The local cable company here (long the worst cable system I know of) made it even worse lately; if you want anything other than minimum basic cable you MUST get the digital reciever (of course, as soon as they started running digital on the system, analog cable reception went down the tube). To make matters worse, their system is crap, and many digital channels approach unwatchable, with all the glitching & heavy digital compression artifacting.
One particularly annoying example of the shittiness of the service is that ANY time a screen remains mostly white for any length of time over about 10s (ie Red Bull commercials), their encoder goes into some sort of feedback loop and the overflow washes out the audio track, resulting in static on the audio track.
I'm a big fan of computing and whatnot, but as far as digital communication (TV, Music, Telephones...) I've never seen anything but a decrease in quality and an increase in profits for the company shoving it down my throat.
Yes and no. Proprietary thin-clients do nothing but promote the feared 'vendor lock-in'. Look at the current crop of thin-clients, a vast majority (essentially anything that is not marketed as an X-term) of all but the most expensive models are limited to RDP and ICA (Citrix's protocol). RDP is 100% Microsoft, ICA provides expensive client/server licences based on Win32 & several commercial unices (Sun, HP, IBM...), neither will likely ever be supported under a free OS, since MSFT, having invested large sums of money in them. has a considerable influence over the decisions made by Citrix.
Most businesses, unless they are specifically looking for interoperability with non-MSFT systems, are going to look beyond that initial purchase price, ignoring the fact that they've essentially purchased a whole office/lab full of hardware that is essentially Windows-only. Where PCs could potentially be converted to a Linux/BSD system, if the desire ever arises, without doing anything more than replacing an OS, these windows only terminals become garbage if an enterprise wishes to move away from Windows.
If this new hardware comes out, it'll be much the same story; another case of MSFT taking open protocols and using their market strength (and customer momentum) to manipulate the standards in such a way that they are no longer open & interoperable, further building the stranglehold they have on the computing industry.
Just think what will happen if MSFT gets their way and manages to get their secure computing platform crap on the market...
Against all reason, I really hope that these devices don't speak RDP. RDP is a -classic- example of MSFTs embrace and extend tactics. Essentially, RDP is based on a suite of international standards protocols (ITU T.128 being the topmost layer) with one little twist; between the T.128 layer (the desktop sharing) and the T.124(? I think.. It's MCS (multipoint communication service), essentially the base protocol for netmeeting) layers there is a security layer that is not documented, requiring signing an agreement w/ MSFT (beyond the standard click-through licensing) to get information on.
Interestingly enough, there DOES exist a free client for RDP, but no server. Why is this? Official MSFT servers are willing to let clients ignore the security layer & skip initialization of it. The official MSFT clients, OTOH, will refuse to connect to a server that doesn't properly support the encryption layer.
In short, there's a snowball's chance in hell of these things ever working with anything other than Windows, short of physically hacking the machines and making Xterms out of them.
After all, they should be paying you for your knowledge and expertise. Would you expect your doctor to write up documentation for you so you can self-diagnose future problems?
...but you do expect a doctor to keep decent records on you, tracking your medical history, etc, in such a way that if you had to get a new doctor, he'd know what kind of problems you've had in the past, what drug alergies you've had, and the like.
We're not talking about writing manuals, we're talking about making notes of how you've decided to assign IP addresses, major configuration issues, passwords and whatnot. The things that somebody, with an appropriate skill set, would need to know to effectively do their job.
Xenix (a Microsoft/SCO product) was a System III unix derivative that was used quite regularly on 16b hardware (I've seen it running on ancient (IE 8in floppy) Tandy Minicomputers and 286s, as well as running an entire 32 user lab (via multi-IO serial cards on Wyse Terminals) on a 386/25 w/ 16MB of RAM.
Aditionally, the PDP-11 was one of the first machines where a usuable Unix system ws worked on and it was 16b.
You're obviously new here. If you stop for a second and think about who we (the slashdot community) are, you'll realize that reading/posting to slashdot is entertainment for us. As such, we are in no way obligated to answer your questions exactly how you want them answered; in fact, by asking your questions in a public forum such as this, you're opening yourself up to all sorts of opinions.
Now, back to the original story... perhaps we could could use a bit more information about this "teenage family member who has left the formal education system". How old is he, and why did he leave the system? Based on my experience, most people who drop-out do so for bullshit reasons that are pure cop-outs.
The answers can vary widely based on his motivation for dropping out. A physically disabled student who doesn't get their needs met by the school system is entirely different than a kid who just doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning or wants to smoke pot all day. A kid who always gets beat up is going to have different needs than somebody who doesn't feel that classes are challenging enough.
Without knowing _WHY_ this kid is dropping out, we have to assume that he, like the vast majority of drop outs, is doing it 'cuz it's the "easy way out" of a situation that actually (**GASP**) sets standards & has expectations of them.
If that assumption is incorrect, a clarification is definately in order.
Assuming that the kid actually wants to learn, and is at least (based on an HONEST evaluation) of average intelligence & learning for a kid his age, I think the best thing to do would be to take a high-school equivalency test (in Washington it's called the GED, and most HS students who pay attention could pass it in their freshman year) and take college level classes, either online or at a local CC. Especially if you go through a community college, the classes, while being somewhat accelerated, would be at an appropriate level, and a GED + Associates degree is a lot more useful than a HS diploma. On top of that, college level classes are going to be easier to check up on; solid accreditation requirements, and multiple organizations rating them, and a far larger selection of organizations providing the service.
Hrmm... maybe I'm issing something here, but if portability is the primary concern, you AVOID doing complex things that might break on one of your platforms. Not to mention the other bennefits (readability, sanity, maintainability) of avoiding the complex outer-reaches of C++.
Re:.Net Runtime negates the need for this
on
Microsoft's New Hurdles
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The difference being that Sun wasn't giving the system away to sell software. Their business plan never really made sense to me; I'm sure that the widespread use of serverside Java has helped to sell a few systems, but mostly it seems to be a bit of charity. MSFT OTOH, in this scenario, would be giving away the.NET system so that they could sell their software; a connecton that seems to be a lot more direct.
Re:Ghost is worth the money
on
Ghost for Unix
·
· Score: 1
He's not just talking about the multicast ability. From the remote console, you can remotely pull an image from or push one down onto the workstation. It's a pretty nifty tool, not cheap tho, since this is only avalable in the enterprise edition.
Re:g4u source code mirror
on
Ghost for Unix
·
· Score: 2
Some sort of multicast is almost neccessary to compete with Ghost. Outside of the single-machine HDD backup realm, the lack of multicasting abilities is going to kill this; I can't imagine imaging a decently sized network without it.
Maybe it's just that I'm reading at +4, but I'm suprised that nobody's mentioned Multics yet. The first thing that popped into my mind when I read "computing at a public utility" was Multics. I mean, the whole point of the system was to make computing a metetered utility. Not that any significant conclusions can be drawn from this, since Multics' failure had nothing to do with the business model, but more to do with them having overly ambitious goals for the project.
By turning to Ask Slashdot you're missing the most obvious place to get information, the admissions office and advisors at the school(s) you want to go to. Having recently looked at grad schools, many schools (and even departments inside of them) have wildly differing requirements. A few emails to grad-info@bigstate.edu will probably get you a lot more useful, relevant, accurate information than 100 posts here.
My $0.02 : Find a not-entirely-prestigious school that will let you into their MS program and let you make up the undergrad classes that you're missing out on (could probably bust them out in a year or so) and from there transver into the Really Good School to finish up the PhD. That way, you not only make up the missing undergrad work quickly, you also end up with a MS degree at the halfway point, giving you an advanced degree to fall-back on if you decide to not go on to the PhD.
A friend of mine was working for a small ISP back in '94-'95, and they didn't give him a paycheck for like 3mo. One night, he walked out with several thousand dollars of routers and servers. If you still have physical access to the facility, this is always an option.
If you plan on going into organic chemistry, building a meth-lab in your basement is a good way to get a head start on things. Additionally, it'll help offset the rising cost of tuition.
Bah. Backgammon, now -that- is a real game; a game in which, even with 'perfect' play, the uncertaintly of the dice still produces a possibility of losing.
I know I'd have no chance at beating a Grandmaster at chess, so I'd never play; in backgammon, even the world's best player can lose occassionally.
It seems somewhat unsportsmanlike for a machine to be talking shit. The machine's designers would never have put in a speech-recognition module to allow the machine to understand, let alone the logic to comprehend, what was being said to it. In the Real World, between human players, shit-talking to your opponent carries the cost of having to deal with their shit-talk in return.
In other words, Fritz is taking cheap shots at Kramnik while having no such weakness itself.
In short, the whole hoopla about the changelog violating the DMCA is just a publicity stunt / protest action. Nobody is going to go to court for saying "joystick driver is buggy", (microsoft's explainations of security patches is equally vague) but it provides an excellent vehicle for showing the potential absurdity of the law, as it stands.
It reminds me of when I took driver's ed. The instructor explained that a major intersection was designed in such a way that it was IMPOSSIBLE to legally go from northbound State St. to northbound Shoultes Rd. even though that was the most common way to go through the intersection (and was required to get to the highschool).
In this case it was pointing out a case where a normal activity being against the law was an indication of a design flaw in the intersection; with teh changelog, it's pointing out that an otherwise normal activity being against the law is showing design flaws in the law.
If you're fast with the keyboard, this kind of thing can push efficiency through the roof.
No... Productivity goes through the roof. The faster you type the more work you can accomplish. A more efficient interface would require less typing, so lightning keyboard skills aren't neccessary.
Of course, lightning typing + efficient interface is even better. +)
Slashdot Mirror
The local cable company here (long the worst cable system I know of) made it even worse lately; if you want anything other than minimum basic cable you MUST get the digital reciever (of course, as soon as they started running digital on the system, analog cable reception went down the tube). To make matters worse, their system is crap, and many digital channels approach unwatchable, with all the glitching & heavy digital compression artifacting.
One particularly annoying example of the shittiness of the service is that ANY time a screen remains mostly white for any length of time over about 10s (ie Red Bull commercials), their encoder goes into some sort of feedback loop and the overflow washes out the audio track, resulting in static on the audio track.
I'm a big fan of computing and whatnot, but as far as digital communication (TV, Music, Telephones...) I've never seen anything but a decrease in quality and an increase in profits for the company shoving it down my throat.
Yes and no. Proprietary thin-clients do nothing but promote the feared 'vendor lock-in'. Look at the current crop of thin-clients, a vast majority (essentially anything that is not marketed as an X-term) of all but the most expensive models are limited to RDP and ICA (Citrix's protocol). RDP is 100% Microsoft, ICA provides expensive client/server licences based on Win32 & several commercial unices (Sun, HP, IBM...), neither will likely ever be supported under a free OS, since MSFT, having invested large sums of money in them. has a considerable influence over the decisions made by Citrix.
Most businesses, unless they are specifically looking for interoperability with non-MSFT systems, are going to look beyond that initial purchase price, ignoring the fact that they've essentially purchased a whole office/lab full of hardware that is essentially Windows-only. Where PCs could potentially be converted to a Linux/BSD system, if the desire ever arises, without doing anything more than replacing an OS, these windows only terminals become garbage if an enterprise wishes to move away from Windows.
If this new hardware comes out, it'll be much the same story; another case of MSFT taking open protocols and using their market strength (and customer momentum) to manipulate the standards in such a way that they are no longer open & interoperable, further building the stranglehold they have on the computing industry.
Just think what will happen if MSFT gets their way and manages to get their secure computing platform crap on the market...
Against all reason, I really hope that these devices don't speak RDP. RDP is a -classic- example of MSFTs embrace and extend tactics. Essentially, RDP is based on a suite of international standards protocols (ITU T.128 being the topmost layer) with one little twist; between the T.128 layer (the desktop sharing) and the T.124(? I think.. It's MCS (multipoint communication service), essentially the base protocol for netmeeting) layers there is a security layer that is not documented, requiring signing an agreement w/ MSFT (beyond the standard click-through licensing) to get information on.
Interestingly enough, there DOES exist a free client for RDP, but no server. Why is this? Official MSFT servers are willing to let clients ignore the security layer & skip initialization of it. The official MSFT clients, OTOH, will refuse to connect to a server that doesn't properly support the encryption layer.
In short, there's a snowball's chance in hell of these things ever working with anything other than Windows, short of physically hacking the machines and making Xterms out of them.
We're not talking about writing manuals, we're talking about making notes of how you've decided to assign IP addresses, major configuration issues, passwords and whatnot. The things that somebody, with an appropriate skill set, would need to know to effectively do their job.
And since when could you do WYSIWYG on a text console?
Xenix (a Microsoft/SCO product) was a System III unix derivative that was used quite regularly on 16b hardware (I've seen it running on ancient (IE 8in floppy) Tandy Minicomputers and 286s, as well as running an entire 32 user lab (via multi-IO serial cards on Wyse Terminals) on a 386/25 w/ 16MB of RAM.
Aditionally, the PDP-11 was one of the first machines where a usuable Unix system ws worked on and it was 16b.
No biggie... By the time the HURD is shipping, 64b procs will either be standard on most computers, or obsolete.
You're obviously new here. If you stop for a second and think about who we (the slashdot community) are, you'll realize that reading/posting to slashdot is entertainment for us. As such, we are in no way obligated to answer your questions exactly how you want them answered; in fact, by asking your questions in a public forum such as this, you're opening yourself up to all sorts of opinions.
Now, back to the original story... perhaps we could could use a bit more information about this "teenage family member who has left the formal education system". How old is he, and why did he leave the system? Based on my experience, most people who drop-out do so for bullshit reasons that are pure cop-outs.
The answers can vary widely based on his motivation for dropping out. A physically disabled student who doesn't get their needs met by the school system is entirely different than a kid who just doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning or wants to smoke pot all day. A kid who always gets beat up is going to have different needs than somebody who doesn't feel that classes are challenging enough.
Without knowing _WHY_ this kid is dropping out, we have to assume that he, like the vast majority of drop outs, is doing it 'cuz it's the "easy way out" of a situation that actually (**GASP**) sets standards & has expectations of them.
If that assumption is incorrect, a clarification is definately in order.
Assuming that the kid actually wants to learn, and is at least (based on an HONEST evaluation) of average intelligence & learning for a kid his age, I think the best thing to do would be to take a high-school equivalency test (in Washington it's called the GED, and most HS students who pay attention could pass it in their freshman year) and take college level classes, either online or at a local CC. Especially if you go through a community college, the classes, while being somewhat accelerated, would be at an appropriate level, and a GED + Associates degree is a lot more useful than a HS diploma. On top of that, college level classes are going to be easier to check up on; solid accreditation requirements, and multiple organizations rating them, and a far larger selection of organizations providing the service.
So now they're justifying the cost of CDs because of promotion? Who started paying radio stations to put song in rotation in the first place?
"We started trying to use underhanded methods to get our music played, then it became standard industry practice, now you get to pay the cost."
Hrmm... RIAA, MPAA & DMCA are all USian. This is about BMG's European division.
Hrmm... maybe I'm issing something here, but if portability is the primary concern, you AVOID doing complex things that might break on one of your platforms. Not to mention the other bennefits (readability, sanity, maintainability) of avoiding the complex outer-reaches of C++.
The difference being that Sun wasn't giving the system away to sell software. Their business plan never really made sense to me; I'm sure that the widespread use of serverside Java has helped to sell a few systems, but mostly it seems to be a bit of charity. MSFT OTOH, in this scenario, would be giving away the .NET system so that they could sell their software; a connecton that seems to be a lot more direct.
He's not just talking about the multicast ability. From the remote console, you can remotely pull an image from or push one down onto the workstation. It's a pretty nifty tool, not cheap tho, since this is only avalable in the enterprise edition.
Some sort of multicast is almost neccessary to compete with Ghost. Outside of the single-machine HDD backup realm, the lack of multicasting abilities is going to kill this; I can't imagine imaging a decently sized network without it.
Maybe it's just that I'm reading at +4, but I'm suprised that nobody's mentioned Multics yet. The first thing that popped into my mind when I read "computing at a public utility" was Multics. I mean, the whole point of the system was to make computing a metetered utility. Not that any significant conclusions can be drawn from this, since Multics' failure had nothing to do with the business model, but more to do with them having overly ambitious goals for the project.
By turning to Ask Slashdot you're missing the most obvious place to get information, the admissions office and advisors at the school(s) you want to go to. Having recently looked at grad schools, many schools (and even departments inside of them) have wildly differing requirements. A few emails to grad-info@bigstate.edu will probably get you a lot more useful, relevant, accurate information than 100 posts here.
My $0.02 : Find a not-entirely-prestigious school that will let you into their MS program and let you make up the undergrad classes that you're missing out on (could probably bust them out in a year or so) and from there transver into the Really Good School to finish up the PhD. That way, you not only make up the missing undergrad work quickly, you also end up with a MS degree at the halfway point, giving you an advanced degree to fall-back on if you decide to not go on to the PhD.
A friend of mine was working for a small ISP back in '94-'95, and they didn't give him a paycheck for like 3mo. One night, he walked out with several thousand dollars of routers and servers. If you still have physical access to the facility, this is always an option.
If you plan on going into organic chemistry, building a meth-lab in your basement is a good way to get a head start on things. Additionally, it'll help offset the rising cost of tuition.
It's no sillier than pretending that writing the changelog for a linux kernel would be a violation of the DMCA.
Bah. Backgammon, now -that- is a real game; a game in which, even with 'perfect' play, the uncertaintly of the dice still produces a possibility of losing.
I know I'd have no chance at beating a Grandmaster at chess, so I'd never play; in backgammon, even the world's best player can lose occassionally.
It seems somewhat unsportsmanlike for a machine to be talking shit. The machine's designers would never have put in a speech-recognition module to allow the machine to understand, let alone the logic to comprehend, what was being said to it. In the Real World, between human players, shit-talking to your opponent carries the cost of having to deal with their shit-talk in return.
In other words, Fritz is taking cheap shots at Kramnik while having no such weakness itself.
That would be a -really- good idea...
IF IT WORKED.
They're not enabled on my 2K box, yet I got a popup spam.
In short, the whole hoopla about the changelog violating the DMCA is just a publicity stunt / protest action. Nobody is going to go to court for saying "joystick driver is buggy", (microsoft's explainations of security patches is equally vague) but it provides an excellent vehicle for showing the potential absurdity of the law, as it stands.
It reminds me of when I took driver's ed. The instructor explained that a major intersection was designed in such a way that it was IMPOSSIBLE to legally go from northbound State St. to northbound Shoultes Rd. even though that was the most common way to go through the intersection (and was required to get to the highschool).
In this case it was pointing out a case where a normal activity being against the law was an indication of a design flaw in the intersection; with teh changelog, it's pointing out that an otherwise normal activity being against the law is showing design flaws in the law.
No... Productivity goes through the roof. The faster you type the more work you can accomplish. A more efficient interface would require less typing, so lightning keyboard skills aren't neccessary.
Of course, lightning typing + efficient interface is even better. +)
So is this a "all your (visual) basics are belong to us" style licence?