How much variance is there in the rate of decay? This is a bit disconcerting on it's face, at least as it relates to nuclear power. Would we have to be concerned about this directly impacting nuclear power facilities, in the event of a very large CME? Or at that point, would we be more concerned about cooking when we go outdoors?
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronomer. Should the school have let me use their time and have them provide me with support since I wanted to do that? Should they have had a teacher go out, retool for my desired skill set and taken time from their standard curriculum?
No, but if the school had a telescope, it seems reasonable to me that they'd let you use it on your own time at home, possibly with a teacher willing to grant you access to the school (depending on where you live in the hemisphere, etc.).
The last time I did an XP install on a machine running a 1.3Ghz P4 it took all of 35 minutes not including updates.
Those of us who actually work in IT - professionally - do not consider something 'installed from media' to be fully or properly installed. That usually doesn't even pass as acceptable with the shadetree home PC repair crowd. So how many hours did it take until the updates were completed? And after you installed all the applications which would also be used on said XP install, what was the total timer at?
Even if it took hours how would Linux be any better off? The last Linux install I did on a dual core with a gig of RAM took over 20 minutes without updates. Again, FUD.
So it took you 20 minutes to get a full install of Linux done, without updates. Issuing a single command on the console and then walking away, considering it done and up to date (call the total timer from 'bare metal' to 'fully installed desktop with apps, drivers, and updates' 25 minutes, maybe) is certainly preferable to having to rove around an isle of workstations clicking 'next' or 'update' or 'download' for the next several hours (minimum). Of course, there's going to be a great deal of waiting with the Windows approach, as well (unless you 'scale up' to enough Windows machines to have it finish its task before it needs your attention for the next step, of course).
I've seen that, too. They're malicious little fucks, particularly in blighted urban areas.
Have you owned an IBM Model M keyboard?:) Not only do they have easily replaceable (and thick, difficult to cut) cables, but it would require a significant amount of force to actually damage the keyboard itself. The hammer impacts would probably be noticed and stopped before the keyboard suffered any significant damage.
The school has the keyboards still - likely from older school computers, not donated equipment. They've lasted this long, I don't see why they wouldn't keep lasting.
Popular Linux distributions have been easier to install and get up to speed since at least Christmas 2003. I remember this because I brought my (still in the box new) IBM Thinkpad X31 laptop with me with a freshly burned Mandrake Linux 9 with me to the hospital to have something to do until my wife was discharged. The system was fully operational within about 20 minutes. I got to "I burned the installation media, drove the 5 blocks to the hospital, went to my wife's room, and got fully installed while she was using the restroom" in the time it would've taken me to install Office Professional and Photoshop, and probably had time to spare.
Remember 'installfests'? They've been around for at least 15 years now. Part of their appeal was that it could be done in a fraction of the time it took to even install Windows, nevermind the application stack. I believe a 'typical' installfest distro competition (eg. get to a working desktop with full driver support and load your distro's web page or the like) could be accomplished in about 30-40 minutes near the end of the millennium without much of a headache. There was also Stormix Storm Linux 2000 (release: Rain), a slickly packaged precursor to what we know as Debian today, which would get you to a fully working, functional desktop in something like 20 minutes - on old hardware.
Over the years, Windows has been easier/quicker to install and update for short periods of time, shortly after their initial releases. I believe this started with Windows 2000, but didn't really become markedly significant until Vista (they fixed the "keyboard does not work" issues and it graduated to "I only have VGA resolution and crude generic drivers for everything" at Vista). So there's been roughly a period of 2.5-3 years in the past 14 where Windows has been 'easier' and 'quicker'. But then they start releasing non-accumulative updates, patch sets to patch sets, and so on, and it's a fucking nightmare after a year or two.
I keep "old version of windows" installs around in VM just to avoid having to reinstall them for one reason or another, ever again. I've also got a pxe/tftp deployment system set up for Cent, Debian, and Ubuntu, should I need them.
With enough infrastructure - deployment systems like system center, AD GPO package deployment, etc. Windows can all be improved upon. But cost of the OS alone has not been the only reason why Windows has never gotten a significant preferential deployment in, for instance, public web services. It's still massively more time consuming for these simple things.
The crux of the issue is the useless 'package management' found on Windows. There is no such thing. You have been able to do full system updates over the Internet (or from CD) since around '98 in Linux on pretty much every distribution (via yum and apt-get). That's 14 years! I believe FreeBSD's ports and OpenBSD's pkgsrc have had similar things working (albeit with more overhead, since they're source based and the binaries aren't actually maintained regularly) since the early 1990s.
You're incorrect, of course. Possibly because you didn't read what I said, or because you don't pay attention to what you do yourself.
You failed to miss the 'update circle of life' I had to go through: it lasted roughly a day and a half of downloading, installing, rebooting, downloading, installing, rebooting - all the while making making the system functionally unusable due to the frequency of reboots. The alternatives would've been:
* disable automatic updates and run the system out of date/insecure * just let Windows 'handle it' and have my system reboot on me 'in 10 minutes', randomly for the next several weeks (like when I'm on lunch or in a meeting). * like the previous option, but disable the automatic installation while keeping the downloading. Routinely remember to 'install updates and shutdown' at the end of the night, saving all my open documents.
Do you do one of the above?
I've run/owned a small computer repair shop. I have donated many an old computer to people to use. The only problems I've had with Linux installs in years are: * Debian's 'non-free' firmware, which often prevent installation if doing a network install * esoteric, crap wifi, eg. anything from Broadcom
Usually, these problems are fixed by either installing a non-free package or pulling a ppa with an appropriate wireless driver, or something relatively quick and trivial. I don't have to wade through a jungle of links on crappy sites reading "where do I find driver xyz for my HP/Dell/USB/etc?" questions (which usually go unanswered).
I then also still have to install Office and whatever other applications I want. Not everything in Windows has 'package management' like what Ninite offers, and not everyone uses Windows almost exclusively to play games. Even for my home system, this usually means a dozen different things I've got to install to get it functional: wincdemu, vmware vclient, Office, XenCenter, and so on. Some of them can be installed concurrently these days (thank God), but often they'll still require/request a reboot.
Heaven help me if there are new versions or I need to reinstall or use the same system as the basis for an image. That, too, is an arduously long task compared to the Linux equivalent, even with the sparse and hard to find documentation on the Linux side of things.
(Speaking of which, even Valve does software installation on Windows better than Microsoft allows through via MSIs. There was a rumour of "Windows apt-get like functionality", using a different packaging system, some years ago (like, 5 at this point), with Microsoft's full support, but I don't believe anything ever came of it.)
On Debian or Ubuntu, I can run the basic install, do a single aptitude upgrade operation, and then install my selected packages in a single fell swoop (either using apt-get/itude or synaptic or whatever). If I know what the package names are, I can either simply copy/paste the ppas into the config from the vendor's site and/or just copy and paste the full list of packages.
Hell, even deployment of identical systems is easier (in terms of 'less time spent learning how to do it and less time spent maintaining it') with something like puppet than just one or two packagings for AD deployment. Yes, part of this argument is "CLI vs GUI". I mean, seriously: my fucking phone is easier and less time consuming to maintain and update with the latest and greatest ROMs than Windows desktop packages are.
What this story doesn't tell you is that Office 2012 is going to be cloud-centric. Remember, they're trying to compete with Google (which, oddly, does not support ODF format on Drive). They are pushing Office Online pretty hard, and even Exchange wants to act as an auxiliary source to Office 365 now.
Microsoft very much wants to control your data in the way that desktop apps and "personal computing" prohibit - and that Google is now able to do through Drive/Gmail/etc. They previously attempted doing so by locking down the file formats to maintain your continued purchases - the stick approach.
Now they're trying the carrot approach to control. They've been interested in this model for at least 14 years (I remember reading it in PC Magazine prior to Windows 2000 coming out). They want their products to be SaaS. They noticed early on what a fiscal bonanza SaaS was for antivirus companies, in contrast to Microsoft's constant need to upsell their latest and greatest candy dispenser. With the iStore, iTunes, Steam, Android Market/Play, et cetera, this has become all the more apparent - particularly in light of many previous customers migrating from things like in-house Exchange systems to Gmail.
Never underestimate the buying power of a free lunch.
Yeah, except most of the carriers are now offering what -was- a $600 phone just a year ago, as a "free" phone. See: Pantech Marauder from Verizon (a carrier notorious for overcharging).
Even the 'basic phones' in the US are more-or-less smartphones.
I mean, shit. You can get a Pantech Marauder with Android 4.0 from Verizon 'for free' with a 2 year contract. In these parts, the 'free phones' define the very bottom of what's available.Look at the specs on that thing - it's very similar in spec to something like an HTC Sensation or any other ~1 year old latest-greatest phone. Assuming getting root on the phone is possible (it is), there's really not any reason to get anything other than a smartphone (short of preference).
A smartphone is one which provides capabilities for general computing, if needbe. That means apps and a way to install them, and "full control" (or close enough to it to get things done) of the device. The hardware needs to be flexible enough to move data on and off it. File management/browsing, editing various files, and so on. Printing is highly advantageous. Email and web access does not cut it.
I should note, I don't think many of the phones (including iPhone and Android) from major carriers are smartphones because their data plans are severely crippled, eg. wifi tether or using wifi itself will incur data usage. It all depends on the phone and the carrier. These phones very well might be 'smartphones', I don't know.
I don't know about that American idea. I don't personally consider the iPhone to be a smartphone unless it's been rooted.
A smartphone is one which provides capabilities for general computing, if needbe. That means apps and a way to install them, and "full control" (or close enough to it to get things done) of the device. File management/browsing, editing various files, and so on. Printing is highly advantageous. Email and web access does not cut it.
What was the reasoning you presented to your school to have them take a resource and divert it from its given purpose to install another OS besides it being "teh Linux!!!!onehundredeleven!!!"?
Should a bespoke reason be required if a student offers something that's free with "I want to do this" and it encourages learning concrete and timeless "job skills"?
I don't know how Windows would be under-featured, other than it being too bloated for the systems in question. I'd wager half the systems received did not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 7. With XP, each machine would've taken hours++ to get installed. Windows also does not offer a suitable security model for out-of-the-box multiuser use - it comes shipped with zero security from that regard. (Though, I'll admit, W7 is much better, as is the application support for 'not running as administrator' than it used to be. It's still a huge pain.)
Yes, but then they'll have to buy new keyboards a couple times a year or so, whereas those keyboards (not withstanding the kids stealing/breaking/etc. the key caps) will last until their grandchildren go to school.:)
No, it won't. XP hasn't been able to run "fine" with less than 768MB since at least 2009. You'll sit through dogged waiting just to use a browser and it'll take a full coffee break to boot with 512MB. (A system with 512MB will run the initial release of Windows 7 better than XP.)
No, you couldn't. Or rather, this gentleman couldn't have, and it'd have been much more time consuming for anyone else to approach.
I installed Windows 7 on a new 128GB Crucial M4 SSD last night (in an i7 tower). Not latest-greatest, but by no means a slow machine! I suppose I should be more precise, in saying that I finished performing the task last night. I actually started several days ago. The process involved:
* The initial installation. This took maybe 30 minutes (as I wondered around the house getting other things done, waiting). * Configuration of the machine. So far, it's pretty identical to a Linux install in what's done. * First boot. I now spend an hour or two hunting for and downloading the appropriate drivers for things which aren't quiet working fully. This may or may not be similar with Linux, depending on hardware. * Oops! Looks like there are updates to perform. Over the next two days, I ran updates, downloading everything that's been released as an update, rebooting, then re-downloading essentially the same fileset for the next update. This would've taken significantly longer if I hadn't been actively doing it. I think I went through over a dozen reboots, and obviously didn't use the computer for much during this time as a result. * Antivirus, useful utilities, and applications - thankfully, there's Ninite, otherwise this would've taken much longer than it did, all told. Three or four hours, maybe? And I knew what I was doing. * Oh, look. Now you've got a Windows machine with Administrator access - fine for me, but for an 8th grader? You're going to have to try to figure out how to get them to not break it.
I only spent $7 or so for the AV and had my Windows key already, and everything else was 'free software'. But between the bandwidth and monkey-like setup procedure, doing the same thing with a lab full of old Windows machines would have literally taken months. Many of the machines he was likely receiving wouldn't have even worked (presumably he had at least some with 512MB of RAM, and many with small drives). On those old systems, W7 took the better part of a full 'work day' to just get installed. If he used XP, just forget it.
It's kind of ironic that, given Apple's history, individuals are 'giving free computers to schools' with Linux installed right in Apple's own back yard.
Oakland is notorious for being a place for degenerates and crime, with activist politics and little future. Why wouldn't Apple take it upon itself to help?
You misunderstood me, and possibly basic English linguistic precedence.
I think this statement is confirmation that sexual harassment is part of "hacker culture". Whether or not a woman "sleeps around" does not have any affect on rape. That you would think her "sleeping around" in any way ameliorates accusations of rape is an indication of how insidious the exploitation of women is in this sub-culture.
I don't know what this hacker culture is, because I'm not a part of it. This is what I've observed in society at large.
Sleeping around has no effect on rape. However, it can have an effect on claims of rape. It's roughly 8% according to the FBI but as high as 41% in some locales (according to studies). The FBI figure is still 4 times as high as other crimes but it is also a direct accusation against a specific person, unlike most other crimes, and only includes forcible rapes (so actual numbers are likely to be higher). The fact that most rapes go unreported is a separate (and similarly important) issue, but that is more a social issue.
Fraudulent rape accusations are a legal matter - a life-ending matter for the accused, in many cases. This is over 1,000 lives ruined with no recourse over a "victim's" false accusation: if you have a job of any social significance or a position in a community, your life is effectively over. Unlike for a rape victim, where it's possible to remain secretive, someone accused of rape has no cultural or legal protection. With something like rape, it's the victim's word against your own: you're likely to have no way to defend yourself from a number of different accusations.
Put another way: unreported rapes are the fault of the victims. False rape accusations is a crime in and of itself with implications just as broad and damaging (if not moreso) as rape - and one which does not get prosecuted.
There are so many 'safe' networks which are Internet attached: power plants, -nuclear- power plants, top secret military data, and so on. If it's on the Internet, or even on a network, it can be hacked.
The question, in this case, would be "why would I want to?" aside from someone from Anonymous having the rover beam back something immature, like a green penis picture, what's the appeal?
Governments typically want to steal the results of other governments' scientific efforts, not do the work themselves. Accessing the rover falls firmly in the "doing the work yourself" category. Unless there's some unknown military function to the rover, controlling it remotely has no appeal to a government.
You can be arrested for 'rape' for any of the following: * sleeping with a woman who, the following day, has regrets * sleeping with a women who felt she was 'coerced' despite her willingness to participate at the time * sleeping with a women who had a drink * impregnating a woman who later finds out she wants to blackmail large child support out of her unexpected pregnancy * sleeping with your girlfriend and being found out by her parents, if you're over 18 and she's under $number (varies by state)
It still has meaning, but the meaning has been drastically, drastically reduced through things such as the above, and things like frequent bullshit claims of a man raping a woman. Rape is the go-to cry of morally unscrupulous women who sleep around; it means "he hurt me". "Rape" has also been diminished in many people's minds due to the fact that the 19-year-old kid who got caught pissing behind a dumpster by a police officer gets thrown into the same legal status bucket of "sex offenders" as the serial rapist.
The result of being accused of rape is still very much real and significant. The social stigma of "he was accused of rape" is somewhat less significant than it used to be due to how common it is.
I'm sorry, how is it educational to have someone parade around in front of a bunch of gay men if the idea is to try to teach him to respect women/treat women as he would like to be treated?
To play devil's advocate, last I checked, women are statistically more likely to be interested in men than women. He should be paraded around at eg. a Chip'n'Dales.
In all likelihood, these ass-grabbing assholes are probably just doing what they'd like women to do to them. In a sense, it's equal treatment, and possibly intended as an esteem. It's not respectful or right, but nobody said most geeks have a clue...
I'm sorry, but if you're going to an event where bravado, being on top and accomplishing things before anyone else, and daring-do is the flavor of the day, in an industry which is primarily composed of entitled and antisocial loner males, why is it surprising that (attractive) females would receive an inordinate amount of (negative) attention when alcohol is involved, in Vegas?
I'm not saying it's right, but it's kinda like complaining that the cherry on the top of the ice cream isn't melting. A lot more has to change industry-wide before DEFCON changes; DEFCON would also need to probably not push such a debaucherous agenda, I imagine.
A high ranking politician has to be able to weigh those things dispassionately, calculate the loss to society as a whole from ten men (how old are they, how much do they benefit/cost the society?) versus one child (what can that child achieve, does it have a good or bad start in life, how much bad publicity will be caused by its death? - and yes, the last one matters, because bad publicity will affect the politicians possibilities to save ten more men the next day.)
As someone else said, the sociopath only cares about how that'll impact him (or her). The dispassionate assessment means he'll probably let it kill the 10 men and 'save a child', because he can monopolize on the emotional appeal of having done so.
IE, sociopaths and politicians will both take the easiest course to more power through manipulation and abuse of others.
Add to that, it seems the 'resume padders' are the ones doing most of the jumping.
Sure, they've got hands-on experience with such-and-such. Do you know what they don't have? Indepth experience. So all their knowledge is superficial. Case in point, I know of an admin with no more than 3 years of actual, hands-on low-level sysadmin experience. He is relatively good; however, he was just hired as the senior administrator at an internationally renowned organization.
Meanwhile, the only people staying in their positions are either brutally honest or have a stake in remaining at one place for long periods of time.
Honestly, the best thing you can do for your career right now (in IT) is lie. It's what all your managers and supervisors do, and it's the only way you're going to get your resume past the filters HR departments have in place which are probably already looking for 10+ years of experience with Windows Server 2008...
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Antarctica and certain parts of Siberia.
Not true. W7 was better than Vista for pretty much everything, even before RTM.
How much variance is there in the rate of decay? This is a bit disconcerting on it's face, at least as it relates to nuclear power. Would we have to be concerned about this directly impacting nuclear power facilities, in the event of a very large CME? Or at that point, would we be more concerned about cooking when we go outdoors?
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronomer. Should the school have let me use their time and have them provide me with support since I wanted to do that? Should they have had a teacher go out, retool for my desired skill set and taken time from their standard curriculum?
No, but if the school had a telescope, it seems reasonable to me that they'd let you use it on your own time at home, possibly with a teacher willing to grant you access to the school (depending on where you live in the hemisphere, etc.).
The last time I did an XP install on a machine running a 1.3Ghz P4 it took all of 35 minutes not including updates.
Those of us who actually work in IT - professionally - do not consider something 'installed from media' to be fully or properly installed. That usually doesn't even pass as acceptable with the shadetree home PC repair crowd. So how many hours did it take until the updates were completed? And after you installed all the applications which would also be used on said XP install, what was the total timer at?
Even if it took hours how would Linux be any better off? The last Linux install I did on a dual core with a gig of RAM took over 20 minutes without updates. Again, FUD.
So it took you 20 minutes to get a full install of Linux done, without updates. Issuing a single command on the console and then walking away, considering it done and up to date (call the total timer from 'bare metal' to 'fully installed desktop with apps, drivers, and updates' 25 minutes, maybe) is certainly preferable to having to rove around an isle of workstations clicking 'next' or 'update' or 'download' for the next several hours (minimum). Of course, there's going to be a great deal of waiting with the Windows approach, as well (unless you 'scale up' to enough Windows machines to have it finish its task before it needs your attention for the next step, of course).
I've seen that, too. They're malicious little fucks, particularly in blighted urban areas.
Have you owned an IBM Model M keyboard? :) Not only do they have easily replaceable (and thick, difficult to cut) cables, but it would require a significant amount of force to actually damage the keyboard itself. The hammer impacts would probably be noticed and stopped before the keyboard suffered any significant damage.
The school has the keyboards still - likely from older school computers, not donated equipment. They've lasted this long, I don't see why they wouldn't keep lasting.
Popular Linux distributions have been easier to install and get up to speed since at least Christmas 2003. I remember this because I brought my (still in the box new) IBM Thinkpad X31 laptop with me with a freshly burned Mandrake Linux 9 with me to the hospital to have something to do until my wife was discharged. The system was fully operational within about 20 minutes. I got to "I burned the installation media, drove the 5 blocks to the hospital, went to my wife's room, and got fully installed while she was using the restroom" in the time it would've taken me to install Office Professional and Photoshop, and probably had time to spare.
Remember 'installfests'? They've been around for at least 15 years now. Part of their appeal was that it could be done in a fraction of the time it took to even install Windows, nevermind the application stack. I believe a 'typical' installfest distro competition (eg. get to a working desktop with full driver support and load your distro's web page or the like) could be accomplished in about 30-40 minutes near the end of the millennium without much of a headache. There was also Stormix Storm Linux 2000 (release: Rain), a slickly packaged precursor to what we know as Debian today, which would get you to a fully working, functional desktop in something like 20 minutes - on old hardware.
Over the years, Windows has been easier/quicker to install and update for short periods of time, shortly after their initial releases. I believe this started with Windows 2000, but didn't really become markedly significant until Vista (they fixed the "keyboard does not work" issues and it graduated to "I only have VGA resolution and crude generic drivers for everything" at Vista). So there's been roughly a period of 2.5-3 years in the past 14 where Windows has been 'easier' and 'quicker'. But then they start releasing non-accumulative updates, patch sets to patch sets, and so on, and it's a fucking nightmare after a year or two.
I keep "old version of windows" installs around in VM just to avoid having to reinstall them for one reason or another, ever again. I've also got a pxe/tftp deployment system set up for Cent, Debian, and Ubuntu, should I need them.
With enough infrastructure - deployment systems like system center, AD GPO package deployment, etc. Windows can all be improved upon. But cost of the OS alone has not been the only reason why Windows has never gotten a significant preferential deployment in, for instance, public web services. It's still massively more time consuming for these simple things.
The crux of the issue is the useless 'package management' found on Windows. There is no such thing. You have been able to do full system updates over the Internet (or from CD) since around '98 in Linux on pretty much every distribution (via yum and apt-get). That's 14 years! I believe FreeBSD's ports and OpenBSD's pkgsrc have had similar things working (albeit with more overhead, since they're source based and the binaries aren't actually maintained regularly) since the early 1990s.
You're incorrect, of course. Possibly because you didn't read what I said, or because you don't pay attention to what you do yourself.
You failed to miss the 'update circle of life' I had to go through: it lasted roughly a day and a half of downloading, installing, rebooting, downloading, installing, rebooting - all the while making making the system functionally unusable due to the frequency of reboots. The alternatives would've been:
* disable automatic updates and run the system out of date/insecure
* just let Windows 'handle it' and have my system reboot on me 'in 10 minutes', randomly for the next several weeks (like when I'm on lunch or in a meeting).
* like the previous option, but disable the automatic installation while keeping the downloading. Routinely remember to 'install updates and shutdown' at the end of the night, saving all my open documents.
Do you do one of the above?
I've run/owned a small computer repair shop. I have donated many an old computer to people to use. The only problems I've had with Linux installs in years are:
* Debian's 'non-free' firmware, which often prevent installation if doing a network install
* esoteric, crap wifi, eg. anything from Broadcom
Usually, these problems are fixed by either installing a non-free package or pulling a ppa with an appropriate wireless driver, or something relatively quick and trivial. I don't have to wade through a jungle of links on crappy sites reading "where do I find driver xyz for my HP/Dell/USB/etc?" questions (which usually go unanswered).
I then also still have to install Office and whatever other applications I want. Not everything in Windows has 'package management' like what Ninite offers, and not everyone uses Windows almost exclusively to play games. Even for my home system, this usually means a dozen different things I've got to install to get it functional: wincdemu, vmware vclient, Office, XenCenter, and so on. Some of them can be installed concurrently these days (thank God), but often they'll still require/request a reboot.
Heaven help me if there are new versions or I need to reinstall or use the same system as the basis for an image. That, too, is an arduously long task compared to the Linux equivalent, even with the sparse and hard to find documentation on the Linux side of things.
(Speaking of which, even Valve does software installation on Windows better than Microsoft allows through via MSIs. There was a rumour of "Windows apt-get like functionality", using a different packaging system, some years ago (like, 5 at this point), with Microsoft's full support, but I don't believe anything ever came of it.)
On Debian or Ubuntu, I can run the basic install, do a single aptitude upgrade operation, and then install my selected packages in a single fell swoop (either using apt-get/itude or synaptic or whatever). If I know what the package names are, I can either simply copy/paste the ppas into the config from the vendor's site and/or just copy and paste the full list of packages.
Hell, even deployment of identical systems is easier (in terms of 'less time spent learning how to do it and less time spent maintaining it') with something like puppet than just one or two packagings for AD deployment. Yes, part of this argument is "CLI vs GUI". I mean, seriously: my fucking phone is easier and less time consuming to maintain and update with the latest and greatest ROMs than Windows desktop packages are.
What this story doesn't tell you is that Office 2012 is going to be cloud-centric. Remember, they're trying to compete with Google (which, oddly, does not support ODF format on Drive). They are pushing Office Online pretty hard, and even Exchange wants to act as an auxiliary source to Office 365 now.
Microsoft very much wants to control your data in the way that desktop apps and "personal computing" prohibit - and that Google is now able to do through Drive/Gmail/etc. They previously attempted doing so by locking down the file formats to maintain your continued purchases - the stick approach.
Now they're trying the carrot approach to control. They've been interested in this model for at least 14 years (I remember reading it in PC Magazine prior to Windows 2000 coming out). They want their products to be SaaS. They noticed early on what a fiscal bonanza SaaS was for antivirus companies, in contrast to Microsoft's constant need to upsell their latest and greatest candy dispenser. With the iStore, iTunes, Steam, Android Market/Play, et cetera, this has become all the more apparent - particularly in light of many previous customers migrating from things like in-house Exchange systems to Gmail.
Never underestimate the buying power of a free lunch.
Yeah, except most of the carriers are now offering what -was- a $600 phone just a year ago, as a "free" phone. See: Pantech Marauder from Verizon (a carrier notorious for overcharging).
Even the 'basic phones' in the US are more-or-less smartphones.
I mean, shit. You can get a Pantech Marauder with Android 4.0 from Verizon 'for free' with a 2 year contract. In these parts, the 'free phones' define the very bottom of what's available.Look at the specs on that thing - it's very similar in spec to something like an HTC Sensation or any other ~1 year old latest-greatest phone. Assuming getting root on the phone is possible (it is), there's really not any reason to get anything other than a smartphone (short of preference).
In an earlier post, I just said this:
A smartphone is one which provides capabilities for general computing, if needbe. That means apps and a way to install them, and "full control" (or close enough to it to get things done) of the device. The hardware needs to be flexible enough to move data on and off it. File management/browsing, editing various files, and so on. Printing is highly advantageous. Email and web access does not cut it.
I should note, I don't think many of the phones (including iPhone and Android) from major carriers are smartphones because their data plans are severely crippled, eg. wifi tether or using wifi itself will incur data usage. It all depends on the phone and the carrier. These phones very well might be 'smartphones', I don't know.
I don't know about that American idea. I don't personally consider the iPhone to be a smartphone unless it's been rooted.
A smartphone is one which provides capabilities for general computing, if needbe. That means apps and a way to install them, and "full control" (or close enough to it to get things done) of the device. File management/browsing, editing various files, and so on. Printing is highly advantageous. Email and web access does not cut it.
What was the reasoning you presented to your school to have them take a resource and divert it from its given purpose to install another OS besides it being "teh Linux!!!!onehundredeleven!!!"?
Should a bespoke reason be required if a student offers something that's free with "I want to do this" and it encourages learning concrete and timeless "job skills"?
I don't know how Windows would be under-featured, other than it being too bloated for the systems in question. I'd wager half the systems received did not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 7. With XP, each machine would've taken hours++ to get installed. Windows also does not offer a suitable security model for out-of-the-box multiuser use - it comes shipped with zero security from that regard. (Though, I'll admit, W7 is much better, as is the application support for 'not running as administrator' than it used to be. It's still a huge pain.)
Yes, but then they'll have to buy new keyboards a couple times a year or so, whereas those keyboards (not withstanding the kids stealing/breaking/etc. the key caps) will last until their grandchildren go to school. :)
That will run XP just fine
No, it won't. XP hasn't been able to run "fine" with less than 768MB since at least 2009. You'll sit through dogged waiting just to use a browser and it'll take a full coffee break to boot with 512MB. (A system with 512MB will run the initial release of Windows 7 better than XP.)
No, you couldn't. Or rather, this gentleman couldn't have, and it'd have been much more time consuming for anyone else to approach.
I installed Windows 7 on a new 128GB Crucial M4 SSD last night (in an i7 tower). Not latest-greatest, but by no means a slow machine! I suppose I should be more precise, in saying that I finished performing the task last night. I actually started several days ago. The process involved:
* The initial installation. This took maybe 30 minutes (as I wondered around the house getting other things done, waiting).
* Configuration of the machine. So far, it's pretty identical to a Linux install in what's done.
* First boot. I now spend an hour or two hunting for and downloading the appropriate drivers for things which aren't quiet working fully. This may or may not be similar with Linux, depending on hardware.
* Oops! Looks like there are updates to perform. Over the next two days, I ran updates, downloading everything that's been released as an update, rebooting, then re-downloading essentially the same fileset for the next update. This would've taken significantly longer if I hadn't been actively doing it. I think I went through over a dozen reboots, and obviously didn't use the computer for much during this time as a result.
* Antivirus, useful utilities, and applications - thankfully, there's Ninite, otherwise this would've taken much longer than it did, all told. Three or four hours, maybe? And I knew what I was doing.
* Oh, look. Now you've got a Windows machine with Administrator access - fine for me, but for an 8th grader? You're going to have to try to figure out how to get them to not break it.
I only spent $7 or so for the AV and had my Windows key already, and everything else was 'free software'. But between the bandwidth and monkey-like setup procedure, doing the same thing with a lab full of old Windows machines would have literally taken months. Many of the machines he was likely receiving wouldn't have even worked (presumably he had at least some with 512MB of RAM, and many with small drives). On those old systems, W7 took the better part of a full 'work day' to just get installed. If he used XP, just forget it.
It's kind of ironic that, given Apple's history, individuals are 'giving free computers to schools' with Linux installed right in Apple's own back yard.
Oakland is notorious for being a place for degenerates and crime, with activist politics and little future. Why wouldn't Apple take it upon itself to help?
You misunderstood me, and possibly basic English linguistic precedence.
I think this statement is confirmation that sexual harassment is part of "hacker culture". Whether or not a woman "sleeps around" does not have any affect on rape. That you would think her "sleeping around" in any way ameliorates accusations of rape is an indication of how insidious the exploitation of women is in this sub-culture.
I don't know what this hacker culture is, because I'm not a part of it. This is what I've observed in society at large.
Sleeping around has no effect on rape. However, it can have an effect on claims of rape. It's roughly 8% according to the FBI but as high as 41% in some locales (according to studies). The FBI figure is still 4 times as high as other crimes but it is also a direct accusation against a specific person, unlike most other crimes, and only includes forcible rapes (so actual numbers are likely to be higher). The fact that most rapes go unreported is a separate (and similarly important) issue, but that is more a social issue.
Fraudulent rape accusations are a legal matter - a life-ending matter for the accused, in many cases. This is over 1,000 lives ruined with no recourse over a "victim's" false accusation: if you have a job of any social significance or a position in a community, your life is effectively over. Unlike for a rape victim, where it's possible to remain secretive, someone accused of rape has no cultural or legal protection. With something like rape, it's the victim's word against your own: you're likely to have no way to defend yourself from a number of different accusations.
Put another way: unreported rapes are the fault of the victims. False rape accusations is a crime in and of itself with implications just as broad and damaging (if not moreso) as rape - and one which does not get prosecuted.
I can't say I'd have much of a problem if they sent Geek Squad there to do it.
We haven't mastered carbon lifeform longevity for intra-solar transit yet, have we? Good.
You kid yourself.
There are so many 'safe' networks which are Internet attached: power plants, -nuclear- power plants, top secret military data, and so on. If it's on the Internet, or even on a network, it can be hacked.
The question, in this case, would be "why would I want to?" aside from someone from Anonymous having the rover beam back something immature, like a green penis picture, what's the appeal?
Governments typically want to steal the results of other governments' scientific efforts, not do the work themselves. Accessing the rover falls firmly in the "doing the work yourself" category. Unless there's some unknown military function to the rover, controlling it remotely has no appeal to a government.
Wrong and incorrect.
You can be arrested for 'rape' for any of the following:
* sleeping with a woman who, the following day, has regrets
* sleeping with a women who felt she was 'coerced' despite her willingness to participate at the time
* sleeping with a women who had a drink
* impregnating a woman who later finds out she wants to blackmail large child support out of her unexpected pregnancy
* sleeping with your girlfriend and being found out by her parents, if you're over 18 and she's under $number (varies by state)
It still has meaning, but the meaning has been drastically, drastically reduced through things such as the above, and things like frequent bullshit claims of a man raping a woman. Rape is the go-to cry of morally unscrupulous women who sleep around; it means "he hurt me". "Rape" has also been diminished in many people's minds due to the fact that the 19-year-old kid who got caught pissing behind a dumpster by a police officer gets thrown into the same legal status bucket of "sex offenders" as the serial rapist.
The result of being accused of rape is still very much real and significant. The social stigma of "he was accused of rape" is somewhat less significant than it used to be due to how common it is.
I'm sorry, how is it educational to have someone parade around in front of a bunch of gay men if the idea is to try to teach him to respect women/treat women as he would like to be treated?
To play devil's advocate, last I checked, women are statistically more likely to be interested in men than women. He should be paraded around at eg. a Chip'n'Dales.
In all likelihood, these ass-grabbing assholes are probably just doing what they'd like women to do to them. In a sense, it's equal treatment, and possibly intended as an esteem. It's not respectful or right, but nobody said most geeks have a clue...
I've had quite a few (gay) men do those things.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to an event where bravado, being on top and accomplishing things before anyone else, and daring-do is the flavor of the day, in an industry which is primarily composed of entitled and antisocial loner males, why is it surprising that (attractive) females would receive an inordinate amount of (negative) attention when alcohol is involved, in Vegas?
I'm not saying it's right, but it's kinda like complaining that the cherry on the top of the ice cream isn't melting. A lot more has to change industry-wide before DEFCON changes; DEFCON would also need to probably not push such a debaucherous agenda, I imagine.
A high ranking politician has to be able to weigh those things dispassionately, calculate the loss to society as a whole from ten men (how old are they, how much do they benefit/cost the society?) versus one child (what can that child achieve, does it have a good or bad start in life, how much bad publicity will be caused by its death? - and yes, the last one matters, because bad publicity will affect the politicians possibilities to save ten more men the next day.)
As someone else said, the sociopath only cares about how that'll impact him (or her). The dispassionate assessment means he'll probably let it kill the 10 men and 'save a child', because he can monopolize on the emotional appeal of having done so.
IE, sociopaths and politicians will both take the easiest course to more power through manipulation and abuse of others.
Add to that, it seems the 'resume padders' are the ones doing most of the jumping.
Sure, they've got hands-on experience with such-and-such. Do you know what they don't have? Indepth experience. So all their knowledge is superficial. Case in point, I know of an admin with no more than 3 years of actual, hands-on low-level sysadmin experience. He is relatively good; however, he was just hired as the senior administrator at an internationally renowned organization.
Meanwhile, the only people staying in their positions are either brutally honest or have a stake in remaining at one place for long periods of time.
Honestly, the best thing you can do for your career right now (in IT) is lie. It's what all your managers and supervisors do, and it's the only way you're going to get your resume past the filters HR departments have in place which are probably already looking for 10+ years of experience with Windows Server 2008...