Sorry to be harsh, but get with the times. Computing these days is vastly more complex then back in the "good old days". Your 386 couldn't even play an mp3 without pegging the CPU, let alone a flash video containing one.
do you know what "data entry" is ? it's pretty much reading something from a sheet of paper (like a form filled by hand) and typing it. i did that on my first job ever on a PC-XT runing MUMPS. after sometime, it gets so mechanic you don't even look at the screen anymore. and who gives a f**k if the CPU can't play MP3s ? if you want to listen music on the job, buy an iPod. data entry can be done on a dumb terminal, for cry out loud. and it's usually quicker an less distracting using a keyboard only, text only interface than messing with GUIs. i see this everytime i stop at a gas station. when it's time to pay, service is much quicker on the ones where the register machine have a text only interface.
Until they try to bring in new-hires. How long does it take to train somebody who is used to modern office programs to use a DOS program like wordperfect? You think they'll ever get as proficient when what they see isn't what they get (a fad, I bet, right?)
let me guess, less than what it takes to train them on GUIs ? learning curve have nothing to do with the nature of the interface (text or graphical) but how well the particular interface of the appliation was writen. and "what you see is what you get" in most cases is irrelevant. not all data inputed is supposed to be printed. in this age of e-mail, even less. so let the WYSIWYG stuff for who actually needs it.
oh, and out of order, but still relevant,
Did you ever have to contend with botnets, spyware or any of that? And dont say "if we used The Right Way Like When I Was Your Age, we wouldn't have those things because software would be Designed Properly". because if we used "The Right Way" like you, software would take so long to develop and cost so much that we wouldn't even have the fancy systems that even make malware possible.
MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, they are as complex as Windows but are much more resistant than what MS sells. and with the exception of MacOS, they're all free. the diference is in the methodology used to develop them. which is to say, the people who work on them actually _DO_ have methodologies, while microsoft seems to have none.
apple isn't very popular with enterprise for several reasons.
- price: no competition means higher price. with the PC, the cutthroat competition between hardware makers is what keeps price down. - openess: the PC is an open architecture, you can choose your box from any manufacturer. even apple recognized this as an advantage and moved to intel/PC arch. - relationship with developers: say what you want, but working in a large IT shop i know several programers who all agree that MS treats developers a whole lot better than apple. see the strangle hold they keep over that iPhone store. - availability of software: the PC was created by IBM with a focus on business. the Mac wasn't. a huge library of corporate software made the diference on DOS days. the previous item does it today.
and you didn't get GP's point. emulation and virtualization, either in hardware or software helps a lot. and MS is not a newbie on this. in the early days of the transition from DOS to windows 3.0, the version for 80286 PC/ATs couldn't multitaks DOS apps. if you opened more than one DOS app, the one in the background would freeze, but in a 80386 you could multitask DOS apps because the 386 introduced hardware based "real mode" VMs. heck, you can run a binary compiled on an S/360 on a current version of Z/OS running in the latest state-of-the-art IBM mainframe.
apple's several transitions, m68k -> PPC -> intel (hardware) and Mac OS classic -> Mac OS X pretty much afected some few specialized (read: badly written) software. nothing that caused widespread problems.
it can be done, and is only the stuborness of the redmond guys that prevents them from doing it.
At just a moment when the internet at large needs to standardize on secure mechanisms, he has to gratuitously add another potential standard to the mix, increasing the difficulty of getting anything done.
that's because he's an egomaniac who'll not be happy until the internet becomes DJBnet, all based on DJB/IP, with DJBDNS, DJBML and the like
it's a baiting scam. first they sell a couple million psystars with OSX, then when justice says all of those copies must be wiped from the hardrives and returned to apple, owners will have to replace the OS with vista.
they annoy apple senselessly AND cash in a couple million sales. win-win for redmond
a friend of mine owns a small architecture office, he got some nastygrams from ABES (brasilian association of software companies, the local branch of BSA), so he went shopping. since he's still stuck with windows because of autocad (the standard in his field), he bought a bunch of licenses for XP on the grey market, but instead of buying MS office, he went with openoffice.
none of his employees noticed the change. they tought it was a new version of MS office, not a completely different software from a diffenrent maker.
now he's trying some alternative, cheaper, cad package that have good compatibility with autocad's.DWG format.
businesses don't have any special attachment to software (that's a geek stuff), instead, they have a vital attachment to DATA!!! as long as the date is readable and usefull, they'll use whatever hardware/OS/software combination that provides the best value for the cash.
I mean, I'm all about open source but nobody developing or promoting proprietary software? What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments? What about gaming?
considering that certain pieces of software can reveal details about a company's business model, this makes sense. keeping the software proprietary helps keeping competitors blinded.
specialized proprietary software is a neccessity. now, infrastructure software (operating systems specially) should be open source thou.
would be better to redirect to a file, then another terminal/virtual console ocasionaly do a "tail -f" to see how things are going. this way you don't lose the output needed to find why things went wrong
there were no black helicopters, but there was the USS forrestal with a complement of destroyers and tankers on brasilian shore to support the coup in 1964.
this was known as operation "brother sam". it's recorded on govt. files in brasilia.
because you didn't visit argentina during late 70s or early 80s when our neighbors (well, we too, and ALL the rest of south america) were under a ruthless dictatorship that used to load anyone they didn't like into C-130s and drop them in the midle of the ocean.
BTW, that regime ? sponsored by the US, with CIA's planning. as were all the dictatorships in the continent.
my hand-built kernel goes from tapping "enter" on grub's menu to a login prompt in 30s flat, including running all the init scripts. a few seconds to login and type "startx" and i think i'm on window maker's screen in less than 40s.
if i shave some more stuff from the init proccess i think i can be on wmaker in 30 seconds after grub.
just atended a seminar about solaris LDOMs at the office. with LDOMs (which only run on niagara T1 and T2 CPUS) you can assign a whole PCI bus to a single guest OS in such way that the guest has full control of that bus, which implies no performance penalty if that bus have a couple of HBAs to connect it to a storage/SAN.
the sun guy at the seminar (same instructor that ran the solaris 10 administration course I took last year) made it very clear that the kind of hardware backed virtualization provided by LDOMs is the second best for high I/O apps, losing only for hardware partitioning, and it's way ahead of the kind of full software virtualization provided by vmware, virtual pc or virtual box.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. OS/2 was an *excellent* operating system. I admit that the 1.x versions were lacking, but that is common for a new OS.
because 1.x was devoloped by, wait for it. wait. microsoft.
Alas, IBM didn't make a ton of deals with hardware manufacturers to practically give them OS/2 in exchange for not allowing any other OS to be sold on the PCs they sold (for obvious reasons--they were competitors to those manufacturers).
I think the real reason is that IBM was a convicted monopoly, and by the time OS/2 2.1 was released this was still fresh on everybody's memory. MS would have cried foul and asked the govt to intervene.
anyway, i miss OS/2 dearly too. if eComstation (consider it as OS/2 warp 5) wasn't so expensive... the company that markets it is about to release version 2. they're current on ECS 2.0RC5, which is available for download. I'll give it a try.
how fitting that this happened near september end.
maybe now i can go back to reading and posting to usenet. i tried a few times during the 90's and early 00's, but the signal-to-noise ratio was so low (so was the speed of my dial-up connection) that i gave up.
seems you know jack shit about physics. if you did, you'd realize that at a constant speed, the engine is just offseting resisting forces.
take a boeing 747-400. the combined thrust of four Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines (one of the available choices for the type) is a maximum of 396,160 lbf, the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft is 875,000 lb. so, how's possible that "much of the engine's power" is used to support the weight if the engines' thrust is less than the total weight ? where does the extra power to counter air drag and turbulence comes from ? specialy if take into account that at cruise speed a 747 doesn't use all the power available ?
the same engine on a car or train would never achieve the same efficiency - AT THE SAME SPEEDS - for the following reasons:
- air resistance is higher on lower altitudes; - drag forces between wheels and surface are bigger that what's needed to keep the aircraft flying; - turbofans are more efficient in high altitudes and high speeds than at lower ones. reasons for that are in this thread (some more correct than others).
the only way to make a land vehicle that's more efficient than a modern jet plane is to put them on tracks (steel-on-steel have less drag than ruber-on-asphalt), power it with electricity and make sure the power comes from a wire instead of heavy, on-board batteries. electric engines are the only thing that beats a turbofan in efficiency.
i work for a fortune 100 company on the IT field. full drive encryption was ordered for all computers, notebook and desktops, to avoid data theft. FDE is even a requirement of one of our costumers. we can't connect to their network with VPN if our drives are not encrypted.
so, if i ever have to go to the US at work, i'll have problems ?
maybe it's time to get a job where i don't risk being sent to gringolandia.
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serious troll is trolling...
take this argument for example:
Sorry to be harsh, but get with the times. Computing these days is vastly more complex then back in the "good old days". Your 386 couldn't even play an mp3 without pegging the CPU, let alone a flash video containing one.
do you know what "data entry" is ? it's pretty much reading something from a sheet of paper (like a form filled by hand) and typing it. i did that on my first job ever on a PC-XT runing MUMPS. after sometime, it gets so mechanic you don't even look at the screen anymore. and who gives a f**k if the CPU can't play MP3s ? if you want to listen music on the job, buy an iPod. data entry can be done on a dumb terminal, for cry out loud. and it's usually quicker an less distracting using a keyboard only, text only interface than messing with GUIs. i see this everytime i stop at a gas station. when it's time to pay, service is much quicker on the ones where the register machine have a text only interface.
Until they try to bring in new-hires. How long does it take to train somebody who is used to modern office programs to use a DOS program like wordperfect? You think they'll ever get as proficient when what they see isn't what they get (a fad, I bet, right?)
let me guess, less than what it takes to train them on GUIs ? learning curve have nothing to do with the nature of the interface (text or graphical) but how well the particular interface of the appliation was writen. and "what you see is what you get" in most cases is irrelevant. not all data inputed is supposed to be printed. in this age of e-mail, even less. so let the WYSIWYG stuff for who actually needs it.
oh, and out of order, but still relevant,
Did you ever have to contend with botnets, spyware or any of that? And dont say "if we used The Right Way Like When I Was Your Age, we wouldn't have those things because software would be Designed Properly". because if we used "The Right Way" like you, software would take so long to develop and cost so much that we wouldn't even have the fancy systems that even make malware possible.
MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, they are as complex as Windows but are much more resistant than what MS sells. and with the exception of MacOS, they're all free. the diference is in the methodology used to develop them. which is to say, the people who work on them actually _DO_ have methodologies, while microsoft seems to have none.
so, well fed already, mr. troll ?
apple isn't very popular with enterprise for several reasons.
- price: no competition means higher price. with the PC, the cutthroat competition between hardware makers is what keeps price down.
- openess: the PC is an open architecture, you can choose your box from any manufacturer. even apple recognized this as an advantage and moved to intel/PC arch.
- relationship with developers: say what you want, but working in a large IT shop i know several programers who all agree that MS treats developers a whole lot better than apple. see the strangle hold they keep over that iPhone store.
- availability of software: the PC was created by IBM with a focus on business. the Mac wasn't. a huge library of corporate software made the diference on DOS days. the previous item does it today.
and you didn't get GP's point. emulation and virtualization, either in hardware or software helps a lot. and MS is not a newbie on this. in the early days of the transition from DOS to windows 3.0, the version for 80286 PC/ATs couldn't multitaks DOS apps. if you opened more than one DOS app, the one in the background would freeze, but in a 80386 you could multitask DOS apps because the 386 introduced hardware based "real mode" VMs. heck, you can run a binary compiled on an S/360 on a current version of Z/OS running in the latest state-of-the-art IBM mainframe.
apple's several transitions, m68k -> PPC -> intel (hardware) and Mac OS classic -> Mac OS X pretty much afected some few specialized (read: badly written) software. nothing that caused widespread problems.
it can be done, and is only the stuborness of the redmond guys that prevents them from doing it.
and this year was the coldest on over a decade, or so i heard.
coincidence ?
global warmin is real. the CAUSE of global warming is debatable.
At just a moment when the internet at large needs to standardize on secure mechanisms, he has to gratuitously add another potential standard to the mix, increasing the difficulty of getting anything done.
that's because he's an egomaniac who'll not be happy until the internet becomes DJBnet, all based on DJB/IP, with DJBDNS, DJBML and the like
it's a baiting scam. first they sell a couple million psystars with OSX, then when justice says all of those copies must be wiped from the hardrives and returned to apple, owners will have to replace the OS with vista.
they annoy apple senselessly AND cash in a couple million sales. win-win for redmond
the codenames AMD is using for the opteron line are all cities that hosts, or used to host, formula 1 grand prixes.
maranelo, sao paulo, magny cours...
nice to see my own city (sao paulo) mentioned in the road map. gotta start saving $$$ to buy me one of those "sao paulo" chips when they get released.
a friend of mine owns a small architecture office, he got some nastygrams from ABES (brasilian association of software companies, the local branch of BSA), so he went shopping. since he's still stuck with windows because of autocad (the standard in his field), he bought a bunch of licenses for XP on the grey market, but instead of buying MS office, he went with openoffice.
none of his employees noticed the change. they tought it was a new version of MS office, not a completely different software from a diffenrent maker.
now he's trying some alternative, cheaper, cad package that have good compatibility with autocad's .DWG format.
businesses don't have any special attachment to software (that's a geek stuff), instead, they have a vital attachment to DATA!!! as long as the date is readable and usefull, they'll use whatever hardware/OS/software combination that provides the best value for the cash.
by your rant, we shouldn't use the terms "set sail", "sailed", etc. for any ship that doesn't actually have a sail, shouldn't we ?
I mean, I'm all about open source but nobody developing or promoting proprietary software? What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments? What about gaming?
considering that certain pieces of software can reveal details about a company's business model, this makes sense. keeping the software proprietary helps keeping competitors blinded.
specialized proprietary software is a neccessity. now, infrastructure software (operating systems specially) should be open source thou.
would be better to redirect to a file, then another terminal/virtual console ocasionaly do a "tail -f" to see how things are going. this way you don't lose the output needed to find why things went wrong
Ubuntu (a foreign language word representing the philosophy behind the distribution and FOSS as a whole)?
and i always tought it meant "can't install debian properly".
living and learning...
it comes with the distro. just add the universe and multiverse repos on apt, then apt-cache search nvidia.
heck, it's even available on vanila debian (wich i reintalled this week. bluetooth wasn't working on ubuntu intrepid) after you add non-free repo.
there were no black helicopters, but there was the USS forrestal with a complement of destroyers and tankers on brasilian shore to support the coup in 1964.
this was known as operation "brother sam". it's recorded on govt. files in brasilia.
because you didn't visit argentina during late 70s or early 80s when our neighbors (well, we too, and ALL the rest of south america) were under a ruthless dictatorship that used to load anyone they didn't like into C-130s and drop them in the midle of the ocean.
BTW, that regime ? sponsored by the US, with CIA's planning. as were all the dictatorships in the continent.
not too far away.
my hand-built kernel goes from tapping "enter" on grub's menu to a login prompt in 30s flat, including running all the init scripts. a few seconds to login and type "startx" and i think i'm on window maker's screen in less than 40s.
if i shave some more stuff from the init proccess i think i can be on wmaker in 30 seconds after grub.
just atended a seminar about solaris LDOMs at the office. with LDOMs (which only run on niagara T1 and T2 CPUS) you can assign a whole PCI bus to a single guest OS in such way that the guest has full control of that bus, which implies no performance penalty if that bus have a couple of HBAs to connect it to a storage/SAN.
the sun guy at the seminar (same instructor that ran the solaris 10 administration course I took last year) made it very clear that the kind of hardware backed virtualization provided by LDOMs is the second best for high I/O apps, losing only for hardware partitioning, and it's way ahead of the kind of full software virtualization provided by vmware, virtual pc or virtual box.
i'd like to buy my own personal mainframe, you insensitive clod...
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. OS/2 was an *excellent* operating system. I admit that the 1.x versions were lacking, but that is common for a new OS.
because 1.x was devoloped by, wait for it. wait. microsoft.
Alas, IBM didn't make a ton of deals with hardware manufacturers to practically give them OS/2 in exchange for not allowing any other OS to be sold on the PCs they sold (for obvious reasons--they were competitors to those manufacturers).
I think the real reason is that IBM was a convicted monopoly, and by the time OS/2 2.1 was released this was still fresh on everybody's memory. MS would have cried foul and asked the govt to intervene.
anyway, i miss OS/2 dearly too. if eComstation (consider it as OS/2 warp 5) wasn't so expensive... the company that markets it is about to release version 2. they're current on ECS 2.0RC5, which is available for download. I'll give it a try.
how fitting that this happened near september end.
maybe now i can go back to reading and posting to usenet. i tried a few times during the 90's and early 00's, but the signal-to-noise ratio was so low (so was the speed of my dial-up connection) that i gave up.
yeah, definetly time to give it a new try.
seems you know jack shit about physics. if you did, you'd realize that at a constant speed, the engine is just offseting resisting forces.
take a boeing 747-400. the combined thrust of four Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines (one of the available choices for the type) is a maximum of 396,160 lbf, the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft is 875,000 lb. so, how's possible that "much of the engine's power" is used to support the weight if the engines' thrust is less than the total weight ? where does the extra power to counter air drag and turbulence comes from ? specialy if take into account that at cruise speed a 747 doesn't use all the power available ?
the same engine on a car or train would never achieve the same efficiency - AT THE SAME SPEEDS - for the following reasons:
- air resistance is higher on lower altitudes;
- drag forces between wheels and surface are bigger that what's needed to keep the aircraft flying;
- turbofans are more efficient in high altitudes and high speeds than at lower ones. reasons for that are in this thread (some more correct than others).
the only way to make a land vehicle that's more efficient than a modern jet plane is to put them on tracks (steel-on-steel have less drag than ruber-on-asphalt), power it with electricity and make sure the power comes from a wire instead of heavy, on-board batteries. electric engines are the only thing that beats a turbofan in efficiency.
i work for a fortune 100 company on the IT field. full drive encryption was ordered for all computers, notebook and desktops, to avoid data theft. FDE is even a requirement of one of our costumers. we can't connect to their network with VPN if our drives are not encrypted.
so, if i ever have to go to the US at work, i'll have problems ?
maybe it's time to get a job where i don't risk being sent to gringolandia.
can you explain to me HOW exactly this thing works ?
I know what each of this stuff does individually, but the don't make sense togheter...
i tried under cygwin and it hosed windows XP so badly i had to power cycle the notebook. evil stuff this.
speaking as a former programer, now working as unix sysadmin, i can say that comic was hardcore pr0n for hardcore coders. you know, the kind of guy that writes code by flipping bits on a disk platter with a magnetized needle
bug #2: works like shit behind a microsoft proxy. loads pages slowly, doesn't load some elements all the way, a mess.