Hmm, what I see is that you should be owed the cost of replacement with similar specification machine at the time your machine broke, plus inflation since that time.
The fact it took three years to arrange the deal is neither here nor there.
Arranging a replacement machine is disingenuous, because computers aren't like houses or cars or furniture in that they improve for the same money very rapidly over time. Hence why they can offer a cheap POS Compaq turd to replace what could have been a high end machine. Surely form and function should have been considered as well as today's cost?
I bet most people would just rather have the dollar value of the POS Compaq rather than compete with 20,000 other people selling their replacement machine on eBay.
Ugh, management. Paperwork and stress, and loss of creativity. It sucks when that is the only option for career advancement, when you really want a technical promotion path so you can do more with the skills and knowledge you actually have, rather than suddenly be expected to balance budgets and make reports!
Anyway if you are promoted to management ask for some training courses, and they should clear up professional boundary issues. I guess that if you are open and honest with the people you manage, and try not to become aloof, then things will be alright. If you want to protect your friends, then enact a 'last one in is first to go' policy (however ridiculous that is in reality). Be honest, how many coworkers have you stayed in contact with once they left the company? Is the term 'friends' correct, or are they actually colleagues with whom you might enjoy a beer or two after work sometimes?
Since I've read in the past that uptake of BluRay was faster than uptake of DVD, either the story has it all wrong and is thinking that DVD really took off quicker than it actually did, or BluRay sales have collapsed since the players got cheaper... which doesn't really make sense.
DVD really took off when the players first went under $100, then under $50 - BluRay players are getting there, and then the sales figures will swing up, even if it's merely because people replace their old DVD player with a new BluRay player as part of natural wear and tear. Of course it has been helped along by the PS3, the PS2 came a few years into DVD's lifespan and also helped kickstart the DVD revolution.
However I do agree that DVD brought loads more vs. VHS than BluRay does vs. DVD. And upscaling within TVs and modern DVD players can lessen the difference.
An enterprise language is actually a platform that includes massive amounts of APIs and frameworks to build your application around.
Sure, you can create a new language really easy. But then you need to create the APIs and frameworks that enterprise development requires.
So to get these libraries you compile your language to the JVM, and allow it to access other classes that are compiled to the JVM, regardless of the language they were written in. Over time you can create native implementations of the libraries until you are free of the old platform, but at least you are relevant during that time.
Maybe we will be talking about Ceylon development in earnest in 2020. I wish them the greatest of luck, especially if they can create a decent native Collections framework and UI framework.
And the RAM in the Osbourne 1 was probably eight 8KB chips, whereas (IIRC) it's two 256MB dies in the iPad 2, on the same chip as the CPU and GPU and more.
But in the end magnitudes are all that matter when the differences are so massive. A Z80 took between 4 and 11 clock cycles to perform an instruction (8 or 16 bits typically) - let's say 0.1 MIPS/clock, whereas a 1GHz ARM A9 can do 2.5 MIPS/clock. That's 25 times more instructions per clock, and 250 times the clock, and twice the cores, and then we have to consider the ARM is 32-bit - so you need even more instructions on the Z80 for 32-bit operations. It's probably not too far off 20,000x faster to compute something on the integer cores of the A5 than on the Osbourne's Z80 - and that's before we consider the Neon vector units, the dedicate hardware for security, graphics, video,...
I'm in the same boat - I upgrade my computer every four years - and this one will probably go another year even (might as well wait for Bulldozer + Fusion in mid-2012) although I could do with a tad more RAM and a better graphics card (due to the monitor upgrade).
But I felt like a NAS, so I just bought a HP ProLiant N36L for £222. There's also a £100 rebate from HP. Sure, I've added on a 2GB DDR3 DIMM (£18), and two 2TB hard drives (£110), but the overall cost is £250 for a full dual-core computer that hopefully will be a NAS, GIT and web server for me for many years to come. A low-profile graphics card (£50?) would make it into a pretty damn good HTPC (well, apart from it's styling, but that's what cupboards and long HDMI cables are for, right?).
Anyway, I digress. I don't expect, or want, my new shiny Bulldozer next year to run in my creaky, then five year old, Socket AM2 motherboard with a 690 chipset and DDR2 memory. So I'll build a new computer. I don't even want the 320GB hard drive - a new 2TB drive is £60, I'd rather start afresh and copy the data across. I can then donate the old computer to charity and know that someone, somewhere, will benefit from it.
Which is ridiculous - if you're right handed, as the vast majority of people are, then your hand will be covering the start menu that opens up if it's in the top left. It *should* be on the bottom left on a stylus/touch screen - it will then open up and be fully visible.
Then again making usable and logical user interfaces was never Microsoft's forte, but it has been something that Apple have done reasonably well - not brilliantly given their odd different UI toolkits - and they did it right with iOS initially.
Except he is having OS level issues with a high level scripting language (running on POSIX systems too!), suggesting a level of code abuse that shouldn't be occurring. A good client-side HTML and CSS developer with good design skills does not automatically make a good server-side developer. Certainly not one that throws down his tools in a strop when things aren't perfect.
Also Emacs comes pre-installed on Macs! Hell you don't even have the GUI, just a lovely plain text interface in the terminal. If you want to have the perfect set up - a large display with an array of terminal windows, some for editing with emacs, some for builds, some for log output, etc, then you can do it without thinking. And set up another desktop/'space' for the normal desktop tools.
Mac OS X packaging mess? It's one of the few operating systems to get application packaging right - a single, draggable icon that just runs. On multiple architectures. Maybe the third party packaging systems (ports from Linux and BSD) aren't perfect, but that's not really the fault of the OS is it? As more people use a Mac, there's more chance that these issues will get resolved.
And "OS X problem" - could be Linux problem - one of these operating systems is a certified Unix, the other isn't.
Hmm, for an OS that comes out of the box with Perl, Python, and Ruby... never mind a few shells, it sure does suck for scripting.
Anything you can do in Linux, you can do on the Mac. Plus all the Mac stuff on top. As a certified Unix, properly coded software will not have a problem building on the Mac.
I just fail to see what tool you need on Linux that the Mac doesn't have, or can't provide.
Finder sucks, yes. But you rarely need to use it when you have a shell available, or an IDE.
Terminal app thrashes Windows cmd.exe too, and it has tabs.
FFS Eclipse has tabs, and is what you'll be using for Tomcat development (or Netbeans, again... tabs). For developing Java and Java web apps, a Mac is a great tool. TextWrangler has tabs. Hell, everything has tabs. What are you talking about?
Then again I've only been developing on the Mac since 2005, so maybe I missed out on when things were less mature.
Tortoise SVN in Windows, and stupid cluttered file menus, both annoy me greatly.
Mac.. yay, Perl. Ruby. Python. Java. Installed by default.
And yes, I used to be a 'I don't need no IDE' person too. Until I used one and it was awesome and managed all the tedious stuff for me, allowing me to code.
He doesn't even need to install emacs - it's built into Mac OS X, albeit you have to run it in the terminal (oh noes!).
AquaMacs is there too. JEdit is also a very popular and well regarded programmer's editor.
As for the overpriced hardware, decent PC hardware is also similarly priced. The fact that there is cheap PC hardware available doesn't mean it is suitable for a four year deployment (with ongoing re-deployment to HR, Finance, etc for a few more year's usage). Indeed over the years speccing similar PCs to Macs has always resulted in some Macs looking the cheaper, better option unless you compromised. And if you are working in programming, and have been for years, your wage should be such that you can damn well afford a Mac, and if the business is paying and you're the founder... sheesh.
I've developed for years - Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Never had a problem with tools. Never had a problem learning a new system (it's an adventure! Well, Windows was a nightmare in places). Installing software like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Python - simple, didn't need a package manager.
Indeed if you are a web developer writing a web platform, a Mac is a good investment because at some point you will be writing an iOS application to access your platform, and that really limits your development options to a Mac. Android - you can develop on the Mac. Windows Phone - well, you'll need a VM for that one...
If they were on Leopard, then the upgrade to SL is $29 a machine - it's not a saving to not get the upgrade, as your development time is going to eventually cost more than the upgrade costs.
If they're on Tiger, then the problem is the 4+ year old computers they're running and expecting to run modern software - especially if there are a lot of PowerPC machines in the mix. Sometimes you have to cut back on the APIs you can use (or use a compatibility library) when you're dealing with old systems.
But until recently Apple managed the Java install on Macs, and thus older versions of the operating system didn't get the latest versions. Fortunately OpenJDK is taking over Java development for Mac OS X, so in the future we can but hope that this ceases to be an issue.
Some people simply can't adjust to a different operating system, even if they're willing to try it. Especially if they go in with preconceived notions that turn out to be incorrect. This is clearly one such case.
A lot of people like Mac hardware though - the laptops have excellent battery lives and they're well engineered. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that get Macs and just run Windows (or Linux) directly on them.
You are completely aware that Windows was a computer UI term well before Microsoft came in and used it for their OS. WIMP - Windows Icons Menus Pointer (although some claim it's Mouse, but then what's the P?) was a well established UI term by then. Apple's Lisa and Mac used it for their OS before Windows came out, and let's not look further back at Xerox Parc, etc.
"barely eke out"... also known as "comprehensively beat". It was faster, it used less power, it can play 1080p video without Ion or a dedicated decoder chip. In short, for casual or office use, it's pretty much the bees knees. It can even play games when you drop the settings - or if you're catching up on older games.
It contains UVD3 video decoder, it can quite happily watch a video. It can play older games just fine - and if you're buying a cheap PC, you'll be buying the old, cheap, reduced games won't you! You're not editing video on a netbook, but you can do it - just not particularly quickly.
AMD had to drop to 1GHz Fusion chips to 'catch down' with Atom.
AMD had made it quite clear that it was a per-clock comparison, not an absolute comparison.
It's unfair to compare it to 3GHz desktop chips and then act all surprised and disappointed when it doesn't meet those incorrect expectations.
Fusion beats Atom, it comes close to the low-end desktop CPUs or even beats them in some areas. It seems nicely balanced. It's cheap to buy. It's cheap to integrate. It doesn't use much power. It's does desktop tasks and even some gaming.
However yes, wait for Llano if you want more from a Fusion chip.
When you are blinded when driving, you slow down. Before being blinded you should be aware of what is ahead of you for a reasonable distance.
You don't get blinded and then suddenly hit someone.
The road is clear, you get blinded, you slow down, by the time the obstruction appears you can stop in time, or the accident isn't as serious. OR The road is not clear (potential dangers - there's people standing and cars stopped), you slow down. The sun's effects are inconsequential here.
So one can quite likely suggest that the driver was not aware of what was ahead of them on the road, that something had taken their eyes from the road.
"That this was the victim reporting the first accident is a reasonable surmise, but there's no evidence of this."
Apart from the other driver from the first incident who will be able to attest that the victim had called about the initial accident, and how long before the second accident happened.
It's unlikely the victim called about the incident that severed his leg leading to him to die as a result of the injuries.
You are right that it all depends on the time between the phone calls being placed, and the incident. Assuming reasonably well synced timestamps for Facebook and the 911 call, a driver can run the route she took to find out how long she she was on the road, and that can be compared to the time between the victim's phone call and the incident time (as the other driver can attest to).
Exactly, on the London Underground delays are frequent, but when it is something out of their control they will state it clearly on service boards and announcements - usually "person under train" or "person taken ill". People can tell the difference between things in control ("wtf, why is the signalling broken again") and stuff that is tough shit for all involved.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case why not just say $100 per member of the class action?
That would actually mean it was in the lawyers' best interest to get more people in the class action, or alternatively they would get paid less.
Instead they're deciding on their next sports car, holiday home purchase and expensive private education package for their spoilt offspring.
Hmm, what I see is that you should be owed the cost of replacement with similar specification machine at the time your machine broke, plus inflation since that time.
The fact it took three years to arrange the deal is neither here nor there.
Arranging a replacement machine is disingenuous, because computers aren't like houses or cars or furniture in that they improve for the same money very rapidly over time. Hence why they can offer a cheap POS Compaq turd to replace what could have been a high end machine. Surely form and function should have been considered as well as today's cost?
I bet most people would just rather have the dollar value of the POS Compaq rather than compete with 20,000 other people selling their replacement machine on eBay.
Ugh, management. Paperwork and stress, and loss of creativity. It sucks when that is the only option for career advancement, when you really want a technical promotion path so you can do more with the skills and knowledge you actually have, rather than suddenly be expected to balance budgets and make reports!
Anyway if you are promoted to management ask for some training courses, and they should clear up professional boundary issues. I guess that if you are open and honest with the people you manage, and try not to become aloof, then things will be alright. If you want to protect your friends, then enact a 'last one in is first to go' policy (however ridiculous that is in reality). Be honest, how many coworkers have you stayed in contact with once they left the company? Is the term 'friends' correct, or are they actually colleagues with whom you might enjoy a beer or two after work sometimes?
Since I've read in the past that uptake of BluRay was faster than uptake of DVD, either the story has it all wrong and is thinking that DVD really took off quicker than it actually did, or BluRay sales have collapsed since the players got cheaper... which doesn't really make sense.
DVD really took off when the players first went under $100, then under $50 - BluRay players are getting there, and then the sales figures will swing up, even if it's merely because people replace their old DVD player with a new BluRay player as part of natural wear and tear. Of course it has been helped along by the PS3, the PS2 came a few years into DVD's lifespan and also helped kickstart the DVD revolution.
However I do agree that DVD brought loads more vs. VHS than BluRay does vs. DVD. And upscaling within TVs and modern DVD players can lessen the difference.
I guess sales of home microcells for people's mobile phones will be going up then...
(except for those that the MiL Barrier is a real positive feature, worth living in radio silence for...)
An enterprise language is actually a platform that includes massive amounts of APIs and frameworks to build your application around.
Sure, you can create a new language really easy. But then you need to create the APIs and frameworks that enterprise development requires.
So to get these libraries you compile your language to the JVM, and allow it to access other classes that are compiled to the JVM, regardless of the language they were written in. Over time you can create native implementations of the libraries until you are free of the old platform, but at least you are relevant during that time.
Maybe we will be talking about Ceylon development in earnest in 2020. I wish them the greatest of luck, especially if they can create a decent native Collections framework and UI framework.
Indeed, it's 2^13 (8192) times more.
And the RAM in the Osbourne 1 was probably eight 8KB chips, whereas (IIRC) it's two 256MB dies in the iPad 2, on the same chip as the CPU and GPU and more.
But in the end magnitudes are all that matter when the differences are so massive. A Z80 took between 4 and 11 clock cycles to perform an instruction (8 or 16 bits typically) - let's say 0.1 MIPS/clock, whereas a 1GHz ARM A9 can do 2.5 MIPS/clock. That's 25 times more instructions per clock, and 250 times the clock, and twice the cores, and then we have to consider the ARM is 32-bit - so you need even more instructions on the Z80 for 32-bit operations. It's probably not too far off 20,000x faster to compute something on the integer cores of the A5 than on the Osbourne's Z80 - and that's before we consider the Neon vector units, the dedicate hardware for security, graphics, video, ...
I'm in the same boat - I upgrade my computer every four years - and this one will probably go another year even (might as well wait for Bulldozer + Fusion in mid-2012) although I could do with a tad more RAM and a better graphics card (due to the monitor upgrade).
But I felt like a NAS, so I just bought a HP ProLiant N36L for £222. There's also a £100 rebate from HP. Sure, I've added on a 2GB DDR3 DIMM (£18), and two 2TB hard drives (£110), but the overall cost is £250 for a full dual-core computer that hopefully will be a NAS, GIT and web server for me for many years to come. A low-profile graphics card (£50?) would make it into a pretty damn good HTPC (well, apart from it's styling, but that's what cupboards and long HDMI cables are for, right?).
Anyway, I digress. I don't expect, or want, my new shiny Bulldozer next year to run in my creaky, then five year old, Socket AM2 motherboard with a 690 chipset and DDR2 memory. So I'll build a new computer. I don't even want the 320GB hard drive - a new 2TB drive is £60, I'd rather start afresh and copy the data across. I can then donate the old computer to charity and know that someone, somewhere, will benefit from it.
Which is ridiculous - if you're right handed, as the vast majority of people are, then your hand will be covering the start menu that opens up if it's in the top left. It *should* be on the bottom left on a stylus/touch screen - it will then open up and be fully visible.
Then again making usable and logical user interfaces was never Microsoft's forte, but it has been something that Apple have done reasonably well - not brilliantly given their odd different UI toolkits - and they did it right with iOS initially.
Except he is having OS level issues with a high level scripting language (running on POSIX systems too!), suggesting a level of code abuse that shouldn't be occurring. A good client-side HTML and CSS developer with good design skills does not automatically make a good server-side developer. Certainly not one that throws down his tools in a strop when things aren't perfect.
Also Emacs comes pre-installed on Macs! Hell you don't even have the GUI, just a lovely plain text interface in the terminal. If you want to have the perfect set up - a large display with an array of terminal windows, some for editing with emacs, some for builds, some for log output, etc, then you can do it without thinking. And set up another desktop/'space' for the normal desktop tools.
Mac OS X packaging mess? It's one of the few operating systems to get application packaging right - a single, draggable icon that just runs. On multiple architectures. Maybe the third party packaging systems (ports from Linux and BSD) aren't perfect, but that's not really the fault of the OS is it? As more people use a Mac, there's more chance that these issues will get resolved.
And "OS X problem" - could be Linux problem - one of these operating systems is a certified Unix, the other isn't.
Hmm, for an OS that comes out of the box with Perl, Python, and Ruby ... never mind a few shells, it sure does suck for scripting.
Anything you can do in Linux, you can do on the Mac. Plus all the Mac stuff on top. As a certified Unix, properly coded software will not have a problem building on the Mac.
I just fail to see what tool you need on Linux that the Mac doesn't have, or can't provide.
Finder sucks, yes. But you rarely need to use it when you have a shell available, or an IDE.
Terminal app thrashes Windows cmd.exe too, and it has tabs.
FFS Eclipse has tabs, and is what you'll be using for Tomcat development (or Netbeans, again ... tabs). For developing Java and Java web apps, a Mac is a great tool. TextWrangler has tabs. Hell, everything has tabs. What are you talking about?
Then again I've only been developing on the Mac since 2005, so maybe I missed out on when things were less mature.
Tortoise SVN in Windows, and stupid cluttered file menus, both annoy me greatly.
Mac .. yay, Perl. Ruby. Python. Java. Installed by default.
And yes, I used to be a 'I don't need no IDE' person too. Until I used one and it was awesome and managed all the tedious stuff for me, allowing me to code.
Buy Mac. Turn on. Open Terminal.app. Type 'emacs'. Press return. Hey Presto, Emacs! On a Mac!
Worst Article Ever. ++.
He doesn't even need to install emacs - it's built into Mac OS X, albeit you have to run it in the terminal (oh noes!).
AquaMacs is there too. JEdit is also a very popular and well regarded programmer's editor.
As for the overpriced hardware, decent PC hardware is also similarly priced. The fact that there is cheap PC hardware available doesn't mean it is suitable for a four year deployment (with ongoing re-deployment to HR, Finance, etc for a few more year's usage). Indeed over the years speccing similar PCs to Macs has always resulted in some Macs looking the cheaper, better option unless you compromised. And if you are working in programming, and have been for years, your wage should be such that you can damn well afford a Mac, and if the business is paying and you're the founder ... sheesh.
I've developed for years - Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Never had a problem with tools. Never had a problem learning a new system (it's an adventure! Well, Windows was a nightmare in places). Installing software like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Python - simple, didn't need a package manager.
Indeed if you are a web developer writing a web platform, a Mac is a good investment because at some point you will be writing an iOS application to access your platform, and that really limits your development options to a Mac. Android - you can develop on the Mac. Windows Phone - well, you'll need a VM for that one...
Good lord, there is indeed Emacs installed on my Mac...
"GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (mac-apple-darwin)
of 2010-05-14 on ghosttown.apple.com"
Never mind AquaMacs ... and all the other editors as you mention.
If they were on Leopard, then the upgrade to SL is $29 a machine - it's not a saving to not get the upgrade, as your development time is going to eventually cost more than the upgrade costs.
If they're on Tiger, then the problem is the 4+ year old computers they're running and expecting to run modern software - especially if there are a lot of PowerPC machines in the mix. Sometimes you have to cut back on the APIs you can use (or use a compatibility library) when you're dealing with old systems.
But until recently Apple managed the Java install on Macs, and thus older versions of the operating system didn't get the latest versions. Fortunately OpenJDK is taking over Java development for Mac OS X, so in the future we can but hope that this ceases to be an issue.
Some people simply can't adjust to a different operating system, even if they're willing to try it. Especially if they go in with preconceived notions that turn out to be incorrect. This is clearly one such case.
A lot of people like Mac hardware though - the laptops have excellent battery lives and they're well engineered. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that get Macs and just run Windows (or Linux) directly on them.
You are completely aware that Windows was a computer UI term well before Microsoft came in and used it for their OS. WIMP - Windows Icons Menus Pointer (although some claim it's Mouse, but then what's the P?) was a well established UI term by then. Apple's Lisa and Mac used it for their OS before Windows came out, and let's not look further back at Xerox Parc, etc.
"barely eke out" ... also known as "comprehensively beat". It was faster, it used less power, it can play 1080p video without Ion or a dedicated decoder chip. In short, for casual or office use, it's pretty much the bees knees. It can even play games when you drop the settings - or if you're catching up on older games.
And at $50 a chip ... no, wait.
It contains UVD3 video decoder, it can quite happily watch a video. It can play older games just fine - and if you're buying a cheap PC, you'll be buying the old, cheap, reduced games won't you! You're not editing video on a netbook, but you can do it - just not particularly quickly.
AMD had to drop to 1GHz Fusion chips to 'catch down' with Atom.
AMD had made it quite clear that it was a per-clock comparison, not an absolute comparison.
It's unfair to compare it to 3GHz desktop chips and then act all surprised and disappointed when it doesn't meet those incorrect expectations.
Fusion beats Atom, it comes close to the low-end desktop CPUs or even beats them in some areas. It seems nicely balanced. It's cheap to buy. It's cheap to integrate. It doesn't use much power. It's does desktop tasks and even some gaming.
However yes, wait for Llano if you want more from a Fusion chip.
When you are blinded when driving, you slow down. Before being blinded you should be aware of what is ahead of you for a reasonable distance.
You don't get blinded and then suddenly hit someone.
The road is clear, you get blinded, you slow down, by the time the obstruction appears you can stop in time, or the accident isn't as serious.
OR
The road is not clear (potential dangers - there's people standing and cars stopped), you slow down. The sun's effects are inconsequential here.
So one can quite likely suggest that the driver was not aware of what was ahead of them on the road, that something had taken their eyes from the road.
"That this was the victim reporting the first accident is a reasonable surmise, but there's no evidence of this."
Apart from the other driver from the first incident who will be able to attest that the victim had called about the initial accident, and how long before the second accident happened.
It's unlikely the victim called about the incident that severed his leg leading to him to die as a result of the injuries.
You are right that it all depends on the time between the phone calls being placed, and the incident. Assuming reasonably well synced timestamps for Facebook and the 911 call, a driver can run the route she took to find out how long she she was on the road, and that can be compared to the time between the victim's phone call and the incident time (as the other driver can attest to).
Exactly, on the London Underground delays are frequent, but when it is something out of their control they will state it clearly on service boards and announcements - usually "person under train" or "person taken ill". People can tell the difference between things in control ("wtf, why is the signalling broken again") and stuff that is tough shit for all involved.