Fine. Then legalize, or at least decriminalize drugs. The people are going to do them anyways, so why not admit that the "war" on drugs is an utter failure and is causing much worse problems than its solving.
By legalizing meth, and regulating production, you'll move most meth production out of the residences and into much safer, controlled environments. You cut down on the risks of the fires starting by both ensuring that the people are a) knowledgable and b) careful about what they're doing.
I'm not a meth user. It's terrible, terrible stuff and you would have to be stupid to make it. That being said, some people want it, and will get their score, regardless of the risks. Mitigate those risks, and preach responsibility, and you've solved the drug problem in a way that the drug war never can.
Wrong. If Gore hadn't been an idiot, he would have easily beaten Dubya. If Gore had chosen to have a backbone, he would have won. If Gore had even a tenth of the charisma of Clinton, he would have won.
And before you ask, no, I did not vote for Nader. I didn't vote for Gore either. I voted for Browne, and will probably vote for the democratic candidate next year because I want to see Dubya out of there. It saddens me to say it a bit, but I'm voting against Dubya here, because I love this country, and want to see it return to the ideals it was founded on. And right now, the ideas of limited government and maximum personal freedom seem to be best espoused by the liberals. In 2008, I'll probably vote libertarian again, but in this situation, chosing the lesser of two evils is the most worthwhile proposition.
DOS 1.0. No directory structure. Thus, everything is in one straight line, hence a 1d desktop.
A 4d desktop would be a collection of 3d desktops -- for example, application Z is a 640x480 window, on the seventh layer of desktop B. Yeah, the usages of a 4d desktop are limited, but that's mostly because you get above 3 dimensions, and the human mind struggles to find analogs for it. We didn't start out with a 3d desktop because the computing power just wasn't there, so we had to slowly build up to a 3d desktop environment as computers got faster and more powerful.
Uh, you knew that there is already an accelerated framework for Linux windowing systems, right. Go goodle for Xrender sometime, and see that your precious longhorn is playing catchup for something that's been available on Linux for years. By the time Longhorn's released, Linux will have hardware 3d acceleration on the desktop for a half decade.
Oh, you mean like this XRender thing that's been in XFree86 for many years now. Glad to see MS catching up with the times.
adding complete vector scaling,
Vector scaling is already in KDE. Mostly eye-candy right now, in the form of the crystal-svg iconset, but it's still extant, which is more that can be said about windows' current implementation
replacing Win32 with.NET
Wow. replacing the rendering system. Should have been done years ago, to be honest. Hardly revolutionary.
and creating a much-talked-about new photorealistic interface called Aero that nobody knows anything about yet.
Photorealistic interface? I'm sorry, but that phrase is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. Photorealistic analog to what? It sounds like the buttons have a higher-color bitmap, which really doesn't mean all too much, if you ask me.
There are so many revolutionary new features of Longhorn that I can't list them all, from XML scripted modular installs
Wow. remote modular installs. Only difference between this setup and systems available on the Unix side seems to be that this is completely buzzword compliant. XML is perhaps the most overhyped phenomena in the past couple years.
WinFS (which kicks the crap out of BeOS' pseudo-database filesystem).
Well, the big issue with BeFS was the fact that it was written in the early 90s, when computers didn't have the clocks to create a database-based filesystem. Were Be to have written their FS a few years later, a database filesystem would have been feasable. Besides, Reiser4 looks to be much a more interesting filesystems than WinFS anyways.
Though I must admit, your post did have one thing going for it. With all the buzzwords flying around, you're certain to have won buzzword bingo. Now, head up to the front and collect your prize.
Yes, it was a good thing. Yes, it's more difficult to filter the wheat from the chaff, but at the same time, once that's been done, the community is much richer. I've met people online whom I never would have met if the elitism of a decade ago was still in place, people who have given me experiences I will treasure for the rest of my life. Am I saying there aren't negatives to this openness? Absolutely not; I work for a tech support department at an ISP, I know more about the pettiness of some people better than the vast majority of the internet population. I just know that in the end, the balance weighs much, much more heavily towards a more open medium.
Uh, if there was a blackout on the scale you're talking about, you'd have much more pressing concerns than radio communication. Like finding food for your family members, for example. The morse code requirement is an anachronism, plain and simple; if there ever was a pressing need, there is a large subset of the population that could learn it relatively quickly. Even in this very post there are people who have said they could learn code well enough to do 5WPM in an evening or so. Were there the need to do so, I'm certain that others would be motivated to learn code in a similar timeframe.
I'd say that it's going to be 2 years until most home PCs are 64 bit for one compelling reason. Media. Even today, it's trivial to create a >4GB media file, especially with video, or audio with many, many tracks. Yeah, there are workarounds, but at the same time, it'll be much easier on the programmers, and lead to a much simpler debug process, if the design stage didn't include having to worry about an internal swapping mechanism for keeping track of an entire multi-gigabyte movie.
Re:Does Linux offer something like this?
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FreeBSD Jails
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In addition to chroot, Linux also offers User mode Linux which is like a supermaximum security jail call. Or, you can go to MAC/RBAC systems such as grsecurity.
It depends. A lot of cities offer have little shoebox-sized office suites for rent for very, very cheap. I know around where I live, there's a complex that'll rent office space and net access for $289/month, and this is in real-estate crazy Los Angeles. Such a suite would probably be good enough for a real estate agent just starting out, or a 1-2 man "marketing" house.
Shame on you WWWWolf, and you too, buck wild, for suggesting that such a valuable, wonderful cultural artifact be used on spammers. I don't know about the rest of you, but the thought alone almost made me cry. If you'll excuse me now, I have to see my shrink. Expect to get his bill in the mail!
Y'know, it's smug assholes like you that make me want to pick up a few books on OS X and write a virus for it. Were the whole world running OS X, most people would still be exploited by viruses, as that's the most common denominator. People who have been taught good security practices, on the other hand, will be unaffected, regardless of the platform they're running. My cousin, for example, is a computer novice, but at the same time, has been taught to check for security updates regularly, and more importantly, to treat all links and attachments as suspect and not to view them. If it's not worth creating as a webpage, it's not worth propogating.
Why do you think I said to put the hard drives in removable bays? For one or two systems, just swap out the drive with a freshy imaged drive and do the ghost work on a physical machine in the IT department. No need for networking, and you get the system working in less user downtime than copying the CD over.
You are assuming word processing/basic app machines, this is not necessarily a valid assumption--I've known schools that do digital video work or teach programs like Photoshop or even use programs such as Lightwave or Maya. These are *not* all that uncommon uses.
For the vast majority of systems, it is, though. On those systems that the extra video card is needed, throw it in. To get to the emac's level of video display wouldn't be more than $50-$60.
Also, on another note, macs now have Quartz Extreme and in 2005 Windows will offer "tiered" user experiences and offload the user interface to the graphics card, an integrated chipset is (likely) not going to fare as well with Longhorn.
Or, it'll be just like windows XP, where you can turn off the new GUI eye candy and use the traditional UI with no problem.
1) It is better. Whether it is worth paying for is in question, but it is better.
2) If you find another CRT, make sure the quality is good, I've seen monitors in some HS's which were so low-quality they hurt they eyes to even glance at.
Depends on the needs. Most labs could do just fine with a good 15" monitor -- the emac's 17" would be overkill. If we're talking about a homogeneous computer lab, than chances are, you can easily go cheaper, especially when buying in bulk.
XP Pro is also useful to programmers et al. Programming tools are free with the mac, they are not with the PC, so if you teach AP (or even basic) computer science you are going to need to fork over more for the PC.
Ever hear of cygwin or mingw? They're free too, ya know. And they run under XP Home.
You are also looking at Windows 2003 Server, which costs a hell of a lot more. MacOS X's unlimited client license is your friend.
Or you run a Linux server, and admin it through a tool such as webmin and save yourself some money on a server. Unlimited clients there, too.
If you are going to factor this in you might as well factor in as well that the Mac is going to cost less to support.
Depends on the IT department. I'd be willing to wager that a good IT policy, and proactive maintenance steps could bring PC and mac support costs to near equity.
Once again, most of the issues you discussed are due to poor IT policy. They make virus scanners for mail servers, which will cut down on the vast majority of the viruses transmitted through that vector. Add a good security policy -- firewalling out webmail servers, not allowing users to install arbitrary software, etc, and you've got yourself protection against nearly every windows virus out there. Additionally, why would datacenter equipment have any sort of email program running on it? Admins whose servers were compromised by melissa were idiots who should have known better than to let a vector for untrusted code anywhere near the servers.
As far as reimaging goes, a bootable CD is not needed. Period. Programs like ghost will create a complete drive image, and a removable drive holder means that repairing a hosed config is a simple matter of pulling out the old drive, putting in the fresh drive, and having the user go on their merry way. Reimage the drive back at the IT department, and that's that. The only real inconvenience to the user is the time it takes to head down to their system to plug the new drive in.
I guess you've angred the floppy gods if you've had that much trouble with disks. I'm pretty harsh on my disks, and aside from some bad sectors from half-decade old floppies, I seem to have pretty good luck transferring real small files back and forth between computers on a regular basis. Now, like I said, most of the time, there are other means of transferring files that are a lot better, but at the same time, when you're darting a few small files back and forth between work, a floppy drive still Just Works. Am I saying that a floppy is useful for everything? No. At the same time though, I do think that apple is a bit loopy for ditching a transfer means when it is still useful in emergency applications.
Why are those features needed in an educational market at all? For a lab of word processing/basic app machines, like 99% of the k-12 computers are, you don't need anything more than the integrated video chipset to handle display. The monitor's a non-issue because a flat picture tube is only (marginally) beneficial to people who are using it day in and day out. You don't need the networking features of XP pro because once again, you're in an environment where you just need to crank out texts. The iApps are similarly worthless for a great deal of the market we're talking about, and aren't a great added value. So, you're still left with spending several hundred dollars more for a comparable emac. Add to the fact that the PC's non-integrated monitor leads to cost savings down the road as one doesn't have to replace the monitor at the same time as the rest of the system, and the PC is clearly a better deal.
Your "insight" on the PC seems to be based more on ignorance and outdated facts than anything else. Worms and viruses, in a well-maintained datacenter, are a non-issue, even in the windows world. Performing duties such as having a virus scanner, using multiuser settings properly, and keeping up-to-date with security patches is easy, and should be a no-brainer for anyone with PC experience. Additionally, I'd dare say that a PC-based lab can be easier to keep maintained than a lab of macs, if the sysadmin performs actions such as having all the drives in removable bays so that if a student does circumvent security procedures, downtime can be measured in the time it takes to swap out the old drive and putting in a clean drive.
Additionally, I fail to see why you dislike floppies so much. They're a cheap, easy way to transfer small files between computers for most users. Why bother with the process of setting up a webmail account just so to email file attachments back and forth between the home systems and the school systems? I'd personally prefer a USB keychain, but if the file's only a few hundred k, a floppy's still tough to beat.
Because schools can teach *nix much cheaper on an x86 system than on a mac. Why spend $800+ on the lowest-end mac when you can spend $500-$600 on an x86 machine that can easily be set up to boot into a *nix environment. Either use dual booting or vmware when you want to teach unix, and you're still ahead of the game. Yeah, show them different operating systems, but take advantage of the lower costs of PC-based hardware, too.
I dunno. Men and sex is pretty good too. Plus, it's got to happen outside, in the middle of the desert. Though I do have to admit it probably would have been better if there hadn't been all those motorcyclists riding around; kinda difficult to keep the mood going.
I'm sorry, but these offering suffer from the same flaws as Apple's current design. An over-pretentious presentation, and a form that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Give me a good solid oak desk, or something in black laquer any day of the week. You know, something that looks like I'll be able to pass down to my great-grandchildren. These desks are purely the flavor of the week, and will be forgotten by next month.
Because Linux offers an even greater bang/buck than OS X. It offers better java performance, finer-grained security through such items as the grsecurity packages, and increased data protection through the kernel encryption packages. Yeah, as a desktop OS, OS X is okay looking, but on a server, Linux just blows it away.
Nail clippers, my friend, nail clippers. Human fingernails can be pretty damn sharp too, which is why we keep them short and blunt. Before getting jiggy with that yiffy cheetah girl from down the street, you'd simply have to make sure she was acquainted with the grooming tools humans use regularly.
See it from a ship? Naw. I've talked to a guy who has been to the pole. He's a guy with some stories to tell - almost getting killed, seeing some of the most beautiful, pristine spots on the planet, oh hell yeah. In person. On his own two feet. Now that's the way to see Antarctica.
Getting this post back to the topic at hand though, a good sensor web would definitely be useful in antarctica. Face it, it's brutal out there, and the brutality does funny things to a person's mind. Losing focus and concentration is a constant concern. Automating/simplifying certain parts of the job, such as monitoring "mundane" conditions can only be a good thing, as it'll allow scientists to spend more time at the more interesting spots, thus expanding the worthiness of their visit to one of the most insanely awesome places on the planet.
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By legalizing meth, and regulating production, you'll move most meth production out of the residences and into much safer, controlled environments. You cut down on the risks of the fires starting by both ensuring that the people are a) knowledgable and b) careful about what they're doing.
I'm not a meth user. It's terrible, terrible stuff and you would have to be stupid to make it. That being said, some people want it, and will get their score, regardless of the risks. Mitigate those risks, and preach responsibility, and you've solved the drug problem in a way that the drug war never can.
And before you ask, no, I did not vote for Nader. I didn't vote for Gore either. I voted for Browne, and will probably vote for the democratic candidate next year because I want to see Dubya out of there. It saddens me to say it a bit, but I'm voting against Dubya here, because I love this country, and want to see it return to the ideals it was founded on. And right now, the ideas of limited government and maximum personal freedom seem to be best espoused by the liberals. In 2008, I'll probably vote libertarian again, but in this situation, chosing the lesser of two evils is the most worthwhile proposition.
A 4d desktop would be a collection of 3d desktops -- for example, application Z is a 640x480 window, on the seventh layer of desktop B. Yeah, the usages of a 4d desktop are limited, but that's mostly because you get above 3 dimensions, and the human mind struggles to find analogs for it. We didn't start out with a 3d desktop because the computing power just wasn't there, so we had to slowly build up to a 3d desktop environment as computers got faster and more powerful.
Uh, you knew that there is already an accelerated framework for Linux windowing systems, right. Go goodle for Xrender sometime, and see that your precious longhorn is playing catchup for something that's been available on Linux for years. By the time Longhorn's released, Linux will have hardware 3d acceleration on the desktop for a half decade.
Wow. remote modular installs. Only difference between this setup and systems available on the Unix side seems to be that this is completely buzzword compliant. XML is perhaps the most overhyped phenomena in the past couple years.
Well, the big issue with BeFS was the fact that it was written in the early 90s, when computers didn't have the clocks to create a database-based filesystem. Were Be to have written their FS a few years later, a database filesystem would have been feasable. Besides, Reiser4 looks to be much a more interesting filesystems than WinFS anyways.Though I must admit, your post did have one thing going for it. With all the buzzwords flying around, you're certain to have won buzzword bingo. Now, head up to the front and collect your prize.
Yes, it was a good thing. Yes, it's more difficult to filter the wheat from the chaff, but at the same time, once that's been done, the community is much richer. I've met people online whom I never would have met if the elitism of a decade ago was still in place, people who have given me experiences I will treasure for the rest of my life. Am I saying there aren't negatives to this openness? Absolutely not; I work for a tech support department at an ISP, I know more about the pettiness of some people better than the vast majority of the internet population. I just know that in the end, the balance weighs much, much more heavily towards a more open medium.
Uh, if there was a blackout on the scale you're talking about, you'd have much more pressing concerns than radio communication. Like finding food for your family members, for example. The morse code requirement is an anachronism, plain and simple; if there ever was a pressing need, there is a large subset of the population that could learn it relatively quickly. Even in this very post there are people who have said they could learn code well enough to do 5WPM in an evening or so. Were there the need to do so, I'm certain that others would be motivated to learn code in a similar timeframe.
I'd say that it's going to be 2 years until most home PCs are 64 bit for one compelling reason. Media. Even today, it's trivial to create a >4GB media file, especially with video, or audio with many, many tracks. Yeah, there are workarounds, but at the same time, it'll be much easier on the programmers, and lead to a much simpler debug process, if the design stage didn't include having to worry about an internal swapping mechanism for keeping track of an entire multi-gigabyte movie.
In addition to chroot, Linux also offers User mode Linux which is like a supermaximum security jail call. Or, you can go to MAC/RBAC systems such as grsecurity.
It depends. A lot of cities offer have little shoebox-sized office suites for rent for very, very cheap. I know around where I live, there's a complex that'll rent office space and net access for $289/month, and this is in real-estate crazy Los Angeles. Such a suite would probably be good enough for a real estate agent just starting out, or a 1-2 man "marketing" house.
Shame on you WWWWolf, and you too, buck wild, for suggesting that such a valuable, wonderful cultural artifact be used on spammers. I don't know about the rest of you, but the thought alone almost made me cry. If you'll excuse me now, I have to see my shrink. Expect to get his bill in the mail!
Ah, sorta like Apple's shortsightedness with IDE, USB 2.0, 802.11a, etc, right? If there's no perceived market, then why bother?
Y'know, it's smug assholes like you that make me want to pick up a few books on OS X and write a virus for it. Were the whole world running OS X, most people would still be exploited by viruses, as that's the most common denominator. People who have been taught good security practices, on the other hand, will be unaffected, regardless of the platform they're running. My cousin, for example, is a computer novice, but at the same time, has been taught to check for security updates regularly, and more importantly, to treat all links and attachments as suspect and not to view them. If it's not worth creating as a webpage, it's not worth propogating.
Why do you think I said to put the hard drives in removable bays? For one or two systems, just swap out the drive with a freshy imaged drive and do the ghost work on a physical machine in the IT department. No need for networking, and you get the system working in less user downtime than copying the CD over.
For the vast majority of systems, it is, though. On those systems that the extra video card is needed, throw it in. To get to the emac's level of video display wouldn't be more than $50-$60.
Or, it'll be just like windows XP, where you can turn off the new GUI eye candy and use the traditional UI with no problem.
Depends on the needs. Most labs could do just fine with a good 15" monitor -- the emac's 17" would be overkill. If we're talking about a homogeneous computer lab, than chances are, you can easily go cheaper, especially when buying in bulk.
Ever hear of cygwin or mingw? They're free too, ya know. And they run under XP Home.
Or you run a Linux server, and admin it through a tool such as webmin and save yourself some money on a server. Unlimited clients there, too.
Depends on the IT department. I'd be willing to wager that a good IT policy, and proactive maintenance steps could bring PC and mac support costs to near equity.
As far as reimaging goes, a bootable CD is not needed. Period. Programs like ghost will create a complete drive image, and a removable drive holder means that repairing a hosed config is a simple matter of pulling out the old drive, putting in the fresh drive, and having the user go on their merry way. Reimage the drive back at the IT department, and that's that. The only real inconvenience to the user is the time it takes to head down to their system to plug the new drive in.
I guess you've angred the floppy gods if you've had that much trouble with disks. I'm pretty harsh on my disks, and aside from some bad sectors from half-decade old floppies, I seem to have pretty good luck transferring real small files back and forth between computers on a regular basis. Now, like I said, most of the time, there are other means of transferring files that are a lot better, but at the same time, when you're darting a few small files back and forth between work, a floppy drive still Just Works. Am I saying that a floppy is useful for everything? No. At the same time though, I do think that apple is a bit loopy for ditching a transfer means when it is still useful in emergency applications.
Why are those features needed in an educational market at all? For a lab of word processing/basic app machines, like 99% of the k-12 computers are, you don't need anything more than the integrated video chipset to handle display. The monitor's a non-issue because a flat picture tube is only (marginally) beneficial to people who are using it day in and day out. You don't need the networking features of XP pro because once again, you're in an environment where you just need to crank out texts. The iApps are similarly worthless for a great deal of the market we're talking about, and aren't a great added value. So, you're still left with spending several hundred dollars more for a comparable emac. Add to the fact that the PC's non-integrated monitor leads to cost savings down the road as one doesn't have to replace the monitor at the same time as the rest of the system, and the PC is clearly a better deal.
Additionally, I fail to see why you dislike floppies so much. They're a cheap, easy way to transfer small files between computers for most users. Why bother with the process of setting up a webmail account just so to email file attachments back and forth between the home systems and the school systems? I'd personally prefer a USB keychain, but if the file's only a few hundred k, a floppy's still tough to beat.
Because schools can teach *nix much cheaper on an x86 system than on a mac. Why spend $800+ on the lowest-end mac when you can spend $500-$600 on an x86 machine that can easily be set up to boot into a *nix environment. Either use dual booting or vmware when you want to teach unix, and you're still ahead of the game. Yeah, show them different operating systems, but take advantage of the lower costs of PC-based hardware, too.
I dunno. Men and sex is pretty good too. Plus, it's got to happen outside, in the middle of the desert. Though I do have to admit it probably would have been better if there hadn't been all those motorcyclists riding around; kinda difficult to keep the mood going.
I'm sorry, but these offering suffer from the same flaws as Apple's current design. An over-pretentious presentation, and a form that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Give me a good solid oak desk, or something in black laquer any day of the week. You know, something that looks like I'll be able to pass down to my great-grandchildren. These desks are purely the flavor of the week, and will be forgotten by next month.
Because Linux offers an even greater bang/buck than OS X. It offers better java performance, finer-grained security through such items as the grsecurity packages, and increased data protection through the kernel encryption packages. Yeah, as a desktop OS, OS X is okay looking, but on a server, Linux just blows it away.
Nail clippers, my friend, nail clippers. Human fingernails can be pretty damn sharp too, which is why we keep them short and blunt. Before getting jiggy with that yiffy cheetah girl from down the street, you'd simply have to make sure she was acquainted with the grooming tools humans use regularly.
No, no jar jar binks. Jar Jar was obviously an amphibian of some sort. This is closer to what a rabbit/human hybrid would be ;3.
Getting this post back to the topic at hand though, a good sensor web would definitely be useful in antarctica. Face it, it's brutal out there, and the brutality does funny things to a person's mind. Losing focus and concentration is a constant concern. Automating/simplifying certain parts of the job, such as monitoring "mundane" conditions can only be a good thing, as it'll allow scientists to spend more time at the more interesting spots, thus expanding the worthiness of their visit to one of the most insanely awesome places on the planet.