Maybe because it doesn't work well for him? I played with KDE 4 and felt that it was too buggy and slow. What should a Desktop do for me? Launch applications and maybe manage files. That is really about it. I may pick a wall paper but that is it. Even widgets don't really thrill me. I think that KDE has a lot of detractors because they don't find any benefit to it for them. Gnome actually works as a good compromise for IMHO between a bare bones and and overly complex desktop environment. But then I may be just too hard to impress. I move between Windows, OS/X, and Gnome all the time and find them all about the same as far as the desktop goes. Not wonderful but not great.
1. A Browser is a much smaller piece of software than an Office suit. 2. We already have a decent office suit called OpenOffice. Not great IMHO but it does work. 3. Just because they can write a good browser doesn't mean that they can write a good Office Suit. 4. Firefox 4 will be out soon a new office suit will take a few years. So I am a lot more excited about FF4 since it will see the light of day.
What does this guy want to see Mozilla fail? They still have a lot of work to do with browsers. The mobile market for one thing. Now if you want to see my dream list of FOSS software that doesn't exist yet let me get started. 1. An Echange replacement. Not 8 things I can lash up to work but a single system that is easy to install that offers all the features of Exchange with none of the pain. Oh and it must work with Outlook and should have a good client that does everything Outlook does plus a good web interface. 2. A Google Docs replacement. I want a FOSS system I can install on my own server that has all the functionality of Google Docs but lives on my sever.
Why would that be a problem? In a program I work on we put in all sorts of parsing on the pages field of the print dialog. you can enter. All 10-end all even all odd 1,2,3 50-100 20 to 50 and so one.
Folks take pride in your work and do it well. Impress and make each program a work of art.
I can see her point as well. If you are entering hundreds of records a day that is a pain. What would have been the best solution IMHO would be to parse the field and if the date was in the format MM/DD then add the current year to field when the user hits enter.
Good UI is more than pretty pictures. It is also about saving time.
Yes, no, and sometimes. As the number of users goes up the cost to produce a single change to the software increases. At my company we have a few tens of thousands of customers and I can tell you that things are not always as simple as you are making them out to be. One problem is with COTS Windows hardware and software. You get some of the dumbest interactions on the face of the earth. We had a pretty common touch pad driver that was causing a c++ exception on our porgram. Well not in our program exactly in the MFC framework from Microsoft. Then you have anit-virus software that can cause performance issues and IO problems. Then you have malware causing a problem with your app. And so on and so forth. Then you have the law of "That never crossed my mind". We had a rash of customers that where overwriting their data with and old data. For the life of us we couldn't figure out how this was happening without them giving the command and ignoring the warning message! This was back in the DOS days and while our program did have pull down menus they also had hot keys for every command. The command to copy to the floppy was CTRL F CTRL T for copy to. The command to copy from the floppy wast CTRL F CTRL F for From Floppy. What was happening is users thought that they had hit the F and the T key at the same time. So when holding down the F the auto repeat in DOS hit a second F for them! As your customer base goes up a problem that is likely to effect only one out of a thousand users becomes a disaster that you hear about many times a day. Even with our small customer base every change to the software must be checked and rechecked to cause as few problems as possible. That is why it takes so long to get new features in and why it can be pretty expensive. It really all depends on the situation.
VirtualBox=free. Cost of not having a back surgery from hauling two or three 17 laptops? I have more than one desktop at my office and it is a major pain. One 13" laptop and a 22" monitor plus virtual box just makes my life so much simpler and my back so much happier.
Verizon CDMA and is the biggest mobile company in the US. Sprint is number 3 and is CDMA. Verizon and Sprint probably out number AT&T and TMobile. I would put your guess as being off. Verizon Wireless (93.2 million), CDMA AT&T (92.8 million), GSM Sprint Corporation (48 million), CDMA IDEN T-Mobile USA (38.5 million), GSM TracFone Wireless (15.4 million), GSM CDMA MetroPCS (over 7.6 million). CDMA US Cellular (6.1 Million) CDMA Cricket (5.7) million CDMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers So 93.2+48+7.6 + 6.1 + 5.7 =160 millon CDMA users give or take. GMS is 92.8 38.5 and 15.4 =146.7 give or take. These are rough numbers because some of Sprints users are on IDEN and some of TrakFone users are on CDMA. But I with these numbers I will stand by the statement that majority of US users are on CDMA. And I did say that Nokia had not made many deals with US carriers. The last smart phone from Nokia that I saw offered by a US carrier was the e71x and yes Nokia removed features from it for AT&T. I do agree that not playing nice with the carriers is part of the issue but also not putting any effort into CDMA also I believe hurt them as well.
It is an ultra portable. Frankly most laptops and netbooks don't let you upgrade the CPU. The ram it would be nice if that was upgradeable but I do not see how they could do that on that design. But then if you want those features in an Apple just get a Macbook or a Macbook pro.
Wouldn't a computer savvy home user or developer have a NAS? I sure don't keep all my music, videos, and photos on my laptop. What if it gets stolen? then they are all gone. Plus I don't need all that with me all the time. Also for real heavy work nothing IMHO matches a desktop for storage and speed. Also fragile? Compared to an HD?
I would say that a savvy home user or developer would setup FreeNAS or OpenFiler with a nice RAID system and then use say a 2 TB external or two for nightly and weekly backups. Using ESATA of course.
But really for most people I your standard PC is massive overkill. I think you are under estimating the massive number of people that really need very little computer power. Last night my wife and I where at dinner and overheard an older gentleman at the next table. He had just paid some "computer tech" $80 for four hours work cleaning system! I am betting that he ran scandisk, defrag, and Spyware search and destroy for this guy. All he does is "Finances "Etrade", Ebay, and email his grandkids." It doesn't take to many $80 visits to make getting a Mac seem like a bargin. And he could do everything he is doing now on an iPad. Or as my wife put it. Someone needs to set him up with a Linux box.
"Intel, Adaptec, LSI, all are supporting SSDs as a cache for HDDs on various RAID controllers." ZFS does this in software now. Imagine the speeds you get from a SAN or NAS using ZFS, and SSD for cacheing, and a full load of ram...
To me a 17" laptop makes no sense. It is too big be an easy portable. If you want a desktop just get a desktop. If you are going to use a laptop for development then get an external monitor and then you get the benefit of two monitors. As to a benefit to having more than one machine I must disagree. Here let me show you the real solution. www.virtualbox.org Now you can run multiple virtual machines on a single computer. Need to bring up a server running Linux? No problem. Need to bring up Windows Server? Yep. Need to run XP to test on? Yep. Just load your machine up with ram and you are good to go. There are very few instances where having an extra machine except as a backup will be of any more benefit than using a good VM solution.
I don't see SSD's fully replacing HDDs what I do see is them pushing them out over time. What we need to look at is the minimal price for an HDD vs a minimal price for an SDD. Sort of the fixed operating costs of both. No matter how small an HDD is it will still cost x amount. The Cheapest HD on Newegg right now is an 80Gb for $35. That is probably a good indicator fixed costs. If you only need 64GB which really isn't that small of an HD and they can get the price down to $.50 per gb then you are at $32 for a much faster drive. Yes it is only $3 but you will also get much higher performance. So for thing like a netbook, office PC, car navigation system, or game console you would be dumb to not use an SSD. If you pay only $5 more for 120Gb but you never use it then it is $5 wasted. I am willing to bet that that HDDs will always win in $ per Gb but when a 1 TB SSD costs $20 who will be willing to spend $100 for a 100TB drive?
That is simple. The Infoworld guy and most people have an American viewpoint myself included about Nokia. Nokia is still the biggest cell phone maker on earth. In the US they are sell a few super expensive smartphones and a few super cheap phones. If the push out MeeGo it will have a huge marketshare in a flash. The real reason for Nokia not being a big deal in the US is that the majority of US cell phones use CDMA vs Europe and many other places that GSM only. Nokia just doesn't have many CDMA phones and Nokia has not make many deals with US carriers.
$700 + SSD + iLife + metal case makes the Air seem right in the ball park. iLife is the big variable for people here. If you want and need it then it is a good deal. The new video editor seems really nice and GarageBand is worth a lot to those that need and want it. For me iLife has less value but again if you need it.
This was around 2000 and you suffering from a failure of imagination. Even if Russia didn't see this as an opportunity. What about India? Maybe they would have decided that a first strike at Pakistan would be worth it. After all it is possible that the US couldn't act quickly enough to stop them. Or China decides to take Taiwan back if they could do it fast enough and threaten the US with a nuclear strike that we could react to if we interfered. A direct attack on the US would be the least of my worries. We would still have Trident and could take out any nation that idid it after we got new codes set up. But if this had leaked out I am not so sure that someone wouldn't have tried to take advantage of this super rare opportunity. That and the fact that Clinton's aid LOST this card and the codes where just floating around really is a whole different nightmare.
The problem is that that writing anything in the legal profession is in many ways a lot like making a wish in DnD. You must carefully put every detail into words and the other party is going to try and find anyway to prevent you from getting what you want without some causing you a large amount of grief.
In this case the judge could have prohibited any obscured or encrypted communications. Honestly banking and online purchases are not going to be a big problem since he is only 15. Make his mommy and daddy do it for him since they seem to need practice keeping an eye on him. The main thing I want to get past everyone was this person was in a lot of trouble. Frankly he seems to be a punk on his way to spending a lot of time in jail.
I do find it very amusing that you bring up proofreading in a comment that starts off with an error. "You raise I good point"
Don't worry I know what you meant. That is the thing about Slashdot. None of use get paid to post here so who cares if we can understand.
Yup Go with VirtualBox. If performance is a worry solve it with hardware. The new AMD G34 Opterons with 8 cores are under $300 and you can get a mother board for it for not much more. They will support high end video cards as well. Before Anyone gets too bent over the price of hardware I am suggesting it is about the same as the price of the software he is using. Also load it with RAM and you will be good to go. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240 And for the CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 The price on the new G34 CPUs are so low now that building a workstation class machine is getting down right affordable.
Well I didn't cherry pick. I knew that Sony made ultra portables so I looked for one that was close to the Air.
You don't buy the Air for the best bang for the buck. You get the Macbook or the Pro depending on what you need. Also a lot of it depends on what you value. The Air is going to have a very long battery price and a very low weight. And the price is actually a few hundred less than the X line.
It just isn't that over priced for the category it is in. It isn't a value leader but it isn't vastly over priced.
Well I suggest that you read the transcript. The Slashdot summary is so bad that it is just shameful. IMHO this is in no way cruel and unusual in fact I would say it is light.
This person was caught with stolen goods. He was riding a 50cc dirtbike on a highway. The motorcycle was stolen and he couldn't say where he got it from. He also was on probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun. He was also has an on going drug problem. In other words the judge could have thrown his but right in kiddie prison for violation of probation! There isn't any Facebook in jail folks. So this idiot is facing a very light house arrest and some restrictions for probation violations. Not that harsh of a punishment If anything this should be a story about how hard it is to write good restrictions for tech. How can you say that you can use PGP to send encrypted emails but SSL is okay? You can use a bank card but you can not use TOR? It is a very common restriction for probation that you can not communicate with felons, own a gun, and so on and so forth. How does one enforce those restrictions in the modern age? So no it is so far from what Slashdot posted that it isn't funny.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it works. Your statement about 8 million flights without a successful terrorist attack almost sounds like an endorsement.
Maybe because it doesn't work well for him?
I played with KDE 4 and felt that it was too buggy and slow. What should a Desktop do for me? Launch applications and maybe manage files.
That is really about it. I may pick a wall paper but that is it. Even widgets don't really thrill me.
I think that KDE has a lot of detractors because they don't find any benefit to it for them. Gnome actually works as a good compromise for IMHO between a bare bones and and overly complex desktop environment.
But then I may be just too hard to impress. I move between Windows, OS/X, and Gnome all the time and find them all about the same as far as the desktop goes.
Not wonderful but not great.
1. A Browser is a much smaller piece of software than an Office suit.
2. We already have a decent office suit called OpenOffice. Not great IMHO but it does work.
3. Just because they can write a good browser doesn't mean that they can write a good Office Suit.
4. Firefox 4 will be out soon a new office suit will take a few years. So I am a lot more excited about FF4 since it will see the light of day.
What does this guy want to see Mozilla fail? They still have a lot of work to do with browsers. The mobile market for one thing.
Now if you want to see my dream list of FOSS software that doesn't exist yet let me get started.
1. An Echange replacement. Not 8 things I can lash up to work but a single system that is easy to install that offers all the features of Exchange with none of the pain. Oh and it must work with Outlook and should have a good client that does everything Outlook does plus a good web interface.
2. A Google Docs replacement. I want a FOSS system I can install on my own server that has all the functionality of Google Docs but lives on my sever.
Those would be big wins as far as I am concerned.
Why would that be a problem?
In a program I work on we put in all sorts of parsing on the pages field of the print dialog.
you can enter.
All
10-end
all even
all odd
1,2,3 50-100
20 to 50
and so one.
Folks take pride in your work and do it well. Impress and make each program a work of art.
I can see her point as well. If you are entering hundreds of records a day that is a pain.
What would have been the best solution IMHO would be to parse the field and if the date was in the format MM/DD then add the current year to field when the user hits enter.
Good UI is more than pretty pictures. It is also about saving time.
Yes, no, and sometimes. As the number of users goes up the cost to produce a single change to the software increases. At my company we have a few tens of thousands of customers and I can tell you that things are not always as simple as you are making them out to be.
One problem is with COTS Windows hardware and software. You get some of the dumbest interactions on the face of the earth.
We had a pretty common touch pad driver that was causing a c++ exception on our porgram. Well not in our program exactly in the MFC framework from Microsoft.
Then you have anit-virus software that can cause performance issues and IO problems.
Then you have malware causing a problem with your app.
And so on and so forth.
Then you have the law of "That never crossed my mind". We had a rash of customers that where overwriting their data with and old data.
For the life of us we couldn't figure out how this was happening without them giving the command and ignoring the warning message!
This was back in the DOS days and while our program did have pull down menus they also had hot keys for every command.
The command to copy to the floppy was CTRL F CTRL T for copy to.
The command to copy from the floppy wast CTRL F CTRL F for From Floppy.
What was happening is users thought that they had hit the F and the T key at the same time.
So when holding down the F the auto repeat in DOS hit a second F for them!
As your customer base goes up a problem that is likely to effect only one out of a thousand users becomes a disaster that you hear about many times a day.
Even with our small customer base every change to the software must be checked and rechecked to cause as few problems as possible.
That is why it takes so long to get new features in and why it can be pretty expensive.
It really all depends on the situation.
Will they load it up with xserve?
I wonder if Apple is the biggest customer for Xserves?
VirtualBox=free.
Cost of not having a back surgery from hauling two or three 17 laptops?
I have more than one desktop at my office and it is a major pain. One 13" laptop and a 22" monitor plus virtual box just makes my life so much simpler and my back so much happier.
Verizon CDMA and is the biggest mobile company in the US.
Sprint is number 3 and is CDMA.
Verizon and Sprint probably out number AT&T and TMobile. I would put your guess as being off.
Verizon Wireless (93.2 million), CDMA
AT&T (92.8 million), GSM
Sprint Corporation (48 million), CDMA IDEN
T-Mobile USA (38.5 million), GSM
TracFone Wireless (15.4 million), GSM CDMA
MetroPCS (over 7.6 million). CDMA
US Cellular (6.1 Million) CDMA
Cricket (5.7) million CDMA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers
So 93.2+48+7.6 + 6.1 + 5.7 =160 millon CDMA users give or take.
GMS is 92.8 38.5 and 15.4 =146.7 give or take.
These are rough numbers because some of Sprints users are on IDEN and some of TrakFone users are on CDMA. But I with these numbers I will stand by the statement that majority of US users are on CDMA. And I did say that Nokia had not made many deals with US carriers. The last smart phone from Nokia that I saw offered by a US carrier was the e71x and yes Nokia removed features from it for AT&T. I do agree that not playing nice with the carriers is part of the issue but also not putting any effort into CDMA also I believe hurt them as well.
It is an ultra portable.
Frankly most laptops and netbooks don't let you upgrade the CPU.
The ram it would be nice if that was upgradeable but I do not see how they could do that on that design.
But then if you want those features in an Apple just get a Macbook or a Macbook pro.
Wouldn't a computer savvy home user or developer have a NAS? I sure don't keep all my music, videos, and photos on my laptop.
What if it gets stolen? then they are all gone. Plus I don't need all that with me all the time.
Also for real heavy work nothing IMHO matches a desktop for storage and speed.
Also fragile? Compared to an HD?
I would say that a savvy home user or developer would setup FreeNAS or OpenFiler with a nice RAID system and then use say a 2 TB external or two for nightly and weekly backups.
Using ESATA of course.
But really for most people I your standard PC is massive overkill. I think you are under estimating the massive number of people that really need very little computer power. Last night my wife and I where at dinner and overheard an older gentleman at the next table.
He had just paid some "computer tech" $80 for four hours work cleaning system!
I am betting that he ran scandisk, defrag, and Spyware search and destroy for this guy.
All he does is "Finances "Etrade", Ebay, and email his grandkids."
It doesn't take to many $80 visits to make getting a Mac seem like a bargin. And he could do everything he is doing now on an iPad.
Or as my wife put it. Someone needs to set him up with a Linux box.
"Intel, Adaptec, LSI, all are supporting SSDs as a cache for HDDs on various RAID controllers."
ZFS does this in software now.
Imagine the speeds you get from a SAN or NAS using ZFS, and SSD for cacheing, and a full load of ram...
To me a 17" laptop makes no sense. It is too big be an easy portable. If you want a desktop just get a desktop.
If you are going to use a laptop for development then get an external monitor and then you get the benefit of two monitors.
As to a benefit to having more than one machine I must disagree. Here let me show you the real solution. www.virtualbox.org
Now you can run multiple virtual machines on a single computer. Need to bring up a server running Linux? No problem.
Need to bring up Windows Server? Yep.
Need to run XP to test on? Yep.
Just load your machine up with ram and you are good to go.
There are very few instances where having an extra machine except as a backup will be of any more benefit than using a good VM solution.
I don't see SSD's fully replacing HDDs what I do see is them pushing them out over time.
What we need to look at is the minimal price for an HDD vs a minimal price for an SDD. Sort of the fixed operating costs of both.
No matter how small an HDD is it will still cost x amount. The Cheapest HD on Newegg right now is an 80Gb for $35. That is probably a good indicator fixed costs. If you only need 64GB which really isn't that small of an HD and they can get the price down to $.50 per gb then you are at $32 for a much faster drive.
Yes it is only $3 but you will also get much higher performance. So for thing like a netbook, office PC, car navigation system, or game console you would be dumb to not use an SSD.
If you pay only $5 more for 120Gb but you never use it then it is $5 wasted.
I am willing to bet that that HDDs will always win in $ per Gb but when a 1 TB SSD costs $20 who will be willing to spend $100 for a 100TB drive?
Maybe because a lot of people like Chrome or Firefox more?
Posted from a Macbook using Chrome.
That is simple. The Infoworld guy and most people have an American viewpoint myself included about Nokia. Nokia is still the biggest cell phone maker on earth.
In the US they are sell a few super expensive smartphones and a few super cheap phones. If the push out MeeGo it will have a huge marketshare in a flash.
The real reason for Nokia not being a big deal in the US is that the majority of US cell phones use CDMA vs Europe and many other places that GSM only. Nokia just doesn't have many CDMA phones and Nokia has not make many deals with US carriers.
$700 + SSD + iLife + metal case makes the Air seem right in the ball park.
iLife is the big variable for people here. If you want and need it then it is a good deal. The new video editor seems really nice and GarageBand is worth a lot to those that need and want it.
For me iLife has less value but again if you need it.
This was around 2000 and you suffering from a failure of imagination. Even if Russia didn't see this as an opportunity. What about India? Maybe they would have decided that a first strike at Pakistan would be worth it. After all it is possible that the US couldn't act quickly enough to stop them.
Or China decides to take Taiwan back if they could do it fast enough and threaten the US with a nuclear strike that we could react to if we interfered.
A direct attack on the US would be the least of my worries. We would still have Trident and could take out any nation that idid it after we got new codes set up.
But if this had leaked out I am not so sure that someone wouldn't have tried to take advantage of this super rare opportunity.
That and the fact that Clinton's aid LOST this card and the codes where just floating around really is a whole different nightmare.
The problem is that that writing anything in the legal profession is in many ways a lot like making a wish in DnD.
You must carefully put every detail into words and the other party is going to try and find anyway to prevent you from getting what you want without some causing you a large amount of grief.
In this case the judge could have prohibited any obscured or encrypted communications. Honestly banking and online purchases are not going to be a big problem since he is only 15. Make his mommy and daddy do it for him since they seem to need practice keeping an eye on him.
The main thing I want to get past everyone was this person was in a lot of trouble. Frankly he seems to be a punk on his way to spending a lot of time in jail.
I do find it very amusing that you bring up proofreading in a comment that starts off with an error.
"You raise I good point"
Don't worry I know what you meant. That is the thing about Slashdot. None of use get paid to post here so who cares if we can understand.
Any state that has a law that requires me to join a Union if I want a certain job is controlled by the union.
Actually that has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever.
I hope you are joking but that kind of error makes a nuclear war more likely than less.
Yup Go with VirtualBox. If performance is a worry solve it with hardware.
The new AMD G34 Opterons with 8 cores are under $300 and you can get a mother board for it for not much more. They will support high end video cards as well.
Before Anyone gets too bent over the price of hardware I am suggesting it is about the same as the price of the software he is using.
Also load it with RAM and you will be good to go.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240
And for the CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266
The price on the new G34 CPUs are so low now that building a workstation class machine is getting down right affordable.
Well I didn't cherry pick. I knew that Sony made ultra portables so I looked for one that was close to the Air.
You don't buy the Air for the best bang for the buck. You get the Macbook or the Pro depending on what you need.
Also a lot of it depends on what you value. The Air is going to have a very long battery price and a very low weight. And the price is actually a few hundred less than the X line.
It just isn't that over priced for the category it is in. It isn't a value leader but it isn't vastly over priced.
But I doubt that it will be Detroit. Texas and other states without the UAW controlling the governments will get the majority of new factories.
Well I suggest that you read the transcript.
The Slashdot summary is so bad that it is just shameful.
IMHO this is in no way cruel and unusual in fact I would say it is light.
This person was caught with stolen goods. He was riding a 50cc dirtbike on a highway.
The motorcycle was stolen and he couldn't say where he got it from.
He also was on probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun.
He was also has an on going drug problem.
In other words the judge could have thrown his but right in kiddie prison for violation of probation!
There isn't any Facebook in jail folks.
So this idiot is facing a very light house arrest and some restrictions for probation violations. Not that harsh of a punishment If anything this should be a story about how hard it is to write good restrictions for tech. How can you say that you can use PGP to send encrypted emails but SSL is okay?
You can use a bank card but you can not use TOR? It is a very common restriction for probation that you can not communicate with felons, own a gun, and so on and so forth. How does one enforce those restrictions in the modern age?
So no it is so far from what Slashdot posted that it isn't funny.