Why do people care about memory usage so much? It made sense back when we had 128K of RAM to play with, but now? People act like they have to pay per the bit stored in memory.
If that happens, then I cancel. Very simple. I like Sirius now because there are no commercials in the music, but if that changed, I'd stop subscribing; I might as well go back to FM for free or listen to more CDs.
And I'm sure I'm not alone, and I'm sure Sirius and XM both realize the risks they'd run if they did start doing commercials in the music.
I'm sure people will jump on me about how I'll be out the cost of the hardware - well, I have three Sirius tuners for a total of about $250. If they start doing commercials in a couple years, at that point I'll feel like I've gotten $250 worth of use out of them and won't mind "losing" that money. So the only real risk is if they start doing commercials in the next year or two, which I'm sure won't happen.
I had exactly the opposite experience: ReiserFS did something VERY scary for me, while ext2/3 have always been fine.
When I was using ReiserFS on my laptop I had a file get, for lack of a better term, "stuck". I couldn't edit it, couldn't delete it, basically, I couldn't touch it, even as root. It was not marked immutable, or anything like that - I tried everything I could think of, I asked around to other Linux users, etc. Eventually, I had to format the drive to "unstick" that file. To me, that's a pretty scary development in a file system.
He does a great lecture on information presentation. Definitely worth seeing, especially if you can get your employer to pay for it like I did.
Unfortunately, my employer has a "Standard PowerPoint Template That We Must Use For Official Presentations" that pretty much destroys everything Tufte taught us in favor of a standard look for presentations that... meh, I'm ranting.
They still made money. That's what the conferences are for. Each school splits the TV network contract. Further, the schools are paid to be in the bowl games.
It can, or it can be two separate desktops. Very cool.
I've been playing with xdmx lately, which does a similar thing but with two computers (I have an old P-133 laptop). I have it working, except that KDE 3.5 has issues with it (text and icons disappear), Firefox crashes for some reason, and it's a bit slower on the "primary" system than X alone is. But the advantages of the multi-screen are quite obvious, no matter whether you expand one desktop to two screens or have separate desktops, and I'd use it all the time if the software worked reliably.
One: Huh? I used the phrase "potential problems", not "always going to beat you over the head problems."
Two: Actually, see above. Same answer.
The issue we encountered is the type of problem that CAN arise without source code. The manufacturer may be willing to fix it. But if they aren't (or can't, if they're out of business or something), the source code would allow us to get the code fixed. Without source, we're entirely dependent upon the company fixing this problem for us; if they choose not to, then the software isn't going to help us as much as we'd hoped.
Three: Yes, they do. Unfortunately, the software, as it currently stands, isn't scratching the itch we paid for it to scratch. I ended up writing code in SAS that would do a similar job, but it doesn't have the features and flexibility of this package (it could, but I don't have the time to write it).
I'm not anti-commercial software. I'm not anti-companies making money. I'm just pointing out that the potential problems of closed-source software are becoming more apparent to the general public - and in the end, that can only be a good thing, even if it just forces the closed-source companies to improve their product.
I'm not sure if she has contacted the author or not. I think she was going to, but now that I think about it, she might've forgotten (we're incredibly busy, and there are much bigger issues we tackle every day).
I think I'll shoot them an email when I get back to work Tuesday; it can't hurt to try. It's a small company, so they may be very responsive.
I ran into a situation at work recently where we (note, we're statisticians, not programmers) discovered firsthand the value of having the source code to a piece of software. A proprietary program we purchased was calculating a value incorrectly because it wasn't taking a certain factor into account that most people don't need, and there was no way to get it to do that. My boss' comment: "And we can't fix it because we don't have the code."
Her point was right on target - if we had the code, we could've easily contracted out fixing the program; it probably would've taken a competent programmer a couple hours to put the fix in and test it. But instead, we're stuck with a software package that's useless for many of the situations we wanted it for, unless the developer decides we're important enough to fix the software.
When this happened, I realized that the general public is becoming much more aware of the potential problems with closed-source software. For now it might just matter mostly to programmers, but sooner or later, it'll matter to a lot more people, too.
It's not horrible for a business to make money, Slashthink notwithstanding.
But I have no idea how your business plans to do that if they don't want to support the very technology they sell. The only thing I can figure is that your company makes these for some internal purpose and just sells them as a "side business", not a primary income. Which makes them an even less attractive purchase.
Actually, I have sigs turned off and didn't see it until you posted it. So, uh, nice way to help him out there. (The people that post sigs in their regular comment text should be slapped, however. If I wanted to see sigs I'd have them turned on.)
I saw one at BWI airport a couple weeks ago with "Security" emblazoned on the sides.
I hypothesized that security guards either (a) need that to get around, or (b) are planning to use that to chase people that violate security. Neither theory made me feel good.
Years? They were introduced in 2005, and I missed it. Sorry. I wasn't looking to buy a car in 2005 and missed the fact that the Accord was now available in hybrid version. So *maybe* the Accord is big enough, but it looks like a mid-size car to me, and I've even had problems with some of those, like the Dodge Stratus and the Mitsubishi Galant.
*shrug* What can I say? They don't have enough legroom for me. I have to be able to stretch my legs out or my knees start to hurt after a while.
I can drive compact cars, but only 2-door varieties - I never had a problem with my '86 Escort 2-door, but my friend's 4-door version of the same car just didn't have enough room for me.
I missed the air raid sirens and duck and cover drills, but I do remember the "us vs. them" mentality when I was in elementary school in the 80s. For example, I remember a science teacher saying something along the lines of, "They got to space first, but we got to the moon first!" (As if it really matters...but, during the cold war, it DID.)
That's right - for some reason, I'd forgotten that the AG was elected separately. Thanks.
Keep in mind it's not height alone that's the problem; it's the relative length of your legs - some 6' people have slightly shorter legs than I do, which makes a difference.
You've had 6'2" people in your Civic before...but maybe they were just polite enough not to complain? I can deal with small cars for a short drive (I'm 6'), but for any distance, forget it - it's worse than airline seating. I've ridden in the back seat of a Civic - not bad, but not great.
Finally, why are hybrids thought to be small? Because up until recently they all were. Let's see...first we got the Insight, Prius, and Civic. All small cars.
Then we got the Ford Escape and similar SUV hybrids....well, I'm not buying another Ford, for one, and two, I don't want an SUV. I remember reading about a few larger cars that are coming with hybrid drivetrains now (albeit geared more toward improving performance than efficiency), but they're mostly luxury cars.
I have nothing against, say, an Impala hybrid car (I have a 2004 Impala now) - but that sort of thing just doesn't exist yet. I'm sure it will someday, but right now the choices just aren't there.
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CowboyNeal?
Why do people care about memory usage so much? It made sense back when we had 128K of RAM to play with, but now? People act like they have to pay per the bit stored in memory.
If that happens, then I cancel. Very simple. I like Sirius now because there are no commercials in the music, but if that changed, I'd stop subscribing; I might as well go back to FM for free or listen to more CDs.
And I'm sure I'm not alone, and I'm sure Sirius and XM both realize the risks they'd run if they did start doing commercials in the music.
I'm sure people will jump on me about how I'll be out the cost of the hardware - well, I have three Sirius tuners for a total of about $250. If they start doing commercials in a couple years, at that point I'll feel like I've gotten $250 worth of use out of them and won't mind "losing" that money. So the only real risk is if they start doing commercials in the next year or two, which I'm sure won't happen.
You expect us to argue with facts? That's crazy! :-)
:-)
That reminds me: We haven't had a good hard disc brand anecdote war here lately... It's about time to stir another one up!
I had exactly the opposite experience: ReiserFS did something VERY scary for me, while ext2/3 have always been fine.
When I was using ReiserFS on my laptop I had a file get, for lack of a better term, "stuck". I couldn't edit it, couldn't delete it, basically, I couldn't touch it, even as root. It was not marked immutable, or anything like that - I tried everything I could think of, I asked around to other Linux users, etc. Eventually, I had to format the drive to "unstick" that file. To me, that's a pretty scary development in a file system.
Edward Tufte is the person in question.
He does a great lecture on information presentation. Definitely worth seeing, especially if you can get your employer to pay for it like I did.
Unfortunately, my employer has a "Standard PowerPoint Template That We Must Use For Official Presentations" that pretty much destroys everything Tufte taught us in favor of a standard look for presentations that... meh, I'm ranting.
They still made money. That's what the conferences are for. Each school splits the TV network contract. Further, the schools are paid to be in the bowl games.
It can, or it can be two separate desktops. Very cool.
I've been playing with xdmx lately, which does a similar thing but with two computers (I have an old P-133 laptop). I have it working, except that KDE 3.5 has issues with it (text and icons disappear), Firefox crashes for some reason, and it's a bit slower on the "primary" system than X alone is. But the advantages of the multi-screen are quite obvious, no matter whether you expand one desktop to two screens or have separate desktops, and I'd use it all the time if the software worked reliably.
I didn't like TekWar either.
One: Huh? I used the phrase "potential problems", not "always going to beat you over the head problems."
Two: Actually, see above. Same answer.
The issue we encountered is the type of problem that CAN arise without source code. The manufacturer may be willing to fix it. But if they aren't (or can't, if they're out of business or something), the source code would allow us to get the code fixed. Without source, we're entirely dependent upon the company fixing this problem for us; if they choose not to, then the software isn't going to help us as much as we'd hoped.
Three: Yes, they do. Unfortunately, the software, as it currently stands, isn't scratching the itch we paid for it to scratch. I ended up writing code in SAS that would do a similar job, but it doesn't have the features and flexibility of this package (it could, but I don't have the time to write it).
I'm not anti-commercial software. I'm not anti-companies making money. I'm just pointing out that the potential problems of closed-source software are becoming more apparent to the general public - and in the end, that can only be a good thing, even if it just forces the closed-source companies to improve their product.
I'm not sure if she has contacted the author or not. I think she was going to, but now that I think about it, she might've forgotten (we're incredibly busy, and there are much bigger issues we tackle every day).
I think I'll shoot them an email when I get back to work Tuesday; it can't hurt to try. It's a small company, so they may be very responsive.
Ahhh...sorry. I thought you were with the company that was selling them.
I ran into a situation at work recently where we (note, we're statisticians, not programmers) discovered firsthand the value of having the source code to a piece of software. A proprietary program we purchased was calculating a value incorrectly because it wasn't taking a certain factor into account that most people don't need, and there was no way to get it to do that. My boss' comment: "And we can't fix it because we don't have the code."
Her point was right on target - if we had the code, we could've easily contracted out fixing the program; it probably would've taken a competent programmer a couple hours to put the fix in and test it. But instead, we're stuck with a software package that's useless for many of the situations we wanted it for, unless the developer decides we're important enough to fix the software.
When this happened, I realized that the general public is becoming much more aware of the potential problems with closed-source software. For now it might just matter mostly to programmers, but sooner or later, it'll matter to a lot more people, too.
It's not horrible for a business to make money, Slashthink notwithstanding.
But I have no idea how your business plans to do that if they don't want to support the very technology they sell. The only thing I can figure is that your company makes these for some internal purpose and just sells them as a "side business", not a primary income. Which makes them an even less attractive purchase.
So, your company is not at all interested in supporting Linux. Then I'm not even going to bother looking at your website.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Distrowatch used to have a great comment about Slackware:
:)
"If you want to know how Linux works, ask a Slackware user."
Actually, I have sigs turned off and didn't see it until you posted it. So, uh, nice way to help him out there. (The people that post sigs in their regular comment text should be slapped, however. If I wanted to see sigs I'd have them turned on.)
I saw one at BWI airport a couple weeks ago with "Security" emblazoned on the sides.
I hypothesized that security guards either (a) need that to get around, or (b) are planning to use that to chase people that violate security. Neither theory made me feel good.
You're willing to wait 22 years for a tape to automatically self-destruct in the name of security? :)
Because it'll be a long time before 1970 rolls around again? ;)
Years? They were introduced in 2005, and I missed it. Sorry. I wasn't looking to buy a car in 2005 and missed the fact that the Accord was now available in hybrid version. So *maybe* the Accord is big enough, but it looks like a mid-size car to me, and I've even had problems with some of those, like the Dodge Stratus and the Mitsubishi Galant.
Oh, and don't put words in my mouth. I made no comments about Accords. I haven't ridden in one, so I don't know.
*shrug* What can I say? They don't have enough legroom for me. I have to be able to stretch my legs out or my knees start to hurt after a while.
I can drive compact cars, but only 2-door varieties - I never had a problem with my '86 Escort 2-door, but my friend's 4-door version of the same car just didn't have enough room for me.
I missed the air raid sirens and duck and cover drills, but I do remember the "us vs. them" mentality when I was in elementary school in the 80s. For example, I remember a science teacher saying something along the lines of, "They got to space first, but we got to the moon first!" (As if it really matters...but, during the cold war, it DID.)
That's right - for some reason, I'd forgotten that the AG was elected separately. Thanks.
Keep in mind it's not height alone that's the problem; it's the relative length of your legs - some 6' people have slightly shorter legs than I do, which makes a difference.
You've had 6'2" people in your Civic before...but maybe they were just polite enough not to complain? I can deal with small cars for a short drive (I'm 6'), but for any distance, forget it - it's worse than airline seating. I've ridden in the back seat of a Civic - not bad, but not great.
Finally, why are hybrids thought to be small? Because up until recently they all were. Let's see...first we got the Insight, Prius, and Civic. All small cars.
Then we got the Ford Escape and similar SUV hybrids....well, I'm not buying another Ford, for one, and two, I don't want an SUV. I remember reading about a few larger cars that are coming with hybrid drivetrains now (albeit geared more toward improving performance than efficiency), but they're mostly luxury cars.
I have nothing against, say, an Impala hybrid car (I have a 2004 Impala now) - but that sort of thing just doesn't exist yet. I'm sure it will someday, but right now the choices just aren't there.