Police get knocked. Hospitals, hospices, and (most especially) medical researchers get knocked. Hell, I've even been knocked as a firefighter.
And that's just at the lower levels of public notice. When you get to government leaders, There's no two ways about it. EVERYBODY has something to say about you, usually for ill. It's no fluke that most well-known leaders only get one shot at the job. Bit by bit, most of the voters are alienated in some way or another.
(I remember seeing a pair of articles a while back, one claimed Bush had weakened an anti-tobacco treaty, the other claimed he strengthened it.)
I suspect they're playing the game really smart by having OSS developers do some of the work. They publish their specs, and we'll do the work for free. I say go for it! It's a great way to expose additional benefits of using Open Source.
So what? They're not trying to promote a moral standard, they're just trying to encourage cheap production of useful software. They're having OSS developers do some of the work, to save cost.
And I say, go for it! Anything to get more attention to the benefits of Open Source. Benefits don't have to be limited to the end-user, you know...
I suspect Linux, in terms of developer/tester count, is larger than Microsoft. Think about it. Linux bugs are submitted by anyone who can find them. Microsoft only accepts bug reports from people who pay-per-incident to report them.
Flexibility is primarily usefull to large businesses. It shows you can handle different situations.
Small businesses (read 1-10 people) tend to be a bit more practical. They're specifically interested in whether you can do the particular job they need you to do.
When I was in elementary school (K-6), my schools used Apples and Macs. (Remember that Apple did the whole "charity" thing once, too.) I don't think it had much of an impact on the students. It didn't have any affect on me or anyone I knew. The only reason I'd get a Mac would be to get a piece of that IBM's 970 processor.
Unfortunately, I expect the same will be true of exposure to Linux. Most of the benefits that schools will see in Linux systems will come from the administrative end. To get exposed students interested in running the platform at home, there'll have to be computer clubs and activity groups that take advantage of the benefits of Linux.
Isolated anecdotes aside, Mozilla 1.3 has been very fast, and very stable, on the machines it's been installed on at my college.
I installed it on one machine, and the tutors liked it, and have installed it on the tutor stations. Several of the tutors have mentioned to me that Mozilla has been much faster and reliable than NS4 and IE6.
From the screenshot, it looks like it might be possible to forgo the audio and video, and just read the texts and click on the link. It looks like the web, repackaged to include visual aides.
I expect it'd be great for online tutorials, though.
For my family (the Moorland Maurauders), the cache wasn't even there on one occasion.
Someone stole the cache from "A Walk in the Bland"...The nature center it was located at helped the maintainer find another place for a new cache onsite. (If you're ever in the Grand Rapids, MI area, go to that one. The trails are free to walk on, and it's a great view.)
Perhaps they should use.NET for their next benchmark. Or Java. That'll be the true test of a video card:-)
I'm not sure how much of that's a joke, so here goes:
Using an interpereted platform to gauge a video card's speed is like putting a PCI GeForce4 in a P90, and comparing it to a PCI GeForce4 in a P4 3GHz. You're not testing the power of the card.
To follow your suggestion, they should take some completely round-about technique consisting solely of driver (or DirectX) calls, to accomplish something that could be done quite a bit more cheaply.
As an interesting note, ATI claims their %1.9 boost came from dynamically recognizing inefficient code and optimizing it, which is essentially the driver fixing the same waste that you suggest testing with.
What happens when a developer implements an efficient algorithm, and ATI's drivers can't make any improvements? It's brain(ATI's drivers) over brawn (pure GPU power and memory bandwidth).
I've got a friend who comes in and helps with the Macs, so I see your point on trust. As for geekiness, well, I'm afraid I'm the one of maybe three Unix-adepts among us student tutors. Most of the rest hang around to tutor MS Office and MS Windows.
I happen to work as a tutor in a place like this. I know and love Linux, and I understand you're not messing with the software, but it's still against the rules. That means anyone caught letting you do your thing gets in more trouble than you do. You'd lose your computer access, but I'd lose my job.
Besides, if you're passing me pr0n under the table (which someone undoubtedly has copyrighted), how can I trust you not to tweak the machines, just for fun? I have enough problems with buggy, corrupted, or just plane crash-happy software on PCs, as is. I don't need to risk it happening on a machine type I don't know how to fix.
Slashdot Mirror
Police get knocked. Hospitals, hospices, and (most especially) medical researchers get knocked. Hell, I've even been knocked as a firefighter.
And that's just at the lower levels of public notice. When you get to government leaders, There's no two ways about it. EVERYBODY has something to say about you, usually for ill. It's no fluke that most well-known leaders only get one shot at the job. Bit by bit, most of the voters are alienated in some way or another.
(I remember seeing a pair of articles a while back, one claimed Bush had weakened an anti-tobacco treaty, the other claimed he strengthened it.)
My dad's got a serial printer laying around somewhere. *rustlerustle* ah ha!
Oh...I don't have any ribbons for it. Drat!
I suspect they're playing the game really smart by having OSS developers do some of the work. They publish their specs, and we'll do the work for free. I say go for it! It's a great way to expose additional benefits of using Open Source.
So what? They're not trying to promote a moral standard, they're just trying to encourage cheap production of useful software. They're having OSS developers do some of the work, to save cost.
And I say, go for it! Anything to get more attention to the benefits of Open Source. Benefits don't have to be limited to the end-user, you know...
I don't recall any feature of Linux that completely flopped.
And, when it comes to OS X, I don't think you can use the phrase "over the years"...
I suspect Linux, in terms of developer/tester count, is larger than Microsoft. Think about it. Linux bugs are submitted by anyone who can find them. Microsoft only accepts bug reports from people who pay-per-incident to report them.
Flexibility is primarily usefull to large businesses. It shows you can handle different situations.
Small businesses (read 1-10 people) tend to be a bit more practical. They're specifically interested in whether you can do the particular job they need you to do.
I suspect Google News doesn't keep references to really old stories. A lot of news content sites take them down after they're no longer hot items.
When I was in elementary school (K-6), my schools used Apples and Macs. (Remember that Apple did the whole "charity" thing once, too.) I don't think it had much of an impact on the students. It didn't have any affect on me or anyone I knew. The only reason I'd get a Mac would be to get a piece of that IBM's 970 processor.
Unfortunately, I expect the same will be true of exposure to Linux. Most of the benefits that schools will see in Linux systems will come from the administrative end. To get exposed students interested in running the platform at home, there'll have to be computer clubs and activity groups that take advantage of the benefits of Linux.
Isolated anecdotes aside, Mozilla 1.3 has been very fast, and very stable, on the machines it's been installed on at my college.
I installed it on one machine, and the tutors liked it, and have installed it on the tutor stations. Several of the tutors have mentioned to me that Mozilla has been much faster and reliable than NS4 and IE6.
I can see the title for a new book: A Rich Kid Lives on Slashdot.
It's a building block for children's education. :P
How can I be correct if I'm a beginner? I just learned Perl 5.005 (in a week) out of Programming Perl: 2nd Edition.
:)
Anyway, Perl allows you to do the same thing in just about as many ways as you can imagine. Your is one way. Mine is another.
No, I believe that would be
/but\ instead\ I\ +/
but instead I +
Or if you wanted to be more specific in Perl usage,
I just checked, and no O'Reilly books are available through my college's netLibrary account. Not surprising, unfortunately.
From the screenshot, it looks like it might be possible to forgo the audio and video, and just read the texts and click on the link. It looks like the web, repackaged to include visual aides.
I expect it'd be great for online tutorials, though.
It's not going to really take off until it's much, much easier for the average joe to make the content than it is now.
For my family (the Moorland Maurauders), the cache wasn't even there on one occasion.
Someone stole the cache from "A Walk in the Bland"...The nature center it was located at helped the maintainer find another place for a new cache onsite. (If you're ever in the Grand Rapids, MI area, go to that one. The trails are free to walk on, and it's a great view.)
Perhaps they should use .NET for their next benchmark. Or Java. That'll be the true test of a video card :-)
I'm not sure how much of that's a joke, so here goes:
Using an interpereted platform to gauge a video card's speed is like putting a PCI GeForce4 in a P90, and comparing it to a PCI GeForce4 in a P4 3GHz. You're not testing the power of the card.
To follow your suggestion, they should take some completely round-about technique consisting solely of driver (or DirectX) calls, to accomplish something that could be done quite a bit more cheaply.
As an interesting note, ATI claims their %1.9 boost came from dynamically recognizing inefficient code and optimizing it, which is essentially the driver fixing the same waste that you suggest testing with.
What happens when a developer implements an efficient algorithm, and ATI's drivers can't make any improvements? It's brain(ATI's drivers) over brawn (pure GPU power and memory bandwidth).
I've got a friend who comes in and helps with the Macs, so I see your point on trust. As for geekiness, well, I'm afraid I'm the one of maybe three Unix-adepts among us student tutors. Most of the rest hang around to tutor MS Office and MS Windows.
Sigh...off to help another clueless C++ student.
I think you're confusing your (or my) dream with reality.
First, a girlfriend running Linux? A girlfriend?!
Second, local friends interested in Linux?
I think I'm going to cry...
On PCs, booting from CD is a BIOS function. I don't know if Macs are the same way.
Found one for ya. Here you go.
There's something nice about a girlfriend whose maintenance includes hardware. Erm...that's computer hardware.
I happen to work as a tutor in a place like this. I know and love Linux, and I understand you're not messing with the software, but it's still against the rules. That means anyone caught letting you do your thing gets in more trouble than you do. You'd lose your computer access, but I'd lose my job.
Besides, if you're passing me pr0n under the table (which someone undoubtedly has copyrighted), how can I trust you not to tweak the machines, just for fun? I have enough problems with buggy, corrupted, or just plane crash-happy software on PCs, as is. I don't need to risk it happening on a machine type I don't know how to fix.