Yes, increased labor costs will increase prices, but it isn't 1:1 - you haven't increased manufacturer costs, rent, or utilities, which probably dominate the equation.
That's interesting point, I must admit I have no idea what the ratio would be.
I've been somewhat assuming that they would have to go up fairly steeply to convince workers in other (better) jobs to migrate to something that might be less demanding, but more mundane or less pleasant menial job.
This is what I was trying to indicate through the example of Sweden, and it's certainly a debatable PoV. I can't see a large number workers being willing to migrate to doing more menial jobs without a strong financial incentive though.
You seem to have mis-judged my point (you may wish to go back and re-read my post a little more carefully and note in which direction I am advocating).
That house you bought for 100k before the Iraq war might be worth 150k now... why?
FWIW, my house cost more like 320,000 USD...and it's a 2 bedroom flat, and a 99 year leasehold at that (but that's London for you), but that's not why I'm commenting on your post:
Your post about a house price not beating inflation and thus 'really' being a loss is a red herring (I say this having myself made a little under 50,000 USD from having sold my last property - one which I hadn't lived in for some time).
This is because people do not tend to pay cash for houses, they take out mortgages - as long as the value of the house rises by more than the amount they have paid in (added to say the best possible rate of return they could have had from a savings account or something like a mutual fund), then they can consider themselves to be in profit.
It's pertinent to point out that house price inflation is not the same as general inflation, so though all the prices in the same immediate area will have gone up by a similar amount, the price of other goods (that is to say, everything except houses) almost certainly won't have increased by the same amount, so in practice most people do indeed have a large chunk of cash-in-hand to spend when they sell up.
All this is why I was able to invest ~ 25,000 USD as a deposit on a new property (compared to the 0.00 USD I put down on my first property this is was good, because it lowers my perceived risk level as far as the lender is concerned, and so allows me to borrow at a more favourable rate) and I still had ~25,000 USD to blow on new shiny things to put in it (including a new 6,500 USD HDTV, new sounds system, new sofa suite, new bed, new kitchen utilities, etc.).
Subtracting the last known historical value (77.68 years in 2000) from the current value (which was based on me thinking it was 80.1 in 2006 - though Google says it's actually more like 80.26 not that it makes much odds to the end result) gives you a rate of decline of 2.42 years of the life expectancy over a period of 6 years - that is, 0.403 (recurring) year-on-year decline. Multiply that value by 34 and you get your figure of ~13.8 years less than the current LE of 80 (and so you end up with ~66).
As I've said though, that's almost certainly overstating the rate of decline.
One, running a checkout station doesn't require much math skill - mostly the ability to wave stuff over a reader and pack bags properly.
And yet, shop staff still manage to get my change wrong and as often as not don't know how to pack bags either ("Oh god, they've put the frozen food in with the bananas, and..good greif...don't put the salad in with the soap powder.").
Two, if you raise the offered salary, more people will be willing to do the job.
That's not actually a secret. However, if you think it is a secret, you think think that this is:
If they had to increase the salaries of their employees, they'd up the price of their goods.
I happen to think a bit more (okay, maybe a lot more) social equality in the US would be a good thing. Take a country like Sweden for example, which is incredibly equitable compared to most countries (IIRC the average salary is about 70,000 USD - and is so equitable that a doctor can expect to earn a fairly similar wage to a shop assistant). Of course everything is horribly expensive by western European standards never mind US standards, it's around 8 USD for a pint of beer in a bar to give you some idea.
I don't imagine many Americans would currently be willing to swallow prices like that in the name of social equality, it would widely be seen as un-American and an obstacle to growth and dynamism (which indeed it would be).
If the US isn't willing to embrace a bit of healthy dare-I-say socialist working practices, it's back to exploiting immigrants for cheap labour (and er...moaning about them).
Perhaps he is advocating that Washington should engage in pro-active 'regime change' in Mexico and India by taking out their leading political figures, thus forcing the countries in to a state of chaos and potentially spark an internal power struggle and perhaps even civil war, in order to stem the tide of immigrants from those countries.
Of course, should the flow dry up, I hope he doesn't mind the extra 10 minute wait at the check-out at the local Wallmart (where a lone in-numerate hillbilly - the only person other than a desperate immigrant they could find to take the job - staffs the only open checkout and tries to work out if the thing they are trying to scan in is a courgette or cucumber).
Assuming that your indeed from the land down under (based on the whois information on your site, which I checked just to be anal;-) I'd like to point out that if your already 34, your life expectancy is going to be quite a bit less than 80 years, even if you are in in above average physical condition (though having good genes is obviously going to make a huge difference).
I point this out as a lot of people take the current life expectancy figures for where ever they live to mean they can expect to live that long, when in fact that figure is only for those born this year (and already assumes things like health care treatments will continue to develop and improve in their life time, at the rate they are now). The life expectancy for someone already in their mid thirties in.au is probably a lot more like 70-75.
As you can see from figures taken from the CIA world fact book for babies born just 6 years ago in.au, the life expectancy was not 80+ years but just over 77 and half years. To do a very dodgy back-of-a-fag packet calculation based on that same rate of decline (purely because that's as far back as that graph goes), if you were born 34 years ago (in 1972) that takes 13.8 years of your life expectancy, bringing it down to just over 66 years!
As I say, that's a very rough calculation and quite a bit under what ever the real value is (and would think that the average for someone of your (or my) age is probably closer to 70-75), but I'd hate to think there are people keeling over in their 60's and 70's thinking "Hey wait, I'm supposed to have another 10-15 years to go here!" due to a misunderstanding about the way 'life expectancy' statistics are calculated.
If there is any stuff you wanted to do in your final years, you might want to try and squeeze it in before you hit 65, just to be on the safe side.:-)
What your facetious commentary overlooks, is that fact that many companies don't consider things like 'build a stable and well monitored platform' - or 'deliver a fundamentally good service' as a core goal of their business (which is why it is worth end users being vocal about, until the message sinks in).
Instead of focusing on things like QoS, companies get wrapped up in developing or touting whizz bang features and proclaiming 'new ways of doing things' in order to market the product, and they assume that things like service reliability, stability are implied and don't need to be thought about.
As a result, companies don't hire enough staff to maintain and monitor their platform, and they don't pay enough attention to putting the proper process in place to ensure the service delivered is of a high standard. That is, until it's already too late and they are bleeding customers, and then the measures are rushed in place.
( I know this is all too true, because most (but not all) companies I've worked for have had this same approach. )
Both Blizzards customer support and sever reliability are appalling, even by standards of the much vilified SOE.
Proper service management, monitoring and competent customer support is not rocket science. All that's required is a single competent high level manager to ensure the required systems, people and procedures are in place. Apparently, people do need to keep pointing out what everyone considers 'obvious', as much amusement as it causes you, because Blizzard don't "get it" (and have lost many customers, including myself, as a result of their poor customer services).
The author rather misses the obvious
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 1
The article doesn't say that sudo isn't the most secure way to run commands, it just details how to make it even more secure.
In doing so, I think the author fails to see the wood for the trees, in that if you want your account to be secure, you don't have to go through (admittedly pretty trivial) hoops to enable the root account and remove the "%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL" line from the sudoers file:
You could just use a non admin level account (i.e. don't tick the 'enable this user' checkbox when creating the account - it is off by default on all secondary accounts created in Mac OS X, the end result being that the account is not in the 'admin' group).
Going so far as to disable sudo for all admin accounts, but leaving it in the admin group strikes me as a bit 'fur coat and no knickers', and could leave users with a false sense of security (as there malicious things you can do to the system with access to any account in the admin group, none of which require any form of additional authentication to perform or have anything to do with sudo).
Just hope there was once a time when we didn't believe - it makes us a whole lot more understanding of those who (still?) don't.
I am reminded of the quote "We are all atheists, some of us just go one god further".
You'll excuse us if we say we've already heard the speech that this latest God is the real deal, and the others were just phoneys.
Various groups have been saying the same thing for thousands of years now (long before anyone came up with Christianity, or Islam) and it's all proven to be a bit of fad, regardless of what the millions of followers at the time have professed.
I'm not even smart enough to get Gentoo booting off my PC!:(
Gentoo should not be considered a sign of intelligent life.
If you're your new to Linux, I'd opt for trying both Unbuntu and Fedora Core, to get a feel for RPM and DPKG based environments). Once your done with that I'd maybe try something like FreeBSD (which is where Gentoo's 'ports' system came from anyway - though there are two primary ways to manage software in FreeBSD).
After that I'd skip Gentoo and just try installing Linux - or better yet something a bit more different like HURD - yourself from scratch (such as from a minimal bootdisk) to get a good overall feel for different platforms (if that sort of thing interests you).
IMO, the purpose of Gentoo is largely for people who (a) like FreeBSD but would rather have a Linux kernel and/or (b) don't grok the point of full package management systems (c) SlackWare fetishists looking for a 'bit on the side' and of course (d) ricers! [1]
[1] Some of my best friends are Gentoo users.[2] [2] It used to be worse, they used to be FreeBSD users.[3] [3] I'll stop now before I get modded to -10;-)
Apple's standard warranty is one year, not one month
Having shreded the keyboard of one PowerBook and dropped the other on a concrete floor (denting it, and busting the motherboard) and had both repaired for free (including a new case in the second instance) - even though I indicated I was happy to pay for repairs - and both on the default 12 month Apple Care (I've never yet purchased the extended cover - you'd think I'd would...) I have to say I'm really impressed and keeps me one happy Apple customer.
Besides, I dispute your claim that a Windows machine "will always" outperform a MacBook anyway, considering the Core Duo nearly matches the performance of an Athlon64 3800+ X2 according to Anandtech. Given the MacBook Pro's specs, it's actually the most powerful gaming laptop out there and probably will always outperform any Windows laptop
Something like a good Aurora from Alienware, or a similar system from a performance oriented vendor, is always going to spank the MacBook in terms of performance.
Even though I play a *lot* of games, I'd still much rather have the MacBook (I have a 1.5+ Ghz G4 AuBook atm, and had a TiBook previously). Other than the OS (of course) the major factors are the form factor and portability, that and I also do Real Work (TM) which means I want something I can use to handle long, complicated and tedious Microsoft Office documents flawlessly (OO still doesn't quite do this for me..) and run and build Unix software on.
As gaming performance is nowhere near going to match my desktop (AMD FX57, Dual/SLI 7800 GTX, 2 GB DDR, 10K RPM SATA/SATA2 disks, etc etc) I'm completely happy if as long as games - like MMO's, and most FPS are playable at the native resolution at a medium level of detail on my laptop.
Although, if ProjecBu...I mean X Code still supported cross platform application building, there is no reason why it couldn't also run on Windows (with Yellow Box) or on Solaris (Sparc), just as it used to do.;-)
I wouldn't argue with that, but I would point out that the engines typically used in hit personal computer games (i.e. the latest Doom/Quake engine from ID, or the latest Unreal engine from Epic - which is used in quite a few MMO's) are written in OpenGL, with Direct X being used only for input/sound handling on the Windows platform (which makes sense).
Though of course there are exceptions like Half Life 2...
An interesting point is that although Halo was written for Direct X when it appeared first on the X Box (after Bungine were purchased by Microsoft at any rate..) when it appeared on the Mac it had been re-written to use Open GL, and the end result was not bad, certainly comparible with the port to Windows.
I thought this was particularly amusing, as one of the ways the house that did the Windows port of Halo, Gearbox Studios, excused the poor optimisation and the lack of features such as support for Full Screen Anti-Aliasing was that it would have been too much work to re-write the engine to make this possible, but some how the team doing the mac port (which must surely have been porting for a smaller audience) managed it...
From a hardware perspective, let alone a software one, not only is there a difference in the graphics card, CPU form factor and weight, but I think the display is one of the most noticeable ones, the new MacBook does 1440 by 900, whereas the Aspire only manages 1280 by 800.
You can get an Acer with very simlar specs to the MacBook Pro, the thing is, it's got a very similar price too, so it's not as if Apple are alone in charging a premium price for premium performance (though I would note the Acer is still heavier, and with not as nice a form factor).
Ultimately though, it's likely to come down to what OS you want to run.
Actually, if you knew the majority of hardware problems with the initial G4 PowerBook were all related to the case (which had problems with it's hinges - which got stiff and cracked, the plastic border round the side which split apart due to stress from the hindges and weak points such as the audio port, the cable for the LCD panel which got streched leading to the displays breaking down, the rubber feet were always coming off and this lead to overheating and stability problems - and this is just a partial list), you'd understand why it's significant, and why the OP has an valid point.
Sticking with with almost an identical form factor is still significant.
I don't know what you've done to your iPod (or what might be up with your USB interface/cable/etc.) by my 60 GB iPod doesn't take that long for a _~45 MB_ MP3, from a Mac Mini. Not sure what's up with yours. I've had several MP3 players, including a couple of Creative's, and 4 iPods (the 5 GB, 15 GB, 20 GB and 60 GB) and the iPod has definately had the best performance (both on the origional FW400 interface and on the new USB 2.0 ones).
In addition, during this file transfer, iTunes will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Firefox is straining to keep up as I type this.
I'm going to assume your not using a Mac (or Linux with WINE) and are infact using that fine example of an operating system that is Microsoft Windows.
You might want to look for something like an IRQ conflict or reasources that are being shared that shouldn't be. FWIW, I have a Windows XP based gaming system (AMD-FX57, 2 GB DDR2 RAM, 2 x 7800 GTX) and if the Bios is left to assume the OS is 'Plug and Play' I find I can get worse performance than a PIII in certain tasks (disk to disk copying, network file transfers, etc.) because Windows XP fails to manage reasource conflicts between all the devices properly.
If it's not that, it may be an incompatibility with USB 2.0 implimentation (and a driver or BIOS update for the motherboard might be in order). Other than that, the only other thing that seems likely is that there is a hardware problem with the iPod or the cable/dock it connects to.
From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the iPod is a superior machine.
I don't think your trying very hard. The reasons why it appeals to people arn't difficult to understand (trying thinking about how tacticle, intuative and 'confortable' the device is to use compared to other players - which typically have a cheaper feel and lower build quality to them, often with poorly designed buttons -, how simple and unthreatening the experience of using one is (compared to something like a Sony or Creative MP3 player, and their rather horrible software) and how easy the interface is for novice users to use).
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various iPods , but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an iPod that has run faster than its iRiver counterpart, despite the iPods' faster chip architecture.
This sounds like BS to me. My AMD system, my PowerBook, my Mac Mini and my 700 Mhz PIII FreeBSD / Linux desktops (which only have USB 1.0) don't perform anything like in the way you describe when I've used them with any of my various iPods (or Creative players).
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a iPod over other faster, cheaper, more stable players.
I'm aware of CHEAPER products (with really crappy client side software and nothign anywhere near as hassle free to use as iTMS or iTunes itself) but what mythical 'faster' or 'more stable' players do you speak of (and in what way are iPods 'not stable')?
I know that was obiously a joke, but I'd just like to point out that a good video card and internet connection are much more important than processor speed these days.
When it comes to Apple laptops, not really:
WoW is only just playable on a curent high end G4 PowerBook (1.67 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, ATI 9700 128 MB VRAM). It's only slightly better than the performance when running on a iBook with a ~1.4 Ghz CPU, 512 MB and graphics card with 32 MB VRAM, as both systems - like the Mac Mini - are held back by the 167 Mhz Bus speed on all the G4 laptops (and the horribly slow disk speed).
Other 'Wintel' laptops often struggle with WoW too (though it's generally still better than it's been on the current PowerBook range). The new MacBook pro, on paper at least, should beat everything but the likes of the dedicated "luggable" gamer laptops (e.g. from Alienware).
Performance of commonly used software, like WoW, will be really intesting to see (and will make or break the purchasing decision for a lot of people I think - probably including me, though I'm likely to wait till the first revision). If it's playable with the draw distance / texture detail / screen resolution at a level comparible to a reasonable desktop then that will be a big improvement in terms of gaming performance (and will bode well for the platform).
I hate to break it to you, but the only lag you'll experience from either setup will probably be server side (depending on your realm)
The reference was to the performance of the system, the performance of a system (good or bad) has nothing to do with lag.
The slang term 'lag', in the context of on line gaming, refers purely to the delay on the network (and/or the server in processing player movement and actions). There has been a trend in the last couple of years or so to confuse this with poor client side performance, but these are completely different things, and it's not a good idea to confuse them.
Many of the users of WoW have done all they can to reduce the lag on their end.
They might have upgrade their system, e.g. by adding more RAM, a faster graphic card with more VRAM or a faster processor - that has nothing to do with minimising 'lag' in WoW though.
When there is 'lag', players experience warping and long delays in performing actions (for themselves and for others), but the framerate is not effected. If your framerate is ever not high enough or the game stutters, it's the system the game is running on. If your running 6600GT might still be running into limitations of the hardware, especially if you have 128 MB or less VRAM (particularly if you are running at a high resolution, or have FSAA or AF enabled).
The current G4 PowerBooks with the best graphics cards avalible in them still very much struggle with WoW (even the fastest models, I know because I have one, and play WoW on it as well as on my Windows gaming system). Primarily because of the limited bus speed on the G4 models (which is a bottleneck, and cripples 3D gaming performance on them, not least because of the texture data they try and shift around). Current Intel / Windows laptops often struggle with WoW (and other MMO's) too, also because they struggle with handling large amounts of texture data.
I've done this a few times, but that last version of Mac OS I've done this on was the pervious release 10.3, and of course there have been significant changes to the 'init' system as far as stating applications go.
However, it's just another application, nothing special, so all we need to do is use 'ps' to find something that looks like the quartz window server, this shouldn't be hard as there aren't that many things running.
This one in particular would seem to be the most promising:
All we have to do now, is find out how it's started. If we are really lucky, hopefully there is a straight forward start up script for it in/etc/ we can grep for:
[deimos:~] iain% sudo find/etc/ -type f -exec grep -l -i windowserver {} \; /etc//group /etc//mach_init.d/WindowServer.pl ist /etc//master.passwd /etc//passwd [powerbook:~]%
/etc/mach_init.d/WindowServer.plist looks like a really promising file:
I would bet editing it (or even renaming the file) might prevent the WindowServer from being booted (and the system will default to the terminal).
Of course, you might want to look in/System/Library/StartupItems or refer to on line documentation at apple.com, but unless you run into trouble, I would bet you can figure it out from just some quick poking around at the CLI.
If you have KDE/GNOME, it's worth trying though to see the performance improvement, as it's really quite significant. It's probably also handy if you have system your using only as a server (and that you want to have Mac OS X on for whatever reason. You can always launch the WindowServer from the CLI to bring up the GUI (and kill it when your done).
Apache developers must be hacks then. In the past i've had a lot of portability issues with some of their code, especially the modjk/modjk2 connectors for apache to tomcat.
It's absolutely flawless here, it's well known to be highly portable software. If your having a problem, it's probably because you don't have a suitable build environment / tool chain or are using a version that conflicts with your current system. I have also complied ethereal on my powerbook (along with a range of other software), from scratch, with no issues.
Because it Mac OS X comes with a decent GNU tool chain and is 'friendly' to open source software in that it is much like building on a BSD distribution, it's far easier to build on Mac OS X that it is on other common platforms like Solaris, AIX or HP-UX.
On a personal note, I love my mac for surfing, web design and iTunes but I also love a CLI once in awhile. terminal.app is not the same as a full screen virtual terminal in freebsd or linux
You don't have to start up the Quartz Window Manager when you boot - it's just an application.
You can just have the CLI, or run X instead (and straight into KDE, GNOME, etc.), in fact GNOME and KDE run much better this way (because they arn't force to share system resources with Quartz).
And in reality, many open source apps DO NOT run on OSX. Sometimes its assembly code which the intel macs will help with, but other times the develop wrote code specifically for linux.
Yeah, because lots of open source software is written in assembly . . .
Anything that only works Linux will also not run run on BSD, or Solaris, let alone other UNIX systems - this applies to a small range of what are predominantly hacks that no one has had the time to write properly, rather than to most open source software.
While obviously not entirely true, as a general rule most open source software that complies and works on BSD will work fine 'out of the box' on Mac OS X.
Heck try to get a recent kde or gnome install in OSX on their build of X11.
I've build both on OS X, it was absolutely trivial and I encountered no significant problems. YMMV.
Not sure why you'd arbitrarily want to limit yourself to using Apple's distribution of X11 though.
I am pretty sure that most people agree, this is not acceptable, and 10 years ago, this would also be considered dangerous
No, it wouldn't. 10 years ago most people were on dial-up, those that had fixed lines almost always had routers with NAT, or were using directly connected machines, but there were proportional very little security issues associated with this (most people were getting pwnd by CGI scripts from 'Matts Script Archive' or having their telnet sniffed).
10 years ago everyone was using Netscape (because Internet Explorer was still at version 2.0 and unusable), most Windows users were still on Windows 3.x.
10 years ago Microsoft hadn't even released IIS, and Windows NT was still at 3.51, web servers weren't getting haxored 10 minutes after they went online.
10 years ago computer viruses were things from dubious floppy disks obtained from friends, BBS's or IRC wares channels, and not something regular users had as much of a problem with.
First off, blocking objectional sites is a good thing. There are a number of things in a work environment that are unacceptable. Sure, some good sites will be gotten as well, but the IT department should have a policy such that you can ask for sites to be allowed if they are being blocked and really shouldn't be. Considering the information on Google Groups, I think that you are looking at a site that really should be allowed.
Like piracy, you can only deal with this problem effectively (in a way that doesn't do the business more harm than good) via policy, not via technical thuggery.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, increased labor costs will increase prices, but it isn't 1:1 - you haven't increased manufacturer costs, rent, or utilities, which probably dominate the equation.
That's interesting point, I must admit I have no idea what the ratio would be.
I've been somewhat assuming that they would have to go up fairly steeply to convince workers in other (better) jobs to migrate to something that might be less demanding, but more mundane or less pleasant menial job.
This is what I was trying to indicate through the example of Sweden, and it's certainly a debatable PoV. I can't see a large number workers being willing to migrate to doing more menial jobs without a strong financial incentive though.
You seem to have mis-judged my point (you may wish to go back and re-read my post a little more carefully and note in which direction I am advocating).
That house you bought for 100k before the Iraq war might be worth 150k now... why?
FWIW, my house cost more like 320,000 USD...and it's a 2 bedroom flat, and a 99 year leasehold at that (but that's London for you), but that's not why I'm commenting on your post:
Your post about a house price not beating inflation and thus 'really' being a loss is a red herring (I say this having myself made a little under 50,000 USD from having sold my last property - one which I hadn't lived in for some time).
This is because people do not tend to pay cash for houses, they take out mortgages - as long as the value of the house rises by more than the amount they have paid in (added to say the best possible rate of return they could have had from a savings account or something like a mutual fund), then they can consider themselves to be in profit.
It's pertinent to point out that house price inflation is not the same as general inflation, so though all the prices in the same immediate area will have gone up by a similar amount, the price of other goods (that is to say, everything except houses) almost certainly won't have increased by the same amount, so in practice most people do indeed have a large chunk of cash-in-hand to spend when they sell up.
All this is why I was able to invest ~ 25,000 USD as a deposit on a new property (compared to the 0.00 USD I put down on my first property this is was good, because it lowers my perceived risk level as far as the lender is concerned, and so allows me to borrow at a more favourable rate) and I still had ~25,000 USD to blow on new shiny things to put in it (including a new 6,500 USD HDTV, new sounds system, new sofa suite, new bed, new kitchen utilities, etc.).
Subtracting the last known historical value (77.68 years in 2000) from the current value (which was based on me thinking it was 80.1 in 2006 - though Google says it's actually more like 80.26 not that it makes much odds to the end result) gives you a rate of decline of 2.42 years of the life expectancy over a period of 6 years - that is, 0.403 (recurring) year-on-year decline. Multiply that value by 34 and you get your figure of ~13.8 years less than the current LE of 80 (and so you end up with ~66).
As I've said though, that's almost certainly overstating the rate of decline.
One, running a checkout station doesn't require much math skill - mostly the ability to wave stuff over a reader and pack bags properly.
And yet, shop staff still manage to get my change wrong and as often as not don't know how to pack bags either ("Oh god, they've put the frozen food in with the bananas, and..good greif...don't put the salad in with the soap powder.").
Two, if you raise the offered salary, more people will be willing to do the job.
That's not actually a secret. However, if you think it is a secret, you think think that this is:
If they had to increase the salaries of their employees, they'd up the price of their goods.
I happen to think a bit more (okay, maybe a lot more) social equality in the US would be a good thing. Take a country like Sweden for example, which is incredibly equitable compared to most countries (IIRC the average salary is about 70,000 USD - and is so equitable that a doctor can expect to earn a fairly similar wage to a shop assistant). Of course everything is horribly expensive by western European standards never mind US standards, it's around 8 USD for a pint of beer in a bar to give you some idea.
I don't imagine many Americans would currently be willing to swallow prices like that in the name of social equality, it would widely be seen as un-American and an obstacle to growth and dynamism (which indeed it would be).
If the US isn't willing to embrace a bit of healthy dare-I-say socialist working practices, it's back to exploiting immigrants for cheap labour (and er...moaning about them).
Perhaps he is advocating that Washington should engage in pro-active 'regime change' in Mexico and India by taking out their leading political figures, thus forcing the countries in to a state of chaos and potentially spark an internal power struggle and perhaps even civil war, in order to stem the tide of immigrants from those countries.
Of course, should the flow dry up, I hope he doesn't mind the extra 10 minute wait at the check-out at the local Wallmart (where a lone in-numerate hillbilly - the only person other than a desperate immigrant they could find to take the job - staffs the only open checkout and tries to work out if the thing they are trying to scan in is a courgette or cucumber).
Not to nit pick, but...
;-) I'd like to point out that if your already 34, your life expectancy is going to be quite a bit less than 80 years, even if you are in in above average physical condition (though having good genes is obviously going to make a huge difference).
.au is probably a lot more like 70-75.
.au, the life expectancy was not 80+ years but just over 77 and half years. To do a very dodgy back-of-a-fag packet calculation based on that same rate of decline (purely because that's as far back as that graph goes), if you were born 34 years ago (in 1972) that takes 13.8 years of your life expectancy, bringing it down to just over 66 years!
:-)
Assuming that your indeed from the land down under (based on the whois information on your site, which I checked just to be anal
I point this out as a lot of people take the current life expectancy figures for where ever they live to mean they can expect to live that long, when in fact that figure is only for those born this year (and already assumes things like health care treatments will continue to develop and improve in their life time, at the rate they are now). The life expectancy for someone already in their mid thirties in
As you can see from figures taken from the CIA world fact book for babies born just 6 years ago in
As I say, that's a very rough calculation and quite a bit under what ever the real value is (and would think that the average for someone of your (or my) age is probably closer to 70-75), but I'd hate to think there are people keeling over in their 60's and 70's thinking "Hey wait, I'm supposed to have another 10-15 years to go here!" due to a misunderstanding about the way 'life expectancy' statistics are calculated.
If there is any stuff you wanted to do in your final years, you might want to try and squeeze it in before you hit 65, just to be on the safe side.
Nope. I've heard Brits get it wrong, too. It has more to do with education than nationality.
...
I would agree that it has more to do education than nationality, but it's definitely an Americanism
What your facetious commentary overlooks, is that fact that many companies don't consider things like 'build a stable and well monitored platform' - or 'deliver a fundamentally good service' as a core goal of their business (which is why it is worth end users being vocal about, until the message sinks in).
Instead of focusing on things like QoS, companies get wrapped up in developing or touting whizz bang features and proclaiming 'new ways of doing things' in order to market the product, and they assume that things like service reliability, stability are implied and don't need to be thought about.
As a result, companies don't hire enough staff to maintain and monitor their platform, and they don't pay enough attention to putting the proper process in place to ensure the service delivered is of a high standard. That is, until it's already too late and they are bleeding customers, and then the measures are rushed in place.
( I know this is all too true, because most (but not all) companies I've worked for have had this same approach. )
Both Blizzards customer support and sever reliability are appalling, even by standards of the much vilified SOE.
Proper service management, monitoring and competent customer support is not rocket science. All that's required is a single competent high level manager to ensure the required systems, people and procedures are in place. Apparently, people do need to keep pointing out what everyone considers 'obvious', as much amusement as it causes you, because Blizzard don't "get it" (and have lost many customers, including myself, as a result of their poor customer services).
The article doesn't say that sudo isn't the most secure way to run commands, it just details how to make it even more secure.
In doing so, I think the author fails to see the wood for the trees, in that if you want your account to be secure, you don't have to go through (admittedly pretty trivial) hoops to enable the root account and remove the "%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL" line from the sudoers file:
You could just use a non admin level account (i.e. don't tick the 'enable this user' checkbox when creating the account - it is off by default on all secondary accounts created in Mac OS X, the end result being that the account is not in the 'admin' group).
Going so far as to disable sudo for all admin accounts, but leaving it in the admin group strikes me as a bit 'fur coat and no knickers', and could leave users with a false sense of security (as there malicious things you can do to the system with access to any account in the admin group, none of which require any form of additional authentication to perform or have anything to do with sudo).
Just hope there was once a time when we didn't believe - it makes us a whole lot more understanding of those who (still?) don't.
I am reminded of the quote "We are all atheists, some of us just go one god further".
You'll excuse us if we say we've already heard the speech that this latest God is the real deal, and the others were just phoneys.
Various groups have been saying the same thing for thousands of years now (long before anyone came up with Christianity, or Islam) and it's all proven to be a bit of fad, regardless of what the millions of followers at the time have professed.
I'm not even smart enough to get Gentoo booting off my PC! :(
;-)
Gentoo should not be considered a sign of intelligent life.
If you're your new to Linux, I'd opt for trying both Unbuntu and Fedora Core, to get a feel for RPM and DPKG based environments). Once your done with that I'd maybe try something like FreeBSD (which is where Gentoo's 'ports' system came from anyway - though there are two primary ways to manage software in FreeBSD).
After that I'd skip Gentoo and just try installing Linux - or better yet something a bit more different like HURD - yourself from scratch (such as from a minimal bootdisk) to get a good overall feel for different platforms (if that sort of thing interests you).
IMO, the purpose of Gentoo is largely for people who (a) like FreeBSD but would rather have a Linux kernel and/or (b) don't grok the point of full package management systems (c) SlackWare fetishists looking for a 'bit on the side' and of course (d) ricers! [1]
[1] Some of my best friends are Gentoo users.[2]
[2] It used to be worse, they used to be FreeBSD users.[3]
[3] I'll stop now before I get modded to -10
Apple's standard warranty is one year, not one month
Having shreded the keyboard of one PowerBook and dropped the other on a concrete floor (denting it, and busting the motherboard) and had both repaired for free (including a new case in the second instance) - even though I indicated I was happy to pay for repairs - and both on the default 12 month Apple Care (I've never yet purchased the extended cover - you'd think I'd would...) I have to say I'm really impressed and keeps me one happy Apple customer.
Besides, I dispute your claim that a Windows machine "will always" outperform a MacBook anyway, considering the Core Duo nearly matches the performance of an Athlon64 3800+ X2 according to Anandtech. Given the MacBook Pro's specs, it's actually the most powerful gaming laptop out there and probably will always outperform any Windows laptop
Something like a good Aurora from Alienware, or a similar system from a performance oriented vendor, is always going to spank the MacBook in terms of performance.
Even though I play a *lot* of games, I'd still much rather have the MacBook (I have a 1.5+ Ghz G4 AuBook atm, and had a TiBook previously). Other than the OS (of course) the major factors are the form factor and portability, that and I also do Real Work (TM) which means I want something I can use to handle long, complicated and tedious Microsoft Office documents flawlessly (OO still doesn't quite do this for me..) and run and build Unix software on.
As gaming performance is nowhere near going to match my desktop (AMD FX57, Dual/SLI 7800 GTX, 2 GB DDR, 10K RPM SATA/SATA2 disks, etc etc) I'm completely happy if as long as games - like MMO's, and most FPS are playable at the native resolution at a medium level of detail on my laptop.
Although, if ProjecBu...I mean X Code still supported cross platform application building, there is no reason why it couldn't also run on Windows (with Yellow Box) or on Solaris (Sparc), just as it used to do. ;-)
Progress, eh?
Developers still mostly use DirectX.
I wouldn't argue with that, but I would point out that the engines typically used in hit personal computer games (i.e. the latest Doom/Quake engine from ID, or the latest Unreal engine from Epic - which is used in quite a few MMO's) are written in OpenGL, with Direct X being used only for input/sound handling on the Windows platform (which makes sense).
Though of course there are exceptions like Half Life 2...
An interesting point is that although Halo was written for Direct X when it appeared first on the X Box (after Bungine were purchased by Microsoft at any rate..) when it appeared on the Mac it had been re-written to use Open GL, and the end result was not bad, certainly comparible with the port to Windows.
I thought this was particularly amusing, as one of the ways the house that did the Windows port of Halo, Gearbox Studios, excused the poor optimisation and the lack of features such as support for Full Screen Anti-Aliasing was that it would have been too much work to re-write the engine to make this possible, but some how the team doing the mac port (which must surely have been porting for a smaller audience) managed it...
From a hardware perspective, let alone a software one, not only is there a difference in the graphics card, CPU form factor and weight, but I think the display is one of the most noticeable ones, the new MacBook does 1440 by 900, whereas the Aspire only manages 1280 by 800.
You can get an Acer with very simlar specs to the MacBook Pro, the thing is, it's got a very similar price too, so it's not as if Apple are alone in charging a premium price for premium performance (though I would note the Acer is still heavier, and with not as nice a form factor).
Ultimately though, it's likely to come down to what OS you want to run.
Actually, if you knew the majority of hardware problems with the initial G4 PowerBook were all related to the case (which had problems with it's hinges - which got stiff and cracked, the plastic border round the side which split apart due to stress from the hindges and weak points such as the audio port, the cable for the LCD panel which got streched leading to the displays breaking down, the rubber feet were always coming off and this lead to overheating and stability problems - and this is just a partial list), you'd understand why it's significant, and why the OP has an valid point.
Sticking with with almost an identical form factor is still significant.
17 Meg song from itunes to the ipod. 20 minutes.
...
I don't know what you've done to your iPod (or what might be up with your USB interface/cable/etc.) by my 60 GB iPod doesn't take that long for a _~45 MB_ MP3, from a Mac Mini. Not sure what's up with yours. I've had several MP3 players, including a couple of Creative's, and 4 iPods (the 5 GB, 15 GB, 20 GB and 60 GB) and the iPod has definately had the best performance (both on the origional FW400 interface and on the new USB 2.0 ones).
In addition, during this file transfer, iTunes will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Firefox is straining to keep up as I type this.
I'm going to assume your not using a Mac (or Linux with WINE) and are infact using that fine example of an operating system that is Microsoft Windows.
You might want to look for something like an IRQ conflict or reasources that are being shared that shouldn't be. FWIW, I have a Windows XP based gaming system (AMD-FX57, 2 GB DDR2 RAM, 2 x 7800 GTX) and if the Bios is left to assume the OS is 'Plug and Play' I find I can get worse performance than a PIII in certain tasks (disk to disk copying, network file transfers, etc.) because Windows XP fails to manage reasource conflicts between all the devices properly.
If it's not that, it may be an incompatibility with USB 2.0 implimentation (and a driver or BIOS update for the motherboard might be in order). Other than that, the only other thing that seems likely is that there is a hardware problem with the iPod or the cable/dock it connects to.
From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the iPod is a superior machine.
I don't think your trying very hard. The reasons why it appeals to people arn't difficult to understand (trying thinking about how tacticle, intuative and 'confortable' the device is to use compared to other players - which typically have a cheaper feel and lower build quality to them, often with poorly designed buttons -, how simple and unthreatening the experience of using one is (compared to something like a Sony or Creative MP3 player, and their rather horrible software) and how easy the interface is for novice users to use).
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various iPods , but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an iPod that has run faster than its iRiver counterpart, despite the iPods' faster chip architecture.
This sounds like BS to me. My AMD system, my PowerBook, my Mac Mini and my 700 Mhz PIII FreeBSD / Linux desktops (which only have USB 1.0) don't perform anything like in the way you describe when I've used them with any of my various iPods (or Creative players).
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a iPod over other faster, cheaper, more stable players.
I'm aware of CHEAPER products (with really crappy client side software and nothign anywhere near as hassle free to use as iTMS or iTunes itself) but what mythical 'faster' or 'more stable' players do you speak of (and in what way are iPods 'not stable')?
Your post sounds entirely like F.U.D.
I know that was obiously a joke, but I'd just like to point out that a good video card and internet connection are much more important than processor speed these days.
When it comes to Apple laptops, not really:
WoW is only just playable on a curent high end G4 PowerBook (1.67 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, ATI 9700 128 MB VRAM). It's only slightly better than the performance when running on a iBook with a ~1.4 Ghz CPU, 512 MB and graphics card with 32 MB VRAM, as both systems - like the Mac Mini - are held back by the 167 Mhz Bus speed on all the G4 laptops (and the horribly slow disk speed).
Other 'Wintel' laptops often struggle with WoW too (though it's generally still better than it's been on the current PowerBook range). The new MacBook pro, on paper at least, should beat everything but the likes of the dedicated "luggable" gamer laptops (e.g. from Alienware).
Performance of commonly used software, like WoW, will be really intesting to see (and will make or break the purchasing decision for a lot of people I think - probably including me, though I'm likely to wait till the first revision). If it's playable with the draw distance / texture detail / screen resolution at a level comparible to a reasonable desktop then that will be a big improvement in terms of gaming performance (and will bode well for the platform).
I hate to break it to you, but the only lag you'll experience from either setup will probably be server side (depending on your realm)
The reference was to the performance of the system, the performance of a system (good or bad) has nothing to do with lag.
The slang term 'lag', in the context of on line gaming, refers purely to the delay on the network (and/or the server in processing player movement and actions). There has been a trend in the last couple of years or so to confuse this with poor client side performance, but these are completely different things, and it's not a good idea to confuse them.
Many of the users of WoW have done all they can to reduce the lag on their end.
They might have upgrade their system, e.g. by adding more RAM, a faster graphic card with more VRAM or a faster processor - that has nothing to do with minimising 'lag' in WoW though.
When there is 'lag', players experience warping and long delays in performing actions (for themselves and for others), but the framerate is not effected. If your framerate is ever not high enough or the game stutters, it's the system the game is running on. If your running 6600GT might still be running into limitations of the hardware, especially if you have 128 MB or less VRAM (particularly if you are running at a high resolution, or have FSAA or AF enabled).
The current G4 PowerBooks with the best graphics cards avalible in them still very much struggle with WoW (even the fastest models, I know because I have one, and play WoW on it as well as on my Windows gaming system). Primarily because of the limited bus speed on the G4 models (which is a bottleneck, and cripples 3D gaming performance on them, not least because of the texture data they try and shift around). Current Intel / Windows laptops often struggle with WoW (and other MMO's) too, also because they struggle with handling large amounts of texture data.
However, it's just another application, nothing special, so all we need to do is use 'ps' to find something that looks like the quartz window server, this shouldn't be hard as there aren't that many things running.
This one in particular would seem to be the most promising:All we have to do now, is find out how it's started. If we are really lucky, hopefully there is a straight forward start up script for it in
Of course, you might want to look in
If you have KDE/GNOME, it's worth trying though to see the performance improvement, as it's really quite significant. It's probably also handy if you have system your using only as a server (and that you want to have Mac OS X on for whatever reason. You can always launch the WindowServer from the CLI to bring up the GUI (and kill it when your done).
Apache developers must be hacks then. In the past i've had a lot of portability issues with some of their code, especially the modjk/modjk2 connectors for apache to tomcat.
It's absolutely flawless here, it's well known to be highly portable software. If your having a problem, it's probably because you don't have a suitable build environment / tool chain or are using a version that conflicts with your current system. I have also complied ethereal on my powerbook (along with a range of other software), from scratch, with no issues.
Because it Mac OS X comes with a decent GNU tool chain and is 'friendly' to open source software in that it is much like building on a BSD distribution, it's far easier to build on Mac OS X that it is on other common platforms like Solaris, AIX or HP-UX.
On a personal note, I love my mac for surfing, web design and iTunes but I also love a CLI once in awhile. terminal.app is not the same as a full screen virtual terminal in freebsd or linux
You don't have to start up the Quartz Window Manager when you boot - it's just an application.
You can just have the CLI, or run X instead (and straight into KDE, GNOME, etc.), in fact GNOME and KDE run much better this way (because they arn't force to share system resources with Quartz).
And in reality, many open source apps DO NOT run on OSX. Sometimes its assembly code which the intel macs will help with, but other times the develop wrote code specifically for linux.
Yeah, because lots of open source software is written in assembly . . .
Anything that only works Linux will also not run run on BSD, or Solaris, let alone other UNIX systems - this applies to a small range of what are predominantly hacks that no one has had the time to write properly, rather than to most open source software.
While obviously not entirely true, as a general rule most open source software that complies and works on BSD will work fine 'out of the box' on Mac OS X.
Heck try to get a recent kde or gnome install in OSX on their build of X11.
I've build both on OS X, it was absolutely trivial and I encountered no significant problems. YMMV.
Not sure why you'd arbitrarily want to limit yourself to using Apple's distribution of X11 though.
I am pretty sure that most people agree, this is not acceptable, and 10 years ago, this would also be considered dangerous
No, it wouldn't. 10 years ago most people were on dial-up, those that had fixed lines almost always had routers with NAT, or were using directly connected machines, but there were proportional very little security issues associated with this (most people were getting pwnd by CGI scripts from 'Matts Script Archive' or having their telnet sniffed).
10 years ago everyone was using Netscape (because Internet Explorer was still at version 2.0 and unusable), most Windows users were still on Windows 3.x.
10 years ago Microsoft hadn't even released IIS, and Windows NT was still at 3.51, web servers weren't getting haxored 10 minutes after they went online.
10 years ago computer viruses were things from dubious floppy disks obtained from friends, BBS's or IRC wares channels, and not something regular users had as much of a problem with.
First off, blocking objectional sites is a good thing. There are a number of things in a work environment that are unacceptable. Sure, some good sites will be gotten as well, but the IT department should have a policy such that you can ask for sites to be allowed if they are being blocked and really shouldn't be. Considering the information on Google Groups, I think that you are looking at a site that really should be allowed.
Like piracy, you can only deal with this problem effectively (in a way that doesn't do the business more harm than good) via policy, not via technical thuggery.