I had a toshiba laptop and my experience with Ubuntu has been a total constant nightmare so my experience might not be like yours.
The point of using a mac is not having to deal with device drivers and having something that just works. Ubuntu may or may not work well with your hardware. On my old toshiba Fedora ran beautifully error free and Debian based distros just well reaked very bad. With buying a mac or sticking with Windows 7 it just works. If you demand quality you are going to pluck down some $$$$ for a mac or an equilivant pc that does not have the same problems. I just did on my system which runs Windows 7 after I almost got a mac that costs the same.
Ubuntu and every Linux distro in America can't play mp3s, play bluerays, or even watch movies. You have to use some program like autoten on Fedora or fiddle with certain deb files that are illegal. The original poster had a daughter who just wants to stick a dvd of Dora and watch it. Can I do that under Linux in the US? No.
Apple just works error free for years and is very simplified.
I paid almost the same amount for a pc that a mac would cost. My wife was tired of me being cheap and Frankensteining components together from past systems to save a few dollars. So I bought an Asus with only 1 spyware app on it and a nice bright HP screen. You do get what you pay for and I would have gotten a mac if only I could upgrade the video card easily as my wife is a wow gamer and likes to upgrade every 2 years.
The HPs come with 9 malware/spyware apps and a dinky 250 watt powersupply. What a nightmare. But they are only $499! PC-decrapifier sometimes can even remove all traces of other applications.
I just hope my system lasts for 5 years like a mac as I blew $1399 in all, which is what a 21 inch imac would have cost. You get what you pay for and right now I just want a very fast system for... well moderately priced that will last. Windows 7 creams on it.
I was under the impression that Openstep was BSD with the Mach kernel. The utilities were replaced with FreeBSD equilivants with MacOSX. There should be no Xenix code at all, but perhaps a few lines of Unixware (SYS V) in some api's.
Apple should have just used FreeBSD to replace the Unix equivalents since they were formed out of BSD lite to purge any remaining Unix code.
I haven't but from what I read here is that it made Windows NT 4.0 very popular. It was called SKUNKWare for a good reason. I mean it had symlinks called/usr and/home and they were not even real directories but rather a million different partitions. From what I read it sounds like a nightmare.
Taco Bell still uses it and this is the only place I seen that still uses it for their 486 servers and registers.
Java's death means.NET and Windows in the server arena. Do you really want that?
Java is the defacto standard for most server apps these days as portals are replacing terminals and Java is used for industrial websites as well. This is truly horrible and no php or perl can not just replace it for mission critical servers. It is not hte language but the 200,000 methods and api's to choose from. Only.NET comes close... not Mono.
Screw the insurance company. Have the parents in your troop to sign a waiver of a release of liability. Explain they can do more activities and can join another troop otherwise.
Litigation is part of the societal problem as well as people demand everything and blame others on their problems.
I tried every med as an adult with some issues such as ADHD and all it did was hurt my marriage and give me other issues. The fact is no drug can cure a condition. The commercials are full of it and give the false impression a magic pill will make your kids perfect. Life does not work that way.
PostgreSQL could not even support more than 32k rows per column in the last release. It is much better than MySQL and I plan to use it for my business until I have enough money for DB2. PostgreSQL does not support OLAP nor can it store more than a TB before having major issues with things like auto-vacuum. 9.x will have more of these features from what I read. I have not heard of any successful implementations of more than 1/2 a TB. Many slashdotters state that it is just not caught up to the big players yet. I could be wrong.
My knowledge of poweredge servers may be weak as I have been out of the loop for 4 years, but I was under the impression they had a limit of 8GB of ram each.
I guess it depends on your goals and your views on life.
My wife loves achievements in World of Warcraft. I liked the feeling of a achieving a few of them as well. However, I feel that it is a substitute for achievements in real life. I realized that the time spent for each one is time lost doing something else in RL. To me I care how people view my career, money, and financial security/savings. I have none of what I want now. I feel guilty playing wow because I know if I work harder I can get a real achievement like a better job or a pay raise to make the things I feel good about. I do not feel embarrassed about my gearscore on my mage but I do when I tell my inlaws how much I make each year and what I do. My priorities have shifted.
Yes, a nobody can be the best damn healing Priest on his or her realm but what does that mean? In RL that person is well still a no one. I feel it is harmful because Wow then becomes a substitute for real life and that person will never better his or herself. End your depression by being successful then you wont need drugs or games. My wife is not as materialistic and I admire that trait about her. I was raised to be responsibility and very hard working to get anything at all. To me I would feel happy and less depressed to feel good about what I am doing and how I am helping myself and family than helping a few under and unemployed guildes out. After you log out of Azeroth you still stuck here on Earth.
If you feel content and do not have kids then go for it! It is a difference in attitude. This is from a former hardcore gamer who stopped by the time I turned 26. Wow can come later after I have what I need... or retirement.:-)
Any condition that negatively impacts your life or those who are around you should be treated as a condition. Yes
I used to play WOW and I can tell you first hand about people who got divorced, unemployed, and those that moved in to their siblings homes so they can continue to run nightly raids. The ones with children quit wow after their wives threaten to leave them. Thank God.
But it is a real problem and why I do not play anymore. I do not blame wow fully for my career to not take off but I realize that no one wants to hire someone who sleeps in til noon every day and plays games to 3am either. I would not want to hire such a person.
As someone who takes wellubutrin I can tell you it is different than Ritalin. It does not numb you or alter your thoughts in anyway like other drugs. It gives you energy so you can do the things you want to do but never get around to it. It is not really a stimulant. It is strange how it works but I desire junk food less and it helps smokers as I feel that I do not need the high that much. It takes your brain off the constant crave for a high smack down for an edorphine high since you have a small endorphine buzz in the background all day. It is not addicting as well which is very nice unlike the other drugs which are dangerous like adderall or Ritalin.
Oddly, I also used to play wow and I quit when I started taking it. I never put the 2 together until now. Basically, I realized under Wellubutrin that my sucky underemployment started as a direct result of playing wow instead of filing resumes and working a 2nd job like everyone else. I do not know if it is the drugs or my change in attitude. Either way the fact that I wanted to take it to better myself shows I care about my life and want to change it. That could of had a larger impact in ending World of Warcraft rather than consuming the medication. Maturity and responsibility go hand in hand to those who want to take the meds or quit a habbit that is destructive.
My insurance runs out soon and I will be out in a few days. I will see if I am tempted to log back in after a few days. I would love to play World of Warcraft for hours on a state of the art computer if I could. I understand that I can't afford the state of the art computer or wow... or a roof over my head to play it with out working my butt off unfortunately. Kids today do not have that burden or responsibility which is why they play more. Still it is a very interesting article indeed.
I started taking it and I started losing interest playing wow with my wife. I ended up despising it but I never got the connection. I just assumed there are better things to do and feel guilty playing World of Warcraft when I am underemployed. I also understand the possible correlation between under/unemployment and World of Warcraft.:-) So I quit. Whether it was Wellubutrin or a more positive outlook after stopping MMORPG is up for debate. The 2 go hand in hand as those who take such medications have a genunuine desire to better themselves than those who do not care( who would not want to take anything or quit gaming anyway)
Yes we have some influence in buying decisions with some bosses, but these bosses have sales reps from Oracle directly. Oracle does not like anything that undermines the value of its products. If Mysql and PostgreSQL did not exist it would mean 3x the amount of revenue for Oracle. In the 1990s businesses bought Oracle for small department, small business servers, and even tiny websites. lol. It was the only tool out there besides the new SQL-Server. We switched to Mysql and that pissed them off. Does Oracle-lite even exist anymore? I remember the error messages from Oracle Databases back then from websites because they were so hard for non DBAs to setup to host simple pages.
The point is business does not care about opensource. Just the results and Oracle does not care about offending us because if open software is less available they can charge more money for their existing products. Their customers do not care as we are not their customers. I pray that they do not be asses with Java. This will make.NET and Windows much more attractive if they do.
So you can buy a few wimpy Dell Poweredge servers with a cheap switch and expect it to perform trillions of operations a day with mysql or some dumb free database? Even if you had Oracle your Poweredges will have limited ram per node and add tools that use views and other SQL oriented features that enterprise software (not mysql) use and you will need the extra CPUs and ram quick.
Also CPU's like the UltraSparc have had hardware based threads for some time. This means that if an app like a database on a x86 overwhelm the system it slows down to an unusable state very fast. With Sun hardware the high number of threads are run on the cpu so even under an insane load you can launch an xterm and fix the issue. If you need a 64 way box you need lots of slots for fiber connections which is something intel based servers lack. The days are still far from over.
PostgreSQL can't even handle a column with more than 53k rows until recently?? I doubt the whole Petabyte was all PostgreSQL based. It was probably used for caching to clients while the real work came from an Oracle system.
As the A/C mentioned it is not only hardware. You think MySQL or even PostgreSQL can handle anywhere near the requirements of that job? lol
Middleware demanding these high end systems is the other reason. I am thinking of starting a business which will have an enormous demand for database transactions which need to be ACID based and can grow very fast if it takes off. I am starting out with PostgreSQL until I have a few thousand members but plan to switch fast to Oracle or DB2 as soon as I get some funding after I show I can generate revenue. 90% of most business is small to medium and do not require that insane computing power or storage so most systems do not support it. RHES and a few Dell Poweredge servers do not fit the other 10%.
I would be more hesitant to use Java to write software after this lawsuit and be more tempted to use.NET if I were a developer. Oracle is killing its goose with the golden egg, and giving Microsoft tons and tons of FUD to spread. Remember what happened with the SCO scare? Many banks no longer run Linux or GNU for fear of litigation.
This is a shame because Java and.NET are far superior (their framework) than other counterparts. This will set things back for years and give Windows the edge in modern application development and dynamically created websites.
I am glad I am out of I.T. and it hurts to watch. I learned true programming with Java.
I had Ubuntu 9.10 for awhile and wanted OpenOffice 3.2 which Ubuntu came with 3.1
I manually downloaded the deb files and I thought it looked like crap and missed features like saving a file as a PDF and docx. Now I know why. The windows version is crippled as well. Sigh
MS Office is the little STD virus people get that keeps spreading. If it were not for that or if we had an alternative I would still use Linux and not stick with Windows or MacOSX. We broke the OS monopoly but now we need a free open source office suite. Like Xfree86 stagnated before Xorg was born we need a new office suite from scratch or a fork of Open Office.
Postgres is not perfect and is a pain with syntax compared to MySQL. The auto-vacuum can slow it down and the replication is behind.
I am thinking of creating a website and I like PostreSQL for its features and statistical support. I am also open to closed source alternatives and MS SQL Server has nice anayltical services and data-mining and so does DB2.
I am not a database administrator or an expert. However, I do want a website with a SQL back-end and need something now with ACID with proper linking with foreign keys. MySQL is catching up but PostgreSQL is already there but a pain to learn.
MySQL supports multiple users well which is why its included with ISPs and easier to learn.
My USB keyboard was supported in FreeBSD 3.4 before Linux and I was deeply impressed. FreeBSD 5.x didn't even support it?? FreeBSD 5.2 came out and I still kept using FreeBSD 4.11 and 4.12 and I realized that the writing was on the wall.
I have not used it in years as Linux caught up but Linux is now very bloated and not like it once was. FreeBSD is bloated now as well and not as stable.
Surprisingly Fedora has been the most stable and not as cutting edge compared to Debian and Ubuntu on my laptop. You should give Fedora a try again as its not the unstable bleeding edge junk it was.
I like Solaris as a server and prefer it. FreeBSD has lost its once solid stability record a while back. Its still more stable than Linux for ISPs but Windows is catching up and Solaris has already been there.
Dos was fun as you can write a program to resemble a Novell Netware login. From there it would ask for a username and password and would store it on a txt file on the disk. Then the problem would exit and the real novell netware login appeared.
Come back a few days later and you have numerous usernames and passwords from all the students. Those were the days.
Too bad with Windows NT 4 and later you had to control alt delete to login. Obviously Microsoft saw this method.
If you can't pass algebra II you do not get your HS diploma. In algebra II (the lowest) you need to know quadratics and matrices. Heck I saw a quadratic on standardized tests for 8th graders! That shocked me as I didn't learn them until much later. Some states wont let you get your HS diploma until you pass Precalc as well.
The articles you read about kids failing these tests is because we set the bar higher today. Not that kids are becoming dumber. This was truly needed for Americans to catch up to Europeans.
Calculus AP 1 and Precalc are common now so these calculators would be required for tests if the teacher truly wanted to see if students understood how to alter functions and use them properly visually.
Yep you just need to know the magic financial ratios. That is it as that shows you understand the theory. If you know them then you can do anything and know the concepts to solve most any business problem with tangible assets.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a toshiba laptop and my experience with Ubuntu has been a total constant nightmare so my experience might not be like yours.
The point of using a mac is not having to deal with device drivers and having something that just works. Ubuntu may or may not work well with your hardware. On my old toshiba Fedora ran beautifully error free and Debian based distros just well reaked very bad. With buying a mac or sticking with Windows 7 it just works. If you demand quality you are going to pluck down some $$$$ for a mac or an equilivant pc that does not have the same problems. I just did on my system which runs Windows 7 after I almost got a mac that costs the same.
Ubuntu and every Linux distro in America can't play mp3s, play bluerays, or even watch movies. You have to use some program like autoten on Fedora or fiddle with certain deb files that are illegal. The original poster had a daughter who just wants to stick a dvd of Dora and watch it. Can I do that under Linux in the US? No.
Apple just works error free for years and is very simplified.
I paid almost the same amount for a pc that a mac would cost. My wife was tired of me being cheap and Frankensteining components together from past systems to save a few dollars. So I bought an Asus with only 1 spyware app on it and a nice bright HP screen. You do get what you pay for and I would have gotten a mac if only I could upgrade the video card easily as my wife is a wow gamer and likes to upgrade every 2 years.
The HPs come with 9 malware/spyware apps and a dinky 250 watt powersupply. What a nightmare. But they are only $499! PC-decrapifier sometimes can even remove all traces of other applications.
I just hope my system lasts for 5 years like a mac as I blew $1399 in all, which is what a 21 inch imac would have cost. You get what you pay for and right now I just want a very fast system for ... well moderately priced that will last. Windows 7 creams on it.
They are just as unstable in my experience. Usually they work for awhile and then a patch comes and messes it up.
It seems people here including the Slashdot editors forgot that Linux != Ubuntu. Many of us do not like it and prefer other distros.
Why is this story marked brown while every other are the regular gray?
I was under the impression that Openstep was BSD with the Mach kernel. The utilities were replaced with FreeBSD equilivants with MacOSX. There should be no Xenix code at all, but perhaps a few lines of Unixware (SYS V) in some api's.
Apple should have just used FreeBSD to replace the Unix equivalents since they were formed out of BSD lite to purge any remaining Unix code.
Have you ever used it?
I haven't but from what I read here is that it made Windows NT 4.0 very popular. It was called SKUNKWare for a good reason. I mean it had symlinks called /usr and /home and they were not even real directories but rather a million different partitions. From what I read it sounds like a nightmare.
Taco Bell still uses it and this is the only place I seen that still uses it for their 486 servers and registers.
Java's death means .NET and Windows in the server arena. Do you really want that?
Java is the defacto standard for most server apps these days as portals are replacing terminals and Java is used for industrial websites as well. This is truly horrible and no php or perl can not just replace it for mission critical servers. It is not hte language but the 200,000 methods and api's to choose from. Only .NET comes close ... not Mono.
Screw the insurance company. Have the parents in your troop to sign a waiver of a release of liability. Explain they can do more activities and can join another troop otherwise.
Litigation is part of the societal problem as well as people demand everything and blame others on their problems.
I tried every med as an adult with some issues such as ADHD and all it did was hurt my marriage and give me other issues. The fact is no drug can cure a condition. The commercials are full of it and give the false impression a magic pill will make your kids perfect. Life does not work that way.
PostgreSQL could not even support more than 32k rows per column in the last release. It is much better than MySQL and I plan to use it for my business until I have enough money for DB2. PostgreSQL does not support OLAP nor can it store more than a TB before having major issues with things like auto-vacuum. 9.x will have more of these features from what I read. I have not heard of any successful implementations of more than 1/2 a TB. Many slashdotters state that it is just not caught up to the big players yet. I could be wrong.
My knowledge of poweredge servers may be weak as I have been out of the loop for 4 years, but I was under the impression they had a limit of 8GB of ram each.
I guess it depends on your goals and your views on life.
My wife loves achievements in World of Warcraft. I liked the feeling of a achieving a few of them as well. However, I feel that it is a substitute for achievements in real life. I realized that the time spent for each one is time lost doing something else in RL. To me I care how people view my career, money, and financial security/savings. I have none of what I want now. I feel guilty playing wow because I know if I work harder I can get a real achievement like a better job or a pay raise to make the things I feel good about. I do not feel embarrassed about my gearscore on my mage but I do when I tell my inlaws how much I make each year and what I do. My priorities have shifted.
Yes, a nobody can be the best damn healing Priest on his or her realm but what does that mean? In RL that person is well still a no one. I feel it is harmful because Wow then becomes a substitute for real life and that person will never better his or herself. End your depression by being successful then you wont need drugs or games. My wife is not as materialistic and I admire that trait about her. I was raised to be responsibility and very hard working to get anything at all. To me I would feel happy and less depressed to feel good about what I am doing and how I am helping myself and family than helping a few under and unemployed guildes out. After you log out of Azeroth you still stuck here on Earth.
If you feel content and do not have kids then go for it! It is a difference in attitude. This is from a former hardcore gamer who stopped by the time I turned 26. Wow can come later after I have what I need ... or retirement. :-)
Any condition that negatively impacts your life or those who are around you should be treated as a condition. Yes
I used to play WOW and I can tell you first hand about people who got divorced, unemployed, and those that moved in to their siblings homes so they can continue to run nightly raids. The ones with children quit wow after their wives threaten to leave them. Thank God.
But it is a real problem and why I do not play anymore. I do not blame wow fully for my career to not take off but I realize that no one wants to hire someone who sleeps in til noon every day and plays games to 3am either. I would not want to hire such a person.
As someone who takes wellubutrin I can tell you it is different than Ritalin. It does not numb you or alter your thoughts in anyway like other drugs. It gives you energy so you can do the things you want to do but never get around to it. It is not really a stimulant. It is strange how it works but I desire junk food less and it helps smokers as I feel that I do not need the high that much. It takes your brain off the constant crave for a high smack down for an edorphine high since you have a small endorphine buzz in the background all day. It is not addicting as well which is very nice unlike the other drugs which are dangerous like adderall or Ritalin.
Oddly, I also used to play wow and I quit when I started taking it. I never put the 2 together until now. Basically, I realized under Wellubutrin that my sucky underemployment started as a direct result of playing wow instead of filing resumes and working a 2nd job like everyone else. I do not know if it is the drugs or my change in attitude. Either way the fact that I wanted to take it to better myself shows I care about my life and want to change it. That could of had a larger impact in ending World of Warcraft rather than consuming the medication. Maturity and responsibility go hand in hand to those who want to take the meds or quit a habbit that is destructive.
My insurance runs out soon and I will be out in a few days. I will see if I am tempted to log back in after a few days. I would love to play World of Warcraft for hours on a state of the art computer if I could. I understand that I can't afford the state of the art computer or wow ... or a roof over my head to play it with out working my butt off unfortunately. Kids today do not have that burden or responsibility which is why they play more. Still it is a very interesting article indeed.
I started taking it and I started losing interest playing wow with my wife. I ended up despising it but I never got the connection. I just assumed there are better things to do and feel guilty playing World of Warcraft when I am underemployed. I also understand the possible correlation between under/unemployment and World of Warcraft. :-) So I quit. Whether it was Wellubutrin or a more positive outlook after stopping MMORPG is up for debate. The 2 go hand in hand as those who take such medications have a genunuine desire to better themselves than those who do not care( who would not want to take anything or quit gaming anyway)
Oracle doesn't care and looks at us as a threat.
Yes we have some influence in buying decisions with some bosses, but these bosses have sales reps from Oracle directly. Oracle does not like anything that undermines the value of its products. If Mysql and PostgreSQL did not exist it would mean 3x the amount of revenue for Oracle. In the 1990s businesses bought Oracle for small department, small business servers, and even tiny websites. lol. It was the only tool out there besides the new SQL-Server. We switched to Mysql and that pissed them off. Does Oracle-lite even exist anymore? I remember the error messages from Oracle Databases back then from websites because they were so hard for non DBAs to setup to host simple pages.
The point is business does not care about opensource. Just the results and Oracle does not care about offending us because if open software is less available they can charge more money for their existing products. Their customers do not care as we are not their customers. I pray that they do not be asses with Java. This will make .NET and Windows much more attractive if they do.
So you can buy a few wimpy Dell Poweredge servers with a cheap switch and expect it to perform trillions of operations a day with mysql or some dumb free database? Even if you had Oracle your Poweredges will have limited ram per node and add tools that use views and other SQL oriented features that enterprise software (not mysql) use and you will need the extra CPUs and ram quick.
Also CPU's like the UltraSparc have had hardware based threads for some time. This means that if an app like a database on a x86 overwhelm the system it slows down to an unusable state very fast. With Sun hardware the high number of threads are run on the cpu so even under an insane load you can launch an xterm and fix the issue. If you need a 64 way box you need lots of slots for fiber connections which is something intel based servers lack. The days are still far from over.
PostgreSQL can't even handle a column with more than 53k rows until recently?? I doubt the whole Petabyte was all PostgreSQL based. It was probably used for caching to clients while the real work came from an Oracle system.
As the A/C mentioned it is not only hardware. You think MySQL or even PostgreSQL can handle anywhere near the requirements of that job? lol
Middleware demanding these high end systems is the other reason. I am thinking of starting a business which will have an enormous demand for database transactions which need to be ACID based and can grow very fast if it takes off. I am starting out with PostgreSQL until I have a few thousand members but plan to switch fast to Oracle or DB2 as soon as I get some funding after I show I can generate revenue. 90% of most business is small to medium and do not require that insane computing power or storage so most systems do not support it. RHES and a few Dell Poweredge servers do not fit the other 10%.
You know what really sucks?
I would be more hesitant to use Java to write software after this lawsuit and be more tempted to use .NET if I were a developer. Oracle is killing its goose with the golden egg, and giving Microsoft tons and tons of FUD to spread. Remember what happened with the SCO scare? Many banks no longer run Linux or GNU for fear of litigation.
This is a shame because Java and .NET are far superior (their framework) than other counterparts. This will set things back for years and give Windows the edge in modern application development and dynamically created websites.
I am glad I am out of I.T. and it hurts to watch. I learned true programming with Java.
I had Ubuntu 9.10 for awhile and wanted OpenOffice 3.2 which Ubuntu came with 3.1
I manually downloaded the deb files and I thought it looked like crap and missed features like saving a file as a PDF and docx. Now I know why. The windows version is crippled as well. Sigh
MS Office is the little STD virus people get that keeps spreading. If it were not for that or if we had an alternative I would still use Linux and not stick with Windows or MacOSX. We broke the OS monopoly but now we need a free open source office suite. Like Xfree86 stagnated before Xorg was born we need a new office suite from scratch or a fork of Open Office.
OpenOffice really sucks.
Postgres is not perfect and is a pain with syntax compared to MySQL. The auto-vacuum can slow it down and the replication is behind.
I am thinking of creating a website and I like PostreSQL for its features and statistical support. I am also open to closed source alternatives and MS SQL Server has nice anayltical services and data-mining and so does DB2.
I am not a database administrator or an expert. However, I do want a website with a SQL back-end and need something now with ACID with proper linking with foreign keys. MySQL is catching up but PostgreSQL is already there but a pain to learn.
MySQL supports multiple users well which is why its included with ISPs and easier to learn.
I used and liked FreeBSD a long time ago.
My USB keyboard was supported in FreeBSD 3.4 before Linux and I was deeply impressed. FreeBSD 5.x didn't even support it?? FreeBSD 5.2 came out and I still kept using FreeBSD 4.11 and 4.12 and I realized that the writing was on the wall.
I have not used it in years as Linux caught up but Linux is now very bloated and not like it once was. FreeBSD is bloated now as well and not as stable.
Surprisingly Fedora has been the most stable and not as cutting edge compared to Debian and Ubuntu on my laptop. You should give Fedora a try again as its not the unstable bleeding edge junk it was.
I like Solaris as a server and prefer it. FreeBSD has lost its once solid stability record a while back. Its still more stable than Linux for ISPs but Windows is catching up and Solaris has already been there.
Dos was fun as you can write a program to resemble a Novell Netware login. From there it would ask for a username and password and would store it on a txt file on the disk. Then the problem would exit and the real novell netware login appeared.
Come back a few days later and you have numerous usernames and passwords from all the students. Those were the days.
Too bad with Windows NT 4 and later you had to control alt delete to login. Obviously Microsoft saw this method.
Things have changed with no child left behind.
If you can't pass algebra II you do not get your HS diploma. In algebra II (the lowest) you need to know quadratics and matrices. Heck I saw a quadratic on standardized tests for 8th graders! That shocked me as I didn't learn them until much later. Some states wont let you get your HS diploma until you pass Precalc as well.
The articles you read about kids failing these tests is because we set the bar higher today. Not that kids are becoming dumber. This was truly needed for Americans to catch up to Europeans.
Calculus AP 1 and Precalc are common now so these calculators would be required for tests if the teacher truly wanted to see if students understood how to alter functions and use them properly visually.
Yep you just need to know the magic financial ratios. That is it as that shows you understand the theory. If you know them then you can do anything and know the concepts to solve most any business problem with tangible assets.