Looking back on an old post, thought I'd respond to you.
I don't have a problem with the Mac OS persay -- I like that it's UNIX-based...much more stable than anything after 7.1 or so. I've been supporting and using Macs since 1996, and was there when NT 4.0 rolled off the shelves as well.
From a business perspective, OS X is lots of eye candy, and while the dual-fingered trackpad is nice (and will likely be adopted by other manufacturers), the single-button desktop mouse remains inferior to multi-button mice. Working in an academic institution currently, my most frequent request from Mac Users: Install Windows so I can continue my research.
Anyway, my biggest problem with people who insist on buying Macs is the money they spend. Many will waste an extra $500-$4000 of taxpayer money to get the shiny case and large icons...then turn around and spend another $100 on Windows XP to be installed, not with Parallels or VMWare, but with BootCamp, thereby negating the best feature of the Mac, its secure OS. And don't get me started on the lack of advanced centralized administration...
I have problems with all the OSes, from Slackware to XP to MacOS. I just don't feel I should be paying a 25% premium to have those problems.
Assembly? I wish we were so advanced. We have to do all our modeling in real-time. Though there's something terribly satisfying when your final calculations are complete and the giant mousetrap fall atop the little rodent...
I'm familiar with the DRM involved with Vista and the potential performance hits (try being on a domain, unplug the network connection, and attempt an admin task...you'll kill 60 seconds each time waiting for Vista to figure out how to authenticate you).
Again, it's a work computer that isn't pushing any hardware limits. If there's a slowdown due to Vista checking on my actions with files (which there could be because the OS isn't exactly snappy), it doesn't affect me too much.
I'm a sys admin, so I've got a dozen Linux boxes via SSH I use for serving data. I've mostly installed Vista to get a professional opinion about it, rather than reading article after article. (Professional...my friend's dad, upon hearing I was in IT, said, "Oh, that's a nice trade." Oh well.)
1) Actual easier use of admin rights while running under a normal user account and therefore better security (as you're more likely to run as a normal user) 2) The snippet tool (ok, this is just handy, and I'm sure is duplicated in lots of freeware) 3) Better performance monitor 4) 64-bit support (don't mention XP 64...that OS isn't really usable)
There are other functions I haven't delved into yet such as the easier whole disk encryption, single-image installation, etc.
I'm not saying it's worth the jump from XP, but having actually tried it from a user's perspective, it's not as horrible as I'd imagined.
Not that a large discussion needs to be had here as the article likely pertains (OCIDNRTFA) to home ownership, but I've chosen to start using Vista at work as of about 3 weeks ago.
And it's, uh, fine. I have 2 GB of memory installed, Vista boots up to use half of that. Firefox, Thunderbird, Photoshop, server admin tools, web design programs are what I use mostly (and putty). The re-install process of everything got a little old with the administrator prompts (I run as a normal user, something I was reluctant to do in XP), but at the same time, it's nice not to have to choose Run as... all the time.
We use it at home on a laptop as well (the kids' gaming machine is XP) and aside from taking 30 seconds to connect to the wireless after sleeping, it's fine.
I think I just don't have any really high-performance needs, so Vista actually works for me. Whole Disk encryption is easier as well with Vista I hear, though I don't use it.
And that right there sums up the problem with Apple's entry into the hardware industry. Apple doesn't even need to worry about whether their system can run any relevant apps or even produce a viable right-click because some people will buy it just because it's shiny (Macbook Pro, I'm looking right at you).
I don't mind it so much when people say something like:
"I say, interesting read this one. I may put further thought into the matter, but I'd like to suggest the chap is correct in not licking the outputs of the miniature fuel cell he's created. Oh, and I do believe I've made the first post. Cheerio."
It's when people snipe articles like they're first edition TMNT comics, typing as fast as they can to get "FRIST POST!" that bugs me.
Err...did you see the movie? People were so wrapped up in their video-fed lives they didn't even know there was a pool or, in fact, that they were using their "monitor" to talk to the person right next to them on their "virtual vacation".
2) One shouldn't base real-world hopes or fears on unrealistic movie plot elements.
I wake up, shower, sit to check my email and news at home on the laptop, sit to drive to work, sit at work staring at my monitor, sit to drive home, sit to eat dinner, showcase my mad tennis skillz for 2 hours, sit and watch TV or use the computer until I lie down to go to sleep.
I think I'm only one-and-a-half activities away from the humans in Wall-E. Unrealistic indeed.
After seeing Wall-E, I'm thinking we need to make sure virtual worlds remain only a tool to cross distances and not the destination in itself. It can save on gas and enable us to live and learn in distant locations, but the idea of Virtual living is the beginning of a downward spiral.
Wish I had some mod points. The car offers too much freedom to be done away with entirely. But we can design better cities and public transportation to make it so you don't need or want to use it as much.
The town I live in is made up almost entirely of 4 lane roads (or it feels like it) -- I'd never bike there for fear of getting squish (just like grape), everything is 2 miles away from anything else, etc. I'd trade my two car garage and 1000 sq foot back yard for a decent apartment with a view if I could walk to the local wine, cheese, and bread stores, to the large park with rowboats and bike trails...heck, even throw in a movie theatre in the apartment building.
The American Dream, last I checked, isn't suburban hell...it's raising a family in a secure, healthy environment. Planned right, even smaller towns can avoid the sprawl. But it takes planning, and buy-in from developers of corporations as well as condos.
Re:That might betray the presence of a hidden volu
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TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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Since I didn't understand anything you just said, and I'm a C# Programmer who has Ubuntu installed on a few machines
No no. If you want to make yourself sound like you know what you're doing, you can't use an MS programming language on an uber-user-friendly Linux distro. Try this:
"You ignorant clod, I'm an awk and sed programmer who's got a basement cluster with a custom build of slackware...."
The one thing that still kills Linux more than anything is being unable to run proprietary applications like, say, Photoshop *natively*. That's something the next Windows will have to face as well, because it can't run them natively, and even a good emulation is still an emulation.
The difference is Microsoft can fork over a few million dollars to give Adobe the push to add its product to the new OS APIs (much like paying a programmer for custom work). Open Source doesn't have that advantage.
I recently saw a demo of a classroom tool. It played upon the peer aspect of a classroom, rather than teacher-to-student. It allowed the professor, with a tablet PC, to actively write on powerpoint slides, save the edits, etc. Nothing new there. But from the student perspective, anyone with a tablet could take their own notes the same way, watching along with the slides on their own computer (those without a tablet could type as it was web-based).
In addition, there was a blogging feature -- a few students with tablet PCs could become "bloggers" for the class, and students could tune their browsers to the blogging students' pages, and watch what they were writing.
Peer respect kept it mostly to good notes but the professor said that even if she heard the class laughing at something the blogger wrote (she never actually looked at the blogs), at least the kids were awake and possibly engaged in some part of the content. More than that, it let others consider parts of the lecture they might not have before -- sort of a group collaboration, but without the professor. A blogger might note something on a slide you hadn't thought of yet, or do a quick visible search on a word you hadn't really focused on, but upon reading the definition, more made sense.
It was really interesting and I felt a very different way of performing in the classroom. Kids staying engaged is professor's number one concern -- not every teacher is dynamic and exciting. Using a tool like this kept the kids interested because it was what they were used to: reading other kids' notes and perspectives on topics.
Think about it - if you're making a clean break from Windows, would you choose a mature, well established alternative like Linux or MacOSX, or would you choose a completely new, unproven and completely incompatible and unstandardised operating system from Microsoft? Even if the new Microsoft OS is cleaner, being incompatible with EVERY operating system out there would absolutely kill it.
I thought this same thing. However, if MS can continue the ease of use and installation, put out a great set of APIs for porting applications, and keep their main products up to date (and their file formats compatible) -- it'll be about cost then. Apple has the ease of use, but no flagship products. Linux has the free software, but lacks driver support and ease of installation on non-standard hardware.
So if Microsoft can continue making Exchange, Office, IE on their new OS and allow use of the documents with people who haven't switched yet, they already have most of their market back as long as it runs on commodity hardware.
Even I might consider switching to Mac at home if I didn't have to shell out the extra $1000-$4000 for the "shiny".
If your grades were decent, consider law school. People who are successful there aren't only good BSers, but have a strong sense of logic, generally something you possess if you're into programming or math.
Of course, if your grades in programming weren't that good, don't let that stop you. The practice of law is overrated.:-)
When your online life is more stimulating than your offline life, you tend to stay online longer. Join a team of something (softball, volleyball, swimming, debate, soup kitchen, crafts, etc). Get yourself *involved* with your offline life. Unlike an MMO which is designed to keep you involved with the online life, offline you sort of have to choose your own density. I mean...destiny.
Re:Despite this "Terminal Chaos"
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Terminal Chaos
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Must be opposite day here at/. The guy who calls "common people" the problematic ones on flights is labeled insightful and me, who says anyone can be a problem, gets labeled troll.
If I didn't have a long nose, scraggly hair, regenerative ability, and a fear of fire, I might be upset.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking back on an old post, thought I'd respond to you.
I don't have a problem with the Mac OS persay -- I like that it's UNIX-based...much more stable than anything after 7.1 or so. I've been supporting and using Macs since 1996, and was there when NT 4.0 rolled off the shelves as well.
From a business perspective, OS X is lots of eye candy, and while the dual-fingered trackpad is nice (and will likely be adopted by other manufacturers), the single-button desktop mouse remains inferior to multi-button mice. Working in an academic institution currently, my most frequent request from Mac Users: Install Windows so I can continue my research.
Anyway, my biggest problem with people who insist on buying Macs is the money they spend. Many will waste an extra $500-$4000 of taxpayer money to get the shiny case and large icons...then turn around and spend another $100 on Windows XP to be installed, not with Parallels or VMWare, but with BootCamp, thereby negating the best feature of the Mac, its secure OS. And don't get me started on the lack of advanced centralized administration...
I have problems with all the OSes, from Slackware to XP to MacOS. I just don't feel I should be paying a 25% premium to have those problems.
"with some caveats in strong magnetic fields" implies the sentence "My theory holds mostly but be warned it does not hold is strong magnetic fields".
I'd say it's acceptable though another poster was correct: "exceptions" would have been clearer.
They just think this thing is going to make a black hole that eats the planet.
It is?! That's it. I'm moving to Canada.
The lesson: making useful comments ultimately ever informative as if.
Exactly.
Assembly? I wish we were so advanced. We have to do all our modeling in real-time. Though there's something terribly satisfying when your final calculations are complete and the giant mousetrap fall atop the little rodent...
I'm familiar with the DRM involved with Vista and the potential performance hits (try being on a domain, unplug the network connection, and attempt an admin task...you'll kill 60 seconds each time waiting for Vista to figure out how to authenticate you).
Again, it's a work computer that isn't pushing any hardware limits. If there's a slowdown due to Vista checking on my actions with files (which there could be because the OS isn't exactly snappy), it doesn't affect me too much.
I'm a sys admin, so I've got a dozen Linux boxes via SSH I use for serving data. I've mostly installed Vista to get a professional opinion about it, rather than reading article after article. (Professional...my friend's dad, upon hearing I was in IT, said, "Oh, that's a nice trade." Oh well.)
Good question. So far I personally have gained:
1) Actual easier use of admin rights while running under a normal user account and therefore better security (as you're more likely to run as a normal user)
2) The snippet tool (ok, this is just handy, and I'm sure is duplicated in lots of freeware)
3) Better performance monitor
4) 64-bit support (don't mention XP 64...that OS isn't really usable)
There are other functions I haven't delved into yet such as the easier whole disk encryption, single-image installation, etc.
I'm not saying it's worth the jump from XP, but having actually tried it from a user's perspective, it's not as horrible as I'd imagined.
Not that a large discussion needs to be had here as the article likely pertains (OCIDNRTFA) to home ownership, but I've chosen to start using Vista at work as of about 3 weeks ago.
And it's, uh, fine. I have 2 GB of memory installed, Vista boots up to use half of that. Firefox, Thunderbird, Photoshop, server admin tools, web design programs are what I use mostly (and putty). The re-install process of everything got a little old with the administrator prompts (I run as a normal user, something I was reluctant to do in XP), but at the same time, it's nice not to have to choose Run as... all the time.
We use it at home on a laptop as well (the kids' gaming machine is XP) and aside from taking 30 seconds to connect to the wireless after sleeping, it's fine.
I think I just don't have any really high-performance needs, so Vista actually works for me. Whole Disk encryption is easier as well with Vista I hear, though I don't use it.
And that right there sums up the problem with Apple's entry into the hardware industry. Apple doesn't even need to worry about whether their system can run any relevant apps or even produce a viable right-click because some people will buy it just because it's shiny (Macbook Pro, I'm looking right at you).
Fixed.
Oddly, a lack of a camera may give something like this a push into certain businesses where cameras are not allowed on the premises.
I don't mind it so much when people say something like:
"I say, interesting read this one. I may put further thought into the matter, but I'd like to suggest the chap is correct in not licking the outputs of the miniature fuel cell he's created. Oh, and I do believe I've made the first post. Cheerio."
It's when people snipe articles like they're first edition TMNT comics, typing as fast as they can to get "FRIST POST!" that bugs me.
Hmm...guess not.
1) Wall-E had nothing to do with virtual worlds.
Err...did you see the movie? People were so wrapped up in their video-fed lives they didn't even know there was a pool or, in fact, that they were using their "monitor" to talk to the person right next to them on their "virtual vacation".
2) One shouldn't base real-world hopes or fears on unrealistic movie plot elements.
I wake up, shower, sit to check my email and news at home on the laptop, sit to drive to work, sit at work staring at my monitor, sit to drive home, sit to eat dinner, showcase my mad tennis skillz for 2 hours, sit and watch TV or use the computer until I lie down to go to sleep.
I think I'm only one-and-a-half activities away from the humans in Wall-E. Unrealistic indeed.
After seeing Wall-E, I'm thinking we need to make sure virtual worlds remain only a tool to cross distances and not the destination in itself. It can save on gas and enable us to live and learn in distant locations, but the idea of Virtual living is the beginning of a downward spiral.
Wish I had some mod points. The car offers too much freedom to be done away with entirely. But we can design better cities and public transportation to make it so you don't need or want to use it as much.
The town I live in is made up almost entirely of 4 lane roads (or it feels like it) -- I'd never bike there for fear of getting squish (just like grape), everything is 2 miles away from anything else, etc. I'd trade my two car garage and 1000 sq foot back yard for a decent apartment with a view if I could walk to the local wine, cheese, and bread stores, to the large park with rowboats and bike trails...heck, even throw in a movie theatre in the apartment building.
The American Dream, last I checked, isn't suburban hell...it's raising a family in a secure, healthy environment. Planned right, even smaller towns can avoid the sprawl. But it takes planning, and buy-in from developers of corporations as well as condos.
Since I didn't understand anything you just said, and I'm a C# Programmer who has Ubuntu installed on a few machines
No no. If you want to make yourself sound like you know what you're doing, you can't use an MS programming language on an uber-user-friendly Linux distro. Try this:
"You ignorant clod, I'm an awk and sed programmer who's got a basement cluster with a custom build of slackware...."
The one thing that still kills Linux more than anything is being unable to run proprietary applications like, say, Photoshop *natively*. That's something the next Windows will have to face as well, because it can't run them natively, and even a good emulation is still an emulation.
The difference is Microsoft can fork over a few million dollars to give Adobe the push to add its product to the new OS APIs (much like paying a programmer for custom work). Open Source doesn't have that advantage.
I recently saw a demo of a classroom tool. It played upon the peer aspect of a classroom, rather than teacher-to-student. It allowed the professor, with a tablet PC, to actively write on powerpoint slides, save the edits, etc. Nothing new there. But from the student perspective, anyone with a tablet could take their own notes the same way, watching along with the slides on their own computer (those without a tablet could type as it was web-based).
In addition, there was a blogging feature -- a few students with tablet PCs could become "bloggers" for the class, and students could tune their browsers to the blogging students' pages, and watch what they were writing.
Peer respect kept it mostly to good notes but the professor said that even if she heard the class laughing at something the blogger wrote (she never actually looked at the blogs), at least the kids were awake and possibly engaged in some part of the content. More than that, it let others consider parts of the lecture they might not have before -- sort of a group collaboration, but without the professor. A blogger might note something on a slide you hadn't thought of yet, or do a quick visible search on a word you hadn't really focused on, but upon reading the definition, more made sense.
It was really interesting and I felt a very different way of performing in the classroom. Kids staying engaged is professor's number one concern -- not every teacher is dynamic and exciting. Using a tool like this kept the kids interested because it was what they were used to: reading other kids' notes and perspectives on topics.
The tool was put out by UC San Diego:
Ubiquitous Presenter
Think about it - if you're making a clean break from Windows, would you choose a mature, well established alternative like Linux or MacOSX, or would you choose a completely new, unproven and completely incompatible and unstandardised operating system from Microsoft? Even if the new Microsoft OS is cleaner, being incompatible with EVERY operating system out there would absolutely kill it.
I thought this same thing. However, if MS can continue the ease of use and installation, put out a great set of APIs for porting applications, and keep their main products up to date (and their file formats compatible) -- it'll be about cost then. Apple has the ease of use, but no flagship products. Linux has the free software, but lacks driver support and ease of installation on non-standard hardware.
So if Microsoft can continue making Exchange, Office, IE on their new OS and allow use of the documents with people who haven't switched yet, they already have most of their market back as long as it runs on commodity hardware.
Even I might consider switching to Mac at home if I didn't have to shell out the extra $1000-$4000 for the "shiny".
If your grades were decent, consider law school. People who are successful there aren't only good BSers, but have a strong sense of logic, generally something you possess if you're into programming or math.
Of course, if your grades in programming weren't that good, don't let that stop you. The practice of law is overrated. :-)
Hey, if I'm getting wiped out, I'm taking as many other species with me as I can!
Yes. Yes you are.
Anonymous online voting. Pick an embryo, vote as often as you like.
I mean, a system like that isn't going to be any worse than a couple people choosing who gets to live or die based on genetic pre-requisites.
did you know that according to the supreme court there is NO expectation of protection against crimes by the police?
"To serve and protect" -- Police motto. I don't think everything needs to be in the Constitution to be understood.
When your online life is more stimulating than your offline life, you tend to stay online longer. Join a team of something (softball, volleyball, swimming, debate, soup kitchen, crafts, etc). Get yourself *involved* with your offline life. Unlike an MMO which is designed to keep you involved with the online life, offline you sort of have to choose your own density. I mean...destiny.
Must be opposite day here at /. The guy who calls "common people" the problematic ones on flights is labeled insightful and me, who says anyone can be a problem, gets labeled troll.
If I didn't have a long nose, scraggly hair, regenerative ability, and a fear of fire, I might be upset.