You can't, (or at least you couldn't at the time, not sure about vSphere 5), initiate any vmotions without vcenter, so when you have an esx host with intermittent storage connectivity problems that made your vCenter VM hang, you can't easily vmotion the remaining VM's off of that physical host without vCenter.
You do realize how easy it is to re-register your vCenter VM on another host, right? Once it comes up it'll clean up the "orphaned instance". Just power it off, log into another host directly, browse the datastore, register and boot. Dead simple. I did this in our DR test environment last week when we had vCenter problems and as soon as vCenter connected to all the hosts and realized there was another copy of the VM it just made the appropriate assumption that the one that was powered on was the one I wanted. Voila. Probably quicker than a vMotion:)
Oh, and before you go telling me how you can manipulate photos and videos with a command line; I know you can. I've done it many times... but if you can give me a simple command line that will take a random arbitrary picture, straighten it to a point that it's visually more appealing, fix errors due to chromic aberration, fix red-eye, soften the focus around the eyes to make them pop a little more (a common photog trick) and whiten the teeth a smidgen then I'll start using that for 80% of the picture I manipulate.
* people are lazy, even if they work hard. They want to get more done for less. * people are either stupid or smart. * smart people prefer using the keyboard (less doing and repetition, which is mentally painful) * stupid people prefer using the mouse (less thinking, which hurts their walnuts)
Because, you know; doing photo editing and video editing with a command line is such an improvement and less painful.
How about my observation; people use the right tool for the job at hand until someone shows them a tool that works better. For some things (administering a server) a command line is a huge improvement. For others (the aforementioned video and photo editing) a mouse is better.
You really sound like someone who just doesn't grok the fact that people use computers for a hell of a lot more than serving up web pages. Get over it; computers have grown far beyond that level and while the mouse is not the perfect input method it is a damned good one for a reasonable cost. The command line is also not perfect, and while powerful there are some things it will always struggle to perform as well as the mouse.
Again I guess it depends a lot on your perspective. On a motorcycle the goal is avoidance; avoidance of collisions and situations in which a collision may happen. Motorcycles are far more maneuverable than a car and thus a well trained rider (which SHOULD be most, but I will concede probably isn't) should be able to avoid most problems. I know that in about a decade of riding I have had some minor accidents but that two of them were the result of me avoiding a potentially more hazardous situation (car lost control in front of me and would've flattened me had I not ridden into a field next to the road for example... my accident was only because I lost control of the bike on the ploughed ground).
In a car, accidents are about survivability. That means making use of safety features and as such I am not averse to legislation of seat belts. Also plainly put have you watched what happens when someone slams on the brakes in a car as opposed to a motorcycle? The very way a bike is shaped means that a sudden stop only throws you an inch or so forward. Sudden brake application even in the cheapest cars can throw you into the steering wheel potentially causing a loss of control. Even a slight tip of the back end of a car can send it into a spin that can throw the occupants all over the place and thus causing another loss of control. Simply because of mass, the risk of collateral damage of that situation is significantly increased.
Seat belts are more about the driver maintaining control of their vehicle in a difficult situation. At least to the extent that it's possible.
As an owner of a BMW with this function, I have to say that apart from the first two days when I owned the car, I have never used any of this functionality. Trust me, the novelty wears off really quickly.
I do like the web radio functions though... that is pretty cool. Though truthfully if I am that desperate to read my Facebook/Twitter feeds then I'm far more likely to find a coffee shop to stop at and do it there where I can sip a cappuccino and actually compose meaningful replies.
So... what? You're advocating seatbelts on a motorcycle? Yeah, I can see that being a big win. I have always wanted to have my motorcycle slide out from underneath me just to be dragged down the highway by several hundred pounds of metal and finally crushed against the center median by it. Believe me the last thing you want is to be strapped to a motorcycle!
As for safety gear... yeah. In terms of personal risk I think that motorcycles are a very different beast from cars. Riding a bike takes a level of concentration that cars just don't have, and require a significant acceptance of the risks involved. If a much larger vehicle hits you in a car, you've got a pretty decent chance to survive simply because there's so much of the car around you to protect you; crumple zones and such. On a motorcycle you don't have any of that and for reasons of weight and practicality you can't. As such you accept a certain amount of risk just by going out on your bike and once you've accepted that level of risk, whether you're wearing full gear or not really becomes a question of how much you want to shift the odds a little in favour of your survival. It doesn't matter how much gear you wear though, the odds will never be as high as they are in a car.
For the record, I am a motorcycle rider, and I do wear full gear. We also neighbour a state that doesn't require helmets yet I wear one all the time even when riding there. However, that's a choice I make.
Some Mac users are stuck up and bought into the cult. I am a Mac user, but I'm also an Android smartphone user. I have had iOS devices and my iPhone 3GS still does sterling duty as a portable music box mostly used in my car.
I like the Mac because it's UNIX. I like the Mac because my 13" Macbook Pro is one of the nicest designed and manufactured laptops I've used in the last few years. I like the Mac because most of the time the OS gets the hell out of my way and lets me get my work done. For two years I tried to be a pure Linux user and failed because I spent (in my opinion) far too much time fiddling with the OS to get it to do what I wanted that I got less work done. And this from someone who has come from a background admin'ing AS/400's and Mainframes, through Solaris, HP-UX and even AT&T Unix at one job... now admin'ing VMware, Windows, Linux and still some Solaris stuff here and there (though mostly a storage guy these days).
Don't tar all Mac users with the same brush, mate; I use it because it's what works for me. If it doesn't work for you or you have some political bias against it then power to you... but for my needs I have used plenty of other platforms and returned to the Mac because for me... well... it just works.
However, I will say for the record that I don't for a second buy into the "secure by default" idea. The Mac's security is good, but so is Windows 7's. Pick you poison but in any large codebase there WILL be holes... and with a compelling desire to make money and/or steal ideas there will ALWAYS be malware for any platform.
Wow... the last time I saw such rampant fanboyism is when I badmouthed the original iPad here on Slashdot on the day of release. Of course, every one of my comments was completely on the mark... and this from someone who still has an original iPad that gets used when I take business trips and almost no other time in my life. But I digress.
Seriously? I had to do a doubletake when I read the summary, and had to take a few more when I read the article. I have run an Android phone for over a year now and I am seriously happy with it. It's not failing under the "crushing weight of viruses" any more than my aging but still useful iPhone 3GS is (I use it as an iPod because I bought into the iTunes ecosystem years ago and it happens to integrate beautifully with my car). I install apps on both depending on my utilization and needs, and neither has been unduly burdened with malware. Of course, my Android phone actually tells me what an application wants to do while I install it, thus providing the knowledgeable user some modicum of security. And yes, every app I install I read those and make a decision whether the app is asking for appropriate rights or not. And yes, I've refused some apps because of it. Of course, I AM a knowledgeable user and that kind of security doesn't help Joe Schmoe with his free smartphone with a 2 year contract and no lube... but one of the central tenets of security is that people are the weakest link in any security chain and that will never change.
So far I've found my only complaint with Android is that it fails under the crushing weight of battery technology that can't cash the check the manufacturers of the device wrote. But at least with Android I can have a second battery hanging around that I can swap in at any time... can't do that with an iPhone unless you're a really determined hardware hacker. Yes, I can improve it slightly by turning off all my antennae but then I am running a dumb phone with games on it... I have a smartphone so it can be connected anywhere at any time. Of course, many of the apps I install probably don't help... but that's a choice I make. Because the charging port is completely standard I just took my charger and left it at work; I use my Kindle's charger at home to keep my phone charged at night because really... how often do I need my Kindle?
As a past and current iOS user (sometimes), AND an Android user I find the article FUD. Actually, can I mod it trollbait?
Having grown up in Belfast, I have to say that in the UK we already had this before. They were called the paramilitaries back then.
People don't really realize this, but back during the 70's and 80's the police in Northern Ireland were basically an ineffectual group when it came to dealing with actual street crime. They only dealt with the "big ticket" problems that were usually caused by the paramilitaries fighting among themselves. When it came to dealing with crime on the streets of Belfast it was actually those same paramilitary groups who did most of the meting out of punishments. Yes, they were judge, jury and executioner (sometimes literally) but the reason they did it is because "small time" criminals like burglars and even rapists would otherwise get away with it. I don't support their actions necessarily, but I honestly felt safer in the streets of Belfast at night during the 80's than I did when I moved to London in the early 90's.
Yes, I realize this is not the same situation; they are taking the current police force and privatizing it. What I do think though is that we will just end up with a police force that tends to be focused on the goals of its controlling group which is in turn focused primarily on a small area or a small list of "specially protected resources", which to my mind is not a million miles away from those same paramilitary groups I grew up around. They were focused on a small area and protected those resources they found valuable; others would be ignored or even destroyed just as quickly by those same people.
Truly, I don't think this is a good idea because the opportunities for corruption within a privatized system is so much higher than one that has to accede to a very large central controlling authority (the government). Now, whether the government itself is corrupt... that's a completely different discussion.
I would tend to agree with you, but it was in some ways even worse than that. Anderson Lake was basically a tool for the current part of the story. I counted at least four times throughout the book that his personality completely changed for no better reason than it served that part of the story. And not just "growing" or even being deceitful (which he is)... some of his behaviours were distinctly at odds with established behaviours from earlier in the narrative. It's almost as if the author did four different drafts and while he remained consistent about the technology and world his characters were event driven rather than personality driven.
This was also a problem with other characters in the book, but Anderson Lake was by far the worst. In fact the only characters I found consistent throughout the narrative were Emiko and Hok Seng. Their motivations and mindset were pretty clear but Anderson just seemed to be a convenient avatar for the reader... but not necessarily a good one.
Still, I won't complain. It was one of the better books I've read in the last couple of years and does bear re-reading. I did find the last third of the book a bit bland as the threads that had been started earlier in the book wrapped up in rather predictable fashion, and I would have actually preferred to see fewer of those threads wrapped up and left open either for the reader's imagination or a sequel. As it stood, the book was almost too neat... too self-contained. There was no feeling that the world would continue once the reader left that world... I prefer it when I feel like that world continued to live without me there. With this book I got none of that.
Not if you like to see the sky, watch birds flying around and breathe fresh air. Yeah, I'm just an old-fashioned country boy at heart. Living on a space station sounds as much fun as sailing on a cruise liner over a sea of death, for ever.
the DSG doesn't have a torque converter with constant slip,
Honestly neither do most automatic transmissions these days. The lockup torque converter basically made it moot because in many cases there is a "virtually mechanical" link between the engine and the drivetrain. Modern automatics are often more efficient than a manual in the same application. Whether dual clutch systems like BMW's DCT or VW's DSG are more efficient than automatics... well again that comes down to software rather than the hardware. Yes, a DSG/DCT can be more efficient than a manual but I would say most engineers will tell you that efficiency is about a wash between a well programmed DSG/DCT and a classic torque converter auto.
However, the flip side is that a DSG/DCT has the potential to be much more sporty than a TC auto. In fact, as shown in BMW's application in the 135i it can be both efficient and sporty at the touch of a button. Something I rather enjoy, though admittedly I rarely drive it without having hit the "Sport" button first. A TC auto can't shift like a DCT with rifle-bolt precision (and a smidge of harshness that's inevitable), but a DSG/DCT can drive an awful lot like a TC auto, including long lazy gear changes that are as soft as an automatic precisely by slipping the clutch packs.
Maybe I wasn't clear in my original post, but I was just pointing out that a DSG in and of itself is not an answer to better efficiency. If that's what you want then you're much better off with a CVT or even a conventional TC auto simply because they are both relatively low cost, proven and continually developed to be better with each generation. A dual-clutch is a relatively new thing which is only used in a very small number of applications and thus doesn't get a lot of the development work that goes into the more common solutions.
Your original statement was that a dual clutch is more efficient than a manual. That's true in most applications but not every application. My point was that software has a huge impact in how efficient a dual clutch actually is, and in many applications you'll find dual clutches less efficient than manuals (like in the Audi S4) because of that. Similarly of course a manual can be horribly inefficient depending on how you drive it... I know; I drove manuals for years until I got this baby Bimmer. Though I agree with you in principle, I disagree with the implication that a dual clutch is inherently more efficient than a manual; I would say it depends a lot on the engineer behind the application and the person behind the wheel:)
Economic theory is bunk when it comes to gasoline manufacturers. Supply is irrelevant, and lower demand historically leads to higher prices in the long term though sometimes has led to lower prices in the very short term.
With gasoline we are at the whims of the greed of executives, not supply and demand. Economic theory be damned.
The reality is that if more people drove hybrids, gasoline prices would be much cheaper for everyone and that would accelerate the economy.
I'm not sure what country or planet you must be living on if you sincerely believe this. While normal rules of economics would dictate this is true, the reality is that if more people drove hybrids, then less fuel would be sold. In order to protect their profits and bonuses, the management at the fuel companies would increase not decrease the cost of gasoline. Historically when demand for gasoline drops, price rises. This is what happens when you have a defacto monopoly (or in this case multiple large companies operating in collusion) to control the price of a resource regardless of the actual supply.
Like it or not, in most of the Western world we are not at the whims of the laws of economics but rather at the whims of human greed in the "top 1%". No, I'm not one of the Occupy movement, but I do agree with some things they have been trying to bring attention to.
Not sure I would call out the DSG itself as being a gas mileage saving. That depends a whole hell of a lot still on how it's programmed. Yes, it can get fantastic gas mileage but like an automatic transmission it's more a matter of the final drive ratio as well as the way the shift points have been programmed.
As anecdotal evidence; I have a 2012 BMW 135i with the Dual Clutch Transmission. Basically the same as VW's DSG but with BMW's tuning for performance rather than VW's tuning for efficiency. And with a 3.46:1 final drive it doesn't give you much room for efficiency. However, my car can do 0-60 with launch control in 4.9 according to my G-Tech. Still, for 300hp I still average about 23-24mpg in mixed driving measured by recording my trips to the pump rather than relying on the on board computer (which averages about 1mpg high). Definitely nowhere near hybrid territory, but if I'd wanted a hybrid I would have one. I have the BMW because I wanted it:)
Wow, there's lots here that you need to think about. Some good advice, some not so good. However, here are my experiences from being in this exact situation about 14 years ago;
1. If you seriously want to monetize your creation, consult an attorney. 2. If not, just offer it to your management.
End of story. It's really that simple.
Let me expound on it a little though. You have written an application that by definition is a vertical application: That is, it's been written specifically to combat challenges that you witnessed within your own team, but have not opened the application up to a wider market for comparison. By the very definition of the application you have provided, if your team does not use it then it is useless and then all your time is waste, no? If that's the case, is it not better that people benefit from the code you have created than to let it languish because you are too wrapped up in your own compensation to help... particularly as these are your colleagues and the people who you indirectly rely upon to succeed.
Although I don't know many details about your work situation other than what I have surmised from your posts, I can say this much; you are almost certainly a salaried individual who was hired for your brain. It doesn't matter that the scope of your job description is narrow... if your brain can provide something that the company or your group can benefit from, then whether you like it or not your job does depend at least in part on your willingness to implement. If all you are going to do is provide solutions within the narrow scope of your job description, then your shelf life in the organization and eventually within IT as a role is going to be pretty short. I constantly do stuff that's WAY outside my job description. That's why I was hired as a Windows Sysadmin and nowadays manage storage, infrastructure, routers and so on... and really only touch on Windows as a sideline. If I had chosen to remain within my job description then I would probably right now be fixing a print server we currently have going spastic in Mississauga, Canada instead of typing this response; we have a Windows sysadmin for that job now and she is doing a great job and will escalate to me if the problem goes beyond her capabilities. However, I have this morning drunk my coffee, fixed some storage replication issues and am preparing to run a test in our DR environment later this afternoon precisely because I extended myself beyond my original job description and did something that I found more interesting/better.
Fourteen years ago I was in the exact situation you're in now. I was working for a company that somewhat viewed IT as a necessary evil. As a manufacturing company they weren't really that interested on spending a bunch of money on resources for IT beyond buying us servers (grudgingly) and laptops (which ours were usually the hand-me-downs from upper management). Our helpdesk grew rapidly but our budget did not allow any application to properly manage tickets and thus things were getting missed, forgotten and dropped. And documentation of fixes was atrocious. In my spare time I wrote a pretty damned good helpdesk suite using Perl and MySQL, with a nice web-based front end. It was simple really, but targeted precisely the problems we had as a group. Now, quite different from you I made the choice not to bother trying to monetize the solution. I knew that this vertical application was very targeted, and while I had deliberately written it to be modular and thus flexible and expandable, there was no denying I did it for the benefit of the group I worked in, and thus indirectly myself. I knew by writing this I would gain only mindshare within the organization, but no money.
I talked to my manager and reached an agreement with him. Since it was developed on my own time I still owned the source code, but the actual implementation within the company belonged to the company but with a reciprocal agreement to allow me to merge modifications into my core source tree. That meant t
The big problem I see with WP7 is that it forces the user into its paradigm in order to use it. How is that a problem? Well, let's look at the facts shall we?
WP6.5 was the "big thing". It succeeded because it was Windows and had a Corporate lock-in that was extremely successful. I mean, you look at most large corporations and they are big on using Exchange... right there was all the evidence most people needed to get a Windows Phone. Its paradigm was about the same as the desktop metaphor that Microsoft had ridden since the 80's and thus people were accustomed to it.
Along came iPhone. Now here was something different; it's well known that the way the iOS interface became developed was that Apple looked at the way people wanted to work and the way non-technical people functioned within a touch-screen based environment. Apple looked at the people first and designed the phone around that, though with a touch of Steve Jobs arrogance thrown in for good measure. Of course, one of Jobs' big assets was that he did see the people part of the equation very clearly, and some of the edicts that he passed down to his phone developers, like no stylus, led to what the iPhone became. It is a phone that fits with what people want to do with a mobile device, and an interface that's designed around the flow of the way people work on a phone and thus fits in with the way people think about a phone. Yes, in some ways it's still tied to the desktop metaphor because that's what became intensely popular within computing.
Android then came along and rode on Apple's coat-tails. Like it or not a lot of what Android has become was because of iOS and its design paradigm. The pre-iOS versions of Android were very much a Blackberry clone with some Palm ideas thrown in for good measure. The only thing that Android really bought to the table was the open platform idea which really only appeals to technical people. However, precisely because of that it attracted developers. That and the fact that development is mostly Java based, and seriously; during the boom years of 1995 through even the late 00's (08 or so) there were millions of people who learned Java because it was an extremely marketable skill and could attract a decent wage. Even with the dot com bust, Java continued to gain popularity because of its ties to "the web". Particularly since the economic meltdown, this has led to a huge number of Java developers out of work who are now finding work either working for themselves or some other corporation developing apps for Android devices. This is not going to disappear or slow down any time soon because it has gained enough traction that it's right up there with iOS in terms of market and mind share.
Now along comes WP7. Late to the game but bringing a new paradigm; Metro. But the fundamental flaw of Metro is that although it does do a great job of integrating social networks into a single "pane of glass" (which was ostensibly the point of Metro), that's not the way people think. It's also at odds with the way most of the social network providers WANT you to think; they want you to know you're communicating with people via Facebook, or Meebo, or LinkedIn or whatever. They don't want that abstraction... they don't want Microsoft to be the gatekeeper to all of your contacts because it destroys mind share. As a result, the Facebook integration for example looks great on the first pane but as soon as you go into anything to do anything, Facebook has to scream out "I am here!" at the top of its lungs to make sure you know what's happening. This breaks the flow of the entire interface and results in users going right back to the desktop metaphor idea that they had before; that they have just pushed a live button to launch an app. In other words precisely what Metro was designed to abstract.
The problem then becomes that WP7 is inconsistent in its flow. Users can't grok the Metro paradigm because even Metro is inconsistent in the way it presents it. And this is not a fault of Metro but rather a fault of the way that the
Hardly high-end. It's slightly larger in interior room than a new 5-series at the same price as a base 5'er once you add some options. Few people buy these cars without adding a few toys.
By US standards we are all communists in Europe (minus that rainy island)
Ha! Having lived in the US for the last 15 years I can say that the attitude here is that the UK is as communist as the rest of Europe if not more so. I mean, they have SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE! Not to mention their government forces them all to take twice as much time off work as we in this more civilized country. How can one live under such an awful regime?
Yeah... BTW for the record I'm British, and if anything I find myself looking wistfully at that "totalitarian regime" and wondering how this country got so messed up. Then I tend to look at the people around me and realize that they are the reason. Maybe it's just because I settled in the Midwest which is predominantly "red state" areas. That means they're primarily Republican and therefore significantly opposed to anything that smells of "communism". It doesn't help that the education system here is in such a dire state that most people couldn't tell you what the difference is between socialism and communism, and the sad thing is they are in such denial about it that they don't want to know.
A man when taught to fish will only eat for life if he is willing to put that knowledge to use.
As an aside; Moto is just about to release the Atrix 2 which does apparently make it faster with more memory, thus fixing the couple of issues I do have with the Atrix. However, I don't know how long it'll be before all these hacks are available... I figure not long given XDA-Developers turnaround time on this stuff:)
My setup is not a tablet, but it's very portable and flexible and runs a pretty much fully fledged Ubuntu install any time I want to. It also keeps the number of gadgets I carry around and thus synchronize to a minimum.
The basic part of my setup is a Motorola Atrix (http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-ATRIX-US-EN) with the Lapdock (http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/accessory-details/?LOSGId=accessoryBucket&q_sku=sku5100298#fbid=GYMvsMM9JQx). To that I then used Webtop2SD (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1119555) to move my Webtop environment to my 16GB SD card on its own dedicated 4GB partition and then did the work to create a full Ubuntu on Webtop (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1000316). Of course, I had to root the phone but that was dead easy... in fact all of the above steps I did in about an hour while sitting at my dining room table drinking my coffee on a Saturday morning.
It's not perfect... I'll admit that. It's slow compared to a laptop but in terms of functionality it's excellent. I can apt-get or run synaptic from my command line, and I added a small Gnome toolbar on the left side of the screen that contains my standard Gnome menu. I can surf the web, write articles in OpenOffice and I am not at the mercy of WiFi in order to be able to access the Internet. The Lapdock contains a battery that charges the phone while it's docked, and so I have gotten several hours of work done without needing to recharge either, and by the time I was done my phone was fully charged anyway.
The beauty part was that I was able to then go home and slap my phone into my Multimedia Dock (http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Multimedia-Dock-ATRIX-Packaging/dp/B004LWYYZ0) which is hooked up to my 23" widescreen monitor and has a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and there was my desktop again like it had never left.
I recently flew about 900 miles from home to get a new car (BMW Performance Center Delivery - http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Experience/Events/PDS/BMWPerformanceCenterFAQ.aspx) and drove all the way home, and all I took with me was my Atrix and Lapdock as well as my cameras and I was able to use them to move pictures and videos to a USB stick temporarily to clear up space on the cameras, as well as use it to check into email and so on. If I'd needed to I could even have dialed into work thanks to our Citrix XenDesktop environment that works like champ on the Lapdock. Thankfully that was unnecessary as it would have really detracted from my driving my new BMW on the Tail of the Dragon (twice!) and the Cherohala Skyway (which I videoed both of them using my ContourGPS video camera and car mount).
Sorry mate... victim of the reality distortion field here.
The point of GP is that the article writer makes the bold statement that he can replace his laptop with an iPad. And a Bluetooth keyboard. I agree with GP, that's a defacto laptop; the only thing it lacks is a mouse. So let's look at your counterpoints, shall we?
10 hour battery life - Yes, the iPad does... but the keyboard he chose has a 3-4 hour battery life in moderate use given the reviews I've read, so in terms of useful life given the requirements of the author (writing), that is the real lifespan of his working platform. Yes, he can write short notes and emails on the iPad keyboard but I for one would never try to write an article on one. Maybe he can use the iPad to email his editor "Sorry I can't hit the deadline; BT keyboard battery is dead. Will finish it tonight..."
Fully functional without the keyboard? Depends on your use case. If you're blogging and writing articles... ehhh... not really.
Weighs 1.4lbs. Not with the keyboard.
All of the above - ROFL
BTW, this is from someone who loves the iPad for what it's good for... but one thing it's NOT good for is replacing a laptop. For the same money as an iPad with a reasonable amount of storage and this BT keyboard/case deal I can buy a bloody good laptop and in deference to my geeky nature put Linux on it. Hell, for a few dollars more I can buy a Macbook Air. My day-to-day work laptop is an Alienware M11x R2 that has a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and smokes the iPad for games as well as work. I love it and to be honest doesn't take up significantly more room in my backpack or weigh significantly more than the iPad.
Yes and no. Windows still requires patching in order to remain secure and stable. While Linux also requires patching it has the ability to basically restart every component except the kernel, thereby allowing a patch without a reboot; merely a service restart. Even the mighty GUI can restart itself; Windows can't do that because architecturally it's prevented from it.
That's not to say that Windows is bad. I use Windows 7 at work and find it excellent, stable and usable operating system that's really on-par with just about anything out of Cupertino... it's just that I find the statement that Windows 7 is able to stay up for years to be incongruous.
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You can't, (or at least you couldn't at the time, not sure about vSphere 5), initiate any vmotions without vcenter, so when you have an esx host with intermittent storage connectivity problems that made your vCenter VM hang, you can't easily vmotion the remaining VM's off of that physical host without vCenter.
You do realize how easy it is to re-register your vCenter VM on another host, right? Once it comes up it'll clean up the "orphaned instance". Just power it off, log into another host directly, browse the datastore, register and boot. Dead simple. I did this in our DR test environment last week when we had vCenter problems and as soon as vCenter connected to all the hosts and realized there was another copy of the VM it just made the appropriate assumption that the one that was powered on was the one I wanted. Voila. Probably quicker than a vMotion :)
sudo make sandwich -Icheese -Iham -Ilettuce -lmustard
No.
You don't want to run "make" as the superuser. "make install", yes, but not make. Even if a sandwich.
You also don't pass non-numeric values with -l in make - the GP was probably thinking of the linker, not make.
Sorry to trash your guys' joke, but c'mon, is it that hard to get even the basics right?
TOPPINGS="cheese ham lettuce mustard" make -k sandwich
Absolutely damned right. You save sudo for when you want bacon.
Oh, and before you go telling me how you can manipulate photos and videos with a command line; I know you can. I've done it many times... but if you can give me a simple command line that will take a random arbitrary picture, straighten it to a point that it's visually more appealing, fix errors due to chromic aberration, fix red-eye, soften the focus around the eyes to make them pop a little more (a common photog trick) and whiten the teeth a smidgen then I'll start using that for 80% of the picture I manipulate.
What I've observed is this:
* people are lazy, even if they work hard. They want to get more done for less.
* people are either stupid or smart.
* smart people prefer using the keyboard (less doing and repetition, which is mentally painful)
* stupid people prefer using the mouse (less thinking, which hurts their walnuts)
Because, you know; doing photo editing and video editing with a command line is such an improvement and less painful.
How about my observation; people use the right tool for the job at hand until someone shows them a tool that works better. For some things (administering a server) a command line is a huge improvement. For others (the aforementioned video and photo editing) a mouse is better.
You really sound like someone who just doesn't grok the fact that people use computers for a hell of a lot more than serving up web pages. Get over it; computers have grown far beyond that level and while the mouse is not the perfect input method it is a damned good one for a reasonable cost. The command line is also not perfect, and while powerful there are some things it will always struggle to perform as well as the mouse.
I wonder what he's make of people like me that haven't worn a watch in 20+ years?
He would probably figure you're either homeless or a photographer.
Of course, it's bloody hard to tell the difference between the two until they open their bags...
Again I guess it depends a lot on your perspective. On a motorcycle the goal is avoidance; avoidance of collisions and situations in which a collision may happen. Motorcycles are far more maneuverable than a car and thus a well trained rider (which SHOULD be most, but I will concede probably isn't) should be able to avoid most problems. I know that in about a decade of riding I have had some minor accidents but that two of them were the result of me avoiding a potentially more hazardous situation (car lost control in front of me and would've flattened me had I not ridden into a field next to the road for example... my accident was only because I lost control of the bike on the ploughed ground).
In a car, accidents are about survivability. That means making use of safety features and as such I am not averse to legislation of seat belts. Also plainly put have you watched what happens when someone slams on the brakes in a car as opposed to a motorcycle? The very way a bike is shaped means that a sudden stop only throws you an inch or so forward. Sudden brake application even in the cheapest cars can throw you into the steering wheel potentially causing a loss of control. Even a slight tip of the back end of a car can send it into a spin that can throw the occupants all over the place and thus causing another loss of control. Simply because of mass, the risk of collateral damage of that situation is significantly increased.
Seat belts are more about the driver maintaining control of their vehicle in a difficult situation. At least to the extent that it's possible.
As an owner of a BMW with this function, I have to say that apart from the first two days when I owned the car, I have never used any of this functionality. Trust me, the novelty wears off really quickly.
I do like the web radio functions though... that is pretty cool. Though truthfully if I am that desperate to read my Facebook/Twitter feeds then I'm far more likely to find a coffee shop to stop at and do it there where I can sip a cappuccino and actually compose meaningful replies.
So... what? You're advocating seatbelts on a motorcycle? Yeah, I can see that being a big win. I have always wanted to have my motorcycle slide out from underneath me just to be dragged down the highway by several hundred pounds of metal and finally crushed against the center median by it. Believe me the last thing you want is to be strapped to a motorcycle!
As for safety gear... yeah. In terms of personal risk I think that motorcycles are a very different beast from cars. Riding a bike takes a level of concentration that cars just don't have, and require a significant acceptance of the risks involved. If a much larger vehicle hits you in a car, you've got a pretty decent chance to survive simply because there's so much of the car around you to protect you; crumple zones and such. On a motorcycle you don't have any of that and for reasons of weight and practicality you can't. As such you accept a certain amount of risk just by going out on your bike and once you've accepted that level of risk, whether you're wearing full gear or not really becomes a question of how much you want to shift the odds a little in favour of your survival. It doesn't matter how much gear you wear though, the odds will never be as high as they are in a car.
For the record, I am a motorcycle rider, and I do wear full gear. We also neighbour a state that doesn't require helmets yet I wear one all the time even when riding there. However, that's a choice I make.
Some Mac users are stuck up and bought into the cult. I am a Mac user, but I'm also an Android smartphone user. I have had iOS devices and my iPhone 3GS still does sterling duty as a portable music box mostly used in my car.
I like the Mac because it's UNIX. I like the Mac because my 13" Macbook Pro is one of the nicest designed and manufactured laptops I've used in the last few years. I like the Mac because most of the time the OS gets the hell out of my way and lets me get my work done. For two years I tried to be a pure Linux user and failed because I spent (in my opinion) far too much time fiddling with the OS to get it to do what I wanted that I got less work done. And this from someone who has come from a background admin'ing AS/400's and Mainframes, through Solaris, HP-UX and even AT&T Unix at one job... now admin'ing VMware, Windows, Linux and still some Solaris stuff here and there (though mostly a storage guy these days).
Don't tar all Mac users with the same brush, mate; I use it because it's what works for me. If it doesn't work for you or you have some political bias against it then power to you... but for my needs I have used plenty of other platforms and returned to the Mac because for me... well... it just works.
However, I will say for the record that I don't for a second buy into the "secure by default" idea. The Mac's security is good, but so is Windows 7's. Pick you poison but in any large codebase there WILL be holes... and with a compelling desire to make money and/or steal ideas there will ALWAYS be malware for any platform.
Wow... the last time I saw such rampant fanboyism is when I badmouthed the original iPad here on Slashdot on the day of release. Of course, every one of my comments was completely on the mark... and this from someone who still has an original iPad that gets used when I take business trips and almost no other time in my life. But I digress.
Seriously? I had to do a doubletake when I read the summary, and had to take a few more when I read the article. I have run an Android phone for over a year now and I am seriously happy with it. It's not failing under the "crushing weight of viruses" any more than my aging but still useful iPhone 3GS is (I use it as an iPod because I bought into the iTunes ecosystem years ago and it happens to integrate beautifully with my car). I install apps on both depending on my utilization and needs, and neither has been unduly burdened with malware. Of course, my Android phone actually tells me what an application wants to do while I install it, thus providing the knowledgeable user some modicum of security. And yes, every app I install I read those and make a decision whether the app is asking for appropriate rights or not. And yes, I've refused some apps because of it. Of course, I AM a knowledgeable user and that kind of security doesn't help Joe Schmoe with his free smartphone with a 2 year contract and no lube... but one of the central tenets of security is that people are the weakest link in any security chain and that will never change.
So far I've found my only complaint with Android is that it fails under the crushing weight of battery technology that can't cash the check the manufacturers of the device wrote. But at least with Android I can have a second battery hanging around that I can swap in at any time... can't do that with an iPhone unless you're a really determined hardware hacker. Yes, I can improve it slightly by turning off all my antennae but then I am running a dumb phone with games on it... I have a smartphone so it can be connected anywhere at any time. Of course, many of the apps I install probably don't help... but that's a choice I make. Because the charging port is completely standard I just took my charger and left it at work; I use my Kindle's charger at home to keep my phone charged at night because really... how often do I need my Kindle?
As a past and current iOS user (sometimes), AND an Android user I find the article FUD. Actually, can I mod it trollbait?
Having grown up in Belfast, I have to say that in the UK we already had this before. They were called the paramilitaries back then.
People don't really realize this, but back during the 70's and 80's the police in Northern Ireland were basically an ineffectual group when it came to dealing with actual street crime. They only dealt with the "big ticket" problems that were usually caused by the paramilitaries fighting among themselves. When it came to dealing with crime on the streets of Belfast it was actually those same paramilitary groups who did most of the meting out of punishments. Yes, they were judge, jury and executioner (sometimes literally) but the reason they did it is because "small time" criminals like burglars and even rapists would otherwise get away with it. I don't support their actions necessarily, but I honestly felt safer in the streets of Belfast at night during the 80's than I did when I moved to London in the early 90's.
Yes, I realize this is not the same situation; they are taking the current police force and privatizing it. What I do think though is that we will just end up with a police force that tends to be focused on the goals of its controlling group which is in turn focused primarily on a small area or a small list of "specially protected resources", which to my mind is not a million miles away from those same paramilitary groups I grew up around. They were focused on a small area and protected those resources they found valuable; others would be ignored or even destroyed just as quickly by those same people.
Truly, I don't think this is a good idea because the opportunities for corruption within a privatized system is so much higher than one that has to accede to a very large central controlling authority (the government). Now, whether the government itself is corrupt... that's a completely different discussion.
I would tend to agree with you, but it was in some ways even worse than that. Anderson Lake was basically a tool for the current part of the story. I counted at least four times throughout the book that his personality completely changed for no better reason than it served that part of the story. And not just "growing" or even being deceitful (which he is)... some of his behaviours were distinctly at odds with established behaviours from earlier in the narrative. It's almost as if the author did four different drafts and while he remained consistent about the technology and world his characters were event driven rather than personality driven.
This was also a problem with other characters in the book, but Anderson Lake was by far the worst. In fact the only characters I found consistent throughout the narrative were Emiko and Hok Seng. Their motivations and mindset were pretty clear but Anderson just seemed to be a convenient avatar for the reader... but not necessarily a good one.
Still, I won't complain. It was one of the better books I've read in the last couple of years and does bear re-reading. I did find the last third of the book a bit bland as the threads that had been started earlier in the book wrapped up in rather predictable fashion, and I would have actually preferred to see fewer of those threads wrapped up and left open either for the reader's imagination or a sequel. As it stood, the book was almost too neat... too self-contained. There was no feeling that the world would continue once the reader left that world... I prefer it when I feel like that world continued to live without me there. With this book I got none of that.
A solid 8/10 in my opinion :-)
Not if you like to see the sky, watch birds flying around and breathe fresh air. Yeah, I'm just an old-fashioned country boy at heart. Living on a space station sounds as much fun as sailing on a cruise liner over a sea of death, for ever.
McCoy, is that you?
the DSG doesn't have a torque converter with constant slip,
Honestly neither do most automatic transmissions these days. The lockup torque converter basically made it moot because in many cases there is a "virtually mechanical" link between the engine and the drivetrain. Modern automatics are often more efficient than a manual in the same application. Whether dual clutch systems like BMW's DCT or VW's DSG are more efficient than automatics... well again that comes down to software rather than the hardware. Yes, a DSG/DCT can be more efficient than a manual but I would say most engineers will tell you that efficiency is about a wash between a well programmed DSG/DCT and a classic torque converter auto.
However, the flip side is that a DSG/DCT has the potential to be much more sporty than a TC auto. In fact, as shown in BMW's application in the 135i it can be both efficient and sporty at the touch of a button. Something I rather enjoy, though admittedly I rarely drive it without having hit the "Sport" button first. A TC auto can't shift like a DCT with rifle-bolt precision (and a smidge of harshness that's inevitable), but a DSG/DCT can drive an awful lot like a TC auto, including long lazy gear changes that are as soft as an automatic precisely by slipping the clutch packs.
Maybe I wasn't clear in my original post, but I was just pointing out that a DSG in and of itself is not an answer to better efficiency. If that's what you want then you're much better off with a CVT or even a conventional TC auto simply because they are both relatively low cost, proven and continually developed to be better with each generation. A dual-clutch is a relatively new thing which is only used in a very small number of applications and thus doesn't get a lot of the development work that goes into the more common solutions.
Your original statement was that a dual clutch is more efficient than a manual. That's true in most applications but not every application. My point was that software has a huge impact in how efficient a dual clutch actually is, and in many applications you'll find dual clutches less efficient than manuals (like in the Audi S4) because of that. Similarly of course a manual can be horribly inefficient depending on how you drive it... I know; I drove manuals for years until I got this baby Bimmer. Though I agree with you in principle, I disagree with the implication that a dual clutch is inherently more efficient than a manual; I would say it depends a lot on the engineer behind the application and the person behind the wheel :)
Economic theory is bunk when it comes to gasoline manufacturers. Supply is irrelevant, and lower demand historically leads to higher prices in the long term though sometimes has led to lower prices in the very short term.
With gasoline we are at the whims of the greed of executives, not supply and demand. Economic theory be damned.
The reality is that if more people drove hybrids, gasoline prices would be much cheaper for everyone and that would accelerate the economy.
I'm not sure what country or planet you must be living on if you sincerely believe this. While normal rules of economics would dictate this is true, the reality is that if more people drove hybrids, then less fuel would be sold. In order to protect their profits and bonuses, the management at the fuel companies would increase not decrease the cost of gasoline. Historically when demand for gasoline drops, price rises. This is what happens when you have a defacto monopoly (or in this case multiple large companies operating in collusion) to control the price of a resource regardless of the actual supply.
Like it or not, in most of the Western world we are not at the whims of the laws of economics but rather at the whims of human greed in the "top 1%". No, I'm not one of the Occupy movement, but I do agree with some things they have been trying to bring attention to.
Not sure I would call out the DSG itself as being a gas mileage saving. That depends a whole hell of a lot still on how it's programmed. Yes, it can get fantastic gas mileage but like an automatic transmission it's more a matter of the final drive ratio as well as the way the shift points have been programmed.
As anecdotal evidence; I have a 2012 BMW 135i with the Dual Clutch Transmission. Basically the same as VW's DSG but with BMW's tuning for performance rather than VW's tuning for efficiency. And with a 3.46:1 final drive it doesn't give you much room for efficiency. However, my car can do 0-60 with launch control in 4.9 according to my G-Tech. Still, for 300hp I still average about 23-24mpg in mixed driving measured by recording my trips to the pump rather than relying on the on board computer (which averages about 1mpg high). Definitely nowhere near hybrid territory, but if I'd wanted a hybrid I would have one. I have the BMW because I wanted it :)
Wow, there's lots here that you need to think about. Some good advice, some not so good. However, here are my experiences from being in this exact situation about 14 years ago;
1. If you seriously want to monetize your creation, consult an attorney.
2. If not, just offer it to your management.
End of story. It's really that simple.
Let me expound on it a little though. You have written an application that by definition is a vertical application: That is, it's been written specifically to combat challenges that you witnessed within your own team, but have not opened the application up to a wider market for comparison. By the very definition of the application you have provided, if your team does not use it then it is useless and then all your time is waste, no? If that's the case, is it not better that people benefit from the code you have created than to let it languish because you are too wrapped up in your own compensation to help... particularly as these are your colleagues and the people who you indirectly rely upon to succeed.
Although I don't know many details about your work situation other than what I have surmised from your posts, I can say this much; you are almost certainly a salaried individual who was hired for your brain. It doesn't matter that the scope of your job description is narrow... if your brain can provide something that the company or your group can benefit from, then whether you like it or not your job does depend at least in part on your willingness to implement. If all you are going to do is provide solutions within the narrow scope of your job description, then your shelf life in the organization and eventually within IT as a role is going to be pretty short. I constantly do stuff that's WAY outside my job description. That's why I was hired as a Windows Sysadmin and nowadays manage storage, infrastructure, routers and so on... and really only touch on Windows as a sideline. If I had chosen to remain within my job description then I would probably right now be fixing a print server we currently have going spastic in Mississauga, Canada instead of typing this response; we have a Windows sysadmin for that job now and she is doing a great job and will escalate to me if the problem goes beyond her capabilities. However, I have this morning drunk my coffee, fixed some storage replication issues and am preparing to run a test in our DR environment later this afternoon precisely because I extended myself beyond my original job description and did something that I found more interesting/better.
Fourteen years ago I was in the exact situation you're in now. I was working for a company that somewhat viewed IT as a necessary evil. As a manufacturing company they weren't really that interested on spending a bunch of money on resources for IT beyond buying us servers (grudgingly) and laptops (which ours were usually the hand-me-downs from upper management). Our helpdesk grew rapidly but our budget did not allow any application to properly manage tickets and thus things were getting missed, forgotten and dropped. And documentation of fixes was atrocious. In my spare time I wrote a pretty damned good helpdesk suite using Perl and MySQL, with a nice web-based front end. It was simple really, but targeted precisely the problems we had as a group. Now, quite different from you I made the choice not to bother trying to monetize the solution. I knew that this vertical application was very targeted, and while I had deliberately written it to be modular and thus flexible and expandable, there was no denying I did it for the benefit of the group I worked in, and thus indirectly myself. I knew by writing this I would gain only mindshare within the organization, but no money.
I talked to my manager and reached an agreement with him. Since it was developed on my own time I still owned the source code, but the actual implementation within the company belonged to the company but with a reciprocal agreement to allow me to merge modifications into my core source tree. That meant t
The big problem I see with WP7 is that it forces the user into its paradigm in order to use it. How is that a problem? Well, let's look at the facts shall we?
WP6.5 was the "big thing". It succeeded because it was Windows and had a Corporate lock-in that was extremely successful. I mean, you look at most large corporations and they are big on using Exchange... right there was all the evidence most people needed to get a Windows Phone. Its paradigm was about the same as the desktop metaphor that Microsoft had ridden since the 80's and thus people were accustomed to it.
Along came iPhone. Now here was something different; it's well known that the way the iOS interface became developed was that Apple looked at the way people wanted to work and the way non-technical people functioned within a touch-screen based environment. Apple looked at the people first and designed the phone around that, though with a touch of Steve Jobs arrogance thrown in for good measure. Of course, one of Jobs' big assets was that he did see the people part of the equation very clearly, and some of the edicts that he passed down to his phone developers, like no stylus, led to what the iPhone became. It is a phone that fits with what people want to do with a mobile device, and an interface that's designed around the flow of the way people work on a phone and thus fits in with the way people think about a phone. Yes, in some ways it's still tied to the desktop metaphor because that's what became intensely popular within computing.
Android then came along and rode on Apple's coat-tails. Like it or not a lot of what Android has become was because of iOS and its design paradigm. The pre-iOS versions of Android were very much a Blackberry clone with some Palm ideas thrown in for good measure. The only thing that Android really bought to the table was the open platform idea which really only appeals to technical people. However, precisely because of that it attracted developers. That and the fact that development is mostly Java based, and seriously; during the boom years of 1995 through even the late 00's (08 or so) there were millions of people who learned Java because it was an extremely marketable skill and could attract a decent wage. Even with the dot com bust, Java continued to gain popularity because of its ties to "the web". Particularly since the economic meltdown, this has led to a huge number of Java developers out of work who are now finding work either working for themselves or some other corporation developing apps for Android devices. This is not going to disappear or slow down any time soon because it has gained enough traction that it's right up there with iOS in terms of market and mind share.
Now along comes WP7. Late to the game but bringing a new paradigm; Metro. But the fundamental flaw of Metro is that although it does do a great job of integrating social networks into a single "pane of glass" (which was ostensibly the point of Metro), that's not the way people think. It's also at odds with the way most of the social network providers WANT you to think; they want you to know you're communicating with people via Facebook, or Meebo, or LinkedIn or whatever. They don't want that abstraction... they don't want Microsoft to be the gatekeeper to all of your contacts because it destroys mind share. As a result, the Facebook integration for example looks great on the first pane but as soon as you go into anything to do anything, Facebook has to scream out "I am here!" at the top of its lungs to make sure you know what's happening. This breaks the flow of the entire interface and results in users going right back to the desktop metaphor idea that they had before; that they have just pushed a live button to launch an app. In other words precisely what Metro was designed to abstract.
The problem then becomes that WP7 is inconsistent in its flow. Users can't grok the Metro paradigm because even Metro is inconsistent in the way it presents it. And this is not a fault of Metro but rather a fault of the way that the
Hardly high-end. It's slightly larger in interior room than a new 5-series at the same price as a base 5'er once you add some options. Few people buy these cars without adding a few toys.
By US standards we are all communists in Europe (minus that rainy island)
Ha! Having lived in the US for the last 15 years I can say that the attitude here is that the UK is as communist as the rest of Europe if not more so. I mean, they have SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE! Not to mention their government forces them all to take twice as much time off work as we in this more civilized country. How can one live under such an awful regime?
Yeah... BTW for the record I'm British, and if anything I find myself looking wistfully at that "totalitarian regime" and wondering how this country got so messed up. Then I tend to look at the people around me and realize that they are the reason. Maybe it's just because I settled in the Midwest which is predominantly "red state" areas. That means they're primarily Republican and therefore significantly opposed to anything that smells of "communism". It doesn't help that the education system here is in such a dire state that most people couldn't tell you what the difference is between socialism and communism, and the sad thing is they are in such denial about it that they don't want to know.
A man when taught to fish will only eat for life if he is willing to put that knowledge to use.
Was there not a time when Slashdot used to recognize and auto-link URL's? Gahhhh! Annoying. Anyway, here's the links;
Motorola Atrix
Motorola Atrix Lapdockx
Webtop2SD
Ubuntu on Webtop
Atrix Multimedia Dock
BMW Performance Center Delivery
As an aside; Moto is just about to release the Atrix 2 which does apparently make it faster with more memory, thus fixing the couple of issues I do have with the Atrix. However, I don't know how long it'll be before all these hacks are available... I figure not long given XDA-Developers turnaround time on this stuff :)
My setup is not a tablet, but it's very portable and flexible and runs a pretty much fully fledged Ubuntu install any time I want to. It also keeps the number of gadgets I carry around and thus synchronize to a minimum.
The basic part of my setup is a Motorola Atrix (http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-ATRIX-US-EN) with the Lapdock (http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/accessory-details/?LOSGId=accessoryBucket&q_sku=sku5100298#fbid=GYMvsMM9JQx). To that I then used Webtop2SD (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1119555) to move my Webtop environment to my 16GB SD card on its own dedicated 4GB partition and then did the work to create a full Ubuntu on Webtop (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1000316). Of course, I had to root the phone but that was dead easy... in fact all of the above steps I did in about an hour while sitting at my dining room table drinking my coffee on a Saturday morning.
It's not perfect... I'll admit that. It's slow compared to a laptop but in terms of functionality it's excellent. I can apt-get or run synaptic from my command line, and I added a small Gnome toolbar on the left side of the screen that contains my standard Gnome menu. I can surf the web, write articles in OpenOffice and I am not at the mercy of WiFi in order to be able to access the Internet. The Lapdock contains a battery that charges the phone while it's docked, and so I have gotten several hours of work done without needing to recharge either, and by the time I was done my phone was fully charged anyway.
The beauty part was that I was able to then go home and slap my phone into my Multimedia Dock (http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Multimedia-Dock-ATRIX-Packaging/dp/B004LWYYZ0) which is hooked up to my 23" widescreen monitor and has a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and there was my desktop again like it had never left.
I recently flew about 900 miles from home to get a new car (BMW Performance Center Delivery - http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Experience/Events/PDS/BMWPerformanceCenterFAQ.aspx) and drove all the way home, and all I took with me was my Atrix and Lapdock as well as my cameras and I was able to use them to move pictures and videos to a USB stick temporarily to clear up space on the cameras, as well as use it to check into email and so on. If I'd needed to I could even have dialed into work thanks to our Citrix XenDesktop environment that works like champ on the Lapdock. Thankfully that was unnecessary as it would have really detracted from my driving my new BMW on the Tail of the Dragon (twice!) and the Cherohala Skyway (which I videoed both of them using my ContourGPS video camera and car mount).
Sorry mate... victim of the reality distortion field here.
The point of GP is that the article writer makes the bold statement that he can replace his laptop with an iPad. And a Bluetooth keyboard. I agree with GP, that's a defacto laptop; the only thing it lacks is a mouse. So let's look at your counterpoints, shall we?
10 hour battery life - Yes, the iPad does... but the keyboard he chose has a 3-4 hour battery life in moderate use given the reviews I've read, so in terms of useful life given the requirements of the author (writing), that is the real lifespan of his working platform. Yes, he can write short notes and emails on the iPad keyboard but I for one would never try to write an article on one. Maybe he can use the iPad to email his editor "Sorry I can't hit the deadline; BT keyboard battery is dead. Will finish it tonight..."
Fully functional without the keyboard? Depends on your use case. If you're blogging and writing articles... ehhh... not really.
Weighs 1.4lbs. Not with the keyboard.
All of the above - ROFL
BTW, this is from someone who loves the iPad for what it's good for... but one thing it's NOT good for is replacing a laptop. For the same money as an iPad with a reasonable amount of storage and this BT keyboard/case deal I can buy a bloody good laptop and in deference to my geeky nature put Linux on it. Hell, for a few dollars more I can buy a Macbook Air. My day-to-day work laptop is an Alienware M11x R2 that has a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and smokes the iPad for games as well as work. I love it and to be honest doesn't take up significantly more room in my backpack or weigh significantly more than the iPad.
Yes and no. Windows still requires patching in order to remain secure and stable. While Linux also requires patching it has the ability to basically restart every component except the kernel, thereby allowing a patch without a reboot; merely a service restart. Even the mighty GUI can restart itself; Windows can't do that because architecturally it's prevented from it.
That's not to say that Windows is bad. I use Windows 7 at work and find it excellent, stable and usable operating system that's really on-par with just about anything out of Cupertino... it's just that I find the statement that Windows 7 is able to stay up for years to be incongruous.