What the hell are "primate peoples"? I'm trying to figure out what you mean. We are "primates", all of us, but so is a baboon. Or do you mean "primitive people" as in bushmen (which wouldn't be nice to say in the first place), or simply people with a limited intellect. None of these explanations makes sense to me. I guess I must be one of those "primate peoples". (Oh, and damnit, "people" is already plural. It doesn't need an "s")
Oh, yes, the famous Ubuntu machines at Dell... Only they're available where? US, UK, France, Germany? I want one in my country? Suck it up, you don't count....
My way was to get the cheapest lappy I could get (back before the Netbooks were in and just before the vista release where all Vista Capable systems were on sale), then buy 3rd party RAM, upgrade it, ditch the XP and be happy.
I just got a new work laptop... I didn't even try Vista. PXEBooted the Debian Lenny Installer and made myself cozy. Sure, I have no wireless (Intel chipset Wifi5100, would have expected otherwhise), but apart from that I know I'll be able to do my work from that.
Often getting the cheapest machine with Windows installed, is the best value. Like it or not...
Except you can do it legally.... Especially, I can just tell you: take that and that file one the Openbsd file-server and burn them on CD. Heck, I've installed my Soekris net5501-70 by using SFTP and that was it. I do not understand your gripe. They copyrighted the ISO. So what? Anyone able to use OpenBSD is able to actually make a CD... heck, most of us don't NEED a CD.
As for creating a Mac OS X or Windows CD.... Well, you're only going to manage that if you download an ISO file. With OpenBSD you do not need to. You create the ISO file yourself. That's the only barrier set, and frankly, they make it easy for you. You get the boot-loader and the directory structure right on their FTP server.
But then, why bother? Just like Debian, they let you install from network... With pretty much nothing more than a floppy and the rest is downloaded. Oh, wait... It wasn't even a floppy! PXEBoot did it just fine. Free downloadable, documented... exactly as we are used from BSD
I still think your original comment was setting the bar far too low in terms of hardware requirements.
Most certainly not on the speed of the CPU. Your gripe seems to be with the RAM. I did not say that my EEE would be sufficient, I gave exact specs: 1GHz, 512Meg RAM.
But XP is also a legacy OS whose life-cycle is only being extended for netbooks because the hardware doesn't meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's current offering.
True, but you have to wonder what exactly Microsoft was thinking. Now Windows 7 may, or may not, meet the requirements of netbooks. That remains to be seen. Also: you have to be kidding me: 128Meg graphics memory? What for? It's insanely high: with that amount of RAM one could quadruble-buffer a 3840x2160x24bit screen! Yes, I know they don't use the framebuffer directly and it's probably to use the 3D capabilities of the graphics chipset, but wow, that's an insane amount of RAM for displaying a few Windows. (To a lesser extent: 16Gig for the operating system alone... Uh?!?))
This is my point, a "lean OS" as you describe it is not comfortable in 512Meg. Usual XP setups with that amount of RAM would normally page much of the kernel on disk (not suitable for SSD). Coupled with an integrated graphics chipset's used of "shared memory", the actual RAM for user-space applications is drastically reduced.
To be fair, with 512Meg it used to be comfortable with XP running SP2. (Remember my old second hand laptop? That ran perfectly fine with WinXP SP2) What I didn't think about was the shared graphics memory. You are right indeed. So, 1GB RAM? Is that ok with you? (Still, for Windows 7, that means it should run okay on 896Meg RAM when the graphics card allocates 128Meg RAM. You really think that's going to happen?)
A normal Windows XP SP3 boots up about with 200Meg-250Meg used. That still gives you another 250Meg that you can use. That's why I say "not comfortable", because I know starting a few apps will eat those in no-time. With 1GB, you have more headroom and hence you're "comfortable".
As an example: I'm actually typing this on my wifes machine: two users logged in, she runs Firefox 3 and I run Firefox 3 (both have multiple tabs open), Thunderbird (5 different email accounts of which 3 IMAP, tons of RSS feeds), Putty, iTunes 7, AVG Antivirus 8, Java is loaded (probably visited a website containing an applet), Gnucleus, Truecrypt and some Bluetooth controll thingy. Used memory with WinXP SP3 is 803Meg. I have never see it go much beyond 1Gig RAM used. (It has 2Gig installed, I upgraded one day because RAM was dirt-cheap and on sale. Originally it did have 512Meg and worked fine...)
I'm sceptical that a 'normal user' does given
Tell me what you think he does. I can only think of two things and that would be photo editing and video editing. Weirdly enough, I have never seen a normal user doing either one.
The typical office clerk doesn't want to mess around with a non-standard LXDE environment. The typical office clerk uses Windows, which as you admit does not run comfortably in the specs you quoted.
The typical office clerk works with what is given to him. He has nothing to say about it. I've seen people using Windows NT when XP was already on SP1, I've seen people using OS/2 warp. Sure, not at home, but in offices: you bet!
The typical office clerk does not fiddle with settings, because he has no right to fiddle with settings. You don't seriously think that the typical office clerk can't install software, can't even run regedit.exe if he wanted to and can't write to system directories. I'm talking Windows here, and you do know that there is good reason to set up that limited usage for office clerks.
As for LXDE, you should at least check out the scree
Sorry about posting anoymously. I must have accidentally clicked the "Post Anonymously" checkbox while editing/reviewing my post. I did indeed reply this.
Re:This is nothing new
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 1
Both:-P
Re:This is nothing new
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Now, let's take the Asus EEE PC (280$) in 1990. In 1990 you would have paid 172.28$ for that. That's a PC that would have beaten your top-of-the-line 2500$ 1990 PC to smithereens. (The i486 came out in 1989!))
Wow.... Okay, any conspiracy theorists on that one?:-P
Re:This is nothing new
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Adjust those number for inflation... Or better, retro-adjust current prices for 1980 prices.
I do remember falling prices in the nineties, but now a PC is pretty close to an impulse buy. For me in 2000, a 2000€ PC was already an impulse buy (That said, I was single, a successful consultant with brand-new sports car, so my "impulses" were a bit off). These days an EEE PC is an impulse buy for anyone loving toys and having a bit spare money.
This is not a repeat of the previous price-falls, this is the computer becoming a throw-away consumer item like a toaster. (Running NetBSD obviously;-) )
Come on! Are you for real? It is an observation a co-founder of Intel.... Look it up on Wikipedia: The trend was first observed by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in a 1965 paper..
The EEE PC did prove this
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 1
I have one of the "original" EEE PCs. The 701 4G. Even with the stock 512Meg RAM and the underclocked to 670MHz CPU, I can do pretty much everything I want to do. The limitation here being the screen (Thank you slashdot for the "previous track icon" on the front page!)
Let's see: I do Word Processing (AbiWord), Spreadsheets (Gnumeric), Browsing (Iceweasel), Email (Icedove), and many things more. All courtesy of the Debian EEE Project. (I run LXDE and the afore mentioned applications). For day-to-day personal stuff this is plenty.
When it still ran Xandros, I even installed Eclipse for fun and kicks. While it wasn't that fast, it was doable and after configuring the interface minimally, it was ever halfway usable. Granted, I wouldn't want to use it over 8 hours.
I hate to be the "640KByte is enough for everyone" guy, but a 1GHz machine with 512Meg RAM and a lean operating system is indeed enough for most uses.
That also explains my wifes machine: a P-IV 2.6GHz Hyperthreaded which was bought in 2003 and still is our primary and only desktop. (Had a few minor upgrades...) We have no intent of changing it. It runs Windows XP Pro.
I have experimented with NTFS on USB sticks too and the last point you gave, brought me back to FAT.
However, I found you can work around it by setting the ACLs to "Everyone","Full Access". After you do that, it doesn't matter anymore. I don't call that "obscure NTFS file permissions": that's bog standard stuff.
That said, the problem you describe (with source codes) should be fixed because this is a terrible way of working around. For this kind of stuff one usually uses version control software. I do realise that they get your source code that way (or you theirs), but your collaborating for crying out loud!
Let the lawyers make a contract allowing each other to see the code under an NDA or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so ask one. I'd hate to be put in such a situation.
Another alternative is writing an API an delivering a DLL, which is a much better alternative. (Or if it's Java, give them a JAR, obfuscated of course...)
As someone who had a 1989 Audi 80 that required leaded petrol when the leaded petrol had already vanished from the pumps (in 1994), it wasn't a problem. You still can find additives to let them run, and for me 95 oct without the additive did work just fine. It really isn't as bad as you might think. I'd take it back, it did 7l/100km (33mpg) and had a 80l gas tank.
Especially, that if you know that most of Europe uses l/100km as a unit for "mileage" (we call it "consumption", which is reflected in the unit) and that you can simply type it into Google and it uses the US Gallon: 9l/100km in mpg. My car indeed does 9l/100km, and as such is a gas guzzler. (It's 9 years old, and I have no intention of scrapping it even if my government just made a similar law.)
I remember seeing a similar thing on Focus TV where companies tried selling Firefox. The advice was just to ignore any calls, any mails, any emails. They won't go to court, that would be their end. They rely on people paying out of fear.
Stay out of consulting if you can, especially if you're not self-employed. I've been trying to get out of it for ages, but it somehow sticks on you.:-(
It's actually a bit harder if you're a consultant. You get sent to clients, and they own the code. I think it must be easier for internal projects. I've got bits 'n pieces of what you describe, but it is by now way the full thing.
Probably, but I live in a country where pretty much the only thing that exists is the banking industry. I can't leave the country because of my wife who earns more than a typical IT worker (which isn't that bad on itself) but her job isn't transferable outside the country. It's a very peculiar situation, I know....
Sure, but I'm not paid to write frameworks and I don't have all that much spare time.... My boss is most certainly not interested in paying me to write such software.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell are "primate peoples"? I'm trying to figure out what you mean. We are "primates", all of us, but so is a baboon. Or do you mean "primitive people" as in bushmen (which wouldn't be nice to say in the first place), or simply people with a limited intellect. None of these explanations makes sense to me. I guess I must be one of those "primate peoples". (Oh, and damnit, "people" is already plural. It doesn't need an "s")
Oh, yes, the famous Ubuntu machines at Dell... Only they're available where? US, UK, France, Germany? I want one in my country? Suck it up, you don't count....
My way was to get the cheapest lappy I could get (back before the Netbooks were in and just before the vista release where all Vista Capable systems were on sale), then buy 3rd party RAM, upgrade it, ditch the XP and be happy.
I just got a new work laptop... I didn't even try Vista. PXEBooted the Debian Lenny Installer and made myself cozy. Sure, I have no wireless (Intel chipset Wifi5100, would have expected otherwhise), but apart from that I know I'll be able to do my work from that.
Often getting the cheapest machine with Windows installed, is the best value. Like it or not...
Be careful when copy/pasting units from wikipedia... They might not show up correctly rendered in slashdot. ;-)
Contraception is quite a nice side effect of condoms, even when married.... Some women don't support the pill well.
No, there is a population of PC buyers where 80$ is important and that aren't geeks.
Except you can do it legally.... Especially, I can just tell you: take that and that file one the Openbsd file-server and burn them on CD. Heck, I've installed my Soekris net5501-70 by using SFTP and that was it. I do not understand your gripe. They copyrighted the ISO. So what? Anyone able to use OpenBSD is able to actually make a CD... heck, most of us don't NEED a CD.
As for creating a Mac OS X or Windows CD.... Well, you're only going to manage that if you download an ISO file. With OpenBSD you do not need to. You create the ISO file yourself. That's the only barrier set, and frankly, they make it easy for you. You get the boot-loader and the directory structure right on their FTP server.
But then, why bother? Just like Debian, they let you install from network... With pretty much nothing more than a floppy and the rest is downloaded. Oh, wait... It wasn't even a floppy! PXEBoot did it just fine. Free downloadable, documented... exactly as we are used from BSD
Stop the FUD or educate yourself...
Uhm.... Just that you know.... Creating a OpenBSD ISO is as easy as Googling a bit around. You don't need to. You can do a net install...
Burning a OpenBSD CD is as much as taking their bootloader and burning the directory structure of their FTP server. I've done it, it works...
Most certainly not on the speed of the CPU. Your gripe seems to be with the RAM. I did not say that my EEE would be sufficient, I gave exact specs: 1GHz, 512Meg RAM.
True, but you have to wonder what exactly Microsoft was thinking. Now Windows 7 may, or may not, meet the requirements of netbooks. That remains to be seen. Also: you have to be kidding me: 128Meg graphics memory? What for? It's insanely high: with that amount of RAM one could quadruble-buffer a 3840x2160x24bit screen! Yes, I know they don't use the framebuffer directly and it's probably to use the 3D capabilities of the graphics chipset, but wow, that's an insane amount of RAM for displaying a few Windows. (To a lesser extent: 16Gig for the operating system alone... Uh?!?))
To be fair, with 512Meg it used to be comfortable with XP running SP2. (Remember my old second hand laptop? That ran perfectly fine with WinXP SP2) What I didn't think about was the shared graphics memory. You are right indeed. So, 1GB RAM? Is that ok with you? (Still, for Windows 7, that means it should run okay on 896Meg RAM when the graphics card allocates 128Meg RAM. You really think that's going to happen?)
A normal Windows XP SP3 boots up about with 200Meg-250Meg used. That still gives you another 250Meg that you can use. That's why I say "not comfortable", because I know starting a few apps will eat those in no-time. With 1GB, you have more headroom and hence you're "comfortable".
As an example: I'm actually typing this on my wifes machine: two users logged in, she runs Firefox 3 and I run Firefox 3 (both have multiple tabs open), Thunderbird (5 different email accounts of which 3 IMAP, tons of RSS feeds), Putty, iTunes 7, AVG Antivirus 8, Java is loaded (probably visited a website containing an applet), Gnucleus, Truecrypt and some Bluetooth controll thingy. Used memory with WinXP SP3 is 803Meg. I have never see it go much beyond 1Gig RAM used. (It has 2Gig installed, I upgraded one day because RAM was dirt-cheap and on sale. Originally it did have 512Meg and worked fine...)
Tell me what you think he does. I can only think of two things and that would be photo editing and video editing. Weirdly enough, I have never seen a normal user doing either one.
The typical office clerk works with what is given to him. He has nothing to say about it. I've seen people using Windows NT when XP was already on SP1, I've seen people using OS/2 warp. Sure, not at home, but in offices: you bet!
The typical office clerk does not fiddle with settings, because he has no right to fiddle with settings. You don't seriously think that the typical office clerk can't install software, can't even run regedit.exe if he wanted to and can't write to system directories. I'm talking Windows here, and you do know that there is good reason to set up that limited usage for office clerks.
As for LXDE, you should at least check out the scree
Sorry about posting anoymously. I must have accidentally clicked the "Post Anonymously" checkbox while editing/reviewing my post. I did indeed reply this.
Both :-P
Now, let's take the Asus EEE PC (280$) in 1990. In 1990 you would have paid 172.28$ for that. That's a PC that would have beaten your top-of-the-line 2500$ 1990 PC to smithereens. (The i486 came out in 1989!))
Wow.... Okay, any conspiracy theorists on that one? :-P
Adjust those number for inflation... Or better, retro-adjust current prices for 1980 prices.
I do remember falling prices in the nineties, but now a PC is pretty close to an impulse buy. For me in 2000, a 2000€ PC was already an impulse buy (That said, I was single, a successful consultant with brand-new sports car, so my "impulses" were a bit off). These days an EEE PC is an impulse buy for anyone loving toys and having a bit spare money.
This is not a repeat of the previous price-falls, this is the computer becoming a throw-away consumer item like a toaster. (Running NetBSD obviously ;-) )
Come on! Are you for real? It is an observation a co-founder of Intel.... Look it up on Wikipedia: The trend was first observed by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in a 1965 paper..
I have one of the "original" EEE PCs. The 701 4G. Even with the stock 512Meg RAM and the underclocked to 670MHz CPU, I can do pretty much everything I want to do. The limitation here being the screen (Thank you slashdot for the "previous track icon" on the front page!)
Let's see: I do Word Processing (AbiWord), Spreadsheets (Gnumeric), Browsing (Iceweasel), Email (Icedove), and many things more. All courtesy of the Debian EEE Project. (I run LXDE and the afore mentioned applications). For day-to-day personal stuff this is plenty.
When it still ran Xandros, I even installed Eclipse for fun and kicks. While it wasn't that fast, it was doable and after configuring the interface minimally, it was ever halfway usable. Granted, I wouldn't want to use it over 8 hours.
I hate to be the "640KByte is enough for everyone" guy, but a 1GHz machine with 512Meg RAM and a lean operating system is indeed enough for most uses.
That also explains my wifes machine: a P-IV 2.6GHz Hyperthreaded which was bought in 2003 and still is our primary and only desktop. (Had a few minor upgrades...) We have no intent of changing it. It runs Windows XP Pro.
Yes, Soekris was the first I thought of too. I hope they'll find a good replacement. They're really nifty little boxes...
I have experimented with NTFS on USB sticks too and the last point you gave, brought me back to FAT.
However, I found you can work around it by setting the ACLs to "Everyone","Full Access". After you do that, it doesn't matter anymore. I don't call that "obscure NTFS file permissions": that's bog standard stuff.
That said, the problem you describe (with source codes) should be fixed because this is a terrible way of working around. For this kind of stuff one usually uses version control software. I do realise that they get your source code that way (or you theirs), but your collaborating for crying out loud!
Let the lawyers make a contract allowing each other to see the code under an NDA or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so ask one. I'd hate to be put in such a situation.
Another alternative is writing an API an delivering a DLL, which is a much better alternative. (Or if it's Java, give them a JAR, obfuscated of course...)
As someone who had a 1989 Audi 80 that required leaded petrol when the leaded petrol had already vanished from the pumps (in 1994), it wasn't a problem. You still can find additives to let them run, and for me 95 oct without the additive did work just fine. It really isn't as bad as you might think. I'd take it back, it did 7l/100km (33mpg) and had a 80l gas tank.
Especially, that if you know that most of Europe uses l/100km as a unit for "mileage" (we call it "consumption", which is reflected in the unit) and that you can simply type it into Google and it uses the US Gallon: 9l/100km in mpg. My car indeed does 9l/100km, and as such is a gas guzzler. (It's 9 years old, and I have no intention of scrapping it even if my government just made a similar law.)
I remember seeing a similar thing on Focus TV where companies tried selling Firefox. The advice was just to ignore any calls, any mails, any emails. They won't go to court, that would be their end. They rely on people paying out of fear.
Amen.... And I'm speaking out of 10 years of experience. :-(
Stay out of consulting if you can, especially if you're not self-employed. I've been trying to get out of it for ages, but it somehow sticks on you. :-(
It's actually a bit harder if you're a consultant. You get sent to clients, and they own the code. I think it must be easier for internal projects. I've got bits 'n pieces of what you describe, but it is by now way the full thing.
Probably, but I live in a country where pretty much the only thing that exists is the banking industry. I can't leave the country because of my wife who earns more than a typical IT worker (which isn't that bad on itself) but her job isn't transferable outside the country. It's a very peculiar situation, I know....
Sure, but I'm not paid to write frameworks and I don't have all that much spare time.... My boss is most certainly not interested in paying me to write such software.