The carpenters I know make high-class furniture. Their customers are not you and me, but people with a lot of money who want quality made to measure and are willing to pay for it. English is a bitch on this one, "carpenter" is both used for the construction worker and for the one making furniture... In other languages the distinction is more clear. Another one like that is "painter". If I tell people, my brother is a painter, they think of the art guy, not of the guy who paints walls...
The harsh reality is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail
When I get into discussions about this topic with (young) people and they think they can play the "Bill Gates" trump card (For some odd reason, they think I should admire the man since I'm "into computers"), this is exactly what I tell them. It's just plain common sense.
If you can't or won't get a college degree, go into plumbing, carpenting or another trade. They are highly undervalued "socially", but I know many of those who make much more money than I do with my computer science degree and cushy admin job. Of course, you won't get "rich" in the "rockstar rich" sense, but if the goal is to make a good living, those jobs are very good choices.
Actually, I understood in certain cases that you can. Your commander orders you to kill civilians? You can (and actually must!) disobey. The "Befehl ist Befehl" defense doesn't work since a few years.
In Europe, anyone who goes to the army, is considered to "have to" because "he/she can't do anything better in their life". It's a very low prestige job. In the US; less so and a US acquaintance tried to convince me that US Military (include Navy, etc....) are more freethinking and educated. I still highly doubt it, but in the end, no not all orders need to be followed. Some outright need to be refused because it's the right thing to do... In ANY army of this world.
As of a matter of fact, I wonder why you were so offended by a little joke about the Apple User Stereotype. You know, stereotypes are there to make fun of, or do you really believe that all blondes are dumb?
Might it be that the glove fit a bit too well? Would explain the reaction.
Anyway, as a paying customer I should indeed be the center of attention of their sales people. That is true for all high end brands, be it at BMW, Apple or Louis Vuitton. They screwed up, and I doubt I will get any "serious" compensation for my trouble with them. Also, do note that this wasn't the first trouble with them. Nothing has been "fixed" yet.
The link you ask? A true Apple Fanboi will not accept any criticism whatsoever regarding Apple. If someone provides evidence of a clusterfuck on their part, the customer is at fault (after all, I'm not the center of Universe, right?) or we'll get stories how bad Dell was in pre-2000 days (pre-OS X after all). I have had my share of problems with Dell, but it didn't take several calls and emails to get it straightened. Your solution was very easy: FDISK/MBR and nobody would have noticed the Linux install.
Do note that Dell isn't in Apples league regarding brands. To make a car comparison, Dell would be Ford and Apple would be BMW.
Read my five or so last journal and you'll see why I'm not exactly happy with Apple. I don't hate them, and I have recommended their machines to people who are better off without Windows. It's just that after my experience with them, I'm not sure I'll do that again.
Did you buy both cars new and drove them for 16/10 years respectively? I doubt it,
Not the poster you replied to, but why is that so hard to believe? I bought my current car in February 2000, new. I still drive it today. I always made sure it was serviced professionally and on time in these 10 years, I only had one show-stopping incident. Engine overheated, or better said the sensor thought so.
I find the Minis mileage a bit wanting. My wife has a Mini Diesel (bought 2007), which does 5l/100km when I drive it. Compare that to my own Audi TT (gas, evidently - bought new in 2000) where I can do 8l/100km. Similar driving patterns. Seriously? The TT has 3x the (potential) power, uses gas (lesser energy density than Diesel) and has more trunk space.
I'd have expected that cars like the Mini would do 3l/100km in Diesel by now...
The Fiesta still considers anything much more than power mirrors an option.
Never bought a BMW, I see.. There, everything is an option. A base BMW doesn't cost that much. I'd wager that the Fiesta has more options standard than a bare BMW.;-)
BMW is in a category above the Toyota Prius (equal if considering the series 1), so your argument about options is a non issue in this context.
I'm a computer scientist myself, and if you had passed reading comprehension, you'd note that I was talking about a "way of thinking". The way of thinking for programming and computer science are the same. I know computer science is way more than just programming.
That said, I have seen code by people who have no clue about complexity analysis and are programmers but not computer scientists. It ain't pretty...
In this context, the issue you try to bring up (people mixing up computer scientists with programmers) is a non-issue. Believe me, I'm the first in line to say that Dijkstra was right in his quote, because he is: computer science is nothing more than maths and can be done without touching a computer. However, the mindset of how to think about problems, the way you tackle a certain problem are identical... well, if we're talking about competent programmers that is. (There are plenty of lousy programmers who actually are computer scientists too.... I'm aware of that too.)
No, really... They shouldn't. Programming is a way of thinking, computer science even more so and if you haven't got that way of thinking, you shouldn't touch it. I'm really sorry. My wife doesn't understand a thing I do professionally (but it brings in the bucks, so we can eat) and I tried explaining. It just isn't her world and even the basic maths behind it are beyond her. Of course, I don't understand a thing about art, which is her thing.
This is akin to the question "I have $YOUNG_FAMILY_MEMBER who likes to game, how do I get him/her programming." You don't... Unless they show real interest it's a waste of time.
Basically, the system forces you to have a cellphone. I already think that's a bad idea. My dad bought a smart-card reader, I tried it on Linux. It gets recognised, but after that, I have no idea how to go on after that.
At work, I got confronted with a mess called "Isabel 6"... Windows only, IE-only and a bitch to get installed on anything but XP. (Only tried Vista, but you need to jump through hoops)
So, I expect a system that is system agnostic, doesn't require any subscription (cellphone is out) and works. Unless that is the case, I'm not interested.
I use LXDE on my Asus EEE 701 4G. Still, I expected more from an Atom because it basically is a P-III and from my experience a P-III in the 1GHz range works just fine, given enough RAM. The problem is, as I said, the NVidia drivers. The Intel drivers on the D410PT work just fine and drive Gnome without any problem.
because Mega Uber Geek Extraordinaire Grandson thinks its best, god help her to get support for it.
No, God doesn't need to get into the game at all. If Mr Geek does that he becomes by default the support of the person for whom he installed $Distro.
I did install Ubuntu on both my moms desktop and my mother in laws desktop. My own mother never calls for support, she gets along very well. My mother in law calls in for support and you know what kind of questions she has? Simple: How do attach a file to an email, or why a certain website doesn't work. First one, is a matter of pratice and eventually she'll learn. The second one you could blame on Ubuntu/Firefox, but no... That wasn't the problem. The web site tried opening a popup for some critical function. Firefox asked to whitelist the website but she simply didn't see the bar on top of the page. Internet Explorer 6 here would have been a big help indeed, IE7 and IE8 not so much because they do exactly the same thing.
From that point of view, the support questions I have under Ubuntu and Windows are exactly the same... Well, with the small exception that I don't need to come over and clean up her machine every three months. Actually, if you know how to set up a Windows XP machine with Limited Users, you don't even need to do that... I know how to do that, but it is very hard to explain to people that they need to shell out 100€ for Windows and another 200€++ for Office.
I did set the default "save" format of OpenOffice to.doc and.xls because she has to share work with other teachers. That said, that world is completely computer-ignorant and a great many people use Macs... (Resulting in sometimes funny situations where files arrive without extensions which other people can't open, etc...)
They call me if they need to know something or if they want to buy hardware. Recently she called me to know if she could buy a new mouse, because to an end-user, it is impossible to know that any mouse would work. Windows or not... Same thing happened with an uncle of my wife who runs XP (I built his machine back in the day). His LCD screen was defect and wanted a new one. Instead of just going out and buying a new one, he called me and I said: don't worry, just buy one on sale, it will work.
Of course if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to help the people you set up with a computer, then don't do that and send them to an Apple store immediately.
Thanks for replying anyway:-) Didn't have the impression that HTPC stuff was so hard on Linux. The rest, Samba and Bittorrent are actually easier on Linux... At least in my opinion.
I've got one of these Atom 330's too. 4GB RAM (can only use 3.5GB though... Meh) Anyway, do you use Windows or Linux. I used it for a while as a primary desktop running Ubuntu 9.04 (I think, it was around September 2009, so it sounds correct). It was unbearably slow... Slower that many dumpster-sourced machines I've used and I'm a proud dumpster diver. My brother currently uses it, but I dumped XP on it. No speed complaints at all. I think the NVidia driver for Linux was really bad for the ION GeForce 9400M that was included.
Compared to a Atom D410 based motherboard (Intel D410PT), I used for building a new desktop for my mother in law. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (was out by then) runs beautifully on it and the thing is just a single-core machine. Including DVD-RW, 250GB HD, 2GB RAM and a very sweet design case (only thing my MiL cared about) it came in around 250€.
I'll be getting back my Atom 330 system soon, as I found a nice laptop in the dumpster for my brother (P-IV Mobile 1.6GHz) and he'll get that instead. Comes with a Windows XP Pro license too.;-) So, if you run Linux on you Atom 330, I'll be glad to hear what you did to get it running decently.
Back a few years, I did give me the same challenge....Or at least similar: 500€ If I could do it, my I'd build my sister a new PC and gift it to her. I did manage. The machine still works, but she now uses a Core2Duo desktop I found at a liquidation sale (store got bankrupt). I offered 300€ for all their computer hardware and this included that fully working E6600-based machine. Sweet:-)
The number of older machines that can save juice is somewhere between zero and none if they're 32-bit or less."
Yes, but they don't use all that much to begin with. I have a P-III 800MHz server, full-SCSI and 768MB RAM. It's my parents server. It uses around ~40W at the socket. That is very very reasonable.
I have bailed out my father in law with an old P-I 166MHz. The old PS/2 connected to some lathe failed and I had nothing lower than that in stock. Dumped FreeDOS on it, the software to control the lathe and my job was done. So, yes, it is possible... BUT... My limitation is my space to stock old stuff. So, I keep always the best 4 to 5 machines because that's my top limit I can stock up. If they fall below that threshold, I disassemble them and keeps parts, the rest is hauled to the recycling centre.
My math might be a bit off... Let's think... I joined the company I work now for in March 2009. I gave the equipment shortly before, so it must have been 8.10. As far as I can count, that's a little over a year without tech support.
I have other machines in the field where tech support is very occasional. The art is to setup the machine in such a way that all you cover all needs you can anticipate. (So make sure it does play DVDs, for example).
For this particular instance, they might have found someone else who installed Windows instead, but I made clear I only would support Ubuntu. Which, for the record, was very positively adopted by the girl as per her mother. Somehow it not being Windows was "cool"... How times have changed.
I do have the t-shirt mentioned below, and I like to wear it when helping people with their computer problems. A bit as an in-joke.
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The carpenters I know make high-class furniture. Their customers are not you and me, but people with a lot of money who want quality made to measure and are willing to pay for it. English is a bitch on this one, "carpenter" is both used for the construction worker and for the one making furniture... In other languages the distinction is more clear. Another one like that is "painter". If I tell people, my brother is a painter, they think of the art guy, not of the guy who paints walls...
When I get into discussions about this topic with (young) people and they think they can play the "Bill Gates" trump card (For some odd reason, they think I should admire the man since I'm "into computers"), this is exactly what I tell them. It's just plain common sense.
If you can't or won't get a college degree, go into plumbing, carpenting or another trade. They are highly undervalued "socially", but I know many of those who make much more money than I do with my computer science degree and cushy admin job. Of course, you won't get "rich" in the "rockstar rich" sense, but if the goal is to make a good living, those jobs are very good choices.
Actually, I understood in certain cases that you can. Your commander orders you to kill civilians? You can (and actually must!) disobey. The "Befehl ist Befehl" defense doesn't work since a few years.
In Europe, anyone who goes to the army, is considered to "have to" because "he/she can't do anything better in their life". It's a very low prestige job. In the US; less so and a US acquaintance tried to convince me that US Military (include Navy, etc....) are more freethinking and educated. I still highly doubt it, but in the end, no not all orders need to be followed. Some outright need to be refused because it's the right thing to do... In ANY army of this world.
As of a matter of fact, I wonder why you were so offended by a little joke about the Apple User Stereotype. You know, stereotypes are there to make fun of, or do you really believe that all blondes are dumb?
Might it be that the glove fit a bit too well? Would explain the reaction.
Anyway, as a paying customer I should indeed be the center of attention of their sales people. That is true for all high end brands, be it at BMW, Apple or Louis Vuitton. They screwed up, and I doubt I will get any "serious" compensation for my trouble with them. Also, do note that this wasn't the first trouble with them. Nothing has been "fixed" yet.
The link you ask? A true Apple Fanboi will not accept any criticism whatsoever regarding Apple. If someone provides evidence of a clusterfuck on their part, the customer is at fault (after all, I'm not the center of Universe, right?) or we'll get stories how bad Dell was in pre-2000 days (pre-OS X after all). I have had my share of problems with Dell, but it didn't take several calls and emails to get it straightened. Your solution was very easy: FDISK /MBR and nobody would have noticed the Linux install.
Do note that Dell isn't in Apples league regarding brands. To make a car comparison, Dell would be Ford and Apple would be BMW.
Read my five or so last journal and you'll see why I'm not exactly happy with Apple. I don't hate them, and I have recommended their machines to people who are better off without Windows. It's just that after my experience with them, I'm not sure I'll do that again.
It's trendy to be an Apple hater?!?
Not the poster you replied to, but why is that so hard to believe? I bought my current car in February 2000, new. I still drive it today. I always made sure it was serviced professionally and on time in these 10 years, I only had one show-stopping incident. Engine overheated, or better said the sensor thought so.
I see no reason to switch cars....
I find the Minis mileage a bit wanting. My wife has a Mini Diesel (bought 2007), which does 5l/100km when I drive it. Compare that to my own Audi TT (gas, evidently - bought new in 2000) where I can do 8l/100km. Similar driving patterns. Seriously? The TT has 3x the (potential) power, uses gas (lesser energy density than Diesel) and has more trunk space.
I'd have expected that cars like the Mini would do 3l/100km in Diesel by now...
.... reminds me of Apple users. ;-)
Neither do I, because I already have moved from XP to Linux, but it was just a kind reminder. Don't hang on too much on Outlook Express.
Well, depends if you want to stay on Windows XP or prior... Outlook Express has been discontinued since Vista. Just saying.
Never bought a BMW, I see.. There, everything is an option. A base BMW doesn't cost that much. I'd wager that the Fiesta has more options standard than a bare BMW. ;-)
BMW is in a category above the Toyota Prius (equal if considering the series 1), so your argument about options is a non issue in this context.
I'm a computer scientist myself, and if you had passed reading comprehension, you'd note that I was talking about a "way of thinking". The way of thinking for programming and computer science are the same. I know computer science is way more than just programming.
That said, I have seen code by people who have no clue about complexity analysis and are programmers but not computer scientists. It ain't pretty...
In this context, the issue you try to bring up (people mixing up computer scientists with programmers) is a non-issue. Believe me, I'm the first in line to say that Dijkstra was right in his quote, because he is: computer science is nothing more than maths and can be done without touching a computer. However, the mindset of how to think about problems, the way you tackle a certain problem are identical... well, if we're talking about competent programmers that is. (There are plenty of lousy programmers who actually are computer scientists too.... I'm aware of that too.)
I guess you learn how to cut and paste paper very well in those.
No, really... They shouldn't. Programming is a way of thinking, computer science even more so and if you haven't got that way of thinking, you shouldn't touch it. I'm really sorry. My wife doesn't understand a thing I do professionally (but it brings in the bucks, so we can eat) and I tried explaining. It just isn't her world and even the basic maths behind it are beyond her. Of course, I don't understand a thing about art, which is her thing.
This is akin to the question "I have $YOUNG_FAMILY_MEMBER who likes to game, how do I get him/her programming." You don't... Unless they show real interest it's a waste of time.
Basically, the system forces you to have a cellphone. I already think that's a bad idea. My dad bought a smart-card reader, I tried it on Linux. It gets recognised, but after that, I have no idea how to go on after that.
At work, I got confronted with a mess called "Isabel 6"... Windows only, IE-only and a bitch to get installed on anything but XP. (Only tried Vista, but you need to jump through hoops)
So, I expect a system that is system agnostic, doesn't require any subscription (cellphone is out) and works. Unless that is the case, I'm not interested.
And, does it work with Linux? In my country they want to do the same thing, but I'm not going to play along if I require to run Windows or Mac OS X.
I use LXDE on my Asus EEE 701 4G. Still, I expected more from an Atom because it basically is a P-III and from my experience a P-III in the 1GHz range works just fine, given enough RAM. The problem is, as I said, the NVidia drivers. The Intel drivers on the D410PT work just fine and drive Gnome without any problem.
No, God doesn't need to get into the game at all. If Mr Geek does that he becomes by default the support of the person for whom he installed $Distro.
I did install Ubuntu on both my moms desktop and my mother in laws desktop. My own mother never calls for support, she gets along very well. My mother in law calls in for support and you know what kind of questions she has? Simple: How do attach a file to an email, or why a certain website doesn't work. First one, is a matter of pratice and eventually she'll learn. The second one you could blame on Ubuntu/Firefox, but no... That wasn't the problem. The web site tried opening a popup for some critical function. Firefox asked to whitelist the website but she simply didn't see the bar on top of the page. Internet Explorer 6 here would have been a big help indeed, IE7 and IE8 not so much because they do exactly the same thing.
From that point of view, the support questions I have under Ubuntu and Windows are exactly the same... Well, with the small exception that I don't need to come over and clean up her machine every three months. Actually, if you know how to set up a Windows XP machine with Limited Users, you don't even need to do that... I know how to do that, but it is very hard to explain to people that they need to shell out 100€ for Windows and another 200€++ for Office.
I did set the default "save" format of OpenOffice to .doc and .xls because she has to share work with other teachers. That said, that world is completely computer-ignorant and a great many people use Macs... (Resulting in sometimes funny situations where files arrive without extensions which other people can't open, etc...)
They call me if they need to know something or if they want to buy hardware. Recently she called me to know if she could buy a new mouse, because to an end-user, it is impossible to know that any mouse would work. Windows or not... Same thing happened with an uncle of my wife who runs XP (I built his machine back in the day). His LCD screen was defect and wanted a new one. Instead of just going out and buying a new one, he called me and I said: don't worry, just buy one on sale, it will work.
Of course if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to help the people you set up with a computer, then don't do that and send them to an Apple store immediately.
Thanks for replying anyway :-) Didn't have the impression that HTPC stuff was so hard on Linux. The rest, Samba and Bittorrent are actually easier on Linux... At least in my opinion.
I've got one of these Atom 330's too. 4GB RAM (can only use 3.5GB though... Meh) Anyway, do you use Windows or Linux. I used it for a while as a primary desktop running Ubuntu 9.04 (I think, it was around September 2009, so it sounds correct). It was unbearably slow... Slower that many dumpster-sourced machines I've used and I'm a proud dumpster diver. My brother currently uses it, but I dumped XP on it. No speed complaints at all. I think the NVidia driver for Linux was really bad for the ION GeForce 9400M that was included.
Compared to a Atom D410 based motherboard (Intel D410PT), I used for building a new desktop for my mother in law. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (was out by then) runs beautifully on it and the thing is just a single-core machine. Including DVD-RW, 250GB HD, 2GB RAM and a very sweet design case (only thing my MiL cared about) it came in around 250€.
I'll be getting back my Atom 330 system soon, as I found a nice laptop in the dumpster for my brother (P-IV Mobile 1.6GHz) and he'll get that instead. Comes with a Windows XP Pro license too. ;-) So, if you run Linux on you Atom 330, I'll be glad to hear what you did to get it running decently.
Back a few years, I did give me the same challenge....Or at least similar: 500€ If I could do it, my I'd build my sister a new PC and gift it to her. I did manage. The machine still works, but she now uses a Core2Duo desktop I found at a liquidation sale (store got bankrupt). I offered 300€ for all their computer hardware and this included that fully working E6600-based machine. Sweet :-)
Minor nitpick: it's "Marconi", not "Marcoli"... unless I missed the joke in that...
Yes, but they don't use all that much to begin with. I have a P-III 800MHz server, full-SCSI and 768MB RAM. It's my parents server. It uses around ~40W at the socket. That is very very reasonable.
I have bailed out my father in law with an old P-I 166MHz. The old PS/2 connected to some lathe failed and I had nothing lower than that in stock. Dumped FreeDOS on it, the software to control the lathe and my job was done. So, yes, it is possible... BUT... My limitation is my space to stock old stuff. So, I keep always the best 4 to 5 machines because that's my top limit I can stock up. If they fall below that threshold, I disassemble them and keeps parts, the rest is hauled to the recycling centre.
My math might be a bit off... Let's think... I joined the company I work now for in March 2009. I gave the equipment shortly before, so it must have been 8.10. As far as I can count, that's a little over a year without tech support.
I have other machines in the field where tech support is very occasional. The art is to setup the machine in such a way that all you cover all needs you can anticipate. (So make sure it does play DVDs, for example).
For this particular instance, they might have found someone else who installed Windows instead, but I made clear I only would support Ubuntu. Which, for the record, was very positively adopted by the girl as per her mother. Somehow it not being Windows was "cool"... How times have changed.
I do have the t-shirt mentioned below, and I like to wear it when helping people with their computer problems. A bit as an in-joke.