In all seriousness, I think the author has broken hardware. The fact that Knoppix, on a read-only CD, behaved differently on different boots, points at hardware flakiness. Anyway...
RedHat: Installs like a dream, but once you try using it you realize how broken it is. Most of the problem is RPM, and the rest is the people who decide it's a good idea to do things like putting a broken binary in an unrelated source RPM. (The jar command, in case you're wondering.)
Debian: An absolute bitch to install, but once you get it installed it's pretty good. Yes, dselect is awful, use aptitude, which is basically dselect with keyboard bindings that actually make some sort of sense. The fact that the Debian team require that all programs have some sort of man page gives them major points over RedHat in my book.
Knoppix: Boots fine on every machine I've tried it with. Someone needs to put an "Install Debian on my hard disk" button on the Knoppix desktop.
Xandros: This would be my distribution of choice for the totally clueless. Imagine Debian with hardware detection and an installer that didn't look like it was hacked together in shell script. Of course, it costs money.
OK, there are two exceptions: TeX and METAFONT. They're finished, done, as far as anyone can tell bugless, not changing any time soon. Oh, and most commercial games tend to stop improving after a while, because they're no longer selling enough copies to make updates worthwhile--though even in games, there are exceptions, like the Civilization and SimCity series.
Every other piece of software is changing, constantly, and will never be finished. This is particularly true for business software.
That's the way the software industry is these days. You don't buy software, you buy an ongoing relationship with the software vendor. For a fee, he sends you periodic snapshots of the evolving software ecosystem. The latest Windows snapshot is called XP, the next one is coming soon.
Sure, you can opt out and run the same version of all your software indefinitely. But if you do, you won't get any bug fixes, including fixes for all those security holes in old commercial software. (Still running NT 4? You have holes that Microsoft will never fix.) You also likely won't be able to start doing new, better things with your computer, because new, better software will require up-to-date snapshots of your OS. And if you install the latest snapshot of your OS, chances are some of your old software will break.
Now, don't get me wrong, I hate the upgrade treadmill as much as the next guy. (I skipped OS X 10.2 until I got it free with a new machine.) I'm just telling it like it is. Software is never finished. Doesn't matter if it's free or commercial. There will always be newer and better versions that still aren't finished, and have dependencies that break existing stuff you were using or require that you upgrade other stuff.
AT&T is switching to GSM. Cingular is switching to GSM. Verizon is considering switching to GSM, and probably will when they start rolling out 3G. The only company in America sticking with CDMA is Sprint PCS, and we all know how much they suck.
Seems to me that Qualcomm is becoming irrelevant, and is seeking a cash injection from the taxpayer via good old American back-room deals.
Having experienced the quality of CDMA and Sprint PCS, my main feeling is: haven't the poor Iraqis suffered enough?
Then again, Al Qaeda was reported to be using cellphones... Maybe someone thinks Iraq and Al Qaeda really are working together, and they're hoping that by giving Iraq a useless cellphone system they'll throw a spanner in the works.
I just wish I could get hold of a copy of the latest PhotoStitch for my PowerShot 100. It's not available for download, and Canon said they couldn't sell me the CD either. Out of stock, or some such crap.
That was what killed it for me. The Sidekick is tied to a single provider, they won't tell me how much it's going to cost per month, and they still expect me to pay $200 for the unit as well? I don't think so...
1. Lightweight. 2. Very bright, 7 LEDs. (Brighter than my big Mag-Lite.) 3. Soft diffuse glow over an area, good for reading. 4. Runs for 155 hours on 4 AA cells. 5. Waterproof to several meters. 6. Floats in water. 7. Rubber and polycarbonate construction, can easily survive a 2m drop onto solid concrete. 8. Push-button rubber-sealed switch on the end. 9. Available in black or safety yellow. 10. Fits in a coat pocket.
Got it for my significant other after she had a bad experience with a Mag Lite and a puddle in some dark woods.
Apparently Streamlight is the brand of choice for rescue workers.
I've tried every damn sync program for the Mac. I've tried tar and dump on UNIX. I've tried fancy network backup tools. I've not found anything that compares with rsync.
I hate the complexity of the command-line syntax, but it has the required functionality:
1. Automatically incremental. 2. Works locally from disk to disk or across a network. 3. Works via secure VPN or SSH. 4. Works between any two platforms I happen to be using, so I can back up to wherever the spare disk space is. 5. Easily scriptable, easily scheduled. 6. More efficient at using network bandwidth than any other protocol I've found. 7. Doesn't fail over on systems with incorrect system clocks or bad timestamps. 8. Data ends up in original native format, not some format that needs a special program to read. 9. Partial restore is trivial. 10. Works great with large capacity but slow-to-write backup media like DVD-RAM. 11. It has never damaged my data.
The only downside I've noticed is that the rsync ports to Windows tend to be comparatively CPU-intensive for some reason. Turning off compression helps.
I also use rsync for maintaining my web site, sharing my iCal calendar, syncing my browser bookmarks...
Hardware is obsolete after 3-4 years tops. It is not an "investment". Any given organization is continuously and slowly migrating to new hardware; a few do it all in one fell swoop, but most just upgrade a machine here, a machine there.
There's no reason a few of those machines shouldn't be OS X Macs, or Linux boxes. It's not like either has problems working alongside Windows.
You could always rip out your Exchange servers and replace them with Domino on Linux. Your users could then use iNotes to access their mail via the Outlook client, or use the iNotes web mail interface via SSL, or use IMAP or POP3 and SMTP with their choice of mail program. Or even use Notes.
You could also consolidate a bunch of Exchange servers onto one iSeries box, and cut your costs. Domino on iSeries has been shown to deal happily with up to 10,000 simultaneous mail users on one server.
I'm assuming you mean published "name brand" poets, rather than Anonymous Cowards... I suspect I'm gonna be the only person posting anything useful here, but it just so happens that you've touched on a favorite obsession of mine: why aren't there more poets dealing with actual modern life?
Anyway, a few pointers:
You'll probably have trouble finding them, but Lawrence Lerner wrote two books of computer-inspired poems. The first was "A.R.T.H.U.R.: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer". UMass Press, ISBN 0-87023-181-2.
ARTHUR is a dim-witted AI (the poems were written in the early 70s). The poems are humorous, but at the same time some of them are quite chilling. I forget the title of his second ARTHUR book; I never managed to track down a copy.
The other obvious answer is "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed" by RACTER, aka William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. RACTER was the psychotic cousin of ELIZA, and Chamberlain and Etter used it to create programs which would output demented prose and poetry.
Something I've often pondered is the feasibility of building a reverse-engineered INRAC clone under the GPL, so RACTER could live again. (Apparently the original authors lost the BASIC source code some years ago.)
If you include song lyrics as poetry, you have to check out recent albums by Momus. He's the only songwriter I'm aware of dealing with technological subjects in an intelligent and witty fashion. "Virtual Valerie" (from "The Philosophy of Momus") is the best song I've ever heard about long-distance relationships via Internet, and "Finnegan The Folk Hero" is a hilarious pastiche of country music that'll strike a nerve with any web developer.
Yes, well done, you spotted the pun in the title. If you'd read the article you'd have found out that Greg Costikyan and Warren Spector are old high school friends. (They developed TOON and Paranoia together.)
Spector gave the "everything is fine!" speech that annoyed Greg.
I remember using webreference.com a couple of years ago. Hadn't been there in ages, just went back to look and... yeesh!
If I hadn't read this story, I would have assumed that the owners of webreference.com had let the domain expire, and some lamer had snatched it up and used it as a backup URL for his GeoCities site.
Needless to say, webreference.com is being deleted from my bookmarks as soon as I hit Submit.
Do you get all the fine Italian food you can eat? Do you get to drive a fancy black limo around? Do you get to cap youse friends who don' show youse no respect?
When I'm finished using the computer, I just get up and walk away. After a while, it realizes I'm gone, and goes to sleep. While asleep, it uses so little electricity it doesn't matter.
When I want to use the computer again, I walk up to it and touch the keyboard or mouse. There's my desktop again, instantly, with no boot time.
Now, why the hell would I ever want to turn it off?
The original poster is right. People turn computers off either because they have crappy computers that don't support deep sleep mode, or because they have crappy software that needs reboots.
You can try using your left hand, sure. Unfortunately, that whole "if you use your left hand it feels like someone else is doing it" thing is about as medically accurate as the one about hairy palms.
From which we deduce that anyone seriously suggesting "use your left hand, it feels like someone else is doing it", has never actually had someone else do it.
I once wrote an animated screen demo system in a weekend. Because of the unrealistic project deadlines, I named it Mathew's Amazing Demo. I gave the data files the extension.MAD.
Everyone was delighted that I actually got the job done, but marketing objected to the.MAD file extension and demanded that it be changed.
Slashdot Mirror
In all seriousness, I think the author has broken hardware. The fact that Knoppix, on a read-only CD, behaved differently on different boots, points at hardware flakiness. Anyway...
RedHat: Installs like a dream, but once you try using it you realize how broken it is. Most of the problem is RPM, and the rest is the people who decide it's a good idea to do things like putting a broken binary in an unrelated source RPM. (The jar command, in case you're wondering.)
Debian: An absolute bitch to install, but once you get it installed it's pretty good. Yes, dselect is awful, use aptitude, which is basically dselect with keyboard bindings that actually make some sort of sense. The fact that the Debian team require that all programs have some sort of man page gives them major points over RedHat in my book.
Knoppix: Boots fine on every machine I've tried it with. Someone needs to put an "Install Debian on my hard disk" button on the Knoppix desktop.
Xandros: This would be my distribution of choice for the totally clueless. Imagine Debian with hardware detection and an installer that didn't look like it was hacked together in shell script. Of course, it costs money.
No software is ever finished. Really.
OK, there are two exceptions: TeX and METAFONT. They're finished, done, as far as anyone can tell bugless, not changing any time soon. Oh, and most commercial games tend to stop improving after a while, because they're no longer selling enough copies to make updates worthwhile--though even in games, there are exceptions, like the Civilization and SimCity series.
Every other piece of software is changing, constantly, and will never be finished. This is particularly true for business software.
That's the way the software industry is these days. You don't buy software, you buy an ongoing relationship with the software vendor. For a fee, he sends you periodic snapshots of the evolving software ecosystem. The latest Windows snapshot is called XP, the next one is coming soon.
Sure, you can opt out and run the same version of all your software indefinitely. But if you do, you won't get any bug fixes, including fixes for all those security holes in old commercial software. (Still running NT 4? You have holes that Microsoft will never fix.) You also likely won't be able to start doing new, better things with your computer, because new, better software will require up-to-date snapshots of your OS. And if you install the latest snapshot of your OS, chances are some of your old software will break.
Now, don't get me wrong, I hate the upgrade treadmill as much as the next guy. (I skipped OS X 10.2 until I got it free with a new machine.) I'm just telling it like it is. Software is never finished. Doesn't matter if it's free or commercial. There will always be newer and better versions that still aren't finished, and have dependencies that break existing stuff you were using or require that you upgrade other stuff.
AT&T is switching to GSM. Cingular is switching to GSM. Verizon is considering switching to GSM, and probably will when they start rolling out 3G. The only company in America sticking with CDMA is Sprint PCS, and we all know how much they suck.
Seems to me that Qualcomm is becoming irrelevant, and is seeking a cash injection from the taxpayer via good old American back-room deals.
Having experienced the quality of CDMA and Sprint PCS, my main feeling is: haven't the poor Iraqis suffered enough?
Then again, Al Qaeda was reported to be using cellphones... Maybe someone thinks Iraq and Al Qaeda really are working together, and they're hoping that by giving Iraq a useless cellphone system they'll throw a spanner in the works.
I just wish I could get hold of a copy of the latest PhotoStitch for my PowerShot 100. It's not available for download, and Canon said they couldn't sell me the CD either. Out of stock, or some such crap.
...did you pay for that Windows XP license?
And once you've programmed in a dozen languages, picking up another one is never that hard. Learning APIs is the tough bit.
See also "His Master's Voice" by Stanislaw Lem, which I think is far more mindblowing.
Congratulations, you win a prize.
That was what killed it for me. The Sidekick is tied to a single provider, they won't tell me how much it's going to cost per month, and they still expect me to pay $200 for the unit as well? I don't think so...
Why do I think you'd rather do? I dunno, but I'd get the LCD every time.
Key features:
1. Lightweight.
2. Very bright, 7 LEDs. (Brighter than my big Mag-Lite.)
3. Soft diffuse glow over an area, good for reading.
4. Runs for 155 hours on 4 AA cells.
5. Waterproof to several meters.
6. Floats in water.
7. Rubber and polycarbonate construction, can easily survive a 2m drop onto solid concrete.
8. Push-button rubber-sealed switch on the end.
9. Available in black or safety yellow.
10. Fits in a coat pocket.
Got it for my significant other after she had a bad experience with a Mag Lite and a puddle in some dark woods.
Apparently Streamlight is the brand of choice for rescue workers.
Yes, rsync is the dog's.
On the Mac, I use RsyncX, which knows about resource forks, even when transferring them to systems which don't have them.
And on Windows, I use rsync again.
I've tried every damn sync program for the Mac. I've tried tar and dump on UNIX. I've tried fancy network backup tools. I've not found anything that compares with rsync.
I hate the complexity of the command-line syntax, but it has the required functionality:
1. Automatically incremental.
2. Works locally from disk to disk or across a network.
3. Works via secure VPN or SSH.
4. Works between any two platforms I happen to be using, so I can back up to wherever the spare disk space is.
5. Easily scriptable, easily scheduled.
6. More efficient at using network bandwidth than any other protocol I've found.
7. Doesn't fail over on systems with incorrect system clocks or bad timestamps.
8. Data ends up in original native format, not some format that needs a special program to read.
9. Partial restore is trivial.
10. Works great with large capacity but slow-to-write backup media like DVD-RAM.
11. It has never damaged my data.
The only downside I've noticed is that the rsync ports to Windows tend to be comparatively CPU-intensive for some reason. Turning off compression helps.
I also use rsync for maintaining my web site, sharing my iCal calendar, syncing my browser bookmarks...
I'm using my t68i as calendar and to-do list. However, it does sync via Bluetooth to my Mac.
I also have the $12 plug-in keyboard for the phone, for when I need to add some stuff during a meeting.
Hardware is obsolete after 3-4 years tops. It is not an "investment". Any given organization is continuously and slowly migrating to new hardware; a few do it all in one fell swoop, but most just upgrade a machine here, a machine there.
There's no reason a few of those machines shouldn't be OS X Macs, or Linux boxes. It's not like either has problems working alongside Windows.
You could always rip out your Exchange servers and replace them with Domino on Linux. Your users could then use iNotes to access their mail via the Outlook client, or use the iNotes web mail interface via SSL, or use IMAP or POP3 and SMTP with their choice of mail program. Or even use Notes.
You could also consolidate a bunch of Exchange servers onto one iSeries box, and cut your costs. Domino on iSeries has been shown to deal happily with up to 10,000 simultaneous mail users on one server.
I'm assuming you mean published "name brand" poets, rather than Anonymous Cowards... I suspect I'm gonna be the only person posting anything useful here, but it just so happens that you've touched on a favorite obsession of mine: why aren't there more poets dealing with actual modern life?
Anyway, a few pointers:
You'll probably have trouble finding them, but Lawrence Lerner wrote two books of computer-inspired poems. The first was "A.R.T.H.U.R.: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer". UMass Press, ISBN 0-87023-181-2.
ARTHUR is a dim-witted AI (the poems were written in the early 70s). The poems are humorous, but at the same time some of them are quite chilling. I forget the title of his second ARTHUR book; I never managed to track down a copy.
The other obvious answer is "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed" by RACTER, aka William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. RACTER was the psychotic cousin of ELIZA, and Chamberlain and Etter used it to create programs which would output demented prose and poetry.
Something I've often pondered is the feasibility of building a reverse-engineered INRAC clone under the GPL, so RACTER could live again. (Apparently the original authors lost the BASIC source code some years ago.)
If you include song lyrics as poetry, you have to check out recent albums by Momus. He's the only songwriter I'm aware of dealing with technological subjects in an intelligent and witty fashion. "Virtual Valerie" (from "The Philosophy of Momus") is the best song I've ever heard about long-distance relationships via Internet, and "Finnegan The Folk Hero" is a hilarious pastiche of country music that'll strike a nerve with any web developer.
Yes, well done, you spotted the pun in the title. If you'd read the article you'd have found out that Greg Costikyan and Warren Spector are old high school friends. (They developed TOON and Paranoia together.)
Spector gave the "everything is fine!" speech that annoyed Greg.
Speaking as someone who has never paid for Microsoft software and doesn't use it, I have to say, bravo.
Not working with Microsoft has not been the death of my career. Hackers of the world, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I remember using webreference.com a couple of years ago. Hadn't been there in ages, just went back to look and... yeesh!
If I hadn't read this story, I would have assumed that the owners of webreference.com had let the domain expire, and some lamer had snatched it up and used it as a backup URL for his GeoCities site.
Needless to say, webreference.com is being deleted from my bookmarks as soon as I hit Submit.
...What are Mafia internships like?
Do you get all the fine Italian food you can eat? Do you get to drive a fancy black limo around? Do you get to cap youse friends who don' show youse no respect?
I'm not talking about illegal immigrants. I'm talking about legal ones. Legal immigrants aren't eligible to vote or get social security.
I guess you don't know any Mac users.
When I'm finished using the computer, I just get up and walk away. After a while, it realizes I'm gone, and goes to sleep. While asleep, it uses so little electricity it doesn't matter.
When I want to use the computer again, I walk up to it and touch the keyboard or mouse. There's my desktop again, instantly, with no boot time.
Now, why the hell would I ever want to turn it off?
The original poster is right. People turn computers off either because they have crappy computers that don't support deep sleep mode, or because they have crappy software that needs reboots.
You can try using your left hand, sure. Unfortunately, that whole "if you use your left hand it feels like someone else is doing it" thing is about as medically accurate as the one about hairy palms.
From which we deduce that anyone seriously suggesting "use your left hand, it feels like someone else is doing it", has never actually had someone else do it.
The sad thing is, a lot of Americans actually believe that immigrants are able to vote and eligible to collect social security.
I once wrote an animated screen demo system in a weekend. Because of the unrealistic project deadlines, I named it Mathew's Amazing Demo. I gave the data files the extension .MAD.
.MAD file extension and demanded that it be changed.
.MFD.
Everyone was delighted that I actually got the job done, but marketing objected to the
So naturally, it was changed to