At nearly every point in the past 5+ centuries we have records of people saying, "my god, how far we've come, there's nothing left to be invented!"
Hmm, see, I didn't think there was anything after the ballista either, but hey, some people proved me wrong. Right now we look back and see things as "well, duh, that was the logical progression." But people never saw things this way when they were actually happening. As much as I see things similarly, I am skeptical that things are as simple as they're trying to be made here. We can discuss this in hindsight in half a century. We'll probably look about and laugh at how silly we were for this conversation.
Seron,
I suppose I forgot to mention. They are IBM Thinkpad i1300s and we have no choice. The U bought about 5000 of them. They come with Win98 pre-installed, upgrades to Millenium are now occuring. I advise everyone I meet against it as it bloats the thing beyond belief.
Personally, I reformatted and set up as a Win2000/Win98/RH7.0 boot setup. Only keep win98 around because I have a cheap winprinter, and win2000 ends up more or less being my primary OS.
Battery life in Win98, roughly 2 hours. Win2000, reports as 3. Seems to actually be accurate. Assuming I'm not doing anything CPU intensive.
I am actually a student here so I am somewhat informed about the laptops. For the most part non-CS majors use them to play solitaire in the back of the lecture halls.
In the end what this turned out to be, or such it is perceived as, is a hidden tuition hike to pay for their new science building. They're charging $385 a semester for an almost year old laptop. Thankfully they improved upon it this year. This is the first year they're actually requiring all students (juniors the previous year had the option of waiving out) to acquire these. After two years you can trade it in to get a new one.
One of the big problems I have with this is that there are no options to purchase your own laptop. You are required to receive one from the University. I became a junior a month or two after the deadline and I was not given the waiver. I argued for quite a while and finally got a pseudo-waiver. I was waived $85. The other $300 was infrastructure fee, of which I was not entitled to waived from. They tried to tell me this was like the $150 we pay for the health center whether we use it or not. It seems like at least the health center doesn't make me buy a $35 toothbrush.
Personally I use the laptop quite frequently, it's nice to be able to carry around Mathematica and Systran among other things. You can hop on the network just about anywhere on campus. Heck the practice rooms in the music building are decked out. But I'm irritated that I'm essentially paying the full cost for a laptop I can't keep.
I'm enrolled in 23.5 credits of classes, *none* of which require the use of a laptop. I'd say maybe one of my professors barely knows to turn it on, the rest?
Anyway, this is probably rambled together as I have class in 20 minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
At nearly every point in the past 5+ centuries we have records of people saying, "my god, how far we've come, there's nothing left to be invented!" Hmm, see, I didn't think there was anything after the ballista either, but hey, some people proved me wrong. Right now we look back and see things as "well, duh, that was the logical progression." But people never saw things this way when they were actually happening. As much as I see things similarly, I am skeptical that things are as simple as they're trying to be made here. We can discuss this in hindsight in half a century. We'll probably look about and laugh at how silly we were for this conversation. Seron,
I'm quite sure is, "All generalizations are dangerous, even this one." -- Alexandre Dumas.
Of course it's a translation, so there's no perfect english.
Oink,
I suppose I forgot to mention. They are IBM Thinkpad i1300s and we have no choice. The U bought about 5000 of them. They come with Win98 pre-installed, upgrades to Millenium are now occuring. I advise everyone I meet against it as it bloats the thing beyond belief.
Personally, I reformatted and set up as a Win2000/Win98/RH7.0 boot setup. Only keep win98 around because I have a cheap winprinter, and win2000 ends up more or less being my primary OS.
Battery life in Win98, roughly 2 hours. Win2000, reports as 3. Seems to actually be accurate. Assuming I'm not doing anything CPU intensive.
Seron,
I am actually a student here so I am somewhat informed about the laptops. For the most part non-CS majors use them to play solitaire in the back of the lecture halls.
In the end what this turned out to be, or such it is perceived as, is a hidden tuition hike to pay for their new science building. They're charging $385 a semester for an almost year old laptop. Thankfully they improved upon it this year. This is the first year they're actually requiring all students (juniors the previous year had the option of waiving out) to acquire these. After two years you can trade it in to get a new one.
One of the big problems I have with this is that there are no options to purchase your own laptop. You are required to receive one from the University. I became a junior a month or two after the deadline and I was not given the waiver. I argued for quite a while and finally got a pseudo-waiver. I was waived $85. The other $300 was infrastructure fee, of which I was not entitled to waived from. They tried to tell me this was like the $150 we pay for the health center whether we use it or not. It seems like at least the health center doesn't make me buy a $35 toothbrush.
Personally I use the laptop quite frequently, it's nice to be able to carry around Mathematica and Systran among other things. You can hop on the network just about anywhere on campus. Heck the practice rooms in the music building are decked out. But I'm irritated that I'm essentially paying the full cost for a laptop I can't keep.
I'm enrolled in 23.5 credits of classes, *none* of which require the use of a laptop. I'd say maybe one of my professors barely knows to turn it on, the rest?
Anyway, this is probably rambled together as I have class in 20 minutes.
Toodles,
Seron/Oink
Not to mention it's so wonderfully compiled with pgcc. Or at least I think it still is, heh. Oink,