I don't actually use the Linux command line very much these days. If you use tools like webmin you never need to use the command line. The main difference between Linux tools and windows tools is that most Windows tools a native Applications/Dlls so you have to use remote desktop (I know there are command line versions that's not the way it is done) whereas most linux tools are commandline with multiple Guis.
cdrecord is a wonderful example. It used to be just a commandline program. Here are some of the interfaces for it that I know:
Webmin - remote backups.
Nautilus - like windows explorer.
Perl scrips - automated backups.
What seems to be happening if most linux appliactions have 3 interfaces:
*A Web interface
*A commandline interface
*An appliaction interface
To be honest generally the command line version have aditional options that aren't in the appliaction version but most windows appliactions that I know of are the same they just use the registry instead (Look in the Windows Knowledge base).
To be honest I can't think of anything that can't be done through a gui know. I'd still recomend doing some of them through the command line incase there are errors but it's not required.
It was on http://www.penny-arcade.com/ which is on the main page of slashdot. It's one of the few sites that I know of that has no problem being slashdoted (that should give you an idea of how much traffic they get).
As for the comment about freeware games:
*All the micrsoft games?
There are lots of others but they a generally small games that you play for a couple of minutes not massive like Final Fanasty.
If you mean why haven't YOU heard about it that's probably because you aren't in the gaming scene. It's been at almost every LAN party I've been to.
Have you kept up with some of the fogeries out there. A couple of years ago someone bought a press from a muesum and did start printing money. Used the same ink and paper to. If I remmember correctly it took them about 2 years to catch them.
As for the feel it's easy to create pressure.
If you want to find some better money come to Australia we've had plastic money for about 5 years not.
Every one has a hologram build into it. No more money left in the pocket being ruined, no more tearing the notes (you have to try really hard). Each note is a completly different color.
The only real problem we've had is that people rub the queens face off the $5 bill (using a weak acid or a coin).
I don't really care about support either. Most of the time I don't use it and when I'm forced to I'm often way out of there league already.
The main reason why you pay for support that you don't need is for managemnet. Support is like insurance you don't really want to use it but if something goes wrong you want it to be fixed. If you died tommorow they want someone that can fix it if it breaks.
So while it doesn't make sence at first in the end it does.
Both of your solutions don't work. You can't fix POSIX. It takes years to add stuff to a standard (that's why it a standard) Even if you were able to add it you end up with stuff like sql where all the big SQL database support sql 92 but none support sql 97(I might have go the dates wrong). Noone supports the latest sql so there's no point learning it since everyone supports different parts of it. One of the main reason why the LSB was formed was that adding stuff to POSIX takes to long and they wanted to define stuff that's outside of the scrope of POSIX.
The second comment it also wrong. If you have systems that are 90% POSIX compatable it much easier to port software to it than if it's 0% POSIX compatable. In the end you have a lot of #ifdef in you code or in the portable classes. The less #ifdef you have to do the easier it is. It does make it harder to debug though as you have to know the subtle differances.
Most of the time though you use a library that wrapes it all up for you like wxWindows or POSIX that makes it fairly portable. You just have to alway remember that different OS have different levels of completeness.
I saw the fruit and veggie section and it was from every where. I've been to some of the international restraunts and they were good.
I guess my comment was because I get Americans telling me how good America is and haow many choices thay have - Like over 1000 falours of icecream etc. After going to America sure they had 1000 favours but they were all from about 3 companies all American.
I guess the easiest way of looking at it is the difference between a MacDonald's and a local Fast Food store. The local store often has better food but sometimes they are horible. MacDonald's is average but average is bland and doesn't have much falvour but doesn't offend anyone (which is god sent when your in a foreign country).
When I went into the Chocolate section for example I saw lots of stuff that has been realeased in my country but it was all from the same companies and was all more or less the same.
When I look in our chocolate section I see chocolate from atleast 5 different countries. All the milk chocolates have a completely different taste.
Do you see the difference you have more choice but less. It's like you can choose any shade of red where was we can only choose 1 shade but any color. You have more options but they aren't that different.
Most of the other stores I saw were the same. They'd become franchise which shows how good you guys are at business but they become franchise they loss anything that could offend and any personality they had.
I think one of your comments says it best:
"show me where to get Tennesse pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw"
It's not a French, a Russian or a British sandwich it's "Tennesse" sandwich. You have lots of choice internally but not much externally and that's because you don't want it. It's a nation looking in on itself. Which isn't bad just not what I expected. Hey there's more people in some of your cities than in my entire country.
I don't think anyone will read this but atlest it's been said.
Allthough this may sound harsh. If I saw that on a peice of software I would never buy it! It tells me
"Hey, there's other software out there that's better than this and cost less but hay you want to support America... don't you?"
I don't live in America but after going there a couple of months ago I now understand better what the news is talking about. America imports virtually nothing.
I've been to a couple of countries and in each one you find stuff in the supermarket that's not native. After going to America and looking around I realised how poor you are multiculturally. You had a token food here and there but on your shelves you have almost 100% American products (lots made in China or Korea but that's the same world over) When I got home I realised how lucky I was to be able to buy Asian, European, American and Local products each with it's own different stile.
To be honest though you guys do get product before us and get them cheaper because you have a larger market but there's nothing I can do about that.
Anyway if you need a job you can always join a "Temp Agency" over there. Over here it pays about the same as an entry level programing Job but you get to use Excel and Word.
Personally I'd recommend doing what were going to do. Were planning on doing a minor upgrade now and then some time next year do a Major upgrade to the 2.6 Kernal.
You don't want to move to Linux only to want to do another major upgrade in 6/9 months time. So I'd recommend doing the minor upgrade now. Do more testing and wait for 2.6 to come out. If 2.6 comes out in October you should be able to start testing you port. Wait for atleast Redhat and Suse to bring out a 2.6 version and wait a couple of months to see if other people are having problems. If everything looks ok then by about June next year you can convert.
As a free bonous if your using Samba then version 3 should be out and stable by then as well as the fact that the SCO vs IBM battle should be more or less resolved.
When I started on linux I had a similar problem. While all the tools are there thay are hard to find. What they allow though is multiple interfaces.
If you want an EASY server for none technical people DON'T give them Linux. Give them an application server powered by linux.
The best example I know of is E-Smith which does everthing for you. The only problem we've had is that it doesn't handle 2,000 users very well (It was only designed for
If you want a general server then use webmin over ssl. It lets you do everything.
Once you've set these up the users never even logs onto the terminal they just use the web interface.
You have to remmember that there are two types of coders:
*Shrink wrap coders **Write software and sell it for less than it cost to make it. **Need lots of sales to make money. **Can make alot more money. **Made for lots of customers
*Company coders (theres a better term but I can't remmeber it) **Get a wage or contract **Paid for how much it cost to make it. **Made for asingle or small number of customers.
More than 80% of coders are the later and the marginalization of software is irrelivant.
Even if all software was free it wouldn't change things very much for the second group.
Now if you write shrink wrap software / shareware then the value of it is going down. This would have happen without open source. Most of the kids these days grew up with computers and lots of them can program. As time goes on the market gets saturated and prices drop which means you have make less money.
Now if you more to the second group then yo get a 9 to 5 job just like everyone else:-) welcome to reality. You generally get an above average wage and some extra percs but you're expected to do more.
I own a gaming centre that has over 50 computers and we can buy whole computers for the cost of these cards (With our upgraded computers with isn't true any more but it was with our stadard computers).
The truth is there is no point buying either of these cards yet[1]. We've got GeForce4 TI4200 which are some of the best allrounders (price, preformance, support) We have ALL[2] of our games turned up to the max[3] with FPS 70+ and have no problems. What more do you want?
1. This may change when half life 2 and Doom three come out. 2. This includes BattleField 1942, CnC Generals and Unreal Tounement 2003. 3. Resolution left at either "1024 x 768" or "1280 x 1024" due to the limitations of the games or the fact that the higher resolution made no difference as the games weren't designed for it. We could increase the Resolution but what's the point????
I ready the white paper and it looks like they are actually providing a number of products:
Download on demand: Think Quicktime/IE/etc. Download a small download then download the components they want. I expect they'd also use a protocol similar to rsync which makes downloading alot faster.
Code Inspection: This is where they say then can decrease to size of the executable. If you've done progaming then you know that you can make executables alot smaller. Here's some examples: Remove inline macros and make them functions, remove debug information.
Ziped executables: You can have realtime zipped executables. There are about 5 different forms of this that I've seen - they zip/encrypt the executable this makes it about the same size as if it was zipped but you don't have to unzip it to run it(It still uses the space in memory) You also have to break the encryption before you can reverse enginer it. The overhead is about 5 - 20% loading times.
Basically the provide servers that campanies could do themselves but get someone with experiance to do instead.
If I did the following: *Used realtime compresion on the exe *Optimized my code so that it didn't incluse useless code. *Moduralised my code (reuse etc) *Made the code more plugin like. *Added a bootstrap downloader. *Make the software come in three versions Lite, Full and express.
If I did all of this I'd easily be able to half the bandwidth needed for a file without really changing it that much.
As for the CD the data has to be over 700MB before they can decrease the size so I'm fairly sure they'd be able to optimse it.
The service they provide isn't unique. It's just a convient package of 10 or more technologies to make life easy for other companies.
That's like saying why post in a Blog (Ie Slashdot) as only 1% of the Internet reads them.
The really reason why you'd want to is that it's often that minority that make the choices.
Of the 95% that use windows I'd say atleast 60% would have never made that choice but been told it by someone else. Same as I'd expect that the 1% of the internet that reads Blogs write and control more than 50% of the web indirrectly.
The reason for this is that the majority often just go with the flow and do what they are told. It's the minority that often tells the majority what to buy.
Most people ask me to recommend computer "stuff" because I'm a computer person. I'd be very hesitant to recommend anything that didn't have good support for linux even if they were using windows.
Also good support for a minority often shows that the company has *GASP* "good support" if they can't be bother writing then chances are they won't support their own products latter on as they don't value to product or their customers.
It's like a school you have the leaders/popular people that say what almost everyone else does. If you can make them do something you can get most of the shcool to do the same thing
Hmm, Your missing the point. Your using the same argument that they used for X86 vs ALPHA/RISC etc. The point that the technology is better is only half the story. I say that your posting from an x86 box ever though it's not the technically superior solution.
The other half of the story is everything around the technology. Here's the real world reasons why it's stupid for them to use CDMA instead of GSM: *All the countries around it use GSM. This means that you couldn't use the same phone (excluing tri band phones) as you went from Iraq to Israel or Iran or Syria etc. *There are only two countries that use CDMA - America and Koria. Your saying that they should be incompatable with 90% of the world just so YOU and the other American soldiers can use their phones in Iraq???? *CDMA phones cost more. *CDMA phones use older technology because they don't have the competition the GSM phones have. Look at the advances in speed for the x86 compared to ALPHA. Sure CDMA get's it eventually but most of the time it's after GSM, it cost more and it not as polished.
If you get nothing else don't forget that technology is only half of the equation.
Here's some tools you might want to look at. I found them right at the end of my last Job using C++ and wish I'd found them at the begining. Together they can really cut compile time down.
CCache http://ccache.samba.org/ this can make make project build almost 6 tines as fast on following compiles. This isn't very good for doing a./configure, make, make install but great when you are developing something.
"I'm pretty sure Windows has a higher market share in the server side of things (still)."
It all depend what you classify as a server. How do you counter servers?
Do you count the number of Boxes? If you what about IBM mainframes that can handle 1000 of users or multiple virtual Operating Systems. What about the number of services? Most Linux machines run multiple services where you'd user multiple machines to do the same thing in windows?
Then we can also go the other way. Does a desktop converted to a web server/file server count? If so what about a proxy? If we use internet connection sharing does that make a windows box into a server? What about if we shared the Hard drive?
Also why are we seprating all the *nix's. It reminds me of South Africa were White's were the majority when they were less than 10% of the popualtion. They did it by counting all the tribes seperately.
Last time I look servers were something like: *Windows 35% *Novel 8% *'nix 53%
But they don't show that they show(making these figues up):
This makes windows seem larger than it is to be fair they should be more like(making these figues up): *Windows NT 4 8% *Windows 2K/XP 25% *Windows 9X 2% *Novel 8% *Solaris 20% *AIX 13% *HP 9% *Linux 7% *Other Unix 4%
So while people can say that one OS has a larger make share than the other it's not always as large or complet as they might say it is.
I haven't used an Amiga for almost 5 years (My Gradfather had one) But one of the coolest things it had that I haven't ever seen on the PC was a RAM drive.
It acted just like a floppy drive and was only 4 Meg but it was one of it's coolest features. You could install games, demos, etc to the ram disk and then play them off the ram disk.
If something goes wrong just reset and it's gone. All the programes in the RAM drive were really quick (supprise supprise) and most programs could use it like/tmp in linux.
I know there are similar things in linux and windows but most of them are just addons. What made the Amiga cool was the fact that it was built into every Amiga (I think) and most programs were smaller than the RAM drive. Most games were less than four meg*.
*For a PC this sounds small but for the Amiga this was enough as most of the games were the Arcade games since they have a similar OS. Also The Amiga had a similar layer to Dirrect X but in on a ROM chip this ment that graphics and Sounds were way ahead of the PC. I've seen a couple of games ported over to the PC and either they end up going from 1Meg to 50+ meg for the same game or they use and emulator.
I thought the same thing so I went with the 10Gig instead of the 20Gig (Second Generation).
I've found out that once you have one it's easy to use it. I now wish I paid the extra.
What uses up more than 10 Gig you may ask? ....
Audio books! I've been listening to a number of audio books. Most of the audio books I have are either a single files that's atleast 300MB and goes for 10+ hours or a collection of 10MB files each going for 10 to 30 minutes. If you get some series (Dragon Lance, Lord of the Rings, etc) they can easily use up 1 for part of the series.
Technically You only need 1 Book on at a time the same can be said for music(you only need 10 hours of music) but what you want is choice.
Anyway here's a summary of what I have on my iPod:
*50% music
*30% talking books
*10% monty python, random quotes, sayings, one liners, stand up comedy
*10% free/changes constantly
There was an article on on slashdot Here and here's a site with free audio books Here if you don't want to use a p2p network.
You know I would feel sorry for you but I just don't get it. Every since High school I WANTED to work with computers. I had just started UNI when the bubble started and finished soon after it busrt.
I had over 500 people in one of my first year subjects coarse (I live in Australia were there are only 10,000 people in a LARGE UNI) and to be honest we had some people who couldn't pass the intro subject - turning on a PC, using a browser etc.
One year into the coarse an they'd just finished a java subject and they got Jobs. They were still CRAP and most of them still are.
I still know lots of people from UNI thoes that are GOOD have jobs. Thoes that aren't DON'T have IT jobs they have normal jobs. Some are holding out for IT jobs but the thing is they are still CRAP.
The truth is the money they got before was Crazy they had no skills then and they still don't have any and they aren't getting jobs BIG deal.
If your REALLY trying to get a JOB then it's not that big a deal. Get part time job as an office temp doing word and excel and then look for a better Job.
If you looking for a position that you deserve then your out of luck because the world OWES you nothing you need to look at things in reverse: WHAT CAN YOU OFFER THEM.
Honestly you may have to make some changes. My uncle lived in a flat with a view of te river by moving to a house without a view they could have saved $300 a week but they burn through there money and then kept on complaining about how he couldn't find a job that would pay him enough.
Basicly there are lots of jobs out there just not ones your willing to do. If that's all your complaining about then to BAD.
I've never been into buying music but my brother is but over the last couple of year WHAT we buy has really changed. We used to CD that we'd listen to on the radio. He'd buy them so we'd have the same CD as his friends. About 2 years ago we got cable Internet before that we had some MP3 but we'd get those from LAN parties our own CD etc. Once we could get song quickly things changed.
Before if someone told us about a new song it would "cool" but you wouldn't bother following up unless they made a really big deal now we go home download it and check them out. We now check out ANY music we like the sound of here's some examples: For about 6 Months after we got cable my brother kept only downloading stuff that wasn't on the radio or in stores (Australia) He'd burn it to CD and show it off to all his friends how told him how cool it was and where ask where he got it from and he'd enjoy bragging about how we had cable and that you couldn't get it in Australia. Opening song for Roswell - Dido: We bought her CD about 3 months before it went mainstream (Australia's a bit behind). We told our friends about it and then all of a sudden it was on TV radio everywhere. Opening song for Lain - Boa: I haven't been able to find there CD ANYWHERE for sale (Australia, US, Uk - it's sold out and on indefinite backorder) but they're really cool. As soon as I can get it in Australia I will. Also found out about another BoA with the same name but Korean, which was an accident, but cool anyway. Opening song for Malcolm in the middle: No idea. I personally never would have checked them out even though it's a cool song but one of my brother's did and they have some really weird stuff but it's cool. Went through a phase of checking out (Armature Music Videos) and found Rammstein and a couple of other band. There's also a lot of spoofs, parodies that we've got: OpenBSD - http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html Counter Strike - I will Survive - http://www.punkassfraggers.com/mp3s.shtml
Got the picture yet. The main point is that how we get music and how we find music has changed. We don't listen to the Radio anymore at home - we have over 1000 songs most of which we have CD of OR can't buy locally OR can't buy because they are one off's like the Counter Strike MP3. Sure we have some MP3 they we didn't buy the CD for and at the start we had more of those than the other but now it's the other way round. I listen to the Radio on the way to work and most of the time I realise how spoilt I am at home. It's not that the songs are bad most of them are good but they are songs that don't offend anyone. If the drive was much longer (10 minutes) I'd probably be bother setting up the Car kit for my IPOD (held out for 1 year)
The radio has no "Weird Al" no "Rammstein" (German) or "BoA" (Korea) or random quotes from "Monty Python" and while I don't listen to them all the time it's nice to have a variety.
I know lots of other people have said this already but that's what they are afraid of: People having a taste in music rather than having a taste based on the music they hear on the radio which the media companies (RIAA approved) can influence.
There are a couple of Projects/Technologies you might like to know about:
PAM(Password Authenication Module): In Linux you can tel it what to use for authenication. You can use the file in etc, NIS(Sun), LDAP, SMB(A windows Domain) In Red Hat 8 all you have to do is point it to the server:-)
Samba:Samba Can be used as a File server and can currently be a Domain Controlor or a Member but not a Backup Contorlor. Samba 3 is currently in the works and will be more compatable with Windows 2000 as the Current Series of Samba 2 are more like NT 4.0 http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998- 10/lw -10-samba-p5.html
Webmin/SWAT: Swat is a GUI for Samba. Webmin does more than that as it is a gui for almost all of the servers in Linux. http://www.webmin.net
You've got some good points but since when did high schools ever use polynomial math?
I know I never did and I did all the science subjects?
As for "setup.exe" at schools one the things you want to STOP is people installing software!
I do agree that Word/Excel is better for assignments but should you require it? If you have it a school and you take an assignment home you then need to buy it a home. For a reasonable highschool of 400 students (about 200 families)that means the families need to buy about $150 * 200 = $30 000. Where as if you have open office you can give it to all of you students on CD.
If I was in charge of a school I don't know which I'd use BUT I do know that I'd put together a School CD that would include software for home that has no cost, mainly to discourage piracy.
The same argument could also be made for Photoshop It's better than painshop pro but I doubt many people use it because it's more than they need at high school.
It's a tough call and can be made either way.
One minor problem if your talking about windows...
If you've ever look at the licence you are only licensed for 2CPU and from what I can tell XP won't let you use more that the number of CPU you have licensed and 98 doesn't really handle more that one CPU.
So while 4 CPU would be nice you'd have to use linux which isn't a bad thing but currently most of the CAD/CAM, video editing, 3D modeling, rendering programs are for windows.
And unfotunately why bother compiling on a single computer when you can use a comile farm: http://distcc.samba.org/
This is maimly right but there are a couple of things I'd like to point out.
1. I don't think "We Folk" think easy is bad it's just that trying to make something complex easy doesn't always work.
Example 1 - My 12 year old brother can install software, use it and then uninstall it (by deleting the dirrectory). Sure it will work initally but after about 12 months he's stuffed up my computer and can't figure out why it's not working anymore.
Example 2 - I know lots of people that can make a database in access. They only have 2 table when there should be 4 or 5. Sure it works but a couple of month later they notice that come of the address are wrong because they only updated one of the places where the address is in the database(because the database was badly designed it's now in 3 different places). This means that you have to keep on checking to make sure the database is giving the right data.
Also for your friend you might want to look at http://www.e-smith.org or one of the other "Application Servers" that are designed to fill a niche and make things easy to use via simple interfaces.
E-Smith can be setup as a PDC in 30 minutes TOTAL. It has a simple web interface and does everything for you
Slashdot Mirror
I don't actually use the Linux command line very much these days. If you use tools like webmin you never need to use the command line. The main difference between Linux tools and windows tools is that most Windows tools a native Applications/Dlls so you have to use remote desktop (I know there are command line versions that's not the way it is done) whereas most linux tools are commandline with multiple Guis.
cdrecord is a wonderful example. It used to be just a commandline program. Here are some of the interfaces for it that I know:
Webmin - remote backups.
Nautilus - like windows explorer.
Perl scrips - automated backups.
What seems to be happening if most linux appliactions have 3 interfaces:
*A Web interface
*A commandline interface
*An appliaction interface
Some more examples that I know of:
*Dia
*Graphviz
To be honest generally the command line version have aditional options that aren't in the appliaction version but most windows appliactions that I know of are the same they just use the registry instead (Look in the Windows Knowledge base).
To be honest I can't think of anything that can't be done through a gui know. I'd still recomend doing some of them through the command line incase there are errors but it's not required.
It was on http://www.penny-arcade.com/ which is on the main page of slashdot. It's one of the few sites that I know of that has no problem being slashdoted (that should give you an idea of how much traffic they get). As for the comment about freeware games: *All the micrsoft games? There are lots of others but they a generally small games that you play for a couple of minutes not massive like Final Fanasty. If you mean why haven't YOU heard about it that's probably because you aren't in the gaming scene. It's been at almost every LAN party I've been to.
Have you kept up with some of the fogeries out there. A couple of years ago someone bought a press from a muesum and did start printing money. Used the same ink and paper to. If I remmember correctly it took them about 2 years to catch them. As for the feel it's easy to create pressure. If you want to find some better money come to Australia we've had plastic money for about 5 years not. Every one has a hologram build into it. No more money left in the pocket being ruined, no more tearing the notes (you have to try really hard). Each note is a completly different color. The only real problem we've had is that people rub the queens face off the $5 bill (using a weak acid or a coin).
Management!
I don't really care about support either. Most of the time I don't use it and when I'm forced to I'm often way out of there league already.
The main reason why you pay for support that you don't need is for managemnet. Support is like insurance you don't really want to use it but if something goes wrong you want it to be fixed. If you died tommorow they want someone that can fix it if it breaks.
So while it doesn't make sence at first in the end it does.
Both of your solutions don't work. You can't fix POSIX. It takes years to add stuff to a standard (that's why it a standard) Even if you were able to add it you end up with stuff like sql where all the big SQL database support sql 92 but none support sql 97(I might have go the dates wrong). Noone supports the latest sql so there's no point learning it since everyone supports different parts of it. One of the main reason why the LSB was formed was that adding stuff to POSIX takes to long and they wanted to define stuff that's outside of the scrope of POSIX.
The second comment it also wrong. If you have systems that are 90% POSIX compatable it much easier to port software to it than if it's 0% POSIX compatable. In the end you have a lot of #ifdef in you code or in the portable classes. The less #ifdef you have to do the easier it is. It does make it harder to debug though as you have to know the subtle differances.
Most of the time though you use a library that wrapes it all up for you like wxWindows or POSIX that makes it fairly portable. You just have to alway remember that different OS have different levels of completeness.
Not clueless, superior or European,
I saw the fruit and veggie section and it was from every where. I've been to some of the international restraunts and they were good.
I guess my comment was because I get Americans telling me how good America is and haow many choices thay have - Like over 1000 falours of icecream etc. After going to America sure they had 1000 favours but they were all from about 3 companies all American.
I guess the easiest way of looking at it is the difference between a MacDonald's and a local Fast Food store. The local store often has better food but sometimes they are horible. MacDonald's is average but average is bland and doesn't have much falvour but doesn't offend anyone (which is god sent when your in a foreign country).
When I went into the Chocolate section for example I saw lots of stuff that has been realeased in my country but it was all from the same companies and was all more or less the same.
When I look in our chocolate section I see chocolate from atleast 5 different countries. All the milk chocolates have a completely different taste.
Do you see the difference you have more choice but less. It's like you can choose any shade of red where was we can only choose 1 shade but any color. You have more options but they aren't that different.
Most of the other stores I saw were the same. They'd become franchise which shows how good you guys are at business but they become franchise they loss anything that could offend and any personality they had.
I think one of your comments says it best:
"show me where to get Tennesse pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw"
It's not a French, a Russian or a British sandwich it's "Tennesse" sandwich. You have lots of choice internally but not much externally and that's because you don't want it. It's a nation looking in on itself. Which isn't bad just not what I expected. Hey there's more people in some of your cities than in my entire country.
I don't think anyone will read this but atlest it's been said.
Allthough this may sound harsh. If I saw that on a peice of software I would never buy it! It tells me "Hey, there's other software out there that's better than this and cost less but hay you want to support America ... don't you?"
I don't live in America but after going there a couple of months ago I now understand better what the news is talking about. America imports virtually nothing.
I've been to a couple of countries and in each one you find stuff in the supermarket that's not native. After going to America and looking around I realised how poor you are multiculturally. You had a token food here and there but on your shelves you have almost 100% American products (lots made in China or Korea but that's the same world over) When I got home I realised how lucky I was to be able to buy Asian, European, American and Local products each with it's own different stile.
To be honest though you guys do get product before us and get them cheaper because you have a larger market but there's nothing I can do about that.
Anyway if you need a job you can always join a "Temp Agency" over there. Over here it pays about the same as an entry level programing Job but you get to use Excel and Word.
Personally I'd recommend doing what were going to do. Were planning on doing a minor upgrade now and then some time next year do a Major upgrade to the 2.6 Kernal.
You don't want to move to Linux only to want to do another major upgrade in 6/9 months time. So I'd recommend doing the minor upgrade now. Do more testing and wait for 2.6 to come out. If 2.6 comes out in October you should be able to start testing you port. Wait for atleast Redhat and Suse to bring out a 2.6 version and wait a couple of months to see if other people are having problems. If everything looks ok then by about June next year you can convert.
As a free bonous if your using Samba then version 3 should be out and stable by then as well as the fact that the SCO vs IBM battle should be more or less resolved.
When I started on linux I had a similar problem. While all the tools are there thay are hard to find. What they allow though is multiple interfaces.
If you want an EASY server for none technical people DON'T give them Linux. Give them an application server powered by linux.
The best example I know of is E-Smith which does everthing for you. The only problem we've had is that it doesn't handle 2,000 users very well (It was only designed for
If you want a general server then use webmin over ssl. It lets you do everything.
Once you've set these up the users never even logs onto the terminal they just use the web interface.
Linus - "Help I'm in a nutshell" ... or was that someone else?
You have to remmember that there are two types of coders:
:-) welcome to reality. You generally get an above average wage and some extra percs but you're expected to do more.
*Shrink wrap coders
**Write software and sell it for less than it cost to make it.
**Need lots of sales to make money.
**Can make alot more money.
**Made for lots of customers
*Company coders (theres a better term but I can't remmeber it)
**Get a wage or contract
**Paid for how much it cost to make it.
**Made for asingle or small number of customers.
More than 80% of coders are the later and the marginalization of software is irrelivant.
Even if all software was free it wouldn't change things very much for the second group.
Now if you write shrink wrap software / shareware then the value of it is going down. This would have happen without open source. Most of the kids these days grew up with computers and lots of them can program. As time goes on the market gets saturated and prices drop which means you have make less money.
Now if you more to the second group then yo get a 9 to 5 job just like everyone else
To be honest does anyone care about the speed?
I own a gaming centre that has over 50 computers and we can buy whole computers for the cost of these cards (With our upgraded computers with isn't true any more but it was with our stadard computers).
The truth is there is no point buying either of these cards yet[1]. We've got GeForce4 TI4200 which are some of the best allrounders (price, preformance, support) We have ALL[2] of our games turned up to the max[3] with FPS 70+ and have no problems. What more do you want?
1. This may change when half life 2 and Doom three come out.
2. This includes BattleField 1942, CnC Generals and Unreal Tounement 2003.
3. Resolution left at either "1024 x 768" or "1280 x 1024" due to the limitations of the games or the fact that the higher resolution made no difference as the games weren't designed for it. We could increase the Resolution but what's the point????
I ready the white paper and it looks like they are actually providing a number of products:
Download on demand:
Think Quicktime/IE/etc. Download a small download then download the components they want. I expect they'd also use a protocol similar to rsync which makes downloading alot faster.
Code Inspection:
This is where they say then can decrease to size of the executable. If you've done progaming then you know that you can make executables alot smaller. Here's some examples: Remove inline macros and make them functions, remove debug information.
Ziped executables:
You can have realtime zipped executables. There are about 5 different forms of this that I've seen - they zip/encrypt the executable this makes it about the same size as if it was zipped but you don't have to unzip it to run it(It still uses the space in memory) You also have to break the encryption before you can reverse enginer it. The overhead is about 5 - 20% loading times.
Basically the provide servers that campanies could do themselves but get someone with experiance to do instead.
If I did the following:
*Used realtime compresion on the exe
*Optimized my code so that it didn't incluse useless code.
*Moduralised my code (reuse etc)
*Made the code more plugin like.
*Added a bootstrap downloader.
*Make the software come in three versions Lite, Full and express.
If I did all of this I'd easily be able to half the bandwidth needed for a file without really changing it that much.
As for the CD the data has to be over 700MB before they can decrease the size so I'm fairly sure they'd be able to optimse it.
The service they provide isn't unique. It's just a convient package of 10 or more technologies to make life easy for other companies.
That's like saying why post in a Blog (Ie Slashdot) as only 1% of the Internet reads them.
The really reason why you'd want to is that it's often that minority that make the choices.
Of the 95% that use windows I'd say atleast 60% would have never made that choice but been told it by someone else. Same as I'd expect that the 1% of the internet that reads Blogs write and control more than 50% of the web indirrectly.
The reason for this is that the majority often just go with the flow and do what they are told. It's the minority that often tells the majority what to buy.
Most people ask me to recommend computer "stuff" because I'm a computer person. I'd be very hesitant to recommend anything that didn't have good support for linux even if they were using windows.
Also good support for a minority often shows that the company has *GASP* "good support" if they can't be bother writing then chances are they won't support their own products latter on as they don't value to product or their customers.
It's like a school you have the leaders/popular people that say what almost everyone else does. If you can make them do something you can get most of the shcool to do the same thing
Thoes are my thoughts anyway.
Hmm,
Your missing the point. Your using the same argument that they used for X86 vs ALPHA/RISC etc. The point that the technology is better is only half the story. I say that your posting from an x86 box ever though it's not the technically superior solution.
The other half of the story is everything around the technology. Here's the real world reasons why it's stupid for them to use CDMA instead of GSM:
*All the countries around it use GSM. This means that you couldn't use the same phone (excluing tri band phones) as you went from Iraq to Israel or Iran or Syria etc.
*There are only two countries that use CDMA - America and Koria. Your saying that they should be incompatable with 90% of the world just so YOU and the other American soldiers can use their phones in Iraq????
*CDMA phones cost more.
*CDMA phones use older technology because they don't have the competition the GSM phones have. Look at the advances in speed for the x86 compared to ALPHA. Sure CDMA get's it eventually but most of the time it's after GSM, it cost more and it not as polished.
If you get nothing else don't forget that technology is only half of the equation.
Nathaniel Brown
Here's some tools you might want to look at. I found them right at the end of my last Job using C++ and wish I'd found them at the begining. Together they can really cut compile time down.
./configure, make, make install but great when you are developing something.
CCache http://ccache.samba.org/ this can make make project build almost 6 tines as fast on following compiles. This isn't very good for doing a
DistCC http://distcc.samba.org/ use everyones computer to compile the project.
So if your having slow compile times in a development environment use these to decrease them.
If at first you don't succeed, don't go sky diving.
"I'm pretty sure Windows has a higher market share in the server side of things (still)."
It all depend what you classify as a server. How do you counter servers?
Do you count the number of Boxes? If you what about IBM mainframes that can handle 1000 of users or multiple virtual Operating Systems. What about the number of services? Most Linux machines run multiple services where you'd user multiple machines to do the same thing in windows?
Then we can also go the other way. Does a desktop converted to a web server/file server count? If so what about a proxy? If we use internet connection sharing does that make a windows box into a server? What about if we shared the Hard drive?
Also why are we seprating all the *nix's. It reminds me of South Africa were White's were the majority when they were less than 10% of the popualtion. They did it by counting all the tribes seperately.
Last time I look servers were something like:
*Windows 35%
*Novel 8%
*'nix 53%
But they don't show that they show(making these figues up):
This makes windows seem larger than it is to be fair they should be more like(making these figues up):
*Windows NT 4 8%
*Windows 2K/XP 25%
*Windows 9X 2%
*Novel 8%
*Solaris 20%
*AIX 13%
*HP 9%
*Linux 7%
*Other Unix 4%
So while people can say that one OS has a larger make share than the other it's not always as large or complet as they might say it is.
I haven't used an Amiga for almost 5 years (My Gradfather had one) But one of the coolest things it had that I haven't ever seen on the PC was a RAM drive.
/tmp in linux.
It acted just like a floppy drive and was only 4 Meg but it was one of it's coolest features. You could install games, demos, etc to the ram disk and then play them off the ram disk.
If something goes wrong just reset and it's gone. All the programes in the RAM drive were really quick (supprise supprise) and most programs could use it like
I know there are similar things in linux and windows but most of them are just addons. What made the Amiga cool was the fact that it was built into every Amiga (I think) and most programs were smaller than the RAM drive. Most games were less than four meg*.
*For a PC this sounds small but for the Amiga this was enough as most of the games were the Arcade games since they have a similar OS. Also The Amiga had a similar layer to Dirrect X but in on a ROM chip this ment that graphics and Sounds were way ahead of the PC. I've seen a couple of games ported over to the PC and either they end up going from 1Meg to 50+ meg for the same game or they use and emulator.
I thought the same thing so I went with the 10Gig instead of the 20Gig (Second Generation). I've found out that once you have one it's easy to use it. I now wish I paid the extra.
....
What uses up more than 10 Gig you may ask?
Audio books! I've been listening to a number of audio books. Most of the audio books I have are either a single files that's atleast 300MB and goes for 10+ hours or a collection of 10MB files each going for 10 to 30 minutes. If you get some series (Dragon Lance, Lord of the Rings, etc) they can easily use up 1 for part of the series.
Technically You only need 1 Book on at a time the same can be said for music(you only need 10 hours of music) but what you want is choice.
Anyway here's a summary of what I have on my iPod: *50% music
*30% talking books
*10% monty python, random quotes, sayings, one liners, stand up comedy
*10% free/changes constantly
There was an article on on slashdot Here and here's a site with free audio books Here if you don't want to use a p2p network.
You know I would feel sorry for you but I just don't get it. Every since High school I WANTED to work with computers. I had just started UNI when the bubble started and finished soon after it busrt. I had over 500 people in one of my first year subjects coarse (I live in Australia were there are only 10,000 people in a LARGE UNI) and to be honest we had some people who couldn't pass the intro subject - turning on a PC, using a browser etc. One year into the coarse an they'd just finished a java subject and they got Jobs. They were still CRAP and most of them still are. I still know lots of people from UNI thoes that are GOOD have jobs. Thoes that aren't DON'T have IT jobs they have normal jobs. Some are holding out for IT jobs but the thing is they are still CRAP. The truth is the money they got before was Crazy they had no skills then and they still don't have any and they aren't getting jobs BIG deal. If your REALLY trying to get a JOB then it's not that big a deal. Get part time job as an office temp doing word and excel and then look for a better Job. If you looking for a position that you deserve then your out of luck because the world OWES you nothing you need to look at things in reverse: WHAT CAN YOU OFFER THEM. Honestly you may have to make some changes. My uncle lived in a flat with a view of te river by moving to a house without a view they could have saved $300 a week but they burn through there money and then kept on complaining about how he couldn't find a job that would pay him enough. Basicly there are lots of jobs out there just not ones your willing to do. If that's all your complaining about then to BAD.
It's easy once you see the natural progression.
I've never been into buying music but my brother is but over the last couple of year WHAT we buy has really changed. We used to CD that we'd listen to on the radio. He'd buy them so we'd have the same CD as his friends. About 2 years ago we got cable Internet before that we had some MP3 but we'd get those from LAN parties our own CD etc. Once we could get song quickly things changed.
Before if someone told us about a new song it would "cool" but you wouldn't bother following up unless they made a really big deal now we go home download it and check them out. We now check out ANY music we like the sound of here's some examples:
For about 6 Months after we got cable my brother kept only downloading stuff that wasn't on the radio or in stores (Australia) He'd burn it to CD and show it off to all his friends how told him how cool it was and where ask where he got it from and he'd enjoy bragging about how we had cable and that you couldn't get it in Australia.
Opening song for Roswell - Dido: We bought her CD about 3 months before it went mainstream (Australia's a bit behind). We told our friends about it and then all of a sudden it was on TV radio everywhere.
Opening song for Lain - Boa: I haven't been able to find there CD ANYWHERE for sale (Australia, US, Uk - it's sold out and on indefinite backorder) but they're really cool. As soon as I can get it in Australia I will. Also found out about another BoA with the same name but Korean, which was an accident, but cool anyway.
Opening song for Malcolm in the middle: No idea. I personally never would have checked them out even though it's a cool song but one of my brother's did and they have some really weird stuff but it's cool.
Went through a phase of checking out (Armature Music Videos) and found Rammstein and a couple of other band.
There's also a lot of spoofs, parodies that we've got:
OpenBSD - http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html
Counter Strike - I will Survive - http://www.punkassfraggers.com/mp3s.shtml
Got the picture yet. The main point is that how we get music and how we find music has changed. We don't listen to the Radio anymore at home - we have over 1000 songs most of which we have CD of OR can't buy locally OR can't buy because they are one off's like the Counter Strike MP3. Sure we have some MP3 they we didn't buy the CD for and at the start we had more of those than the other but now it's the other way round. I listen to the Radio on the way to work and most of the time I realise how spoilt I am at home. It's not that the songs are bad most of them are good but they are songs that don't offend anyone. If the drive was much longer (10 minutes) I'd probably be bother setting up the Car kit for my IPOD (held out for 1 year)
The radio has no "Weird Al" no "Rammstein" (German) or "BoA" (Korea) or random quotes from "Monty Python" and while I don't listen to them all the time it's nice to have a variety.
I know lots of other people have said this already but that's what they are afraid of: People having a taste in music rather than having a taste based on the music they hear on the radio which the media companies (RIAA approved) can influence.
There are a couple of Projects/Technologies you might like to know about:
:-)
- 10/lw -10-samba-p5.html
PAM(Password Authenication Module): In Linux you can tel it what to use for authenication. You can use the file in etc, NIS(Sun), LDAP, SMB(A windows Domain) In Red Hat 8 all you have to do is point it to the server
Samba:Samba Can be used as a File server and can currently be a Domain Controlor or a Member but not a Backup Contorlor. Samba 3 is currently in the works and will be more compatable with Windows 2000 as the Current Series of Samba 2 are more like NT 4.0
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998
Webmin/SWAT: Swat is a GUI for Samba. Webmin does more than that as it is a gui for almost all of the servers in Linux.
http://www.webmin.net
Enjoy
Nathaniel Brown
You've got some good points but since when did high schools ever use polynomial math? I know I never did and I did all the science subjects? As for "setup.exe" at schools one the things you want to STOP is people installing software! I do agree that Word/Excel is better for assignments but should you require it? If you have it a school and you take an assignment home you then need to buy it a home. For a reasonable highschool of 400 students (about 200 families)that means the families need to buy about $150 * 200 = $30 000. Where as if you have open office you can give it to all of you students on CD. If I was in charge of a school I don't know which I'd use BUT I do know that I'd put together a School CD that would include software for home that has no cost, mainly to discourage piracy. The same argument could also be made for Photoshop It's better than painshop pro but I doubt many people use it because it's more than they need at high school. It's a tough call and can be made either way.
One minor problem if your talking about windows...
If you've ever look at the licence you are only licensed for 2CPU and from what I can tell XP won't let you use more that the number of CPU you have licensed and 98 doesn't really handle more that one CPU.
So while 4 CPU would be nice you'd have to use linux which isn't a bad thing but currently most of the CAD/CAM, video editing, 3D modeling, rendering programs are for windows.
And unfotunately why bother compiling on a single computer when you can use a comile farm:
http://distcc.samba.org/
This is maimly right but there are a couple of things I'd like to point out.
1. I don't think "We Folk" think easy is bad it's just that trying to make something complex easy doesn't always work.
Example 1 - My 12 year old brother can install software, use it and then uninstall it (by deleting the dirrectory). Sure it will work initally but after about 12 months he's stuffed up my computer and can't figure out why it's not working anymore.
Example 2 - I know lots of people that can make a database in access. They only have 2 table when there should be 4 or 5. Sure it works but a couple of month later they notice that come of the address are wrong because they only updated one of the places where the address is in the database(because the database was badly designed it's now in 3 different places). This means that you have to keep on checking to make sure the database is giving the right data.
Also for your friend you might want to look at http://www.e-smith.org or one of the other "Application Servers" that are designed to fill a niche and make things easy to use via simple interfaces.
E-Smith can be setup as a PDC in 30 minutes TOTAL. It has a simple web interface and does everything for you