These are clients, not servers. And I'm sure there are a lot of students who are running linux or BSD, but they aren't the ones this article is about. Hence no mention.
But on to your question: Why would MIT use Windows? Well, there are probably students there who want to be programmers. And as aspiring programmers, they probably want to know a platform that has a big consumer market, and that is Windows. There are also probably students who want to be network administrators. There are still a lot of companies that use Windows 2000 networks, and even if you're planning to convert the company to Linux, you won't get hired if you don't know Windows.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next Microsoft worm used VeriSign's new "feature" to bring the internet to a crawl.
Ooh! That is a fun idea. I'm thinking, perhaps, the payload could involve making "HEAD" requests every x seconds or so for domains comprised of random letters. Such a trick would have minimal effect on the occasional match, but it would simply hammer the VeriSign server. Since the names would be random, too, most of the lookups would have to go to all the way up to the root server. No caching, no suggestions from the local DNS server. This just might very well be the method used one day when somebody figures out how to take down a significant chunk of the web. The distributed dig of death!
All you need to know is HTML and you can develop pages like the pros.
I really hope that was meant to be sarcastic. To be a good web developer, one should know HTML as well as XHTML, CSS, Javascript, some server-side programming, SQL, and be well-versed in browser compatibility, accessibility, interface guidelines, and information architecture. Photoshop or Fireworks is a plus too. And of course, it's always a strong point to know Apache fairly well.
A good working knowledge of HTTP is useful, too, but I agree that it's not necessary to know much about it. If you know GET, POST, and HEAD, you should be able to get by fine.
Forgive me if I sound like I'm on crack, but I would suggest a straight-up graphics program for something like this. Seriously. I have made presentations using Macromedia Fireworks and I was quite pleased with the way they came out. Just create a new image that's 1024x768 (or whatever the projector's best resultion is) and keep adding frames for everything. You can export it to a series of web pages (which will come out as tables of images) or export each frame and run a slide show.
Powerpoint is for the suits. We're geeks. We can control the kerning and anti-aliasing and alpha levels and snazzy rollovers. With Powerpoint et al, the application tells you how your presentation should look. I'd prefer to tell the application what I want.
There are a few reasons for fast loading times, from my perspective. I use linux on my home machine almost exclusively, and when a friend needs to open a word processor, he/she has to click on the OpenOffice icon. Usually this process is accompanied by the following conversation:
Friend: Where's Word?
Me: Oh, I don't use Word. Click on that icon right there. Friend: What's this OpenOffice thing? Me: It's a linux counterpart to MS Office. It works pretty much the same. Friend: Um, are you sure it's loading? Me: Yeah, just give it a minute... ... ... Me: Ok, well, it's not quite as quick as MS Office...
The load time is the first impression people typically have of an application. If it takes forever to load, that first impression is not so good.
The other reason why load time is important is the whole frustration factor. At my job, I use an application that requires starting no less than three other applications first, all of which take 30-45 seconds each, then when I start the actual desired app, it takes close to three minutes before I can get going. That's five and a half minutes of just sitting there. Granted, this application especially sucks, but the point is, long load times are frustrating, and you don't want all your employees to have to deal with a long load time every time they accidentally shut down the office suite.
One thing I've learned working in an office is that nobody cares about theoretical usability and all that stuff. If the users complain, then it's an issue.
If you went up to a 100 people and ask them to say the first thing that comes to them when asked the word apple, and you told them it couldn't be a food, I bet most would say Apple computer.
It doesn't matter. This is breach of contract. You should be asking whether 100 lawyers or judges reading the contract would agree with what Apple Records is saying.
And shame on all these people who are not giving proper respect to the Beatles! I know a lot of people here are too young to have been around way back then (so am I), but the Beatles broke a lot of ground. It would be worth it to see what they did differently, compared with other music from the time.
Why, these days, all the big systems are running OS's that end in the letter "X" - Linux, Unix, AIX, QNX, even Mac OS X. SCO, desperate by any means to be on the corporate radar, trades under "SCOX" just to try to level the playing field.
Windows can't compete with the "X." They tried with "NT," thinking two more common letters (and half of "can't," "won't," and "don't") would be a natural evolutional step, but that was unsuccessful until the third version, where the name was changed to "Windows 2000." This was partially successful because the name ends in a string of zeroes, which are nearly as powerful as a single, murderous "X," but not quite. The next iteration, Windows XP, is closer, but some marketing clown thought that sticking a P on the end would improve on the threatening, eat-your-children lure of the "X" - what resulted is a GUI that looks like it was designed to fit with the Habitrail plastic tubes.
Until Microsoft can get with the program and start developing an OS whose name ends in "X," the crucial systems of the world will continue to run other operating systems. Even then, the company may find it needs to double or triple its efforts and create Windows XXX. Other OS's, however, have seen the emerging trend and are planning to look at things from the other side - the beginning of the name. YAMacOS is tentatively scheduled for a code freeze in March 2005, three months before Microsoft's Windows XXX, currently codenamed Hindenburg, is scheduled for release.
Re:How meaningful.
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 2, Funny
I'm just hoping SCO never wrote a "Hello World" program, otherwise some lawyers may raid my freshman course records and have me arrested in six languages.
if you were a musician would you like your music to be STOLEN by anybody 12 or 112 years old?
First, it's not stealing - it's copyright infringement. Second, YES! I would love for anybody and everybody to download my band's music. Lots of other musicians feel this way, too. MP3's are a tool for marketing, for letting people know what you sound like, with the hope that some of them are going to see you live. The gigs are what most musicians live off of.
Your stance suggests that you think the only music worth listening to is the stuff that the big labels pay Clearchannel to play a zillion times per day. Music is art! It isn't a prepackaged commodity, and the RIAA's members don't know what music you want to listen to. But the RIAA is force-feeding consumers the message that they know what songs are good, and we need them to tell us.
I disagree that age shouldn't matter, too. How would you feel if you sued a 12-year-old for $150,000 per song pirated? If she's one of the big offenders, I'm going to guess that they found at least 200 songs on her family's computer. That means she's facing $30M for her actions. I can't imagine how the RIAA's legal people can sleep at night, considering how badly they are trying to ruin some little girl's life. What would you have done if, at age twelve, some intimidating people told you that you're going to owe them millions of dollars? "Congratulations, you're ruined. For the rest of your life. Hope you never wanted to drive a car, or own a house, or a TV, or clothing, or anything, really. Don't pirate music."
Until some kid walks into the hotel, runs over to the glowing, spinning tape, runs back out, heads right, outruns a car to hijack it, presses "X", hits "R1" as he fishtails around a corner on his way to the Ammu-nation, walks into the glowing disc, presses "X" again a few times to buy weapons, then auto-targets with "R1," I'm not going to believe that he learned how to do that because of Grand Theft Auto.
The game may present an idea, but there are far more steps involved in actually carrying this sort of thing out than those presented in a video game. What, did the kid run towards a spinning, levitating star after he shot at cars?
I see a couple problems with this idea that may be holding the idea back:
Time: Stores want customers to spend their money in the shortest amount of time possible. Even if they don't say so outright, it is easier on staffing if a customer is out in five minutes than if the customer is there for fifteen minutes.
Knowledge: The staff will have to be trained on the CD burners. Even if it's just a simple kiosk, these things don't work right sometimes, or a customer will want to know the year an album was released, or something will happen that will a.) take the kiosk down for some amount of time (making it hard to get sales) and b.) require some dedicated attention from staff.
Quality/Compatibility: Some people want a pressed disc with silkscreen printing. Some people have old CD players that can't read CD-R's. If I'm buying an album, I want it to be pressed, not burned. I can burn a disc myself. But that's just me.:)
Money: Burning-on-demand may develop a model like arcade machines - there's no easy way to verify exactly how many quarters went into the arcade machine, so you have to take the owner's word for it. If something similar were to happen with CD's, the store owner might sell 50 discs, but tell the labels he only sold 45 and 5 discs were corrupt. That's 10% royalties lost by the RIAA.
Abuse: What's to stop me from writing 650MB from/dev/random to a disc, walking into the store, and demanding a working copy of this disc which I just purchased? Or, let's say I buy album A, go home, burn it, put a small scratch in the TOC, then bring it back and say my copy of album B is corrupt, and I want a replacement? Measures could be put into place to prevent this, but at the expense of convenience and customer service.
There's a business model out there that will make everybody happy, but we haven't found it yet. The person who does is going to make a lot of money. Just remember to throw some my way!
We're measuring the weight of clouds? Come on, how about the mass? And the density?...And I guess the volume, just to round out that formula. The density of a cloud is very very low, less than the air around it (which is why it floats). The article is just a piece of pop science - useful trivia if you're trying to impress drunks at a frat party, but not the sort of thing intelligent people want to start their mornings with.
But it did get me thinking - since the clouds are less dense than air, there is less mass per cubic foot (or meter or whatever), so is the air pressure under a cloud lower? I know low pressure is indicative of a warm/cold front; are the two related?
Actually, the full name is The SCO Group, not Santa Cruz Operations. Caldera, after buying most of Santa Cruz Operation's intellectual property, changed its name to The SCO Group. The original SCO has changed its name to Tarantella.
I'd be embarrassed to use this sort of thing. If you can't sing/play on key, on command, you don't belong on the stage. Being a real musician is hard work, and that means you perform when you are supposed to. And you do a damn good job at it, every time. And if you aren't in the mood, or you're upset, or whatever, you do it anyway. If you're going to use a safety net like this, you may as well lip-sync to the studio track.
I know this sounds like a harsh approach, but that's the world of the professional musician. I have to question the work ethic of a musician who would need something like this. If you were the leader a band (especially one wth 12+ members), would you want the singer to have a special little box "just in case" he/she made a mistake? I'd rather get a singer who is confident he/she won't make those mistakes. There are more musicians than gigs, so to make it, you have to be there whenever they ask, and don't fuck up.
Pop stars are obviously a different matter, thought. They are much more glamorous, and typically less talented and don't work as hard as the pro musician. They are tossed into a studio to record the next "hit" written by a room full of boring-looking writers, quickly whisked away to a dance studio where the star is yelled at for hours until he/she can dance like a rock star, then a bus takes the soon-to-be-one-hit-wonder around the country while Clearchannel plays the hell out of the new song. This is the kind of person who needs a safety net like that. This is not the kind of person who spent years writing and practicing, accepting any gig that came along, playing to sometimes empty clubs, sometimes double-booking rather than turning down a gig, and driving for five hours to play a four-hour gig. While that may sound like hell to the non-musicians out there, it is exactly the kind of experience that most real musicians go through, and if it weren't for the genuine love of music, nobody would do it. But through that process, the musician learns a lot of discipline, and is ready to sight-read through forty charts with a band full of strangers. Ask the musician if he/she needs a device like this.
I almost considered buying this book, but then I remembered that season 3 of The Simpsons just came out today. Guess I won't be reading for a while...:) And the DVD set comes with a bottle opener. Guess I'm going to be drinking tonight...:)
The number one nitpic among people who hate that movie is the scence with the 'apple' computer interfacing with the space ship. On the surface, yeah that seems bad, but nobody considers the fact that they have been studing the electronic technology for 50 years, or that perhaps the OS is not the OS the laptop shipped with?
So, the mysterious OS also uses the MacOS widgets, complete with "Uploading Virus..." progressbar?:)
That's not as good as Swordfish, with it's "hydra" - the amazing multi-headed worm. Holy crap, that's brilliant, a worm that doesn't just make one copy of itself! Thank you, John Travolta. Up until now, worms used to infect one machine at a time, making DoS attacks painfully slow and rather ineffective. But still strong enough to take down IIS.
You forgot one more slashdotter to preview the post, and realize that there was no formatting. I probably would have given you a +1 mod, but then I considered giving a -1 for such an eyestrain, now I've finally settled on responding to let you know why you're not getting modded up (at least by me).
Mastering C++ takes time, practice and patience. Jumping headfirst into GUI development without first taking the time to understand C++ / data structures / general concepts of computer science will not result in extraordinary success. Most likely, you will be overwhelmed by the complexity of GUI programming and give up.
Please, look at my original post. I'm not trying to fast-track my way into writing the next MS Office replacement. I already learned data structures. I already learned the basics of C++. I know the "general concepts of computer science," too. And for the record, I know the basics of programming in C, C++, Java, VB, Perl, COBOL, Assembler, Prolog, PHP, SQL, and I wrote a few video games for my TI-82 when I was in high school. I started programming in BASIC when I was six. C-64, Apple IIe, and TRS-80, before moving on to Amiga, MS-DOS, MacOS, Windows, AIX, BeOS, Linux, Solaris, QNX, and, unfortunately now, SCO Unix.
I wouldn't be listing all this, but clearly you thought my post was akin to "hi guys i wanna write a game like halflife or doom any1 have any advice?" Of course, it's hard to take your response seriously when you post anonymously, anyway. And thanks to the other responses, where it is obvious that these people were reasonable people who read my original post and weren't just looking for a chance to tell me that I couldn't possibly understand all those big scary concepts like you do (oh, you're so smart), and I might as well just stick to VB.
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These are clients, not servers. And I'm sure there are a lot of students who are running linux or BSD, but they aren't the ones this article is about. Hence no mention.
But on to your question: Why would MIT use Windows? Well, there are probably students there who want to be programmers. And as aspiring programmers, they probably want to know a platform that has a big consumer market, and that is Windows. There are also probably students who want to be network administrators. There are still a lot of companies that use Windows 2000 networks, and even if you're planning to convert the company to Linux, you won't get hired if you don't know Windows.
A good working knowledge of HTTP is useful, too, but I agree that it's not necessary to know much about it. If you know GET, POST, and HEAD, you should be able to get by fine.
Forgive me if I sound like I'm on crack, but I would suggest a straight-up graphics program for something like this. Seriously. I have made presentations using Macromedia Fireworks and I was quite pleased with the way they came out. Just create a new image that's 1024x768 (or whatever the projector's best resultion is) and keep adding frames for everything. You can export it to a series of web pages (which will come out as tables of images) or export each frame and run a slide show.
Powerpoint is for the suits. We're geeks. We can control the kerning and anti-aliasing and alpha levels and snazzy rollovers. With Powerpoint et al, the application tells you how your presentation should look. I'd prefer to tell the application what I want.
The other reason why load time is important is the whole frustration factor. At my job, I use an application that requires starting no less than three other applications first, all of which take 30-45 seconds each, then when I start the actual desired app, it takes close to three minutes before I can get going. That's five and a half minutes of just sitting there. Granted, this application especially sucks, but the point is, long load times are frustrating, and you don't want all your employees to have to deal with a long load time every time they accidentally shut down the office suite.
One thing I've learned working in an office is that nobody cares about theoretical usability and all that stuff. If the users complain, then it's an issue.
It's the sort of typo you'd expect from an MCSE. "I bought my certification from MicroSoft! Hire me! I know Microsoft XP!"
And shame on all these people who are not giving proper respect to the Beatles! I know a lot of people here are too young to have been around way back then (so am I), but the Beatles broke a lot of ground. It would be worth it to see what they did differently, compared with other music from the time.
Perhaps if Apple Computers can't do anything related to music, Apple Records should be barred from using computers.
Hey, it's worth a shot. So much for Sosumi.
- Write a song about Linux, and include some source code in the lyrics.
- Build up enough interest in it so that some record label offers a deal. Major labels only, please.
- Play the hell out of the song. Get all of Slashdot to buy multiple copies, get it preinstalled on Linux distros, etc.
- Profit!!! (but we're not done yet)
- Tell SCO that the second verse contains System V code.
Things will just, well, work themselves out. On there own. Easy.Actually, all that downtime makes administering Windows even cheaper. "Server's down!" "OK, I'm going to the pub!"
Why, these days, all the big systems are running OS's that end in the letter "X" - Linux, Unix, AIX, QNX, even Mac OS X. SCO, desperate by any means to be on the corporate radar, trades under "SCOX" just to try to level the playing field.
Windows can't compete with the "X." They tried with "NT," thinking two more common letters (and half of "can't," "won't," and "don't") would be a natural evolutional step, but that was unsuccessful until the third version, where the name was changed to "Windows 2000." This was partially successful because the name ends in a string of zeroes, which are nearly as powerful as a single, murderous "X," but not quite. The next iteration, Windows XP, is closer, but some marketing clown thought that sticking a P on the end would improve on the threatening, eat-your-children lure of the "X" - what resulted is a GUI that looks like it was designed to fit with the Habitrail plastic tubes.
Until Microsoft can get with the program and start developing an OS whose name ends in "X," the crucial systems of the world will continue to run other operating systems. Even then, the company may find it needs to double or triple its efforts and create Windows XXX. Other OS's, however, have seen the emerging trend and are planning to look at things from the other side - the beginning of the name. YAMacOS is tentatively scheduled for a code freeze in March 2005, three months before Microsoft's Windows XXX, currently codenamed Hindenburg, is scheduled for release.
I'm just hoping SCO never wrote a "Hello World" program, otherwise some lawyers may raid my freshman course records and have me arrested in six languages.
yeah, it looks like "chmod -r 700 /var/www/" or something. There are better ways to do this.
Your stance suggests that you think the only music worth listening to is the stuff that the big labels pay Clearchannel to play a zillion times per day. Music is art! It isn't a prepackaged commodity, and the RIAA's members don't know what music you want to listen to. But the RIAA is force-feeding consumers the message that they know what songs are good, and we need them to tell us.
I disagree that age shouldn't matter, too. How would you feel if you sued a 12-year-old for $150,000 per song pirated? If she's one of the big offenders, I'm going to guess that they found at least 200 songs on her family's computer. That means she's facing $30M for her actions. I can't imagine how the RIAA's legal people can sleep at night, considering how badly they are trying to ruin some little girl's life. What would you have done if, at age twelve, some intimidating people told you that you're going to owe them millions of dollars? "Congratulations, you're ruined. For the rest of your life. Hope you never wanted to drive a car, or own a house, or a TV, or clothing, or anything, really. Don't pirate music."
Until some kid walks into the hotel, runs over to the glowing, spinning tape, runs back out, heads right, outruns a car to hijack it, presses "X", hits "R1" as he fishtails around a corner on his way to the Ammu-nation, walks into the glowing disc, presses "X" again a few times to buy weapons, then auto-targets with "R1," I'm not going to believe that he learned how to do that because of Grand Theft Auto.
The game may present an idea, but there are far more steps involved in actually carrying this sort of thing out than those presented in a video game. What, did the kid run towards a spinning, levitating star after he shot at cars?
- Time: Stores want customers to spend their money in the shortest amount of time possible. Even if they don't say so outright, it is easier on staffing if a customer is out in five minutes than if the customer is there for fifteen minutes.
- Knowledge: The staff will have to be trained on the CD burners. Even if it's just a simple kiosk, these things don't work right sometimes, or a customer will want to know the year an album was released, or something will happen that will a.) take the kiosk down for some amount of time (making it hard to get sales) and b.) require some dedicated attention from staff.
- Quality/Compatibility: Some people want a pressed disc with silkscreen printing. Some people have old CD players that can't read CD-R's. If I'm buying an album, I want it to be pressed, not burned. I can burn a disc myself. But that's just me.
:)
- Money: Burning-on-demand may develop a model like arcade machines - there's no easy way to verify exactly how many quarters went into the arcade machine, so you have to take the owner's word for it. If something similar were to happen with CD's, the store owner might sell 50 discs, but tell the labels he only sold 45 and 5 discs were corrupt. That's 10% royalties lost by the RIAA.
- Abuse: What's to stop me from writing 650MB from
/dev/random to a disc, walking into the store, and demanding a working copy of this disc which I just purchased? Or, let's say I buy album A, go home, burn it, put a small scratch in the TOC, then bring it back and say my copy of album B is corrupt, and I want a replacement? Measures could be put into place to prevent this, but at the expense of convenience and customer service.
There's a business model out there that will make everybody happy, but we haven't found it yet. The person who does is going to make a lot of money. Just remember to throw some my way!We're measuring the weight of clouds? Come on, how about the mass? And the density? ...And I guess the volume, just to round out that formula. The density of a cloud is very very low, less than the air around it (which is why it floats). The article is just a piece of pop science - useful trivia if you're trying to impress drunks at a frat party, but not the sort of thing intelligent people want to start their mornings with.
But it did get me thinking - since the clouds are less dense than air, there is less mass per cubic foot (or meter or whatever), so is the air pressure under a cloud lower? I know low pressure is indicative of a warm/cold front; are the two related?
I happen to know where you can find a DO CALL list that works probably just as well.
And now you know, the rest of the story.
I'd be embarrassed to use this sort of thing. If you can't sing/play on key, on command, you don't belong on the stage. Being a real musician is hard work, and that means you perform when you are supposed to. And you do a damn good job at it, every time. And if you aren't in the mood, or you're upset, or whatever, you do it anyway. If you're going to use a safety net like this, you may as well lip-sync to the studio track.
I know this sounds like a harsh approach, but that's the world of the professional musician. I have to question the work ethic of a musician who would need something like this. If you were the leader a band (especially one wth 12+ members), would you want the singer to have a special little box "just in case" he/she made a mistake? I'd rather get a singer who is confident he/she won't make those mistakes. There are more musicians than gigs, so to make it, you have to be there whenever they ask, and don't fuck up.
Pop stars are obviously a different matter, thought. They are much more glamorous, and typically less talented and don't work as hard as the pro musician. They are tossed into a studio to record the next "hit" written by a room full of boring-looking writers, quickly whisked away to a dance studio where the star is yelled at for hours until he/she can dance like a rock star, then a bus takes the soon-to-be-one-hit-wonder around the country while Clearchannel plays the hell out of the new song. This is the kind of person who needs a safety net like that. This is not the kind of person who spent years writing and practicing, accepting any gig that came along, playing to sometimes empty clubs, sometimes double-booking rather than turning down a gig, and driving for five hours to play a four-hour gig. While that may sound like hell to the non-musicians out there, it is exactly the kind of experience that most real musicians go through, and if it weren't for the genuine love of music, nobody would do it. But through that process, the musician learns a lot of discipline, and is ready to sight-read through forty charts with a band full of strangers. Ask the musician if he/she needs a device like this.
I almost considered buying this book, but then I remembered that season 3 of The Simpsons just came out today. Guess I won't be reading for a while... :) And the DVD set comes with a bottle opener. Guess I'm going to be drinking tonight... :)
That's not as good as Swordfish, with it's "hydra" - the amazing multi-headed worm. Holy crap, that's brilliant, a worm that doesn't just make one copy of itself! Thank you, John Travolta. Up until now, worms used to infect one machine at a time, making DoS attacks painfully slow and rather ineffective. But still strong enough to take down IIS.
You forgot one more slashdotter to preview the post, and realize that there was no formatting. I probably would have given you a +1 mod, but then I considered giving a -1 for such an eyestrain, now I've finally settled on responding to let you know why you're not getting modded up (at least by me).
I wouldn't be listing all this, but clearly you thought my post was akin to "hi guys i wanna write a game like halflife or doom any1 have any advice?" Of course, it's hard to take your response seriously when you post anonymously, anyway. And thanks to the other responses, where it is obvious that these people were reasonable people who read my original post and weren't just looking for a chance to tell me that I couldn't possibly understand all those big scary concepts like you do (oh, you're so smart), and I might as well just stick to VB.