I have to admit, when I first saw the announcement (I'm Clayton, #5 in the Matthias's original thread), I simply thought, "What a dumbass; he doesn't know anything about X," and moved on. However, the few times that I've been presented with KDE recently, I've been pretty impressed at what a full-featured and easy-to-use desktop it's turned out to be.
Nice work, folks. I hope you keep it up.
John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now
on
NYT on RFID Tags
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· Score: 1
"It's targeted marketing," said Jeff Boortz, creative director for the 14 spots while at 3 Ring and founder of Philadelphia-based Concrete Pictures. "The individual is only shown ads for products they want to buy. The goal is to promote a relationship between brands and the consumer. I don't think that's a bad thing."
I have three boxes under my desk at work. One running Windows XP, one running Debian, and one running Jaguar. The Windows box has been awakened from sleep maybe three times since Jaguar came out, and all three times it was to run NessusWX or some Novell client application that won't run on Mac OS X. I have used the Debian box for netselect a few times (can't seem to find a Mac OS X port for that one yet), and that's about it.
But the Mac... Mail.app filters my junk mail very efficiently. Chimera does tabbed browsing almost as well as Galeon. iCal is young but already extremely cool, letting me keep track of my schedule and tasks. Terminal.app's ANSI colors suck, but it's a good emulator otherwise. Oh, and Fink and XDarwin let me sudo apt-get install gimp and almost anything else I could do on my Linux box.
Oh, yeah, and I can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
1) You might not enjoy the ergonomics of hacking with a laptop atop your lap, but it works well for lots of folks.
2) As far as battery life goes, you're partly right. If he's running a game that allows the disk to stay spun down for long periods of time, he might be able to stretch the battery out for about half his trip. The original poster doesn't mention it, but he could well have spare batteries.
3) Wake time for a sleeping Mac OS X iBook: less than the time it takes to open it. Go-to-sleep time on a running Mac OS X iBook: about the time it takes to close it. My iBook is only ever asleep or awake; it is never shut down.
4) With the games that people have been recommending, fancy controls don't sound like an issue.
5) The iBook is small enough that with a carry-on at the guy's feet, he ought to be able to rest the iBook on his lap, pull out the carry-on, stuff the iBook in, and have it all zipped up and tidy in about ten seconds, all with his seatbelt on. Have you ever tried to cram a GBA in your pocket with a seatbelt on?
Yeah, this rumor has floated around countless times, almost as many as the one about how Apple's about to just go bankrupt and call it quits. But somebody passed it around to me about six years ago with the funniest spin:
Yeah, did you hear? Sun's going to buy Apple! Yeah, and do you know what they're gonna call themselves after the merger?
As for Microsoft's opinion that Apple isn't pushing Mac OS X hard enough? Well, that just sounds like a software company's opinion of a hardware company. Apple's shipping machines with Mac OS X as the default OS and has made plenty of announcements about the sunsetting of Classic Mac OS. Apple's money comes from selling machines, so that's all they need to do.
And how does Microsoft intend to "steal Apple's thunder?" By simply by making announcements of its own versions of what Apple has been doing with tremendous success for years. Movie trailers will continue to be in QuickTime format, MPEG-4 is still QuickTime, and Apple will continue to sell 802.11b harware in addition to their robust and easy-to-use software.
If Bill thinks he's going to lead the game, he'd better try to get out in front on a thing or two.
Well, I was pretty sure that Teoma clearly labels the paid results at the top of their results pages, but when I went to confirm, there was no server there! I guess you're right-- they must be on vacation.
Go to any Bestbuy or Circuit city that happens to have a Mac section, and you'll find one or two Mac Zealots there to 'encourage' people toward buying a Mac.
Right. That's why the CompUSA/Apple "Store within a store" failed and Apple opened their own retail stores.
When I worked at Circuit City in '93, a buddy and I used to take the AST on one of the display endcaps and boot it off the Slackware boot- and root-disks, just to scare customers. I think we even installed Linux partitions on a few of the machines there (until we reparitioned a Compaq that kept its BIOS management software in a hidden partition-- oops!). We never had a single customer that wasn't completely flummoxed by the non-Windows OS. I'm not sure it would be any different at Wal-Mart in 2002.
Boy, those were the days-- unauthorized Linux installs, playing DOOM over a null modem cable on working hours. Sometimes, I think I miss retail.
Notice that Malda posted all this goofy stuff, and then said you could feel free to mail Bates if you have comments? I'd hate to be hosting Jeff's email right now.
It would be really cool to take the relay blackhole list to an extreme, and enhance it with something like LaBrea. That way, instead of just immediately refusing to accept spam, freeing the spammer to move on to the next host on the list, a "tarpit" relay would bog the spammer down, maybe slowing their spamstream down to the point that they're sending only one message per hour. If we could get just a small percent of the SMTP servers on the 'net running such a tarpit, that would reduce the amount of spam that we all get. That is, until the spammers rewrite their software to give up on slow relays.
Here in Oxford, OH, Miami University has a deal with the local RoadRunner POP, such that Miami's support desk does front-line support of the service, and RoadRunner only charges faculty and staff $25/mo (plus $10/mo just to have the cable running into the house, if you don't already pay for cable). I believe that students pay even less, $20/mo. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.
RR orinigally claimed that we'd be getting the same speeds to our home machines as we got to our office machines, which is 10Mb/s Ethernet. I don't think I'm seeing anything close to that at home, but it's certainly faster than $20/mo 56k, so I'm not complaining!
I graduated from Miami U with a BA in philosophy and a BS in physics. I started the very next day as Miami's primary Unix sysadmin. Now, at the time, they only had a couple of Unix boxes, and almost nobody even knew what they did, but they were mission-critical (BootP and DNS servers), and I learned right away what the word robust meant. Since then, I have taken on primary or secondary responsibility for about four dozen Unix boxes, and we've added three or four more Unix admins. Still, I think I'm considered the guru among them.
The hiring manager told me flat out that there were at least a few other candidates that were much more experienced in Unix than I. He told me he was going to recommend me anyway, though, because he liked my enthusiasm and really felt that he would enjoy working with me.
Before graduation, I had been the sysadmin of my own home Linux box for a few years, and had even spent a year as president of the Miami Unix Collective, a student organization of Unix geeks. But I had no enterprise-level sysadmin experience, period, and certainly no certifications from Big Blue or anything like that.
The thing is, I had a passion for learning. All the Unix I knew, I had crammed into my head in between studying Plato, formal logic, mathematical physics, and organic chemistry. I think the manager was impressed with that, and I know he was impressed with how much I picked up after I started here.
I've been a Unix sysadmin here for five years, and pretty much everybody knows to come to me if they're stumped with something Unix-y. And pretty much everybody comes out of my cube with at least a good direction, if not the answer to their problem.
I script and automate routine stuff that doesn't really need my attention, and I augment systems with GNU and other tools more useful than the ones that come with the systems, so that I can work more efficiently. Folks frequently have to ask me to slow down if they want to be able to repeat what I'm showing them. I think it's because I've really come to think in pipes and regular expressions and such.
That's really the most helpful thing of all-- being able to think Unix.
Forget worrying about the degree. Just show them your stuff, and they'll hire you. If a particular employer won't hire you based on your capabilities, but is insisting on some silly technical degree, then you probably don't want to get stuck with them, anyway.
Advocate all you want-- I continue to, myself-- but it's the truth.
I had to do a whole bunch of load testing of a web application this morning. I used my Linux box to coordinate the entire thing. From my local command line, I launched a barrage of web requests from some other Linux box, in a dark machine room somewhere, against our unsuspecting web application servers. Meanwhile, I had a script running on this same workstation, collecting utilization statistics from those poor web servers , time-stamping and host-stamping everything. I collected about 300MB of data total in about three hours of testing.
And when the boss came in and asked me to prepare an executive summary to give to her boss's boss in thirty minutes, do you know what I did?
I turned to the XP box sitting next to my Linux workstation and fired up Excel.
Actually, first, I thought about it for something like five seconds. I thought about what I had installed since setting this box up a month ago, and I thought about all the Linux apps I've used over the last eight years. And then I laughed out loud.
I'll tell you, what I roughed out in thirty minutes in Excel wasn't pretty. But in that thirty minutes, I didn't fight with a single interface control, didn't have to re-print eight times because WYSINWYG, didn't have the application crash on me three times, and didn't overrun my deadline. I got graphs printed and on the Director's desk, just as I was asked. No Linux app could let me do that, and don't try to tell me otherwise.
Until someone can make a Linux office suite that'll let me crank out professional documents without any armwrestling, I'll be keeping another box on my desk (although as I type this, I'm replacing my XP machine with a G4 running OS X-- looking forward to sharing/home via NFS!).
Slashdot Mirror
1337JT indeed.
I have to admit, when I first saw the announcement (I'm Clayton, #5 in the Matthias's original thread), I simply thought, "What a dumbass; he doesn't know anything about X," and moved on. However, the few times that I've been presented with KDE recently, I've been pretty impressed at what a full-featured and easy-to-use desktop it's turned out to be.
Nice work, folks. I hope you keep it up.
From Minority Report Has Ad-ded Value:
"It's targeted marketing," said Jeff Boortz, creative director for the 14 spots while at 3 Ring and founder of Philadelphia-based Concrete Pictures. "The individual is only shown ads for products they want to buy. The goal is to promote a relationship between brands and the consumer. I don't think that's a bad thing."
Forgot to mention, I've been running Linux since the 1.0 kernel, and I've used Linux as a primary desktop for over five years.
But the Mac... Mail.app filters my junk mail very efficiently. Chimera does tabbed browsing almost as well as Galeon. iCal is young but already extremely cool, letting me keep track of my schedule and tasks. Terminal.app's ANSI colors suck, but it's a good emulator otherwise. Oh, and Fink and XDarwin let me sudo apt-get install gimp and almost anything else I could do on my Linux box.
Oh, yeah, and I can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
I've switched, and I can't see going back.
...is that the mascot for WKRP in Cincinnati was the carp, and their major rival radio station was WPIG.
You've obviously never used the frosty new iBook.
1) You might not enjoy the ergonomics of hacking with a laptop atop your lap, but it works well for lots of folks.
2) As far as battery life goes, you're partly right. If he's running a game that allows the disk to stay spun down for long periods of time, he might be able to stretch the battery out for about half his trip. The original poster doesn't mention it, but he could well have spare batteries.
3) Wake time for a sleeping Mac OS X iBook: less than the time it takes to open it. Go-to-sleep time on a running Mac OS X iBook: about the time it takes to close it. My iBook is only ever asleep or awake; it is never shut down.
4) With the games that people have been recommending, fancy controls don't sound like an issue.
5) The iBook is small enough that with a carry-on at the guy's feet, he ought to be able to rest the iBook on his lap, pull out the carry-on, stuff the iBook in, and have it all zipped up and tidy in about ten seconds, all with his seatbelt on. Have you ever tried to cram a GBA in your pocket with a seatbelt on?
Here are a few links to jog the memory:
Thanks!
Yeah, just as long as we don't get into any infinite recursion, I'm happy.
Who needs the Internet Wayback Machine, when you have Slashdot scooping a story it scooped a year ago!
Oh, that's just great! Well it's a good thing Theo made his periodic table modular, for just this case!
As for Microsoft's opinion that Apple isn't pushing Mac OS X hard enough? Well, that just sounds like a software company's opinion of a hardware company. Apple's shipping machines with Mac OS X as the default OS and has made plenty of announcements about the sunsetting of Classic Mac OS. Apple's money comes from selling machines, so that's all they need to do.
And how does Microsoft intend to "steal Apple's thunder?" By simply by making announcements of its own versions of what Apple has been doing with tremendous success for years. Movie trailers will continue to be in QuickTime format, MPEG-4 is still QuickTime, and Apple will continue to sell 802.11b harware in addition to their robust and easy-to-use software.
If Bill thinks he's going to lead the game, he'd better try to get out in front on a thing or two.
Well, I was pretty sure that Teoma clearly labels the paid results at the top of their results pages, but when I went to confirm, there was no server there! I guess you're right-- they must be on vacation.
When I worked at Circuit City in '93, a buddy and I used to take the AST on one of the display endcaps and boot it off the Slackware boot- and root-disks, just to scare customers. I think we even installed Linux partitions on a few of the machines there (until we reparitioned a Compaq that kept its BIOS management software in a hidden partition-- oops!). We never had a single customer that wasn't completely flummoxed by the non-Windows OS. I'm not sure it would be any different at Wal-Mart in 2002.
Boy, those were the days-- unauthorized Linux installs, playing DOOM over a null modem cable on working hours. Sometimes, I think I miss retail.
2002-07-13 07:45:21 Halo finally coming to Mac OS, Windows (articles,games) (rejected)
Remember back to the summer of '99, before Microsoft bought Bungie, and we were all looking forward to Halo, "Coming soon for Windows and Mac OS"? And then, suddenly, a year later, it changed to Halo, "Coming soon to a platform near you". Well, according to this press release, Halo is finally coming (in a year or so) for Windows and Mac OS.
Notice that Malda posted all this goofy stuff, and then said you could feel free to mail Bates if you have comments? I'd hate to be hosting Jeff's email right now.
Stallman Now Threat To Betty Crocker, Too
Microsoft To Acquire Catholic Church
Falwell Ministries Takes Over TSR, Inc.
RFC 748 - TELNET Randomly-Lose Option
It would be really cool to take the relay blackhole list to an extreme, and enhance it with something like LaBrea. That way, instead of just immediately refusing to accept spam, freeing the spammer to move on to the next host on the list, a "tarpit" relay would bog the spammer down, maybe slowing their spamstream down to the point that they're sending only one message per hour. If we could get just a small percent of the SMTP servers on the 'net running such a tarpit, that would reduce the amount of spam that we all get. That is, until the spammers rewrite their software to give up on slow relays.
RR orinigally claimed that we'd be getting the same speeds to our home machines as we got to our office machines, which is 10Mb/s Ethernet. I don't think I'm seeing anything close to that at home, but it's certainly faster than $20/mo 56k, so I'm not complaining!
If you ain't got Mojo Nixon then your page could use some fixin'...
The hiring manager told me flat out that there were at least a few other candidates that were much more experienced in Unix than I. He told me he was going to recommend me anyway, though, because he liked my enthusiasm and really felt that he would enjoy working with me.
Before graduation, I had been the sysadmin of my own home Linux box for a few years, and had even spent a year as president of the Miami Unix Collective, a student organization of Unix geeks. But I had no enterprise-level sysadmin experience, period, and certainly no certifications from Big Blue or anything like that.
The thing is, I had a passion for learning. All the Unix I knew, I had crammed into my head in between studying Plato, formal logic, mathematical physics, and organic chemistry. I think the manager was impressed with that, and I know he was impressed with how much I picked up after I started here.
I've been a Unix sysadmin here for five years, and pretty much everybody knows to come to me if they're stumped with something Unix-y. And pretty much everybody comes out of my cube with at least a good direction, if not the answer to their problem.
I script and automate routine stuff that doesn't really need my attention, and I augment systems with GNU and other tools more useful than the ones that come with the systems, so that I can work more efficiently. Folks frequently have to ask me to slow down if they want to be able to repeat what I'm showing them. I think it's because I've really come to think in pipes and regular expressions and such.
That's really the most helpful thing of all-- being able to think Unix.
Forget worrying about the degree. Just show them your stuff, and they'll hire you. If a particular employer won't hire you based on your capabilities, but is insisting on some silly technical degree, then you probably don't want to get stuck with them, anyway.
Best of luck.
clayton hynfield
I had to do a whole bunch of load testing of a web application this morning. I used my Linux box to coordinate the entire thing. From my local command line, I launched a barrage of web requests from some other Linux box, in a dark machine room somewhere, against our unsuspecting web application servers. Meanwhile, I had a script running on this same workstation, collecting utilization statistics from those poor web servers , time-stamping and host-stamping everything. I collected about 300MB of data total in about three hours of testing.
And when the boss came in and asked me to prepare an executive summary to give to her boss's boss in thirty minutes, do you know what I did?
I turned to the XP box sitting next to my Linux workstation and fired up Excel.
Actually, first, I thought about it for something like five seconds. I thought about what I had installed since setting this box up a month ago, and I thought about all the Linux apps I've used over the last eight years. And then I laughed out loud.
I'll tell you, what I roughed out in thirty minutes in Excel wasn't pretty. But in that thirty minutes, I didn't fight with a single interface control, didn't have to re-print eight times because WYSINWYG, didn't have the application crash on me three times, and didn't overrun my deadline. I got graphs printed and on the Director's desk, just as I was asked. No Linux app could let me do that, and don't try to tell me otherwise.
Until someone can make a Linux office suite that'll let me crank out professional documents without any armwrestling, I'll be keeping another box on my desk (although as I type this, I'm replacing my XP machine with a G4 running OS X-- looking forward to sharing /home via NFS!).