The US Army SF units were in the country for months before the first start was fired. They largely did recon and organized the Northern Alliance to go on the offensive.
The US bombing of Afghanistan was the endgame for the first part of the war. Your simple view of what happened is based on watching the nightly news and not on doing research or educating yourself about the historical campaign.
I agree completely... everytime I read an article like this (and there are sooo many on/.), it completely undermines the message that/. eveangelizes because the/. community loses credibility.
I would be much more impressed if/. actually mirrored the experiences most users have with linux and windows rather than a certain OS fanboy point of view.
Take linux or mac admins, through them into having to admin a large windows environment and what happens? They suck.
If I had a dime for everytime a unix admin bitched about windows... it's funny. As a QA Manager, the problem is usually an admin who doesn't want to learn new tricks.
hehe, trying use use Linux on my laptop would be a total fucking disaster. And I'm the tech guru in my office group (of software developers...)
We all use high-end laptops that aren't supported very well to start with. Not to mention ALL of our projects are aimed at people who use Windows on an institutional level.
Sometimes, I wonder if Linux cheerleaders have any experience outside the comptuer labs.
By the time Linux becomes honestly viable for the non-geek desktop, then MS will already own all the wireless devices in your home.
Most people I know couldn't give a fuck what was on their computer so long as it worked. Unfortunately for all of you linux cheerleaders, linux doesn't actually work very well under real use (ie, heavy office work, media creation, game playing, etc.) Takes me about 10 sec to crash any program from a fresh install of Mandrake or Redhat.
Actually, it cost a lot more than they sell to bother with. Ie, selling computers does not equal profit.
Most likely, Mandrake is giving it to them for free for the press and also doing the engineering work. HP only has to give someone the product if he wants it. If I was HP, I wouldn't invest a dime into this.
If everyone other than me in my family had to use linux, they would stop using computers.
It's windows and macs for those folks.
Personally, I think Linux is fun to play with occasionally, but I wouldn't want to try to do something serious with it... say, edit video, create artwork, manage source code, create product to send out to clients.
The first cut? Nope. Science benefits in times like these. The US government is the biggest VC in world history. Of course, it depends what you're researching. You can map technological innovation almost directly to the time leading up to conflicts and the conflict itself. It's only in very recent history that commerical use has been a driving force (and that doesn't pay for big research, high-risk research.)
If you want to count only recenty accomplishments, that pretty much discounts everything Europe has ever achieved.
How recent do you want to get? How about the last 5 or 10 years... mmmm.... do I really need to draw a picture for you? Space? Biotech? Computer Science? Europe can claim a few achievments, but they pale in comparison to the US. Maybe one day Europe will be relevent again.
Why does every non-American think the only news channel we get if Fox? I realize that Murdoch has the money to get that channel into nearly every market. This is usually just another example of Euros thinking they know something and providing evidence of their own ignorance.
BTW, I get pretty much all the same channels you do above and probably many more. There's this recent technology call Digital Cable that allows about 800 channels to beam straight to my living room (and we aren't even going to start counting web sources.) My personal favorite is ITV, but also get a kick out of NHK.
What media outlet in the US is state controlled anyway? The closest you can get to it is NPR, which is pretty liberal.
That would be the conflict where NATO's management system became a total joke and targets were selected by commitees (Kosovo to you uninformed.)
Funny thing is, it was still the US doing most of the work. Seemed to end the conflict too, even if it wasn't pretty. Wonder why NATO wasn't invited to go to Afghanistan with us? There's your answer.
Next time you fuckers can bomb the future Bosnias and Kosovos by yourselves... if the genicide isn't over by the time the French get done dicking around with diplomacy.
So what exactly was the last world problem that Europe actually solved?
Mmmm... you do realize that the Video Toaster was once a piece of hardware built on top of an Amiga and eventually took over what was left of the amiga? I suspect that Mac may be headed down the same road.
You don't seem to understand the point about Wise. You see, I actually get paid for software. In fact, it ships in large volumes and we like to protect that work as well has manage the software distribution. While that may be easy between all four mac people, it does take industrial strength software on a PC. Strangely enough, Wise also has products for Unix and Macs...
I started out in graphic design as a Mac geek. From there I went into videography. Later on, I joined the 3D gaming software community and started making art and coding. I believe that my early Mac experience was Quark, Pagemaker and Photoshop 2.0.
My laptop is an IBM that has one fatal flaw (no touchpad!!!! damn the eraser!) As far as the cost of the applications go, we get enterprise discounts, so their are actually pretty cheap (you'd be amazed at how little businesses pay for software.)
Least you think I'm just an XP lover... I also run Linux on one of my spare boxes for shits and giggles. It's not like I can actually do something productive with it...
My point about my laptop was that people who think that Macs will or can rule the laptop world are sadly mistaken for a number of reasons:
1) They are slow. Sorry, that's the way it is.
2) To get decent performance, they cost an arm and a leg.
3) Businesses still well outbuy consumers when it comes to laptops. Guess what? They aren't all being used to make word documents (as you can tell by mine.) In fact, today I did a build of a 3D application, layed out a DVD using ReelDVD, exported some PDFs and very large printable graphic files, and about 20 other things. How many times did I do "office" work? 1 time.
4) Yes, my laptop has firewire. OhMyGod!!! Dorks. All decent laptops come with firewire now.
5) Slot loading sounds interesting... can you take the drive out and stick another hardrive in? Switch it with a DVD burner? Stick another battery in it? I can.
6) Yea, Macs still run all the programs I use... I learned how to use most of them on the Mac. Who do you think Adobe is developing for first and foremost for now? 95% Windows users...
7) Maya started out on Unix. It would have been a shame if they couldn't have proted it to OSX. It's about time that Macs got something decent in 3D... now you just need some pro-level graphic cards to do multi-monitor 3D windows (that's what I do with my DVI out, BTW...)
Think I'm trolling? You've probably bought my games and they weren't developed on a Mac.:)
My laptop as 3D Max, Premiere, After Effects, Sound Forge, Illustrator, Wise Installer, Visual Studio, and a bunch of other things on it.
Did I mention is has an ATI FireGL? A high quality 1200x1600 display?
No, I didn't buy it. The place I work for bought it, like a few thousands others (most of them not as high end as mine though.) That is where the meat and potatos are for you mac users. I'm laughing at you and your little mac toys!;)
Seriously though, no one buys macs for 3D or business use, which is what most computers for businesses are bought for. That leaves a few flaky designers who are more interested in looking cool than getting work done. Oh yea, lets not forget the musicians. Anyone remember the Video Toaster? Not really? There's a reason for that...
The TRUTH of the matter is that it is not worth the money to optimize or even take the Mac into account for the vast majority of software products or websites. So 5% of the potential viewers might not be able to view your site? So what. You may or may not want to spend money to get the 5% or make their experience better. That is a business decision, not a design decision.
I know, slashdotters will say to make everything as compatible as possible. Do a spreadsheet once in awhile. Next time someone gives you $100,000, to build a commercial site for a market that is 95% PC based, you'll have to justify spending money for Mac/Linux users as opposed to maximizing the product for the 95% you know you will be compatible with.
Pathetic Laziness? You mean like Linux desktop design and conventions?
From my experience, a huge number of people have at some point switched from Macs to Windows. While not as elegant for early computer users, you won't have the nasty incompatibility problem with everyone you know who's not a graphic designer... (I'm a graphics/development guy.)
If Bush had been President in '39, the Allies would have had the will to make the Germans keep to the disarmament treaty. As it was, there was no negative consequense nor was there military action to stop the Germans in Czechslavokia. Everyone knows the end result.
Call us facists if you want, but just keep in mind that whatever well-being your country has is probably due to America's military budget. Personally, I think we should close down most of the overseas bases and make the rest of you punk countries take some responsibilty for regional problems.
I'll be the first to criticise NASA... for being a government agency and inheriting all the problems that come with that (if you don't know what these are, consider yourself lucky.)
Now, time for a reality check. To the best of my knowledge, simple low-earth orbit satillite launches by purely commercial entities have only just started. This puts them into line with what, the early 60s? So far, even with it's problems, NASA is the only agency that can do what it does: put people into space on a regular basis and bring them home.
China might get somebody into space this year. They have high goals, but space isn't cheap and it isn't easy. Once they they get someone into space, this will only leave them more than 30 years behind. I suspect they will cover the gap quickly, but not easily. Don't forget that the Chinese program is completely run by the military. I think China is doing this for respect as they already launch satillites and have ICBMs.
Russia... do they really have a space agency anymore? It seems like the last thing I heard was that they couldn't afford to finish up the current projects. Maybe the Chinese should hire the engineers? Personally, I think this is sad because their space agency has such a proud history despite Soviet management. Doesn't it seem like the Euros should be helping these guys out and making a mutually helpful deal?
Japan... they made some interesting announcements lately about a reusable low-earth orbit space plane. Easy to announce... I'll be happy for them when it flies. I think Japan has only recently realized how helpful pushing space tech could be for them.
Europe... didn't Europes new rocket just go to hell a couple of times in a row? Like everyone else, they have been making big plans and announcements. Europe has a lot of potential, but no military spending to back it up. It will be interesting to see where they go in the long run. Nothing would please me more than having French have to speak English all the way to Mars...
So then, NASA doesn't look so bad considering the lack of competition. This is bad as nothing sparks Americans to do great things like being challenged. For God's sake, somebody give us some competition outside of doing things cheap! I want a moon base!
I do software development for the government focused on training and tracking. We take tablet PCs and Pocket PCs very seriously for this type of work... in fact we are already doing enterprise level R&D with them as a target platform. Remember, the government collects a lot of information about things and then must manage it. This is easier said that done...
Slashdot Mirror
The US Army SF units were in the country for months before the first start was fired. They largely did recon and organized the Northern Alliance to go on the offensive.
The US bombing of Afghanistan was the endgame for the first part of the war. Your simple view of what happened is based on watching the nightly news and not on doing research or educating yourself about the historical campaign.
Nothing ever happens in Hickory. People just drive through it in order to get to someplace else, usually Charlotte or Raleigh.
I agree completely... everytime I read an article like this (and there are sooo many on /.), it completely undermines the message that /. eveangelizes because the /. community loses credibility.
/. actually mirrored the experiences most users have with linux and windows rather than a certain OS fanboy point of view.
I would be much more impressed if
The entire Chinese economy is presently the size of California and legit software sells a tiny fraction of this.
Take linux or mac admins, through them into having to admin a large windows environment and what happens? They suck.
If I had a dime for everytime a unix admin bitched about windows... it's funny. As a QA Manager, the problem is usually an admin who doesn't want to learn new tricks.
Eh... could it be because Macs were the first to support graphic design well and designers won't ever move on to easier to support and buy PCs?
I know of what I talk. I have worked in graphic design and game development.
hehe, trying use use Linux on my laptop would be a total fucking disaster. And I'm the tech guru in my office group (of software developers...)
We all use high-end laptops that aren't supported very well to start with. Not to mention ALL of our projects are aimed at people who use Windows on an institutional level.
Sometimes, I wonder if Linux cheerleaders have any experience outside the comptuer labs.
By the time Linux becomes honestly viable for the non-geek desktop, then MS will already own all the wireless devices in your home.
Most people I know couldn't give a fuck what was on their computer so long as it worked. Unfortunately for all of you linux cheerleaders, linux doesn't actually work very well under real use (ie, heavy office work, media creation, game playing, etc.) Takes me about 10 sec to crash any program from a fresh install of Mandrake or Redhat.
Actually, it cost a lot more than they sell to bother with. Ie, selling computers does not equal profit.
Most likely, Mandrake is giving it to them for free for the press and also doing the engineering work. HP only has to give someone the product if he wants it. If I was HP, I wouldn't invest a dime into this.
If everyone other than me in my family had to use linux, they would stop using computers.
It's windows and macs for those folks.
Personally, I think Linux is fun to play with occasionally, but I wouldn't want to try to do something serious with it... say, edit video, create artwork, manage source code, create product to send out to clients.
The first cut? Nope. Science benefits in times like these. The US government is the biggest VC in world history. Of course, it depends what you're researching. You can map technological innovation almost directly to the time leading up to conflicts and the conflict itself. It's only in very recent history that commerical use has been a driving force (and that doesn't pay for big research, high-risk research.)
If you want to count only recenty accomplishments, that pretty much discounts everything Europe has ever achieved.
How recent do you want to get? How about the last 5 or 10 years... mmmm.... do I really need to draw a picture for you? Space? Biotech? Computer Science? Europe can claim a few achievments, but they pale in comparison to the US. Maybe one day Europe will be relevent again.
Why does every non-American think the only news channel we get if Fox? I realize that Murdoch has the money to get that channel into nearly every market. This is usually just another example of Euros thinking they know something and providing evidence of their own ignorance.
BTW, I get pretty much all the same channels you do above and probably many more. There's this recent technology call Digital Cable that allows about 800 channels to beam straight to my living room (and we aren't even going to start counting web sources.) My personal favorite is ITV, but also get a kick out of NHK.
What media outlet in the US is state controlled anyway? The closest you can get to it is NPR, which is pretty liberal.
That would be the conflict where NATO's management system became a total joke and targets were selected by commitees (Kosovo to you uninformed.)
Funny thing is, it was still the US doing most of the work. Seemed to end the conflict too, even if it wasn't pretty. Wonder why NATO wasn't invited to go to Afghanistan with us? There's your answer.
Next time you fuckers can bomb the future Bosnias and Kosovos by yourselves... if the genicide isn't over by the time the French get done dicking around with diplomacy.
So what exactly was the last world problem that Europe actually solved?
Mmmm... you do realize that the Video Toaster was once a piece of hardware built on top of an Amiga and eventually took over what was left of the amiga? I suspect that Mac may be headed down the same road.
You don't seem to understand the point about Wise. You see, I actually get paid for software. In fact, it ships in large volumes and we like to protect that work as well has manage the software distribution. While that may be easy between all four mac people, it does take industrial strength software on a PC. Strangely enough, Wise also has products for Unix and Macs...
- Money_Shot
I started out in graphic design as a Mac geek. From there I went into videography. Later on, I joined the 3D gaming software community and started making art and coding. I believe that my early Mac experience was Quark, Pagemaker and Photoshop 2.0.
:)
My laptop is an IBM that has one fatal flaw (no touchpad!!!! damn the eraser!) As far as the cost of the applications go, we get enterprise discounts, so their are actually pretty cheap (you'd be amazed at how little businesses pay for software.)
Least you think I'm just an XP lover... I also run Linux on one of my spare boxes for shits and giggles. It's not like I can actually do something productive with it...
My point about my laptop was that people who think that Macs will or can rule the laptop world are sadly mistaken for a number of reasons:
1) They are slow. Sorry, that's the way it is.
2) To get decent performance, they cost an arm and a leg.
3) Businesses still well outbuy consumers when it comes to laptops. Guess what? They aren't all being used to make word documents (as you can tell by mine.) In fact, today I did a build of a 3D application, layed out a DVD using ReelDVD, exported some PDFs and very large printable graphic files, and about 20 other things. How many times did I do "office" work? 1 time.
4) Yes, my laptop has firewire. OhMyGod!!! Dorks. All decent laptops come with firewire now.
5) Slot loading sounds interesting... can you take the drive out and stick another hardrive in? Switch it with a DVD burner? Stick another battery in it? I can.
6) Yea, Macs still run all the programs I use... I learned how to use most of them on the Mac. Who do you think Adobe is developing for first and foremost for now? 95% Windows users...
7) Maya started out on Unix. It would have been a shame if they couldn't have proted it to OSX. It's about time that Macs got something decent in 3D... now you just need some pro-level graphic cards to do multi-monitor 3D windows (that's what I do with my DVI out, BTW...)
Think I'm trolling? You've probably bought my games and they weren't developed on a Mac.
My laptop as 3D Max, Premiere, After Effects, Sound Forge, Illustrator, Wise Installer, Visual Studio, and a bunch of other things on it.
;)
Did I mention is has an ATI FireGL? A high quality 1200x1600 display?
No, I didn't buy it. The place I work for bought it, like a few thousands others (most of them not as high end as mine though.) That is where the meat and potatos are for you mac users. I'm laughing at you and your little mac toys!
Seriously though, no one buys macs for 3D or business use, which is what most computers for businesses are bought for. That leaves a few flaky designers who are more interested in looking cool than getting work done. Oh yea, lets not forget the musicians. Anyone remember the Video Toaster? Not really? There's a reason for that...
- money_shot
The TRUTH of the matter is that it is not worth the money to optimize or even take the Mac into account for the vast majority of software products or websites. So 5% of the potential viewers might not be able to view your site? So what. You may or may not want to spend money to get the 5% or make their experience better. That is a business decision, not a design decision.
I know, slashdotters will say to make everything as compatible as possible. Do a spreadsheet once in awhile. Next time someone gives you $100,000, to build a commercial site for a market that is 95% PC based, you'll have to justify spending money for Mac/Linux users as opposed to maximizing the product for the 95% you know you will be compatible with.
Pathetic Laziness? You mean like Linux desktop design and conventions?
From my experience, a huge number of people have at some point switched from Macs to Windows. While not as elegant for early computer users, you won't have the nasty incompatibility problem with everyone you know who's not a graphic designer... (I'm a graphics/development guy.)
-Money_shot
If Bush had been President in '39, the Allies would have had the will to make the Germans keep to the disarmament treaty. As it was, there was no negative consequense nor was there military action to stop the Germans in Czechslavokia. Everyone knows the end result.
Call us facists if you want, but just keep in mind that whatever well-being your country has is probably due to America's military budget. Personally, I think we should close down most of the overseas bases and make the rest of you punk countries take some responsibilty for regional problems.
money_shot
I'll be the first to criticise NASA... for being a government agency and inheriting all the problems that come with that (if you don't know what these are, consider yourself lucky.)
Now, time for a reality check. To the best of my knowledge, simple low-earth orbit satillite launches by purely commercial entities have only just started. This puts them into line with what, the early 60s? So far, even with it's problems, NASA is the only agency that can do what it does: put people into space on a regular basis and bring them home.
China might get somebody into space this year. They have high goals, but space isn't cheap and it isn't easy. Once they they get someone into space, this will only leave them more than 30 years behind. I suspect they will cover the gap quickly, but not easily. Don't forget that the Chinese program is completely run by the military. I think China is doing this for respect as they already launch satillites and have ICBMs.
Russia... do they really have a space agency anymore? It seems like the last thing I heard was that they couldn't afford to finish up the current projects. Maybe the Chinese should hire the engineers? Personally, I think this is sad because their space agency has such a proud history despite Soviet management. Doesn't it seem like the Euros should be helping these guys out and making a mutually helpful deal?
Japan... they made some interesting announcements lately about a reusable low-earth orbit space plane. Easy to announce... I'll be happy for them when it flies. I think Japan has only recently realized how helpful pushing space tech could be for them.
Europe... didn't Europes new rocket just go to hell a couple of times in a row? Like everyone else, they have been making big plans and announcements. Europe has a lot of potential, but no military spending to back it up. It will be interesting to see where they go in the long run. Nothing would please me more than having French have to speak English all the way to Mars...
So then, NASA doesn't look so bad considering the lack of competition. This is bad as nothing sparks Americans to do great things like being challenged. For God's sake, somebody give us some competition outside of doing things cheap! I want a moon base!
Money_shot
No matter what new, elegant product Apple brings out, it will cost too, be proprietary, and get talked to death by graphic design groupies.
I'll just get a cheaper, more universal PC version of whatever it is, overclock it and hack it.
I do software development for the government focused on training and tracking. We take tablet PCs and Pocket PCs very seriously for this type of work... in fact we are already doing enterprise level R&D with them as a target platform. Remember, the government collects a lot of information about things and then must manage it. This is easier said that done...
So I'm sitting in my cubile at RTI in RTP wondering if Jesse might do one redeeming thing in his political career before retirement...