- it makes it very easy for repressive regimes to track who bought what: a handful of authentification servers have that info. granted, we may not feel concerned by that right now, but a good part of the world is, and you never know what will happen to us later on. Recent events show that corporations are all too happy to oblige any request from any "big market" government.
- it even makes possible to recall a book, possibly to change it, which conjures uneasy visions of the Ministry of Truth.
When my granny died, her grandchildren were asked what knick-knacks of hers they wanted as keepsakes... I asked for a very old, red leather bound Robinson Crusoë that I remembered reading reverently with her as a kid, awed both by the story and the object, which was so much more impressive than my usual paperbacks or modern kid's books.
So, to me, the object counts, too. Some are signed gifts, also.
And, the idea is that I can give (very unlikely) or loan that book. I couldn't with an ebook.
And I'm safe in the idea that it's forever mine, I'll hopefully read it with my nephew some day.
I think there's an issue with lag, and another issue with lag stability. Lag may or may not be handled depending on the kind of game; Variable lag is even harder to compensate for
Thanks for the Unison link, I'll try it. I was hoping to just use rsynch, but it seems there are issues with NTFS timestamps, right now it's re-synching everything everytime, which takes way too long (1.5TB drive).
For VLC, there is an issue with X on ATI IGP chipsets, I was only getting a slideshow. I got that fixed, though I don't remember how.
For remote control, I find VNC extremely slow and ugly when controlling a Linux PC from a Windows client. I was trying to get the nomachine RDP server to work to see if the result was better, I couldn't. I'm sure I'm missing something fairly basic, but the doc didn't really help, either.
These 3 functions work well right away in Windows, so I haven't even had to look for doc. It did take me a while to figure out that the right way to look for docs for ubuntu was google, not ubuntu's site ^^
No, I mean you can get remote desktop, directory synching, and VLC to work, and get docs on how to do it. The first 2 of those I failed to do nor find current docs about in Linux, and the 3rd one took me about one hour of trial and error, which is too much.
But, I'm a lowly user, not a roxxor kernel haxxor.
Ok, the upgrades are free, but it's hard to find docs and make some things work.
I'd rather have an older OS that works and has good documentation, than get on an upgrade - find out things don't work - hunt for elusive doc hell cycle.
Not quite true: I leave in France, where, when Al Gore invented the Internets, we where in a rather worse situation, telecoms-wise: single, nationally-owned carrier, high prices, quite good service, though.
What they did, as in much of the EU I think, is force deregulation by - selling 3 nationwide GSM licenses, so there was competition right from the start - forcing standardization and interoperability by enforcing the GSM standard for all carriers, which helped with coverage and provider switching - Carriers also had to commit to cover an increasing percentage of the population, which is admittedly easier to do than in the US (France is a bit smaller than Texas, but has more than twice the population). - later, forcing number portability (you can switch provider and keep the same number) - above all, agreeing that the caller pays for calls, with mobile numbers set apart by a different prefix (06 = mobile, 01 = Paris, 04 = south east...). You used to be able to figure out which carrier someone was using by looking at the second couple of digits, but with number portability that is no longer 100% true.
The one remaining issue, apart from Texts pricing, is pricing legibility: telcos are free to set up there tariffs as they wish, so it's very hard to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison.
There really is not enough info to give you advice:
- has the kid voiced any interest at all, or are you more or less forcing that on him ? In the first instance you may go relatively hardcore, or at least art for art's sake, sooner, in the second case, you need a bit more demagogy. - is he interested in scientific stuff in general ? - does he do anything on a PC that may get him hooked, like play on a macro-able game, draw... - does he play with any programmable stuff, like Lego Mindstorm... - have you ever done anything else with him, or are you just trying to hook him up to so that he'll leave you alone with that "baseball" thing ? -...
I'm famous Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, known for solving the ages-old Poincare Conjecture.
Alas, for reasons I'm sure you understand, I'm not able to come and collect the multi-million dollar prize associated with this tremendous achievement.
I've been told that, thanks to your love of science and general kindness, you may be willing to go and get that reward for me, and then send it on. Of course, to compensate you for the bother, we kindly offer you to keep 20% of the $6 million.
Would you kindly contact me at gperelman@411.ng so we can send you the relevant info and documentation ?
Most of that can be achieved with a well-designed "fat client" network: - standard PCs, swap if broken - no local data storage via user policies/right - patching: frankly, i don't care, 1000 identical desktops can be automated - power/noise: i'll grant you that one, hsouldn't be much of an issue though - portability: can be done on fat clients too - bandwidth: i'll grant you that one too
On the flip side, fat clients give you more responsive UI, less network load/dependency, less peak-time cpu cycles starvation...
I want local apps, with local data, that I can synch with anything (one of my PCs, on-line storage...).
I don't want to be dependent on a wireless net connection to access my apps nor my data. In my experience, even wifi is flaky. And I can't trust 3rd parties to have my apps and data available, secure, and safe.I'm a big ASS fan. I'd be interested in local javascript apps, with local data storage, maybe...
Plus the smallest-common-denominator issue: as long as different devices have different capabilities (color, accelerometer, multi-touch, video/3D acceleration...)
wrong on so many levels.. have you even tried it ?
I put WoW in its own directory in the root of my Apps drive -which is much easier to do than for apps that require being in the/Program Files dir and have outside dependencies. I don't have to neither switch to admin mode nor disable the UAC to run it. I actually never had to install WoW when I upgraded from XP to 7... I just left it where it was on my Apps drive, upgraded to 7 on my System drive, created a shortcut, that's it.
I did indeed have to add WoW's directory to my backup list, but guess what, if I ever have to restore it, it will work, as opposed to pretty much all other windows apps. I get to make a usable backup of both my data and my program files, which is a huge time saver for a restore.
WoW does have a separate data subdirectory for each account (=user) and for its own data, so I don't get your last point at all. Anyway, the data without the program is fairly useless, as is the program without all its and my data. Makes sense to have both together, and you can fine-tune rights per dir/subdir if you want to.
For the sake of argument, AMD also could not make nearly enough chips for everyone - one of the reason being thei cross license agreemtn with Intel prevented them for outsourcing x86 production.
I actually like WoW's way of doing things: want to backup/restore WoW, or put it on antoher PC ? just copy WoW's dir. No dependencies. No DLL Hell. No registry hacks. Want to wipe it ? Delete the directory.
I wish all programs worked that way and were that easy to manage.
BTW, Data and program files are segregated in separate subdirs. User data, too.
1- First difference between software that turns on my PC, and software in my dishwasher: in one case, the manufacturer controls everything, in another, the software runs in an unknown, possibly weird/tricky/otherwise buggy platform. Unless you're Apple, and Apple definitely should offer the same warranty as dishwashers.
2- Second difference: if my dishwasher's software craps out, my whole dishwasher craps out. If my PC software is broken, only that specific piece (hopefully) won't work. So whatever warranty should apply in one case to the whole shebang, in the other case, only to the specific software ? Or not, because if i bought my PC for a specific task and it won't do it, I need to get rid of it all ?
3- That said, I'm in favor of doing something, anything, to improve OS/Apps quality. The industry is not self-regulating. Reviewers are not doing the job. Right now the best you can do as a consumer is to buy a complete, packaged pc+os+apps, and return it to the manufacturer if it won't work. You can rarely do that, though, because you've got to get stuff from different suppliers. My Motorola phone never synched with XP. My new WinMob phone crashes daily, usually when synching with 7, too. Ubuntu never worked for me (didn't cost me much, though ^^)
I worked for a PC manufacturer for a while. The margins on extended warranties are higher than on anything else, even than on catalog upgrades.
Also, warranties are rarely benchmarked. Well, quality isn't even benchmarked, but the experiences I've had with basic warranties (Asus never followed up on a procedure I started for a failed MB, Dell made me kneel below a desk to... check out a PC that was supposedly covered by on-site service...), those don't make me want to pay more for more crap.
1- It kinda makes sense, though. I'm sure there's a known monetary value for saving one life, either though medical treatment or better safety. The value may vary in rich vs poor countries, but money = lives (and lives = money, sadly).
2- Indeed. What can we do except witch about it ? Both political parties are equally guilty...
I assume, since he's a boss, that he has a private office ? If that's the case, offer him to come do some cerebral, non-social work (not on the phone, more like writing a report or something) for a half day in one of your cubicles, and judge for himself if he really thinks he wouldn't have worked better being isolated from the chatter.
Stress out to him that it's not like you're buying 10 new CDs a day and listening intently to them while on the company's time, but just whiting out very distracting noises so that you can focus on your job.
Show him how you come to work with your music already chosen, and spend 0 time on it (I can spend hours building a playlist:-p )
Be careful to NOT discuss music with you coworkers for a while, nor visit any music sites...
Try and find examples of companies that he will judge well-run (not geeky nerdy ones, more in his frame of reference - Google, MS... don't count) that do allow music for programmers.
If all that doesn't work, try and work out an agreed playlist / music genre, or just wear earplugs/muffs ? That would suck, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd add a couple of extra concerns:
- it makes it very easy for repressive regimes to track who bought what: a handful of authentification servers have that info. granted, we may not feel concerned by that right now, but a good part of the world is, and you never know what will happen to us later on. Recent events show that corporations are all too happy to oblige any request from any "big market" government.
- it even makes possible to recall a book, possibly to change it, which conjures uneasy visions of the Ministry of Truth.
When my granny died, her grandchildren were asked what knick-knacks of hers they wanted as keepsakes... I asked for a very old, red leather bound Robinson Crusoë that I remembered reading reverently with her as a kid, awed both by the story and the object, which was so much more impressive than my usual paperbacks or modern kid's books.
So, to me, the object counts, too. Some are signed gifts, also.
And, the idea is that I can give (very unlikely) or loan that book. I couldn't with an ebook.
And I'm safe in the idea that it's forever mine, I'll hopefully read it with my nephew some day.
I think there's an issue with lag, and another issue with lag stability. Lag may or may not be handled depending on the kind of game; Variable lag is even harder to compensate for
Thanks for the Unison link, I'll try it. I was hoping to just use rsynch, but it seems there are issues with NTFS timestamps, right now it's re-synching everything everytime, which takes way too long (1.5TB drive).
For VLC, there is an issue with X on ATI IGP chipsets, I was only getting a slideshow. I got that fixed, though I don't remember how.
For remote control, I find VNC extremely slow and ugly when controlling a Linux PC from a Windows client. I was trying to get the nomachine RDP server to work to see if the result was better, I couldn't. I'm sure I'm missing something fairly basic, but the doc didn't really help, either.
These 3 functions work well right away in Windows, so I haven't even had to look for doc. It did take me a while to figure out that the right way to look for docs for ubuntu was google, not ubuntu's site ^^
No, I mean you can get remote desktop, directory synching, and VLC to work, and get docs on how to do it. The first 2 of those I failed to do nor find current docs about in Linux, and the 3rd one took me about one hour of trial and error, which is too much.
But, I'm a lowly user, not a roxxor kernel haxxor.
I beg to differ.
Ok, the upgrades are free, but it's hard to find docs and make some things work.
I'd rather have an older OS that works and has good documentation, than get on an upgrade - find out things don't work - hunt for elusive doc hell cycle.
There are cheap soap-bar phones too, including some dust and splash resistant ones.
There's even a really small and cheap one, the one review I saw of it was quite positive:
http://www.gadgetfolder.com/simvalley-pico-rx-80-phone-credit-card-size-and-only-25.html
Not quite true: I leave in France, where, when Al Gore invented the Internets, we where in a rather worse situation, telecoms-wise: single, nationally-owned carrier, high prices, quite good service, though.
What they did, as in much of the EU I think, is force deregulation by
- selling 3 nationwide GSM licenses, so there was competition right from the start
- forcing standardization and interoperability by enforcing the GSM standard for all carriers, which helped with coverage and provider switching
- Carriers also had to commit to cover an increasing percentage of the population, which is admittedly easier to do than in the US (France is a bit smaller than Texas, but has more than twice the population).
- later, forcing number portability (you can switch provider and keep the same number)
- above all, agreeing that the caller pays for calls, with mobile numbers set apart by a different prefix (06 = mobile, 01 = Paris, 04 = south east...). You used to be able to figure out which carrier someone was using by looking at the second couple of digits, but with number portability that is no longer 100% true.
The one remaining issue, apart from Texts pricing, is pricing legibility: telcos are free to set up there tariffs as they wish, so it's very hard to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison.
There really is not enough info to give you advice:
- has the kid voiced any interest at all, or are you more or less forcing that on him ? In the first instance you may go relatively hardcore, or at least art for art's sake, sooner, in the second case, you need a bit more demagogy. ...
- is he interested in scientific stuff in general ?
- does he do anything on a PC that may get him hooked, like play on a macro-able game, draw...
- does he play with any programmable stuff, like Lego Mindstorm...
- have you ever done anything else with him, or are you just trying to hook him up to so that he'll leave you alone with that "baseball" thing ?
-
The thing is so ugly you won't want to do vanity runs around the neighborhood... yet more savings !
I still remember a French Interior minister a while back saying in a gravely voice: "we're gonna terrorize the terrorists".
Never went as far as US though, nor did that much collateral damage.
scared ? they should be happy.
Dear mister Peroxy,
I'm famous Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, known for solving the ages-old Poincare Conjecture.
Alas, for reasons I'm sure you understand, I'm not able to come and collect the multi-million dollar prize associated with this tremendous achievement.
I've been told that, thanks to your love of science and general kindness, you may be willing to go and get that reward for me, and then send it on. Of course, to compensate you for the bother, we kindly offer you to keep 20% of the $6 million.
Would you kindly contact me at gperelman@411.ng so we can send you the relevant info and documentation ?
Your friend forever,
G Perelman.
Most of that can be achieved with a well-designed "fat client" network:
- standard PCs, swap if broken
- no local data storage via user policies/right
- patching: frankly, i don't care, 1000 identical desktops can be automated
- power/noise: i'll grant you that one, hsouldn't be much of an issue though
- portability: can be done on fat clients too
- bandwidth: i'll grant you that one too
On the flip side, fat clients give you more responsive UI, less network load/dependency, less peak-time cpu cycles starvation...
I want local apps, with local data, that I can synch with anything (one of my PCs, on-line storage...).
I don't want to be dependent on a wireless net connection to access my apps nor my data. In my experience, even wifi is flaky. And I can't trust 3rd parties to have my apps and data available, secure, and safe.I'm a big ASS fan. I'd be interested in local javascript apps, with local data storage, maybe...
Plus the smallest-common-denominator issue: as long as different devices have different capabilities (color, accelerometer, multi-touch, video/3D acceleration...)
your memory is wrong.
Addons are managed after account login, at the character selection screen. So each user can choose their addons. for each character, too.
Why do people who have no clue of what we're talking about keep popping in on that discussion and talk out of their ass ?
wrong on so many levels.. have you even tried it ?
I put WoW in its own directory in the root of my Apps drive -which is much easier to do than for apps that require being in the /Program Files dir and have outside dependencies. I don't have to neither switch to admin mode nor disable the UAC to run it. I actually never had to install WoW when I upgraded from XP to 7... I just left it where it was on my Apps drive, upgraded to 7 on my System drive, created a shortcut, that's it.
I did indeed have to add WoW's directory to my backup list, but guess what, if I ever have to restore it, it will work, as opposed to pretty much all other windows apps. I get to make a usable backup of both my data and my program files, which is a huge time saver for a restore.
WoW does have a separate data subdirectory for each account (=user) and for its own data, so I don't get your last point at all. Anyway, the data without the program is fairly useless, as is the program without all its and my data. Makes sense to have both together, and you can fine-tune rights per dir/subdir if you want to.
nope, each account has its own subdir, and then each realm, and then each character.
For the sake of argument, AMD also could not make nearly enough chips for everyone - one of the reason being thei cross license agreemtn with Intel prevented them for outsourcing x86 production.
I do agree with your points, though.
I actually like WoW's way of doing things: want to backup/restore WoW, or put it on antoher PC ? just copy WoW's dir. No dependencies. No DLL Hell. No registry hacks. Want to wipe it ? Delete the directory.
I wish all programs worked that way and were that easy to manage.
BTW, Data and program files are segregated in separate subdirs. User data, too.
1- First difference between software that turns on my PC, and software in my dishwasher: in one case, the manufacturer controls everything, in another, the software runs in an unknown, possibly weird/tricky/otherwise buggy platform. Unless you're Apple, and Apple definitely should offer the same warranty as dishwashers.
2- Second difference: if my dishwasher's software craps out, my whole dishwasher craps out. If my PC software is broken, only that specific piece (hopefully) won't work. So whatever warranty should apply in one case to the whole shebang, in the other case, only to the specific software ? Or not, because if i bought my PC for a specific task and it won't do it, I need to get rid of it all ?
3- That said, I'm in favor of doing something, anything, to improve OS/Apps quality. The industry is not self-regulating. Reviewers are not doing the job. Right now the best you can do as a consumer is to buy a complete, packaged pc+os+apps, and return it to the manufacturer if it won't work. You can rarely do that, though, because you've got to get stuff from different suppliers. My Motorola phone never synched with XP. My new WinMob phone crashes daily, usually when synching with 7, too. Ubuntu never worked for me (didn't cost me much, though ^^)
I worked for a PC manufacturer for a while. The margins on extended warranties are higher than on anything else, even than on catalog upgrades.
Also, warranties are rarely benchmarked. Well, quality isn't even benchmarked, but the experiences I've had with basic warranties (Asus never followed up on a procedure I started for a failed MB, Dell made me kneel below a desk to ... check out a PC that was supposedly covered by on-site service ...), those don't make me want to pay more for more crap.
1- It kinda makes sense, though. I'm sure there's a known monetary value for saving one life, either though medical treatment or better safety. The value may vary in rich vs poor countries, but money = lives (and lives = money, sadly).
2- Indeed. What can we do except witch about it ? Both political parties are equally guilty...
I assume, since he's a boss, that he has a private office ? If that's the case, offer him to come do some cerebral, non-social work (not on the phone, more like writing a report or something) for a half day in one of your cubicles, and judge for himself if he really thinks he wouldn't have worked better being isolated from the chatter.
Stress out to him that it's not like you're buying 10 new CDs a day and listening intently to them while on the company's time, but just whiting out very distracting noises so that you can focus on your job.
Show him how you come to work with your music already chosen, and spend 0 time on it (I can spend hours building a playlist :-p )
Be careful to NOT discuss music with you coworkers for a while, nor visit any music sites...
Try and find examples of companies that he will judge well-run (not geeky nerdy ones, more in his frame of reference - Google, MS... don't count) that do allow music for programmers.
If all that doesn't work, try and work out an agreed playlist / music genre, or just wear earplugs/muffs ? That would suck, though.
It's the pendulum effect. They couldn't give a Nobel Warmongering Prize to GW Bush, so they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to B. Obama.