The main reason OSX 'just works' as they like to say is that the hardware spec is tightly controlled and the OS drivers are written and tested specifically for that hardware. Unless there's a linux vendor who's maintaining a distribution tailored for the hardware, Linux won't give you that level of smoothness. Sadly I don't think that will ever happen as the idea of tightly-coupling a distribution to particular hardware is naturally contrary to the nature of most Linux users so we have a deadlock.
Personally I love the integration of Mac hardware OSX and it's a premium I am happy to pay for myself. I write code personally and professionally much of my waking life. I love figuring out and optimising systems but when I get home and want to chill I appreciate not having to do maintenance on my own machine! I run Linux (and that other OS) in VMWare Fusion and it works perfectly plus lets me hotswitch and easily archive virtual machines and I find the performance hit isn't a big deal for my needs. It might not be for everyone but for me it lets me spend time focussing on what I want to achieve and not waste my valuable spare time ****ing about in stuff I already know about and don't need to deal with over and over again like a high-tech factory worker...
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
Interesting... I didn't know RIM had acquired QNX - it's a cracking embedded OS. They used to make a big deal of the fact that the inherent stability of the design meant it had found a natural home in applications such as nuclear power stations and air traffic control etc. and that their average uptime was often multiples of years. However, the power management support in Neutrino always seemed to be pretty elementary and certainly never stretched to supporting things like dynamic voltage and frequency scaling that many of the (potentially) most efficient SoC's support nowadays so I wonder how it'll compare on this front. Then again to be fair, most Windows Embedded and Linux BSP's never seem to be implemented that brilliantly in this regard either...
Does EngIish really have that much redundancy? Most of the language has evolved by assimilating new words as required so I would have thought that this naturally eschews redundancy. A lot of what could be considered redundant could be genuinely (subtley) different meanings? Im sure that some people consider the differences small enough to be redundant whilst others consider them significant - this could perhaps be one of the most succinct ways to define the difference between computer programmers and poets...?:-D
FYI I'd definately categorise myself as the former not the latter but I do love the quirkiness of English. I'm sure (but with no citations!) that the process of learning such a nuts language as a child helps you develop in much more interesting ways than a logical and simple language would...
Yes, apple got lucky with their ipods, iphones & ipads. Lucky, that is all. Some maybe call it smart, visionairy, or some stupid shit like that, but it was lucky. They made products that was easy to use, looked nice, and people loved it.
Have you ever noticed that people (or companies) who design good looking products that work well and are easy to use are consistently a LOT more lucky than their competitors?
BTW, is "Vision-airy" a clever reference to the Dyson Airblade or the Air Multiplier perhaps? I was just wondering as that's another splendid example of a company that got lucky but also co-incidentally designed products that are beautiful, functional and technically better than the competition and found a solid user base despite being more expensive...
To the person complaining about relevence, if you don't care about it, ignore it! Maybe consider investing the time you spent typing negative comments in reading something you are interested in instead? Much more rewarding I promise:-) besides, Know Your History! I'd seriously be amazed at anyone I know that's a committed hacker (old defn) not to be fascinated by that article.
Anyway, my actual reason for posting - Given the age of hte article, does anyone know of a recent follow up to it? I'd love to know what the main characters have been spending the rest of their working lives doing and what the "blind kids" found to pique their interest in the modern world!
I must say that I'm quite surprised that no-one technically minded has yet managed to raid Mr Murdoch and Mrs Brooks voicemails and publish them on YouTube. I'm sure there must have been some juicy irate messages left and would be a most apt thing to do.
Hang on, didn't them crafty LulzSec buggers have a request-line...?! Anyone got the number?
This might be a daft question but think about it : All the energy from the sun hitting the desert gets absorbed as heat into planet. We all know that a lot of the way this planet works is a delicate balance that no-one understands so what happens if we start diverting a significant amount of this energy away? Does it have any knock on effects?
Does this mean that you'll have no issue with me turning up at your house and punching you in the face if I notify you in writing first suggest leave your house to avoid this occurring first? Following your comment, if you dont leave that means that I didn't intentionally do anything and its your fault for not leaving?
Everything else is fluff? Bollocks it is! As an embedded systems engineer, one of the features of the Tek MSO2024 Ive been using recently that I've massively appreciated is its protocol module for analysing I2C & RS232. This is a MASSIVE advantage for anyone doing embedded systems work. Yes, it can help the software guys as well as the hardware guys when debugging why something on a bus isnt working as anticipated...
Having said that the capture time isn't very good so I also use a USBee AX PC/USB gizmo with one analog and eight digital channels for basic logic analysis work. Theoretically its OK but some things are limited (e.g. fixed digital signal thresholds) and their software is pretty amateurish. The 'scope' functionality is not a match for real hardware as noted...
Or has this large growth served us well, exemplified by no successful terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11?
I would like to pose a counter-question : Since 9/11 the Christian community in the US has been praying for protection from terrorist acts. Given the apparent lack of successful terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11, can you argue that the tech investment was more likely to have been successful than the power of prayer?
Interesting - I did mention that would appeal to the *conspiracy* theorists who dont generally think quite so rationally;-) Having said that, even if it WAS a plan and they spent a large proportion e.g. 50% on the war, 500 Billion USD would STILL go a long way towards the defecit...!
Well, isn't it lucky that the USA has invaded already - it saves them having to invent a thin pretext to invade later! Of course, the conspiracy theorists will probably be saying that this was all already known and was the pretext for the invasion but didn't make it public knowledge until now so that people wouldn't make a mental link between the resources and the invasion....
So... you want to change the units used so that people don't make wrong basic assumptions? Perhaps investing in a better education system so people don't end up thick as **** and misunderstand elementary maths might be a better long term plan? Then you won't have to worry about changing every other metric used in daily life... Anyone tried asking a cross section of the public in the US whats better for their waistlines - changing from eating 70g to 45g or from 250g to 200g packets of potato chips...? Are KCal's simple enough or should you change to a kind of unit that takes into account portion size too?
Sure a somewhat facetious example but hey, where do you draw the line under ignorance?
'Doing a much better job of making our products more secure'... ?
As a statement it's a little loaded - if it was secure in the first place you wouldn't need to have a small army of people showing how pro-active you are, it'd just be secure and that would be the end of the drama...!
So, as suggested, modding games is a great way to harness the enthusiasm for games which is critical. Dont just have an agenda to teach programming, be flexible - if their journey into game related stuff veers off (for example) into a graphical or design direction its important to support that equally and not show a bias / agenda. Also worth considering is flash & scripting as that's pretty approachable and can offer lots of extra complexity that grows with experience. But be prepared to offer support when hard patches arise (as teenagers can sometimes have short attention spans for problem solving!) Be wary of helping too much though, the geek mindset is to jump in with both feet to help and it's easy to forget that young people need the freedom to be creative and make their own mistakes - that's how we learnt in the first place too:-D
So, there have been various studies that have shown that swearing reduces stress. I'm not sure if a reason has been found but it's fair to assume it's about providing an outlet that helps. So, if you deprive people of that outlet it could be reasonably argued that you're potentially threatening their health - of course the degree to which you're doing so is difficult to ascertain but you can't ever prove that exposure to swearing causes any physically measurable negative effect...!
Slashdot Mirror
The main reason OSX 'just works' as they like to say is that the hardware spec is tightly controlled and the OS drivers are written and tested specifically for that hardware. Unless there's a linux vendor who's maintaining a distribution tailored for the hardware, Linux won't give you that level of smoothness. Sadly I don't think that will ever happen as the idea of tightly-coupling a distribution to particular hardware is naturally contrary to the nature of most Linux users so we have a deadlock.
Personally I love the integration of Mac hardware OSX and it's a premium I am happy to pay for myself. I write code personally and professionally much of my waking life. I love figuring out and optimising systems but when I get home and want to chill I appreciate not having to do maintenance on my own machine! I run Linux (and that other OS) in VMWare Fusion and it works perfectly plus lets me hotswitch and easily archive virtual machines and I find the performance hit isn't a big deal for my needs. It might not be for everyone but for me it lets me spend time focussing on what I want to achieve and not waste my valuable spare time ****ing about in stuff I already know about and don't need to deal with over and over again like a high-tech factory worker...
Erm, doesn't all stored data inherently have merit? If it didn't, no-one would store it?!
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
The Only Constant Is Change.
Interesting... I didn't know RIM had acquired QNX - it's a cracking embedded OS. They used to make a big deal of the fact that the inherent stability of the design meant it had found a natural home in applications such as nuclear power stations and air traffic control etc. and that their average uptime was often multiples of years. However, the power management support in Neutrino always seemed to be pretty elementary and certainly never stretched to supporting things like dynamic voltage and frequency scaling that many of the (potentially) most efficient SoC's support nowadays so I wonder how it'll compare on this front. Then again to be fair, most Windows Embedded and Linux BSP's never seem to be implemented that brilliantly in this regard either...
Does EngIish really have that much redundancy? Most of the language has evolved by assimilating new words as required so I would have thought that this naturally eschews redundancy. A lot of what could be considered redundant could be genuinely (subtley) different meanings? Im sure that some people consider the differences small enough to be redundant whilst others consider them significant - this could perhaps be one of the most succinct ways to define the difference between computer programmers and poets...? :-D
FYI I'd definately categorise myself as the former not the latter but I do love the quirkiness of English. I'm sure (but with no citations!) that the process of learning such a nuts language as a child helps you develop in much more interesting ways than a logical and simple language would...
Have you ever noticed that people (or companies) who design good looking products that work well and are easy to use are consistently a LOT more lucky than their competitors?
BTW, is "Vision-airy" a clever reference to the Dyson Airblade or the Air Multiplier perhaps? I was just wondering as that's another splendid example of a company that got lucky but also co-incidentally designed products that are beautiful, functional and technically better than the competition and found a solid user base despite being more expensive...
~Pev
To the person complaining about relevence, if you don't care about it, ignore it! Maybe consider investing the time you spent typing negative comments in reading something you are interested in instead? Much more rewarding I promise :-) besides, Know Your History! I'd seriously be amazed at anyone I know that's a committed hacker (old defn) not to be fascinated by that article.
Anyway, my actual reason for posting - Given the age of hte article, does anyone know of a recent follow up to it? I'd love to know what the main characters have been spending the rest of their working lives doing and what the "blind kids" found to pique their interest in the modern world!
Well, this might get you started :
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/view
I must say that I'm quite surprised that no-one technically minded has yet managed to raid Mr Murdoch and Mrs Brooks voicemails and publish them on YouTube. I'm sure there must have been some juicy irate messages left and would be a most apt thing to do.
Hang on, didn't them crafty LulzSec buggers have a request-line...?! Anyone got the number?
This might be a daft question but think about it : All the energy from the sun hitting the desert gets absorbed as heat into planet. We all know that a lot of the way this planet works is a delicate balance that no-one understands so what happens if we start diverting a significant amount of this energy away? Does it have any knock on effects?
Does this mean that you'll have no issue with me turning up at your house and punching you in the face if I notify you in writing first suggest leave your house to avoid this occurring first? Following your comment, if you dont leave that means that I didn't intentionally do anything and its your fault for not leaving?
Forget University, Forget the web - use BOOKS for education.
Seriously, RTFA : "He believes Douthett didn't immediately awaken partly because of nerve damage caused by diabetes".
Everything else is fluff? Bollocks it is! As an embedded systems engineer, one of the features of the Tek MSO2024 Ive been using recently that I've massively appreciated is its protocol module for analysing I2C & RS232. This is a MASSIVE advantage for anyone doing embedded systems work. Yes, it can help the software guys as well as the hardware guys when debugging why something on a bus isnt working as anticipated...
Having said that the capture time isn't very good so I also use a USBee AX PC/USB gizmo with one analog and eight digital channels for basic logic analysis work. Theoretically its OK but some things are limited (e.g. fixed digital signal thresholds) and their software is pretty amateurish. The 'scope' functionality is not a match for real hardware as noted...
If Goatse gives you nightmares then you really haven't seen much of this planet. Open your eyes and see what really goes on in this world of ours.
In response to the OP's question :
I would like to pose a counter-question :
Since 9/11 the Christian community in the US has been praying for protection from terrorist acts. Given the apparent lack of successful terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11, can you argue that the tech investment was more likely to have been successful than the power of prayer?
Interesting - I did mention that would appeal to the *conspiracy* theorists who dont generally think quite so rationally ;-) Having said that, even if it WAS a plan and they spent a large proportion e.g. 50% on the war, 500 Billion USD would STILL go a long way towards the defecit...!
Well, isn't it lucky that the USA has invaded already - it saves them having to invent a thin pretext to invade later! Of course, the conspiracy theorists will probably be saying that this was all already known and was the pretext for the invasion but didn't make it public knowledge until now so that people wouldn't make a mental link between the resources and the invasion....
So... you want to change the units used so that people don't make wrong basic assumptions? Perhaps investing in a better education system so people don't end up thick as **** and misunderstand elementary maths might be a better long term plan? Then you won't have to worry about changing every other metric used in daily life... Anyone tried asking a cross section of the public in the US whats better for their waistlines - changing from eating 70g to 45g or from 250g to 200g packets of potato chips...? Are KCal's simple enough or should you change to a kind of unit that takes into account portion size too?
Sure a somewhat facetious example but hey, where do you draw the line under ignorance?
So they're side-stepping normal hierarchy so ex-gamers can just play with militray toys? No wonder the 'collateral damage' bodycount is so high...
Any conspiracy that can be proven is a pretty rubbish conspiracy - it's in their nature that they need to be denyable! :-D
'Doing a much better job of making our products more secure' ... ?
As a statement it's a little loaded - if it was secure in the first place you wouldn't need to have a small army of people showing how pro-active you are, it'd just be secure and that would be the end of the drama...!
So, as suggested, modding games is a great way to harness the enthusiasm for games which is critical. Dont just have an agenda to teach programming, be flexible - if their journey into game related stuff veers off (for example) into a graphical or design direction its important to support that equally and not show a bias / agenda. Also worth considering is flash & scripting as that's pretty approachable and can offer lots of extra complexity that grows with experience. But be prepared to offer support when hard patches arise (as teenagers can sometimes have short attention spans for problem solving!) Be wary of helping too much though, the geek mindset is to jump in with both feet to help and it's easy to forget that young people need the freedom to be creative and make their own mistakes - that's how we learnt in the first place too :-D
So, there have been various studies that have shown that swearing reduces stress. I'm not sure if a reason has been found but it's fair to assume it's about providing an outlet that helps. So, if you deprive people of that outlet it could be reasonably argued that you're potentially threatening their health - of course the degree to which you're doing so is difficult to ascertain but you can't ever prove that exposure to swearing causes any physically measurable negative effect...!