Not so sure about that -- I had an 80GB 5400 RPM Seagate that passes every drive test I could throw at it, but it kept having problems in my TiVO. A pair of 60GB Maxtor 7200 RPM drives have been quite happy for months.
I found there to be less than a 3C temp difference between the original drive and the pair of 7200's, and about a 2C difference with the 5400. Even though the unit is running well within it's temperature tolerance, I found that it periodically was unstable, even with the original drive.
I eventually diagnosed the crashes as occuring whenever DirecTV was hammering the encryption codes to knock out the pirates. During the hours that they do that, the temp would rise an additional 5-6C.
I now run it with the cover off and it's ok, but a better solution would be to carve some mounts for small case fans. I just happen to be a bit too lazy for that...
How many disks did you burn with each drive before they died? The lasers used for burning do have limits on their lifespan. My old HP, for example, churned out around 500-800 CDRs before it died (2 years), but my Plextor 24/10/40A has burnt over 800 already and is still going strong.
With the number of drives you've used, I have to wonder if the same burnout isn't happening in your case.
Aside from that, you are the first person I've heard mention having multiple Plextor drives fail. Out of a few dozen owners at different sites with different Plextor models, I've only heard of one failure -- and that was after 2500 CDRs had been burnt with the unit.
Sun giving away StarOffice for education is more of a public relations ploy than anything else.
The vast majority of StarOffice code is actually the OpenOffice base, which is free to _anyone_? All that comes extra with StarOffice is a few fragments of functionality that can't be distributed as open source because it is owned by companies other than Sun.
IE, on the other hand, was (and is) an entirely closed source base that cannot be obtained (legally) from anywhere except Microsoft and it's partners.
It's also important to note that "free" IE is only available for download to run on systems running Microsoft's own OS products, which are _not_ free. If WinXX were free, and Microsoft were giving away IE to educational groups but charging the general public, you would have a fair comparison, but as it stands your comparison is just a red herring.
I've had both Linux and WinXX systems for development and experimentation for several years. About 2-3 months ago one of Microsoft's "updates" blew out a stable Win2K system to the point that I couldn't even boot in recovery mode.
That's when I made the permanent switch to Linux as my primary desktop instead of just for my servers (I play around with small-scale simulation of distributed architectures.)
I still have WinXP Pro boot drive sitting on a shelf, but I haven't bothered putting it in a system again. If a client needs WinXX development done, I'll put it in a box, but otherwise there is no _way_ I'll go back to WinXX. Even then, the source code will be duped to my Linux boxen where I know it's safe.
Yes, I have blown out Linux systems by making mistakes with kernel builds and such (rare), but I've always been able to just toss in a clean drive, reinstall the base, and just copy everything back over from the no-longer-bootable drive.
No registry junk lost. No functionality lost because of some file I forgot to restore that isn't in the app directory. No serious hassles at all. Never mind the need for add-on virus scanners, add-on firewall software, compilers, etc -- all taking away money I could have spent on something far more useful or entertaining.
I have absolutely no fear of having a business rely on any reasonably current *nix system, be it Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, or otherwise. But there is no way in hell I would ever risk corporate data on a WinXX based server. It's just plain suicidal, and for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would do so.
I recently put together a system based on an ASUS P4 mobo (533), boxed CPU, DVD reader, 256MB DDR, Natural Pro keyboard, Intellimouse Explorer, and floppy for about $700 USD. The board includes 100MB ethernet, excellant sound, and "good enough" video for any corporate desktop. A monitor comparable to what I'm forced to use at most client sites (17") would have brought the price to around $850.
Corporate buyers would be more likely to go with a $1000-1200 system from Dell, Gateway, etc. because they don't want to assemble their own hardware, but you're still talking about 40-50% of the price of a comparably powered Mac.
Go with a board based on the NVidia chipset with AMD, and you might cut the price even further. (I like AMD and have a couple boxen built around their CPUs, but if you're after an integrated mobo solution with expansion options there are more choices with P4.)
So yes -- a third to half the price of a Mac. I really like OS/X, but there is absolutely no way I could justify paying that kind of money.
On a similar note, Apple has a beautiful widescreen LCD display, but I can buy 4.5 Sony G520 21" monitors for the price of that display (although I'd much rather have to move 5 Apple LCDs than one G520.)
Apple has good stuff, but people who buy them tend to do so because of vertical market needs or because they already love their systems, not because they're price-effective.
OpenVMS was named in a time when "open" meant that your OS supported open standard APIs. That would mean ANSI and ISO standards for languages, POSIX APIs, etc. While the core services (file management, process scheduling, etc.) were nothing like Unix, they were equally powerful and had some extra concepts that were rather useful at times.
While it was quite easy to port well-written code between OpenVMS and Unix systems, OpenVMS just didn't maintain the market share to survive. The world focused on *nix vs. Windows, with a stable core of corporate mainframes, and a few specialist markets (Apple in media content, SGI in CGI editing.) Much like OS/2, it was a victim of poor marketting that didn't show the computing public what the real benefits of their advanced features were.
While I wouldn't mind seeing OpenVMS on a client site, I really don't expect it will ever happen. Business does not buy orphans, and they're the only market that needs the benefits of OpenVMS features. *nix systems already have add-on packages and projects to address those needs in other ways.
Re:This is the way it should be...
on
KDE Gets The Hat
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· Score: 2
So RedHat created a KDE Desktop theme using Gnome graphics, and suggested different defaults for the browser and a few other things.
And...?
I've done much the same myself, except I like Opera and paid for it on both Linux and Win32. I opted to use Sylpheed for email. I don't have any office tools in my toolbar, use different dialers, etc. The core is SuSE, but I don't work with the default tools anyhow -- I configure the ones I like for developing code.
More often than not I end up using the Gnome icons for linking those preferred apps. Basically I just look for any icon that seems indicative of the application's function, regardless of what it was originally "designed" for.
Provided RedHat lets you continue to select the existing KDE themes (should you so choose), I really don't see why this whole episode should be an "issue"!
After 15 years in the industry, I'd say there are three classes of software developers:
The natural coder. This is the person with an intuitive grasp of technology, who sees the similarities in software architectures and reuses concepts across disparate technologies. Alas they are rare, maybe 1/10 qualify.
The "steady Eddie" programmer. The vast majority of support staff, documenters, etc. are "steady Eddie" types. They do the job, they follow instructions and designs, but are not necessarily creative or intuitive about it. They're the people who form the corporate infrastructure, and about 7/10 fall in this category. They are much slower than the natural coder, but do get the job done.
The clueless wannabe. Fortunately there aren't too many of these on projects I've worked on, but there are still more of them than natural coders -- I'd say about 2/10.
The original poster's commentary indicates that it's a relatively young/naive developer who is either a natural coder or a steady Eddie with an overblown ego doing the writing. Either way, I am guessing that he is quick to grasp concepts and ideas, and gets easily frustrated with people who don't -- and it shows. Even if such people try to be understanding or are "open" to questions, the way they phrase their answers is often intimidating to their peers.
You need to make sure people understand the project is truly a team effort, not a blame game, and encourage questions. If no one is asking questions, check with them daily to see how they are doing, but handle it as an offer to help out or clarify specs rather than just getting their status.
Learn the skills of your people. Those who can't code are often good at other things -- debugging, screen layouts, build management, etc. Very few people are actually useless, they just aren't necessarily good at what has been assigned.
When working with a team of juniors, start out by creating the outline of the code -- makefiles, interface headers, and stub code. Don't get into the details of your code -- make sure the overall project has been outlined. It helps juniors a lot to have a solid interface they are expected to implement, and it helps to modularize the system code.
When people ask questions, don't give them the answer, even if you know. I'm serious! Guide them with questions that lead to the answer, but let them come up with the solution if at all possible. This helps them to learn how to think (your questions show what they should be asking and thinking about), and they gain confidence by coming up with solutions "by themselves."
Ignore all the postings you've seen about beer, pizza parties, and threats of layoff or termination. You'll never succeed with a project if you are wasting your time and budget on frills and turning your staff into nervous wrecks.
If you do encounter a truly useless clueless "developer" who just doesn't "get it", make sure they're working on something non-critical and that their access is restricted. If you have to keep them on the project, try to use them as testers or for "grunt work" like build management. Even the most clueless person can follow a checklist to test software or compile code, and sometimes they can actually become quite good at it. Believe it or not, you need people who will be happy doing the mindless work -- most of the work on a large project is mindless.
Don't create your schedule on the assumption that everyone is going to code as fast as you. Be realistic, and then double the time allotted. Sad to say, I've often found that still doesn't allow enough time for some people.
If you find anyone on the team playing the blame game, snuff that thread. If someone complains about weak specs, redirect the discussion to suggestions about how to improve the specs. If someone is blaming other people for being late with interfaces they "need", redirect to a discussion of modular programming and how the interfaces can be designed without a full implementation. Whatever you do, don't let people get away with blaming others for their own shortcomings.
Perhaps most important, don't use the "big stick" of layoffs and termination to encourage people to work. If they are any good, you'll just scare them into finding another project, leaving you without resources. If they really are useless, no threats will improve their skills and you're going to turn the team into quivering, terrified blobs who would rather chew their own arms off than ask you for help or guidance.
Failing all of the above, make sure that management is aware of delivery issues and potential schedule changes early on. Even if you think you can recover lost time, make sure management knows the time has been lost so that it isn't a surprise if things don't turn out as you hope. Ensure that you've got a feature prioritization so that you know which features to sacrifice if it's critical to get "something" out for a given date.
Finally, keep smiling and keep it light. When all is said and done, it's just another project, not your life, and you'll only get ulcers by stressing excessively. More often than not things don't work out as you'd like, so learn how to manage them in the direction you need when they take a turn.
Being an arrogant SOB myself, it took me years to learn to be more gentle with my coworkers. Rather than bluntly stating my disappointments, I find it's much better to provide them with the interface headers (potentially with stubs), and let them code from there.
Well, you never know when "everyone they know" is the co-worker down the hall (i.e. one other person.) And when someone claims that others "have the same issues" but no one has tried replacing their HDD I find it hard to take the problem report too seriously.
There is also no mention of whether micsaund and his friend(s) are using UPS power protection (TiVO units are computers, after all!), surge protecting their cable feeds, etc. If their cable company took a major lightning strike that surged everyone's equipment around the same time it would explain everyone having glitches in the same period. If the power conditions in the whole town have been unstable and no one is using UPS units to stabilize brownouts, they will all have similar data transfer problems.
While returning a defective unit might seem an obvious solution, it isn't very feasible when you've waited until one week after your warranty expired to upgrade to an 80GB HDD, and the problems start 4-6 weeks after that... *g*
Actually, if his fiance is anything like those of my friends, she is teasing him far more about this than anyone is on this site. Not because anything she says is worse, but because no one has a knack for perfect delivery like an s.o.
Now if the wedding is leaving him that frazzled, just wait until he forgets that appointment to be fitted for his tux...
I got my equipment from American Satellite. They provided excellent, timely service and good prices. When the so-called "Ultimate" TV proved to be anything but and did the ever-popular spontaneous M$ crash, ASE cheerfully let me exchange it for a TiVO. As this was within a few weeks of the original purchase, they gave me full credit towards the TiVO, treating it as an RMA with no restocking fee. All it cost was the price difference between the units and the shipping charges to send the UTV back to them.
The only hassle I had was over a dish cover, and even for that they did a good job of getting the problem straightened out. Both I and they were frustrated by the time I got the cover I originally ordered, but with all the shipping charges they lost money rather than letting a customer go away unhappy.
No, I don't work for them, own stock, have relatives who work there, etc. I was just really impressed with how far they went to ensure I was happy with the equipment I ordered.
I'll not argue with your evidence. In further support of your point, it's also only in the past 4-6 weeks that I've noticed playback problems during indexing/GC regardless of the size of the drives in use. Until then I've known of people using pairs of 120GB HDD without issue.
On the flip side, the crashing stopped after I restored the backup image and let it refresh from the servers again. Theoretically I should be running the same software image as everyone else, except that I might have skipped over some intermediate patch between early January (first backup/upgrade) and the most recent restoration. My issues for the past couple weeks have been directly correlated to DirecTV anti-piracy measures, despite my having a fully paid subscription for both DTV and TiVO service.
I leave the cover off now as I consider 50C too hot for any electronics to be running (dual 7200 RPM Maxtors), regardless of what Sony/TiVO consider "normal".
More likely your hard drive is failing. I had upgraded to an 80GB Seagate ST380020A 5400RPM which worked fine for about 4-5 weeks, then I started getting spontaneous reboots and capture glitches. I've replaced that drive with a pair of Maxtors and all is well again. (I followed the instructions at http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/ in an afternoon.)
Hard drives are physical devices and while they may test ok from a storage device perspective, that doesn't necessarily mean they can push data at a steady enough data rate for the DirecTiVO to record two data streams and play back a third.
If this was Wednesday night a couple weeks ago with a DirecTiVO, it wasn't your TiVO that flaked out, but DirecTV making a mess of the local channels again. They are getting so aggressive in their anti-piracy measures that it's starting to affect paying customers.
Also if you're on DirecTV, you may be seeing compression glitches that are the result of DirecTV's aggressive compression. With DirecTiVO, the unit just stores the data stream from the satellite and doesn't recompress the data. Those glitches are the result of signal errors (very rare) and severe bit rate compression (quite common.) Alas, the bit rate problem won't go away as long as DTV is trying to push so many channels without having a lot more bandwidth available.
A final possibility if you are getting periods of jerky/pausing playback is that the garbage collection/reindexing tasks are running. After a few weeks of comparing the logs to the periods when I have playback problems I've noticed that GC/reindex of large drives takes 10-20 minutes, during which playback is unreliable. The unit is smart enough to schedule these tasks to run when no recordings are scheduled, so your recordings are safe.
My concern is not that C.T should be "objective", but that he should perform a minimal check of facts before posting accusations of GPL violation. Lately it seems a significant percentage of such articles posted by C.T. eventually turn out to be "oversights" or "errors."
Historically this was not an issue with C.T.'s postings. It seems to have become a problem in the past 6-9 months, particularly the past 3-6 months.
A lot of/. articles lately should be modded as Flamebait themselves, and that is my issue. This is supposed to be a place for people to learn about what is going on in the industry and in various loosely tech-related subjects, not a place for C.T. to post potentially libelous flamebait rants.
I've been thinking about whether I would be willing to pay for a subscription or put up with advertising, but I have to agree with you -- this "article" just made the decision easy. If the "reporters" like CmdrTaco can't be bother to check something so trivial before splattering such a sensationalistic item like a supermarket tabloid, then I see absolutely no sense in paying for the "service."
That series is also on my DVD "buy list" when it comes available. As far as I'm aware, it was produced by little-known talent, not by the typical Hollywood budget-grinder. I could be wrong, of course, and often am.
I find it interesting how often the Australian and New Zealand film industries seem to be involved in "out of nowhere" success stories. Perhaps it has something to do with an irreverant, politically incorrect, tongue-in-cheek, low-budget, don't-give-a-damn action-flick mentality?
Realistically, I think that's what I like most about the B movies. These are people who make movies for the love of making a movie. They don't care if it's a "great" script, the acting is heartfelt if uneven, and the budget wouldn't cover a lot of Hollywood trailers, yet they manage to put out a lot of solid entertainment. I get the feeling the people in that sector of the industry are more interested in entertaining the audience, and if they make enough money to bankroll the next effort, they call it a success.
The B movies, asian dubs, and other "unprofitable" movies also happen to be what I enjoy most about satellite TV (DirecTV.) The movie channels I watch most weren't even available on Comcast cable!
As to size of the DVD collection, it's into the hundreds. It's actually a good thing there isn't much new material worth buying coming out -- I was spending too much. As to replacing it with the upcoming HDTV blue-laser disks -- dream on! I can't afford it!
Software development, business processing, video gaming, home video editing, garage band audio recording and editing, internet surfing, and email are just a small handful of legal uses for general purpose PCs. Despite my small social circle, I personally know people who use their machines for each and every one of these purposes -- dozens of them. If you include people I know through work from the "business processing" category, I've known hundreds. How many do I know that "pirate" videos?
Two.
How many do I know that publish pirated videos for people to download?
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Why?
Because despite what Valenti and co. think, even most so-called "pirates" have morals. The two people I know who "pirate" videos make copies to share with each other because too many of their DVDs were damaged by mailing them back and forth. If a couple CDs with a DiVX gets trashed by the post office, it's only some effort and $1.20 worth of CDRs that are lost.
I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in downloading free movies, but I think it's safe to assume those are people who would rent or borrow the movie rather than buy a copy.
It's the same as the Napster demographic -- most Napster hoarders I know didn't spend a lot of money on CDs before Napster, they didn't spend a lot after Napster was shut down, and they never will. Back in the pre-digital days, they were the people who taped songs with a cassette deck from FM radio, while the industry cried that they would be ruined.
It's time Hollywood got off their monopolistic high horse and accepted that their industry is losing money because it's churning out crap, not because of piracy. I haven't been to a theatre in four years because there hasn't been anything worth paying theatre-ticket prices.
Most of my DVDs are of movies produced years ago, less than 10% are "new" releases from the past couple years. A huge chunk of that collection is B-movies and anime, neither of which are produced on a tenth of the budget wasted on the advertising budget for the typical Hollywood flop.
Movie producers go to great lengths to avoid the highest ratings so that they can get the all-important teen audience. If you check any theatre, the vast majority of the audience is under 20, and the video game producers know it as well as the movie producers.
The producers would probably prefer to keep 10 year olds from buying the most violent of games -- many of them have children, too. They don't want to make it too difficult for the 14-18 audience to buy the games, as that is probably a huge chunk of their market.
I have to question the rationale behind wanting the violence to be ever increasingly realistic. As a programmer I'm impressed by the attention to detail in the newer games (e.g. area-specific damage skins), but I don't really notice those details when I'm playing the games.
Realism in the sense of allowing alernate solutions as Deus Ex tried to is far more important to me as a player than whether the blood pool under a body spreads as time goes on.
Despite my personal opinions that we don't need such attention to detail for the gibs, I strongly object to censorship. It is the responsibility of parents to monitor their children, not society at large.
Anyone who thinks desensitization comes from video games really needs to take a look at their own reaction to the news, particularly when their children are in the room. How many people sit stone-faced while the latest accident/murder/rape is reported on the news, suggesting to their children that this is a "normal" part of society? How many more protest "shock" at such acts, while remaining glued to the screen in rapt attention, the very attention children crave from their parents?
While very similar, TiVO provides one huge advantage over a VCR: I don't need to scan the listings to record the shows I want to see. I just set the name, and the software does the rest for me.
That also means I don't subscribe to any of the listings magazines (TV Guide or any produced by local newspapers.) As a result, I don't see their attempts to boost weak shows by "interviewing" the cast members or reading biased reviews.
I believe there is more threatened than their advertising revenue -- their whole pricing structure is being affected. The large TV companies have spent years charging different rates for advertising during different time slots. With PVRs, the audience starts ignoring time slots and watches shows when it's convenient.
Why would an advertiser spend huge sums to place an ad during the 20h00 run of a prime time show if people with PVRs are just as likely to watch an off-hours run of the same show? For example, UPN runs "Enterprise" as a prime time slot on Wednesday, and in a non-prime slot Sunday night. If an advertiser knows that people are just as likely to watch the Sunday transmission as the Wednesday, why would they pay the premium fees for the Wednesday prime time run?
PVRs also mean a lot of the "filler" shows that run before and after their big hits don't get any audience, because they aren't scheduled in the PVRs. Suddenly their advertising fees are tied to the popularity of a show, not the time slot, and that means they have to invest a lot more effort into producing something people want to see for it's own sake.
Given the quantity of drek on the airwaves, it's no wonder they're running scared. How dare the audience demand quality shows!
Your last line really says it all, and knowing that is the great differentiator between the new-grad programmer and a seasoned developer.
Like any other university grad, I started my career thinking project management, documentation, and QA were just for people who "couldn't program." The past 15 years in the industry have taught me that real design documentation, project management, and QA are critical to the success of a project. It's only the little one-person jobs that don't "need" those features, and those tasks are now the domain of office automation software, not development teams.
On the downside, the first areas of a development team to be hit when there are budget cuts are QA, design/documentation and programming teams. Good managers hang on because they have a knack for getting the most done with their ever-reducing resources, but the poor ones are out the door as quickly as the rest of the team.
Many people have mentioned that some staff get retained because they "get along" with people in management. Where is the surprise here? If you don't get along with anyone except hard-core techs, how can you hope to collect business requirements (from people who don't speak geek), follow up on bug reports, or convince anyone that your work is important? Take the arrogant hard-core computer geek attitude and you just alienate the people you're supposed to be servicing.
While I'd rather program for fun, my job is servicing business needs. It took the first few years of my career to learn that, and that bit of experience is the main reason most placement agencies want people with 2-3 years experience or more. Working on part-time jobs during your education that are one-person development projects doesn't develop those skills and understandings, which is why interviewers only want to know about the work you did after graduating.
DiVX has already been promoting the licensing of their codec for commercial use; only personal use is free.
A post lower down has a copy of the license agreement for MPEG4, and it really isn't as bad as you might think. It would cost less than a dollar to get a personal use license, a far cry from the $19 for Pegasus Imaging MJPEG codec. Even if they had to charge a few dollars more to cover the cost of selling the licenses (say $5 total), it still wouldn't be a bad deal.
The per-minute charges are for commercial user of MPEG4, not personal home use. Even if you were to provide streams from your webserver, there are no per-minute fees provided that you are not charging to view the content.
As I often pay the $10-20 most shareware developers want, I really have no problem with paying $5-10 for a DiVX personal-use license provided that I can continue to use the codec with VirtualDub as a video-tape replacement for archiving broadcast TV series.
I agree with some of your points, but with caveats.
(1) Sun's support is great if you are in the right area. Check with companies in smaller centers to see what kind of support they are getting, and how long it takes to get a good engineer out to resolve any serious issues.
(3) Isn't quite true. The OS is only the foundation, and you rapidly find that you need this particular OS patch for Sybase, another for DB/2, another for Encina, Tuxedo, Websphere,... If you can find a combination of packages that can agree on patch levels, count yourself lucky! The only advantage Sun has here is a better coordination of patches than standalone Linux.
(4) You have got to be kidding! Sun's CPUs, memory modules, and hard drives fail at least as often as other vendors. Personal experience would indicate IBM and HP as the most reliable, but I have no empirical evidence to support that observation.
Your point on price not being relevant is largely true. The cost of the physical hardware is trivial compared to maintenance staff, software licenses, development costs, and cascading downtime.
Not only no rewind, but no menus, no chapter skips, etc.
My bigger concern is that I've never had any of my 300+ DVDs jam, tear, stretch, or drop out. I've had 6 that were poorly burned on manufacture and had to be exchanged. I sure can't say the same for my VHS and SVHS tapes.
"But it's digital", some might say. Digital tapes are still subject to the problems. When I consider the number of bad DLT and 8mm tapes I've encountered over the past few years, there is no way I'd ever consider buying a movie on tape again.
As to handling HD formats, I'll just wait for next-gen DVD to deal with that. As the cheapest HDTV I've seen that is "good enough" to justify the upgrade is about $4000 beyond what I'm willing to pay, it'll be a while before it concerns me at all.
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Not so sure about that -- I had an 80GB 5400 RPM Seagate that passes every drive test I could throw at it, but it kept having problems in my TiVO. A pair of 60GB Maxtor 7200 RPM drives have been quite happy for months.
I found there to be less than a 3C temp difference between the original drive and the pair of 7200's, and about a 2C difference with the 5400. Even though the unit is running well within it's temperature tolerance, I found that it periodically was unstable, even with the original drive.
I eventually diagnosed the crashes as occuring whenever DirecTV was hammering the encryption codes to knock out the pirates. During the hours that they do that, the temp would rise an additional 5-6C.
I now run it with the cover off and it's ok, but a better solution would be to carve some mounts for small case fans. I just happen to be a bit too lazy for that...
How many disks did you burn with each drive before they died? The lasers used for burning do have limits on their lifespan. My old HP, for example, churned out around 500-800 CDRs before it died (2 years), but my Plextor 24/10/40A has burnt over 800 already and is still going strong.
With the number of drives you've used, I have to wonder if the same burnout isn't happening in your case.
Aside from that, you are the first person I've heard mention having multiple Plextor drives fail. Out of a few dozen owners at different sites with different Plextor models, I've only heard of one failure -- and that was after 2500 CDRs had been burnt with the unit.
Sun giving away StarOffice for education is more of a public relations ploy than anything else.
The vast majority of StarOffice code is actually the OpenOffice base, which is free to _anyone_? All that comes extra with StarOffice is a few fragments of functionality that can't be distributed as open source because it is owned by companies other than Sun.
IE, on the other hand, was (and is) an entirely closed source base that cannot be obtained (legally) from anywhere except Microsoft and it's partners.
It's also important to note that "free" IE is only available for download to run on systems running Microsoft's own OS products, which are _not_ free. If WinXX were free, and Microsoft were giving away IE to educational groups but charging the general public, you would have a fair comparison, but as it stands your comparison is just a red herring.
I've had both Linux and WinXX systems for development and experimentation for several years. About 2-3 months ago one of Microsoft's "updates" blew out a stable Win2K system to the point that I couldn't even boot in recovery mode.
That's when I made the permanent switch to Linux as my primary desktop instead of just for my servers (I play around with small-scale simulation of distributed architectures.)
I still have WinXP Pro boot drive sitting on a shelf, but I haven't bothered putting it in a system again. If a client needs WinXX development done, I'll put it in a box, but otherwise there is no _way_ I'll go back to WinXX. Even then, the source code will be duped to my Linux boxen where I know it's safe.
Yes, I have blown out Linux systems by making mistakes with kernel builds and such (rare), but I've always been able to just toss in a clean drive, reinstall the base, and just copy everything back over from the no-longer-bootable drive.
No registry junk lost. No functionality lost because of some file I forgot to restore that isn't in the app directory. No serious hassles at all. Never mind the need for add-on virus scanners, add-on firewall software, compilers, etc -- all taking away money I could have spent on something far more useful or entertaining.
I have absolutely no fear of having a business rely on any reasonably current *nix system, be it Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, or otherwise. But there is no way in hell I would ever risk corporate data on a WinXX based server. It's just plain suicidal, and for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would do so.
I recently put together a system based on an ASUS P4 mobo (533), boxed CPU, DVD reader, 256MB DDR, Natural Pro keyboard, Intellimouse Explorer, and floppy for about $700 USD. The board includes 100MB ethernet, excellant sound, and "good enough" video for any corporate desktop. A monitor comparable to what I'm forced to use at most client sites (17") would have brought the price to around $850.
Corporate buyers would be more likely to go with a $1000-1200 system from Dell, Gateway, etc. because they don't want to assemble their own hardware, but you're still talking about 40-50% of the price of a comparably powered Mac.
Go with a board based on the NVidia chipset with AMD, and you might cut the price even further. (I like AMD and have a couple boxen built around their CPUs, but if you're after an integrated mobo solution with expansion options there are more choices with P4.)
So yes -- a third to half the price of a Mac. I really like OS/X, but there is absolutely no way I could justify paying that kind of money.
On a similar note, Apple has a beautiful widescreen LCD display, but I can buy 4.5 Sony G520 21" monitors for the price of that display (although I'd much rather have to move 5 Apple LCDs than one G520.)
Apple has good stuff, but people who buy them tend to do so because of vertical market needs or because they already love their systems, not because they're price-effective.
While it was quite easy to port well-written code between OpenVMS and Unix systems, OpenVMS just didn't maintain the market share to survive. The world focused on *nix vs. Windows, with a stable core of corporate mainframes, and a few specialist markets (Apple in media content, SGI in CGI editing.) Much like OS/2, it was a victim of poor marketting that didn't show the computing public what the real benefits of their advanced features were.
While I wouldn't mind seeing OpenVMS on a client site, I really don't expect it will ever happen. Business does not buy orphans, and they're the only market that needs the benefits of OpenVMS features. *nix systems already have add-on packages and projects to address those needs in other ways.
So RedHat created a KDE Desktop theme using Gnome graphics, and suggested different defaults for the browser and a few other things.
And...?
I've done much the same myself, except I like Opera and paid for it on both Linux and Win32. I opted to use Sylpheed for email. I don't have any office tools in my toolbar, use different dialers, etc. The core is SuSE, but I don't work with the default tools anyhow -- I configure the ones I like for developing code.
More often than not I end up using the Gnome icons for linking those preferred apps. Basically I just look for any icon that seems indicative of the application's function, regardless of what it was originally "designed" for.
Provided RedHat lets you continue to select the existing KDE themes (should you so choose), I really don't see why this whole episode should be an "issue"!
The original poster's commentary indicates that it's a relatively young/naive developer who is either a natural coder or a steady Eddie with an overblown ego doing the writing. Either way, I am guessing that he is quick to grasp concepts and ideas, and gets easily frustrated with people who don't -- and it shows. Even if such people try to be understanding or are "open" to questions, the way they phrase their answers is often intimidating to their peers.
You need to make sure people understand the project is truly a team effort, not a blame game, and encourage questions. If no one is asking questions, check with them daily to see how they are doing, but handle it as an offer to help out or clarify specs rather than just getting their status.
Learn the skills of your people. Those who can't code are often good at other things -- debugging, screen layouts, build management, etc. Very few people are actually useless, they just aren't necessarily good at what has been assigned.
When working with a team of juniors, start out by creating the outline of the code -- makefiles, interface headers, and stub code. Don't get into the details of your code -- make sure the overall project has been outlined. It helps juniors a lot to have a solid interface they are expected to implement, and it helps to modularize the system code.
When people ask questions, don't give them the answer, even if you know. I'm serious! Guide them with questions that lead to the answer, but let them come up with the solution if at all possible. This helps them to learn how to think (your questions show what they should be asking and thinking about), and they gain confidence by coming up with solutions "by themselves."
Ignore all the postings you've seen about beer, pizza parties, and threats of layoff or termination. You'll never succeed with a project if you are wasting your time and budget on frills and turning your staff into nervous wrecks.
If you do encounter a truly useless clueless "developer" who just doesn't "get it", make sure they're working on something non-critical and that their access is restricted. If you have to keep them on the project, try to use them as testers or for "grunt work" like build management. Even the most clueless person can follow a checklist to test software or compile code, and sometimes they can actually become quite good at it. Believe it or not, you need people who will be happy doing the mindless work -- most of the work on a large project is mindless.
Don't create your schedule on the assumption that everyone is going to code as fast as you. Be realistic, and then double the time allotted. Sad to say, I've often found that still doesn't allow enough time for some people.
If you find anyone on the team playing the blame game, snuff that thread. If someone complains about weak specs, redirect the discussion to suggestions about how to improve the specs. If someone is blaming other people for being late with interfaces they "need", redirect to a discussion of modular programming and how the interfaces can be designed without a full implementation. Whatever you do, don't let people get away with blaming others for their own shortcomings.
Perhaps most important, don't use the "big stick" of layoffs and termination to encourage people to work. If they are any good, you'll just scare them into finding another project, leaving you without resources. If they really are useless, no threats will improve their skills and you're going to turn the team into quivering, terrified blobs who would rather chew their own arms off than ask you for help or guidance.
Failing all of the above, make sure that management is aware of delivery issues and potential schedule changes early on. Even if you think you can recover lost time, make sure management knows the time has been lost so that it isn't a surprise if things don't turn out as you hope. Ensure that you've got a feature prioritization so that you know which features to sacrifice if it's critical to get "something" out for a given date.
Finally, keep smiling and keep it light. When all is said and done, it's just another project, not your life, and you'll only get ulcers by stressing excessively. More often than not things don't work out as you'd like, so learn how to manage them in the direction you need when they take a turn.
Being an arrogant SOB myself, it took me years to learn to be more gentle with my coworkers. Rather than bluntly stating my disappointments, I find it's much better to provide them with the interface headers (potentially with stubs), and let them code from there.
Gotta love TiVO listings. DirecTiVO takes care of that watch one record another thing just fine, too.
There is also no mention of whether micsaund and his friend(s) are using UPS power protection (TiVO units are computers, after all!), surge protecting their cable feeds, etc. If their cable company took a major lightning strike that surged everyone's equipment around the same time it would explain everyone having glitches in the same period. If the power conditions in the whole town have been unstable and no one is using UPS units to stabilize brownouts, they will all have similar data transfer problems.
While returning a defective unit might seem an obvious solution, it isn't very feasible when you've waited until one week after your warranty expired to upgrade to an 80GB HDD, and the problems start 4-6 weeks after that... *g*
Now if the wedding is leaving him that frazzled, just wait until he forgets that appointment to be fitted for his tux...
The only hassle I had was over a dish cover, and even for that they did a good job of getting the problem straightened out. Both I and they were frustrated by the time I got the cover I originally ordered, but with all the shipping charges they lost money rather than letting a customer go away unhappy.
No, I don't work for them, own stock, have relatives who work there, etc. I was just really impressed with how far they went to ensure I was happy with the equipment I ordered.
On the flip side, the crashing stopped after I restored the backup image and let it refresh from the servers again. Theoretically I should be running the same software image as everyone else, except that I might have skipped over some intermediate patch between early January (first backup/upgrade) and the most recent restoration. My issues for the past couple weeks have been directly correlated to DirecTV anti-piracy measures, despite my having a fully paid subscription for both DTV and TiVO service.
I leave the cover off now as I consider 50C too hot for any electronics to be running (dual 7200 RPM Maxtors), regardless of what Sony/TiVO consider "normal".
Hard drives are physical devices and while they may test ok from a storage device perspective, that doesn't necessarily mean they can push data at a steady enough data rate for the DirecTiVO to record two data streams and play back a third.
If this was Wednesday night a couple weeks ago with a DirecTiVO, it wasn't your TiVO that flaked out, but DirecTV making a mess of the local channels again. They are getting so aggressive in their anti-piracy measures that it's starting to affect paying customers.
Also if you're on DirecTV, you may be seeing compression glitches that are the result of DirecTV's aggressive compression. With DirecTiVO, the unit just stores the data stream from the satellite and doesn't recompress the data. Those glitches are the result of signal errors (very rare) and severe bit rate compression (quite common.) Alas, the bit rate problem won't go away as long as DTV is trying to push so many channels without having a lot more bandwidth available.
A final possibility if you are getting periods of jerky/pausing playback is that the garbage collection/reindexing tasks are running. After a few weeks of comparing the logs to the periods when I have playback problems I've noticed that GC/reindex of large drives takes 10-20 minutes, during which playback is unreliable. The unit is smart enough to schedule these tasks to run when no recordings are scheduled, so your recordings are safe.
Historically this was not an issue with C.T.'s postings. It seems to have become a problem in the past 6-9 months, particularly the past 3-6 months.
A lot of /. articles lately should be modded as Flamebait themselves, and that is my issue. This is supposed to be a place for people to learn about what is going on in the industry and in various loosely tech-related subjects, not a place for C.T. to post potentially libelous flamebait rants.
I've been thinking about whether I would be willing to pay for a subscription or put up with advertising, but I have to agree with you -- this "article" just made the decision easy. If the "reporters" like CmdrTaco can't be bother to check something so trivial before splattering such a sensationalistic item like a supermarket tabloid, then I see absolutely no sense in paying for the "service."
I find it interesting how often the Australian and New Zealand film industries seem to be involved in "out of nowhere" success stories. Perhaps it has something to do with an irreverant, politically incorrect, tongue-in-cheek, low-budget, don't-give-a-damn action-flick mentality?
Realistically, I think that's what I like most about the B movies. These are people who make movies for the love of making a movie. They don't care if it's a "great" script, the acting is heartfelt if uneven, and the budget wouldn't cover a lot of Hollywood trailers, yet they manage to put out a lot of solid entertainment. I get the feeling the people in that sector of the industry are more interested in entertaining the audience, and if they make enough money to bankroll the next effort, they call it a success.
The B movies, asian dubs, and other "unprofitable" movies also happen to be what I enjoy most about satellite TV (DirecTV.) The movie channels I watch most weren't even available on Comcast cable!
As to size of the DVD collection, it's into the hundreds. It's actually a good thing there isn't much new material worth buying coming out -- I was spending too much. As to replacing it with the upcoming HDTV blue-laser disks -- dream on! I can't afford it!
Two.
How many do I know that publish pirated videos for people to download?
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Why?
Because despite what Valenti and co. think, even most so-called "pirates" have morals. The two people I know who "pirate" videos make copies to share with each other because too many of their DVDs were damaged by mailing them back and forth. If a couple CDs with a DiVX gets trashed by the post office, it's only some effort and $1.20 worth of CDRs that are lost.
I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in downloading free movies, but I think it's safe to assume those are people who would rent or borrow the movie rather than buy a copy.
It's the same as the Napster demographic -- most Napster hoarders I know didn't spend a lot of money on CDs before Napster, they didn't spend a lot after Napster was shut down, and they never will. Back in the pre-digital days, they were the people who taped songs with a cassette deck from FM radio, while the industry cried that they would be ruined.
It's time Hollywood got off their monopolistic high horse and accepted that their industry is losing money because it's churning out crap, not because of piracy. I haven't been to a theatre in four years because there hasn't been anything worth paying theatre-ticket prices.
Most of my DVDs are of movies produced years ago, less than 10% are "new" releases from the past couple years. A huge chunk of that collection is B-movies and anime, neither of which are produced on a tenth of the budget wasted on the advertising budget for the typical Hollywood flop.
The producers would probably prefer to keep 10 year olds from buying the most violent of games -- many of them have children, too. They don't want to make it too difficult for the 14-18 audience to buy the games, as that is probably a huge chunk of their market.
I have to question the rationale behind wanting the violence to be ever increasingly realistic. As a programmer I'm impressed by the attention to detail in the newer games (e.g. area-specific damage skins), but I don't really notice those details when I'm playing the games.
Realism in the sense of allowing alernate solutions as Deus Ex tried to is far more important to me as a player than whether the blood pool under a body spreads as time goes on.
Despite my personal opinions that we don't need such attention to detail for the gibs, I strongly object to censorship. It is the responsibility of parents to monitor their children, not society at large.
Anyone who thinks desensitization comes from video games really needs to take a look at their own reaction to the news, particularly when their children are in the room. How many people sit stone-faced while the latest accident/murder/rape is reported on the news, suggesting to their children that this is a "normal" part of society? How many more protest "shock" at such acts, while remaining glued to the screen in rapt attention, the very attention children crave from their parents?
That also means I don't subscribe to any of the listings magazines (TV Guide or any produced by local newspapers.) As a result, I don't see their attempts to boost weak shows by "interviewing" the cast members or reading biased reviews.
Why would an advertiser spend huge sums to place an ad during the 20h00 run of a prime time show if people with PVRs are just as likely to watch an off-hours run of the same show? For example, UPN runs "Enterprise" as a prime time slot on Wednesday, and in a non-prime slot Sunday night. If an advertiser knows that people are just as likely to watch the Sunday transmission as the Wednesday, why would they pay the premium fees for the Wednesday prime time run?
PVRs also mean a lot of the "filler" shows that run before and after their big hits don't get any audience, because they aren't scheduled in the PVRs. Suddenly their advertising fees are tied to the popularity of a show, not the time slot, and that means they have to invest a lot more effort into producing something people want to see for it's own sake.
Given the quantity of drek on the airwaves, it's no wonder they're running scared. How dare the audience demand quality shows!
Like any other university grad, I started my career thinking project management, documentation, and QA were just for people who "couldn't program." The past 15 years in the industry have taught me that real design documentation, project management, and QA are critical to the success of a project. It's only the little one-person jobs that don't "need" those features, and those tasks are now the domain of office automation software, not development teams.
On the downside, the first areas of a development team to be hit when there are budget cuts are QA, design/documentation and programming teams. Good managers hang on because they have a knack for getting the most done with their ever-reducing resources, but the poor ones are out the door as quickly as the rest of the team.
Many people have mentioned that some staff get retained because they "get along" with people in management. Where is the surprise here? If you don't get along with anyone except hard-core techs, how can you hope to collect business requirements (from people who don't speak geek), follow up on bug reports, or convince anyone that your work is important? Take the arrogant hard-core computer geek attitude and you just alienate the people you're supposed to be servicing.
While I'd rather program for fun, my job is servicing business needs. It took the first few years of my career to learn that, and that bit of experience is the main reason most placement agencies want people with 2-3 years experience or more. Working on part-time jobs during your education that are one-person development projects doesn't develop those skills and understandings, which is why interviewers only want to know about the work you did after graduating.
A post lower down has a copy of the license agreement for MPEG4, and it really isn't as bad as you might think. It would cost less than a dollar to get a personal use license, a far cry from the $19 for Pegasus Imaging MJPEG codec. Even if they had to charge a few dollars more to cover the cost of selling the licenses (say $5 total), it still wouldn't be a bad deal.
The per-minute charges are for commercial user of MPEG4, not personal home use. Even if you were to provide streams from your webserver, there are no per-minute fees provided that you are not charging to view the content.
As I often pay the $10-20 most shareware developers want, I really have no problem with paying $5-10 for a DiVX personal-use license provided that I can continue to use the codec with VirtualDub as a video-tape replacement for archiving broadcast TV series.
(1) Sun's support is great if you are in the right area. Check with companies in smaller centers to see what kind of support they are getting, and how long it takes to get a good engineer out to resolve any serious issues.
(3) Isn't quite true. The OS is only the foundation, and you rapidly find that you need this particular OS patch for Sybase, another for DB/2, another for Encina, Tuxedo, Websphere, ... If you can find a combination of packages that can agree on patch levels, count yourself lucky! The only advantage Sun has here is a better coordination of patches than standalone Linux.
(4) You have got to be kidding! Sun's CPUs, memory modules, and hard drives fail at least as often as other vendors. Personal experience would indicate IBM and HP as the most reliable, but I have no empirical evidence to support that observation.
Your point on price not being relevant is largely true. The cost of the physical hardware is trivial compared to maintenance staff, software licenses, development costs, and cascading downtime.
My bigger concern is that I've never had any of my 300+ DVDs jam, tear, stretch, or drop out. I've had 6 that were poorly burned on manufacture and had to be exchanged. I sure can't say the same for my VHS and SVHS tapes.
"But it's digital", some might say. Digital tapes are still subject to the problems. When I consider the number of bad DLT and 8mm tapes I've encountered over the past few years, there is no way I'd ever consider buying a movie on tape again.
As to handling HD formats, I'll just wait for next-gen DVD to deal with that. As the cheapest HDTV I've seen that is "good enough" to justify the upgrade is about $4000 beyond what I'm willing to pay, it'll be a while before it concerns me at all.