Ok... I can kind of understand why this could be helpful to someone looking for a vector drawing program for some purpose, but the programs on that list do such different things. CAD graphics are for one thing, vector illustration is another, graphing programs are yet another. Even included a vector animation program. Sure, they all use a particular method of calculating objects, but that's about it.
Can you imagine trying to do an ad layout with AutoCAD? How about trying to do animated web graphics with a graphic program.
This chart is pretty much useless, except for listing what standards formats each can handle.
In Addition To The Previous Comments..
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Raise requirements for extracurricular involvement. My school required a 2.5 GPA for anyone wanting to participate in sports, clubs, etc. Raise this to 3.0, actually enforce it, and you'll see grades increase. Obviously grades aren't necessarily reflective of what the student is learning, but it's a good start.
Reward attendance and good behavior An alternative school in Milwaukee started paying students to attend class. Their attendance went up significantly. Many people will oppose this, saying you're bribing kids, but at least kids will be in class. I'd rather have my tax dollars go toward this type of program than raising teacher salaries (which doesn't lead to better students).
Stop silly "alternative" teaching methods This includes creative spelling, among other things. Phonics is a proven method... stick with it. If kids can read and spell, they'll have a much better chance of being able to learn on their own outside of school. They'll also be more likely to take up positive hobbies like creative writing.
Also, stop trying to get rid of sports and music programs. I was in many sports in high school, and it was definitely something that helped my studies and social skills.
Finally, grow a pair and take on the teacher unions. I have seriously considered switching to teaching as a profession and still think the teacher unions are complete BS. They always talk about taking care of the kids when state budgets are being planned, but they have yet to say "Ok... we'll pay $20/month toward our insurance like most people do... use the money that's saved toward actually EDUCATING the kids." The teacher union is a greedy organization that really needs a big dose of reality.
Build it in a basement with a good vapor barrier. To make it more efficient to cool, use a cooling system that makes use of a ground loop of coolant. They're extremely efficient and not too expensive.
Without the a/c on, my basement hovers around 68 degrees throughout the year. It's much easier to control the temperature than elsewhere in the house. With a way to actively dissipate heat (the ground loop), it'd be the ideal datacenter location without having to man a post in Alaska.:)
Your 3 computers must be built with awful components. At my former employer we were keeping the entire server room cool with a $200 window air conditioner. The server room had 2 HP servers, a handful of 1U IBM x336 servers, 3 workstations, 2 racks of networking equipment, and a variety of other smaller devices. The window unit ran about once an hour for 5 minutes in 85 degree weather and kept the room sufficiently cool.
The key is to move your UPS out of the temperature controlled area, since that's the biggest source of heat in most server rooms. Then we were gradually replacing the multitude of old HP servers with the IBM servers. Each IBM could to the work of 4 HP's easily, and ran much cooler than a single HP.
Your 3 computers must be running 1000+ watt power supplies, multiple 6800 vid cards, and a ton of hard drives if your home a/c is having trouble cooling that room.
Where can you purchase 600GB drives these days? (1.5PB / 2500 drives)
The math doesn't work when you multiply the number of systems out either: 600 systems * 1.6TB/system = 960TB. That's just under a petabyte, or am I missing something?
Also, if you've got those in a RAID5 setup, you're 'only' talking about approx 800TB of usable space. That's far less than the 1.5 petabytes claimed.
800TB is a lot of space, but there must be a cheaper/easier way than purchasing 600 systems to do it.
That's interesting, considering my wife used to be in dietetics and she claims that McDonald's cheeseburgers are one of the healthier things you can get at the major fast food chains. Sure, perhaps a grilled chicken sandwich would be better for you, but only if you left off the mayo.
Fact is, McDonald's cheeseburgers have 310 calories, 12g fat (6 saturated), and 40mg cholesterol. If you get that and a small fruit & yogurt parfait or apple dippers, you're probably eating healthier than you do at home.
People that complain about the nutrition of fast food aren't making smart choices when they order from the menu. Ordering a sandwich without mayo or cheese, getting a diet soda, and doing it all in moderation is a fine choice for a meal once in a while.
I agree with most of your post, but there are a few things that my wife and I do to make going to an actual theater more enjoyable.
We stop at McDonald's on the way and smuggle in a few cheeseburgers and a couple of cans of soda. We unwrap/open them before the previews so we don't disturb anyone. McDonald's cheeseburgers don't give off a smell really, so that's not a concern either.
We only go to matinee shows, which are before 5:30pm at our local cinema. This means we pay only $5.50 each opposed to $8.50 later on. The shows are generally less packed as well, meaning we don't have to get there early for a decent seat.
I work from home, so once in a while I just like to get out. Our budget theater has dollar night once a week where tickets are only $1. $2 for 2.5 hours of entertainment and getting out of the house is a good deal. When weather's really nice we do other stuff, but it's nice to have this option.
Our home bathroom isn't as clean as our local cinema.;)
Our couch can only fit 6 people. We like to go to movies with friends we don't see regularily, so it makes the cost much more bearable.
Finally, we only go to movies that we're REALLY excited about, like the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series. It just makes it a little more fun for us.
Similar to RSS, people can put whatever content in meta tags to explain what their content is about. The problem is that with everyone doing this there's a ton of data and a lot of it is junk. That's where the search engines come in.
RSS isn't going to replace search... the search engines will just have an easier job if the RSS feeds are provided for them.
Actually, they're getting rid of the managers that Slashdotters like to complain about. You know, the ones that don't understand the technical end of things, and as a result end up setting unrealistic deadlines and promising impossible accomplishments. They're getting RID of the political bureaucracy and replacing it with scientists. Oh the shame!
Of course, since you can attribute it as another negative of the Bush Administration, you will. And most of Slashdot will agree.
- Violent Femmes - Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band - Summerfest - Willem Dafoe (spelling?) - Apostle Island National Lakeshore - lots of beer & cheese - polka music - Green Bay Packers - Ben Sheets - 1st NBA pick - lake effect snow - UW halloween party - Milwaukee Art Museum - more lakes than Minnesota - Bodeans (you know.. the Friends theme?:/ ) - me:)
I love Firefox, too, and use it exclusively. However, the functionality was there in Opera. I would consider Opera an innovative product, even though I don't really like using it. Mosiac was definitely innovative.
Other innovative products: ICQ, The Brain, MacOS, and many others. It may be a semantics argument, but I enjoy sticking to the original meaning of words rather than marketing language.
It has features and methodology that make it an innovator, but it's still just a web browser with tabs and plugins. There were other tabbed browsers before Firefox came along.
In the same way, Acrylic may have some interesting features that are innovations over what Photoshop or Gimp had, but it's still just a graphics program.
If you want to consider Firefox an innovator, then you need to consider every Microsoft product one as well, since all of them have extended the features of their predecessors in some way. I'd prefer to refer to none of them as innovators unless the program as a whole is completely unlike anything before it.
Lots of comments already about how MS isn't innovating. Of course they aren't. Neither was Open Office, Gimp, Firefox, etc. Not all software needs to be innovative to be successful. It just needs to be as good or better than alternatives, or fit a niche market that isn't filled already.
Since the market for graphics programs is filled already, MS needs to make this at least as good as Gimp and Photoshop for it to be successful. Since this is only a beta, only time will tell if they've done that.
Besides, I thought having choices was a good thing? Once MS starts unfairly competing in the graphics program industry, then start complaining about it. Until then, this is a good thing.
I have mod points, but I'd prefer to counter that statement. A few months ago, I probably would have agreed. However, my wife, who normally abhors anything with too much T&A, started watching Stacked. She absolutely loves it. The humor is actually witty at times and the acting is acceptable. It's far better than most of the reality shows (Dancing With The Stars?) and better than a good deal of other sitcoms. I was pretty surprised.
The fact that there's a lot of T&A is an added bonus.:)
But allowing OSX to have a virtual machine for older mac programs is ok? It's basically the same thing going on, technology-wise.
Besides, MS already has a virtual server program called Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. It's decent, but has more overhead than VMWare. The benefit is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get running and keep running than VMWare.
Also, linux comes prepackaged with a firewall product and I don't hear anyone complaining about that. I think the big point you should be making is that Microsoft isn't the first to do most of these things, just the first to make a big fuss about them.
The MS monopoly isn't about which programs they provide. It's about business practices that are made to eliminate competition. If they prevent Windows from running within VMWare or similar, then I'll have an issue with them. Until then, it's basically 2 different markets.
Anyway, this move by them is more likely to allow them to create a secure codebase without having to worry about older programs working properly. If they make old programs run within a Win2K virtual environment within Longhorn, they can keep insecure code away from the primary OS.
Beside the fact that universities already have huge research budgets, as other posters have noted, I would argue that space exploration should have the ultimate goal of colonization.
Mankind is quickly depleting the natural resources of Earth, growing fast enough that overcrowding might be a problem in a few centuries, and is highly vulnerable to a "planet killing" event like a large meteor or nuclear war. While conservation, population controls, and Bruce Willis can protect us for now, their usefulness will run out eventually. It makes sense to colonize the moon, Mars, and eventually create some form of Universe ship.
An off-Earth colony is far more useful than any research that Hubble has done.
There's many more instances on the EU's statistical website. It seems they REALLY like grouping all their data together so they can be viewed as an industrial competitor to the US and Japan.
Almost all of the responses so far are the obvious DRM "not my data" jokes or "what's the big deal" statements. The first few jokes are funny, but most need help. The "what's the big deal" statements are accurate for the most part, except that I think this is a really good idea.
It's always annoyed me how MS went overboard in trying to simplify document locations. My grandmother knows that her documents are in the "My Documents" folder now, but is smart enough to understand that they'd be under "Documents" if it existed. Adding "My " to the beginning of every default folder location does nothing to help anyone, and as such should be done away with. It makes sense.
Not to mention the fact that writing Perl scripts with hard-coded Windows directories is a complete pain in the ass. By giving the directories 1 word names, you reduce the path from "C:\Docume~1\Blah\MyDocu~1" to "C:\Docume~1\Blah\Documents". Once they change "Documents and Settings" to "home", I'll be even happier. Ideally, it would be "C:\home\Blah\Documents".
I would think that a lot of Slashdotters would actually like this, since getting to certain paths through Samba can be a pain if you have to deal with Windows filenames.
Slashdot Mirror
Err... should have previewed. That should be:
web graphics with a graphing program.
instead of:
web graphics with a graphic program.
Ok... I can kind of understand why this could be helpful to someone looking for a vector drawing program for some purpose, but the programs on that list do such different things. CAD graphics are for one thing, vector illustration is another, graphing programs are yet another. Even included a vector animation program. Sure, they all use a particular method of calculating objects, but that's about it.
Can you imagine trying to do an ad layout with AutoCAD? How about trying to do animated web graphics with a graphic program.
This chart is pretty much useless, except for listing what standards formats each can handle.
What about the I LIEK MILK site? That was huge in the gaming community in 98/99.
http://www.generation.nl/~hitoshi/
My school required a 2.5 GPA for anyone wanting to participate in sports, clubs, etc. Raise this to 3.0, actually enforce it, and you'll see grades increase. Obviously grades aren't necessarily reflective of what the student is learning, but it's a good start.
An alternative school in Milwaukee started paying students to attend class. Their attendance went up significantly. Many people will oppose this, saying you're bribing kids, but at least kids will be in class. I'd rather have my tax dollars go toward this type of program than raising teacher salaries (which doesn't lead to better students).
This includes creative spelling, among other things. Phonics is a proven method... stick with it. If kids can read and spell, they'll have a much better chance of being able to learn on their own outside of school. They'll also be more likely to take up positive hobbies like creative writing.
Also, stop trying to get rid of sports and music programs. I was in many sports in high school, and it was definitely something that helped my studies and social skills.
Finally, grow a pair and take on the teacher unions. I have seriously considered switching to teaching as a profession and still think the teacher unions are complete BS. They always talk about taking care of the kids when state budgets are being planned, but they have yet to say "Ok... we'll pay $20/month toward our insurance like most people do... use the money that's saved toward actually EDUCATING the kids." The teacher union is a greedy organization that really needs a big dose of reality.
Build it in a basement with a good vapor barrier. To make it more efficient to cool, use a cooling system that makes use of a ground loop of coolant. They're extremely efficient and not too expensive.
:)
Without the a/c on, my basement hovers around 68 degrees throughout the year. It's much easier to control the temperature than elsewhere in the house. With a way to actively dissipate heat (the ground loop), it'd be the ideal datacenter location without having to man a post in Alaska.
Your 3 computers must be built with awful components. At my former employer we were keeping the entire server room cool with a $200 window air conditioner. The server room had 2 HP servers, a handful of 1U IBM x336 servers, 3 workstations, 2 racks of networking equipment, and a variety of other smaller devices. The window unit ran about once an hour for 5 minutes in 85 degree weather and kept the room sufficiently cool.
The key is to move your UPS out of the temperature controlled area, since that's the biggest source of heat in most server rooms. Then we were gradually replacing the multitude of old HP servers with the IBM servers. Each IBM could to the work of 4 HP's easily, and ran much cooler than a single HP.
Your 3 computers must be running 1000+ watt power supplies, multiple 6800 vid cards, and a ton of hard drives if your home a/c is having trouble cooling that room.
No. They say 2500 drives (actually 2400 since it's 4 per system in 600 systems), which comes out to 600GB per drive for 1.5PB.
50kW at 10 cents per kilowatt hour = $120/day.
:)
I doubt it draws at a constant 50kW, though. It's probably an average (was given in TFA).
My math might be completely wrong, given I don't have a clue how to calculate kilowatt hours. Is it just kW * hours_used_daily?
Where can you purchase 600GB drives these days? (1.5PB / 2500 drives)
The math doesn't work when you multiply the number of systems out either: 600 systems * 1.6TB/system = 960TB. That's just under a petabyte, or am I missing something?
Also, if you've got those in a RAID5 setup, you're 'only' talking about approx 800TB of usable space. That's far less than the 1.5 petabytes claimed.
800TB is a lot of space, but there must be a cheaper/easier way than purchasing 600 systems to do it.
That's interesting, considering my wife used to be in dietetics and she claims that McDonald's cheeseburgers are one of the healthier things you can get at the major fast food chains. Sure, perhaps a grilled chicken sandwich would be better for you, but only if you left off the mayo.
Fact is, McDonald's cheeseburgers have 310 calories, 12g fat (6 saturated), and 40mg cholesterol. If you get that and a small fruit & yogurt parfait or apple dippers, you're probably eating healthier than you do at home.
People that complain about the nutrition of fast food aren't making smart choices when they order from the menu. Ordering a sandwich without mayo or cheese, getting a diet soda, and doing it all in moderation is a fine choice for a meal once in a while.
Similar to RSS, people can put whatever content in meta tags to explain what their content is about. The problem is that with everyone doing this there's a ton of data and a lot of it is junk. That's where the search engines come in.
RSS isn't going to replace search... the search engines will just have an easier job if the RSS feeds are provided for them.
DJIA
Wow... look at that crumbling economy.
Actually, they're getting rid of the managers that Slashdotters like to complain about. You know, the ones that don't understand the technical end of things, and as a result end up setting unrealistic deadlines and promising impossible accomplishments. They're getting RID of the political bureaucracy and replacing it with scientists. Oh the shame!
Of course, since you can attribute it as another negative of the Bush Administration, you will. And most of Slashdot will agree.
Damn, you're right. I'm pretty sure I knew that, but would never claim so. You're brave. :)
Shit.. almost forgot: :(
- Laverne & Shirley
- Happy Days
- That 70's Show
- Step By Step
- Violent Femmes :/ ) :)
- Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band
- Summerfest
- Willem Dafoe (spelling?)
- Apostle Island National Lakeshore
- lots of beer & cheese
- polka music
- Green Bay Packers
- Ben Sheets
- 1st NBA pick
- lake effect snow
- UW halloween party
- Milwaukee Art Museum
- more lakes than Minnesota
- Bodeans (you know.. the Friends theme?
- me
I love Firefox, too, and use it exclusively. However, the functionality was there in Opera. I would consider Opera an innovative product, even though I don't really like using it. Mosiac was definitely innovative.
Other innovative products: ICQ, The Brain, MacOS, and many others. It may be a semantics argument, but I enjoy sticking to the original meaning of words rather than marketing language.
It has features and methodology that make it an innovator, but it's still just a web browser with tabs and plugins. There were other tabbed browsers before Firefox came along.
In the same way, Acrylic may have some interesting features that are innovations over what Photoshop or Gimp had, but it's still just a graphics program.
If you want to consider Firefox an innovator, then you need to consider every Microsoft product one as well, since all of them have extended the features of their predecessors in some way. I'd prefer to refer to none of them as innovators unless the program as a whole is completely unlike anything before it.
Lots of comments already about how MS isn't innovating. Of course they aren't. Neither was Open Office, Gimp, Firefox, etc. Not all software needs to be innovative to be successful. It just needs to be as good or better than alternatives, or fit a niche market that isn't filled already.
Since the market for graphics programs is filled already, MS needs to make this at least as good as Gimp and Photoshop for it to be successful. Since this is only a beta, only time will tell if they've done that.
Besides, I thought having choices was a good thing? Once MS starts unfairly competing in the graphics program industry, then start complaining about it. Until then, this is a good thing.
I have mod points, but I'd prefer to counter that statement. A few months ago, I probably would have agreed. However, my wife, who normally abhors anything with too much T&A, started watching Stacked. She absolutely loves it. The humor is actually witty at times and the acting is acceptable. It's far better than most of the reality shows (Dancing With The Stars?) and better than a good deal of other sitcoms. I was pretty surprised.
:)
The fact that there's a lot of T&A is an added bonus.
But allowing OSX to have a virtual machine for older mac programs is ok? It's basically the same thing going on, technology-wise.
Besides, MS already has a virtual server program called Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. It's decent, but has more overhead than VMWare. The benefit is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get running and keep running than VMWare.
Also, linux comes prepackaged with a firewall product and I don't hear anyone complaining about that. I think the big point you should be making is that Microsoft isn't the first to do most of these things, just the first to make a big fuss about them.
The MS monopoly isn't about which programs they provide. It's about business practices that are made to eliminate competition. If they prevent Windows from running within VMWare or similar, then I'll have an issue with them. Until then, it's basically 2 different markets.
Anyway, this move by them is more likely to allow them to create a secure codebase without having to worry about older programs working properly. If they make old programs run within a Win2K virtual environment within Longhorn, they can keep insecure code away from the primary OS.
Beside the fact that universities already have huge research budgets, as other posters have noted, I would argue that space exploration should have the ultimate goal of colonization.
Mankind is quickly depleting the natural resources of Earth, growing fast enough that overcrowding might be a problem in a few centuries, and is highly vulnerable to a "planet killing" event like a large meteor or nuclear war. While conservation, population controls, and Bruce Willis can protect us for now, their usefulness will run out eventually. It makes sense to colonize the moon, Mars, and eventually create some form of Universe ship.
An off-Earth colony is far more useful than any research that Hubble has done.
What kind of moron compares one country against a group of several countries?
Well, the EU does. (note: link is a PDF)
There's many more instances on the EU's statistical website. It seems they REALLY like grouping all their data together so they can be viewed as an industrial competitor to the US and Japan.
Almost all of the responses so far are the obvious DRM "not my data" jokes or "what's the big deal" statements. The first few jokes are funny, but most need help. The "what's the big deal" statements are accurate for the most part, except that I think this is a really good idea.
It's always annoyed me how MS went overboard in trying to simplify document locations. My grandmother knows that her documents are in the "My Documents" folder now, but is smart enough to understand that they'd be under "Documents" if it existed. Adding "My " to the beginning of every default folder location does nothing to help anyone, and as such should be done away with. It makes sense.
Not to mention the fact that writing Perl scripts with hard-coded Windows directories is a complete pain in the ass. By giving the directories 1 word names, you reduce the path from "C:\Docume~1\Blah\MyDocu~1" to "C:\Docume~1\Blah\Documents". Once they change "Documents and Settings" to "home", I'll be even happier. Ideally, it would be "C:\home\Blah\Documents".
I would think that a lot of Slashdotters would actually like this, since getting to certain paths through Samba can be a pain if you have to deal with Windows filenames.