created & enforced poverty. for example, how could i get a job in my area if i have no car (long story, but most potential employers were not within mass transit range) or a computer, or 'too many suits'?
thank ${deity} that a 'short term' contract (it went from 20 working days to 3 or 4 months, because of an error from the supplier) landed on me two weeks before i would have been in a very uncomfortable spot (evicted from my app., etc.), but this showed me that some form of social net is needed and whatever i got helped me. maybe our social net is somewhat broken too around the edges, but it has prevented many unlucky souls ending in the streets.
voting republican will not help you or make things more fair. don't fall prey to the canard they like to spread, that the down-trodden (right word? sp?) are poor because they want it and like it. and if you got the wrong end of the stick, have you considered that maybe you talked to the wrong people, that maybe the proverbial 'next cubicle' might have been more helpful? (i hope i got my point across)
and if the system is broken in the us, maybe you might want to let president obama know. afaik, he has dealt with these kinds of issues before, though maybe he has not encountered a scenario such like yours. 'the system' cannot be fixed if the powers that be don't know which parts of it are broken. let obama know, try even emailing him. maybe he reads his e-mails like steve jobs does.
ac