I have had it pounded into my head over the last month or so (mainly on DellTalk) that the A09 BIOS breaks frame buffer support - otherwise I'd go that route. But fb only works with the 2.2 kernels - and my real hope was to take an off-the-shelf distro and run it as-is. Until a few days ago, my only option was a 2.0-based distro (I played with getting SuSE 6.0 running on it, with some success - I had X up with a patched server, but I couldn't get the PC Card Ethernet to work right). My point is that I don't even care about X support in a server PC, but for a laptop, my only _easy_ option is to have a ready-to-use X that supports the LT Pro without mods. Sure, I can hack it, but I shouldn't have to.
As for the fellow who said I shouldn't have bought the card - Hello! This is a laptop, the card's built-in! I get no choice there, plus the Rage Pro LT is about as hotrod as it gets in laptops right now. A TNT doesn't go in there... I doubt it would fit! Besides, I bought it for the office, and that's why it runs NT. Very nicely, too. I'd like to use Linux more at the office, instead of just at home - and that's why I brought this up in the first place.
I have yet to see a "release" X server that properly supports the ATI Rage Pro LT (the regular Rage Pro isn't a problem). Until then, I'm stuck with good old NT as my only OS on my Dell I7K (I already blew away the boot sector virus known as Windows 98). There's a hacked X available, but it breaks on the current Dell BIOS. Bummer.
Other than that, I used SuSE 6.0 for a while at home, and it's pretty nice. Right now I'm playing with COL 2.2, though.
I disagree. The way for to fix things is to become the mangers, the leaders, the bosses. Play the game as much as you have to. Get ahead - we're smarter, more capable, more creative, and more understanding than the majority. Get to the top, and then do things your way.
I was miserable in high school, and I drifted through (eventually dropping out) college, but once I was working for a living I realized the best way to have a good boss and to help other people was to be the boss myself. Nowadays I run a department of techs, and I have worked my butt off to give them a better environment and more dignity than they had before. I also do everything I can IRL for the same purpose.
We shouldn't complain about it - we should take over. There's no reason we can't play the game too, and better than they do. The majority doesn't know we have our own rules and our own culture, and they don't care. We, on the other hand, know their game, understand their rules, and lord knows we're smart enough to dominate them on the field of play... So why don't we?
Here's a few possibilities (which may or may not be correct):
1-No capital. 2-No "vision" types in the group, just a bunch of good engineers. 3-None of them have the appropriate contacts to deal with #1 above.
Or they just don't want the hassle of running a company - hell, they'll get equity for just being a strong team of worker bees in this market. Pretty cool idea, I think - definitely different.
Before this Linux testing disaster, Mindcraft had performed similar comparisons between NT4/NetWare 5, NT4/NetWare4.11 and NT4/Solaris. They are, historically, a professional, unbiased testing shop who can accurately perform tests that will produce whatever Microsoft wants - Microsoft seems to be their largest paying benchmark customer. They also did some tests for Netscape, too, "proving" that Netscape blows away NetWare for directory management.
You'd think that if a company pays for tainted benchmarks, they could at least ask Mindcraft to cook the numbers less blatantly.
THe best way to do this test, I think, would be to run the NT benchmarks, then let Linus, Alan, Brian, Andrew, and Dean (I apologize for any gurus I forgot) have their way with the same server for testing. Let the Mindcraft stooges watch. They may just learn something.
I was in a "day-a-week" gifted program in the town where I grew up, too (Westport, CT - noted for their schools). If anything, it made the socialization problem worse for me. I went from being a nerdy kid to a nerdy kid who got taken out of school one day a week to play with the other nerdy kids in town. I didn't get along very well with them, either. In fact, I didn't even really begin to socialize until my last two years of High School (Westport's HS was a three-year school back then), when I stumbled into developing loose ties with the Players (the theater group). Then I finally began to come out of my shell. I did participate in sports, but I only enjoyed track/cross country - it was solitary in nature.
It wasn't really until I escaped to college that I could put K-12 behind me and start over. Only one of my friends today is a person who I went to high school with. In a burst of irony, she's a psychologist.
As much as the gifted program didn't do much for my socialization, at least it gave me an outlet for my mind. I spent a lot of my time designing and building model rockets, which fascinated me. Today, I guess, that would be considered a sign of impending doom (My God! He plays with explosives!). Problematic though it was, it beats my earliest years in the Manhattan public schools. I already was reading adult books when I went to first grade, so when the teacher realized I already was beyond the entire year's reading plan, she gave me a dictionary and put me in the back of the room to read it. Oh yeah, THAT helped...
Despite this, I somehow parlayed this start into being a moderately successful adult. This proves there is hope for just about all of us - we just have to get through the Inferno that passes for public school.
Perhaps there's a market for a private school devoted to nerd children. But I bet it, too, would quickly stratify into social layers. There will always be "cool" kids, and there will always be outcasts, regardless.
Those of you reading this who are still there - it gets better. Really.
I may only have a wimpy Micra, but it rocks
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Look out Leatherman!
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· Score: 1
I had a little Victorinox keychain Swiss Army for about 8 years or so, 'til it died. I picked up one of the Leatherman Micras to replace it - what a wonderful tool! It was only a little bigger, but the scissors are great, it has a nice blade, and it has a Phillips, too. Unfortunately, the tweezer on it sucks eggs, but you can't have everything - where would you put it? The other advantage of the Micra (but a disadvantage to those who like a full utility belt) is that it fits in pocket rather than on the belt. With my pager, Palm III, and potbelly, I don't have room for a lot of belt stuff.
When I was in my friend Rob's wedding a couple of years ago, he gave all the groomsmen engraved Leatherman tools. Now that's cool. Mine's in my car.
Though I was very leery of YALD (Yet Another Linux Distribution) Corel is at least building on existing systems and a solid GUI (I know GNOME is cool, but it's really not as far along at this point as KDE). This, IMHO, is a Good Thing. It'll be interesting to see what Corel does to customize/ease-of-useify their distro. Debian is great, but it could use a little easier install, I think. Hopefully some of Corel's work will filter back into Debian.
I'm not surprised, really - the companies that produce boxes as well as Unixes have been embracing Linux (Sun, SGI, HP, IBM), since it gives them an attractive option and lets them keep selling their boxes. SCO, on the other hand, quoting Spike Lee in those asinine Pizza Hut ads: "You got nothin'!" Even though they bought the old AT&T code, it hasn't done them a whit of good. And SCO is far too wed to the old pricing and development modes to really compete against Linux and Windows at the low end, and minis/other commercial Unixes at the high end.
Heck, I like VMS. A lot. Cut my teeth on it at Northeastern back in the mid '80s. But, like mainframes once were last decade, minis are now a dying technology. Mainframes already are dead - but my definition of dead isn't that they don't exist or that people aren't making money on them. Dead to me means that the technology no longer supports a large variety of vendors and that technology improvements are more or less incremental to the point of being maintenance.
Companies will milk minicomputers for revenues for a long time - but think about how many mainframe vendors are still standing. They do OK because the margins are so high, but it's not a growth business anymore.
Minicomputers are on their way to that point - with lower margins than mainframes. Sure, DEC makes Alpha, and Alpha rocks. And they've done some cool stuff in the labs. But their core business is a ferocious, cutthroat industry where margins are non-existent and everybody runs the same software with no differentiation (MS Windows Whatever). Compaq counted on DEC and Tandem to diversify their revenues and get more $ from services in order to combat the Wintel clone problem. So far, they get an 'F'.
Besides, DEC (though Alpha is the balls) stands in a corner with Novell as two companies with great products and crappy marketing. DEC would sell sushi as "raw dead fish". Though truth in advertising is great for engineers, reality dictates otherwise. While the DECs and Novells of the world preach to the choir, their competition always sold to the PHBs above. Once IT started maturing as a profession and the suits took over, DEC didn't change.
And I love the Proliant 1600s - I've bought six of 'em in the last year. And one Proliant 6000 with dual Xeons - it's sweet. As for smoking though, it's a vile habit. I do eat too much and work out too little, though...
In the previous two decades, the big iron vendors all bought each other out while the minicomputer vendors (like DEC and Tandem) nimbly skirted them and thrived. Back then those smaller companies were the mammals - staying out of the way while the poor, doomed dinosaurs mated above them.
Today, the DECs and Tandems have become the dinosaurs. And Compaq, despite their servers (I love 'em), has started to turn into one, too.
The fundamental problem this time that differentiates a Compaq from an Apple in the turnaround effort is that Apple has gotten where they are by being different - an alternative to the prevailing Wintel near-monopoly. Compaq, despite owning Alpha, VMS, and their belated embrace of Linux, is just a Wintel vendor at heart. And Wintel companies are a dime a dozen.
For Apple, thinking different means something. For Compaq, it just means they're Dell with a higher cost structure, more outside salesmen, and Alpha chips. Whoopee.
I'll buy some shares in case they turn around (what the hell - they're cheap now), but I'm not going to bet the house on them.
To me, if I have to write code it means that the tool isn't there to solve my problem already. So I'm better off when I don't write any, by my standard.
Now if you asked my how much code I've _read_, that would be a different story indeed. Even if I just use it, I still like to see how it works.
Of course, the other reason I don't like to write code is because I suck at it.
As long as there are geeks, there will always be quality reverse-engineering to produce software, adapters, etc. My point was more to say "hey - it's a cheap consumer device. As fun and cool as it is to go find all the neat software people have written for it, I don't necessarily _want_ to." I also want USB, but that's besides the point. The Rio would be perfect with 64MB of base RAM, USB (and maybe serial or parallel until Linux supports it), and Win/Mac/Linux drivers ready to go, with a little cheatsheet explaining the protocol for the roll-your-own crowd. And for half the price.
I'd buy several of 'em, use one and give the rest away as holiday gifts to my non-geek friends. But as far as this model goes - if it looks like an iMac it ought to work with one out of the box.
I'm glad that Apple's survival seems to people to now be a fait accompli, but I will miss the EvangeList. I had a feeling this was coming, with the postings getting smaller and smaller lately. Anyhow, the same way Linux and the Open Source movement represent something necessary and good for this industry, Apple does too. Say what you will about their antiquated memory management, Apple was (and is) historically the only platform designed more by artists than by engineers and focus groups. I still do a lot of work on my good old PowerBook 3400, and my non-computer savvy wife and mother both use iMacs. Yes, Linux is a fundamentally sounder platform, and I use it for more and more at home (and at work), but when I just need to fire up the machine and get something quick done, I still use my Mac.
(Besides, I've never seen a Usenet reader as slick as MT-Newswatcher on any other platform)
Once the InterNIC became a business instead of a service, that's when the network (and the dispute policies) went to crap, as far as I'm concerned. I won't miss the monopoly. Now they just need to handle the zone files, so that each registry can operate root servers correctly. I'm not sure if that's been covered yet.
Do what I did - major in Theater, switch to Political Science, then drop out. It worked for me... so well they made me a PHB eventually.
On second thought - maybe that track doesn't work for everybody!
Seriously, I think that just about any major is fine, so ling as you have the interest and aptitude for sysadmin work. Liberal Arts may be a good place to go, personally I find that a lot of "diverse thinkers" tend to come from that background and it seems to help. Is it the person or the major? I'd say it's probably more the person, though ou can learn "how to think" in a good college program.
"Are Linux folks really interested in free software? Or are they interested only in Linux?"
Yes.
I'm very interested in free software (free speech). I'm also interested in free software (free beer). And I'm interested in Linux. My interest began as "Hey - these ACC Bookstore guys are selling a really cheap Unix. Unix would look real good on my resume. I have a spare PC."
Then, after a while, it morphed into "Wow! I can download all this cool stuff and I don't have to pay!" This is about when ACC morphed into Redhat 2.0.
Now, years later, I'm mainly interested in "This isn't Windows, halelujah!", combined with "the right to poke around your software and do with it whatever you want - how can software be built any other way?".
But the bottom line is these are _all_ motivating factors (and for a lot of others, as well). Back then I was a young geek, now I'm a professional PHB (sadly, my geeking is mostly on the side for fun), but I still have all the same motivations for using Linux.
I never did give a sweet damn what RMS wants to call it (it's Linux as far as I'm concerned, but hey - as I said, I'm just a PHB), but I'm glad he and the GNU Project are out there.
I doubt it'd do much good - Windows is such a monolithic beast to begin with. If they put less of it in the core OS, it might help... Oh yeah. Nevermind. The government already took a shot at that part a few years ago...
The quote here is from PJ O'Rourke's book "All the Trouble in the World" (1994), which I strongly recommend. His politics are not my cup of tea but PJ, when he writes on things political, can make things astonishingly clear and funny, too. His new book, "Eat the Rich" is very funny, too.
"The way Tito kept Yugoslavs from killing each other was he did it for them. This is the same technique used by the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Nazi Germans, and everyone else who's had the misfortune to rule the Balkans. The locals have to be provided with an ample supply of new grievances, otherwise old grievances come to the fore. In Tito's case, one of the old grievances was Tito.
Although Tito himself was of mixed Croat/Slovene/son-of-a-bitch background, his World War II Partisan troops were mostly Serbs. In 1946, 100,000 anti-Tito Croat refugees were handed over to Tito by the ever-admirable British. Tito's partisans then killed something between 40,000 and all of them, with the usual number of women, children, and old people included. Of course, the Partisans didn't do this for a lark. The Croats, under raving nationalist Ante Pavelic, had established a Nazi puppet state in 1941 and killed as many as 350,000 Serbs.........
Who Hates Who, and Why...
The Christians hate the Muslims because Cristians were peons under the Ottomans. The Muslims hate the Christians because Muslims were pissants under the Communists. The Croats hate the Serbs for collaborating with the Communists the same way the Serbs hate the Croats for collaborating with the Nazis, and now the Bosnians hate the Montnegrins for collaborating with the Serbs. The Serbs hate the Albanians for going to Yugoslavia. Everybody hates the Serbs because there are more of them than anybody else to hate and because when Yugoslavia was created in 1918 (with the help of know-it-all American President Woodrow Wilson), the Serbs grabbed control of the govenment and army and haven't let go yet...
It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song. Even those of us who are savagely opposed to pacifism are tempted to grab the Yugoslavs by their fashionably padded shoulders and give them nonviolent what-for: "Even if you win, you ASSHOLES, all you've got is YUGOSLAVIA ! It's not like you're invading France or something."
(For promoting nationalism)....War doesn't work anymore. Rape and slaughter may get Serbia on the evening news, but, from the point of view of becoming major players upon the international stage, Serbs would be better off selling Yugos."
The server finally appears to be back... (for now)
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Nerd Dream Home?
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I saw it. I want it. I wish I could commute to my job from it. I bet it's going to get slashdotted again today...
The home can withstand a nuclear blast, war, famine, or meteor impact, but it can't stand up to the dreaded Slashdot effect. I'm gonna have to start getting up at midnight to see if all Rob's links for the day have recovered...
You know - every once in a while you get a pitch that's right down the middle, and exactly what you thought the pitcher was going to throw. Then, using just enough patience to not swing too soon (because you know you _own_ this pitch), you turn your body into the pitch and quickly put all your force into the end of the bat and...
Thwack!
The ball gets blasted out of the ballpark. And as you trot around the bases, you holler at the pitcher:
I think a lot of this book's "sales" will be traced to bookstores in towns with Microsoft sales offices in them. Kind of the same way Scientologists buy up palette loads worth of Dianetics to keep it on the best-seller list.
"If you act now, you can win a free copy of Bill Gates' new classic, Business @ The Speed Of Thought! And if you don't win, you get two copies!"
Slashdot Mirror
I have had it pounded into my head over the last month or so (mainly on DellTalk) that the A09 BIOS breaks frame buffer support - otherwise I'd go that route. But fb only works with the 2.2 kernels - and my real hope was to take an off-the-shelf distro and run it as-is. Until a few days ago, my only option was a 2.0-based distro (I played with getting SuSE 6.0 running on it, with some success - I had X up with a patched server, but I couldn't get the PC Card Ethernet to work right). My point is that I don't even care about X support in a server PC, but for a laptop, my only _easy_ option is to have a ready-to-use X that supports the LT Pro without mods. Sure, I can hack it, but I shouldn't have to.
As for the fellow who said I shouldn't have bought the card - Hello! This is a laptop, the card's built-in! I get no choice there, plus the Rage Pro LT is about as hotrod as it gets in laptops right now. A TNT doesn't go in there... I doubt it would fit! Besides, I bought it for the office, and that's why it runs NT. Very nicely, too. I'd like to use Linux more at the office, instead of just at home - and that's why I brought this up in the first place.
I have yet to see a "release" X server that properly supports the ATI Rage Pro LT (the regular Rage Pro isn't a problem). Until then, I'm stuck with good old NT as my only OS on my Dell I7K (I already blew away the boot sector virus known as Windows 98). There's a hacked X available, but it breaks on the current Dell BIOS. Bummer.
Other than that, I used SuSE 6.0 for a while at home, and it's pretty nice. Right now I'm playing with COL 2.2, though.
I disagree. The way for to fix things is to become the mangers, the leaders, the bosses. Play the game as much as you have to. Get ahead - we're smarter, more capable, more creative, and more understanding than the majority. Get to the top, and then do things your way.
I was miserable in high school, and I drifted through (eventually dropping out) college, but once I was working for a living I realized the best way to have a good boss and to help other people was to be the boss myself. Nowadays I run a department of techs, and I have worked my butt off to give them a better environment and more dignity than they had before. I also do everything I can IRL for the same purpose.
We shouldn't complain about it - we should take over. There's no reason we can't play the game too, and better than they do. The majority doesn't know we have our own rules and our own culture, and they don't care. We, on the other hand, know their game, understand their rules, and lord knows we're smart enough to dominate them on the field of play... So why don't we?
Here's a few possibilities (which may or may not be correct):
1-No capital.
2-No "vision" types in the group, just a bunch of good engineers.
3-None of them have the appropriate contacts to deal with #1 above.
Or they just don't want the hassle of running a company - hell, they'll get equity for just being a strong team of worker bees in this market. Pretty cool idea, I think - definitely different.
Before this Linux testing disaster, Mindcraft had performed similar comparisons between NT4/NetWare 5, NT4/NetWare4.11 and NT4/Solaris. They are, historically, a professional, unbiased testing shop who can accurately perform tests that will produce whatever Microsoft wants - Microsoft seems to be their largest paying benchmark customer. They also did some tests for Netscape, too, "proving" that Netscape blows away NetWare for directory management.
You'd think that if a company pays for tainted benchmarks, they could at least ask Mindcraft to cook the numbers less blatantly.
THe best way to do this test, I think, would be to run the NT benchmarks, then let Linus, Alan, Brian, Andrew, and Dean (I apologize for any gurus I forgot) have their way with the same server for testing. Let the Mindcraft stooges watch. They may just learn something.
I was in a "day-a-week" gifted program in the town where I grew up, too (Westport, CT - noted for their schools). If anything, it made the socialization problem worse for me. I went from being a nerdy kid to a nerdy kid who got taken out of school one day a week to play with the other nerdy kids in town. I didn't get along very well with them, either. In fact, I didn't even really begin to socialize until my last two years of High School (Westport's HS was a three-year school back then), when I stumbled into developing loose ties with the Players (the theater group). Then I finally began to come out of my shell. I did participate in sports, but I only enjoyed track/cross country - it was solitary in nature.
It wasn't really until I escaped to college that I could put K-12 behind me and start over. Only one of my friends today is a person who I went to high school with. In a burst of irony, she's a psychologist.
As much as the gifted program didn't do much for my socialization, at least it gave me an outlet for my mind. I spent a lot of my time designing and building model rockets, which fascinated me. Today, I guess, that would be considered a sign of impending doom (My God! He plays with explosives!). Problematic though it was, it beats my earliest years in the Manhattan public schools. I already was reading adult books when I went to first grade, so when the teacher realized I already was beyond the entire year's reading plan, she gave me a dictionary and put me in the back of the room to read it. Oh yeah, THAT helped...
Despite this, I somehow parlayed this start into being a moderately successful adult. This proves there is hope for just about all of us - we just have to get through the Inferno that passes for public school.
Perhaps there's a market for a private school devoted to nerd children. But I bet it, too, would quickly stratify into social layers. There will always be "cool" kids, and there will always be outcasts, regardless.
Those of you reading this who are still there - it gets better. Really.
I had a little Victorinox keychain Swiss Army for about 8 years or so, 'til it died. I picked up one of the Leatherman Micras to replace it - what a wonderful tool! It was only a little bigger, but the scissors are great, it has a nice blade, and it has a Phillips, too. Unfortunately, the tweezer on it sucks eggs, but you can't have everything - where would you put it? The other advantage of the Micra (but a disadvantage to those who like a full utility belt) is that it fits in pocket rather than on the belt. With my pager, Palm III, and potbelly, I don't have room for a lot of belt stuff.
When I was in my friend Rob's wedding a couple of years ago, he gave all the groomsmen engraved Leatherman tools. Now that's cool. Mine's in my car.
Though I was very leery of YALD (Yet Another Linux Distribution) Corel is at least building on existing systems and a solid GUI (I know GNOME is cool, but it's really not as far along at this point as KDE). This, IMHO, is a Good Thing. It'll be interesting to see what Corel does to customize/ease-of-useify their distro. Debian is great, but it could use a little easier install, I think. Hopefully some of Corel's work will filter back into Debian.
I'm not surprised, really - the companies that produce boxes as well as Unixes have been embracing Linux (Sun, SGI, HP, IBM), since it gives them an attractive option and lets them keep selling their boxes. SCO, on the other hand, quoting Spike Lee in those asinine Pizza Hut ads: "You got nothin'!" Even though they bought the old AT&T code, it hasn't done them a whit of good. And SCO is far too wed to the old pricing and development modes to really compete against Linux and Windows at the low end, and minis/other commercial Unixes at the high end.
Personally, I'd sell their stock short.
Heck, I like VMS. A lot. Cut my teeth on it at Northeastern back in the mid '80s. But, like mainframes once were last decade, minis are now a dying technology. Mainframes already are dead - but my definition of dead isn't that they don't exist or that people aren't making money on them. Dead to me means that the technology no longer supports a large variety of vendors and that technology improvements are more or less incremental to the point of being maintenance.
Companies will milk minicomputers for revenues for a long time - but think about how many mainframe vendors are still standing. They do OK because the margins are so high, but it's not a growth business anymore.
Minicomputers are on their way to that point - with lower margins than mainframes. Sure, DEC makes Alpha, and Alpha rocks. And they've done some cool stuff in the labs. But their core business is a ferocious, cutthroat industry where margins are non-existent and everybody runs the same software with no differentiation (MS Windows Whatever). Compaq counted on DEC and Tandem to diversify their revenues and get more $ from services in order to combat the Wintel clone problem. So far, they get an 'F'.
Besides, DEC (though Alpha is the balls) stands in a corner with Novell as two companies with great products and crappy marketing. DEC would sell sushi as "raw dead fish". Though truth in advertising is great for engineers, reality dictates otherwise. While the DECs and Novells of the world preach to the choir, their competition always sold to the PHBs above. Once IT started maturing as a profession and the suits took over, DEC didn't change.
And I love the Proliant 1600s - I've bought six of 'em in the last year. And one Proliant 6000 with dual Xeons - it's sweet. As for smoking though, it's a vile habit. I do eat too much and work out too little, though...
In the previous two decades, the big iron vendors all bought each other out while the minicomputer vendors (like DEC and Tandem) nimbly skirted them and thrived. Back then those smaller companies were the mammals - staying out of the way while the poor, doomed dinosaurs mated above them.
Today, the DECs and Tandems have become the dinosaurs. And Compaq, despite their servers (I love 'em), has started to turn into one, too.
The fundamental problem this time that differentiates a Compaq from an Apple in the turnaround effort is that Apple has gotten where they are by being different - an alternative to the prevailing Wintel near-monopoly. Compaq, despite owning Alpha, VMS, and their belated embrace of Linux, is just a Wintel vendor at heart. And Wintel companies are a dime a dozen.
For Apple, thinking different means something. For Compaq, it just means they're Dell with a higher cost structure, more outside salesmen, and Alpha chips. Whoopee.
I'll buy some shares in case they turn around (what the hell - they're cheap now), but I'm not going to bet the house on them.
To me, if I have to write code it means that the tool isn't there to solve my problem already. So I'm better off when I don't write any, by my standard.
Now if you asked my how much code I've _read_, that would be a different story indeed. Even if I just use it, I still like to see how it works.
Of course, the other reason I don't like to write code is because I suck at it.
As long as there are geeks, there will always be quality reverse-engineering to produce software, adapters, etc. My point was more to say "hey - it's a cheap consumer device. As fun and cool as it is to go find all the neat software people have written for it, I don't necessarily _want_ to." I also want USB, but that's besides the point. The Rio would be perfect with 64MB of base RAM, USB (and maybe serial or parallel until Linux supports it), and Win/Mac/Linux drivers ready to go, with a little cheatsheet explaining the protocol for the roll-your-own crowd. And for half the price.
I'd buy several of 'em, use one and give the rest away as holiday gifts to my non-geek friends. But as far as this model goes - if it looks like an iMac it ought to work with one out of the box.
I'm glad that Apple's survival seems to people to now be a fait accompli, but I will miss the EvangeList. I had a feeling this was coming, with the postings getting smaller and smaller lately. Anyhow, the same way Linux and the Open Source movement represent something necessary and good for this industry, Apple does too. Say what you will about their antiquated memory management, Apple was (and is) historically the only platform designed more by artists than by engineers and focus groups. I still do a lot of work on my good old PowerBook 3400, and my non-computer savvy wife and mother both use iMacs. Yes, Linux is a fundamentally sounder platform, and I use it for more and more at home (and at work), but when I just need to fire up the machine and get something quick done, I still use my Mac.
(Besides, I've never seen a Usenet reader as slick as MT-Newswatcher on any other platform)
Oh boy. An MP3 player that looks just like my wife's iMac but won't work with it. Yippee.
Tell Diamond I'll be interested when they start using USB instead of the dead, useless, cheesy parallel port and include Linux and Mac support.
Once the InterNIC became a business instead of a service, that's when the network (and the dispute policies) went to crap, as far as I'm concerned. I won't miss the monopoly. Now they just need to handle the zone files, so that each registry can operate root servers correctly. I'm not sure if that's been covered yet.
Do what I did - major in Theater, switch to Political Science, then drop out. It worked for me... so well they made me a PHB eventually.
On second thought - maybe that track doesn't work for everybody!
Seriously, I think that just about any major is fine, so ling as you have the interest and aptitude for sysadmin work. Liberal Arts may be a good place to go, personally I find that a lot of "diverse thinkers" tend to come from that background and it seems to help. Is it the person or the major? I'd say it's probably more the person, though ou can learn "how to think" in a good college program.
"Are Linux folks really interested in free software? Or are they interested only in Linux?"
Yes.
I'm very interested in free software (free speech). I'm also interested in free software (free beer). And I'm interested in Linux. My interest began as "Hey - these ACC Bookstore guys are selling a really cheap Unix. Unix would look real good on my resume. I have a spare PC."
Then, after a while, it morphed into "Wow! I can download all this cool stuff and I don't have to pay!" This is about when ACC morphed into Redhat 2.0.
Now, years later, I'm mainly interested in "This isn't Windows, halelujah!", combined with "the right to poke around your software and do with it whatever you want - how can software be built any other way?".
But the bottom line is these are _all_ motivating factors (and for a lot of others, as well). Back then I was a young geek, now I'm a professional PHB (sadly, my geeking is mostly on the side for fun), but I still have all the same motivations for using Linux.
I never did give a sweet damn what RMS wants to call it (it's Linux as far as I'm concerned, but hey - as I said, I'm just a PHB), but I'm glad he and the GNU Project are out there.
I doubt it'd do much good - Windows is such a monolithic beast to begin with. If they put less of it in the core OS, it might help... Oh yeah. Nevermind. The government already took a shot at that part a few years ago...
The quote here is from PJ O'Rourke's book "All the Trouble in the World" (1994), which I strongly recommend. His politics are not my cup of tea but PJ, when he writes on things political, can make things astonishingly clear and funny, too. His new book, "Eat the Rich" is very funny, too.
....War doesn't work anymore. Rape and slaughter may get Serbia on the evening news, but, from the point of view of becoming major players upon the international stage, Serbs would be better off selling Yugos."
"The way Tito kept Yugoslavs from killing each other was he did it for them. This is the same technique used by the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Nazi Germans, and everyone else who's had the misfortune to rule the Balkans. The locals have to be provided
with an ample supply of new grievances, otherwise old grievances come to the fore. In Tito's case, one of the old grievances was Tito.
Although Tito himself was of mixed Croat/Slovene/son-of-a-bitch background, his World War II Partisan troops were mostly Serbs. In 1946, 100,000 anti-Tito Croat refugees were handed over to Tito by the ever-admirable British. Tito's partisans then killed something between 40,000 and all of them, with the usual number of women, children, and old people included. Of course, the Partisans didn't do this for a lark. The Croats, under raving nationalist Ante Pavelic, had established a Nazi puppet state in 1941 and killed as many as 350,000 Serbs.........
Who Hates Who, and Why...
The Christians hate the Muslims because Cristians were peons under the Ottomans. The Muslims hate the Christians because Muslims were pissants under the Communists. The Croats hate the Serbs for collaborating with the Communists the same way the Serbs hate the Croats for collaborating with the Nazis, and now the Bosnians hate the Montnegrins for collaborating with the Serbs. The Serbs hate the Albanians for going to Yugoslavia. Everybody hates the Serbs because there are more of them than anybody else to hate and because when Yugoslavia was created in 1918 (with the help of know-it-all American President Woodrow Wilson), the Serbs grabbed control of the govenment and army and haven't let go yet...
It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song. Even those of us who are savagely opposed to pacifism are tempted to grab the Yugoslavs by their fashionably padded shoulders and give them nonviolent what-for: "Even if you win, you ASSHOLES, all you've got is YUGOSLAVIA ! It's not like you're invading France or something."
(For promoting nationalism)
I saw it. I want it. I wish I could commute to my job from it. I bet it's going to get slashdotted again today...
The home can withstand a nuclear blast, war, famine, or meteor impact, but it can't stand up to the dreaded Slashdot effect. I'm gonna have to start getting up at midnight to see if all Rob's links for the day have recovered...
Despite their server being slashdotted so quickly, the snippets I did see looked interesting. I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrrow...
You know - every once in a while you get a pitch that's right down the middle, and exactly what you thought the pitcher was going to throw. Then, using just enough patience to not swing too soon (because you know you _own_ this pitch), you turn your body into the pitch and quickly put all your force into the end of the bat and...
Thwack!
The ball gets blasted out of the ballpark. And as you trot around the bases, you holler at the pitcher:
"Way to try and put that FUD past me, Eddie-boy!"
Nice article, Nick.
I think a lot of this book's "sales" will be traced to bookstores in towns with Microsoft sales offices in them. Kind of the same way Scientologists buy up palette loads worth of Dianetics to keep it on the best-seller list.
"If you act now, you can win a free copy of Bill Gates' new classic, Business @ The Speed Of Thought! And if you don't win, you get two copies!"