From upper management's perspective there are dozens of great ideas - some will boost the brand, some will help fill niches that competitors are festering in, some will cement loyalty, some will increase appreciation by best customers, grow the number of best customers, decrease churn, reactivate customers, grow the customer base, provide additional channels for purchase, shift horizontally, shift vertically, decrease long term overheads, increase flexibility by reducing response time to market dynamics,...
That's just off the top of my head in a minute - you can't begin to imagine how many ideas get put forward and some of those ideas are really very good. It isn't until you sit in front of your budget and realise you only have the money for 10% of the ideas that reality sets in.
Which ideas do you cut? Enough IT infrastructure for black friday, a brand refresh to counteract waning customer interest or redundant logistics infrastructure so you don't get caught paying for warehouse space while customers are going to compeditors in frustration at your stock not being in stock?
Every body I've ever talked to is convinced their project is the most important. In my (admittedly, limited) experience it is rarely IT that has the greatest strategic or tactical ROI - most of them end up over budget and under performing!
For 30k (or 10k if you don't get ripped off), you can build an aircraft that relies on GPS + digital compass with a built in map for navigation, uses sonar for handling weaknesses in the map (e.g. the map didn't mention this aircraft just in front of me), and stores/transmits pictures (over 3G).
However, if you want to have onboard video processing then things start getting expensive very fast. A processor and graphics card powerful enough to do image processing is very hard to make small and low power (where hard is a synonym for expensive). As you start putting higher power requirements on the engine, you have to put greater weight (damn batteries) which coupled with how heavy batteries are means you have to start buying hideously expensive small/light/powerful batteries. Also, you have to do the same with every other component of the system - the motor is the most obvious but the rest of the aircraft has to be specced to handle an extra 10 pounds without being any larger or heavier.
Next, if your computer is drawing nontrivial amounts of juice, you've got to seriously think about whether you're better with a generator onboard rather than seperate batteries. Oh, and you better get a really efficient generator since you can't afford the weight of more fuel. I'm sure you can see where this is heading.
Crudely put, think about cellphone technology. What you're asking for is something like a cellphone (with a couple pretty standard addons like GPS and sonar) except you're wanting a cellphone from five years in the future in terms of power and features. How much do you think it costs to custom-build a cellphone from five years in the future today?
Finally, but perhaps most important, I've skipped over development time. These projects take a lot of work and even more testing. You can only do so much with Flight Gear before you have to build and crash a few to configure the software. Want to test the emergency radio override before you start flying this thing around the city, you'll have to crash a few in the process. Even if you're getting development at cost (ie. you hire a team of programmers to do it for you), you'll still pay around $1M and have to amortise that over all the planes you build. Few people get development at cost either - it is hard to build up a team of decent programmers so much easier to contract to a company that's already done it.
Now everybody knows the cunning terrorism attack vector I had planned. I bet they'll go and fix it now so Americans are no longer vulnerable. Here's hoping the police insist it must not be fixed for 'security reasons'.
That was exactly my thought. I'm betting this new Oracle virtualised linux will have proper licencing while none of the others do, but I can't find any details anywhere.
I'm thinking of installing Oracle Linux on the server I'm putting together next week just in case it means I can try out virtulisation in case they fix the licencing. We run all servers on the bare metal entirely because of this... crazy!
There are a few amazing features in the OLPC which are unavailable in any other laptop at any price - mainly related to power saving and robustness. But generally speaking, this isn't supposed to be good value - it is supposed to be a way to encourage geeks to donate to OLPC.
I went through a similar process and ended up with a similar board. Unfortunately for me (and possibly you, I haven't kept up since), ASUS concentrates on adding features and minor details like standards compliance are ignored.
The ASUS boards do not correctly have their sensors detected, their USB controller doesn't quite work (problems with suspend, problems with cold-boot occasionally), their ACPI is screwed (broken APIC). Basically, if it works well enough for casual windows users they consider it good enough.
I use my 6150 IGP and my sound (cmedia based? I didn't even check), but I really would prefer them to use standards-compliant components throughout the board.
Actually, this is a discussion that came up at work this week - SQL server is an inferior product to Oracle but the massive difference in licensing costs (roughly $10,000 for SQL server vs $250,000 for Oracle) mean we are really evaluating just how much better oracle is.
The difference is that SQL server licenses per machine while oracle licenses per core and this machine will have roughly twenty different SQL programmers using it at any one time so having 16 cores is strongly desirable. In the interim we're just deliberately living with a poor CPU (single dual core) and putting everything else high spec (solid state mixed with SAS drives, gig after gig of ram, etc.) since Oracle only charges per core, not by overall system cost.
However, I doubt anything will change for at least a year - vendor lock-in is not just a Microsoft thing, it's just too hard to verify all of the SQL is vendor-neutral, check all of the triggers, port all of the oracle designer table definitions, etc.
The licence terms do not restrict on what the computer 'can' run, they just bill per CPU.
A Mac that is incapable of running the software will also require a licence to run it. I know a school which did not get Macs because the cost of software licences for Microsoft software that the Mac's were incapable of running put the idea over budget, so they bought Toshiba notebooks running Windows instead.
You have a point. Site Licences have existed for a while and sites using them get fewer headaches. They don't generally cost more if you have more computers, but I can see the desire to charge large schools more than small schools.
Every case that goes before a judge has facts that are particular to that case.
In most of the world, the judge takes all those facts into consideration and uses them as the primary reason for their decision. This means the 'law of precedent' which dominates the US is of more limited value in other countries -- "Sure, that case sounds similar, but what were the details which made the judge rule this way?" By contrast, the US describes the current case primarily in terms of past cases, with stuff particular to the current case mainly being used to select between precedents.
That's not to say precedents are ignored outside the US, but they do not dominate the system in the way they do in the US.
CPU designers are held back by trying to give good performance to general purpose programs at the same time as supporting these specialised uses. They've tried, we have 3DNOW, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and others but it is too hard for them to compete with a GPU which doesn't have to support general purpose use. A GPU doesn't even have to deal with things like interrupts or memory protection!
Sure it is possible, ever written a new version after completing a prototype?
The first version is slow to write because you resolve all of the design issues. The second one is a piece of cake because you can easily test every little function in isolation.
Oh, and Python is quite a lot faster to develop in than C too. I'd say 5* faster.
I agree, though I'd say cheap cables/wiring in the house is the leading candidate. If you watch unpopular channels (e.g. I watch Food TV) then that would be the other leading candidate.
Game companies are different. They no that no matter how badly they treat their staff, there will always be an unlimited supply of young talented but inexperienced kids^Wgame developers just begging to work for them. Where there is virtually unlimited supply of cheap inexperienced labour it wouldn't be capitalism if you paid your inexperienced staff more than peanuts.
Not being an expert in the gaming industry, I would suspect that the managers there are quite well paid - they have to deal with young, inexperienced staff and manage a high attrition rate while still delivering to deadlines.
I've recently shifted from a cutting-edge linux shop to a behind-the-times microsoft shop and have been struggling to find decent MS tools rather than giving up and just going with what I know.
PS: looking at the code sample
int[] numbers = { 5, 4, 1, 3, 9, 8, 6, 7, 2, 0 };
var lowNums =
from n in numbers
where n 5
select n;
Just like we have plenty of Mom and Pop stores to buy from? The simple fact is that vast most people want to buy cheap and are willing to be inconvenienced to get cheap. In fact, that accounts for such a high proportion of the population that shops catering for any other segments of the population (e.g. knowledgeable service) struggle to survive. If you want something that is not what most people want, do not assume the free market will supply because economies of scale mean it frequently is not worth offering niche services.
It is fascinating if you sit down and work out what the average Joe will put up with and what he won't. People do not demand the cheapest - offering a burger for a few cents less won't cause hordes of people to beat down your doors, but they do demand cheap and if you consistantly cost more than the big players you'll have to really fight to survive. People also demand consistant far more than you'd expect, but they can be suckered into thinking two different things are much the same with a few weasle words.
Have you tried iWork? I personally think it is an excellent replacement. It is a shame Apple tries to squeeze (a little) money out of you to get it though - it would be really nice if as part of getting a mac you got an easy to use work environment. I haven't tried numbers yet, but their presenter is quite a bit easier to use than powerpoint.
It is unlikely you own shares because you have a pension fund. More likely the pension fund owns shares and you are a (I forget the word, not Investor... in the pension fund). Shareholders get a number of rights (voting, prospectus, AGM, etc. that your pension fund manager will be excercising but unless it is a really transparent pension fund I doubt you'd be able to ask for the shares you 'own' via it.
As you noted, a broker over the bus station is the sort of thing you're looking for. They will be a 'full service' broker which means you'll pay more (fee is usually 4% from memory) and get their advice and coffee - I generally value the latter more highly. They do have the benefit that they're really easy to get money to - cash, cheque, visa, etc. If you're lucky, they might even be able to arrange printed certificates - rich people like buying them for their kids is the only real reason pretty certificates still exist.
If you are looking for a cheaper entry to the sharemarket, then online brokers avoid a lot of the fees which makes it much more affordable to sell if you later find yourself broke apart from the shares. They're a surprisingly illiquid asset - more so than money in a pension fund in many ways because apart from being a hassle, you have to pay a fee for selling out.
PS: I wouldn't advise investing right now as a strategic move, rising oil prices have traditionally been tied to a falling share market. Of course, there are exceptions, this is not financial advice etc. But a few thousand SCO shares for prosterity would be fun if you had a grand lying around not doing anything.
Perhaps a little unusual, but you've gotta admit it is easy to spell, pronounce and remember.
I would suggest referring to a new file as a.fenton, it is long enough to be distinguishable but not as long as.ryanfenton, which might be a bit unwieldy. The protocol can be referred to as the 'ryan' protocol, which nicely seperates out the file format from the transferring protocol - something bittorrent did not do.
By following the Fenton's family tree, we have a long list of names for new transfer protocols. Perhaps Ryan has an aunt called Jenny who has a more close-knit circle of friends. An alternative file-format/protocol then is Jenny Fenton, meaning the same file format but the client prefers sharing with known closer clients rather than treating all comers equally. A family member who has trouble coming out of his shell might correspond to the version which implements 'tor'. Major breaks in file formats (perhaps replacing the MD5 sum with a rolling MD5 sum) can be viewed as requiring a change in the family name.
All in all, I think it works really well. And think about how famous it will make our own Mr Fenton!
I guess I'm a little old fashoned in that I have one OS per computer (except for windows which doesn't get its own computer) so after an initial play to see it worked, I don't bother virtualising linux at all - just sit down at the console.
You can, and it works fine. It isn't quite as easy as editing/etc/fstab (here's/etc/fstab from a computer I'm currently sshed into...
andrea-lakelands-computer:~ corrin$ cat/etc/fstab.hd IGNORE THIS FILE. This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents. -- As you can see, apart from the warning it now contains nothing (this is on 10.4.10). I think on 10.3 it contained the warning and mounted volumes ala/etc/mtab but that could be my memory playing tricks on me. However, the pretty little GUI for editing that file is 100% scriptable from the command line, and so writing scripts to do remote system administration is considered sensible.
Having said that, some people don't like working like that and those people get pretty little gui tools. Even more scary, some of those people are syadmins - I know because I used to work with one. They had been an OS 7, OS 8, OS 9 sysadmin before OS X came out and there was no way they were going to stop using their way of doing things just because there was a new version of the operating system. Used to drive me nuts watching them work until I trained myself to turn a blind eye.
I have ubuntu at work and printing to samba printing was as simple as adding a printer. I haven't looked at smb.conf on the machine.
As for mounting shares, I don't really know. I mounted them by editing/etc/fstab at the same time I added nfs shares to my system. Perhaps you'd care to share how you mount SMB shares at boot on an apple? Do you know how to do it in the GUI? Or how you find the shares when they don't turn up magically in the 'Network' tab - command-K followed by the IP address isn't it?
Firewall is installed on ubuntu, and enabled by default. The lack of open ports on a default install makes this less of an issue too.
VPN is just as easy to set up on ubuntu as OSX. Actually, I'd say easier. On OSX to add keys for VPN use you have to go into the keychain as root which requires you to go to the terminal and sudo open/Applications/Keychain.app. If your VPN just has a password rather than keys then it hardly counts as private. If your vpn is based on openvpn rather than pptp then OSX is out of date (2.0 rather than 2.1) so you can't get the full performance (2.1 adds better DNS support).
disk encryption. If I have a zip file with a password then I can click on it, enter the password and browse/edit files on it using a finder-like interface. That seems very like disk encryption to me. I suppose there is no flashing neon-light saying 'disk encryption' though... maybe the next version will highlight it more.
Sound is largely a fixed problem now, your desktop environment provides a sound server and everything connects to it. Not perfect, but not a problem for normal users. I remember when I used to switch user in OSX and be unable to play sound because another user was using the sound device too...
Every widescreen monitor I've used with ubuntu has just been plug'n'play, same as OSX.
I'm not claiming ubuntu is perfect (and I have two macs at home), but it works pretty damn well out of the box. Having all your OS updates in one place rather than just Apple updates available via software update is a huge benefit too. And the same program which does updating lets you add and remove programs. That's how it SHOULD be. Apple's drag to the Applications folder is kinda cute, but now and again it screws up with trying to drag an application out announcing 'permission denied' - WTF, why didn't it prompt me for my password if I don't have permission? Maybe 10.5 will fix that.
At a guess, you might just have to wait until you're older. For a start, by then the other party will be principally looking to have some company in the evenings after work rather than the blood-pumping thrill of sex. A word of advice though, work really hard on the social and communication skills thing now - if you 'somehow' find yourself in a stable relationship later then losing it because you don't have the communication skills that people your age are developing now really sucks.
Basically, the older you get the higher the stakes are (emotionally, percentage of your life dedicated, etc) and so if you choose not to play the lower stakes game for whatever reason then it is worthwhile trying to stack the odds back in your favour a little.
I have a macbook on which I cannot connect at all to a WAP which an iMac next to it uses all the time. Even right next to the WAP it would report unexpected errors. I spent a while trying to diagnose the problem (including installing kisMac, and finding it didn't work at all on the macbook) before giving up and buying a cheap 802.11g + ethernet switch, which I can connect to from a phoenominal range on the macbook.
As a bonus, I'm now using WPA2 security, though I don't know how secure it really is thanks to the lack of working tools like kisMac.
Slashdot Mirror
Try viewing it from the other side of the fence.
...
From upper management's perspective there are dozens of great ideas - some will boost the brand, some will help fill niches that competitors are festering in, some will cement loyalty, some will increase appreciation by best customers, grow the number of best customers, decrease churn, reactivate customers, grow the customer base, provide additional channels for purchase, shift horizontally, shift vertically, decrease long term overheads, increase flexibility by reducing response time to market dynamics,
That's just off the top of my head in a minute - you can't begin to imagine how many ideas get put forward and some of those ideas are really very good. It isn't until you sit in front of your budget and realise you only have the money for 10% of the ideas that reality sets in.
Which ideas do you cut? Enough IT infrastructure for black friday, a brand refresh to counteract waning customer interest or redundant logistics infrastructure so you don't get caught paying for warehouse space while customers are going to compeditors in frustration at your stock not being in stock?
Every body I've ever talked to is convinced their project is the most important. In my (admittedly, limited) experience it is rarely IT that has the greatest strategic or tactical ROI - most of them end up over budget and under performing!
The range is not really that surprising.
For 30k (or 10k if you don't get ripped off), you can build an aircraft that relies on GPS + digital compass with a built in map for navigation, uses sonar for handling weaknesses in the map (e.g. the map didn't mention this aircraft just in front of me), and stores/transmits pictures (over 3G).
However, if you want to have onboard video processing then things start getting expensive very fast. A processor and graphics card powerful enough to do image processing is very hard to make small and low power (where hard is a synonym for expensive). As you start putting higher power requirements on the engine, you have to put greater weight (damn batteries) which coupled with how heavy batteries are means you have to start buying hideously expensive small/light/powerful batteries. Also, you have to do the same with every other component of the system - the motor is the most obvious but the rest of the aircraft has to be specced to handle an extra 10 pounds without being any larger or heavier.
Next, if your computer is drawing nontrivial amounts of juice, you've got to seriously think about whether you're better with a generator onboard rather than seperate batteries. Oh, and you better get a really efficient generator since you can't afford the weight of more fuel. I'm sure you can see where this is heading.
Crudely put, think about cellphone technology. What you're asking for is something like a cellphone (with a couple pretty standard addons like GPS and sonar) except you're wanting a cellphone from five years in the future in terms of power and features. How much do you think it costs to custom-build a cellphone from five years in the future today?
Finally, but perhaps most important, I've skipped over development time. These projects take a lot of work and even more testing. You can only do so much with Flight Gear before you have to build and crash a few to configure the software. Want to test the emergency radio override before you start flying this thing around the city, you'll have to crash a few in the process. Even if you're getting development at cost (ie. you hire a team of programmers to do it for you), you'll still pay around $1M and have to amortise that over all the planes you build. Few people get development at cost either - it is hard to build up a team of decent programmers so much easier to contract to a company that's already done it.
Now everybody knows the cunning terrorism attack vector I had planned. I bet they'll go and fix it now so Americans are no longer vulnerable. Here's hoping the police insist it must not be fixed for 'security reasons'.
That was exactly my thought. I'm betting this new Oracle virtualised linux will have proper licencing while none of the others do, but I can't find any details anywhere.
I'm thinking of installing Oracle Linux on the server I'm putting together next week just in case it means I can try out virtulisation in case they fix the licencing. We run all servers on the bare metal entirely because of this... crazy!
You're largely correct.
There are a few amazing features in the OLPC which are unavailable in any other laptop at any price - mainly related to power saving and robustness. But generally speaking, this isn't supposed to be good value - it is supposed to be a way to encourage geeks to donate to OLPC.
I went through a similar process and ended up with a similar board. Unfortunately for me (and possibly you, I haven't kept up since), ASUS concentrates on adding features and minor details like standards compliance are ignored.
The ASUS boards do not correctly have their sensors detected, their USB controller doesn't quite work (problems with suspend, problems with cold-boot occasionally), their ACPI is screwed (broken APIC). Basically, if it works well enough for casual windows users they consider it good enough.
I use my 6150 IGP and my sound (cmedia based? I didn't even check), but I really would prefer them to use standards-compliant components throughout the board.
Yes, I said CPU when I meant computer.
Actually, this is a discussion that came up at work this week - SQL server is an inferior product to Oracle but the massive difference in licensing costs (roughly $10,000 for SQL server vs $250,000 for Oracle) mean we are really evaluating just how much better oracle is.
The difference is that SQL server licenses per machine while oracle licenses per core and this machine will have roughly twenty different SQL programmers using it at any one time so having 16 cores is strongly desirable. In the interim we're just deliberately living with a poor CPU (single dual core) and putting everything else high spec (solid state mixed with SAS drives, gig after gig of ram, etc.) since Oracle only charges per core, not by overall system cost.
However, I doubt anything will change for at least a year - vendor lock-in is not just a Microsoft thing, it's just too hard to verify all of the SQL is vendor-neutral, check all of the triggers, port all of the oracle designer table definitions, etc.
The licence terms do not restrict on what the computer 'can' run, they just bill per CPU.
A Mac that is incapable of running the software will also require a licence to run it. I know a school which did not get Macs because the cost of software licences for Microsoft software that the Mac's were incapable of running put the idea over budget, so they bought Toshiba notebooks running Windows instead.
You have a point. Site Licences have existed for a while and sites using them get fewer headaches. They don't generally cost more if you have more computers, but I can see the desire to charge large schools more than small schools.
Every case that goes before a judge has facts that are particular to that case.
In most of the world, the judge takes all those facts into consideration and uses them as the primary reason for their decision. This means the 'law of precedent' which dominates the US is of more limited value in other countries -- "Sure, that case sounds similar, but what were the details which made the judge rule this way?" By contrast, the US describes the current case primarily in terms of past cases, with stuff particular to the current case mainly being used to select between precedents.
That's not to say precedents are ignored outside the US, but they do not dominate the system in the way they do in the US.
No.
CPU designers are held back by trying to give good performance to general purpose programs at the same time as supporting these specialised uses. They've tried, we have 3DNOW, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and others but it is too hard for them to compete with a GPU which doesn't have to support general purpose use. A GPU doesn't even have to deal with things like interrupts or memory protection!
Sure it is possible, ever written a new version after completing a prototype?
The first version is slow to write because you resolve all of the design issues. The second one is a piece of cake because you can easily test every little function in isolation.
Oh, and Python is quite a lot faster to develop in than C too. I'd say 5* faster.
I agree, though I'd say cheap cables/wiring in the house is the leading candidate. If you watch unpopular channels (e.g. I watch Food TV) then that would be the other leading candidate.
Game companies are different. They no that no matter how badly they treat their staff, there will always be an unlimited supply of young talented but inexperienced kids^Wgame developers just begging to work for them. Where there is virtually unlimited supply of cheap inexperienced labour it wouldn't be capitalism if you paid your inexperienced staff more than peanuts.
Not being an expert in the gaming industry, I would suspect that the managers there are quite well paid - they have to deal with young, inexperienced staff and manage a high attrition rate while still delivering to deadlines.
I've recently shifted from a cutting-edge linux shop to a behind-the-times microsoft shop and have been struggling to find decent MS tools rather than giving up and just going with what I know.
PS: looking at the code sample
int[] numbers = { 5, 4, 1, 3, 9, 8, 6, 7, 2, 0 };
var lowNums =
from n in numbers
where n 5
select n;
Doesn't it remind you of a PROC DATA step in SAS?
Erm, riiiight,
Just like we have plenty of Mom and Pop stores to buy from? The simple fact is that vast most people want to buy cheap and are willing to be inconvenienced to get cheap. In fact, that accounts for such a high proportion of the population that shops catering for any other segments of the population (e.g. knowledgeable service) struggle to survive. If you want something that is not what most people want, do not assume the free market will supply because economies of scale mean it frequently is not worth offering niche services.
It is fascinating if you sit down and work out what the average Joe will put up with and what he won't. People do not demand the cheapest - offering a burger for a few cents less won't cause hordes of people to beat down your doors, but they do demand cheap and if you consistantly cost more than the big players you'll have to really fight to survive. People also demand consistant far more than you'd expect, but they can be suckered into thinking two different things are much the same with a few weasle words.
Have you tried iWork? I personally think it is an excellent replacement. It is a shame Apple tries to squeeze (a little) money out of you to get it though - it would be really nice if as part of getting a mac you got an easy to use work environment. I haven't tried numbers yet, but their presenter is quite a bit easier to use than powerpoint.
It is unlikely you own shares because you have a pension fund. More likely the pension fund owns shares and you are a (I forget the word, not Investor... in the pension fund). Shareholders get a number of rights (voting, prospectus, AGM, etc. that your pension fund manager will be excercising but unless it is a really transparent pension fund I doubt you'd be able to ask for the shares you 'own' via it.
As you noted, a broker over the bus station is the sort of thing you're looking for. They will be a 'full service' broker which means you'll pay more (fee is usually 4% from memory) and get their advice and coffee - I generally value the latter more highly. They do have the benefit that they're really easy to get money to - cash, cheque, visa, etc. If you're lucky, they might even be able to arrange printed certificates - rich people like buying them for their kids is the only real reason pretty certificates still exist.
If you are looking for a cheaper entry to the sharemarket, then online brokers avoid a lot of the fees which makes it much more affordable to sell if you later find yourself broke apart from the shares. They're a surprisingly illiquid asset - more so than money in a pension fund in many ways because apart from being a hassle, you have to pay a fee for selling out.
PS: I wouldn't advise investing right now as a strategic move, rising oil prices have traditionally been tied to a falling share market. Of course, there are exceptions, this is not financial advice etc. But a few thousand SCO shares for prosterity would be fun if you had a grand lying around not doing anything.
Just buy some shares. A number of brokers will print out an official certificate for a (surprisingly high) fee.
Perhaps a little unusual, but you've gotta admit it is easy to spell, pronounce and remember.
.fenton, it is long enough to be distinguishable but not as long as .ryanfenton, which might be a bit unwieldy. The protocol can be referred to as the 'ryan' protocol, which nicely seperates out the file format from the transferring protocol - something bittorrent did not do.
I would suggest referring to a new file as a
By following the Fenton's family tree, we have a long list of names for new transfer protocols. Perhaps Ryan has an aunt called Jenny who has a more close-knit circle of friends. An alternative file-format/protocol then is Jenny Fenton, meaning the same file format but the client prefers sharing with known closer clients rather than treating all comers equally. A family member who has trouble coming out of his shell might correspond to the version which implements 'tor'. Major breaks in file formats (perhaps replacing the MD5 sum with a rolling MD5 sum) can be viewed as requiring a change in the family name.
All in all, I think it works really well. And think about how famous it will make our own Mr Fenton!
Interesting, thanks.
I guess I'm a little old fashoned in that I have one OS per computer (except for windows which doesn't get its own computer) so after an initial play to see it worked, I don't bother virtualising linux at all - just sit down at the console.
You'll want parallels rather than VMWare, way better OSX integration.
I haven't tried anything except linux or windows in a virtual machine, so I'll leave others to comment on how well OpenBSD goes.
You can, and it works fine. It isn't quite as easy as editing /etc/fstab (here's /etc/fstab from a computer I'm currently sshed into...
/etc/fstab.hd /etc/mtab but that could be my memory playing tricks on me. However, the pretty little GUI for editing that file is 100% scriptable from the command line, and so writing scripts to do remote system administration is considered sensible.
andrea-lakelands-computer:~ corrin$ cat
IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents.
--
As you can see, apart from the warning it now contains nothing (this is on 10.4.10). I think on 10.3 it contained the warning and mounted volumes ala
Having said that, some people don't like working like that and those people get pretty little gui tools. Even more scary, some of those people are syadmins - I know because I used to work with one. They had been an OS 7, OS 8, OS 9 sysadmin before OS X came out and there was no way they were going to stop using their way of doing things just because there was a new version of the operating system. Used to drive me nuts watching them work until I trained myself to turn a blind eye.
Your post is pretty uninformed.
/etc/fstab at the same time I added nfs shares to my system. Perhaps you'd care to share how you mount SMB shares at boot on an apple? Do you know how to do it in the GUI? Or how you find the shares when they don't turn up magically in the 'Network' tab - command-K followed by the IP address isn't it?
/Applications/Keychain.app. If your VPN just has a password rather than keys then it hardly counts as private. If your vpn is based on openvpn rather than pptp then OSX is out of date (2.0 rather than 2.1) so you can't get the full performance (2.1 adds better DNS support).
I have ubuntu at work and printing to samba printing was as simple as adding a printer. I haven't looked at smb.conf on the machine.
As for mounting shares, I don't really know. I mounted them by editing
Firewall is installed on ubuntu, and enabled by default. The lack of open ports on a default install makes this less of an issue too.
VPN is just as easy to set up on ubuntu as OSX. Actually, I'd say easier. On OSX to add keys for VPN use you have to go into the keychain as root which requires you to go to the terminal and sudo open
disk encryption. If I have a zip file with a password then I can click on it, enter the password and browse/edit files on it using a finder-like interface. That seems very like disk encryption to me. I suppose there is no flashing neon-light saying 'disk encryption' though... maybe the next version will highlight it more.
Sound is largely a fixed problem now, your desktop environment provides a sound server and everything connects to it. Not perfect, but not a problem for normal users. I remember when I used to switch user in OSX and be unable to play sound because another user was using the sound device too...
Every widescreen monitor I've used with ubuntu has just been plug'n'play, same as OSX.
I'm not claiming ubuntu is perfect (and I have two macs at home), but it works pretty damn well out of the box. Having all your OS updates in one place rather than just Apple updates available via software update is a huge benefit too. And the same program which does updating lets you add and remove programs. That's how it SHOULD be. Apple's drag to the Applications folder is kinda cute, but now and again it screws up with trying to drag an application out announcing 'permission denied' - WTF, why didn't it prompt me for my password if I don't have permission? Maybe 10.5 will fix that.
At a guess, you might just have to wait until you're older. For a start, by then the other party will be principally looking to have some company in the evenings after work rather than the blood-pumping thrill of sex. A word of advice though, work really hard on the social and communication skills thing now - if you 'somehow' find yourself in a stable relationship later then losing it because you don't have the communication skills that people your age are developing now really sucks.
Basically, the older you get the higher the stakes are (emotionally, percentage of your life dedicated, etc) and so if you choose not to play the lower stakes game for whatever reason then it is worthwhile trying to stack the odds back in your favour a little.
I have a macbook on which I cannot connect at all to a WAP which an iMac next to it uses all the time. Even right next to the WAP it would report unexpected errors. I spent a while trying to diagnose the problem (including installing kisMac, and finding it didn't work at all on the macbook) before giving up and buying a cheap 802.11g + ethernet switch, which I can connect to from a phoenominal range on the macbook.
As a bonus, I'm now using WPA2 security, though I don't know how secure it really is thanks to the lack of working tools like kisMac.