WinXP is rock solid, sure it costs lots of money, has it's issues, has the big evil empire behind it, etc but it's still a great OS that very solid on good hardware. Anyone who says otherwise is just plain naive.
Well, I certainly hoped so as I installed it when win98 finally died. And I must say that my first months of XP "professional" was very tollerable, but then bitrot set in. It's now at the point where it will lock solid in 30-60 minutes of starting it (and the funny thing is that XP wont detect that on the next boot).
It's not hardware, Linux on the same machine is rock solid. Temperature looks nice. The only third party driver is the NVidia one (which I need for TV out). But I run the same driver from the same company under Linux and that works, so that's no excuse. There's been no tweaking or even a lot of software installed, and I even use the evil uptodate software so my machine looks the way MS wants it to look.
So, for me XP has unfortunately turned out to be the same crap that MS products always (IMHO of course) turns out to be.
I'm going to pick an very small nit: While Geheminis is the correct root, in the abbreviation it becomes Geheime. I don't know the proper English terminology for changing nouns like this (since, well, English doesn't do it). So the correct expansion of Gestapo is Geheime Staatspolizei.
Doesn't change the meaning or point of your post one bit. Just so no one will go arround shouting for the Gehemnis Staatspolizei. That would roughly translate to "a secret" state police.
And I assume you already knew about the umbrella organisation that contained the Gestapo the SD (Sicherheits dienst) and the Kriminalpolizei; Reichssicherheitsamt. Translate that and you have: Reich=Realm or homeland, sicherheit=security, amt=department/office, i.e. the Department of homeland security. Nice bit of translation there.:-)
Perhaps he was thinking of "int *i, j" which isn't all that bad in terms of confusion until you started seeing stroustrup's style, which I *hated* from day one of, "int* i" which of course lead to people using, "int* i, j".
Yeah, I never figured out why some people can't get it into their heads that variable declarations in C is an equivalence construct. "int *i" is supposed to be read as "typeof(int) == typeof(*i)". The type on the left is equal to the type of the expression to the right. Since '*' is a pointer deference and '*i' should be of type int, then 'i' can only be a pointer to said int.
To write it "int* i" completely misses the point. That's akin to reading it "int pointer i", which won't work at all when more complex types are involved. Just plain wrong.
It may be argued that this is a back asswards way of specifying types of variables (or typedefs) but that's the way it is. There is actually some method to the madness.
I'm not looking for a Trans-Atlantic pissing contest,
Could have fooled me.
but you're posting on an "Ask Slashdot" topic. If you know something about the topic, then share it. If not, don't.
And what knowledge exactly did you share? Except for the whining? So far I'm way ahead in the knowedge sharing department.
Look, if you really wanted to know what you felt my post was lacking, you could have just politely asked. You, didn't. I still provided you with the information you wanted. You're still bitching. You're quite a piece of work.
Hey, thanks for the tip. I didn't really think that there'd be that much difference within the EU (since that's usually the case) so I never botherd to look.
Too bad I'm already pretty well stocked on batteries, and already invested in a charger that doesn't wear then out as fast.;-)
The comment was going so well, up until the point where you told us we couldn't have the really valuable nugget of information that you seem to be privy to.
"Watch out, there's a model that undercharges! No, I won't tell you which one it is."
Gee, thanks, for sharing.
Well, I just didn't think that slashdot (which is mostly americans) would be all that interested in what model charger sold (to my knowledge) exclusively on the Swedish market failed the test. It was more directed to the Swedes I do know read slashdot, and they (now) know where to get it.
But on the off chance that it's sold there as well it's the "QuickCharger" carried exclusively by the ClasOhlson stores. And they (presumably as a result of the test) don't even carry it any longer. Didn't do you any good now did it? But you're welcome all the same. The intended point for americans being that not all chargers are created equal, caveat emptor. (Incidentally the best ones were: Ansmann Powerline 5 and Friwo Gigabox Exclusiv, both to my knowledge German made.)
That's what makes Slashdot such a wonderful place... So many smart, well-informed people, most of which are perfectly content to simply lord it over your head that they know something you don't.
There's also the ones that expect you to do their own bloody homework for them. I presume Consumer Report (or equivalent) has made a similar test at one time or another, go look it up. My post contained what I thought would be interesting to the general public on the subject. It wasn't a disertation. And if you happen to be interested in my field of study (computer security, esp intrusion detection) then my results (knock on wood) will be available in the form of a disertation. I'll still probably know more about that than you, but not for lack of providing you with the information.
With NiMH AA batteries costing just slightly more than the alkaline versions, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend $100 or more on a charger if that's all you're going to use it for.
If only that was true here. A good set of NiMH here in Sweden will set you back at least ten times as much as a good set of alkalines. The $50 charger I bought is only about 5 sets of four AAs. As I said, I really don't know the American market.
If you can live with the long recharge time there's really no point in spending the money on a fancy charger.
Well, with considerably more expensive batteries, it doesn't make as much sense having that much money tied up in batteries as you are going to have to have with the day long charging times.
Besides, I'm a geek God damn it! Cost effectiveness doesn't always make it to the top of my list. "-deltaV because it's the right way to do it!" or "-deltaV, because that's how engineers want it!";-)
I just picked up a 1 hour charger which probably cuts down the battery life significantly, but damn is it convenient. I throw them in the -deltaV charger when I have the time, but if I need to Trim My beard, load up the Digital Camera, charge up my CD player, reload my PDA, and charge up my Voice recorder I definitely enjoy the 1 hour charging.
But that's why you want the more expensive (-deltaV) charger; it'll charge fast and not wear out your batteries. As someone else has pointed out if you can live with the long recharging times a trickle charger can be more (cost) effective.
I use NiMH batteries for my wireless mouse, and my camera. Got a simple charger over at radioshack, and it works quite well.
About chargers, understand that there are two types out there; timer controlled and -deltaV controled.
You want the -deltaV controlled, which monitor the voltage on the battery to sense when they're fully charged. The timer controlled chargers, will overcharge the battery, and nothing kills batteries like overcharging.
Now it turns out that for low amp applications, even a simple charger will get enough performance out of the batteries, but for more serious applications such as digital camera, a real charger could tripple the number of cycles you'll get out of the batteries.
Also, watch out for 'micro processor controlled.' While all -deltaV chargers will have that on them somewhere, it may also mean timer controlled (as in there's a micro processor keeping time somewhere).
There was a good test this spring in the Swedish equivalent of Consumer report, but unfortunately it's in Swedish (and you have to be a subscriber). The noteworthy point was that not all -deltaV chargers are created equal, one undercharged, so you may want to check around. Expect to pay serious money for a serious charger. The good ones in the test were $100-$200 in Sweden, you'd pay perhaps 50%-75% of that in the US (I don't really know the battery charger market).
P.S. Use NiMH. Better for you, and no memoy effect. With a -deltaV charger you can easily top them up if you've had them on the shelf for a while (they'll lose their charge in a couple of months when stored).
Re:Has anybody tried it yet?
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Kroupware Komplete
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· Score: 2, Informative
No true patriot would ever use this stuff. Do you really want your kids world to be full of words like "Erfrakon" and "Klarälvdalens Datakonsult"?
Even though the rest of your post is absolute rubbish, let's at least get our biggotry straight; "Klarälvens Datakonsult" is a Swedish company, not German.
And even though we're not exactly an ally, Sweden and the US have never been at war either. In fact Sweden's hardly been at war since the founding of the US (there's the tiff with the Russians in 1809 but that's about it).
> The UK, Switzerland and Japan are way more Socialist than the US,
True. Also Australia (and it's quite nicely done, too).
Don't forget those of us here in the cold north, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Way more socialist (democratic) than any of the above, and doing better than most of them. The US, certainly in any case.
Your McD's example show a lack of understanding of the problem; Rewarding effort worth rewarding... if McD's isn't doing it, get a better job. It's supply and demand your bitchin' about, being the best damn schmoe at burger world doesn't somehow limit the number of schmoes capable of doing the same job just as well.
So, then we're not rewarding effort any longer; we're back to rewarding success. As in "If you're not successful in your current job, get another one."
My point being of course, that under conservatism it is fine and dandy that some people (quite many in fact) who have neither the schooling nor money nor mental capacity to "get that better job" should remain dirt poor and without even the hope of being able to better themselves, no matter how hard they work. Too many people know how to perform the task they're performing, so why pay any of them anything, right?
Because it's all about the holy incentive, circumstances be damned.
I'm a hardcore conservative, and I'm not sure how much I agree with this definition. To my way of thinking, it's not a matter of "rewarding the strong". It's a matter of incentive --- if people are going to be taken care of no matter whether or not they do any useful work, they simply aren't likely to do any useful work.
Yeah, if the young Finnish university student hadn't been paid good money while hacking away at his operating system implementation where would we be today?
Or if RMS hadn't been given cold hard cash as a reward for his hacking gcc, gdb and the GPL. None of those would have seen the light of day either.
Or how about the people with the highest grades in university (same here and in the US) earning more than their less successful brethren going in to research and accepting a position with the university instead of with industry.
See where this line of reasoning is going? There are other motivations besides "capitalist" rewards. These motivations are often stronger than solely pecuniary rewards can incite. I need only look around my CS department; these are the kinds of people that industry couldn't afford to pay for, only the university gets away with it, paying a lot less.
It's more a matter of rewarding effort than of rewarding strength.
I've seen a guy or two in McDonalds (actually Burger King was worse) in the US who were living proof that this is most certainly not the case. Hint: They put in a lot of effort and didn't have anything to show for it. No American dream for them.
Hmm. Consider this. What if each car was entirely different (like Linux boxen can be). Let's say there are NO standards. Gas pedal could be on the left or right. There could be a gas BUTTON on the steering wheel. Breaks could likewise be accessable via a lever. And that's assuming that you keep the same rough configuration (that is, driver sits on the left side [in the US]). Just imagine if every car you ever had to drive was radically different. THat's what Linux is like.
Well, I dunno. I've heard this argument before and it doesn't quite fly. The reason being that cars are actually not very standardised in their controls. About the only thing you can hope for is the wheel, a break pedal on the left of the accelerator, and the indicator leaver. That's about it. Even the layout of the gears isn't standardised (and that's ignoring the difference between a manual and an automatic). Which IMHO is pretty central. Don't get me started on the wipers, horn, lights, cruise control, radio and the rest of the electrics. Most bets are off then.
Compare that with the computer, the screen looks about the same with overlapping windows, there's a mouse with (typically) a pointer that follows same and a button or two to click, and keyboards are roughly laid out the same (I'm having no trouble typing this under Winblows for example). I'm not sure there's a world of difference between the standardisation between the automobile user interface and the computer user interface.
I'm actually old enough to remember the debate around whether keyboards were too difficult to learn for the average user (now even the CEOs have bitten the bullet and type their own email etc), and don't get me started on the mouse, incredibly difficult to learn. Incidentally, much the same was said about the car, it was much too difficult to learn how to operate.
Both these technologies have matured, but we as users of them have also matured along with them. Their respective idiosyncrasies are today 'no big deal'.
Now, I'm not saying the Mac interface isn't a huge step forward compared to what it replaced. But, and that's a big 'but': It also came at the expense of some power. It is less powerful, but also as a consequence more generally useful.
Now, to take your car analogy further, it's to suggest that the original poster, himeself a confessed formula one race driver (indy car for you americans), would do better to enter the race in a Yugo, since the Yugo sported a human interface that was more familiar to most other users. I'd beg to differ, the race driver need the formula one interface; e.g. paddles for shifting with the hands still on the wheel, and more buttons to fiddle with to control every minute aspect of handling than you'd care to remember.
That's not to say that for the majority of users, just counting them one by one, a Yugo wouldn't make more sense or rather for most MS users a Yugo would make sense, the mactivists would probably prefer the SAAB.
I believe this is the situation in most places (well, not the Gestapo bit, but the bit about counter-espionage being hands-length from law enforcement).
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think that's generally true in much of Europe. It's not in the Nordic countries, that I know for sure. The SÄPO (Security Police) in Sweden are a branch of the Police. BUT, and that's a but, they're separate from the rest of the police, i.e. they don't handle "ordinary" crime.
Yeah, I think most people in the world agree that capitalism works fairly well for running an economy. The USA is the only country I know though where laissez-faire capitalism extends to the legal system!
Actually that's true. We may call ourselves Socialist (Democratic), but the meaning of the word "socialism" has actually drifted in Europe over the years to be mostly equivalent to "liberal" in US parlance. There's a large portion of laisses-faire capitalism (though often with more restraint than in the US). We're keeping that separate from the rest of the government though, for now. Corporations still have to apeal to common (well) sense, when addressing the legal problems of business climate, they can't just buy one that suits them.
In mosts countries, the secret services have nothing to do with law enforcement so a spook coming across a record that showed minor suspicous (in a criminal sense) behaviour, as long as it has no national security implications, would just ignore it.
I'm reminded of the situation with the German Verfassungsschuts, i.e. the counter espionage. Since the Germans have (very) bad experiences with the "Secret State Police" (GeStaPo) breaking down doors in the middle of the night, hauling away people in their pyamases never to be heard from again, the Verfassungsschuts is forbidden by law to have any law enforcement powers. If they need a spie arrested they have to collect the evidence and go to the police like any other citizen would have to.
This suits the Verfassungsschuts just fine, since they reason: "If we're not allowed to thwart crime we cannot be required to report crime whenever we see it, like the police must." Thus enabling them to look the other way when the police wouldn't have been able to.
Of course in the US much of this is moot anyway, since the police there is allowed to commit crimes to investigate crimes (such as posing as a buyer of narcotics) to a much greater degree than is the norm in Europe. (And plea bargains and turning states evidence and whatnot).
I guess all I'm trying to say is, you might be surprised just how intuitive the mouse gestures can be for the idiot masses.
Ah, d*mn, you mean I'm going to actuall have to try them out myself?:-) I've been putting off doing it, but by the sound of your post there's no dealying it further.
Keeping 'customers' happy is a full time job, no?:)
I think it's more an issue of 9 out of 10 people have something better to do with their lives then worry about their browser, so they just don't fucking care.
Well, if the actually use said browser I've had an easy sell with Mozilla's popup blocking. It's been the killer app in getting people to switch. That and the fact that it works just as IE, there's no great hurdle to switch.
Imagine the extreme case, where the US has a 90% trade deficit. Almost everything is made far cheaper overseas, so nearly everyone is unemployed, and there's no tax money to pay unemployment benefit. Sure, everything's cheap, but that doesn't help because nobody has any money to buy stuff.
Except, everything from overseas won't be as cheap, because the value of the dollar will have depreceated with respect to the currencies that you do trade in. All of a sudden americans can't buy stuff so cheaply (because the dollar is worth less) and likewise the value of american goods and services rise, because they're cheaper all of a sudden.
What you point to is exactly what happened in Argentina, but it's important to remember that it could only happen beacuse the Argentinian government had fixed the local currency to the dollar. Keeping it there made the country go completely and utterly broke. The entire economy virtually collapsed. All becuse the population could cheaply import goods that they used to produce locally, which meant that the local producers went bust putting everybody out of their jobs. And all of a sudden nothing could be bought (cheaply or otherwise) by anyone. Having a variable exchange rate would have done a lot to alleviate this.
Now the world bank and the likes don't want countries to have access to currency politics, they like their exchange rates fixed, and would rather see nations go broke. It's not that currency politics is a particularly good instrument, it's rather blunt in fact, but it's a good one to keep in your back pocket for when the shit really hits the fan.
A well-hacked program will be completely invisible to you, as well. Your grep methodology is too simplistic to catch any sort of sophisticated trojan. Even if you were to laboriously go through the code, line by line, you still wouldn't catch anything but the most obvious of hacks/problems.
Here it would be fitting to point the original poster to Ken Thompson's Turing award speech, Reflections on trusting trust.
To quote:
The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.
That's true, but more and more it feels like people are insulting Bush for no reason other than that it is the socially acceptable thing to do.
That may be true. But as a matter of fact the man scares me. No other president of the US in my time has managed to do that, not even Reagan, which I didn't much agree with, so it's not primarily political.
Now, from my perspective across the pond, it seems that Bush really falls short of the qualifications one associates with the precedency(sp?). To be frank, he seems ignorant, not very bright, and lazy. Reading about his previous exploits doesn't do much to change that picture. Add to that his trouble with words, written and spoken (and I don't hold that against him as a man, it's just that I presume that being skilled with words is important when holding such a position; just a being a blind bus driver probably isn't a good idea).
The shortcomings of a president could (and should) be compensated by his advisors, but it seems that he only listens to the ones similar to himself. Just look at the debacle made by the secretary of war (sorry, you insist on still calling it "defence") when he decided to dabble in diplomacy, instead of letting the secretary of state handle it.
You don't really have experience with inherited heads of state, but take it from those of us who do: Bush exhibits many of the traits of king that shouldn't have been. A mediocre man finding himself in circumstances that demands excelence. We had our share of those, had to violently overthrow a few, until we wised up, had the socialist (democratic) revolution, and either threw them all out, or stripped them of all but purely ornamentary functions. (Well, the British never saw the light, but that's their loss).
Now I guess it could be worse, he could be all that he is and ambitious instead of lazy, which would be even more dangerous...
Now, I don't actually have a lot against americans as people, you have your charms and anoyances as do most. And given how your elections are run (and who pays for them) I'm not even sure I can blame you for electing him, but you could have ended up with a lot better man for the post of US ambasador to the world.
I'll try that. What I'm leaning towards is a bad sector on my hard disk.
Also, you sure it's the running time (in weeks I mean)? Could be heat if the usage scenario differs. Heat can be tricky sometimes, especially with laptops.
I don't know if the smaller IBM disks support S.M.A.R.T, but if they do checking out what it says (if you suspect the disk) could also be worth a try (there's a daemon for Linux). It doesn't catch all (esp. intermittent) problems, but it's better than nothing.
The problem you are describing (something getting messed up after a few weeks of running it) is something I have never seen in Linux on any hardware.
I can only second that. I've experienced serious bit-rot on "that other operating system", still does with XP, but never Linux. The only time I've even come close was when the disk filled up on an RH 7.2 system (from misconfigured logs) but that wasn't that hard to understand. Could be hardware as the previous poster said, but I doubt it's the OS.
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Well, I certainly hoped so as I installed it when win98 finally died. And I must say that my first months of XP "professional" was very tollerable, but then bitrot set in. It's now at the point where it will lock solid in 30-60 minutes of starting it (and the funny thing is that XP wont detect that on the next boot).
It's not hardware, Linux on the same machine is rock solid. Temperature looks nice. The only third party driver is the NVidia one (which I need for TV out). But I run the same driver from the same company under Linux and that works, so that's no excuse. There's been no tweaking or even a lot of software installed, and I even use the evil uptodate software so my machine looks the way MS wants it to look.
So, for me XP has unfortunately turned out to be the same crap that MS products always (IMHO of course) turns out to be.
I'm going to pick an very small nit: While Geheminis is the correct root, in the abbreviation it becomes Geheime. I don't know the proper English terminology for changing nouns like this (since, well, English doesn't do it). So the correct expansion of Gestapo is Geheime Staatspolizei.
Doesn't change the meaning or point of your post one bit. Just so no one will go arround shouting for the Gehemnis Staatspolizei. That would roughly translate to "a secret" state police.
And I assume you already knew about the umbrella organisation that contained the Gestapo the SD (Sicherheits dienst) and the Kriminalpolizei; Reichssicherheitsamt. Translate that and you have: Reich=Realm or homeland, sicherheit=security, amt=department/office, i.e. the Department of homeland security. Nice bit of translation there. :-)
Yeah, I never figured out why some people can't get it into their heads that variable declarations in C is an equivalence construct. "int *i" is supposed to be read as "typeof(int) == typeof(*i)". The type on the left is equal to the type of the expression to the right. Since '*' is a pointer deference and '*i' should be of type int, then 'i' can only be a pointer to said int.
To write it "int* i" completely misses the point. That's akin to reading it "int pointer i", which won't work at all when more complex types are involved. Just plain wrong.
It may be argued that this is a back asswards way of specifying types of variables (or typedefs) but that's the way it is. There is actually some method to the madness.
Could have fooled me.
And what knowledge exactly did you share? Except for the whining? So far I'm way ahead in the knowedge sharing department.
Look, if you really wanted to know what you felt my post was lacking, you could have just politely asked. You, didn't. I still provided you with the information you wanted. You're still bitching. You're quite a piece of work.
Hey, thanks for the tip. I didn't really think that there'd be that much difference within the EU (since that's usually the case) so I never botherd to look.
Too bad I'm already pretty well stocked on batteries, and already invested in a charger that doesn't wear then out as fast. ;-)
Well, I just didn't think that slashdot (which is mostly americans) would be all that interested in what model charger sold (to my knowledge) exclusively on the Swedish market failed the test. It was more directed to the Swedes I do know read slashdot, and they (now) know where to get it.
But on the off chance that it's sold there as well it's the "QuickCharger" carried exclusively by the ClasOhlson stores. And they (presumably as a result of the test) don't even carry it any longer. Didn't do you any good now did it? But you're welcome all the same. The intended point for americans being that not all chargers are created equal, caveat emptor. (Incidentally the best ones were: Ansmann Powerline 5 and Friwo Gigabox Exclusiv, both to my knowledge German made.)
There's also the ones that expect you to do their own bloody homework for them. I presume Consumer Report (or equivalent) has made a similar test at one time or another, go look it up. My post contained what I thought would be interesting to the general public on the subject. It wasn't a disertation. And if you happen to be interested in my field of study (computer security, esp intrusion detection) then my results (knock on wood) will be available in the form of a disertation. I'll still probably know more about that than you, but not for lack of providing you with the information.
If only that was true here. A good set of NiMH here in Sweden will set you back at least ten times as much as a good set of alkalines. The $50 charger I bought is only about 5 sets of four AAs. As I said, I really don't know the American market.
Well, with considerably more expensive batteries, it doesn't make as much sense having that much money tied up in batteries as you are going to have to have with the day long charging times.
Besides, I'm a geek God damn it! Cost effectiveness doesn't always make it to the top of my list. "-deltaV because it's the right way to do it!" or "-deltaV, because that's how engineers want it!" ;-)
But that's why you want the more expensive (-deltaV) charger; it'll charge fast and not wear out your batteries. As someone else has pointed out if you can live with the long recharging times a trickle charger can be more (cost) effective.
About chargers, understand that there are two types out there; timer controlled and -deltaV controled.
You want the -deltaV controlled, which monitor the voltage on the battery to sense when they're fully charged. The timer controlled chargers, will overcharge the battery, and nothing kills batteries like overcharging.
Now it turns out that for low amp applications, even a simple charger will get enough performance out of the batteries, but for more serious applications such as digital camera, a real charger could tripple the number of cycles you'll get out of the batteries.
Also, watch out for 'micro processor controlled.' While all -deltaV chargers will have that on them somewhere, it may also mean timer controlled (as in there's a micro processor keeping time somewhere).
There was a good test this spring in the Swedish equivalent of Consumer report, but unfortunately it's in Swedish (and you have to be a subscriber). The noteworthy point was that not all -deltaV chargers are created equal, one undercharged, so you may want to check around. Expect to pay serious money for a serious charger. The good ones in the test were $100-$200 in Sweden, you'd pay perhaps 50%-75% of that in the US (I don't really know the battery charger market).
P.S. Use NiMH. Better for you, and no memoy effect. With a -deltaV charger you can easily top them up if you've had them on the shelf for a while (they'll lose their charge in a couple of months when stored).
Even though the rest of your post is absolute rubbish, let's at least get our biggotry straight; "Klarälvens Datakonsult" is a Swedish company, not German.
And even though we're not exactly an ally, Sweden and the US have never been at war either. In fact Sweden's hardly been at war since the founding of the US (there's the tiff with the Russians in 1809 but that's about it).
Don't forget those of us here in the cold north, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Way more socialist (democratic) than any of the above, and doing better than most of them. The US, certainly in any case.
So, then we're not rewarding effort any longer; we're back to rewarding success. As in "If you're not successful in your current job, get another one."
My point being of course, that under conservatism it is fine and dandy that some people (quite many in fact) who have neither the schooling nor money nor mental capacity to "get that better job" should remain dirt poor and without even the hope of being able to better themselves, no matter how hard they work. Too many people know how to perform the task they're performing, so why pay any of them anything, right?
Because it's all about the holy incentive, circumstances be damned.
Yeah, if the young Finnish university student hadn't been paid good money while hacking away at his operating system implementation where would we be today?
Or if RMS hadn't been given cold hard cash as a reward for his hacking gcc, gdb and the GPL. None of those would have seen the light of day either.
Or how about the people with the highest grades in university (same here and in the US) earning more than their less successful brethren going in to research and accepting a position with the university instead of with industry.
See where this line of reasoning is going? There are other motivations besides "capitalist" rewards. These motivations are often stronger than solely pecuniary rewards can incite. I need only look around my CS department; these are the kinds of people that industry couldn't afford to pay for, only the university gets away with it, paying a lot less.
I've seen a guy or two in McDonalds (actually Burger King was worse) in the US who were living proof that this is most certainly not the case. Hint: They put in a lot of effort and didn't have anything to show for it. No American dream for them.
Well, I dunno. I've heard this argument before and it doesn't quite fly. The reason being that cars are actually not very standardised in their controls. About the only thing you can hope for is the wheel, a break pedal on the left of the accelerator, and the indicator leaver. That's about it. Even the layout of the gears isn't standardised (and that's ignoring the difference between a manual and an automatic). Which IMHO is pretty central. Don't get me started on the wipers, horn, lights, cruise control, radio and the rest of the electrics. Most bets are off then.
Compare that with the computer, the screen looks about the same with overlapping windows, there's a mouse with (typically) a pointer that follows same and a button or two to click, and keyboards are roughly laid out the same (I'm having no trouble typing this under Winblows for example). I'm not sure there's a world of difference between the standardisation between the automobile user interface and the computer user interface.
I'm actually old enough to remember the debate around whether keyboards were too difficult to learn for the average user (now even the CEOs have bitten the bullet and type their own email etc), and don't get me started on the mouse, incredibly difficult to learn. Incidentally, much the same was said about the car, it was much too difficult to learn how to operate.
Both these technologies have matured, but we as users of them have also matured along with them. Their respective idiosyncrasies are today 'no big deal'.
Now, I'm not saying the Mac interface isn't a huge step forward compared to what it replaced. But, and that's a big 'but': It also came at the expense of some power. It is less powerful, but also as a consequence more generally useful.
Now, to take your car analogy further, it's to suggest that the original poster, himeself a confessed formula one race driver (indy car for you americans), would do better to enter the race in a Yugo, since the Yugo sported a human interface that was more familiar to most other users. I'd beg to differ, the race driver need the formula one interface; e.g. paddles for shifting with the hands still on the wheel, and more buttons to fiddle with to control every minute aspect of handling than you'd care to remember.
That's not to say that for the majority of users, just counting them one by one, a Yugo wouldn't make more sense or rather for most MS users a Yugo would make sense, the mactivists would probably prefer the SAAB.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think that's generally true in much of Europe. It's not in the Nordic countries, that I know for sure. The SÄPO (Security Police) in Sweden are a branch of the Police. BUT, and that's a but, they're separate from the rest of the police, i.e. they don't handle "ordinary" crime.
Actually that's true. We may call ourselves Socialist (Democratic), but the meaning of the word "socialism" has actually drifted in Europe over the years to be mostly equivalent to "liberal" in US parlance. There's a large portion of laisses-faire capitalism (though often with more restraint than in the US). We're keeping that separate from the rest of the government though, for now. Corporations still have to apeal to common (well) sense, when addressing the legal problems of business climate, they can't just buy one that suits them.
That'll probably (and lamentably) change though.
I'm reminded of the situation with the German Verfassungsschuts, i.e. the counter espionage. Since the Germans have (very) bad experiences with the "Secret State Police" (GeStaPo) breaking down doors in the middle of the night, hauling away people in their pyamases never to be heard from again, the Verfassungsschuts is forbidden by law to have any law enforcement powers. If they need a spie arrested they have to collect the evidence and go to the police like any other citizen would have to.
This suits the Verfassungsschuts just fine, since they reason: "If we're not allowed to thwart crime we cannot be required to report crime whenever we see it, like the police must." Thus enabling them to look the other way when the police wouldn't have been able to.
Of course in the US much of this is moot anyway, since the police there is allowed to commit crimes to investigate crimes (such as posing as a buyer of narcotics) to a much greater degree than is the norm in Europe. (And plea bargains and turning states evidence and whatnot).
Ah, d*mn, you mean I'm going to actuall have to try them out myself? :-) I've been putting off doing it, but by the sound of your post there's no dealying it further.
Amen! :-)
It seems your "customers" are more tech savy than mine. ;-)
Well, if the actually use said browser I've had an easy sell with Mozilla's popup blocking. It's been the killer app in getting people to switch. That and the fact that it works just as IE, there's no great hurdle to switch.
Except, everything from overseas won't be as cheap, because the value of the dollar will have depreceated with respect to the currencies that you do trade in. All of a sudden americans can't buy stuff so cheaply (because the dollar is worth less) and likewise the value of american goods and services rise, because they're cheaper all of a sudden.
What you point to is exactly what happened in Argentina, but it's important to remember that it could only happen beacuse the Argentinian government had fixed the local currency to the dollar. Keeping it there made the country go completely and utterly broke. The entire economy virtually collapsed. All becuse the population could cheaply import goods that they used to produce locally, which meant that the local producers went bust putting everybody out of their jobs. And all of a sudden nothing could be bought (cheaply or otherwise) by anyone. Having a variable exchange rate would have done a lot to alleviate this.
Now the world bank and the likes don't want countries to have access to currency politics, they like their exchange rates fixed, and would rather see nations go broke. It's not that currency politics is a particularly good instrument, it's rather blunt in fact, but it's a good one to keep in your back pocket for when the shit really hits the fan.
Here it would be fitting to point the original poster to Ken Thompson's Turing award speech, Reflections on trusting trust.
To quote:
Yes, heaven forbid that living in a democracy you actually do something to have them changed...
That may be true. But as a matter of fact the man scares me. No other president of the US in my time has managed to do that, not even Reagan, which I didn't much agree with, so it's not primarily political.
Now, from my perspective across the pond, it seems that Bush really falls short of the qualifications one associates with the precedency(sp?). To be frank, he seems ignorant, not very bright, and lazy. Reading about his previous exploits doesn't do much to change that picture. Add to that his trouble with words, written and spoken (and I don't hold that against him as a man, it's just that I presume that being skilled with words is important when holding such a position; just a being a blind bus driver probably isn't a good idea).
The shortcomings of a president could (and should) be compensated by his advisors, but it seems that he only listens to the ones similar to himself. Just look at the debacle made by the secretary of war (sorry, you insist on still calling it "defence") when he decided to dabble in diplomacy, instead of letting the secretary of state handle it.
You don't really have experience with inherited heads of state, but take it from those of us who do: Bush exhibits many of the traits of king that shouldn't have been. A mediocre man finding himself in circumstances that demands excelence. We had our share of those, had to violently overthrow a few, until we wised up, had the socialist (democratic) revolution, and either threw them all out, or stripped them of all but purely ornamentary functions. (Well, the British never saw the light, but that's their loss).
Now I guess it could be worse, he could be all that he is and ambitious instead of lazy, which would be even more dangerous...
Now, I don't actually have a lot against americans as people, you have your charms and anoyances as do most. And given how your elections are run (and who pays for them) I'm not even sure I can blame you for electing him, but you could have ended up with a lot better man for the post of US ambasador to the world.
Also, you sure it's the running time (in weeks I mean)? Could be heat if the usage scenario differs. Heat can be tricky sometimes, especially with laptops.
I don't know if the smaller IBM disks support S.M.A.R.T, but if they do checking out what it says (if you suspect the disk) could also be worth a try (there's a daemon for Linux). It doesn't catch all (esp. intermittent) problems, but it's better than nothing.
I can only second that. I've experienced serious bit-rot on "that other operating system", still does with XP, but never Linux. The only time I've even come close was when the disk filled up on an RH 7.2 system (from misconfigured logs) but that wasn't that hard to understand. Could be hardware as the previous poster said, but I doubt it's the OS.