Is it just me, or is this guy living in 1998 going on about wintel?
I'm really not impressed with this kind of navel-gazing anymore. If you're just realizing now that there are nicer OSs out there than Windows, well, you're a few years late.
Despite what Forbes.com says, there is a wireless network (has been for like 4 years), the school provides web pages, the school does stream courses, network access is available in dormitory lounges (because there's a wireless network), the school has multimedia equipment for students to use, it provides courses in "emerging technologies" (what the fuck?), and it streams it's radio station (radiok.org).
The only thing it doesn't do is require you to have a computer. Who the hell put this list together anyway?
Because they're for developing embedded products, they're low power and solid state. There's a PCMCIA bus on the kit, so you could probably get a SCSI adapter and run a disk on that. Otherwise, you could use Compact Flash for storage. For that matter, you could use USB. There was some story about a guy who ripped a 5 Gb CF drive out of a Rio mp3 player or something the other day.
Anyway, the site specifies which card engines run Linux (no FreeBSD port that I know of). I've always wanted to give it a try, but I'm busy working on my house all the time.
You must only fly Qantis Airlines, or have they had a plane crash yet?
Seriously though, I'm sorry you've had trouble with your Jetta.
I've heard that German cars are over-engineered. I haven't had any problems with my Golf, but maybe I'm just lucky. Basically, my attitude is that with all the bells and doodads, something is bound to go wrong. I try not to be too demanding of car companies. As long as the little things are fixed under warranty, then they're doing their due-diligence.
My best mileage on a tank of fuel with my Golf TDI is 49.1 miles per gallon. That's for an entire tank. Nearly 700 miles.
I rarely get fewer than 43 miles per gallon. I can easily go 500 miles before thinking about filling up.
That and diesel is $0.25 less than gasoline right now, which makes me happy. On top of that, I have the option of using biodiesel, which is a domestic fuel. Admittedly, I've never used biodiesel, because you can only find it at farmer Co-ops out in the country.
I've been a skeptic of hybrids for a long time, and this only serves to reinforce my skepticism.
Diesel is a good near term solution for fuel efficiency. Volkswagen has been doing a great job of it, and I hope the availability of diesel engines will increase in the future in the US.
I started my own business too, and it enabled me to move way up the ladder in the past two years: from tech support to Webmaster. I had confidence in myself. I was willing to fall flat on my face and fail. I took a chance. Worked hard. Treated people right. Was honest. It paid off.
One tip: when you have many skills, and little experience, tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. If they want an ASP developer, don't tell them you can do ASP, PHP, Perl, and some JSP. Tell them you can do ASP.
Then, to add to that, tell them you work well with other people. You're not selfish about your turf. They're looking for a quality person who can do the job. Show them that you're a quality person that can do the job. Then, when you get the job, be a quality person, do the job.
but I wonder just how much cheaper it's going to be.
I know you're comparing to Corn Ethanol here, but as far as compared to gasoline, at least this stuff isn't just as expensive as the Saudis want it to be. That's what I like about it.
Indeed, most people are running 10% ethanol, but Ford has several engines, in the Taurus, Ranger, Explorer, maybe others, that can run on E85, which is 85% ethanol.
It's higher octane than Gasoline, so you get more power. It's a domestic fuel, so you get less upward pressure on the defense department budget. It's renewable, so we won't suddenly run out.
I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords.
Re:Gentoo docs are a good example
on
CSS for the LDP?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I agree. Gentoo's docs are good.
As a webmaster, I'd love to see more major sites embrace CSS sitewide. Getting browsers up to date on the standard is long overdue. If people start visiting CNN, for example, and having problems, they'll be more likely to update their browsers.
I'm still doing transitional, but the next iteration of my site will probably be in XHTML 1.0 strict -- if I can convince management to go that route.
I voted for Gibson too, but I was glad to see Dayton win.
Again, he said he doesn't favor it. I have to try to fight the stereotype that all Democrats always raise taxes. It simply isn't true.
This particular idea is along the lines of of pollution tax or a cigarette tax. Most economists would agree that if you can manage to make all externalities internal to the market, you'll see a reduction of things that are bad (pollution, cigarettes, spam) because of their costs. The fact is, you can't wave a magic wand and make externalitis internal to the market, and that's where gov't can be useful. Of course, things can go overboard.
Dayton is simply looking at this from an economist's perspective. I don't think it warrents the flying-off-the-handle tax-and-spend finger pointing that I see happening here.
Reading some of these posts, it seems a lot of people believe that politicians want to "get rich" by raising taxes.
I think you and I both agree that we should pay for what we're getting, hence run a balanced budget for a vast majority of the time. We'd think twice about some of the spending that takes place if we actually had to pay for it up front.
Ok, there are already some wingnut posts on this story, so I feel the need to set the record straight:
This is not just a case of RTFA, it's a case of RTFP (post). Fortunately the post quotes Dayton as saying Dayton says a tax is "just one of the tactics that should be considered, but I don't favor it at this time.".
It's just an idea folks. Obviously we all know it isn't workable, but at least these guys are thinking about the issue in general.
There probably isn't a legislative solution, and I think Mark Dayton is open minded enough to reach that conclusion and then say it publicly. Of course, I don't think it would get as much coverage as this story, because here's a Democrat trying to raise taxes! For shame!
It's widely warez'd, and I think that's part of the reason it's the industry standard. So many people get their start using photoshop on a pirated copy. If that weren't the case, I don't think Adobe would have the market share that they have now.
Being bastards like this will probably do them more harm than good.
And it would pan out, too, if MS didn't drop the ball.
If MS didn't drop the ball, we'd have offices full of non-IT people creating XML documents without realizing it. A mass of structured data would build and become grist for the mill that is the office geek.
Unless OpenOffice/StarOffice has some huge market share that I'm not aware of, I'm not expecting to see any remarkable perl scripts for parsing office docs soon.
I don't know why people always try to liken music sharing to property theft. It's just not the same thing. When you download a song, you're making a COPY. That's different from taking the property of another person. In the case of theft, the victim sacrifices the thing that you took.
The one argument that you could make is that the label loses the opportunity to sell you a CD when you download their music, but that isn't true either. I would say half of my music downloads (and I don't download very much) lead to CD purchases.
My point was that with these designs to change the way people use Usenet, because, as in the article, Usenet was designed by anti-social people, Microsoft will likely affect the overall look of Usenet to better serve their ends. I don't put that past them.
I don't know of any specific efforts by AOL related to Usenet in the past. Please tell me if there were such efforts.
From the rumors we've heard about Microsoft dumping tons of money into improving their search engine, and integrating it into the next version of Windows, I don't think the "Google has already done this" argument is going to slow them down.
While Linux is probably Microsoft's number one threat in the business world, I would guess sites like Google (privately held) are close to the top of the list on the home front. There's a lot of power to be had if you can funnel millions of internet users through your search engine or portal. This is what Microsoft is trying to do.
If they can clue the masses into Usenet in such a way that users think that they need Microsoft software in order to do Usenet, they'll control millions of people's access to Usenet, and to some degree Usenet itself.
My thoughts were, these are the kinds of songs that people download because they aren't going to buy a crappy CD just for one song. Too bad the RIAA doesn't get the drift.
I was wondering the same thing -- the article mentions one student who was known to have downloaded 5 songs, one by Radiohead, one by Dave Matthews, and a few others. What's stopping him from checking the subpoena to see what songs were supposedly pirated, and going out and buying some used CDs to cover his ass, or at least borrow some CDs from friends.
They couldn't prove that he hadn't "purchased a license to the music" when he downloaded the songs.
This whole thing is such a fucked up waste of time, really.
Re:Speaking of FUD
on
PHP Cookbook
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
So what are you saying is better than PHP? Running ASP with Javascript (or ECMAscript to be pedantic)?
If you can tell me that handling forms and working with databases can be done better with something other than PHP please do.
Also, please tell us what is a 'bigger' language, if PHP and *gasp* Perl are so little?
I wonder because I started in ASP with VBScript. I learned Perl and PHP and now I do PHP pretty much full time. If I want a script that is blantent CGI I use Perl. To me PHP and Perl completely blow away (not blow chunks) ASP with VBScript -- they are far better languages for web development. I can't say exactly why I think that, but one of the main things for me is the quality of the community surrounding the language. There's a lot more user support for PHP and Perl which to me is more helpful than the MSDN library will ever be. I also like a lot of punctuation -- but that's just a personal preference.
As far as switching back and forth between languages (JavaScript and PHP, for example), I never thought it was so silly. To me, doing things client-side is distinctly different from doing things server-side. It's no problem to have different languages for those two things. Especially when have to limit what you do on the client side because every browser is different. It seems to me like wasted effort to spend to much time on JavaScript stuff, because lo and behold browser X won't support what I'm trying to do. If I do it server side in PHP, I have an easier time writing portable code.
You certainly have a right to advocate your language of choice, and probably a right to bash others, but could you explain yourself a little better?
You can't just assume that WinXP would take no "interoperability time" and that it would take no retraining.
Windows XP is radically different from Windows 95. It's going to take people time to learn how to get around.
You're assuming they have Windows Servers, maybe they have Novell servers, maybe they telnet to a mainframe application. In the latter case configuration of Linux would be a snap.
If they think ahead well enough they'll mount/home and/usr from a file server. All of the machines will have the same software and the users will have their home folder, no matter what machine they get.
I've worked as a tech in a Windows environment, migrating users (including a finance department) from Windows NT 4/Windows 95 on Novell to Windows 2000 on Active Directory. It certainly didn't get done by itself, and I would have a hard time proving that Linux would take longer if done right.
Slashdot Mirror
I could barely get through that article because it was so horribly written.
"As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link."
WFT kind of sentence is that!?
Is it just me, or is this guy living in 1998 going on about wintel?
I'm really not impressed with this kind of navel-gazing anymore. If you're just realizing now that there are nicer OSs out there than Windows, well, you're a few years late.
I checked on the University of Minnesota (my school) and several items were incorrect.
Despite what Forbes.com says, there is a wireless network (has been for like 4 years), the school provides web pages, the school does stream courses, network access is available in dormitory lounges (because there's a wireless network), the school has multimedia equipment for students to use, it provides courses in "emerging technologies" (what the fuck?), and it streams it's radio station (radiok.org).
The only thing it doesn't do is require you to have a computer. Who the hell put this list together anyway?
Logic Zoom SDKs are low power development kits that support Sharp (ARM) and Renesas (SuperH) based microcontrollers.
Because they're for developing embedded products, they're low power and solid state. There's a PCMCIA bus on the kit, so you could probably get a SCSI adapter and run a disk on that. Otherwise, you could use Compact Flash for storage. For that matter, you could use USB. There was some story about a guy who ripped a 5 Gb CF drive out of a Rio mp3 player or something the other day.
Anyway, the site specifies which card engines run Linux (no FreeBSD port that I know of). I've always wanted to give it a try, but I'm busy working on my house all the time.
Good luck!
Disclaimer -- I work for this company.
You'll be able to get development kits for this platform that fit the mini-itx form factor.
One type kit.
disclaimer: I work for that company.
Dude, why didn't you just do this:
Because you know cars and software are exactly the same type of good.
Here's to every clear thinking techie who has warned management about the risks associated with proprietary software.
You must only fly Qantis Airlines, or have they had a plane crash yet?
Seriously though, I'm sorry you've had trouble with your Jetta.
I've heard that German cars are over-engineered. I haven't had any problems with my Golf, but maybe I'm just lucky. Basically, my attitude is that with all the bells and doodads, something is bound to go wrong. I try not to be too demanding of car companies. As long as the little things are fixed under warranty, then they're doing their due-diligence.
My best mileage on a tank of fuel with my Golf TDI is 49.1 miles per gallon. That's for an entire tank. Nearly 700 miles.
I rarely get fewer than 43 miles per gallon. I can easily go 500 miles before thinking about filling up.
That and diesel is $0.25 less than gasoline right now, which makes me happy. On top of that, I have the option of using biodiesel, which is a domestic fuel. Admittedly, I've never used biodiesel, because you can only find it at farmer Co-ops out in the country.
I've been a skeptic of hybrids for a long time, and this only serves to reinforce my skepticism.
Diesel is a good near term solution for fuel efficiency. Volkswagen has been doing a great job of it, and I hope the availability of diesel engines will increase in the future in the US.
How about we have a wireless phone that acts as a WiFi access point, providing network access to computers in its range through the service provider?
Wouldn't that be more useful, and require essentially the same hardware as this?
And yes, I know you can get a phone with a bluetooth adapter, but unfortunately most laptops now come with 802.11b but not bluetooth.
I started my own business too, and it enabled me to move way up the ladder in the past two years: from tech support to Webmaster. I had confidence in myself. I was willing to fall flat on my face and fail. I took a chance. Worked hard. Treated people right. Was honest. It paid off.
One tip: when you have many skills, and little experience, tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. If they want an ASP developer, don't tell them you can do ASP, PHP, Perl, and some JSP. Tell them you can do ASP.
Then, to add to that, tell them you work well with other people. You're not selfish about your turf. They're looking for a quality person who can do the job. Show them that you're a quality person that can do the job. Then, when you get the job, be a quality person, do the job.
but I wonder just how much cheaper it's going to be.
I know you're comparing to Corn Ethanol here, but as far as compared to gasoline, at least this stuff isn't just as expensive as the Saudis want it to be. That's what I like about it.
Indeed, most people are running 10% ethanol, but Ford has several engines, in the Taurus, Ranger, Explorer, maybe others, that can run on E85, which is 85% ethanol.
It's higher octane than Gasoline, so you get more power. It's a domestic fuel, so you get less upward pressure on the defense department budget. It's renewable, so we won't suddenly run out.
I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords.
I agree. Gentoo's docs are good.
As a webmaster, I'd love to see more major sites embrace CSS sitewide. Getting browsers up to date on the standard is long overdue. If people start visiting CNN, for example, and having problems, they'll be more likely to update their browsers.
I'm still doing transitional, but the next iteration of my site will probably be in XHTML 1.0 strict -- if I can convince management to go that route.
Non compliant browsers be damned!
I voted for Gibson too, but I was glad to see Dayton win.
Again, he said he doesn't favor it. I have to try to fight the stereotype that all Democrats always raise taxes. It simply isn't true.
This particular idea is along the lines of of pollution tax or a cigarette tax. Most economists would agree that if you can manage to make all externalities internal to the market, you'll see a reduction of things that are bad (pollution, cigarettes, spam) because of their costs. The fact is, you can't wave a magic wand and make externalitis internal to the market, and that's where gov't can be useful. Of course, things can go overboard.
Dayton is simply looking at this from an economist's perspective. I don't think it warrents the flying-off-the-handle tax-and-spend finger pointing that I see happening here.
Reading some of these posts, it seems a lot of people believe that politicians want to "get rich" by raising taxes.
I think you and I both agree that we should pay for what we're getting, hence run a balanced budget for a vast majority of the time. We'd think twice about some of the spending that takes place if we actually had to pay for it up front.
Ok, there are already some wingnut posts on this story, so I feel the need to set the record straight:
This is not just a case of RTFA, it's a case of RTFP (post). Fortunately the post quotes Dayton as saying Dayton says a tax is "just one of the tactics that should be considered, but I don't favor it at this time.".
It's just an idea folks. Obviously we all know it isn't workable, but at least these guys are thinking about the issue in general.
There probably isn't a legislative solution, and I think Mark Dayton is open minded enough to reach that conclusion and then say it publicly. Of course, I don't think it would get as much coverage as this story, because here's a Democrat trying to raise taxes! For shame!
It's widely warez'd, and I think that's part of the reason it's the industry standard. So many people get their start using photoshop on a pirated copy. If that weren't the case, I don't think Adobe would have the market share that they have now.
Being bastards like this will probably do them more harm than good.
And it would pan out, too, if MS didn't drop the ball.
If MS didn't drop the ball, we'd have offices full of non-IT people creating XML documents without realizing it. A mass of structured data would build and become grist for the mill that is the office geek.
Unless OpenOffice/StarOffice has some huge market share that I'm not aware of, I'm not expecting to see any remarkable perl scripts for parsing office docs soon.
I've got a Golf TDI and I love it. I'm about to run to the bookstore -- but I'm going to ride my bike. It gets even better mileage. :)
I don't know why people always try to liken music sharing to property theft. It's just not the same thing. When you download a song, you're making a COPY. That's different from taking the property of another person. In the case of theft, the victim sacrifices the thing that you took.
The one argument that you could make is that the label loses the opportunity to sell you a CD when you download their music, but that isn't true either. I would say half of my music downloads (and I don't download very much) lead to CD purchases.
Is that because AOL is such a popular ISP?
My point was that with these designs to change the way people use Usenet, because, as in the article, Usenet was designed by anti-social people, Microsoft will likely affect the overall look of Usenet to better serve their ends. I don't put that past them.
I don't know of any specific efforts by AOL related to Usenet in the past. Please tell me if there were such efforts.
From the rumors we've heard about Microsoft dumping tons of money into improving their search engine, and integrating it into the next version of Windows, I don't think the "Google has already done this" argument is going to slow them down.
While Linux is probably Microsoft's number one threat in the business world, I would guess sites like Google (privately held) are close to the top of the list on the home front. There's a lot of power to be had if you can funnel millions of internet users through your search engine or portal. This is what Microsoft is trying to do.
If they can clue the masses into Usenet in such a way that users think that they need Microsoft software in order to do Usenet, they'll control millions of people's access to Usenet, and to some degree Usenet itself.
My thoughts were, these are the kinds of songs that people download because they aren't going to buy a crappy CD just for one song. Too bad the RIAA doesn't get the drift.
I was wondering the same thing -- the article mentions one student who was known to have downloaded 5 songs, one by Radiohead, one by Dave Matthews, and a few others. What's stopping him from checking the subpoena to see what songs were supposedly pirated, and going out and buying some used CDs to cover his ass, or at least borrow some CDs from friends.
They couldn't prove that he hadn't "purchased a license to the music" when he downloaded the songs.
This whole thing is such a fucked up waste of time, really.
So what are you saying is better than PHP? Running ASP with Javascript (or ECMAscript to be pedantic)?
If you can tell me that handling forms and working with databases can be done better with something other than PHP please do.
Also, please tell us what is a 'bigger' language, if PHP and *gasp* Perl are so little?
I wonder because I started in ASP with VBScript. I learned Perl and PHP and now I do PHP pretty much full time. If I want a script that is blantent CGI I use Perl. To me PHP and Perl completely blow away (not blow chunks) ASP with VBScript -- they are far better languages for web development. I can't say exactly why I think that, but one of the main things for me is the quality of the community surrounding the language. There's a lot more user support for PHP and Perl which to me is more helpful than the MSDN library will ever be. I also like a lot of punctuation -- but that's just a personal preference.
As far as switching back and forth between languages (JavaScript and PHP, for example), I never thought it was so silly. To me, doing things client-side is distinctly different from doing things server-side. It's no problem to have different languages for those two things. Especially when have to limit what you do on the client side because every browser is different. It seems to me like wasted effort to spend to much time on JavaScript stuff, because lo and behold browser X won't support what I'm trying to do. If I do it server side in PHP, I have an easier time writing portable code.
You certainly have a right to advocate your language of choice, and probably a right to bash others, but could you explain yourself a little better?
I wonder how many were parked in the parking lot at this conference?
BTW, this is a legitmate argument, not flamebait.
Read more about it here.
You can't just assume that WinXP would take no "interoperability time" and that it would take no retraining.
Windows XP is radically different from Windows 95. It's going to take people time to learn how to get around.
You're assuming they have Windows Servers, maybe they have Novell servers, maybe they telnet to a mainframe application. In the latter case configuration of Linux would be a snap.
If they think ahead well enough they'll mount /home and /usr from a file server. All of the machines will have the same software and the users will have their home folder, no matter what machine they get.
I've worked as a tech in a Windows environment, migrating users (including a finance department) from Windows NT 4/Windows 95 on Novell to Windows 2000 on Active Directory. It certainly didn't get done by itself, and I would have a hard time proving that Linux would take longer if done right.
It's all about planning.