Underwelmed by TextMate
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TextMate
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· Score: 1, Interesting
I'm a primarily a Mac OS X user for 3 years now - having moved from Linux - and have to say that I am underwelmed by the o-so-famous seen-on-every-webframework-screencast-in-the-last- 2-years OS X Editor TextMate. It's basically a sophisticated Cocoa Textwidget with an all-out scripting interface. It only costs 39$ and runs natively which makes it an OK deal, but the hype this editor gets just because it's the first of it's kind on OS X is baseless. If someone would come along and build an editor that has the same featureset as jEdit in a native, non-Java manner, then I'd be impressed and even pay money for it. But I've tested TextMate and have to say I'd rather learn one of the OS X Emacs ports which can be that much harder than putting up with yet another proprietary editor scripting language. That way I'll be able to use the old CLI variants aswell. So be it that jEdit comparativly is a slowpoke and can't realistically open anything larger than 1,5 MB - it's the best editor out there and has been the feature-bar for the last few years for any other project or tool out there. No need to learn a new, proprietary tool that only runs on one OS and has less functionality. My 2 cents.
Mark "Mr. Ubuntu Linux" Shuttleworth has a team he sponsors building on a project called 'School Tool'. It's a) built in Zope, which is quite possibly the most advanced (if yet compareatively slower) web application server in existance and probably the most sophisticated enviroment for this sort of thing and b) is a project that is in extremly good shape (having failed once when attempted in Java) and lead by people with solid software developement experience and skills. If SchoolTool doesn't solve your multiple-timesheets problems I'd say your outa luck because AFAICT it's the best software for this sort of thing there is.
The overall trend is MS either going the way of the dodo or bogging down the overall developement with the IT industry. Which boils down to the same. I'd avoid MS whereever possible nowadays. If you do stuff with MS then do it for data migration into open formats or something. Use OSS and you'll never learn stuff that's obsolete 4 years later - this actually is one of the big reasons to switch to Linux aswell. Aside from that do anything you like. Business programming/ERP, Web Stuff, RIA, Admin/Maintainance, Databases, Low-Level/Drivers... whatever you like. IT in general is growing and all these areas are comparativly 'hot' as you would put it.
OpenGL is neat and a true standard - but no where near DX feature wise. What I expect is the ongoing XP & Vista lockin / registration / DRM / compliance annoyance MS introduces causing people to look for alternatives and turn to sub-par (compared to DX) OpenGL and work on improving the standard. It's not that OpenGL couldn't do the same thing DX can, it's only that people haven't had a reason in the last few years to do so. Plattforms are getting more diverse performance wise and people need to take a growing range of OSes that users have into account. This will undoubtly get attention back on to OpenGL and it's downsides. Unless, of course, MS licences DX for Mac OS X and Linux. Which would actually be a thing they really could do to turn a profit in a future world where OSS has won. Meanwhile we've got translation libs that turn DX calls into OpenGL stuff (Cedega and such) which is an ok intermediate solution imho.
First I was about to joke and write something like 'MS gives in to representative body of 400 Million people' but then I noticed that even this can't be taken for granted. I'm glad the EU has enough self-respect to tell MS who's boss when it comes to anti-competitive behaviour.
Then again MS was delaying the game to draw attention off the fact that they're defending their monopoly much more effectively in another place: Standards, closed, non-compatible Data Formats and Software Patents. The former two are great devices of market control. The EU ought to do something about that. Probalby MS wasn't really interested in lobbying in this as, as giving in here isn't so much a loss for them as it would be if they where required to comply to an amount of standard IT standards. Now *that* would be the appropriate punishment for MS.
The campaign is interesting. It comes in Ubuntu colors and basically lies about the large mass of Linux users who have lock in issues with MS. It goes on to talk gibberish about 'Show them GetTheFacts' and 'Many MS service people around' and 'cheaper support available'. The big problem is though that this sort of campaign is off by about 5-6 years. Today IT joints only win by having IT, Sales and Management working closely together. It's heavyly web oriented because opinion leaders see it as the only way to avoid MS lock-in and deployment fuss. When that needs to happen, flaws in the underlying technology pop into sight in the most mercyless way. In the two years in which to large, general concepts each have have gotten their buzzword that sticks ('Web 2.0' and 'Ajax') businesses have been seeking their own way to avoid lock-in. Opinion leaders in technology (99% OSS friendly most of the time) have been going full-throttle Web, Ajax, PDF and a little OpenOffice ever since and the Heat is closing in on MS extremely fast. Especially in the corporate market. A growing Mac OS *niX Community doesn't help the situation for MS. As a Linux/OSS advocate I was alone in the wide prairie 4 years ago. Now I have Linux/Apache/PHP competitors popping up left, right and center all around me and the market is still growing. It's this combined with Ubuntu and a zero-fuss desktop Linux that scares the living piss out of MS. If MS is smart their next Windows installment will have a rebranded Linux kernel and a closed Direct X 12 or something plus.Net. Each as a kernel module. This campaing is nothing but a last ditch effort of the old school Guard over at MS trying to stop the inevitable.
... that's what I fear anyway. A solid cross plattform multimedia ready RIA enviroment with a reliable roadmap and good backing is what the world is desperately crying for. Flash could easyly be and stay king of the hill in that game. Java slowpocked to long and Flash has the largest installbase of any plattform ever. I wonder why they don't just continue to improve Flash/AS. Is it the Community that needs rebranding? Apollo could give the whole Flash/AS thing a fresh start and remove those psycho barriers anti-flash zealots have had trouble with to overcome. I hope this won't put of anyone who has hoped for a consolidation of the RIA industry. Yet again it goes without saying that they won't get any foothold if they don't release a Linux version of it pronto. Make *nix the stepchild and all opinion leaders will turn your back on you. For good reasons too. I thought Adobemedia had gotten that by now. Looks as if they're losing focus again. If this turns into yet another 'We'll be 1.5 years late again with Linux' fiasco then they can shove their Apollo. Bow, Arrow and all.... Ouch.
A Zalman TNN 500a Case or a simulat custom built one with all that fits inside without making noise. All x86 CPUs and all memory that fits in, all OSes and most used software ready configured and installed into an extended BIOS ready to run 5 seconds after I booted. No HDDs, all SSDs. The fastest OpenGL card available.
Curiously enough, the Mac Pro Quad Core maxed out with all that fits in (~19 000 €) comes pretty much close to what I'd consider the best possible workstation.
Imagine a maxed out Quad Core Mac Pro with SSDs in all 4 bays and a passive heatpipe cooling. That would be my dream machine. I guess the SSDs (custom built from these guys), the extended BIOS and the manpower to set it all up for me would be the biggest pricepoints for the box itself. 40 000 to 60 000 dollars? Dunno, something like that.
As periferals I'd like a thermal transfer printer (with 20 000 pages worth of ink and spare parts), a high end inkjet with 200 000 pages top quality paper and the ink for printing on them and a Z-Corp 3D rapid prototyping printer plus enough high-performance material, binder and color to print an entire army of Heavy Gear Mech figures and a few Star Wars Spaceships. All drivers preinstalled, tested and working.
Add in all the software goodies available for good measure (The entire Adobe Line, the entire Apple Line, Lightwave 3D 9, all training DVDs and plugins available + any software needed to make best use of the printers and the prototyper). Maybe some programming productivity / software design applications as an extra (Gentleware Enterprise CASE System, The Visual Paradigm Enterprise line)
Last but not least the system should come with all this in a documented base configuration where all of the above is set up and works and a tested desaster recovery to restore it should the need arise.
All this could easyly amount to 200 000 - 300 000 Euros - and still fit in a normal room. Then again, you said money doesn't matter.
I think that setup would keep me busy for a while.:-)
You do *not* want to lug a MacBook about. I don't even lug it about when going to a customer unless I've got a presentation. Even the idea of lugging it about on Korsikas GR20 or somewhere in the tundra of Kamtshatka is utterly silly.
Here's my list for '80% of landsurface' backpacking:
Leatherman or equivalent
Tent Repair Kit
Tent (VauDe or, if you've got the cash, Hilleberg)
Shampoo
Waterfilter (katadyn or the sorts)
Drinking Water Desinfectant (Micropur or the sorts)
Drinking Water Fold Container
3-4 underpants (2 synthetic, fast drying, 2 cotton/silk)
3 pair of kneesocks (2 synthetic, one cotton)
3 T-Shirts
Toothcare Kit
Fleece Pullover
Outdoor Pants, the kind you can wash and wear. At the same time if the need be. (Tactel, Fleece, whatever tech cloth there is)
Outdoor Jacket
Headlamp (modern rugged LED)
spare batteries
Sleepingbag
Biwakbag
Kompass
a good knife, if survival - no crap. Survival Knives tend to be crap. Look out.
Isul-Matt
Flask
Moutaineers Cup
Staticrope
Materialkarabiner/Snaplink
Plaster
Tschamba-Fii (universal natural sun protection and post-sunburn treatment)
A good book
Map
Backbelt / Materialrope/thin Staticrope + knowledge of knots
Medium Backpack to carry it all. Not to big, you'll only pack to much general medicine snakebite kit heat blanket storm matches lighter cooker (the best is a methalated spirits cooker, meth-spirit is uncommon in the US - except for costal areas where the powerboots ride on it, but this fuel is available as cooking fuel everywhere else on the planet, you can run it on high percentage liquor if the need arises)
If you absolutely need to take tech then add: A mechanical photocamera. With FILM! (as in 35mm). You do not want your techie gadget failing at -10 degrees and the most beautyfull view of your life at K2 or on to the Goby desert. Take enough films with you. Don't take a cam that needs electronics to work! By an old cheap Minolta 70 or something. They've survived stuff any modern cam wouldn't, no matter how expensive.
If you think you need a phone (which I wouldn't know why) then take an Iridium. All else is pointless. Don't forget a solar charger.
As a gadget fitting the phone would be a good universal PDA with an optional electronic cam built in. Get a pouch that can keep it warm when in the mountains or someplace cold. See that the solar charger fits both Iridium Phone and PDA (I recommend a Zaurus) and that you got a RS232 link to connect to the Iridium.
Happy posting from the chinese wall. One word of Warning: If I catch you somewhere in the boondocks of patagonias nature and suddenly your phone rings, I'll kill you. Promise.
The list above isn't complete and needs tweaking. Do not take electronics with you unless you really know what you are doing. You won't need them anyway.
All my fat geek and roleplayer friends (including the one who's become a fatty over the last few years) have the same problem: They've come to eat over their appetite at every meal. 10 years ago I was study and performing expressive stage dance. 5 hrs a day dancing. The only people with less body fat than me where ballet dancers and kung-fu masters. I was so happy pumping my metabolisim and my body everyday that I once literally forgot to eat for two days. To illustrate: Of all 10th grade classmates that made an untrained 1km sprint/run without stopping I was the second last. 5 years later I was the fastest in sprint and long-distance. I sprinted against a good friend of mine in the early twenties. Once he was the sprinting king of our class, now he was becoming a genuine fatso. It was allmost sad the way I outran him. I've moved to IT since - dancing doesn't pay the bills if you aren't top 10. I do Aikido twice a week and it's the best thing I can think of for a geek. For half a year now I'm doing a german GED and have no time for training. It sucks big time. I have to watch the general habbit of compensating stress with overeating. As soon as my jeans start pinching I go in fasting mode and stick to veggie-juice and a spoon of honey a day to prevent the shakies. The Jojo says hello.
My advice: If you're a fatso it's 95% the case because you've gotten accustomed to eating to much! Probably by using eating as a substitute for excercise and a compensation/'reward' for stress. That's the simple truth. Get of your ass and get excercise. That will have you feel better *without* eating and you'll find it easyer to eat less. That doesn't have to be boring. Climbing, Hiking, Cross-Country Biking (the pedal kind, not the motor kind), Cross-Country Running (adds geek factor with map and compass!), Swiming (with diving), Martial Arts, Breakdance, Parcour, Surfing (the ocean, not the web)... People who excercise vent their frustration by doing it and thus eat less out of frustration. As a rule of thumb you should see that your 'exercise' has a little more to it than pure sport. Breakdance and Parcour are also considers sort-of forms of art. Surfers and Climbers have strong ties to nature, a good thing aswell. The only other alternative to excercise I know of is smoking as a substitute for overeating. You can lose weight that way aswell. But it's very unhealthy.
Academias monopoly on CS is dying. (Halleluja!)
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Is Computer Science Dead?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
CS isn't dying. Academias monopoly on CS is dying. Forging swords was an experts job 400 years ago. Now it's a hobbyists thing. I may not know my way around memory allocation that well anymore, simply because my last three PHP customers and I couldn't give a sh*t, but I did opcode/assam programming 20 years ago (to control single dots on my sharp handheld screen) and the book I need to learn C in and out again is resting on a shelf two meters away.
CS is sort of becoming a science like philosophy. There are people who study it and earn money with it, but anyone half way interested can join an educated discussion with them on the topic. And, on top of that, the experts view on the topic usually is quite strange and outside of common sense. You'll find tons of Wittgenstein crackpots at academic positions simply because they dig mental masturbation as a dayjob. The Schopenhauer guys all have occupations that are more 'real'.
Nobody takes a guy serious anymore ranting about how this PL is worse than that and how Java sucks and real men use C or PHP is for sissies and Ruby is cool. They don't even want to hear from me that Zope still is lightyears ahead of Rails;-) . People want the job done. And move on.
Point in (simular) case: Nowadays nobody (not even academics) - except maybe a few people who build satellites and stuff - gives a rats ass if x86 sucks or not. It has won. Period. And I bet unemployed non-x86 hardware guys tell you how crappy it is if you give them some change and a warm dinner. If some kid in india who's read a copy of Kernighan & Ritchie can solve my low-level problem with some Linux module that's getting in my way, I don't give a hoot wether he's an academic or not. Yet I bet he's got a simular skill kit of one.
Bottom line: Computers and their science have become mainstream and are slowly moving out of their steam age. Get with the programm.
This looks like a mid-eighties handheld - stylewise. If it where as cheap as an old handheld (remember that late Atari handheld? That was kinda cool) and run just as long it would be cool. The thickness aparently doesn't transfer to offgrid runtime and the price-tag is prohibitive. The OQO is kinda cute for those who have the cash - but this is just ugly. And won't fly. Talking about Pocket Computer uptime: My Sharp PC-1403 H runs 150 hrs. on batteries. My Palm runs aprox. 20 hrs. And that's the minimum I can bear. Until a device comes close to that I won't buy it.
The definition of the US bible belt christian god is actually one of a very small minority on earth. There are billions of Hindus and Buddists who have an entirely different definition of God and many country where more than 50% don't believe in god.(Someone here mentioned Sweden). This study is next to pointless I'd presume.
They show via a few quick financial numbers that even though Apple is selling fewer machines, they're making more money per machine than your Dells or your Gateways.
No shit. Thanks, Captain Obvious. Apple builds hard and software to fit. PC vendors still put out large ugly space-wasting and compareativly expensive boxes running an OS that only manages to stay because it was preinstalled. Fact is, considering price/performance iMacs are currently the best Desktop deal. Close behind are the PC laptops with their hardware prices rapidly plummeting. I've been wondering for years why no one puts out their own 'Mac Mini' clone for half the price. There is some psychosis going on from preventing PC builder to step into the comodity area. Somehow even cheap non-gaming PCs have to be big, ugly and hand-assembled. Anything remotely Apple like from Shuttle or hushtechnologies is bizarely priced. As long as that is the case, Apple will gain popularity. Good for them, they deserve it. Nothing new here.
The parent is a troll & liar and links to a loonie Site claiming that 'Ubuntu Linux' stands for 'Jewbuntu' and that Linux is a stolen version of Windows. Quite hilarious actually, but please mod him down. Thanks.
I've been doing professional active content web developement since the late dot-bomb days. Looking at the site for 15 seconds tells me this is probably nothing other than a scheme to fool investors. The things people put out for 'the next big thing' when they discover that JavaScript is a PL and runs in every browser amazes me time and time again.
There are some points about RIAs one should learn as fast as possible to avoid wasting everybodys time:
1) JavaScript is nothing new. It's been around for something like 10 years. DTML/Push-Pull JavaScript/Ajax/[Fill in own buzzword of choice] is nothing new. Many people have tried it, many have given up and even the best in 'Ajax' have stepped down again from using it in anything but the most tried and true situations and use cases.
2) RIA is nothing new. Plugins are nothing new. There are entire landfills full of potential competitors to Flash and Java. Most of them failed. A few remain in niches where others can't reach. The only one I would care to mention is curl, and they are having a hard time and only manage by patiently working away at their tool for x-plattform RIAs.
3) The big boys Adobemedia / Sun / IBM and some promising others are currently involved in a giant hack & slay fest over the best and most prevailent rich client / server integration. Joining them with some obscure cross-funded project with bad buzzwords, a crappy website and nothing to deliver than something worse than the most half-assed Ajax kit is like showing up on a Knights tournament riding an aged donkey, armed with a cardboard kiddie helmet, a broomstick and a toothpick.
4) 'We will revolutionize... blahblah... the way people/the world thinks about computers/the web/whatever' is allway a dead giveaway that they don't know the troubles involved in building a good web product. There is no free lunch. Even with technologies around or around the corner like Laszlo, Adobes Flex (a Laszlo rippoff), Curl, Eclipse RIA, AMF, JSON/JDON, XUL/XUL Runner - all of which are basically free (all beer and mostly speech) and cream of the crop, building a working RIA that runs on every OS and doesn't bring your new 2 GB RAM Dual Core Turbo PC to a grinding halt is extremly hard work and a very tricky task with bucketloads of tradeoffs to evaluate. I do this every day, the possiblities are growing but the task itself isn't getting any easyer. And the pipedream of emulating a desktop in a browser has been implemented by many, and the best at it admit it's turned out more like a kind of experiment than anything usefull.
Bottom line: This isn't news and it's not the bits worth it takes to transmit it. Move on. No one needs yet another bunch of silly goofs who try and tell the users/clients that they've discovered something new and everything will change if only you run with their buzzword ridden half-assed vision of an untested product that apes things others have finished years ago - and people don't know about for a reason.
The Nazis back in WW2 where doing all kinds of obscure military research. On of them being the search for the 'ultimate black' that would not reflect any light whatsoever and enable soldiers to appear as non-dimensional shadows. They didn't get very far iirc.
WTF? Looking for a cheap DVI Gfx card and wanna know where to find it? How about waking up from your koma and use this thing called internet. 15 seconds max. to find one. Then again, the guy who put your question up needs a mental reboot aswell imho.
+5 insightful? "+" Certs aren't worth the paper their printed on. A waste of time and money, no matter how cheap and easy. If you want a cert, go for LPI (fits your Unix background) or something.
Is the comparsion with KZ Doctors to far fetched? Is it really? Maybe there is one because it has a strong emotional conotation - which critics to the comparsion here have fallen prone to just as much as I have when using it. Yet the question remains unanswered: Must we do everything we can do? Must we put electrodes into the inards of animals and sends signals through them to see what happens? Why don't the scientists use their own brains? Newton used his own eye to - extremly successfully - find out more about the way we see and the guy who proved that ulcers are caused by bacteria successfully proved so by drinking moldy boullion in front of an atourney. Before that he was considered an unscientific moron.
Be it that the geeks 'in-defence-of-anything-called-science' gene kicks in when you mod me down as overrated or read the Nazi comparsion - I get that. But mod me down all you want - there *is* a lack of ethics in modern science and I'd go so far as to say that this electrodes-in-animal-brain thing is the corpus delicti proving that fact. In my book science and ethics and at least an ongoing discussion about ethics belong together.
If they don't belong, then there really is even a smaller difference between this study and Dr. Mengele and his studies than the critics to this comparsion or I would have care to think.
Must we do everything that we can do? I scares me a little seeing a lack of ethical concerns here on subjects like these. The chinese didn't develop these pigeons. Nature and evolution did. The chinese opened their heads and stuck wires into them. NO big deal and nothing really scientific. This sort of 'research' goes to show that some areas of modern science are even more bogus, bizare and pointless than some obscure spiritistic variants of alchemy from the old days. If I'd be in charge these scientists would lose their funding, their job and their accreditation all at once. Unethical bullshit pseudoscience not very far from what the Nazi KZ Doctors did to the people captured in the camps, that's what this is.
2 Gig running Win 2k3 Server and a developement enviroment? No ease of use is an excuse for that. Whatever. I'd suggest you take a Laptop, put 2 gig in it, install one of those new nifty 2.5" Samsung SSDs and crank up virtual memory. Being the performance hog it is allready and considering that these SSDs have an access time of 60ns you'll hardly notice any difference to RAM I presume. And you'll have a bizarely fast boot-up. Allthough Windows will eat most of that away.
That specific problem aside... It's been said a million times in this story allready, but still: Do check out OSS enviroments in a quiet moment. They really can be worth it. And switching from Windows Server Stuff to Linux Server Stuff really isn't that difficult. Besides, if you have a mature Appserver like JBoss or Zope eating up 2 gigs of memory you'll get your share of ease of use for that in return - and you can test those two on Windows beforehand btw. You'll never look back and you'll never have to learn something that becomes obsolete after 5 years or less. That's on of the main reasons I try to avoid proprietary park myself. Be it in the OS or the Applayer.
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I'm a primarily a Mac OS X user for 3 years now - having moved from Linux - and have to say that I am underwelmed by the o-so-famous seen-on-every-webframework-screencast-in-the-last- 2-years OS X Editor TextMate.
It's basically a sophisticated Cocoa Textwidget with an all-out scripting interface. It only costs 39$ and runs natively which makes it an OK deal, but the hype this editor gets just because it's the first of it's kind on OS X is baseless. If someone would come along and build an editor that has the same featureset as jEdit in a native, non-Java manner, then I'd be impressed and even pay money for it. But I've tested TextMate and have to say I'd rather learn one of the OS X Emacs ports which can be that much harder than putting up with yet another proprietary editor scripting language. That way I'll be able to use the old CLI variants aswell.
So be it that jEdit comparativly is a slowpoke and can't realistically open anything larger than 1,5 MB - it's the best editor out there and has been the feature-bar for the last few years for any other project or tool out there. No need to learn a new, proprietary tool that only runs on one OS and has less functionality.
My 2 cents.
Mark "Mr. Ubuntu Linux" Shuttleworth has a team he sponsors building on a project called 'School Tool'. It's a) built in Zope, which is quite possibly the most advanced (if yet compareatively slower) web application server in existance and probably the most sophisticated enviroment for this sort of thing and b) is a project that is in extremly good shape (having failed once when attempted in Java) and lead by people with solid software developement experience and skills. If SchoolTool doesn't solve your multiple-timesheets problems I'd say your outa luck because AFAICT it's the best software for this sort of thing there is.
The overall trend is MS either going the way of the dodo or bogging down the overall developement with the IT industry. Which boils down to the same. ... whatever you like. IT in general is growing and all these areas are comparativly 'hot' as you would put it.
I'd avoid MS whereever possible nowadays. If you do stuff with MS then do it for data migration into open formats or something. Use OSS and you'll never learn stuff that's obsolete 4 years later - this actually is one of the big reasons to switch to Linux aswell. Aside from that do anything you like. Business programming/ERP, Web Stuff, RIA, Admin/Maintainance, Databases, Low-Level/Drivers
OpenGL is neat and a true standard - but no where near DX feature wise. What I expect is the ongoing XP & Vista lockin / registration / DRM / compliance annoyance MS introduces causing people to look for alternatives and turn to sub-par (compared to DX) OpenGL and work on improving the standard. It's not that OpenGL couldn't do the same thing DX can, it's only that people haven't had a reason in the last few years to do so. Plattforms are getting more diverse performance wise and people need to take a growing range of OSes that users have into account. This will undoubtly get attention back on to OpenGL and it's downsides. Unless, of course, MS licences DX for Mac OS X and Linux. Which would actually be a thing they really could do to turn a profit in a future world where OSS has won. Meanwhile we've got translation libs that turn DX calls into OpenGL stuff (Cedega and such) which is an ok intermediate solution imho.
First I was about to joke and write something like 'MS gives in to representative body of 400 Million people' but then I noticed that even this can't be taken for granted. I'm glad the EU has enough self-respect to tell MS who's boss when it comes to anti-competitive behaviour.
Then again MS was delaying the game to draw attention off the fact that they're defending their monopoly much more effectively in another place: Standards, closed, non-compatible Data Formats and Software Patents. The former two are great devices of market control. The EU ought to do something about that. Probalby MS wasn't really interested in lobbying in this as, as giving in here isn't so much a loss for them as it would be if they where required to comply to an amount of standard IT standards. Now *that* would be the appropriate punishment for MS.
I'll rest when MS has 50% market share or less.
The campaign is interesting. It comes in Ubuntu colors and basically lies about the large mass of Linux users who have lock in issues with MS. It goes on to talk gibberish about 'Show them GetTheFacts' and 'Many MS service people around' and 'cheaper support available'. The big problem is though that this sort of campaign is off by about 5-6 years. Today IT joints only win by having IT, Sales and Management working closely together. It's heavyly web oriented because opinion leaders see it as the only way to avoid MS lock-in and deployment fuss. When that needs to happen, flaws in the underlying technology pop into sight in the most mercyless way. .Net. Each as a kernel module. This campaing is nothing but a last ditch effort of the old school Guard over at MS trying to stop the inevitable.
In the two years in which to large, general concepts each have have gotten their buzzword that sticks ('Web 2.0' and 'Ajax') businesses have been seeking their own way to avoid lock-in. Opinion leaders in technology (99% OSS friendly most of the time) have been going full-throttle Web, Ajax, PDF and a little OpenOffice ever since and the Heat is closing in on MS extremely fast. Especially in the corporate market. A growing Mac OS *niX Community doesn't help the situation for MS.
As a Linux/OSS advocate I was alone in the wide prairie 4 years ago. Now I have Linux/Apache/PHP competitors popping up left, right and center all around me and the market is still growing. It's this combined with Ubuntu and a zero-fuss desktop Linux that scares the living piss out of MS.
If MS is smart their next Windows installment will have a rebranded Linux kernel and a closed Direct X 12 or something plus
... that's what I fear anyway. A solid cross plattform multimedia ready RIA enviroment with a reliable roadmap and good backing is what the world is desperately crying for. Flash could easyly be and stay king of the hill in that game. Java slowpocked to long and Flash has the largest installbase of any plattform ever. ... Ouch.
I wonder why they don't just continue to improve Flash/AS. Is it the Community that needs rebranding?
Apollo could give the whole Flash/AS thing a fresh start and remove those psycho barriers anti-flash zealots have had trouble with to overcome. I hope this won't put of anyone who has hoped for a consolidation of the RIA industry. Yet again it goes without saying that they won't get any foothold if they don't release a Linux version of it pronto. Make *nix the stepchild and all opinion leaders will turn your back on you. For good reasons too. I thought Adobemedia had gotten that by now. Looks as if they're losing focus again. If this turns into yet another 'We'll be 1.5 years late again with Linux' fiasco then they can shove their Apollo. Bow, Arrow and all.
A Zalman TNN 500a Case or a simulat custom built one with all that fits inside without making noise. All x86 CPUs and all memory that fits in, all OSes and most used software ready configured and installed into an extended BIOS ready to run 5 seconds after I booted. No HDDs, all SSDs. The fastest OpenGL card available.
:-)
Curiously enough, the Mac Pro Quad Core maxed out with all that fits in (~19 000 €) comes pretty much close to what I'd consider the best possible workstation.
Imagine a maxed out Quad Core Mac Pro with SSDs in all 4 bays and a passive heatpipe cooling. That would be my dream machine. I guess the SSDs (custom built from these guys), the extended BIOS and the manpower to set it all up for me would be the biggest pricepoints for the box itself. 40 000 to 60 000 dollars? Dunno, something like that.
As periferals I'd like a thermal transfer printer (with 20 000 pages worth of ink and spare parts), a high end inkjet with 200 000 pages top quality paper and the ink for printing on them and a Z-Corp 3D rapid prototyping printer plus enough high-performance material, binder and color to print an entire army of Heavy Gear Mech figures and a few Star Wars Spaceships. All drivers preinstalled, tested and working.
Add in all the software goodies available for good measure (The entire Adobe Line, the entire Apple Line, Lightwave 3D 9, all training DVDs and plugins available + any software needed to make best use of the printers and the prototyper). Maybe some programming productivity / software design applications as an extra (Gentleware Enterprise CASE System, The Visual Paradigm Enterprise line)
Last but not least the system should come with all this in a documented base configuration where all of the above is set up and works and a tested desaster recovery to restore it should the need arise.
All this could easyly amount to 200 000 - 300 000 Euros - and still fit in a normal room. Then again, you said money doesn't matter.
I think that setup would keep me busy for a while.
You do *not* want to lug a MacBook about. I don't even lug it about when going to a customer unless I've got a presentation. Even the idea of lugging it about on Korsikas GR20 or somewhere in the tundra of Kamtshatka is utterly silly.
Here's my list for '80% of landsurface' backpacking:
Leatherman or equivalent
Tent Repair Kit
Tent (VauDe or, if you've got the cash, Hilleberg)
Shampoo
Waterfilter (katadyn or the sorts)
Drinking Water Desinfectant (Micropur or the sorts)
Drinking Water Fold Container
3-4 underpants (2 synthetic, fast drying, 2 cotton/silk)
3 pair of kneesocks (2 synthetic, one cotton)
3 T-Shirts
Toothcare Kit
Fleece Pullover
Outdoor Pants, the kind you can wash and wear. At the same time if the need be. (Tactel, Fleece, whatever tech cloth there is)
Outdoor Jacket
Headlamp (modern rugged LED)
spare batteries
Sleepingbag
Biwakbag
Kompass
a good knife, if survival - no crap. Survival Knives tend to be crap. Look out.
Isul-Matt
Flask
Moutaineers Cup
Staticrope
Materialkarabiner/Snaplink
Plaster
Tschamba-Fii (universal natural sun protection and post-sunburn treatment)
A good book
Map
Backbelt / Materialrope/thin Staticrope + knowledge of knots
Medium Backpack to carry it all. Not to big, you'll only pack to much
general medicine
snakebite kit
heat blanket
storm matches
lighter
cooker (the best is a methalated spirits cooker, meth-spirit is uncommon in the US - except for costal areas where the powerboots ride on it, but this fuel is available as cooking fuel everywhere else on the planet, you can run it on high percentage liquor if the need arises)
If you absolutely need to take tech then add:
A mechanical photocamera. With FILM! (as in 35mm). You do not want your techie gadget failing at -10 degrees and the most beautyfull view of your life at K2 or on to the Goby desert. Take enough films with you. Don't take a cam that needs electronics to work! By an old cheap Minolta 70 or something. They've survived stuff any modern cam wouldn't, no matter how expensive.
If you think you need a phone (which I wouldn't know why) then take an Iridium. All else is pointless. Don't forget a solar charger.
As a gadget fitting the phone would be a good universal PDA with an optional electronic cam built in. Get a pouch that can keep it warm when in the mountains or someplace cold. See that the solar charger fits both Iridium Phone and PDA (I recommend a Zaurus) and that you got a RS232 link to connect to the Iridium.
Happy posting from the chinese wall.
One word of Warning: If I catch you somewhere in the boondocks of patagonias nature and suddenly your phone rings, I'll kill you. Promise.
The list above isn't complete and needs tweaking. Do not take electronics with you unless you really know what you are doing. You won't need them anyway.
All my fat geek and roleplayer friends (including the one who's become a fatty over the last few years) have the same problem: They've come to eat over their appetite at every meal.
... People who excercise vent their frustration by doing it and thus eat less out of frustration. As a rule of thumb you should see that your 'exercise' has a little more to it than pure sport. Breakdance and Parcour are also considers sort-of forms of art. Surfers and Climbers have strong ties to nature, a good thing aswell.
10 years ago I was study and performing expressive stage dance. 5 hrs a day dancing. The only people with less body fat than me where ballet dancers and kung-fu masters. I was so happy pumping my metabolisim and my body everyday that I once literally forgot to eat for two days. To illustrate: Of all 10th grade classmates that made an untrained 1km sprint/run without stopping I was the second last. 5 years later I was the fastest in sprint and long-distance. I sprinted against a good friend of mine in the early twenties. Once he was the sprinting king of our class, now he was becoming a genuine fatso. It was allmost sad the way I outran him.
I've moved to IT since - dancing doesn't pay the bills if you aren't top 10. I do Aikido twice a week and it's the best thing I can think of for a geek. For half a year now I'm doing a german GED and have no time for training. It sucks big time. I have to watch the general habbit of compensating stress with overeating. As soon as my jeans start pinching I go in fasting mode and stick to veggie-juice and a spoon of honey a day to prevent the shakies. The Jojo says hello.
My advice: If you're a fatso it's 95% the case because you've gotten accustomed to eating to much! Probably by using eating as a substitute for excercise and a compensation/'reward' for stress. That's the simple truth. Get of your ass and get excercise. That will have you feel better *without* eating and you'll find it easyer to eat less.
That doesn't have to be boring. Climbing, Hiking, Cross-Country Biking (the pedal kind, not the motor kind), Cross-Country Running (adds geek factor with map and compass!), Swiming (with diving), Martial Arts, Breakdance, Parcour, Surfing (the ocean, not the web)
The only other alternative to excercise I know of is smoking as a substitute for overeating. You can lose weight that way aswell. But it's very unhealthy.
CS isn't dying. Academias monopoly on CS is dying. Forging swords was an experts job 400 years ago. Now it's a hobbyists thing. I may not know my way around memory allocation that well anymore, simply because my last three PHP customers and I couldn't give a sh*t, but I did opcode/assam programming 20 years ago (to control single dots on my sharp handheld screen) and the book I need to learn C in and out again is resting on a shelf two meters away.
;-) . People want the job done. And move on.
CS is sort of becoming a science like philosophy. There are people who study it and earn money with it, but anyone half way interested can join an educated discussion with them on the topic. And, on top of that, the experts view on the topic usually is quite strange and outside of common sense. You'll find tons of Wittgenstein crackpots at academic positions simply because they dig mental masturbation as a dayjob. The Schopenhauer guys all have occupations that are more 'real'.
Nobody takes a guy serious anymore ranting about how this PL is worse than that and how Java sucks and real men use C or PHP is for sissies and Ruby is cool. They don't even want to hear from me that Zope still is lightyears ahead of Rails
Point in (simular) case: Nowadays nobody (not even academics) - except maybe a few people who build satellites and stuff - gives a rats ass if x86 sucks or not. It has won. Period. And I bet unemployed non-x86 hardware guys tell you how crappy it is if you give them some change and a warm dinner.
If some kid in india who's read a copy of Kernighan & Ritchie can solve my low-level problem with some Linux module that's getting in my way, I don't give a hoot wether he's an academic or not. Yet I bet he's got a simular skill kit of one.
Bottom line:
Computers and their science have become mainstream and are slowly moving out of their steam age. Get with the programm.
*Da-Dum! Tock! Thud! Crash!*
This looks like a mid-eighties handheld - stylewise. If it where as cheap as an old handheld (remember that late Atari handheld? That was kinda cool) and run just as long it would be cool. The thickness aparently doesn't transfer to offgrid runtime and the price-tag is prohibitive. The OQO is kinda cute for those who have the cash - but this is just ugly. And won't fly.
Talking about Pocket Computer uptime: My Sharp PC-1403 H runs 150 hrs. on batteries. My Palm runs aprox. 20 hrs. And that's the minimum I can bear. Until a device comes close to that I won't buy it.
The definition of the US bible belt christian god is actually one of a very small minority on earth. There are billions of Hindus and Buddists who have an entirely different definition of God and many country where more than 50% don't believe in god.(Someone here mentioned Sweden).
This study is next to pointless I'd presume.
They show via a few quick financial numbers that even though Apple is selling fewer machines, they're making more money per machine than your Dells or your Gateways.
No shit. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
Apple builds hard and software to fit. PC vendors still put out large ugly space-wasting and compareativly expensive boxes running an OS that only manages to stay because it was preinstalled. Fact is, considering price/performance iMacs are currently the best Desktop deal. Close behind are the PC laptops with their hardware prices rapidly plummeting. I've been wondering for years why no one puts out their own 'Mac Mini' clone for half the price. There is some psychosis going on from preventing PC builder to step into the comodity area. Somehow even cheap non-gaming PCs have to be big, ugly and hand-assembled. Anything remotely Apple like from Shuttle or hushtechnologies is bizarely priced. As long as that is the case, Apple will gain popularity. Good for them, they deserve it. Nothing new here.
The parent is a troll & liar and links to a loonie Site claiming that 'Ubuntu Linux' stands for 'Jewbuntu' and that Linux is a stolen version of Windows. Quite hilarious actually, but please mod him down. Thanks.
I've been doing professional active content web developement since the late dot-bomb days. Looking at the site for 15 seconds tells me this is probably nothing other than a scheme to fool investors. The things people put out for 'the next big thing' when they discover that JavaScript is a PL and runs in every browser amazes me time and time again.
... blahblah ... the way people/the world thinks about computers/the web/whatever' is allway a dead giveaway that they don't know the troubles involved in building a good web product. There is no free lunch. Even with technologies around or around the corner like Laszlo, Adobes Flex (a Laszlo rippoff), Curl, Eclipse RIA, AMF, JSON/JDON, XUL/XUL Runner - all of which are basically free (all beer and mostly speech) and cream of the crop, building a working RIA that runs on every OS and doesn't bring your new 2 GB RAM Dual Core Turbo PC to a grinding halt is extremly hard work and a very tricky task with bucketloads of tradeoffs to evaluate. I do this every day, the possiblities are growing but the task itself isn't getting any easyer. And the pipedream of emulating a desktop in a browser has been implemented by many, and the best at it admit it's turned out more like a kind of experiment than anything usefull.
There are some points about RIAs one should learn as fast as possible to avoid wasting everybodys time:
1) JavaScript is nothing new. It's been around for something like 10 years. DTML/Push-Pull JavaScript/Ajax/[Fill in own buzzword of choice] is nothing new. Many people have tried it, many have given up and even the best in 'Ajax' have stepped down again from using it in anything but the most tried and true situations and use cases.
2) RIA is nothing new. Plugins are nothing new. There are entire landfills full of potential competitors to Flash and Java. Most of them failed. A few remain in niches where others can't reach. The only one I would care to mention is curl, and they are having a hard time and only manage by patiently working away at their tool for x-plattform RIAs.
3) The big boys Adobemedia / Sun / IBM and some promising others are currently involved in a giant hack & slay fest over the best and most prevailent rich client / server integration. Joining them with some obscure cross-funded project with bad buzzwords, a crappy website and nothing to deliver than something worse than the most half-assed Ajax kit is like showing up on a Knights tournament riding an aged donkey, armed with a cardboard kiddie helmet, a broomstick and a toothpick.
4) 'We will revolutionize
Bottom line:
This isn't news and it's not the bits worth it takes to transmit it. Move on. No one needs yet another bunch of silly goofs who try and tell the users/clients that they've discovered something new and everything will change if only you run with their buzzword ridden half-assed vision of an untested product that apes things others have finished years ago - and people don't know about for a reason.
The Nazis back in WW2 where doing all kinds of obscure military research. On of them being the search for the 'ultimate black' that would not reflect any light whatsoever and enable soldiers to appear as non-dimensional shadows. They didn't get very far iirc.
WTF? Looking for a cheap DVI Gfx card and wanna know where to find it?
How about waking up from your koma and use this thing called internet. 15 seconds max. to find one.
Then again, the guy who put your question up needs a mental reboot aswell imho.
+5 insightful?
"+" Certs aren't worth the paper their printed on. A waste of time and money, no matter how cheap and easy. If you want a cert, go for LPI (fits your Unix background) or something.
You got a point there. :-)
We need a funny/insightfull combo mod.
Is the comparsion with KZ Doctors to far fetched? Is it really? Maybe there is one because it has a strong emotional conotation - which critics to the comparsion here have fallen prone to just as much as I have when using it. Yet the question remains unanswered: Must we do everything we can do? Must we put electrodes into the inards of animals and sends signals through them to see what happens? Why don't the scientists use their own brains? Newton used his own eye to - extremly successfully - find out more about the way we see and the guy who proved that ulcers are caused by bacteria successfully proved so by drinking moldy boullion in front of an atourney. Before that he was considered an unscientific moron.
Be it that the geeks 'in-defence-of-anything-called-science' gene kicks in when you mod me down as overrated or read the Nazi comparsion - I get that. But mod me down all you want - there *is* a lack of ethics in modern science and I'd go so far as to say that this electrodes-in-animal-brain thing is the corpus delicti proving that fact. In my book science and ethics and at least an ongoing discussion about ethics belong together.
If they don't belong, then there really is even a smaller difference between this study and Dr. Mengele and his studies than the critics to this comparsion or I would have care to think.
My 5 cents. Opinions please.
Must we do everything that we can do? I scares me a little seeing a lack of ethical concerns here on subjects like these. The chinese didn't develop these pigeons. Nature and evolution did. The chinese opened their heads and stuck wires into them. NO big deal and nothing really scientific.
This sort of 'research' goes to show that some areas of modern science are even more bogus, bizare and pointless than some obscure spiritistic variants of alchemy from the old days. If I'd be in charge these scientists would lose their funding, their job and their accreditation all at once.
Unethical bullshit pseudoscience not very far from what the Nazi KZ Doctors did to the people captured in the camps, that's what this is.
Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, , Mushroom, MUSHROOM, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, , Mushroom, MUSHROOM, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, Aaaaah A Snake, It's a Snake, Ooouuh, A Snake, a Snake, Judgers, Judgers, Judgers, etc. ...
[WTF?]
2 Gig running Win 2k3 Server and a developement enviroment? No ease of use is an excuse for that.
... It's been said a million times in this story allready, but still:
Whatever.
I'd suggest you take a Laptop, put 2 gig in it, install one of those new nifty 2.5" Samsung SSDs and crank up virtual memory. Being the performance hog it is allready and considering that these SSDs have an access time of 60ns you'll hardly notice any difference to RAM I presume. And you'll have a bizarely fast boot-up. Allthough Windows will eat most of that away.
That specific problem aside
Do check out OSS enviroments in a quiet moment. They really can be worth it. And switching from Windows Server Stuff to Linux Server Stuff really isn't that difficult. Besides, if you have a mature Appserver like JBoss or Zope eating up 2 gigs of memory you'll get your share of ease of use for that in return - and you can test those two on Windows beforehand btw. You'll never look back and you'll never have to learn something that becomes obsolete after 5 years or less. That's on of the main reasons I try to avoid proprietary park myself. Be it in the OS or the Applayer.