They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).
I'm pretty confident that my mother has never played a game on her computer. In fact, she's never installed any software without my assistance or the assistance of one of my sisters. All she cares about is that she has a computer that does what the computer lab machines can do so that she can finish her masters without having to live in the college library.
Would Linux work for my mother? Absolutely. She doesn't do anything that Linux doesn't handle well. Does her machine currently run Linux? Absolutely not! We've gone to great lengths to make sure that her computer looks and acts exactly like the XP machines that the college uses (minus the crapware). She has a support network of friends who know just enough about using Windows to help her through most things if she has a problem, and the college library has a computer support desk for harder problems. If she ran Linux, I would be her sole source of support (which would be okay, except that I live 1500+ miles away)
I've been impressed with every Borders store I've been in. Clean floors and well organized shelves.
Particularly, Borders does a better job than anyone else in organizing their technical books section in a way that actually makes sense. In a B&N, I have to look through the entire technical books section to make sure they don't have something where in Borders, if they've got it, it's where I would expect it to be. Borders is also far more likely to carry historically important books like K&R, Mythical Man Month, the Latex Companion, etc.
Every time I've been involved in replacing manual work with some sort of automation, nobody has ever lost a job. However, they do get less overtime pay now.
Is an ad homonym attack when you try to attack someone's statement by substituting words they said with different words, with different meanings, but the same pronunciation?
No, I believe what you've just described is a form of the straw man attack by using equivocation to enable the straw man attack.
An ad homonym attack is when you insult/attack the person making the argument rather than the argument itself.
According to the article's example, the company that owned the patent was paid a 5% stake in the start-up in exchange for letting the start-up use the patent.
Not a donation in the strictest sense of the word, but still, they're letting someone use a patent that they weren't going to pursue.
Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.
on
Gnome 2.18 Released
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· Score: 2
When I say "very functional", I mean that it reliably does what I need it to do.
It does crash, but not regularly. I fire it up in the morning, use it all day for email (and occasionally to put things on my calendar), and then shut it down normally before leaving work. Maybe 2 or 3 times a week I'll get a message that some process has gone away unexpectedly, but I've never lost any data because of it. It only costs me the time it takes to read the message, kill any remaining evolution framework, and then restart evolution.
Do I like evolution? No. Would I use evolution if I had a choice? No. Does it work well enough to use? Yes.
Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.
on
Gnome 2.18 Released
·
· Score: 1
Its Exchange functionality is non-functional
No, Evolution Exchange functionality is slow, but very functional.
Normally, I'd be the first to complain loudly about Evolution, but for all the things I dislike about Evolution, the reason I (have no choice but to) use it is because it's the only usably way to access my corporate Exchange email (no, I can't convince them to turn IMAP back on). It's slow, but functional. If it weren't for Evolution, I'd be forced to choose between the web interface or a second computer to run Windows+Outlook.
Knowing how to handle data structures, how low level network layers work, and a whole lot of theoritical math, doesn't help in any of these things.
This statement makes me weep inside.
The number one issue that governs how how well a team can work together is how well they communicate with each other. If everyone on the team has a basic understanding of the theory, then they share a common vernacular which is their most valuable asset when it comes to actually getting work done. Without a common vernacular, they will be required to invent their own which is a time consuming and error-prone endeavor which inevitably results in a late and bug-ridden product.
You don't need to have a CS degree, but if I have to go to the white board to explain stuff that could have been quickly and clearly communicated verbally to anyone who had studied the basics, I'm probably better off not giving you development assignments in the first place.
Usually, right before the quaterdeck gets wet, all the helpful users leave; the ones that remain and answer questions give you answers like "your hardware is rubbish, buy this, its what I have, it works" or "Go read the documentation."
Where are you seeing this happen now? Forums? IRC? Bugzilla? All of the above?
I get whatever support I need through the Forums and on Bugzilla. Bugzilla can be hit-or-miss, but I've always found the forums to be consistently helpful and non-abusive (granted, I don't think I've ever gone to the Forums for hardware support). I have not noticed any recent drop in quality.
I find that putting my portage tree on a ReiserFS partition speeds things up noticeably and reduces the amount of space required to store the tree. This works good enough for me.
If you wanted to, you could put your portage tree in a compressed file system (mounted over loop-back) and, presumably, get most of the benefits you've described without making any changes to the way portage works.
Your blog quote seems to imply that the Gentoo community is smaller than it once was. I don't believe this to be true (although I could, perhaps, be persuaded if you've got metrics you'd like to share).
It appears to me that the Gentoo community is larger and healthier now than ever before, but the composition of community members has changed. Most noticeably, we lost most of the users who have to be using whatever the most hyped distro is (these are the people who were constantly singing the praises of Gentoo in every possible slashdot article). Those of us who are left use Gentoo because, for some reason or another, it appeals to us even without the trendy newness.
I quit using All-in-one gestures some time ago when I got frustrated with the fact that it didn't allow me to use gestures until the page was loaded. It would never allow me to use gestures to close empty tabs (like when you open a link in another tab and the link turns out to be a download).
Mouse gestures doesn't have these limitations, but it's missing some features that I like from all-in-one.
Anyone know if all-in-one has fixed these limitations in recent releases?
Go into your slashdot homepage preferences and check 'Simple Design', 'Low Bandwidth', and 'No Icons'. Does wonders for removing clutter from Slashdot. Once you get used to it, it's painful to see Slashdot before you've logged in.
Your role as IT cubicle dweller is to recommend the right tool for the job within the constraints given
No, it's your job to apply your expertise to the business problem at hand. That means that if the constraints are artificial, misguided, or downright malicious, it is your job to point this out.
Slashdot Mirror
They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).
I'm pretty confident that my mother has never played a game on her computer. In fact, she's never installed any software without my assistance or the assistance of one of my sisters. All she cares about is that she has a computer that does what the computer lab machines can do so that she can finish her masters without having to live in the college library.
Would Linux work for my mother? Absolutely. She doesn't do anything that Linux doesn't handle well. Does her machine currently run Linux? Absolutely not! We've gone to great lengths to make sure that her computer looks and acts exactly like the XP machines that the college uses (minus the crapware). She has a support network of friends who know just enough about using Windows to help her through most things if she has a problem, and the college library has a computer support desk for harder problems. If she ran Linux, I would be her sole source of support (which would be okay, except that I live 1500+ miles away)
I've been impressed with every Borders store I've been in. Clean floors and well organized shelves.
Particularly, Borders does a better job than anyone else in organizing their technical books section in a way that actually makes sense. In a B&N, I have to look through the entire technical books section to make sure they don't have something where in Borders, if they've got it, it's where I would expect it to be. Borders is also far more likely to carry historically important books like K&R, Mythical Man Month, the Latex Companion, etc.
I've always suspected that Border's biggest margins are on their coffee and muffins.
Books are just a way to get you into the store.
Hillary was never "watching from the sidelines".
She's as "old regime" as her husband is.
Every time I've been involved in replacing manual work with some sort of automation,
nobody has ever lost a job. However, they do get less overtime pay now.
Ah. For some reason I thought the PS2 had 100% backwards compatibility.
I guess I've been lucky with all my PS1 games.
What? does the PS2 not play PS1 games anymore? When did that happen?
That juicy bit of trivia came from Philosophy 102: General Logic/Introduction to Critical Thinking
Actually one of my more fondly remember courses from undergrad.
Is an ad homonym attack when you try to attack someone's statement by substituting words they said with different words, with different meanings, but the same pronunciation?
No, I believe what you've just described is a form of the straw man attack by using equivocation to enable the straw man attack.
An ad homonym attack is when you insult/attack the person making the argument rather than the argument itself.
According to the article's example, the company that owned the patent was paid a 5% stake in the start-up in exchange for letting the start-up use the patent.
Not a donation in the strictest sense of the word, but still, they're letting someone use a patent that they weren't going to pursue.
When I say "very functional", I mean that it reliably does what I need it to do.
It does crash, but not regularly. I fire it up in the morning, use it all day for email (and occasionally to put things on my calendar), and then shut it down normally before leaving work. Maybe 2 or 3 times a week I'll get a message that some process has gone away unexpectedly, but I've never lost any data because of it. It only costs me the time it takes to read the message, kill any remaining evolution framework, and then restart evolution.
Do I like evolution? No.
Would I use evolution if I had a choice? No.
Does it work well enough to use? Yes.
Its Exchange functionality is non-functional
No, Evolution Exchange functionality is slow, but very functional.
Normally, I'd be the first to complain loudly about Evolution, but for all the things I dislike about Evolution, the reason I (have no choice but to) use it is because it's the only usably way to access my corporate Exchange email (no, I can't convince them to turn IMAP back on). It's slow, but functional. If it weren't for Evolution, I'd be forced to choose between the web interface or a second computer to run Windows+Outlook.
If you don't mind used hardware, Tiger Direct will gladly sell you refurbished computers for under $200 with no OS installed.
Knowing how to handle data structures, how low level network layers work, and a whole lot of theoritical math, doesn't help in any of these things.
This statement makes me weep inside.
The number one issue that governs how how well a team can work together is how well they communicate with each other. If everyone on the team has a basic understanding of the theory, then they share a common vernacular which is their most valuable asset when it comes to actually getting work done. Without a common vernacular, they will be required to invent their own which is a time consuming and error-prone endeavor which inevitably results in a late and bug-ridden product.
You don't need to have a CS degree, but if I have to go to the white board to explain stuff that could have been quickly and clearly communicated verbally to anyone who had studied the basics, I'm probably better off not giving you development assignments in the first place.
Usually, right before the quaterdeck gets wet, all the helpful users leave; the ones that remain and answer questions give you answers like "your hardware is rubbish, buy this, its what I have, it works" or "Go read the documentation."
Where are you seeing this happen now? Forums? IRC? Bugzilla? All of the above?
I get whatever support I need through the Forums and on Bugzilla. Bugzilla can be hit-or-miss, but I've always found the forums to be consistently helpful and non-abusive (granted, I don't think I've ever gone to the Forums for hardware support). I have not noticed any recent drop in quality.
If there's quite a bit of prior art, wouldn't that make it unpatentable?
Or am I missing something about the purpose of prior art in the patent process?
I find that putting my portage tree on a ReiserFS partition speeds things up noticeably and reduces the amount of space required to store the tree. This works good enough for me.
If you wanted to, you could put your portage tree in a compressed file system (mounted over loop-back) and, presumably, get most of the benefits you've described without making any changes to the way portage works.
Give it a shot. Let us know how it works.
Your blog quote seems to imply that the Gentoo community is smaller than it once was. I don't believe this to be true (although I could, perhaps, be persuaded if you've got metrics you'd like to share).
It appears to me that the Gentoo community is larger and healthier now than ever before, but the composition of community members has changed. Most noticeably, we lost most of the users who have to be using whatever the most hyped distro is (these are the people who were constantly singing the praises of Gentoo in every possible slashdot article). Those of us who are left use Gentoo because, for some reason or another, it appeals to us even without the trendy newness.
Out of curiosity, which visible organizations have dropped Ubuntu?
I wish Microsoft would pump more money into SCO.
That would instantly settle all the SCO-is-a-MS-puppet debates.
And really, it wouldn't change the outcome one bit.
I quit using All-in-one gestures some time ago when I got frustrated with the fact that it didn't allow me to use gestures until the page was loaded. It would never allow me to use gestures to close empty tabs (like when you open a link in another tab and the link turns out to be a download).
Mouse gestures doesn't have these limitations, but it's missing some features that I like from all-in-one.
Anyone know if all-in-one has fixed these limitations in recent releases?
Go into your slashdot homepage preferences and check 'Simple Design', 'Low Bandwidth', and 'No Icons'. Does wonders for removing clutter from Slashdot. Once you get used to it, it's painful to see Slashdot before you've logged in.
Your experience may differ, but I've found that developers of open source
software are very receptive of constructive criticism.
Are you sure you're not confusing constructive criticism with verbal abuse?
Your role as IT cubicle dweller is to recommend the right tool for the job within the constraints given
No, it's your job to apply your expertise to the business problem at hand. That means that if the constraints are artificial, misguided, or downright malicious, it is your job to point this out.
TIFF supports JPEG-style compression (don't remember if that was in the original standard or if it was added later).
Actually, TIFF supports multiple compression methods.