Linux is an alternative that would make those problems worse not better. If stability is a feature you want, for end user apps, Linux is a terrible choice. Windows may very well be the best choice around in this regard. It is like criticizing Microsoft for having insufficient advertising and offering Linux as an alternative.
OK makes sense. But how does Amazon vs. say Borders (store) effect content creation very much? And I'm unclear what Google's role is here.
The point about why people sell their stuff is interesting. Especially since that's exactly what I'm hoping for (the signing tour, though I wouldn't complain about the groupies). I'm looking for fame / name recognition from the book. The publisher can keep the money, I want to make it on consulting not authoring.
I'm sorry maybe I'm being stupid but I'm not still not clear how this list hangs together. It just seems like "list of stuff I don't like" and I don't see what Amazon or Google have to do with it.
And how are search engines raising the barriers of entry into distribution? It seems to me they've done the exact opposite. Distribution is much much easier today than it was 15 years ago.
Maybe could you work an example of how this plays out?
Agreed, though actually there are rumors they subsidized the hardware.
I'd also add: 3) They didn't truly customize the netbooks. They shouldn't have had an OS but rather there should have been end user images you just select and installed via. the web. -- college student (non engineering) -- college student (engineering) -- professional commuter -- middle/high school student -- IT professional etc...
They make unnecessary changes to major application's UI which serve no real purpose but confuse trained users. They force expensive upgrade and purposely break backwards compatibility to this end.
I don't think in a discussion about Linux it is reasonable to be critical of Microsoft's frequency or degree of UI changes nor of their binary formats not being stable enough.
Take a look at the Netbook discussions from a year ago. Limpus, Netbook Xandros.... weren't quality. The Linuxes that shipped with Netbooks weren't really good enough in particular in terms of software choice and package availability. Almost every/. person who bought one ended up putting on a different Linux. That means an OS install. And those OS installs were complicated because of obscure hardware which often required specialized driver packages.
It wasn't ready.
Linux has been ready given a strong backing for a decade. What it lacks though is the sort of strong backing. Something like Mandriva's OEM Netbook Linux pairing with a Dell would have been perfect. But then where are Dell's cost savings?
I read the article and I still not quite sure what he is talking about. He seems to be complaining about fee structures. Amazon doesn't control compensation structures and offers all sorts of direct sales models and google by and large doesn't sell content at all.
I couldn't follow even the basic cause and effect claim for his issue with the current model.
No not really. First off you are looking at arrest and indictment not conviction. Child porn is being used because more and more often obscenity cases are failing. The successes are very rare and moreover the majority of the population quite often disagrees with the verdict. Prosecutors are having to be selective so as not to lose the cases.
Child porn laws have become incredibly strict but that is mainly because that is one of the few areas where the social libertarianism that applies to almost every other area of porn doesn't apply. Essentially what has happened is pederasty has gotten conflated with pedophilia to make people think that there is a pedophilia epidemic and they are responding rationally to incorrect information. This sort of disinformation campaign isn't going to last more than a generation. The Republicans are going to need to regain the public trust and the culture of propaganda may very well be a causality of Iraq.
In nearly every case of societal downfall (the Roman Empire is a good example of this)
This is one of those Christian myths that get used to scare people. When Rome was a pagan society with gladiator games, orgies an open embrace of pagan magic and an economy based on slavery it thrived. People like Caligula and Nero were during Rome's incredible growth phases. When it fell, and over a century earlier than that, ut was a morally upright Christian society, which strongly backed the Christian church both in its war against paganism and in providing state support for its moral codes.
Rome is an example of the exact opposite of this claim.
Access -> SQL server isn't that bad. Access makes front end creation easy. It just isn't multi user. Once you need multi user just have Access utilize the same tables in SQL server. Then if you want you can swap out the interface.
The real problem with Access comes from inconsistent data and multiple copies. But that is a result of not making the Access -> SQL server switch early enough.
FileMaker Pro and Access (I've never tried OO BASE but I assume it is similar) provide excellent development environments for the bigger than a spreadsheet smaller than an Oracle app type custom software. Besides his goal is to learn.
Cache will only be large when there are large amounts of writes. Once memory starts to fill and the system starts wanting to swap a lot of the read caching will get dropped.
The reason for the rule is that this 3x is the maximum level where the system is reasonable responsive. Above that and the system becomes unresponsive. In terms of price ram is around 100-1000x more expensive than disk space. You want to use disk where you can use it without loss of performance.
Might be possible. My current notebook has 256G which is getting tight the two before that came in at 50G which got tight near the end of the 2nd one's life. The one before that had 4G. 4G was very tight and that was Windows 2000 or Linux a decade ago.
Other than the OS, the main problem is you want 2-3x ram for virtual memory and I can't see being under 2 gigs of ram. Also mail is now frequently in the megabytes.
On the other hand on my blackberry I have a 4g memory card and I never use it. The 64 megs of flash is plenty. It is going to come down to what you use it for.
A 200 person company offers you flexibility in how things are done. It will be a good place to get some development experience first hand. Law firms are incredibly cheap when it comes to IT staff. What I would suggest is:
1) Learn a language 2) Start automating stuff, start having code in production that is yours.
Something like an Access / Filemaker pro database should be an easy first project. Alternately something like VBA if they use lots of spreadsheets or some Perl to do automation of system administration tasks.
3) Start making the systems more custom and more complex. Start bringing in tools and services for the lawyers. So that you are doing administration not just unjamming printers. You'll need to work some extra hours in the beginning but very very quickly you are likely to start getting raises. Even if that doesn't happen you will be able to talk about work you've done.
I wouldn't worry about developers behind you on projects. The next sure thing is very hard to predict. Standards within languages change, ways of accessing data change or thinking about problems. Paradigm shifts happen quickly and as "close to the metal" is getting less popular language flexibility is increasing.
Thanks for the detailed response. It would be nice to make an opera note of this under "advantages of opera". I could see how something like devon personal would be very practical using that notes feature
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to be the case. Interesting the image shows a laptop. You can get an image (that doesn't include playback and codecs) for the 15n:
http://linux.dell.com/files/ubuntu/hardy/iso-images/ubuntu-8.04.1-dell-reinstall.iso
Linux is an alternative that would make those problems worse not better. If stability is a feature you want, for end user apps, Linux is a terrible choice. Windows may very well be the best choice around in this regard. It is like criticizing Microsoft for having insufficient advertising and offering Linux as an alternative.
OK makes sense. But how does Amazon vs. say Borders (store) effect content creation very much? And I'm unclear what Google's role is here.
The point about why people sell their stuff is interesting. Especially since that's exactly what I'm hoping for (the signing tour, though I wouldn't complain about the groupies). I'm looking for fame / name recognition from the book. The publisher can keep the money, I want to make it on consulting not authoring.
I'm sorry maybe I'm being stupid but I'm not still not clear how this list hangs together. It just seems like "list of stuff I don't like" and I don't see what Amazon or Google have to do with it.
And how are search engines raising the barriers of entry into distribution? It seems to me they've done the exact opposite. Distribution is much much easier today than it was 15 years ago.
Maybe could you work an example of how this plays out?
Dell Inspiron 15n. A 15" linux laptop.
http://www.everexstore.com/everex/products/products.php
Agreed, though actually there are rumors they subsidized the hardware.
I'd also add:
3) They didn't truly customize the netbooks. They shouldn't have had an OS but rather there should have been end user images you just select and installed via. the web.
-- college student (non engineering)
-- college student (engineering)
-- professional commuter
-- middle/high school student
-- IT professional
etc...
Take advantage of Linux's strengths.
I don't think in a discussion about Linux it is reasonable to be critical of Microsoft's frequency or degree of UI changes nor of their binary formats not being stable enough.
Take a look at the Netbook discussions from a year ago. Limpus, Netbook Xandros.... weren't quality. The Linuxes that shipped with Netbooks weren't really good enough in particular in terms of software choice and package availability. Almost every /. person who bought one ended up putting on a different Linux. That means an OS install. And those OS installs were complicated because of obscure hardware which often required specialized driver packages.
It wasn't ready.
Linux has been ready given a strong backing for a decade. What it lacks though is the sort of strong backing. Something like Mandriva's OEM Netbook Linux pairing with a Dell would have been perfect. But then where are Dell's cost savings?
I read the article and I still not quite sure what he is talking about. He seems to be complaining about fee structures. Amazon doesn't control compensation structures and offers all sorts of direct sales models and google by and large doesn't sell content at all.
I couldn't follow even the basic cause and effect claim for his issue with the current model.
No not really. First off you are looking at arrest and indictment not conviction. Child porn is being used because more and more often obscenity cases are failing. The successes are very rare and moreover the majority of the population quite often disagrees with the verdict. Prosecutors are having to be selective so as not to lose the cases.
Child porn laws have become incredibly strict but that is mainly because that is one of the few areas where the social libertarianism that applies to almost every other area of porn doesn't apply. Essentially what has happened is pederasty has gotten conflated with pedophilia to make people think that there is a pedophilia epidemic and they are responding rationally to incorrect information. This sort of disinformation campaign isn't going to last more than a generation. The Republicans are going to need to regain the public trust and the culture of propaganda may very well be a causality of Iraq.
This is one of those Christian myths that get used to scare people. When Rome was a pagan society with gladiator games, orgies an open embrace of pagan magic and an economy based on slavery it thrived. People like Caligula and Nero were during Rome's incredible growth phases. When it fell, and over a century earlier than that, ut was a morally upright Christian society, which strongly backed the Christian church both in its war against paganism and in providing state support for its moral codes.
Rome is an example of the exact opposite of this claim.
Read speed even with 30% drop off crushes the fastest RAIDs. Write speed is an issue though. That's where the good SSDs are focusing.
You want the SSD for frequently read infrequently written files. Scratch / swap most likely will be slower on SSD. So using Unix terminology:
SSD: /boot, /etc, /bin, /usr....
HDD: /var, /tmp, /home
An even so-so SSD will generally beat a high end RAID on everything but random write. They really are that fast.
Access -> SQL server isn't that bad. Access makes front end creation easy. It just isn't multi user. Once you need multi user just have Access utilize the same tables in SQL server. Then if you want you can swap out the interface.
The real problem with Access comes from inconsistent data and multiple copies. But that is a result of not making the Access -> SQL server switch early enough.
FileMaker Pro and Access (I've never tried OO BASE but I assume it is similar) provide excellent development environments for the bigger than a spreadsheet smaller than an Oracle app type custom software. Besides his goal is to learn.
Cache will only be large when there are large amounts of writes. Once memory starts to fill and the system starts wanting to swap a lot of the read caching will get dropped.
The reason for the rule is that this 3x is the maximum level where the system is reasonable responsive. Above that and the system becomes unresponsive. In terms of price ram is around 100-1000x more expensive than disk space. You want to use disk where you can use it without loss of performance.
Might be possible. My current notebook has 256G which is getting tight the two before that came in at 50G which got tight near the end of the 2nd one's life. The one before that had 4G. 4G was very tight and that was Windows 2000 or Linux a decade ago.
Other than the OS, the main problem is you want 2-3x ram for virtual memory and I can't see being under 2 gigs of ram. Also mail is now frequently in the megabytes.
On the other hand on my blackberry I have a 4g memory card and I never use it. The 64 megs of flash is plenty. It is going to come down to what you use it for.
A 200 person company offers you flexibility in how things are done. It will be a good place to get some development experience first hand. Law firms are incredibly cheap when it comes to IT staff. What I would suggest is:
1) Learn a language
2) Start automating stuff, start having code in production that is yours.
Something like an Access / Filemaker pro database should be an easy first project. Alternately something like VBA if they use lots of spreadsheets or some Perl to do automation of system administration tasks.
3) Start making the systems more custom and more complex. Start bringing in tools and services for the lawyers. So that you are doing administration not just unjamming printers. You'll need to work some extra hours in the beginning but very very quickly you are likely to start getting raises. Even if that doesn't happen you will be able to talk about work you've done.
I wouldn't worry about developers behind you on projects. The next sure thing is very hard to predict. Standards within languages change, ways of accessing data change or thinking about problems. Paradigm shifts happen quickly and as "close to the metal" is getting less popular language flexibility is increasing.
Thanks for the detailed response. It would be nice to make an opera note of this under "advantages of opera". I could see how something like devon personal would be very practical using that notes feature
Yep a far worse work around IMHO since it made things like working with a file a problem.
At $50k per year for web developers / content guys (which may be high given how many are abroad) that's
$1 billion = 20,000 man years
$1 trillion = 20,000,000 man years
I really really doubt it is over $50b. Still a big hole but nothing like the banking crisis.
What are the big features of Opera you actually find useful?
(Genuinely asking, not being sarcastic)
Macs come with a webserver today. You just turn websharing on and you have a webserver. The problem with IIS was that it was insecure.