I asked "What's the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
They responded correctly.
To be honest I thought it was the screw-off interview in which I got all the jokes and smartass remarks out of my system. Ended up taking the job. Whoops.
There are a few Supreme Court decisions that, if overturned, would prompt me to expatriate (and Bush makes me want to already), and the Scopes decision is one of them.
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, and I don't think that I am, there's two problems with the statement.
1) The Scopes trial never made it to SCOTUS. 2) John Scopes (and those promoting the education of evolutionary theory) lost.
The victory there was Clarence Darrow making William Jennings Bryan look silly.
I've had no SAP experience, but I understand the concept.
Out in the world, there's a software configuration management (SCM) tool called ClearCase. It's developed by a company called Rational, which is now known as a subsidiary of IBM.
As best as I can tell, the only reason anyone uses this thing is because it integrates cleanly into another product, Rational Rose (a UML modeling tool). Or in my case, because the company says it's a standard (no matter how many stories I hear that every project that uses it tends to do so miserably)
They, do, helpfully, have a linux version of both the client and the server. Unfortunately, this thing requires a binary kernel module to support their own proprietary filesystem (mvfs)
Of course, as binary-only modules usually go, if it wasn't compiled against the same version you're running (and in some cases, the same branch, stinking distribution vendors and their nonstandard patches), bad things happen.
I've spent a month fighting with one such machine that's running one of their blessed distribution/version combinations, and it's still causing problems. Seems the thing is trashing some part of kernel memory and causing both the ext3 and ext2 filesystems to go wonky.
But then, isn't this the exact reason why there's a separation between kernel and user space?
I've seen so many warts on this thing, I can't help but believe that Linux support for them was at best an afterthought, at worst a deceptive bulletpoint on marketing's spec sheets.
And this is what's considered "Enterprise Class Software" (like that term ever meant anything)
So if "spread" is the "rise over run" ratio, he's using the result of taking the measure of the opposite side of a right triangle (rise) and dividing it by the distance from that side (run).
Or opposite over adjacent. Or Tangent.
So am I to understand he hasn't really removed concepts such as thought up new words for them?
And part of me feels compelled to say that there was a better time when I could search for specific strings and get something other than "Buy %s here!"
when "-order -buy" became ingrained in the muscle memory, it made me sad.
I'd guess that they'd probably err on the lower limit, because "slower is always safer"
So you'd be cruising along at a nice speed, and then slow down at every cross street. I'm sure someone with more voice than sense would say that you should be slowing down at intersections, anyhow.
you want someone dead, because of your perspective in the present. you go back in time to kill them. if they die in the past, you never get the urge to kill them. Thus, they don't die. Thus, you don't go back to kill them.
I guess the trick is to go back just far enough for you to want them dead. You can't stop all of their actions, but the first one that convinces you it's worth taking the trip is the winner.
scrollback hell is when your are actively tailing a file or some other activity that happens to put output to the terminal, the others automatically drop you back to the current commandline and I can't read what I'm trying to read.
Just tried Shift+PageUp/PageDown in both xterm and rxvt. Don't see a problem there. Got back to the beginning of the buffer just fine. If I wanted even finer grained control, I'd use a pager such as less. Quite handy if I care about things like scrolling back. Yes, if you're following a file using tail, it'll drop you back to the bottom. I use tail in that occassion to actually follow something, not to go back and do any deep reading. You're asking for both worlds. I'd be more irritated having to scroll back down to the bottom every time I wanted to do something.
It has variable transparency
Mostly trivial eye-candy. Ok, I suppose there are rare occassions where you might notice something behind the window that you'd otherwise miss. Not very functional beyond that.
I won't contest your claim to have used every terminal under the sun, because it is silly, as claims go.
But I will give you credit for one thing: Most of the OS X zealots I see on here talk about what a great feature it is that it was built on top of Unix, and then asked what they do with it, nearly without fail talk about how they can master DVDs or use Final Cut Pro, or some iWhatever app. You, on the other hand, get excited by the terminal emulator, because you actually use it.
the Terminal.app is worth the investment in a PowerBook in itself.
Considering how much Terminal.app is like any terminal emulator (i.e., xterm, rxvt, etc.), you do realize that this line does, in fact, make you sound retarded.
If you're all hot and bothered about the *BSD userland, you can get that easily without a powerbook. You can even use a version that comes close to meeting the Unix Filesystem Hierarchy Standard instead of dumping shit wherever they wanted to (because/System/ just works, you know.)
I think my biggest complaint from when they switched from the 1.x series to the 2.x series was when I discovered that many of the things that I liked were pulled out with the explanation "Oh, it was too confusing. So we made it easier."
And so I kept banging my head against the blessed defaults, thinking "But I don't like it this way. I used to be able to change it. Why is taking away flexibility considered an improvement?"
Of course, things like gconf don't help either. Making configuration more opaque doesn't make my life easier. Editing name,value pairs in a text editor isn't that bad. A program that uses that sort of configuration format should be nice enough to give you an annotated sample config to start with, and belch out something on stderr if you munge an entry in an unworkable way. The "XMLize-everything!" camp seems to be fretting over a lack of consistency, but it takes away so much. For example,
So what happens when you go off and edit either by hand? Oh wait, we're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to use gconf-editor. Which immediately warns us not to. I understand the comparisons people make with the Windows registry.
I could go on at length as to why dumping all these settings into a big file hierarchy (i.e., ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/file_views/), with all config files named %gconf.xml, is a bad idea, but that's just implementation boneheadedness.
I want to know why the GNOME team would rather irritate some of their existing users in the name of getting new users, on the advice of the people that have been pushing CDE as the one true UI for years.
As I use GNOME less, it strikes me as a dumping ground for flavor-of-the-month technology.
Apple's interface isn't particulary simplistic or well integrated, by my experience.
Closing windows but leaving the programs running in the background. If the window is not on my screen, and I didn't explicitly say "Go hide somewhere until I fetch you again", it just asking for a bigger mess.
The one-button mouse issue is still an issue. Sure, many immediately replace the abomination, but when the sentiment of "Oh, more than one mouse button is confusing to new users! Ctrl-Option-click is far more intuitive!" still reigns supreme, their interface will continue to be lousy.
They ain't selling easy. They ain't selling "It just works.", they're still selling colored plastic and eye candy.
As a user that never uses drag and drop, had used several mp3 applications before iTunes hit the market and called itself the first, several calendaring apps before iCal, plenty of photo organization/image manipulation stuff before iPhoto, video editing before iMovie, I could give a rat's ass about any of it. None of it is new, they just keep getting away with pretending it is because everyone's hypnotized by their "Genie Effect" window animations.
Don't get me wrong, I did once like Gnome. But when Sun came along and brainwashed Havoc into saying "Everything different is bad.", it lost a lot of appeal to me. Maybe I like having multiple clock applets to choose from, rather than being scared and confused by a selection.
I still miss the days of Gnome 1.x before the Sun usability studies made it completely unusable, and I see nothing special about XP as far as usability goes. XP's just got familiarity with such a large crowd.
Remember kids, options are bad, they only anger up the blood.
So I'll admit to signing up for as many free offers as I could circa 1997, sticking to anything that would actually send me free tangible stuff (I think the most I ever got was a "Internet-safe color wheel poster")
But forget this. I could almost understand giving out a street address, provided it accepts P.O. Boxes or that I was planning on moving without filling out a change of address card at the post office anyhow.
If it were really lucrative, and I'd had several independent confirmations that it was on the up and up, I could almost give out a credit card number, believing that I could cancel it later if it turned out to be a hive of scum and villainry.
If the clouds opened up and the almighty $DEITY said "Do it. It'll be fine.", I'd give up my SSN, knowing that even it could be exchanged in instances of fraud.
But there's no way in hell I'd provide anyone a copy of my birth certificate in the name of a free, soon-to-be-obsolesent not-quite-standards-complaint digital music player.
I'm a bit curious of something, as I've seen this thought repeated often. By no means do I ask you to answer for anyone who has espoused it in the past.
Are there any "defense industry" programs that you wouldn't consider to be corporate welfare?
I'll grant you that the 767 tanker lease program that Boeing nearly had could be argued as such, but you'll notice that it wasn't awarded to them (largely after people like McCain called foul), and it's now gone off to be a competitive bid.
But do all of these programs instantly equate to a handout to the industry?
If you're against the US gov't paying for this stuff in general, why not just say so, citing things like the X-year lead the US allegedly has over the rest of the world in military tech, or whatever reason suits your viewpoint.
Personally, I'm for programs that counter existing tech, at least up to the point that the governments of the world decide it's time to move on to the next thing (space-based weapons?) because too much of the existing tech was countered.
I, too, have never played EverQuest. On that note, offtopic, here we come....
However, I do find myself interested in the mechanics of gameplay. I can't say that I'm as much a fan of the Fantasy genre, but that my heart really lies with Wasteland. Darn good game.
But I won't call it the be-all/end-all for gameplay, though. I've found turn-based combat can be as much of a chore if you're grinding through repetitive enemies. It's a fine balance getting enough strategy in there to really think about your next decision without getting too bogged down in detail. I'd rather not hold down A)ttack, nor suffer the pains of "Hm, a +1FP,-1MP blizzard attack might be effective against this stone golem, but I think a +1IP,+2FP,-3HP will be the better choice if I can match it with a -1XP,+2RP,+1QP counter-attack from my other player in the next round"
One of my favorite combat systems to date was in Parasite Eve for the PSX. You got a nice little dome for the range of an attack, and even when you were still waiting for your next round to recharge, you could still move around and dodge some attacks. Too bad I never got through the 100 floors of mazes (all twisty and turning) to get to the final super ultimate boss. When I get around to replaying that one (it is my way), I think I'll stop with the superficial ending.
I think the bigger threat to modern-day RPGs is the MPOG (MMPOG is a dumb acronym. You see a few go under for lack of interest, and there can't be anything inherently "massive" about them.) Here the basic problem: Most people won't really role-play. If you do, you'll either get mocked or the experience will get ruined by the first kid that wanders in with "OMG! What R U wearing? WTF? ABC. 123. U and me."
I'd rather live with the relatively short lives of a single-player game. I avoid the monthly fee, and even short playtimes (what's the current metric? 40 hours?) are still better than hour spirts of quality buried in every six hours of crap.
I'll second the comment on their books and selection (although Fry's has a bigger selection), but their prices are not that great.
I've never been impressed with the Fry's book selection. I suppose if I wanted "Frontpage for Dummies", "The Idiot's Guide to Frontpage", and "The Step-by-step Guide to Frontpage for Mouth-breathing, Knuckle-dragging Neanderthals", I guess I'd be a bit keener on Fry's book selection. I've also had a hard time beating the bargain book section at Microcenter (I've picked up a few obsolete-revision O'Reilly books for $1.99 to $5.99, as well as one of the Complete [something] CD bookshelves for around $7. Sure, the selection's hit or miss (there's as much "AOL version 2 for Dummies" as there is quality, but when it's that cheap, it's worth checking in periodically to see what's there.)
They seem to be substantially higher than, say, NewEgg. A DVD burner that costs $60 on NewEgg will cost $120 at MicroCenter.
It depends on your willingness to wait for a UPS/Fedex/DHL whatever guy, if you care enough to buy something you'll have to wait [days|weeks|months] for, and the trustworthiness of the dealer. Sure, tigerdirect's got good prices. I don't trust them for shit, though.
It will be retail instead of OEM, but the retail version is then $80 or so online.
The frugal might look for OEM dealers in their area. Bonus points if they take cash (multiwave could have been one of the good instances of OEM-for-the-common-man, but I've not trusted them since they lost control of their credit card database and wouldn't admit it for the longest time)
Similarly for hard drives and RAM. Their wireless cards (and the like) also tend not to have Linux drivers.
At least when you're in a brick and mortar, you can scour the package for a revision number you know to be compatible, rather than playing "wait and see" with something you get online.
It ain't a perfect world, and online retailers ain't the paragon of consumer bliss.
it'd probably be in the drive itself. remember that playing DVDs on a computer is a feature, not a bug.
So if it's done right, it could mean cross-platform digital media viewing for all. I'm not holding my breath, there's probably some driver that would need to be hacked up to set up the svp chip itself.
It still doesn't fix the bigger part of the problem: sure, this might slow the casual copiers, but a bit-for-bit physical media copy will still be vulnerable. Same as they are today, which as legend goes, is what's being peddled on some urban streetcorners.
I find them to be scratchy and horrible. Nothing special as far as ergonomics go. Remember, Herman Miller also gave us the cubicle. Way to go.
At home, I've got a ~$100 chair picked up from the local office products store. Checked out all of them until I found one I liked.
At work, I've got some ergonomic wonder, but my company is also just large enough to freak out if they think we'll have grounds for an RSI lawsuit, so they'll readily accomodate us if we start complaining.
The best advice here is to take semi-regular breaks. Regular exercize probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I asked "What's the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
They responded correctly.
To be honest I thought it was the screw-off interview in which I got all the jokes and smartass remarks out of my system. Ended up taking the job. Whoops.
There are a few Supreme Court decisions that, if overturned, would prompt me to expatriate (and Bush makes me want to already), and the Scopes decision is one of them.
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, and I don't think that I am, there's two problems with the statement.
1) The Scopes trial never made it to SCOTUS.
2) John Scopes (and those promoting the education of evolutionary theory) lost.
The victory there was Clarence Darrow making William Jennings Bryan look silly.
So I'm not sure what you're advocating here.
I've had no SAP experience, but I understand the concept.
Out in the world, there's a software configuration management (SCM) tool called ClearCase. It's developed by a company called Rational, which is now known as a subsidiary of IBM.
As best as I can tell, the only reason anyone uses this thing is because it integrates cleanly into another product, Rational Rose (a UML modeling tool). Or in my case, because the company says it's a standard (no matter how many stories I hear that every project that uses it tends to do so miserably)
They, do, helpfully, have a linux version of both the client and the server. Unfortunately, this thing requires a binary kernel module to support their own proprietary filesystem (mvfs)
Of course, as binary-only modules usually go, if it wasn't compiled against the same version you're running (and in some cases, the same branch, stinking distribution vendors and their nonstandard patches), bad things happen.
I've spent a month fighting with one such machine that's running one of their blessed distribution/version combinations, and it's still causing problems. Seems the thing is trashing some part of kernel memory and causing both the ext3 and ext2 filesystems to go wonky.
But then, isn't this the exact reason why there's a separation between kernel and user space?
I've seen so many warts on this thing, I can't help but believe that Linux support for them was at best an afterthought, at worst a deceptive bulletpoint on marketing's spec sheets.
And this is what's considered "Enterprise Class Software" (like that term ever meant anything)
It's not that much of a surprise.
Funcoland was acquired back when Gamestop was still wholly owned by Barnes & Noble.
You know, the guys we're supposed to buy from because Amazon is evil?
-transiit
It's a good thing you posted anonymously.
You sound retarded.
-transiit
Wait a second. Back that truck up.
So if "spread" is the "rise over run" ratio, he's using the result of taking the measure of the opposite side of a right triangle (rise) and dividing it by the distance from that side (run).
Or opposite over adjacent. Or Tangent.
So am I to understand he hasn't really removed concepts such as thought up new words for them?
part of me feels compelled to mention Google's Academic Section
And part of me feels compelled to say that there was a better time when I could search for specific strings and get something other than "Buy %s here!"
when "-order -buy" became ingrained in the muscle memory, it made me sad.
-transiit
My hopes aren't high.
I'd guess that they'd probably err on the lower limit, because "slower is always safer"
So you'd be cruising along at a nice speed, and then slow down at every cross street. I'm sure someone with more voice than sense would say that you should be slowing down at intersections, anyhow.
Wow, I'm glad I don't live in the UK.
-transiit
um, no.
here's the paradox:
you want someone dead, because of your perspective in the present.
you go back in time to kill them.
if they die in the past, you never get the urge to kill them.
Thus, they don't die.
Thus, you don't go back to kill them.
I guess the trick is to go back just far enough for you to want them dead. You can't stop all of their actions, but the first one that convinces you it's worth taking the trip is the winner.
-transiit
scrollback hell is when your are actively tailing a file or some other activity that happens to put output to the terminal, the others automatically drop you back to the current commandline and I can't read what I'm trying to read.
Just tried Shift+PageUp/PageDown in both xterm and rxvt. Don't see a problem there. Got back to the beginning of the buffer just fine. If I wanted even finer grained control, I'd use a pager such as less. Quite handy if I care about things like scrolling back. Yes, if you're following a file using tail, it'll drop you back to the bottom. I use tail in that occassion to actually follow something, not to go back and do any deep reading. You're asking for both worlds. I'd be more irritated having to scroll back down to the bottom every time I wanted to do something.
It has variable transparency
Mostly trivial eye-candy. Ok, I suppose there are rare occassions where you might notice something behind the window that you'd otherwise miss. Not very functional beyond that.
I won't contest your claim to have used every terminal under the sun, because it is silly, as claims go.
But I will give you credit for one thing: Most of the OS X zealots I see on here talk about what a great feature it is that it was built on top of Unix, and then asked what they do with it, nearly without fail talk about how they can master DVDs or use Final Cut Pro, or some iWhatever app. You, on the other hand, get excited by the terminal emulator, because you actually use it.
-transiit
the Terminal.app is worth the investment in a PowerBook in itself.
/System/ just works, you know.)
Considering how much Terminal.app is like any terminal emulator (i.e., xterm, rxvt, etc.), you do realize that this line does, in fact, make you sound retarded.
If you're all hot and bothered about the *BSD userland, you can get that easily without a powerbook. You can even use a version that comes close to meeting the Unix Filesystem Hierarchy Standard instead of dumping shit wherever they wanted to (because
-transiit
And so I kept banging my head against the blessed defaults, thinking "But I don't like it this way. I used to be able to change it. Why is taking away flexibility considered an improvement?"
Of course, things like gconf don't help either. Making configuration more opaque doesn't make my life easier. Editing name,value pairs in a text editor isn't that bad. A program that uses that sort of configuration format should be nice enough to give you an annotated sample config to start with, and belch out something on stderr if you munge an entry in an unworkable way. The "XMLize-everything!" camp seems to be fretting over a lack of consistency, but it takes away so much. For example,
As opposed to:
So what happens when you go off and edit either by hand? Oh wait, we're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to use gconf-editor. Which immediately warns us not to. I understand the comparisons people make with the Windows registry.
I could go on at length as to why dumping all these settings into a big file hierarchy (i.e., ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/file_views/), with all config files named %gconf.xml, is a bad idea, but that's just implementation boneheadedness.
I want to know why the GNOME team would rather irritate some of their existing users in the name of getting new users, on the advice of the people that have been pushing CDE as the one true UI for years.
As I use GNOME less, it strikes me as a dumping ground for flavor-of-the-month technology.
-transiit
Apple's interface isn't particulary simplistic or well integrated, by my experience.
Closing windows but leaving the programs running in the background. If the window is not on my screen, and I didn't explicitly say "Go hide somewhere until I fetch you again", it just asking for a bigger mess.
The one-button mouse issue is still an issue. Sure, many immediately replace the abomination, but when the sentiment of "Oh, more than one mouse button is confusing to new users! Ctrl-Option-click is far more intuitive!" still reigns supreme, their interface will continue to be lousy.
They ain't selling easy. They ain't selling "It just works.", they're still selling colored plastic and eye candy.
As a user that never uses drag and drop, had used several mp3 applications before iTunes hit the market and called itself the first, several calendaring apps before iCal, plenty of photo organization/image manipulation stuff before iPhoto, video editing before iMovie, I could give a rat's ass about any of it. None of it is new, they just keep getting away with pretending it is because everyone's hypnotized by their "Genie Effect" window animations.
Don't get me wrong, I did once like Gnome. But when Sun came along and brainwashed Havoc into saying "Everything different is bad.", it lost a lot of appeal to me. Maybe I like having multiple clock applets to choose from, rather than being scared and confused by a selection.
-transiit
Hi.
I still miss the days of Gnome 1.x before the Sun usability studies made it completely unusable, and I see nothing special about XP as far as usability goes. XP's just got familiarity with such a large crowd.
Remember kids, options are bad, they only anger up the blood.
-transiit
Just be wary of where the links come from. Some freeware aggregators will wrap the regular installers in one that will include spyware.
Easiest way to avoid this is to code in a way for people to flag entries as questionable, to be verified manually by you or a trusted compatriot.
Think about it some.
-transiit
Depending on what you're looking for, gaim is even better.
Performace is better, though skinnability (and your own personal concept of aesthetics) is less.
-transiit
Fuck that.
So I'll admit to signing up for as many free offers as I could circa 1997, sticking to anything that would actually send me free tangible stuff (I think the most I ever got was a "Internet-safe color wheel poster")
But forget this. I could almost understand giving out a street address, provided it accepts P.O. Boxes or that I was planning on moving without filling out a change of address card at the post office anyhow.
If it were really lucrative, and I'd had several independent confirmations that it was on the up and up, I could almost give out a credit card number, believing that I could cancel it later if it turned out to be a hive of scum and villainry.
If the clouds opened up and the almighty $DEITY said "Do it. It'll be fine.", I'd give up my SSN, knowing that even it could be exchanged in instances of fraud.
But there's no way in hell I'd provide anyone a copy of my birth certificate in the name of a free, soon-to-be-obsolesent not-quite-standards-complaint digital music player.
-transiit
I'm a bit curious of something, as I've seen this thought repeated often. By no means do I ask you to answer for anyone who has espoused it in the past.
Are there any "defense industry" programs that you wouldn't consider to be corporate welfare?
I'll grant you that the 767 tanker lease program that Boeing nearly had could be argued as such, but you'll notice that it wasn't awarded to them (largely after people like McCain called foul), and it's now gone off to be a competitive bid.
But do all of these programs instantly equate to a handout to the industry?
If you're against the US gov't paying for this stuff in general, why not just say so, citing things like the X-year lead the US allegedly has over the rest of the world in military tech, or whatever reason suits your viewpoint.
Personally, I'm for programs that counter existing tech, at least up to the point that the governments of the world decide it's time to move on to the next thing (space-based weapons?) because too much of the existing tech was countered.
-transiit
I, too, have never played EverQuest. On that note, offtopic, here we come....
However, I do find myself interested in the mechanics of gameplay. I can't say that I'm as much a fan of the Fantasy genre, but that my heart really lies with Wasteland. Darn good game.
But I won't call it the be-all/end-all for gameplay, though. I've found turn-based combat can be as much of a chore if you're grinding through repetitive enemies. It's a fine balance getting enough strategy in there to really think about your next decision without getting too bogged down in detail. I'd rather not hold down A)ttack, nor suffer the pains of "Hm, a +1FP,-1MP blizzard attack might be effective against this stone golem, but I think a +1IP,+2FP,-3HP will be the better choice if I can match it with a -1XP,+2RP,+1QP counter-attack from my other player in the next round"
One of my favorite combat systems to date was in Parasite Eve for the PSX. You got a nice little dome for the range of an attack, and even when you were still waiting for your next round to recharge, you could still move around and dodge some attacks. Too bad I never got through the 100 floors of mazes (all twisty and turning) to get to the final super ultimate boss. When I get around to replaying that one (it is my way), I think I'll stop with the superficial ending.
I think the bigger threat to modern-day RPGs is the MPOG (MMPOG is a dumb acronym. You see a few go under for lack of interest, and there can't be anything inherently "massive" about them.) Here the basic problem: Most people won't really role-play. If you do, you'll either get mocked or the experience will get ruined by the first kid that wanders in with "OMG! What R U wearing? WTF? ABC. 123. U and me."
I'd rather live with the relatively short lives of a single-player game. I avoid the monthly fee, and even short playtimes (what's the current metric? 40 hours?) are still better than hour spirts of quality buried in every six hours of crap.
-transiit
I'll second the comment on their books and selection (although Fry's has a bigger selection), but their prices are not that great.
I've never been impressed with the Fry's book selection. I suppose if I wanted "Frontpage for Dummies", "The Idiot's Guide to Frontpage", and "The Step-by-step Guide to Frontpage for Mouth-breathing, Knuckle-dragging Neanderthals", I guess I'd be a bit keener on Fry's book selection. I've also had a hard time beating the bargain book section at Microcenter (I've picked up a few obsolete-revision O'Reilly books for $1.99 to $5.99, as well as one of the Complete [something] CD bookshelves for around $7. Sure, the selection's hit or miss (there's as much "AOL version 2 for Dummies" as there is quality, but when it's that cheap, it's worth checking in periodically to see what's there.)
They seem to be substantially higher than, say, NewEgg. A DVD burner that costs $60 on NewEgg will cost $120 at MicroCenter.
It depends on your willingness to wait for a UPS/Fedex/DHL whatever guy, if you care enough to buy something you'll have to wait [days|weeks|months] for, and the trustworthiness of the dealer. Sure, tigerdirect's got good prices. I don't trust them for shit, though.
It will be retail instead of OEM, but the retail version is then $80 or so online.
The frugal might look for OEM dealers in their area. Bonus points if they take cash (multiwave could have been one of the good instances of OEM-for-the-common-man, but I've not trusted them since they lost control of their credit card database and wouldn't admit it for the longest time)
Similarly for hard drives and RAM. Their wireless cards (and the like) also tend not to have Linux drivers.
At least when you're in a brick and mortar, you can scour the package for a revision number you know to be compatible, rather than playing "wait and see" with something you get online.
It ain't a perfect world, and online retailers ain't the paragon of consumer bliss.
-transiit
why would they need to?
it'd probably be in the drive itself. remember that playing DVDs on a computer is a feature, not a bug.
So if it's done right, it could mean cross-platform digital media viewing for all. I'm not holding my breath, there's probably some driver that would need to be hacked up to set up the svp chip itself.
It still doesn't fix the bigger part of the problem: sure, this might slow the casual copiers, but a bit-for-bit physical media copy will still be vulnerable. Same as they are today, which as legend goes, is what's being peddled on some urban streetcorners.
-transiit
Or don't.
I find them to be scratchy and horrible. Nothing special as far as ergonomics go. Remember, Herman Miller also gave us the cubicle. Way to go.
At home, I've got a ~$100 chair picked up from the local office products store. Checked out all of them until I found one I liked.
At work, I've got some ergonomic wonder, but my company is also just large enough to freak out if they think we'll have grounds for an RSI lawsuit, so they'll readily accomodate us if we start complaining.
The best advice here is to take semi-regular breaks. Regular exercize probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, either.
-transiit
save your logs.
if nothing else, it might be fun self-indulgence to plot out how fast and furious the requests came in.
-transiit
Funny.
The One True Solution sounds a lot like "As long as the only way to do it is the way I'd do it, nobody gets hurt" approach.
There's always more than one way to do it, syntactic variations or not.
If Python really had the market cornered on the Right way, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
-transiit
10GigE is what I'd use as a backbone between buildings, metro area networks, etc.
Come in real handy if GigE rollouts to the desktop start happening.
And before anyone starts spouting off about maximum 100m spans, I'm talking 10GigE over fiber
-transiit