Speaking of budget Linux CD's, is there a reason that few if any of the regular CD vendors offer DVD-R's? Not that I don't love getting a whole stack of ten (10) Debian CD's in the mail!
I expect the next version of Debian will need to ship on a spindle pack, OR maybe more companies will offer DVD's instead!
Mandrake has a DVD available, but it's not free or even budget-priced, or wasn't the last time I checked. I don't really need all the extra non-free stuff they bundle in; I just don't like swapping discs.
Debian has a DVD available, but you have to install their funky little tool in order to download it. Not worth my time. Somebody, please just sell me the stupid disk!
BSD looks like it has a DVD, but it's also non-budget priced.
I haven't checked any other distributions yet, but would welcome recommendations.
The day I bought my iPod, I dropped it, while listening to it, about four feet onto my hard kitchen floor. It didn't really seem to notice. I assume the HD wasn't spinning, but I really don't know. Maybe I just got lucky.
On the other hand, the shiny metal and plastic does show scratches very easily... but then, I didn't buy an iPod to LOOK at it!
I've looked at Safari recently and I'm cautiously optimistic about it, but I do have a couple of concerns.
1. When my home network is down because my routing software is screwed up, I need to connect to the Safari website to find a book on routing so I can try to figure out what's wrong, but I can't because... the network is down.
2. If civilization were to collapse, or if O'Reilly goes belly up (God forbid), I'll still have my dead trees. How can I know that those books will be available online a year from now? Or five years from now?
Ultimately, though, I need to start moving to some eBook-ish sort of; the amount of technical reference I need to have on hand grows every year, and my apartment isn't getting any bigger.
We use sybase, not Oracle... but any "simple" version upgrade is not taken lightly. With 10K tables, some of which have more than 1000K rows, many of which are mission critical, there are no "easy" upgrades for us. Even moving to a new piece of hardware takes several months of testing.
I posted an earlier comment; sorry, it hadn't occurred to me that people use monitors for things other than text! Programmer's blind spot, I guess.
If you feel a need to buy CRT's for prepress or whatever, then ok... I'm sorry for your loss.
For everyone else, get an LCD now! Vacuum tubes suck.
BTW, I once tried to reheat a slice of pizza on the back of a CRT. They seem hot, but they're not quite hot enough. Ended up having to use the microwave as usual. Bummer.
On the plus side, I bought a pair of full-size Sony "studio montior" headphones back in 1990-something. They were spectacular for about seven or eight years. Eventually the ear pads disintegrated, and I couldn't get enough volume out of them. So I replaced them... with an identical set of Sony studio monitor headphones. No problems for the two years I've had them, plus they work great with my iPod. (I guess it's worth pointing out that prior to the Sony headphones I used to go through several pairs of cheap headphones per year.)
Also on the plus side, I have two Sony TV's (13 inch, 20 inch) that have worked great for about a decade. The 20-inch model suffers from less-than-perfect linearity, and the 13 had the labels rub off of its buttons, but other than that both have been perfect over their entire lifetime.
On the minus side, I bought a Sony VCR in 1994 or so, and when I got it home, it was DOA. Took it back and swapped it for an identical Sony VCR, and never had any problems with it. My next two VCRs, plus my DVD player, did not come from Sony, mostly because of my previous experience.
Bottom line: I don't know whether to recommend Sony or not... but I really like their headphones!
When the time comes for a high definition LCD TV, I'll have to decide whether or not to consider a Sony; it won't be an easy decision.
I frequently date my notes for home-only projects; just force of habit.
At work, I always date my notes with month, day, year, and also include which project the notes are for.
Not for IP, lawsuit, or policy reasons, just to remove the "WTF" that will come up when I look at the notes after four or five years. Or in case I get hit by a minivan again; I may not be so lucky next time!
I'm not saying that this guy did or didn't do that... I'm just saying that it's not that unusual.
I do NOT generally write any kind of copyright info on any of my notes, though. Whether this is good, bad, or indifferent is an exercise for the reader.
Again I'm ahead of the game! For me, radio became unlistenable around 1994 or 1995. At the time, I had a 45 minute bus ride to and from work, twice a day, and the radio became so annoying that I switched to casette tapes. I've since moved, so I now have ony a 10 minute bus ride, and for such a short trip, silence is just fine. If I were to move further away, I'd rely on my iPod.
No force in nature could make me listen to a Clearchannel radio station under any circumstances.
I can't wait for Clearchannel to strangle itself; I loved radio when I was in high school (1981-1985).
I'm a longtime DOS/Windows/Unix/MacOS, and current MacOS X/Solaris user.
If Qualcomm were to offer a Linux port of Eudora, I'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to switch to a Linux desktop. I've tried Evolution; it's too much like Outlook. Eudora isn't perfect (in particular, I need more sophisticated filtering abilities), but I've been using it for ten years, so only something spectacularly more powerful would make me switch. (I've only used two email programs in my life, the first was unix Berkeley mail, the second was Eudora.)
The only other application I use constantly is bbedit, but I suppose I could learn to love vim or emacs. Web browsing is already handled quite well by Mozilla and its derivatives.
I'm ready, even eager, to switch, as soon as the software is ready. Until then, MacOS X.
Yet again I'm twenty-five years ahead of the universe.
In 1977, at age 10, after seeing Star Wars a couple of times, I made a collapsible (but not origami) robot out of 3x5 index cards and shiny decorative tape, carefully folded it into an envelope, and mailed it to George Lucas, along with a letter telling him how great Star Wars was. Of course, he didn't write back, being so busy with The Empire Strikes Back, I assume.
I'd send a similar commemorative object today, except that I'm pretty sure there's some law against sending folding turds in the mail.
Whenever I spend money on Apple software, I try to remember that every dollar that goes to them doesn't go to the enemy.
Why, I've even bought software for various platforms from other vendors that I've nevereven installed, just because I saw it for sale in a retail outlet and wanted to encourage them. (Someday I'll get around to trying them out, I suppose.)
Vote with your dollars, people. It's the only vote that matters these days. Sad but true.
Neuromancer et al. were great. I read Virtual Light a couple times, but still can't remember a damn thing about it. Something about sunglasses, right?
Idoru is okay, but it's a much better book if you're already a fan of Japanese Pop, or a fan of HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP. It's kind of like the American Bandstand equivalent for Japanese pop music. (For a quick English description, try here). I watch HHHMC on International Channel on cable, and even if you don't speak Japanese (which I don't, really) it's alternately fascinating and hilarious. Want to watch Japanese pop stars give the show's hosts haircuts on the island of Guam? You need to watch it!
I also really liked The Difference Engine, but it's an entirely different kind of book. I'd recommend it to any programmer, though. They just don't teach the young people enough about Ada Lovelace these days! (Okay, so Gibson's work is fiction; does that really matter these days?)
My prediction: Microsoft uses some fraction of the $40 billion or so it has in the bank to buy AOL from Time Warner. Eventually, this is integrated with MSN, and some future version of Windows becomes a subscription-only service.
If this sounds crazy, go to the AOLTW corporate site and look at their financials for the last couple of years. There is already talk about undoing the merger (see the recent article in Businesweek, for instance), and although some of the issues in re-splitting the company are tricky (in particular, how to split debt between the two companies) someone coming along with a giant pile of cash would solve may of those problems quite nicely.
Now that you know, try to act surprised when it happens.
I haven't bought one of these yet, but I'm strongly considering it... has anybody else tried this?
My current problem is autodialers that call me back every 20 minutes; simply not answering the phone isn't working that well anymore, as the phone is ringing almost constantly.
Via/Cyrix C3/800/133 in a cheap Socket 370 motherboard is what I run on my home file server. With carefully chosen components, it runs cool and is virtually silent, but fast enough for Samba and email. I've even done 3D rendering on it, at about 1/3 the speed of a P4/1.8.
The real purpose of a "Hello, World" program, in any language, is to ensure that you can compile and execute a program (or run a script). It doesn't have anything to do with OOP at all, and shouldn't.
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I expect the next version of Debian will need to ship on a spindle pack, OR maybe more companies will offer DVD's instead!
Mandrake has a DVD available, but it's not free or even budget-priced, or wasn't the last time I checked. I don't really need all the extra non-free stuff they bundle in; I just don't like swapping discs.
Debian has a DVD available, but you have to install their funky little tool in order to download it. Not worth my time. Somebody, please just sell me the stupid disk!
BSD looks like it has a DVD, but it's also non-budget priced.
I haven't checked any other distributions yet, but would welcome recommendations.
Why aren't there more DVD distros out there?
On the other hand, the shiny metal and plastic does show scratches very easily... but then, I didn't buy an iPod to LOOK at it!
1. When my home network is down because my routing software is screwed up, I need to connect to the Safari website to find a book on routing so I can try to figure out what's wrong, but I can't because... the network is down.
2. If civilization were to collapse, or if O'Reilly goes belly up (God forbid), I'll still have my dead trees. How can I know that those books will be available online a year from now? Or five years from now?
Ultimately, though, I need to start moving to some eBook-ish sort of; the amount of technical reference I need to have on hand grows every year, and my apartment isn't getting any bigger.
We use sybase, not Oracle... but any "simple" version upgrade is not taken lightly. With 10K tables, some of which have more than 1000K rows, many of which are mission critical, there are no "easy" upgrades for us. Even moving to a new piece of hardware takes several months of testing.
If you feel a need to buy CRT's for prepress or whatever, then ok... I'm sorry for your loss.
For everyone else, get an LCD now! Vacuum tubes suck.
BTW, I once tried to reheat a slice of pizza on the back of a CRT. They seem hot, but they're not quite hot enough. Ended up having to use the microwave as usual. Bummer.
Also on the plus side, I have two Sony TV's (13 inch, 20 inch) that have worked great for about a decade. The 20-inch model suffers from less-than-perfect linearity, and the 13 had the labels rub off of its buttons, but other than that both have been perfect over their entire lifetime.
On the minus side, I bought a Sony VCR in 1994 or so, and when I got it home, it was DOA. Took it back and swapped it for an identical Sony VCR, and never had any problems with it. My next two VCRs, plus my DVD player, did not come from Sony, mostly because of my previous experience.
Bottom line: I don't know whether to recommend Sony or not... but I really like their headphones!
When the time comes for a high definition LCD TV, I'll have to decide whether or not to consider a Sony; it won't be an easy decision.
At work, I always date my notes with month, day, year, and also include which project the notes are for.
Not for IP, lawsuit, or policy reasons, just to remove the "WTF" that will come up when I look at the notes after four or five years. Or in case I get hit by a minivan again; I may not be so lucky next time!
I'm not saying that this guy did or didn't do that... I'm just saying that it's not that unusual.
I do NOT generally write any kind of copyright info on any of my notes, though. Whether this is good, bad, or indifferent is an exercise for the reader.
No force in nature could make me listen to a Clearchannel radio station under any circumstances.
I can't wait for Clearchannel to strangle itself; I loved radio when I was in high school (1981-1985).
Freedom will rise again!
If Qualcomm were to offer a Linux port of Eudora, I'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to switch to a Linux desktop. I've tried Evolution; it's too much like Outlook. Eudora isn't perfect (in particular, I need more sophisticated filtering abilities), but I've been using it for ten years, so only something spectacularly more powerful would make me switch. (I've only used two email programs in my life, the first was unix Berkeley mail, the second was Eudora.)
The only other application I use constantly is bbedit, but I suppose I could learn to love vim or emacs. Web browsing is already handled quite well by Mozilla and its derivatives.
I'm ready, even eager, to switch, as soon as the software is ready. Until then, MacOS X.
In 1977, at age 10, after seeing Star Wars a couple of times, I made a collapsible (but not origami) robot out of 3x5 index cards and shiny decorative tape, carefully folded it into an envelope, and mailed it to George Lucas, along with a letter telling him how great Star Wars was. Of course, he didn't write back, being so busy with The Empire Strikes Back, I assume.
I'd send a similar commemorative object today, except that I'm pretty sure there's some law against sending folding turds in the mail.
Why, I've even bought software for various platforms from other vendors that I've never even installed, just because I saw it for sale in a retail outlet and wanted to encourage them. (Someday I'll get around to trying them out, I suppose.)
Vote with your dollars, people. It's the only vote that matters these days. Sad but true.
BTW, are there any good games for Linux yet?
Idoru is okay, but it's a much better book if you're already a fan of Japanese Pop, or a fan of HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP. It's kind of like the American Bandstand equivalent for Japanese pop music. (For a quick English description, try here). I watch HHHMC on International Channel on cable, and even if you don't speak Japanese (which I don't, really) it's alternately fascinating and hilarious. Want to watch Japanese pop stars give the show's hosts haircuts on the island of Guam? You need to watch it!
I also really liked The Difference Engine, but it's an entirely different kind of book. I'd recommend it to any programmer, though. They just don't teach the young people enough about Ada Lovelace these days! (Okay, so Gibson's work is fiction; does that really matter these days?)
If this sounds crazy, go to the AOLTW corporate site and look at their financials for the last couple of years. There is already talk about undoing the merger (see the recent article in Businesweek, for instance), and although some of the issues in re-splitting the company are tricky (in particular, how to split debt between the two companies) someone coming along with a giant pile of cash would solve may of those problems quite nicely.
Now that you know, try to act surprised when it happens.
PrivateTIME Phone
I haven't bought one of these yet, but I'm strongly considering it... has anybody else tried this?
My current problem is autodialers that call me back every 20 minutes; simply not answering the phone isn't working that well anymore, as the phone is ringing almost constantly.
Via/Cyrix C3/800/133 in a cheap Socket 370 motherboard is what I run on my home file server. With carefully chosen components, it runs cool and is virtually silent, but fast enough for Samba and email. I've even done 3D rendering on it, at about 1/3 the speed of a P4/1.8.
The real purpose of a "Hello, World" program, in any language, is to ensure that you can compile and execute a program (or run a script). It doesn't have anything to do with OOP at all, and shouldn't.