Don't let me discourage you from trying Linux again. By all means, go for it. The only windoze box I still have in the house is my wife's W2K Dell 1GHz. She doesn't like change which means she's going to stick with Windoze until she has to switch to either a different version of windoze or Linux. I'm pushing Linux.
Even though I've been using Linux for over eight years (and Unix boxes before that), I still have a hard time with the bit twiddlers who seem to expect everyone to be at their level of expertise and wanting to delve into the details as much as they do. My whole point on my original point was simply that not everyone has that level of interest and there's nothing wrong with that.
I just had three really clean installs of Fedora 6. From what I've heard, Ubuntu should be equally clean. If something doesn't work, Google is your friend. Besides the Ubuntu web site, you might also find Linuxquestions.org to be a decent resource. Linspire is also a good starter distro even though the same bit twiddlers deride it because it contains quite a bit of proprietary code to achieve compatibility. If you continue with the Linspire route, do some research as to how to secure your system. Some of Linspire's compatibility and ease of use comes at the price of bypassing some of the things that make Linux so secure.
In my college days (late '70s) I had a collapsed lifter on my car (1969 Plymouth GTX, 440 cu. in. V8). I was able to strip the top of the engine down to where I could get to the lifters, pop the old lifters, hone the lifter bores, put in the new lifters and re-assemble it. It still ran for as long as I needed it so I must have gotten it right. I agree that I couldn't do that now. On the other hand, I have yet to run into a car where I couldn't change the oil. Do I? Nah, it's easier to pay somebody at Grease Monkey to do it for me. That's what I was getting at.
To me, hardcore Linux users go way beyond this in what they expect of "normal" users. It's like they want people to rebuild their engine for racing (Gentoo's compile everything?), tune the suspension, maybe build in a roll cage, etc. To most people, a computer is just a way to get something done like ballance their checkbook, play a game, surf the 'net, etc. They really don't care if a browser built for their specific hardware loads and runs 3% faster than the stock, i386 browser that ships with a distro like Red Hat. Likewise, they want to be able to just click on "install plug-in" to get the plug-ins they need. This seems to be heresey to some people.
I didn't say that the computer was an appliance; I said that's what people want it to be. Turn it on; compute; turn it off. Turn it on; play a game; turn it off. Why do you think game consoles are so popular? None of the hassles of maintaining a computer. Turn it on; play a game; turn it off. The console may be a computer internally but it doesn't expose any of its internals unless you work really hard at cracking it.
Likewise, how many people own power tools? It's amazing to me how many people won't even use manual tools to do things like unclog a drain or tighten a handle. It's not that it's that hard; people just dont want to be bothered and they es[pecially don't want to be bothered with learning how to do something. Also, for newer power tools, have you noticed how much idiot proofing goes into them? How much the instructions are about limiting liability? Same idea so your power tool analogy is spot on. Talk to the staff at an emergency room to find out how many people do really stupid things with power tools (and then blame the tool or its manufacturer for allowing them to get hurt).
Unfortunately, a game console is about as close as we'll get to an idiot proof computer so we'll have to continue to put up with bot-nets and spam zombies.
A guy who used to work for me described it this way: people want a computing appliance. That is, they want their computer to work like their toaster or, at worst, their microwave oven. They really don't know nor do they care what goes on "inside." They just want to play a game, toast a bagle or nuke some left-overs.
Every interest has a small subset of people who find the internals fascinating. I usually pick on the example of cars. Most people really don't care about how all of the internals work. They just want to put the key in the ignition, turn it on, and drive. Is it within most people's ability to do a significant amount of their own maintenance? Yes. Do they? No. They have other things to do with their time. The Linux community needs to understand this. Unfortunately, all too many Linux folks would rather engage in a protracted flae-war over some nuanced difference between KDE and Gnome, Red Hat and SuSE and Gentoo and Ubuntu and,.. ad infinitum, Debian and any commercial distribution, etc.
Oh yeah, I've been using Linux since Red Hat 5.0 in 1998. Its great. I just installed Fedora Core 6 on three different systems (including one laptop) and the installs all went flawlessly. I only had to resort to the command line for some "under the hood" changes that a typical user wouldn't do. Its getting there. It would help if there wasn't so much noise about how terrible such a default installation is from all the bit twiddlers.
The short answer is Johnson and McNamara let politcal considerations override the military. Whether the war could have been "won" by the U.S. and South Vietnam is an open question. That what was done "lost" the war is pretty clear.
The biggest change in my attitude was I really blame Johnson and McNamara that it went on for a long time with no hope of winning. I had some ideas about how bad the decision process was but didn't realize the extent to which Johnson and McNamara coerced the Joint Chiefs into being "yes men" when what was needed was clear analysis. In any hierarchical organization, good information should go up and then, hopefully, good decisions can be made based on that information. When the message to those reporting is "don't rock the boat", lousy decisions get made. The organization can be as small as the last company I worked at (the same, "don't tell me it won't work; it has to work" approach to planning) or as big as the U.S. government.
All three are good books; even McNamara's. I disagreed with his rationale for why things were done but it was still interesting to read his perspective.
Sometimes, that's exactly what you need to do. Especially when you aren't content with letting sound-bites define your opinions and the subject is complicated. A while ago, I bought three books:
I wanted a relatively unbiased view and then arguments from both sides. It's a good method if you have the time and a willingness to actually understand the issues.
...but Debian likes to avoid breaking rules where possible.
Reading between the lines alot (always dangerous). It sounds like you're saying that Iceweasel is more a negotiating ploy than anything else. That is, Debian is saying either give us real permission (not just tacit) to fix things or we'll fork it for our distribution so we legally can. If this is the case, I think they'd get a lot more support from people like me if they explained this. As originally reported, this sounded more like some sort of Debian elitist thing about not liking a trademarked logo.
2. Debian's policy is to stick with a version of a given package for a release and backport security and stability fixes only. Mozilla.com would rather have everyone running the latest version at all times.
I find it hard to believe that this is a problem. Red Hat has been using the same policy for quite some time:
Yeah, FC4 just went unsupported but Firefox 1.5 was out for quite a while while FC4 was supported. Security and stability fixes got backported (note that this is 1.0.8-1.1). Same for RHEL 4.3 but Firefox was upgraded to 1.5 as of RHEL 4.4 or I'd have two boxes that were still running a prior release of Firefox. I also expect both Fedora and RHEL to stick with Firefox 1.5 for quite a while after Firefox 2.0 is released.
(2) Message-passing. Academically it's embodied in the "pi calculus". In web terms it's embodied in the W3C "choreography" working draft. In practical terms it's embodied in Microsoft's Biztalk and in Ericcson's Erlang language and in Microsoft's new Robotics SDK. It's also a little reminiscent of "tuple-space" operating systems. The idea is that threads communicate by sending messages to each other. It's still possible to deadlock (e.g. if one thread waits for a message that will never come) but these errors seem more rare in practice. Also it's easier to analyse for this kind of problem at compile-time than it is with synchronization.
This was the standard design paradigm where I worked in the 1980s (TRW Defense Systems Group). About the only difference is we were doing it with VAX VMS or UNIX processes communicating via IPC (VMS had it, it just took a little more work to implement). Hint #1: the trick to avoinding the deadlock you described is to not allow state coupling between threads. Hint #2: although rare, the deadlocks do occur and Murphy will make sure that they occur at the least opportune time.
[Gartner analyst] Veccio stated "Why would you ever code an app from scratch again? Why would you need to?"
How about because what's needed doesn't exist? This bozo sounds like the head of the patent office in 19th century who recommended that the office be closed because, "...everything that can be invented, has been invented." What an idiot.
As the cost of computing drops, there will always be new problems that could not be economically attacked until the cost of the computation became cheap enough. These problems will not have a canned solution and someone will have to go off and build the application from scratch. As long as computing continues to get cheaper, there will always be new problems to be solved.
Microsoft is very careful not to clarify who's advantage their talking about. The program is *VERY* advantageous to Microsoft. In that sense, it is even a "genuine" advantage.
Have you ever tried to get private/individual health insurance?
Piece of cake in Colorado and the rates aren't bad if you go with a high ($5,000) deductible. I should add that my wife and I both hit 50 this year and we each have a pre-existing condition (high cholesterol for me, asthma for her). Not sure what you're whining about.
I have to agree but a bunch of the other replies don't seem to like your idea.
I do backups to a SUN logo HP C1557A (6 x 12GB tape changer) that I picked up used for about $100. Load the tapes each Monday and let amanda take care of backing up three Linux boxes plus my wife's Windoze box for the rest of the week. Works for me but you'll note that only one box runs Windoze and I'm working on my wife to try Linux so I don't have to deal with Bill's crappy OS anymore.
The real question is whether any of these items were brought up in one of the multitudinous specification reviews, design reviews or configuration audits that such a project goes through. One reason why no one may have cared is that this could have all been spelled out at some point and a decision made to go with the solutions he complained about.
I've seen lots of systems that didn't meet some aspect of their original requirements because the requirement got changed. I've also seen some very creative interpretation of requirements so the requirement is met. On the other hand, its also possible to meet requirements in ways that may not be obvious. Picking just on the cable shielding requirement, the "system level" requirement may have been that no useful signal be emitted beyond a given radius of the ship. Lots of people might interpret this to mean the cables have to be shielded. Bzzt; wrong answer. Its possible the locations of the cables within the hull or superstructure are sufficient to prevent signal leak. Saves a little on implementation and lots on testing for full TEMPEST compliance.
As the OP pointed out, meeting some of these requirements can be very expensive and I'd like to think that the people in charge actually did the right thing to lower the cost to me, the taxpayer.
That's only a small part of the experiment. There are varying amounts of unpronounceable ingredients in lots of other things, too.
My guess is the experiment is to eventually get us to the point that embalming is no longer necessary. Morticians and coroners have already noticed that people now take longer to decay when they die and the speculation is that all of the preservatives and antibiotics in our food is the cause.
Absolutely! The "right answer" for best *intelligent* compression would only store a *minimal* set of pertinent data points and then would use intellect to flesh out the details on decompression. Although you could end up with http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/, I'll worry that when some AI researcher starts down this path
Minor disagreement with what you said... The details are relevant; they just aren't important enough to store in and of themselves. Sort of like mathematics where you only need to learn the principle (pertinent data) and how to apply it. Then every example is just a specific case (flesh out the details).
It takes real intelligence to know which priciple to apply or that none apply and you're doing real research. Genius is being able to find such a solution where none existed before. The details are relevant but just not important enough to bother storing since they can be reasonably recreated by applying real inteligence. So, real intelligent compression would mean that different people decompressing the same article at different times would *not* get the same text but enough of the pertinent data would be the same that they all come away from reading the article with the same meaning. That would be real intelligent compression and decompression.
Any idea what year your 5150 is from? From what I could dig up through some Google searches, the 5.25in floppy was part of the "not-IBM" hardware that was included in the original IBM PC (1981) which was considered ground-breaking because, up until then, IBM had a really bad "Not Invented Here" attitude. Doesn't say IBM wouldn't have included it on the 5150 before then but the 8 inch floppy was "corporate standard" including being used to IPL their mainframes.
The only 51xx I really used was the original 5100. Any chance that the 5.25 floppy was one of the enhancements to the 5100 that made it into a 5150?
Not talking about an IBM PC. We're talking about the predecessor to the PC. The IBM 51XX. It ran APL and basic and had a built in cassette drive. One of the many "non-IBM" items included with the original IBM PC was the 5.25 inch floppy drive.
Sorry. No five inch floppy back then. 8 inch floppies and cassette tape (the kind that got replaced by CDs). The models I used only had the tape drive but I understand you could get the 8 inch floppy drive as an option for lots of $$$$.
The OP needs to find out if his employer will reimburse for flying his own airplane. Very few large companies allow it. Also, as pointed out by one of the other replies, anything short of a business jet and he is at the mercy of weather conditions that can make small plane operations suicidal. At a minimum he would need his IFR rating and a pressurized twin to have any hope of being able to come and go at times close to his chosing.
I also find it amusing that NO ONE has even attempted to answer his question as of the time of this post. Lots of rants and lame advice but no pointers to a single charter operation. Of course, he could have just Googled for what he's looking for: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fractional+je t+charter&btnG=Google+Search
I hope that Tivo get's taken to court. It would be a triumph for open source efforts.
Er, no it wouldn't. Here's why...
The TiVo license applies to what can be run on the TiVo hardware device. You are free to download the TiVo source, modify it as you see fit and run it on any compatible device; the TiVo device itself just isn't one of these. You are also free to attempt to hack the TiVo hardware to allow non-signed software to run but this is a different problem (and probably voids the warranty).
Tivo meets all of the requirements of GPL v2 and, chances are, it will meet the letter of GPL v3. It would be very difficult for a software license to restrict what a hardware vendor does.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't let me discourage you from trying Linux again. By all means, go for it. The only windoze box I still have in the house is my wife's W2K Dell 1GHz. She doesn't like change which means she's going to stick with Windoze until she has to switch to either a different version of windoze or Linux. I'm pushing Linux.
Even though I've been using Linux for over eight years (and Unix boxes before that), I still have a hard time with the bit twiddlers who seem to expect everyone to be at their level of expertise and wanting to delve into the details as much as they do. My whole point on my original point was simply that not everyone has that level of interest and there's nothing wrong with that.
I just had three really clean installs of Fedora 6. From what I've heard, Ubuntu should be equally clean. If something doesn't work, Google is your friend. Besides the Ubuntu web site, you might also find Linuxquestions.org to be a decent resource. Linspire is also a good starter distro even though the same bit twiddlers deride it because it contains quite a bit of proprietary code to achieve compatibility. If you continue with the Linspire route, do some research as to how to secure your system. Some of Linspire's compatibility and ease of use comes at the price of bypassing some of the things that make Linux so secure.
Cheers,
Dave
In my college days (late '70s) I had a collapsed lifter on my car (1969 Plymouth GTX, 440 cu. in. V8). I was able to strip the top of the engine down to where I could get to the lifters, pop the old lifters, hone the lifter bores, put in the new lifters and re-assemble it. It still ran for as long as I needed it so I must have gotten it right. I agree that I couldn't do that now. On the other hand, I have yet to run into a car where I couldn't change the oil. Do I? Nah, it's easier to pay somebody at Grease Monkey to do it for me. That's what I was getting at.
To me, hardcore Linux users go way beyond this in what they expect of "normal" users. It's like they want people to rebuild their engine for racing (Gentoo's compile everything?), tune the suspension, maybe build in a roll cage, etc. To most people, a computer is just a way to get something done like ballance their checkbook, play a game, surf the 'net, etc. They really don't care if a browser built for their specific hardware loads and runs 3% faster than the stock, i386 browser that ships with a distro like Red Hat. Likewise, they want to be able to just click on "install plug-in" to get the plug-ins they need. This seems to be heresey to some people.
Cheers,
Dave
I didn't say that the computer was an appliance; I said that's what people want it to be. Turn it on; compute; turn it off. Turn it on; play a game; turn it off. Why do you think game consoles are so popular? None of the hassles of maintaining a computer. Turn it on; play a game; turn it off. The console may be a computer internally but it doesn't expose any of its internals unless you work really hard at cracking it.
Likewise, how many people own power tools? It's amazing to me how many people won't even use manual tools to do things like unclog a drain or tighten a handle. It's not that it's that hard; people just dont want to be bothered and they es[pecially don't want to be bothered with learning how to do something. Also, for newer power tools, have you noticed how much idiot proofing goes into them? How much the instructions are about limiting liability? Same idea so your power tool analogy is spot on. Talk to the staff at an emergency room to find out how many people do really stupid things with power tools (and then blame the tool or its manufacturer for allowing them to get hurt).
Unfortunately, a game console is about as close as we'll get to an idiot proof computer so we'll have to continue to put up with bot-nets and spam zombies.
Cheers,
Dave
A guy who used to work for me described it this way: people want a computing appliance. That is, they want their computer to work like their toaster or, at worst, their microwave oven. They really don't know nor do they care what goes on "inside." They just want to play a game, toast a bagle or nuke some left-overs.
.. ad infinitum, Debian and any commercial distribution, etc.
Every interest has a small subset of people who find the internals fascinating. I usually pick on the example of cars. Most people really don't care about how all of the internals work. They just want to put the key in the ignition, turn it on, and drive. Is it within most people's ability to do a significant amount of their own maintenance? Yes. Do they? No. They have other things to do with their time. The Linux community needs to understand this. Unfortunately, all too many Linux folks would rather engage in a protracted flae-war over some nuanced difference between KDE and Gnome, Red Hat and SuSE and Gentoo and Ubuntu and,
Oh yeah, I've been using Linux since Red Hat 5.0 in 1998. Its great. I just installed Fedora Core 6 on three different systems (including one laptop) and the installs all went flawlessly. I only had to resort to the command line for some "under the hood" changes that a typical user wouldn't do. Its getting there. It would help if there wasn't so much noise about how terrible such a default installation is from all the bit twiddlers.
Cheers,
Dave
The short answer is Johnson and McNamara let politcal considerations override the military. Whether the war could have been "won" by the U.S. and South Vietnam is an open question. That what was done "lost" the war is pretty clear.
The biggest change in my attitude was I really blame Johnson and McNamara that it went on for a long time with no hope of winning. I had some ideas about how bad the decision process was but didn't realize the extent to which Johnson and McNamara coerced the Joint Chiefs into being "yes men" when what was needed was clear analysis. In any hierarchical organization, good information should go up and then, hopefully, good decisions can be made based on that information. When the message to those reporting is "don't rock the boat", lousy decisions get made. The organization can be as small as the last company I worked at (the same, "don't tell me it won't work; it has to work" approach to planning) or as big as the U.S. government.
All three are good books; even McNamara's. I disagreed with his rationale for why things were done but it was still interesting to read his perspective.
Cheers,
Dave
A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975
In Retrospect:: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam
I wanted a relatively unbiased view and then arguments from both sides. It's a good method if you have the time and a willingness to actually understand the issues.
Cheers,
Dave
Cheers,
Dave
Cheers,
Dave
Hans called and asked if you'd drop by his house. He needs somebody to pick up some groceries.
Dave
Cheers,
Dave
As the cost of computing drops, there will always be new problems that could not be economically attacked until the cost of the computation became cheap enough. These problems will not have a canned solution and someone will have to go off and build the application from scratch. As long as computing continues to get cheaper, there will always be new problems to be solved.
Cheers,
Dave
Microsoft is very careful not to clarify who's advantage their talking about. The program is *VERY* advantageous to Microsoft. In that sense, it is even a "genuine" advantage.
Cheers,
Dave
Cheers,
Dave
I have to agree but a bunch of the other replies don't seem to like your idea.
I do backups to a SUN logo HP C1557A (6 x 12GB tape changer) that I picked up used for about $100. Load the tapes each Monday and let amanda take care of backing up three Linux boxes plus my wife's Windoze box for the rest of the week. Works for me but you'll note that only one box runs Windoze and I'm working on my wife to try Linux so I don't have to deal with Bill's crappy OS anymore.
Cheers,
Dave
The real question is whether any of these items were brought up in one of the multitudinous specification reviews, design reviews or configuration audits that such a project goes through. One reason why no one may have cared is that this could have all been spelled out at some point and a decision made to go with the solutions he complained about.
I've seen lots of systems that didn't meet some aspect of their original requirements because the requirement got changed. I've also seen some very creative interpretation of requirements so the requirement is met. On the other hand, its also possible to meet requirements in ways that may not be obvious. Picking just on the cable shielding requirement, the "system level" requirement may have been that no useful signal be emitted beyond a given radius of the ship. Lots of people might interpret this to mean the cables have to be shielded. Bzzt; wrong answer. Its possible the locations of the cables within the hull or superstructure are sufficient to prevent signal leak. Saves a little on implementation and lots on testing for full TEMPEST compliance.
As the OP pointed out, meeting some of these requirements can be very expensive and I'd like to think that the people in charge actually did the right thing to lower the cost to me, the taxpayer.
Cheers,
Dave
That's only a small part of the experiment. There are varying amounts of unpronounceable ingredients in lots of other things, too.
My guess is the experiment is to eventually get us to the point that embalming is no longer necessary. Morticians and coroners have already noticed that people now take longer to decay when they die and the speculation is that all of the preservatives and antibiotics in our food is the cause.
Cheers,
Dave
Microsoft Bob is clearly superior to Windows ME. It does less far with far more stability.
Cheers,
Dave
Absolutely! The "right answer" for best *intelligent* compression would only store a *minimal* set of pertinent data points and then would use intellect to flesh out the details on decompression. Although you could end up with http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/, I'll worry that when some AI researcher starts down this path
Minor disagreement with what you said... The details are relevant; they just aren't important enough to store in and of themselves. Sort of like mathematics where you only need to learn the principle (pertinent data) and how to apply it. Then every example is just a specific case (flesh out the details).
It takes real intelligence to know which priciple to apply or that none apply and you're doing real research. Genius is being able to find such a solution where none existed before. The details are relevant but just not important enough to bother storing since they can be reasonably recreated by applying real inteligence. So, real intelligent compression would mean that different people decompressing the same article at different times would *not* get the same text but enough of the pertinent data would be the same that they all come away from reading the article with the same meaning. That would be real intelligent compression and decompression.
Cheers,
Dave
Any idea what year your 5150 is from? From what I could dig up through some Google searches, the 5.25in floppy was part of the "not-IBM" hardware that was included in the original IBM PC (1981) which was considered ground-breaking because, up until then, IBM had a really bad "Not Invented Here" attitude. Doesn't say IBM wouldn't have included it on the 5150 before then but the 8 inch floppy was "corporate standard" including being used to IPL their mainframes.
The only 51xx I really used was the original 5100. Any chance that the 5.25 floppy was one of the enhancements to the 5100 that made it into a 5150?
Cheers,
Dave
Not talking about an IBM PC. We're talking about the predecessor to the PC. The IBM 51XX. It ran APL and basic and had a built in cassette drive. One of the many "non-IBM" items included with the original IBM PC was the 5.25 inch floppy drive.
Cheers,
Dave
Sorry. No five inch floppy back then. 8 inch floppies and cassette tape (the kind that got replaced by CDs). The models I used only had the tape drive but I understand you could get the 8 inch floppy drive as an option for lots of $$$$.
Cheers,
Dave
The OP needs to find out if his employer will reimburse for flying his own airplane. Very few large companies allow it. Also, as pointed out by one of the other replies, anything short of a business jet and he is at the mercy of weather conditions that can make small plane operations suicidal. At a minimum he would need his IFR rating and a pressurized twin to have any hope of being able to come and go at times close to his chosing.
e t+charter&btnG=Google+Search
I also find it amusing that NO ONE has even attempted to answer his question as of the time of this post. Lots of rants and lame advice but no pointers to a single charter operation. Of course, he could have just Googled for what he's looking for: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fractional+j
Cheers,
Dave
The TiVo license applies to what can be run on the TiVo hardware device. You are free to download the TiVo source, modify it as you see fit and run it on any compatible device; the TiVo device itself just isn't one of these. You are also free to attempt to hack the TiVo hardware to allow non-signed software to run but this is a different problem (and probably voids the warranty).
Tivo meets all of the requirements of GPL v2 and, chances are, it will meet the letter of GPL v3. It would be very difficult for a software license to restrict what a hardware vendor does.
Cheers,
Dave
No. They punish you by installing Microsoft Bob on your computer (think of it as a frontal lobotomy for your computer).
Cheers,
Dave
Cheers,
Dave