I recently got a letter from Spain in the mail telling me I had won ~$US800,000 in a lottery. The hotmail email address was one indication of it's bogosity. A quick search of google unearthed a bunch of sad stories like a 84yo woman who sent them $US1500 plus her SS# and bank account #!
1. Productivity from desktop computers has increased in particular fields by factors of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. Even the most well designed paper system was inefficent at its heart. Think of a newspaper: my local newspaper runs the entire operation with 66 people. Back when my grandfather worked there the typesetting department was 50ish in size. Your argument here is unsustainable.
You have just described what has happened in all areas of manufacturing over the last 30 to 50 years. Typesetting a newspaper has more to do with manufacturing than clerical work. Do the journo's work less hours per column inch to produce the copy?
2. Clerical works do not generally benefit from Internet access. However, you assume that any time they spend on non-business things would go to business things. That is simply false. Most people do not disregard work related projects in favor of going to read the latest gosip on their favorite fansite. Instead, they visit in downtime, between projects, while on the phone, etc. That is not lost productivity. The only cost to the company in those cases is the bandwidth.
Where does this come from? My observations come from proxy logs and walking the floors
3. For thousands and thousands of positions, the productivity increase is amazing. The Internet combined with desktop workstations is simply unparalleled. And it is suprising that you'd think otherwise, to be frank. Think back to the 80s. The company fax machine would be clogged, and you'd have to wait often times hours to get a spot in the queue. It was most frustrating for many people. Now, it goes right to the desktop via e-mail. That is just one example of literally millions of ways that the Internet has steadily provided a net benefit to productivity.
Desktop fax is all very well for receiving, but sending documents still requires access to scanning services in many cases. BTW, The Internet has liitle to do with Desktop fax delivery.
The Internet, for the vast majority of clerical workers, is a distraction that has not improved productivity a jot. Looking at client sites with Internet access to the desktop, 40-60% of web-surfing and 20-30% of emails is not work-related. Popular news and entertainment web sites top the surfing list. SPAM and useless mailing lists clog the email queues. Sure, some people can be more "productive" by using online shoopping and banking at lunchtime, but the majority overuse the facility. In fact, look a little closer and, despite the billions spent, productivity has not improved by using desktop computers either.
malloc() IS a system call. You are making a system request. It's also part of the standard C library.
Actually malloc is a library as you pointed out. For examply, on my Solaris and linux boxen, the underlying system call is brk.
Re:Open Source as a way out of bankruptcy?
on
Netwinder is Back
·
· Score: 1
Not quite correct. The main IP Netwinder developed was the NeTTrom boot monitor program. Very handy piece of work and the code for it was never released. All other work on Free Software went to help the wider ARM community. I can't comment on the Crusoe-based machines as I was only interested in the DM
It wasn't just the domain name. This company was also well known for its spend-thrift parties, social functions, etc. etc. If you didn't know any better, you would think that the company knocked off a bank or two every so often to finance these events.
They sent me a key ring (half way around the world) because I had a netwinder DM I guess. All I wanted was an assurance of continued support.
Excellent point. A hardware vendor ceases to exist if it doesn't sell hardware. For those who want high availability, there will still be a market for Solaris as Sun is loathe to "open the kimono" with respect to specs for high-end features. Sun won't exist if it doesn't shift boxes. If anyone disagrees, tell me what Prime, Wang and Data General are doing now?
Spelling Alert!!! It's Greenwich. The Internet is a wonderful thing, no need for an encyclopedia, dictionary or grammar checker, there is always some AR-type ready to point out flaws in posts:)
Garbage collection is highly overrated. GC is useful for systems that make use of a great deal of non-stack memory (such as Java) but for low-profile processes, reference counting is much more useful. In fact, overall memory use will be significantly lower.
Pardon my ignorance. I thought reference counting was a form of GC, cf "Mark and Sweep".
Once upon a time, When you bought a piece of hardware, you got all the doco and specs to implement a driver for it. Then along came Windows and most manufacturers stopped including or even supplying the info.
Comparing driver support between two OSs doesn't count when one has an unfair advantage.
If it doesn't work with lynx, what use is it to people with vision impairment as well?
Lynx is great when your on a slow dialup. Lynx is great if you just want the facts, not fluff.
MS made inroads into the Desktop Apps department by shiping an OS that would run *their* package (MS Word) fine, but failed to inform their competitors about features that lead to instability. Word Perfect was rock solid on early Windows releases but went into decline once Windows 3.0 was released. People overlook the importance of selling an OS AND the Apps, each locking the user in. A number of corporates standardised on MS Apps, based purely on the fact that the OS came from MS as well and they could be assured that it would all work. (MS Word 6.0 belied that fact, but they were hooked by then)
There was very little bleating about keeping with apps that the users were familiar with.
Good point. You left out the 32bit wonder-machine that brought 2GB of virtual memory to Digital users - the VAX-11/780. Of course our Uni crammed up to 80 users into 128kB of real memory so response time was measured in tens of minutes when assignments were due:(
I find the best part though, is that DOS is a de facto cross platform standard. Many Operating Systems can run dos applications either natively or thorugh an emulator or VDM.
Running an emulator is stretching the the "cross platform" story too far. If you dont have an 8088/8086 or it's descendants, forget it.
For the last 6 years, many Afghans have been selling all their property and posessions and setting out across the world. They are spending thousands of dollars in the pursuit of a better life. A lot of these posts here assume that everyone in Afghanistan is a dirt-poor peasant raking over rocks, eking out a living in a total wasteland. Sure there is a lot of that but that is not the lot of every Afghani.
mammal-like reptiles Theraspids, emegered relatively early in the "Age of Reptiles", in fact even back in the Permian period. True mammals seemed to appear dunring the upper Triassic, making the mammals almost equally presistent over the dinosaurs "reign".
The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS? Would 66% of Americans have daily access to it? Would it have grown in acceptance faster than telephone, radio or television? I don't know, perhaps, and perhaps not.
When the Internet was taking off, MS provided nothing to support it because it was still pushing its proprietary LAN technologies and MSN. Win 3.11
PCs often used LAN Workplace for Windows for TCP/IP, Trumpet for PPP, Mosaic/Netscape for their browser, Eudora for their email. MS was nowhere to be seen.
go through the IETF RFCs and seen when MS started contributing, c 1995. Before that, squat.
I was bullied through much of K-7. I was a regular churchgoer and, following the teaching of "Love the enemy" I used to invite the bullies to my birthday parties. I still remember getting my head split open on concrete at one of my parties along with getting "typewritered" by two of the others. It wasn't until I sent my primary tormenter flying across the hallway with a left hook, and then kicking him in the head the next year with my football boots, punching him in the head in another fight that the bullying stopped and we became reasonable acquaintances. I last saw him when he played for the same football club (Aussie Rules) after we left High School. School was hell for a lot of that time until I stood up to him.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently got a letter from Spain in the mail telling me I had won ~$US800,000 in a lottery. The hotmail email address was one indication of it's bogosity. A quick search of google unearthed a bunch of sad stories like a 84yo woman who sent them $US1500 plus her SS# and bank account #!
IIRC, the death of Boromir, the dispatch of his body down the river and the breaking fo the fellowship are described in "The Two Towers".
Seriously. I prefer living with abundant wildlife than one voracious cat.
1. Productivity from desktop computers has increased in particular fields by factors of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. Even the most well designed paper system was inefficent at its heart. Think of a newspaper: my local newspaper runs the entire operation with 66 people. Back when my grandfather worked there the typesetting department was 50ish in size. Your argument here is unsustainable.
You have just described what has happened in all areas of manufacturing over the last 30 to 50 years. Typesetting a newspaper has more to do with manufacturing than clerical work. Do the journo's work less hours per column inch to produce the copy?
2. Clerical works do not generally benefit from Internet access. However, you assume that any time they spend on non-business things would go to business things. That is simply false. Most people do not disregard work related projects in favor of going to read the latest gosip on their favorite fansite. Instead, they visit in downtime, between projects, while on the phone, etc. That is not lost productivity. The only cost to the company in those cases is the bandwidth.
Where does this come from? My observations come from proxy logs and walking the floors
3. For thousands and thousands of positions, the productivity increase is amazing. The Internet combined with desktop workstations is simply unparalleled. And it is suprising that you'd think otherwise, to be frank. Think back to the 80s. The company fax machine would be clogged, and you'd have to wait often times hours to get a spot in the queue. It was most frustrating for many people. Now, it goes right to the desktop via e-mail. That is just one example of literally millions of ways that the Internet has steadily provided a net benefit to productivity.
Desktop fax is all very well for receiving, but sending documents still requires access to scanning services in many cases. BTW, The Internet has liitle to do with Desktop fax delivery.
The Internet, for the vast majority of clerical workers, is a distraction that has not improved productivity a jot. Looking at client sites with Internet access to the desktop, 40-60% of web-surfing and 20-30% of emails is not work-related. Popular news and entertainment web sites top the surfing list. SPAM and useless mailing lists clog the email queues. Sure, some people can be more "productive" by using online shoopping and banking at lunchtime, but the majority overuse the facility. In fact, look a little closer and, despite the billions spent, productivity has not improved by using desktop computers either.
malloc() IS a system call. You are making a system request. It's also part of the standard C library.
Actually malloc is a library as you pointed out. For examply, on my Solaris and linux boxen, the underlying system call is brk.Not quite correct. The main IP Netwinder developed was the NeTTrom boot monitor program. Very handy piece of work and the code for it was never released. All other work on Free Software went to help the wider ARM community. I can't comment on the Crusoe-based machines as I was only interested in the DM
It wasn't just the domain name. This company was also well known for its spend-thrift parties, social functions, etc. etc. If you didn't know any better, you would think that the company knocked off a bank or two every so often to finance these events.
They sent me a key ring (half way around the world) because I had a netwinder DM I guess. All I wanted was an assurance of continued support.
Excellent point. A hardware vendor ceases to exist if it doesn't sell hardware. For those who want high availability, there will still be a market for Solaris as Sun is loathe to "open the kimono" with respect to specs for high-end features. Sun won't exist if it doesn't shift boxes. If anyone disagrees, tell me what Prime, Wang and Data General are doing now?
Spelling Alert!!!
It's Greenwich. The Internet is a wonderful thing, no need for an encyclopedia, dictionary or grammar checker, there is always some AR-type ready to point out flaws in posts:)
Gotta get a wider perspective on Mr Weaving. Go see "Proof" and "Priscilla: Queen fo the Desert"
Not if they have been given an "advance" from the distributors. See Courtney Love's Salon Article
Garbage collection is highly overrated. GC is useful for systems that make use of a great deal of non-stack memory (such as Java) but for low-profile processes, reference counting is much more useful. In fact, overall memory use will be significantly lower.
Pardon my ignorance. I thought reference counting was a form of GC, cf "Mark and Sweep".
Once upon a time, When you bought a piece of hardware, you got all the doco and specs to implement a driver for it. Then along came Windows and most manufacturers stopped including or even supplying the info.
Comparing driver support between two OSs doesn't count when one has an unfair advantage.
While searching for some of my historical "gems" I found a post of mine to aus.test
A mine of information that one.
The monopoly existed before Windows. It was called PC-DOS->MS-DOS.
If it doesn't work with lynx, what use is it to people with vision impairment as well?
Lynx is great when your on a slow dialup. Lynx is great if you just want the facts, not fluff.
MS made inroads into the Desktop Apps department by shiping an OS that would run *their* package (MS Word) fine, but failed to inform their competitors about features that lead to instability. Word Perfect was rock solid on early Windows releases but went into decline once Windows 3.0 was released. People overlook the importance of selling an OS AND the Apps, each locking the user in. A number of corporates standardised on MS Apps, based purely on the fact that the OS came from MS as well and they could be assured that it would all work. (MS Word 6.0 belied that fact, but they were hooked by then)
There was very little bleating about keeping with apps that the users were familiar with.
Good point. You left out the 32bit wonder-machine that brought 2GB of virtual memory to Digital users - the VAX-11/780. Of course our Uni crammed up to 80 users into 128kB of real memory so response time was measured in tens of minutes when assignments were due :(
I find the best part though, is that DOS is a de facto cross platform standard. Many Operating Systems can run dos applications either natively or thorugh an emulator or VDM. Running an emulator is stretching the the "cross platform" story too far. If you dont have an 8088/8086 or it's descendants, forget it.
For the last 6 years, many Afghans have been selling all their property and posessions and setting out across the world. They are spending thousands of dollars in the pursuit of a better life. A lot of these posts here assume that everyone in Afghanistan is a dirt-poor peasant raking over rocks, eking out a living in a total wasteland. Sure there is a lot of that but that is not the lot of every Afghani.
C-x C-s 3-keystrokes
:w 3-keystrokes
mammal-like reptiles Theraspids, emegered relatively early in the "Age of Reptiles", in fact even back in the Permian period. True mammals seemed to appear dunring the upper Triassic, making the mammals almost equally presistent over the dinosaurs "reign".
The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS? Would 66% of Americans have daily access to it? Would it have grown in acceptance faster than telephone, radio or television? I don't know, perhaps, and perhaps not.
When the Internet was taking off, MS provided nothing to support it because it was still pushing its proprietary LAN technologies and MSN. Win 3.11 PCs often used LAN Workplace for Windows for TCP/IP, Trumpet for PPP, Mosaic/Netscape for their browser, Eudora for their email. MS was nowhere to be seen.
go through the IETF RFCs and seen when MS started contributing, c 1995. Before that, squat.
I was bullied through much of K-7. I was a regular churchgoer and, following the teaching of "Love the enemy" I used to invite the bullies to my birthday parties. I still remember getting my head split open on concrete at one of my parties along with getting "typewritered" by two of the others. It wasn't until I sent my primary tormenter flying across the hallway with a left hook, and then kicking him in the head the next year with my football boots, punching him in the head in another fight that the bullying stopped and we became reasonable acquaintances. I last saw him when he played for the same football club (Aussie Rules) after we left High School. School was hell for a lot of that time until I stood up to him.