Every shell script I write can run in a non-dynamic bourne shell. With all my years of supporting dozens of different flavors of unix, I grew accustomed to never assuming what shells may or may not be available on a given system.
The most amusing thing to me is going to be watching all the people completely freak out about all the changes, and they may never realize just how many of those omissions or additions were done by Douglas Adams himself. (Such as the new Kavula character, created entirely by Adams for the movie.)
Adams wasn't an idiot, like most of the people involved with the Harry Potter films. He (like Peter Jackson) knew that a novel is not a film script. Even a radio play script is not a film script. Even most television shows, if shown on the big screen in the theater, would look all wrong. Film is it's own medium and no matter what your source material is, above all, your focus has to be on the fact that you are now creating a film. It seems like everyone involved with the HHG movie understands that except for some of the fans.
I assume the official ClearCase solution to that is using distributed servers in each region that are synchronized/replicated with each other.
I've never worked with ClearCase though, so maybe not. We still use Continuus where I work, which has a distributed server option for different regional development offices.
So what's the solution for online delivery? You just spent $50 million dollars and many years making what you think is the best game your company ever made. You'd love to let people download it so they don't have to buy from a distributor.
Now, how you you do that *and* get paid? What stops the first person who pays from letting everyone else download it from them for free?
How do you deliver content online without just pissing away any hope of ever feeding your children from your work?
For the record, I'm not a huge fan of some elements of steam either, but I AM a huge fan of eliminating distributors and publishers from the world whenever possible.
I'd love to now the name of that journal that published the "hogwash". Doesn't sound like it's a legitimate one. Any real journal has a posse of reviewers just salivating at the chance of taking apart someone else's work.
Interesting how close that is to just buying a standalone Tivo right now. $99 (after rebate) for the box + $299 lifetime subscription. Tivo is even linux-based! (I still remember that from back when people thought Tivo was cool for using linux. Now, of course, Tivo is evil because a) they're the brand leader and b) they would like to make money someday.)
In what way is Wikipedia "Peer-reviewed"? *Anyone* can update an entry, right? Like, I could decide to submit my own interpretations on string theory, despite my knowing nothing about string theory and having no credentials on that subject at all.
That's not at all like a real peer-reviewed journal, where the review and comment process is much more rigorous.
Sure, if I spew some blatantly false blather, someone will eventually catch it and fix it. But how long will the wrong information be out there for some poor student to see and think is true vetted "peer-reviewed" data?
My wife teaches various aspects of anthropology and works with some genuine peer-reviewed academic journals. She'd never accept Wikipedia as a real reference in a student paper. (She in fact rants about it frequently for how common errors are.) Neither would she accept someguyswebsite.com either, of course. Many credible sources also have their own websites, and then there's always the horrible prospect of actually going into a library for research.
Wikipedia has its uses, I still refer to it myself sometimes when I'm just looking something up out of curiosity, but I treat everything I read there with a grain of salt.
This article by one of Wikipedia's original co-founders I think very precisely sums up some of the challenges Wikipedia faces to be considered a true, academic-level information source on par with "real" peer-reviews journals and encyclopedias.
Ironically, I just checked the brand repair history page for refrigerators, and CR lists Maytag as having some of the worst reliability ratings of all the manufacturers.
But you're right, neither CR nor any other source of reviews will be an untouchable pillar of wisdom. Their methodology just means that, statistically, they're going to be right more often than someone that gets free test products and has their revenue dependent on the support of the manufacturer. And even then, I never buy anything blindly based on CR's recommendations. I always look for a variety of opinions when possible.
They're an old-fashioned company though, no doubt, and they're reviews of computer equipment reflect that. I've often wondered if CU could put some effort into real dedicated technical reviews, possibly for a separate magazine/website, but I honestly wonder if their whole philosophy is compatible with the geek world.
Oh no! An anecdotal incident! Surely you noticed that even the *most* reliable appliance in CR's reviews still did not have a non-zero incidence of repairs.
The whole point of statistical data like that is to provide just that, statistics. It's not telling you which product will never break, it's reporting which products statisticaly broke less often in their surveys.
If you gave a good review to some laptop, and I had problems with it due to a manufacturing defect, does that make your review a bad review?
I wholeheartedly agree that I would not go to Consumer Reports for computer hardware reviews, but that's because I'm not a "consumer" of computer hardware. I'm an expert, aficionado, obsessed geek, whatever. If I was Grandma Jones looking for one of those new computing machines, a consumer reports review based on price, tech support, and ease of restoration would mean a lot more to me than the FPS of Doom 3.
The one way I often find myself disagreeing with CR is they weigh money *far* more than I do in some situations. They'd overall rate a lower quality product higher if it's price is lower, which is handy sometimes, but sometimes I really want the best quality regardless of price. In fact, within some reasonable limits of price, I pretty much *always* would pay more for better quality. But I'm not living from paycheck to paycheck like a lot of people are.
Basically, if your refrigerator breaks, that doesn't make the CR reliability rating inaccurate. They didn't rate *your* refrigerator. They reviewed repair reports and tabulated the statistics. Some people will buy the least reliable car in the world and never have a problem others might buy the most reliable and have frequent problems.
It's an interesting point though, about the movie review business. As far as I know it's pretty traditional for movie reviewers to not have to pay for preview screenings, but that generally hasn't seemed to sully the reputation of the few respected reviewers. If people think Ebert's review of a movie is way wrong, they just say it's because they think he's an idiot, not because he's "on the take".
I believe there *are* some packaged systems like this based on Apple hardware. I'm pretty sure I've seen some retail cash register suites using imacs at some small shops around.
It certainly wouldn't hurt Apple's penetration into the business market to have more of those though.
If you're "poor brown people", scrabbling in the dirt hoping to find a morsel of food for your children, would you rather have a well-designed robust web server, or a sandwhich?
The world needs both free software *and* generous charitable donations. Don't discount one because you prefer the other.
And don't play the "Oh, well, it doesn't count because it's not a significant portion of his worth". A hungry person doesn't give a damn how much someone had to sacrifice to give him that bowl of soup.
How many examples are there of *any* succesful software being developed without knowledge of the subject or input from its target audience? Was photoshop developed by programmers with no knowledge of image manipulation? Was Lotus 123 developed by people with no knowledge of spreadsheets?
The fact is, no non-prime time animated shows make *all* their money from merchandising deals. It doesn't matter how good the ratings are, they never get enough money from ads to cover production costs. If you're cartoon isn't selling toys, shirts, lunchboxes, etc, it's losing money, period.
That's why Static Shock ended even though it was something like the number one or two highest rated american-produced kids cartoon. They couldn't get a toy company to agree to a merchandising deal, and had to stop production even though the network wanted more shows.
It's a sad fact, and almost certainly the reason most animated shows are crap, especially the American ones.
I got mildly burned on a Best Buy rebate once, though I was not without fault. I was buying a DirecTV system, and the clerk at Best Buy encouraged me to buy a package system of dish + two receivers, even though I really only needed the dish since I was going to buy a DirecTivo unit. Anyway, he convinced me that, after the special rebates being offered, the package system would end up being free. $99 for the package with free installation and a $100 rebate.
It was a great deal, and I dutifully filled in all the rebate paperwork. A couple months later I got a response back informing me that said rebate offer had ended the week before I bought the package. I checked the original rebate offer form and sure enough it had.
At that point it wasn't really worth trying to go to the Best Buy and inform them that several months ago an employee whose name I never knew and whose face I don't recall told me something thast wasn't true, and I have no documentation to prove that. I just chalked it up as a lesson to check the rebate details myself before I buy, and I'm reminded every time I see the pair of receivers that I'll never use.
I can't stop laughing at the complaint that it takes *three whole minutes* to destroy an enemy battleship.
I wish someone had told me that naval battles are traditionally resolved in 30 seconds. Why does everyone try to translate space combat as analagous to aerial dogfights? Big massive ships bristling with weaponry are not likely to dart about like dragonflys.
Are PC games significantly better? I don't know. Were any of these games released on consoles? Heck, how many were even released on Macs?
Planescape: Torment Baldur's Gate (the RPG, not the action thing) Grim Fandango Full Throttle Deus Ex (the first non crappy one) Thief Ultima series (heck, my earliest experiences were on my old Apple IIe) Half-Life 1 and 2 No One Lives Forever 1 and 2
I've played some fun console games in my life (going back to the original Pong units we had in our family room as a kid) but none rank among the best games I've ever played, sadly.
I have to say, that really would be a HUGE deal. Being able to just drop a commonly available game CD into a mac laptop and game away, even if it required a separate controller (ideally, a good quality bluetooth one) would definitely cover the "not enough quality games" issue quite well.
It really comes down to basics. If you want to watch Lost or American Idol or whatever, somebody has to pay for it. People don't want to pay for their TV service, and they don't want to endure some ads. There's just no way for a broadcast network to win.
Maybe it's one of the reasons so much of the best television programs on the air are coming from premium subscription channels lately.
Even worse, some of those network pop-ups have started getting *loud*. I remember watching Justice League on cartoon network and getting pop-up ads for Megas XLR that were so loud they actually drowned out the dialog going on at the time.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Really? Sorry, I must have imagined this sentence:
"Not to mention IT issues a Mac and completely forgets about it since there are no support issues."
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Rebuilding the desktop was something one had to do in "the old days" pre-OSX. I'll presume that the OSX finder never needs this to happen any more, hopefully.
I don't know if any OS problems are an order of magnitude worse than any other. My conclusions after working the last 10+ years in IT is that end-users are the source of more problems than any OS or hardware.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Woo hoo! Sweet! Now I can rest...forever sleep...earned it I have.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
There is a big difference between "less" and "none". And I sit next to my wife and her iBook (previously a powerbook) every night. So even anecdotally I can vouch for her having problems with application crashes or even system problems. (She had lots of problems with OSX on her old powerbook especially.) Not to mention the times I took her powerbook to the "genius bar" at the Apple store. Surprising how many people were waiting in line ahead of me, considering how Apple systems never need support.
So I'll just keep sticking to the mantra: All systems have problems. Never believe any evangelist who tells you any system never has problems. Any properly maintained system can run smoothly. Yes, even Windows boxes, though the details of "properly maintained" can certainly be more intensive.
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Every shell script I write can run in a non-dynamic bourne shell. With all my years of supporting dozens of different flavors of unix, I grew accustomed to never assuming what shells may or may not be available on a given system.
#!/bin/sh 4 LIFE!
The most amusing thing to me is going to be watching all the people completely freak out about all the changes, and they may never realize just how many of those omissions or additions were done by Douglas Adams himself. (Such as the new Kavula character, created entirely by Adams for the movie.)
Adams wasn't an idiot, like most of the people involved with the Harry Potter films. He (like Peter Jackson) knew that a novel is not a film script. Even a radio play script is not a film script. Even most television shows, if shown on the big screen in the theater, would look all wrong. Film is it's own medium and no matter what your source material is, above all, your focus has to be on the fact that you are now creating a film. It seems like everyone involved with the HHG movie understands that except for some of the fans.
I assume the official ClearCase solution to that is using distributed servers in each region that are synchronized/replicated with each other.
I've never worked with ClearCase though, so maybe not. We still use Continuus where I work, which has a distributed server option for different regional development offices.
So what's the solution for online delivery? You just spent $50 million dollars and many years making what you think is the best game your company ever made. You'd love to let people download it so they don't have to buy from a distributor.
Now, how you you do that *and* get paid? What stops the first person who pays from letting everyone else download it from them for free?
How do you deliver content online without just pissing away any hope of ever feeding your children from your work?
For the record, I'm not a huge fan of some elements of steam either, but I AM a huge fan of eliminating distributors and publishers from the world whenever possible.
By the same token, gravity is "just" a theory, of course.
I'd love to now the name of that journal that published the "hogwash". Doesn't sound like it's a legitimate one. Any real journal has a posse of reviewers just salivating at the chance of taking apart someone else's work.
Interesting how close that is to just buying a standalone Tivo right now. $99 (after rebate) for the box + $299 lifetime subscription. Tivo is even linux-based! (I still remember that from back when people thought Tivo was cool for using linux. Now, of course, Tivo is evil because a) they're the brand leader and b) they would like to make money someday.)
In what way is Wikipedia "Peer-reviewed"? *Anyone* can update an entry, right? Like, I could decide to submit my own interpretations on string theory, despite my knowing nothing about string theory and having no credentials on that subject at all.
5
That's not at all like a real peer-reviewed journal, where the review and comment process is much more rigorous.
Sure, if I spew some blatantly false blather, someone will eventually catch it and fix it. But how long will the wrong information be out there for some poor student to see and think is true vetted "peer-reviewed" data?
My wife teaches various aspects of anthropology and works with some genuine peer-reviewed academic journals. She'd never accept Wikipedia as a real reference in a student paper. (She in fact rants about it frequently for how common errors are.) Neither would she accept someguyswebsite.com either, of course. Many credible sources also have their own websites, and then there's always the horrible prospect of actually going into a library for research.
Wikipedia has its uses, I still refer to it myself sometimes when I'm just looking something up out of curiosity, but I treat everything I read there with a grain of salt.
This article by one of Wikipedia's original co-founders I think very precisely sums up some of the challenges Wikipedia faces to be considered a true, academic-level information source on par with "real" peer-reviews journals and encyclopedias.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/2
Ironically, I just checked the brand repair history page for refrigerators, and CR lists Maytag as having some of the worst reliability ratings of all the manufacturers.
But you're right, neither CR nor any other source of reviews will be an untouchable pillar of wisdom. Their methodology just means that, statistically, they're going to be right more often than someone that gets free test products and has their revenue dependent on the support of the manufacturer. And even then, I never buy anything blindly based on CR's recommendations. I always look for a variety of opinions when possible.
They're an old-fashioned company though, no doubt, and they're reviews of computer equipment reflect that. I've often wondered if CU could put some effort into real dedicated technical reviews, possibly for a separate magazine/website, but I honestly wonder if their whole philosophy is compatible with the geek world.
Oh no! An anecdotal incident! Surely you noticed that even the *most* reliable appliance in CR's reviews still did not have a non-zero incidence of repairs.
The whole point of statistical data like that is to provide just that, statistics. It's not telling you which product will never break, it's reporting which products statisticaly broke less often in their surveys.
If you gave a good review to some laptop, and I had problems with it due to a manufacturing defect, does that make your review a bad review?
I wholeheartedly agree that I would not go to Consumer Reports for computer hardware reviews, but that's because I'm not a "consumer" of computer hardware. I'm an expert, aficionado, obsessed geek, whatever. If I was Grandma Jones looking for one of those new computing machines, a consumer reports review based on price, tech support, and ease of restoration would mean a lot more to me than the FPS of Doom 3.
The one way I often find myself disagreeing with CR is they weigh money *far* more than I do in some situations. They'd overall rate a lower quality product higher if it's price is lower, which is handy sometimes, but sometimes I really want the best quality regardless of price. In fact, within some reasonable limits of price, I pretty much *always* would pay more for better quality. But I'm not living from paycheck to paycheck like a lot of people are.
Basically, if your refrigerator breaks, that doesn't make the CR reliability rating inaccurate. They didn't rate *your* refrigerator. They reviewed repair reports and tabulated the statistics. Some people will buy the least reliable car in the world and never have a problem others might buy the most reliable and have frequent problems.
It's an interesting point though, about the movie review business. As far as I know it's pretty traditional for movie reviewers to not have to pay for preview screenings, but that generally hasn't seemed to sully the reputation of the few respected reviewers. If people think Ebert's review of a movie is way wrong, they just say it's because they think he's an idiot, not because he's "on the take".
I believe there *are* some packaged systems like this based on Apple hardware. I'm pretty sure I've seen some retail cash register suites using imacs at some small shops around.
It certainly wouldn't hurt Apple's penetration into the business market to have more of those though.
If you're "poor brown people", scrabbling in the dirt hoping to find a morsel of food for your children, would you rather have a well-designed robust web server, or a sandwhich?
The world needs both free software *and* generous charitable donations. Don't discount one because you prefer the other.
And don't play the "Oh, well, it doesn't count because it's not a significant portion of his worth". A hungry person doesn't give a damn how much someone had to sacrifice to give him that bowl of soup.
How many examples are there of *any* succesful software being developed without knowledge of the subject or input from its target audience? Was photoshop developed by programmers with no knowledge of image manipulation? Was Lotus 123 developed by people with no knowledge of spreadsheets?
bah, typo, should say "all non prime-time animated shows make all their money from"
The fact is, no non-prime time animated shows make *all* their money from merchandising deals. It doesn't matter how good the ratings are, they never get enough money from ads to cover production costs. If you're cartoon isn't selling toys, shirts, lunchboxes, etc, it's losing money, period.
That's why Static Shock ended even though it was something like the number one or two highest rated american-produced kids cartoon. They couldn't get a toy company to agree to a merchandising deal, and had to stop production even though the network wanted more shows.
It's a sad fact, and almost certainly the reason most animated shows are crap, especially the American ones.
I got mildly burned on a Best Buy rebate once, though I was not without fault. I was buying a DirecTV system, and the clerk at Best Buy encouraged me to buy a package system of dish + two receivers, even though I really only needed the dish since I was going to buy a DirecTivo unit. Anyway, he convinced me that, after the special rebates being offered, the package system would end up being free. $99 for the package with free installation and a $100 rebate.
It was a great deal, and I dutifully filled in all the rebate paperwork. A couple months later I got a response back informing me that said rebate offer had ended the week before I bought the package. I checked the original rebate offer form and sure enough it had.
At that point it wasn't really worth trying to go to the Best Buy and inform them that several months ago an employee whose name I never knew and whose face I don't recall told me something thast wasn't true, and I have no documentation to prove that. I just chalked it up as a lesson to check the rebate details myself before I buy, and I'm reminded every time I see the pair of receivers that I'll never use.
I can't stop laughing at the complaint that it takes *three whole minutes* to destroy an enemy battleship.
I wish someone had told me that naval battles are traditionally resolved in 30 seconds. Why does everyone try to translate space combat as analagous to aerial dogfights? Big massive ships bristling with weaponry are not likely to dart about like dragonflys.
Are PC games significantly better? I don't know. Were any of these games released on consoles? Heck, how many were even released on Macs?
Planescape: Torment
Baldur's Gate (the RPG, not the action thing)
Grim Fandango
Full Throttle
Deus Ex (the first non crappy one)
Thief
Ultima series (heck, my earliest experiences were on my old Apple IIe)
Half-Life 1 and 2
No One Lives Forever 1 and 2
I've played some fun console games in my life (going back to the original Pong units we had in our family room as a kid) but none rank among the best games I've ever played, sadly.
I have to say, that really would be a HUGE deal. Being able to just drop a commonly available game CD into a mac laptop and game away, even if it required a separate controller (ideally, a good quality bluetooth one) would definitely cover the "not enough quality games" issue quite well.
It really comes down to basics. If you want to watch Lost or American Idol or whatever, somebody has to pay for it. People don't want to pay for their TV service, and they don't want to endure some ads. There's just no way for a broadcast network to win.
Maybe it's one of the reasons so much of the best television programs on the air are coming from premium subscription channels lately.
Even worse, some of those network pop-ups have started getting *loud*. I remember watching Justice League on cartoon network and getting pop-up ads for Megas XLR that were so loud they actually drowned out the dialog going on at the time.
Really? Sorry, I must have imagined this sentence:
"Not to mention IT issues a Mac and completely forgets about it since there are no support issues."
Rebuilding the desktop was something one had to do in "the old days" pre-OSX. I'll presume that the OSX finder never needs this to happen any more, hopefully.
I don't know if any OS problems are an order of magnitude worse than any other. My conclusions after working the last 10+ years in IT is that end-users are the source of more problems than any OS or hardware.
Woo hoo! Sweet! Now I can rest...forever sleep...earned it I have.
There is a big difference between "less" and "none". And I sit next to my wife and her iBook (previously a powerbook) every night. So even anecdotally I can vouch for her having problems with application crashes or even system problems. (She had lots of problems with OSX on her old powerbook especially.) Not to mention the times I took her powerbook to the "genius bar" at the Apple store. Surprising how many people were waiting in line ahead of me, considering how Apple systems never need support.
So I'll just keep sticking to the mantra: All systems have problems. Never believe any evangelist who tells you any system never has problems. Any properly maintained system can run smoothly. Yes, even Windows boxes, though the details of "properly maintained" can certainly be more intensive.