I've played violent video games since I got my first computer in 1982. Hell, I wrote a couple of shareware/freeware violent games. I feel that I grew up into a relatively well adjusted and normal adult, and most of my peers agree. I do realize some people have a tenuous grip on reality, and they could have found themselves being made more violent or desensitized to violence by violent computer games, but these same people would probably have the same problem with movies, TV and books.
The primary problem here is not in my opinion the games, but rather the lack of parenting these people have received. I see way too often parents who are detached from their kids, essentially letting the state, the TV and the computer raise their children in this country. Parents would rather continue to live the same lives they led while single rather than actually do any real work to raise children. They're often viewed as a burden by these people. My parents raised me to recognize fact from fiction, and made sure I could draw the lines easily. I'm doing the same with my children, and yes I do let them play violent video games so long as they know that they're just that; games.
And to answer the question, after playing said video games I often feel less violent. They're a great stress relief in a violent world, and when I'm done playing depending on the time I will go to bed, or go down to the family room to watch Mythbusters with my kids, or go out and play soccer with my son... you name it. In many ways, I consider myself quite normal. And to answer your last question about who analyzes me? Well, my wife and kids for a start. I'm not the gamer you think I am; living alone and playing games all the time. I play games when I feel like it and/or have time. I am constantly being analyzed by those around me... and I'm a very social creature. If I become antisocial for some reason, there's my wife, my kids and my friends who will tell me about it. Sorry, that argument that nobody analyzes me doesn't stand up.
I mean, seriously. I remember playing this game years ago!
Has this one just become a big deal because the Spectrum couldn't handle full motion 3D graphics? Bully seems to be just a logical evolution of Skool Daze, a game that's over 20 years old now but was great in its time (and I played it recently on a Spectrum emulator and enjoyed the hell out of it, still!). Hell, it even had the "homosexual content" thing down where you could kiss guys, so even that's nothing new.
Having said that, I'm actually looking forward to picking this one up and playing it. I have always enjoyed Rockstar's games and I see no reason I won't enjoy this, too. I doubt it's going to turn me into a bully because (a) I'm not at school; I'm in my 30's and (b) Grand Theft Auto didn't turn me into a carjacking gun-toting villain except maybe for a few hours every few days when I got time to play it! If you seriously can't separate fact from fiction enough to play a game like Bully, then you probably shouldn't go to the movies, or watch TV... or hell read a book!
Honestly, I own an iPod because it does exactly what I need. No more, no less. It's compact, it's resilient, it's lightweight and it doesn't weigh me down with overly complicated menu systems or functions that I'll never use. Radio? Please. There's nothing on the radio I want to hear. Wi-fi? Again, why? It's a security hole and I don't see any real need for it (especially the way the Zune implements it).
My iPod allows me to listen to encoded CD's so I don't have to cart my CD collection around with me. It also allows me to buy music on iTMS and play that back too (only bought a few albums, but that's all I need). What more do I need from my device? OK, so my calendar and contacts are there. Groovy, they're on my phone, too so it's sort of redundant functionality for me. I own an iPod because it has decent sound quality, the device itself is pretty slick, the interface is simple and easy to work with and generally it meets my needs. What more do I want?
I won't buy a Zune; not because it's Microsoft but because it doesn't give me any killer features that I need. Sure, conceptually the wireless music sharing is a nice idea, but cannot be implemented in a truly free way. The only way I can see it being useful for me is to be able to share limited-time sample tracks of small bands (often friends of mine) to get other friends interested in their music. But then again, I do that by email already, so it's not a killer feature there, either.
I will run my iPod until it won't run any more. Once that dies, I'll look at the market and if the iPod is still what meets my needs and requirements with minimal fuss at a reasonable price I'll probably replace it with another iPod. If something else comes along that meets my needs better or has killer features I decide I can't live without then I'll buy that instead. Sure, this confirms what the article says somewhat, but not for the reasons implied in the article (it implies that iPod owners will drop the iPod for the Zune, that's not true).
For reference, I'm also a Mac owner, a Linux user and a Windows admin for work. I don't particularly "keep the faith" of any manufacturer; I use what works for me.
FYI, I use my (Yonah) Macbook Pro one-handed all the time. The track pad and keyboard are positioned such that I can hit the CTRL key with my pinky finger with my index finger on the trackpad and thumb on the button. This is not unusual for me. Though I have to admit, when I know I'm going to be sitting at a desk for some time working I will tend to whip out my Bluetooth mouse and put that on the table as well. Wow, costs me an extra 4 seconds to get that out of my bag too!!!:)
On the flip-side, I have to say in user-interface design the two-fingered scrolling on the trackpad is the best damned advance in interaction I've seen in a LONG time. Even when I have a mouse connected, I tend to switch to the trackpad to scroll, especially when I have to scroll horizontally. Damn that high-resolution porn:)
Sound like a management mantra, but it's true. Globalization sucks for the people caught in the middle today (the high-tech workers who actually directly drove up the price of tech workers during the dot-com boom) and will continue to. There are two sides to the story, though and that is that in losing a little in the "first-world countries" we are actually pulling the "third-world countries" up to our level.
However, there are problems that I think people are only now beginning to see. For a start in India in general now that a small percentage of the populous has suddenly become relatively well paid, the cost of items in the economy is going up. This either forces the majority of the population to get increases in pay relative to the increasing cost or they run the risk of destroying the economy of their own country. Increase in wealth must be managed or it risks the entire economy. India is starting to learn this.
Now, so long as it's all managed properly then India will be bought up to the level of the US in terms of quality of life, cost of living and so forth (well, maybe a little lower), then their jobs will all be offshored to some other country and so the cycle begins again. Over time this will have a generally levelling effect and will result in a world that is better placed to actually improve the lives of those living on the Earth rather than in-fighting and bickering. This is generally a good thing.
The utopia envisioned by science fiction writers for years will not come about without a great deal of pain. There's going to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the economies of the first world countries will crumble. The high-horse that the West has ridden for centuries has finally run itself out, and we're all going to feel the pinch.
There are ways to make sure you survive through this; be flexible. Be ready to work where and doing whatever it takes to make ends meet and support your own families. Don't get too attached to the "everything on credit" lifestyle to which we in the West have become accustomed, that lifestyle is going to end in a huge and extremely ugly crash. The foundation of this crash was founded in the early 1970's when the dollar value was seperated from gold. Then with the additional weight of the effect of networking and decentralization on top of that it will lead to a complete crash of our lifestyle. I don't know if it will happen in our lifetimes, but I really believe it will happen.
We're in a new market now where our jobs can be done anywhere. This is going to lead to a short term situation where jobs will migrate away from the West. We can't prevent it. We can complain about it, and we can whine about it but the best we're going to do is delay it and in doing so make the crash that much worse when it comes.
Yes, I've been hit by globalization myself but even I have to realize that the future is going to change radically. Many are going to hate it, I don't claim to like the short term picture myself... but I have to accept it. In fact, as one of the drivers in the dot-com boom and the decentralization projects of large companies I also have to claim a certain amount of responsibility. Many of us on Slash do. We wanted this brave new world where the Internet made things possible like improving the lot of others in the world. Well, now our visions are becoming a reality... but the utopian vision we had has a down side that we're all feeling.
Get used to it, or complain about it... but we can't prevent it. Not now. Not ever.
Only really the early MBP's had a problem with this extreme of a heat problem. Mine's relatively recent (manufacture date in May) and doesn't exhibit really excessive temperatures. Without fan control, and both cores running I run about 52C pretty consistently at idle. The only time I've seen in excess of 65 is doing some major compilation job. Even playing Second Life it seems relatively cool to the touch.
Having said that, the case of the machine can get hot... especially at the top of the keyboard; the strip between the keyboard and screen. That can get very toasty when doing some heavy-duty compilation or very CPU intensive stuff.
Even stock though, I've never had a problem putting it on my lap. It can get warm, definitely but cooler than my last Dell (a D610 Pentium M).
Much as this tool is cool and much needed, the one at http://www.lobotomo.com/products/downloads/Fan%20C ontrol.zip is much better. Installs as a preference panel and allows you to set thresholds for temperature in your MBP. Doesn't really give direct fan control, but does give you "baseline" control and allows you to tune the thresholds built into the machine.
Granted, I've only been running it a day or so, but it's awesome. If I'm in a relatively noisy environment (coffee shop, etc) I can crank up the fans to make sure my mac's nice and cool. If I'm at home in the quiet I can crank it down.
Also, if you've installed the Processor Preference panel you can switch off the second core in the CPU allowing better battery runtime and get rid of the "CPU whine".
Hey, the MBP isn't perfect... it was and still is Apple's first attempt at an Intel notebook. The Macbook actually improved on the MBP in terms of "polish" because Apple had a chance to really work the kinks out of that one. The Merom based MBP's promise to be much more polished, and hopefully impressive.
However, despite all the misc problems I've had (nothing critical, just minor irritants), the initial quality out of the box and ongoing quality of the machine FAR exceed anything I could've gotten out of a Dell. The screen doesn't flex at all unless you put significant weight on it, the iSight works like a champ for web-camming with my friends... generally this is one really great piece of kit. It needs tweaking... so what? Do did my last Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Re:That depends on a lot more than you think
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I did say that it was second-hand knowledge... and that I've got a lot less material to work from with Google (one friend working there) than Microsoft (lost count... maybe 10?). Take with appropriate sodium intake. Maybe it's just the way my friend feels about his immediate management... it may not be systemic. He still loves working there, though!
Re:That depends on a lot more than you think
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Yeah, but still mostly sales offices. Of course, most of MS Development goes on in Redmond as well so again YMMV depending on the type of work you're doing. Microsoft's offices across the country do tend to be "combo" offices where there are some coders, engineers and salesdroids. Of course, Microsoft is also a big believer in "work from home" for engineering people... something that reduces the amount of physical office required and is good for the engineer as well.
I can admit when I'm wrong, though:) However, I will say that I still think the flexibility aspect of Microsoft is good.
Oh, and note I'm far from a Microsoft shill... I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro that's had Office 2004 forcibly removed since two days after I bought it and replaced with NeoOffice. Most of my software is either downloads or compiled using Fink.... in fact I don't think I have anything Microsoft left on this machine! My primary server at home is Linux. I just do Windows at work 'cos it pays the bills... but even I can appreciate that MS is actually a good company to work for according to my friends. YMMV though:)
That depends on a lot more than you think
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Microsoft's actually not one big monolithic Borg culture as Slashdot likes to jest. I have made many friends with Microsoft people over the years, and have one friend who works for Google. So, take what I'm about to say somewhat at face value; it's all second-hand information anyway.
Google might be a good place to work if you just really feel that their products and services are going to be part of the next big wave of technology. They are doing a lot of cool stuff with network computing which I think people failed to predict a few years ago, and they have a culture of "doing the cool stuff". However, they're a small company. Despite their significant resources, they are still as susceptible to the mood of the market as any other relatively small company. Sure, they can liquidate resources if they get in a pinch due to the whims of the marketplace, but to do so would invariably affect their deliverable services and drive more people away. That's a hard place to be and could lead to a devolution of Google within a very short timeframe. They've been lucky so far, and I have to admit I do like their products a lot. However, I don't pay for them. At least not directly.
Microsoft is a big company with deep pockets and wide reserves that can weather a storm in the economy much better than Google. Sure, again they can liquidate resources in a crunch but it would take an economic disaster far worse than the Dot Com crash to kill a company like Microsoft. We as the Open Source / Apple / Tech crowd might want to believe Microsoft will be beaten by , but that's not really going to happen any time soon.
Google has a monoculture. Sure, they're a small company doing some cool stuff but they're still quite focused on a particular market. When you work for Google, you work for the company. Microsoft surprisingly has many different cultures depending on where in Microsoft you work. Microsoft is not one company, not really. It's a gestalt entity that shares the umbrella name of "Microsoft", but each division is run differently by different people with different management styles and personalities. This makes sense because each division does something very different. Even different areas of the country provide different cultures; I find the Microsoft guys I work with and know in St. Louis are VERY different from the Microsoft friends of mine in New York, at least in terms of business. They work differently, they think differently.
Bear in mind also that a job at Microsoft doesn't tie you to Redmond. You can pretty much work anywhere in the world. Last I checked, Google is in SF and that's about it. Bear that in mind; at Microsoft you can transfer your job to any of the other communities where they perform that function. Especially Microsoft Consulting Services... you can pretty much pick your location after you've been at MS for 6 months to a year and really proven yourself.
On the down side, I do know that Google tends to be an easy-going work environment, though with a veiled sense of pressure. Employees are subtly pressured to work far beyond 40 hours a week and thus it's not a good career in my opinion for someone with a family or someone intending to start a family. However, it *is* a fun place to work with lots of dynamic individuals who work hard but also play hard. Microsoft... well it depends where you work. There are fewer chances for advancement within Microsoft because people do tend to stay there. That also to my mind speaks to how good Microsoft actually are to work for; people tend to start there and stay there. However, the chances to "make it big with MS Stock" are over and have been for years. There may still be room for Google millionaires for real rock-star employees... MS... less so. However, the lack of advancement in my opinion is more than made up for by the flexibility of work location I mentioned previously.
I have to say that those friends of mine who work for Microsoft really enjoy their work. Many of them are as much of a geek as I am... running Linux and Vista on thei
If anything in my opinion, the thing that killed Transmeta was that IIRC you could code directly to the chip... you had to go through the code-morphing layer.
Had they developed a chip that had both its own native instruction set and a compatibility layer for x86, at the very least it would have been very popular among the OSS crowd... and low power is always popular in embedded devices. x86 compatibility would be nice in embedded devices to bootstrap DOS, then run your Transmeta-native apps from within x86 wrappers... best of both worlds.
Of course, I may be thinking of something completely different... but I seem to remember this being a reason Transmeta wasn't used in embedded devices I worked on.
As a followup, and in case anyone's still following this thread:
Based upon the feedback I received, I went ahead and installed the beta version to test it. Sure, it was nice to be able to launch Office under MacOS (and it ran faster and better than Office 2004...), but I'm still not impressed. The application compatibility is questionable at best and out of the two or three applications I still retain a Parallels Windows XP box for, precisely NONE of them worked. In fact, only one of them would even install.
Well, not necessarily here on Slash... but here's my opinion.
Where's the "killer app" for this operating system? I mean, really? Sure, in my opinion there has always been room in the past for new operating systems, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed a long time ago. There are already a smorgasbord of good operating systems out there that meet the needs of modern developers both on the desktop and in embedded systems. So where's the compelling reason to scope out one more OS platform when developing either of these platforms?
Embedded systems need a good real-time operating system, or at least one that is light on resources. OK, so by default I know in a few years we're going to be seeing really powerful embedded systems, but that will only open the door to increase the OS footprint using existing OS's. They're all still being developed, so they will continue to grow as the hardware platforms also continue to grow. This isn't new, this is just economics of the computer industry 101.
Today if you want to develop an embedded platform you have a multitude of good choices of platform. I don't see much market for yet another OS. If you want quick and dirty development on the cheap, you've got Linux kernels... if you want well polished and flexible you've got Symbian. If you want something verging on a desktop OS in complexity you've got CE / PocketPC / Whatever they hell they're calling it this year. Take your pick... and these are only the high-profile contenders. For each of these, there are probably a dozen other alternatives that work just as well. I don't see how AmigaOS is going to compete in this market space.
Now to the desktop side. Sorry, I still don't see it. In many ways I feel OSX was the natural spiritual successor to AmigaOS. Many of the things that made it great are quite obviously inspiring similar or even identical functionality in OSX. That's natural; many of the things AmigaOS did were only great by the standards of the time. And today, only Apple does the same thing with the unified architecture of platform an operating system... Microsoft can't compete there because they have such a wide range of hardware to support. As long as Apple maintains control of the hardwar they can tune the OS to said hardware and provide a user experience not a million miles away from what AmigaOS gave us 20 years ago.
Even then, on the desktop side you have a multitude of choices again; Linux, BSD, Windows, you name it! There are even Windows workalikes, MS-DOS platforms. And if you think DOS is dead you've obviously never worked in the embedded space. Sure it may just be a bootstrapper for your applications rather than a true OS, but there are plenty of people still coding in the 16-bit DOS space, sometimes with 32-bit extensions where required. Hell, I even maintain a DOS installation in a Parallels virtual machine on my Macbook so I can do development in the environment... so there's yet another desktop OS to compete with.
I loved the Amiga platform. I had two of them; a 500 and a 1200. I also had an Atari ST which I loved just as much. Having said that though, the only compelling reason I can find to even look at the new AmigaOS is for the purposes of nostalgia. Sorry, that doesn't cut it either for me. I've done the nostalgia thing... I've booted these OS's in emulators and checked them out. They're dated and do nothing that modern OS's don't. Sure I can view these platforms through rose-tinted spectacles and profess my love for the stuff they did, but by modern standards they just fail to impress on most levels.
I'm not saying we've reached a plateau with regard to operating systems... I personally feel that all the major players have plenty of places to go. However, just another OS with a desktop metaphor interface in an already crowded market place... you'd have to give it away to make it viable unless it does something incredible. Look at Be. Great OS, and to my mind the closest we've been to an AmigaOS like experience on Intel architecture... but they tried to sell i
OK... games. That's one place the Mac seriously lacks. But having been a Linux geek for years before becoming a Mac geek this year, I've found the game situation to be almost a smorgasbord compared to what I had under Linux. Plus, of course on my MBP I can use BootCamp if I really get a hankering for Windows games... and it works damned well.
I also use Parallels for those 1 or 2 Office type application I have left that I need Windows for.
Which brings me to the part I don't get. Office? Why? When you're got Office 2004 (slow on the Intel architecture in my opinion), or fantastic and well-rounded free solutions like OpenOffice... why on Earth would you want Office 2000 running on your Mac? Besides, that'll just look UGLY on OSX compared to the rest of the desktop.
If you're determined not to pay for Office 2004... great... NeoOffice is compiled for OSX natively, looks native and runs well (slow to start, but about the same startup time as Word 2004 but with all the apps there). If you're using Office 2000, then document compatbility is not a problem. Hell, if you've migrated to Mac then honestly the hard part of transitioning is over; learning the new OS. Apps are easy by comparison.
Sorry... I do see a need for this for the gamer... but this is one Mac user who won't be buying.
Last I checked, the majority of cellphone thefts are not for the phone; rather they're for the SIM card so the thief (or another related party) can make phone calls at least until the original owner realizes the SIM's gone, or until they manage to run the gamut of cell provider's customer support lines and get it disabled.
Honestly, my phone is not that valuable to me. I don't keep any data on it that I don't back up... and while it would suck to lose my phone (because of the cost of replacement), I'm more concerned about people racking up minutes on my number before I get a chance to cancel.
There's not really a great used market for cell phones... they're pretty much out of date at release these days. Though I agree cellphones are stolen, they're generally not for the phone itself.
A good question, but one that the magazine publishers need to ask instead of the readers. It's really down to them to find a new business model, one that works in the modern age. If not, there are plenty of other sources of information that you can go to. Are the sites I mentioned associated with a magazine? Hmm...
OT: I've been well impressed with my Yonah-based Macbook pro. The only problem I've had with it so far is I have a flaky Bluetooth module (I'll call this in to Apple when I can afford to be without my Mac for a week... right now I just have a third-party dongle in a USB port). In part I wanted to wait for Merom-based MBP's as well, but I knew that it'd be a while before I'd actually buy one after they were first released. I needed a laptop when I bought it, not another six months from now. (yes, I know they're out in a few weeks... just don't buy first run of anything... wait a month or two).
Oh, one bit of advice? Max out the ram immediately. I put 1Gb of RAM in this when I got it, but once you get a few apps running at once you'll chow down RAM quickly. I'd also recommend dropping Office 2004 quickly and use NeoOffice (a version of OpenOffice compiled for Mac natively)... Rosetta apps run well, but they do eat up a lot of memory. I plan to upgrade my RAM in October.
I think the computer print media is dead. Quite simply, the magazines that I used to read have really devolved into advertisement-fests with little to no real content. Plus, by the time the magazine hits the streets the information contained therein is actually quite seriously out of date. Said information is quite freely available online at various news sites... and so long as you don't limit yourself to a single news source for technology (like Slashdot!) then you'll get most of the information you require.
I have a list of sites I check daily (of which Slash is one), and sites I check bi-weekly (like arstechnica). There's also a few Apple specific sites I check up on occasionally being a Mac user (appleinsider, macrumours etc.). I get a pretty well-rounded viewpoint I think on most upcoming tech, and I can make a decision on my future direction in technology from this.
I might point out I've not purchased a computer magazine for the better part of 5-6 years. However, I do occasionally pick up and read a copy at the local coffee shop when I'm sipping on my caffeine... much less hassle (and less distracting) than opening up my laptop.
So long as you can deal with the distraction of a computer, reading stuff on the web is a decent source of info.
Having said that, for anything other than technology your mileage may vary. I still routinely buy hard magazines of "Plane & Pilot" (though I also check aero-news.net every day) because the online media for pilots is not nearly as good as you can get in a print magazine. Yet. I also buy "New Scientist", "Skeptic" and "Fortean Times" for the same reasons; all stuff I'm interested in that I can't find a good source for online.
Oh, and for news? Well, I buy the sunday paper mostly for the ads... anything beyond that I can get on the Internet quite easily.
Didn't this question come up on Slashdot years ago? Probably should have:)
I'd mod you up for this (I have mod points), but I want to post on this and say that a close friend of mine went through the exact same thing when his wife passed away earlier this year. His severely disabled child needed almost constant care, and despite the pain it caused him when I said it to him (and the pain it caused when he did it), he checked his child into a managed care facility. He knew that without his wife's help, he wouldn't be able to effectively work for a living. Without working, the quality of life he and his son shared would have degraded to the point that he would no longer be able to care for his son effectively anyway.
When I first said it to him over a drink shortly after the funeral, he didn't talk to me for almost 3 months. When he finally did call, he apologized and told me I had been right, and that putting his son in the care facility was the right thing to do.
As it stands, he spends every weekend and most weeknights with his son, and their quality of life has never been better.
I'm just glad Apple is actually finding bugs in their own code and fixing them in a reasonable period of time.
I bought a Macbook Pro recently, and it does still have its share of problems. First of all, it's a new platform for Apple so it's almost bound to have a few issues that they didn't predict. Just because OSX has really been running for years on Intel platform, doesn't mean it's optimized for it yet.
This wireless patch deals with a couple of issues they've found. I installed the patch last night, and I sincerely hope that it does fix the "beachball of death" wireless issue that seems to have hit a fair number of MBP owners myself included. The wireless is pretty damned good, the antenna in the machine is significantly better than my other Dell laptop. However, it's not perfect, and it's known to cause problems in the right (wrong?) circumstances. I can't nail down precisely what those circumstances are, but it will freeze Finder with SBOD problems. Thankfully, EscapePod comes to the rescue for me or it would be that big fat power button of death for my MBP.
I reiterate... I am a Mac owner and I'm proud to say that Apple is at least proactively fixing their code. Secureworks identified one problem, Apple fixed three. That speaks volumes to me about how serious Apple are about squashing bugs.
The frontend already runs on Mac, but the backend? Eeehhhhhh... no.
I think the primary reason is that the majority of Mac owners who are interested in this kind of setup are usually the kind who have a Mini for hacking. No encoding capability. Myself, I run a Macbook Pro; no supported encoders there either. To get PCI, you gotta get a Mac Pro; an expensive proposition. Most people who would build a Myth box are building it from commodity hardware or from their own "bits boxes". In other words, doing it on the cheap. Hell, I know I did.
Yes, I know there are firewire encoding boxes, but these don't tend to be well supported by Linux. Porting to OSX and using OSX native APIs would be a significant undertaking.
I think another thing is the average Mac consumer is not the kind to fiddle with this kind of thing. While there are some developers on MythTV that use Macs, I'm not sure there's a large enough community to pull together a port.
Of course, you could start up a Sourceforge project to port it and prove me wrong:)
My feeling is that when the project itself stabilizes a little (note the 0. in the version number... that means we're at least 80 versions from production;) ) we might see more effort to port it to OSX. At the moment, it's a moving target as much of the API is still "in flux" and will be for some time to come. As I mentioned above, to port to OSX interfaces would not be trivial, and to have to redo it every 3 months because a new version has changed a core piece of code would be a pain in the arse. That's the reason you don't see much activity on a BSD port either... or Windows... though I know some have tried it.
Bear in mind though, that despite Axel Thimm's best efforts, it might be a few days before truly stable RPMs are available through APT or YUM. I'm going to hold out for the weekend or next weekend and do the upgrade.
Yes, I've been running it on FC3 for well over 18 months now, and I used that same guide for the setup. Despite a few stumbles in my setup (serial connection to satellite receiver etc.) it worked like a champ first time. It just got better with 0.19 and now I'm really excited about the 0.20 changes.
This is probably going to get lost in the jokes and jibes, but I have honest and serious advice from someone who's been on the opposite side of that (the only guy in an all-female department), and now in a department with a few women but mostly guys.
First, don't try too hard. Just be yourself. Honestly, out of the two women in my directly interfacing departments, one of them fits in well with the guys because she's just herself. She doesn't put on airs and graces, doesn't pretend to be better than the guys... but also doesn't go out of her way to be one of the guys either. The other tries to be one of the guys, and as a result she actually ends up being excluded from the guys going out to lunch because she's become somewhat branded as "the office bike". Maybe that's just because she joins in with a lot of the bawdy jokes, maybe that's just her personality in general coming through. But to be honest I like hanging out with her sometimes... but her personality can grate quickly.
A lot of the problem of women joining in with guys is actually a mindset that's encouraged by the places we work. Sexism didn't disappear; it just changed form. Today's American workplace is an incredibly sexist place. All of these classes about "tolerance" and "working well with the opposite sex"... not to mention the constant reminders to avoid "sexist jokes" and "sexist remarks" in the office space just continue to remind everyone that we're different. That's a bunch of horse hockey in my opinion; we're all human and most women I know outside of work enjoy a good joke even at their own gender's expense... just so long as it doesn't go too far. The attitudes that are forced onto us at work just serve to reinforce the differences between the genders and thus reinforce that we should all view the opposite sex as a foreign country. I'd say the larger the corporation, the worse it is because they're so afraid of lawsuits that they become reactionary and thus as I mentioned earlier constantly reinforce the idea of difference.
Sure, women and men are different... but we're all still human. Until we can get out of the mindset that we're all different countries that need to be treated differently we'll never get away from the sexism that I see every day. As I said, it's still there; we're still living in 1950... just the form has changed. It's more covert than overt, but it's definitely there and is reinforced every single day.
Myself, I plan to get out of the Corporate world soon... start working for myself because I am so sick of the attitudes that are prevalent in the Corporate world.
Sorry I got off on a bit of a rant... but the upshot is to be yourself. Don't try to be something you're not... and don't bend over backwards to fit in. Friends you make in the workplace will be your friends regardless of whether or not you're male or female. You don't want to break into a clique because by the evidence that the clique exists they have already shown you and everyone else that they don't want anyone else to join. Cliques are usually formed by selfish and self-motivated people who you probably don't want to hang out with anyway.
Find friends with whom you have something in common; male or female. Make friends with their friends and remain open to the idea of inviting others in and letting others invite others in, even if you personally disagree with that decision. Some of my best friends today I considered complete jackasses when I first met them... only after getting to know them (and in some cases giving them a dose of humility) did we become friends... and now I've made some lifelong friends (I hope) who are good people.
While I admit it depends a lot on the type of work users are doing, how many of your users routinely run at 100% CPU utilization 8 hours a day? I'd be willing to bet few to none. The simple fact is that CPU speed outstripped user requirements a LONG time ago in terms of real work. Sure, there are gamers and media guys who have more specific needs, but for the average office user you just simply don't need 3Ghz PC's at every desk sucking up electricity and heating your building (causing an increase in air conditioning costs).
Hell, I'm a power user, and even then I barely scratch the surface of my 1.6Ghz Centrino laptop with 1Gb of RAM. The only time I come close is when I'm running a few virtual machines... something the average office user doesn't do.
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I've played violent video games since I got my first computer in 1982. Hell, I wrote a couple of shareware/freeware violent games. I feel that I grew up into a relatively well adjusted and normal adult, and most of my peers agree. I do realize some people have a tenuous grip on reality, and they could have found themselves being made more violent or desensitized to violence by violent computer games, but these same people would probably have the same problem with movies, TV and books.
The primary problem here is not in my opinion the games, but rather the lack of parenting these people have received. I see way too often parents who are detached from their kids, essentially letting the state, the TV and the computer raise their children in this country. Parents would rather continue to live the same lives they led while single rather than actually do any real work to raise children. They're often viewed as a burden by these people. My parents raised me to recognize fact from fiction, and made sure I could draw the lines easily. I'm doing the same with my children, and yes I do let them play violent video games so long as they know that they're just that; games.
And to answer the question, after playing said video games I often feel less violent. They're a great stress relief in a violent world, and when I'm done playing depending on the time I will go to bed, or go down to the family room to watch Mythbusters with my kids, or go out and play soccer with my son... you name it. In many ways, I consider myself quite normal. And to answer your last question about who analyzes me? Well, my wife and kids for a start. I'm not the gamer you think I am; living alone and playing games all the time. I play games when I feel like it and/or have time. I am constantly being analyzed by those around me... and I'm a very social creature. If I become antisocial for some reason, there's my wife, my kids and my friends who will tell me about it. Sorry, that argument that nobody analyzes me doesn't stand up.
I mean, seriously. I remember playing this game years ago!
Has this one just become a big deal because the Spectrum couldn't handle full motion 3D graphics? Bully seems to be just a logical evolution of Skool Daze, a game that's over 20 years old now but was great in its time (and I played it recently on a Spectrum emulator and enjoyed the hell out of it, still!). Hell, it even had the "homosexual content" thing down where you could kiss guys, so even that's nothing new.
Having said that, I'm actually looking forward to picking this one up and playing it. I have always enjoyed Rockstar's games and I see no reason I won't enjoy this, too. I doubt it's going to turn me into a bully because (a) I'm not at school; I'm in my 30's and (b) Grand Theft Auto didn't turn me into a carjacking gun-toting villain except maybe for a few hours every few days when I got time to play it! If you seriously can't separate fact from fiction enough to play a game like Bully, then you probably shouldn't go to the movies, or watch TV... or hell read a book!
Honestly, I own an iPod because it does exactly what I need. No more, no less. It's compact, it's resilient, it's lightweight and it doesn't weigh me down with overly complicated menu systems or functions that I'll never use. Radio? Please. There's nothing on the radio I want to hear. Wi-fi? Again, why? It's a security hole and I don't see any real need for it (especially the way the Zune implements it).
My iPod allows me to listen to encoded CD's so I don't have to cart my CD collection around with me. It also allows me to buy music on iTMS and play that back too (only bought a few albums, but that's all I need). What more do I need from my device? OK, so my calendar and contacts are there. Groovy, they're on my phone, too so it's sort of redundant functionality for me. I own an iPod because it has decent sound quality, the device itself is pretty slick, the interface is simple and easy to work with and generally it meets my needs. What more do I want?
I won't buy a Zune; not because it's Microsoft but because it doesn't give me any killer features that I need. Sure, conceptually the wireless music sharing is a nice idea, but cannot be implemented in a truly free way. The only way I can see it being useful for me is to be able to share limited-time sample tracks of small bands (often friends of mine) to get other friends interested in their music. But then again, I do that by email already, so it's not a killer feature there, either.
I will run my iPod until it won't run any more. Once that dies, I'll look at the market and if the iPod is still what meets my needs and requirements with minimal fuss at a reasonable price I'll probably replace it with another iPod. If something else comes along that meets my needs better or has killer features I decide I can't live without then I'll buy that instead. Sure, this confirms what the article says somewhat, but not for the reasons implied in the article (it implies that iPod owners will drop the iPod for the Zune, that's not true).
For reference, I'm also a Mac owner, a Linux user and a Windows admin for work. I don't particularly "keep the faith" of any manufacturer; I use what works for me.
No, the word would be "likelihood". Honestly, English seems to be a dying art in "journalism" these days.
FYI, I use my (Yonah) Macbook Pro one-handed all the time. The track pad and keyboard are positioned such that I can hit the CTRL key with my pinky finger with my index finger on the trackpad and thumb on the button. This is not unusual for me. Though I have to admit, when I know I'm going to be sitting at a desk for some time working I will tend to whip out my Bluetooth mouse and put that on the table as well. Wow, costs me an extra 4 seconds to get that out of my bag too!!! :)
:)
On the flip-side, I have to say in user-interface design the two-fingered scrolling on the trackpad is the best damned advance in interaction I've seen in a LONG time. Even when I have a mouse connected, I tend to switch to the trackpad to scroll, especially when I have to scroll horizontally. Damn that high-resolution porn
Sound like a management mantra, but it's true. Globalization sucks for the people caught in the middle today (the high-tech workers who actually directly drove up the price of tech workers during the dot-com boom) and will continue to. There are two sides to the story, though and that is that in losing a little in the "first-world countries" we are actually pulling the "third-world countries" up to our level.
However, there are problems that I think people are only now beginning to see. For a start in India in general now that a small percentage of the populous has suddenly become relatively well paid, the cost of items in the economy is going up. This either forces the majority of the population to get increases in pay relative to the increasing cost or they run the risk of destroying the economy of their own country. Increase in wealth must be managed or it risks the entire economy. India is starting to learn this.
Now, so long as it's all managed properly then India will be bought up to the level of the US in terms of quality of life, cost of living and so forth (well, maybe a little lower), then their jobs will all be offshored to some other country and so the cycle begins again. Over time this will have a generally levelling effect and will result in a world that is better placed to actually improve the lives of those living on the Earth rather than in-fighting and bickering. This is generally a good thing.
The utopia envisioned by science fiction writers for years will not come about without a great deal of pain. There's going to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the economies of the first world countries will crumble. The high-horse that the West has ridden for centuries has finally run itself out, and we're all going to feel the pinch.
There are ways to make sure you survive through this; be flexible. Be ready to work where and doing whatever it takes to make ends meet and support your own families. Don't get too attached to the "everything on credit" lifestyle to which we in the West have become accustomed, that lifestyle is going to end in a huge and extremely ugly crash. The foundation of this crash was founded in the early 1970's when the dollar value was seperated from gold. Then with the additional weight of the effect of networking and decentralization on top of that it will lead to a complete crash of our lifestyle. I don't know if it will happen in our lifetimes, but I really believe it will happen.
We're in a new market now where our jobs can be done anywhere. This is going to lead to a short term situation where jobs will migrate away from the West. We can't prevent it. We can complain about it, and we can whine about it but the best we're going to do is delay it and in doing so make the crash that much worse when it comes.
Yes, I've been hit by globalization myself but even I have to realize that the future is going to change radically. Many are going to hate it, I don't claim to like the short term picture myself... but I have to accept it. In fact, as one of the drivers in the dot-com boom and the decentralization projects of large companies I also have to claim a certain amount of responsibility. Many of us on Slash do. We wanted this brave new world where the Internet made things possible like improving the lot of others in the world. Well, now our visions are becoming a reality... but the utopian vision we had has a down side that we're all feeling.
Get used to it, or complain about it... but we can't prevent it. Not now. Not ever.
Only really the early MBP's had a problem with this extreme of a heat problem. Mine's relatively recent (manufacture date in May) and doesn't exhibit really excessive temperatures. Without fan control, and both cores running I run about 52C pretty consistently at idle. The only time I've seen in excess of 65 is doing some major compilation job. Even playing Second Life it seems relatively cool to the touch.
Having said that, the case of the machine can get hot... especially at the top of the keyboard; the strip between the keyboard and screen. That can get very toasty when doing some heavy-duty compilation or very CPU intensive stuff.
Even stock though, I've never had a problem putting it on my lap. It can get warm, definitely but cooler than my last Dell (a D610 Pentium M).
Much as this tool is cool and much needed, the one at http://www.lobotomo.com/products/downloads/Fan%20C ontrol.zip is much better. Installs as a preference panel and allows you to set thresholds for temperature in your MBP. Doesn't really give direct fan control, but does give you "baseline" control and allows you to tune the thresholds built into the machine.
Granted, I've only been running it a day or so, but it's awesome. If I'm in a relatively noisy environment (coffee shop, etc) I can crank up the fans to make sure my mac's nice and cool. If I'm at home in the quiet I can crank it down.
Also, if you've installed the Processor Preference panel you can switch off the second core in the CPU allowing better battery runtime and get rid of the "CPU whine".
Hey, the MBP isn't perfect... it was and still is Apple's first attempt at an Intel notebook. The Macbook actually improved on the MBP in terms of "polish" because Apple had a chance to really work the kinks out of that one. The Merom based MBP's promise to be much more polished, and hopefully impressive.
However, despite all the misc problems I've had (nothing critical, just minor irritants), the initial quality out of the box and ongoing quality of the machine FAR exceed anything I could've gotten out of a Dell. The screen doesn't flex at all unless you put significant weight on it, the iSight works like a champ for web-camming with my friends... generally this is one really great piece of kit. It needs tweaking... so what? Do did my last Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
I did say that it was second-hand knowledge... and that I've got a lot less material to work from with Google (one friend working there) than Microsoft (lost count... maybe 10?). Take with appropriate sodium intake. Maybe it's just the way my friend feels about his immediate management... it may not be systemic. He still loves working there, though!
Yeah, but still mostly sales offices. Of course, most of MS Development goes on in Redmond as well so again YMMV depending on the type of work you're doing. Microsoft's offices across the country do tend to be "combo" offices where there are some coders, engineers and salesdroids. Of course, Microsoft is also a big believer in "work from home" for engineering people... something that reduces the amount of physical office required and is good for the engineer as well.
:) However, I will say that I still think the flexibility aspect of Microsoft is good.
:)
I can admit when I'm wrong, though
Oh, and note I'm far from a Microsoft shill... I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro that's had Office 2004 forcibly removed since two days after I bought it and replaced with NeoOffice. Most of my software is either downloads or compiled using Fink.... in fact I don't think I have anything Microsoft left on this machine! My primary server at home is Linux. I just do Windows at work 'cos it pays the bills... but even I can appreciate that MS is actually a good company to work for according to my friends. YMMV though
Microsoft's actually not one big monolithic Borg culture as Slashdot likes to jest. I have made many friends with Microsoft people over the years, and have one friend who works for Google. So, take what I'm about to say somewhat at face value; it's all second-hand information anyway.
Google might be a good place to work if you just really feel that their products and services are going to be part of the next big wave of technology. They are doing a lot of cool stuff with network computing which I think people failed to predict a few years ago, and they have a culture of "doing the cool stuff". However, they're a small company. Despite their significant resources, they are still as susceptible to the mood of the market as any other relatively small company. Sure, they can liquidate resources if they get in a pinch due to the whims of the marketplace, but to do so would invariably affect their deliverable services and drive more people away. That's a hard place to be and could lead to a devolution of Google within a very short timeframe. They've been lucky so far, and I have to admit I do like their products a lot. However, I don't pay for them. At least not directly.
Microsoft is a big company with deep pockets and wide reserves that can weather a storm in the economy much better than Google. Sure, again they can liquidate resources in a crunch but it would take an economic disaster far worse than the Dot Com crash to kill a company like Microsoft. We as the Open Source / Apple / Tech crowd might want to believe Microsoft will be beaten by , but that's not really going to happen any time soon.
Google has a monoculture. Sure, they're a small company doing some cool stuff but they're still quite focused on a particular market. When you work for Google, you work for the company. Microsoft surprisingly has many different cultures depending on where in Microsoft you work. Microsoft is not one company, not really. It's a gestalt entity that shares the umbrella name of "Microsoft", but each division is run differently by different people with different management styles and personalities. This makes sense because each division does something very different. Even different areas of the country provide different cultures; I find the Microsoft guys I work with and know in St. Louis are VERY different from the Microsoft friends of mine in New York, at least in terms of business. They work differently, they think differently.
Bear in mind also that a job at Microsoft doesn't tie you to Redmond. You can pretty much work anywhere in the world. Last I checked, Google is in SF and that's about it. Bear that in mind; at Microsoft you can transfer your job to any of the other communities where they perform that function. Especially Microsoft Consulting Services... you can pretty much pick your location after you've been at MS for 6 months to a year and really proven yourself.
On the down side, I do know that Google tends to be an easy-going work environment, though with a veiled sense of pressure. Employees are subtly pressured to work far beyond 40 hours a week and thus it's not a good career in my opinion for someone with a family or someone intending to start a family. However, it *is* a fun place to work with lots of dynamic individuals who work hard but also play hard. Microsoft... well it depends where you work. There are fewer chances for advancement within Microsoft because people do tend to stay there. That also to my mind speaks to how good Microsoft actually are to work for; people tend to start there and stay there. However, the chances to "make it big with MS Stock" are over and have been for years. There may still be room for Google millionaires for real rock-star employees... MS... less so. However, the lack of advancement in my opinion is more than made up for by the flexibility of work location I mentioned previously.
I have to say that those friends of mine who work for Microsoft really enjoy their work. Many of them are as much of a geek as I am... running Linux and Vista on thei
If anything in my opinion, the thing that killed Transmeta was that IIRC you could code directly to the chip... you had to go through the code-morphing layer.
Had they developed a chip that had both its own native instruction set and a compatibility layer for x86, at the very least it would have been very popular among the OSS crowd... and low power is always popular in embedded devices. x86 compatibility would be nice in embedded devices to bootstrap DOS, then run your Transmeta-native apps from within x86 wrappers... best of both worlds.
Of course, I may be thinking of something completely different... but I seem to remember this being a reason Transmeta wasn't used in embedded devices I worked on.
As a followup, and in case anyone's still following this thread:
;)
Based upon the feedback I received, I went ahead and installed the beta version to test it. Sure, it was nice to be able to launch Office under MacOS (and it ran faster and better than Office 2004...), but I'm still not impressed. The application compatibility is questionable at best and out of the two or three applications I still retain a Parallels Windows XP box for, precisely NONE of them worked. In fact, only one of them would even install.
Give me a call when you hit Version 10
Well, not necessarily here on Slash... but here's my opinion.
Where's the "killer app" for this operating system? I mean, really? Sure, in my opinion there has always been room in the past for new operating systems, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed a long time ago. There are already a smorgasbord of good operating systems out there that meet the needs of modern developers both on the desktop and in embedded systems. So where's the compelling reason to scope out one more OS platform when developing either of these platforms?
Embedded systems need a good real-time operating system, or at least one that is light on resources. OK, so by default I know in a few years we're going to be seeing really powerful embedded systems, but that will only open the door to increase the OS footprint using existing OS's. They're all still being developed, so they will continue to grow as the hardware platforms also continue to grow. This isn't new, this is just economics of the computer industry 101.
Today if you want to develop an embedded platform you have a multitude of good choices of platform. I don't see much market for yet another OS. If you want quick and dirty development on the cheap, you've got Linux kernels... if you want well polished and flexible you've got Symbian. If you want something verging on a desktop OS in complexity you've got CE / PocketPC / Whatever they hell they're calling it this year. Take your pick... and these are only the high-profile contenders. For each of these, there are probably a dozen other alternatives that work just as well. I don't see how AmigaOS is going to compete in this market space.
Now to the desktop side. Sorry, I still don't see it. In many ways I feel OSX was the natural spiritual successor to AmigaOS. Many of the things that made it great are quite obviously inspiring similar or even identical functionality in OSX. That's natural; many of the things AmigaOS did were only great by the standards of the time. And today, only Apple does the same thing with the unified architecture of platform an operating system... Microsoft can't compete there because they have such a wide range of hardware to support. As long as Apple maintains control of the hardwar they can tune the OS to said hardware and provide a user experience not a million miles away from what AmigaOS gave us 20 years ago.
Even then, on the desktop side you have a multitude of choices again; Linux, BSD, Windows, you name it! There are even Windows workalikes, MS-DOS platforms. And if you think DOS is dead you've obviously never worked in the embedded space. Sure it may just be a bootstrapper for your applications rather than a true OS, but there are plenty of people still coding in the 16-bit DOS space, sometimes with 32-bit extensions where required. Hell, I even maintain a DOS installation in a Parallels virtual machine on my Macbook so I can do development in the environment... so there's yet another desktop OS to compete with.
I loved the Amiga platform. I had two of them; a 500 and a 1200. I also had an Atari ST which I loved just as much. Having said that though, the only compelling reason I can find to even look at the new AmigaOS is for the purposes of nostalgia. Sorry, that doesn't cut it either for me. I've done the nostalgia thing... I've booted these OS's in emulators and checked them out. They're dated and do nothing that modern OS's don't. Sure I can view these platforms through rose-tinted spectacles and profess my love for the stuff they did, but by modern standards they just fail to impress on most levels.
I'm not saying we've reached a plateau with regard to operating systems... I personally feel that all the major players have plenty of places to go. However, just another OS with a desktop metaphor interface in an already crowded market place... you'd have to give it away to make it viable unless it does something incredible. Look at Be. Great OS, and to my mind the closest we've been to an AmigaOS like experience on Intel architecture... but they tried to sell i
OK... games. That's one place the Mac seriously lacks. But having been a Linux geek for years before becoming a Mac geek this year, I've found the game situation to be almost a smorgasbord compared to what I had under Linux. Plus, of course on my MBP I can use BootCamp if I really get a hankering for Windows games... and it works damned well.
I also use Parallels for those 1 or 2 Office type application I have left that I need Windows for.
Which brings me to the part I don't get. Office? Why? When you're got Office 2004 (slow on the Intel architecture in my opinion), or fantastic and well-rounded free solutions like OpenOffice... why on Earth would you want Office 2000 running on your Mac? Besides, that'll just look UGLY on OSX compared to the rest of the desktop.
If you're determined not to pay for Office 2004... great... NeoOffice is compiled for OSX natively, looks native and runs well (slow to start, but about the same startup time as Word 2004 but with all the apps there). If you're using Office 2000, then document compatbility is not a problem. Hell, if you've migrated to Mac then honestly the hard part of transitioning is over; learning the new OS. Apps are easy by comparison.
Sorry... I do see a need for this for the gamer... but this is one Mac user who won't be buying.
Last I checked, the majority of cellphone thefts are not for the phone; rather they're for the SIM card so the thief (or another related party) can make phone calls at least until the original owner realizes the SIM's gone, or until they manage to run the gamut of cell provider's customer support lines and get it disabled.
Honestly, my phone is not that valuable to me. I don't keep any data on it that I don't back up... and while it would suck to lose my phone (because of the cost of replacement), I'm more concerned about people racking up minutes on my number before I get a chance to cancel.
There's not really a great used market for cell phones... they're pretty much out of date at release these days. Though I agree cellphones are stolen, they're generally not for the phone itself.
A good question, but one that the magazine publishers need to ask instead of the readers. It's really down to them to find a new business model, one that works in the modern age. If not, there are plenty of other sources of information that you can go to. Are the sites I mentioned associated with a magazine? Hmm...
OT: I've been well impressed with my Yonah-based Macbook pro. The only problem I've had with it so far is I have a flaky Bluetooth module (I'll call this in to Apple when I can afford to be without my Mac for a week... right now I just have a third-party dongle in a USB port). In part I wanted to wait for Merom-based MBP's as well, but I knew that it'd be a while before I'd actually buy one after they were first released. I needed a laptop when I bought it, not another six months from now. (yes, I know they're out in a few weeks... just don't buy first run of anything... wait a month or two).
Oh, one bit of advice? Max out the ram immediately. I put 1Gb of RAM in this when I got it, but once you get a few apps running at once you'll chow down RAM quickly. I'd also recommend dropping Office 2004 quickly and use NeoOffice (a version of OpenOffice compiled for Mac natively)... Rosetta apps run well, but they do eat up a lot of memory. I plan to upgrade my RAM in October.
I think the computer print media is dead. Quite simply, the magazines that I used to read have really devolved into advertisement-fests with little to no real content. Plus, by the time the magazine hits the streets the information contained therein is actually quite seriously out of date. Said information is quite freely available online at various news sites... and so long as you don't limit yourself to a single news source for technology (like Slashdot!) then you'll get most of the information you require.
:)
I have a list of sites I check daily (of which Slash is one), and sites I check bi-weekly (like arstechnica). There's also a few Apple specific sites I check up on occasionally being a Mac user (appleinsider, macrumours etc.). I get a pretty well-rounded viewpoint I think on most upcoming tech, and I can make a decision on my future direction in technology from this.
I might point out I've not purchased a computer magazine for the better part of 5-6 years. However, I do occasionally pick up and read a copy at the local coffee shop when I'm sipping on my caffeine... much less hassle (and less distracting) than opening up my laptop.
So long as you can deal with the distraction of a computer, reading stuff on the web is a decent source of info.
Having said that, for anything other than technology your mileage may vary. I still routinely buy hard magazines of "Plane & Pilot" (though I also check aero-news.net every day) because the online media for pilots is not nearly as good as you can get in a print magazine. Yet. I also buy "New Scientist", "Skeptic" and "Fortean Times" for the same reasons; all stuff I'm interested in that I can't find a good source for online.
Oh, and for news? Well, I buy the sunday paper mostly for the ads... anything beyond that I can get on the Internet quite easily.
Didn't this question come up on Slashdot years ago? Probably should have
I'd mod you up for this (I have mod points), but I want to post on this and say that a close friend of mine went through the exact same thing when his wife passed away earlier this year. His severely disabled child needed almost constant care, and despite the pain it caused him when I said it to him (and the pain it caused when he did it), he checked his child into a managed care facility. He knew that without his wife's help, he wouldn't be able to effectively work for a living. Without working, the quality of life he and his son shared would have degraded to the point that he would no longer be able to care for his son effectively anyway.
When I first said it to him over a drink shortly after the funeral, he didn't talk to me for almost 3 months. When he finally did call, he apologized and told me I had been right, and that putting his son in the care facility was the right thing to do.
As it stands, he spends every weekend and most weeknights with his son, and their quality of life has never been better.
Just food for thought.
I'm just glad Apple is actually finding bugs in their own code and fixing them in a reasonable period of time.
I bought a Macbook Pro recently, and it does still have its share of problems. First of all, it's a new platform for Apple so it's almost bound to have a few issues that they didn't predict. Just because OSX has really been running for years on Intel platform, doesn't mean it's optimized for it yet.
This wireless patch deals with a couple of issues they've found. I installed the patch last night, and I sincerely hope that it does fix the "beachball of death" wireless issue that seems to have hit a fair number of MBP owners myself included. The wireless is pretty damned good, the antenna in the machine is significantly better than my other Dell laptop. However, it's not perfect, and it's known to cause problems in the right (wrong?) circumstances. I can't nail down precisely what those circumstances are, but it will freeze Finder with SBOD problems. Thankfully, EscapePod comes to the rescue for me or it would be that big fat power button of death for my MBP.
I reiterate... I am a Mac owner and I'm proud to say that Apple is at least proactively fixing their code. Secureworks identified one problem, Apple fixed three. That speaks volumes to me about how serious Apple are about squashing bugs.
Nah, that's just the combined heat coming from Gentoo machines compiling constantly and the Macbooks pumping out watts.
:)
Yes, this from a Macbook Pro owner
The frontend already runs on Mac, but the backend? Eeehhhhhh... no.
:)
;) ) we might see more effort to port it to OSX. At the moment, it's a moving target as much of the API is still "in flux" and will be for some time to come. As I mentioned above, to port to OSX interfaces would not be trivial, and to have to redo it every 3 months because a new version has changed a core piece of code would be a pain in the arse. That's the reason you don't see much activity on a BSD port either... or Windows... though I know some have tried it.
I think the primary reason is that the majority of Mac owners who are interested in this kind of setup are usually the kind who have a Mini for hacking. No encoding capability. Myself, I run a Macbook Pro; no supported encoders there either. To get PCI, you gotta get a Mac Pro; an expensive proposition. Most people who would build a Myth box are building it from commodity hardware or from their own "bits boxes". In other words, doing it on the cheap. Hell, I know I did.
Yes, I know there are firewire encoding boxes, but these don't tend to be well supported by Linux. Porting to OSX and using OSX native APIs would be a significant undertaking.
I think another thing is the average Mac consumer is not the kind to fiddle with this kind of thing. While there are some developers on MythTV that use Macs, I'm not sure there's a large enough community to pull together a port.
Of course, you could start up a Sourceforge project to port it and prove me wrong
My feeling is that when the project itself stabilizes a little (note the 0. in the version number... that means we're at least 80 versions from production
Bear in mind though, that despite Axel Thimm's best efforts, it might be a few days before truly stable RPMs are available through APT or YUM. I'm going to hold out for the weekend or next weekend and do the upgrade.
Yes, I've been running it on FC3 for well over 18 months now, and I used that same guide for the setup. Despite a few stumbles in my setup (serial connection to satellite receiver etc.) it worked like a champ first time. It just got better with 0.19 and now I'm really excited about the 0.20 changes.
This is probably going to get lost in the jokes and jibes, but I have honest and serious advice from someone who's been on the opposite side of that (the only guy in an all-female department), and now in a department with a few women but mostly guys.
First, don't try too hard. Just be yourself. Honestly, out of the two women in my directly interfacing departments, one of them fits in well with the guys because she's just herself. She doesn't put on airs and graces, doesn't pretend to be better than the guys... but also doesn't go out of her way to be one of the guys either. The other tries to be one of the guys, and as a result she actually ends up being excluded from the guys going out to lunch because she's become somewhat branded as "the office bike". Maybe that's just because she joins in with a lot of the bawdy jokes, maybe that's just her personality in general coming through. But to be honest I like hanging out with her sometimes... but her personality can grate quickly.
A lot of the problem of women joining in with guys is actually a mindset that's encouraged by the places we work. Sexism didn't disappear; it just changed form. Today's American workplace is an incredibly sexist place. All of these classes about "tolerance" and "working well with the opposite sex"... not to mention the constant reminders to avoid "sexist jokes" and "sexist remarks" in the office space just continue to remind everyone that we're different. That's a bunch of horse hockey in my opinion; we're all human and most women I know outside of work enjoy a good joke even at their own gender's expense... just so long as it doesn't go too far. The attitudes that are forced onto us at work just serve to reinforce the differences between the genders and thus reinforce that we should all view the opposite sex as a foreign country. I'd say the larger the corporation, the worse it is because they're so afraid of lawsuits that they become reactionary and thus as I mentioned earlier constantly reinforce the idea of difference.
Sure, women and men are different... but we're all still human. Until we can get out of the mindset that we're all different countries that need to be treated differently we'll never get away from the sexism that I see every day. As I said, it's still there; we're still living in 1950... just the form has changed. It's more covert than overt, but it's definitely there and is reinforced every single day.
Myself, I plan to get out of the Corporate world soon... start working for myself because I am so sick of the attitudes that are prevalent in the Corporate world.
Sorry I got off on a bit of a rant... but the upshot is to be yourself. Don't try to be something you're not... and don't bend over backwards to fit in. Friends you make in the workplace will be your friends regardless of whether or not you're male or female. You don't want to break into a clique because by the evidence that the clique exists they have already shown you and everyone else that they don't want anyone else to join. Cliques are usually formed by selfish and self-motivated people who you probably don't want to hang out with anyway.
Find friends with whom you have something in common; male or female. Make friends with their friends and remain open to the idea of inviting others in and letting others invite others in, even if you personally disagree with that decision. Some of my best friends today I considered complete jackasses when I first met them... only after getting to know them (and in some cases giving them a dose of humility) did we become friends... and now I've made some lifelong friends (I hope) who are good people.
Hope this helps.
While I admit it depends a lot on the type of work users are doing, how many of your users routinely run at 100% CPU utilization 8 hours a day? I'd be willing to bet few to none. The simple fact is that CPU speed outstripped user requirements a LONG time ago in terms of real work. Sure, there are gamers and media guys who have more specific needs, but for the average office user you just simply don't need 3Ghz PC's at every desk sucking up electricity and heating your building (causing an increase in air conditioning costs).
Hell, I'm a power user, and even then I barely scratch the surface of my 1.6Ghz Centrino laptop with 1Gb of RAM. The only time I come close is when I'm running a few virtual machines... something the average office user doesn't do.