Personally, I now have moved my start bar to the left-hand side of my screen. That way I gain a bit height... But from a 1280x800 screen, that makes a 1000x800 screen or so... Not much difference with my old laptops 4:3 screen that was 1024x786 and a far cry from my dads 4:3 screen at 1600x1200.
On Linux I can't seem to be able to put the menubar to the left because it also rotates the text which makes it unusable. (In Gnome, haven't tried KDE and I might just revert to WindowMaker like in the good olden days)
And that gives them the right to use their company issued laptop to play games? I'm sorry, I don't get that. I have a company issued laptop, and I leave it at work. There are two reasons in giving you a company laptop: You're on the road often or they hope to lure you to work in your spare time. I'm not in the first category, yet I got a laptop. My laptop stays at work, on my desk at all times.
A company laptop is for work. If you want to game, buy a machine yourself. Even in the rare cases I got sent away for a few weeks, I took my company laptop and my personal laptop. Company laptop for work, personal laptop for play. It's not that I cannot install anything on my company laptop, I'm admin on it, works just fine.
I do understand that inflation isn't exponential and the proposed system is.... Still, you do not know what the future holds and it might be that in 64 years (that's 2072), a simple beer might cost as much as 500,000$. You simply don't know.... With my current salary, I could live like a king.... if I had to pay 1950 prices...
Cool idea, but you need way to keep in account the inflation. AFAIK, my parents bought a house for 50000€ in the mid-seventies. Today, that amount gets you a large car at best and nowhere close to a house. In 64 years, $184,467,440,737,095,516.16 might be chump change for any large company.
I pretty much assumed that, but I never tried so I wasn't 100% sure. I added that phrase mainly to counter eventual people that would say "Wait until you rip dvds/edit video/edit photos/....".
I played Portal on that machine and it was very playable at 1024x768... I still have to start Halflife 2, but that's mainly because I lack diskspace, hence the planned upgrade (I have the disk, just not yet the occasion to switch it...)
for computers it maddens me that people get a top of the range high power monster to browse the net and do word processing, when their old PC would of done the job fine.
I love when people do that: I'm a dumpster diver!:-D
My wifes PC (I don't have a PC anymore, I just use hers) is a PC from around 2003. I upgraded it a bit left and right when RAM was on sale, or I'd get a better video card somewhere.... It's a Hyperthreaded P-IV 2.6GHz with 2Gig RAM. 5 years old, and still going strong for everything we do on it. Of course, we don't do stuff like ripping DVDs or edit home video, but for what we do it's absolutely enough. The motherboard even supports SATA: the next upgrade is to replace the 120Gig IDE drive with a 500Gig SATA drive.
I promised my wife a Mac if this one stops working. I don't expect that to happen within the next few years. Bummer for her that I know how to maintain computers;-)
You'd be surprised (or maybe not, this is Slashdot...) how many students think "I did the experiment once, my data is perfect, nothing could have possibly gone wrong."
Oh, I do understand... but I did't understand before teaching myself. It's one of the reasons I quit teaching as fast as I could. They're not worth my time.
If you want to raise free-thinking people, you need to expose them to different viewpoints and teach them how to live alongside people who have a different view of the world
True, but you can achieve exactly the same by explaining what these people believe. Back in school, I got an overview of all major religions and their beliefs. I wasn't however said "this is the one true way". Sending a kid to church is sending it right into the lions lair. You don't have to put a kid in the lions lair to tell them it's dangerous.
Because public schools don't brainwash kids. Right. Sure.
Sure they do! I absolutely agree. Be conform, don't speak up, girls are bad at math, etc.... However, believing in something like the Bible is orders of magnitude worse.
Of course, keep in mind that most of the historical great Western thinkers were Christians - or received training in Christian settings.
Mainly because they didn't have a choice.... Do keep that in mind when using that statement. These days we *do* have a choice, and moving away from barbarian books like the Bible and e Qur'an will only do goo to humanity.
And simply because a kid is home-schooled doesnt mean they don't have friends and get out more. We have churches and civic programs that kids need to be involved in as well.
Uh-Oh! I'm sorry, but if you want to raise your kids as free thinking people, it's best to keep them out of brain-washing institutions like churches.
Ah, back in the day, I coded a TSR program that hijacked the PrintScreen key. Upon pressing it, the thing would spew random characters over the screen and you had to reboot (unless you knew what combination would get you out). I hid it in the autoexec.bat.
Fun... Especially, that next time we went to the lab, my computer wasn't there anymore. Probably "in repairs". Hehehe.
That was not the point: the point is, it accesses both and presumably interchanges. What you thought to be "on your hardisk only" might end up online. That's not something one wants, and from what I understand this will be completely transparent.
It just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. This is pretty much in the same league as: "Hey, lets make a binary plugin that can do anything a normal binary can do!" That exists, it's called "ActiveX"....
My primary storage (for documents, *not* multimedia stuff) is a USB stick half of which is dedicated to a Truecrypt volume. I have it in my pocket at all times. I can pretty much access my data on any computer manufactured in the last few years.
So, I looked up the German version and here is my own translation of the song. Of course it doesn't rhyme anymore.;-)
Do you have some time for me
Then I'll sing you a song
About 99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
Do you perhaps right now think of me
Then I'll sing you a song
About 99 balloons
And that this from that comes
99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
Were considered UFOs from outer space
Because of that a General
Send a fighter squad after them
To Alert if it was that
But on the horizon were
Just 99 balloons
99 fighterjets
Everyone a great fighter
Thought they were Captain Kirk
Then there was a big firework
The neighbours didn't get it
And immediately felt threathened
But on the horizon they were shooting
On 99 balloons
99 war ministers
Match and jerrycan
Thought they were smart men
Anticipated great loot
Yelled: war and we want and power
Who would have thought that
That it would come that far
Because of 99 balloons
99 years of war
Didn't leave a place for winners
War ministers don't exits anymore
And no fighterjets either
Today I walk around
See the world in ashes
I found a balloon
Think of you and let him fly
Yeah, I saw a few. I don't see why anyone wants to go there if you can get good coffee cheaper pretty much everywhere else. I refuse to go into a Starbucks, simply for it being the overpriced equivalent of what MacDonalds is to food.
Two bedroom apartment. Everything computer related is relegated to our "office" (being the second bedroom). Computers in the livingroom are a big no-no. I even had to cut back: my beloved AMD Athlon XP 2400+ / 4Gig RAM is gone because it was louder than a vacuum cleaner. Her PC is "only" a P-IV 2.6MHz HT / 2Gig RAM, but it's much quieter. Also, my complete "spare pieces" storage had to go too. My spare pieces storage is now at my parents, which is nice, but if I need something, I always have to drive over.
I fear the day we have kids, I'll have to give away all my gear and go laptop-only.
But as said, you're too recently married. Sooner or later the issue will come up. Believe me.... They close their grip slowly, but tightly.
Where are my days as beer drinking and pizza eating geeky bachelor? *deep sigh*
Well, no, I buy the tech stuff too. However, she'll get bitchy when you come home with something that really doesn't fit. You're too recently married. You'll know what I talk about in a year or two.
It also depends a lot on where and how the device is going to be used. If you do not have an office (in Europe space comes at a premium), the computer is often in the living room. You can bet that an ugly looking Dell box won't come over well. A nice pretty iMac on the other hand (which has much less cables).... I've heard of a few geeks that had to put their PC in a closet so that "it wouldn't be visible". Sad, but true....
Luckily my wife didn't even *know* Apple before meeting me and has an ugly Fujitsu Siemens desktop. She wants a Mac now, and I said I'd buy her one of her current machine doesn't work anymore. The odds to that stand on my side: the machine is from 2003, had a few minor upgrades (more RAM, better graphics card, bigger harddisk) and is managed by me. Unless the motherboard breaks, that machine will be with us for many more years;-)
Pretty much the same situation for me (except that I'm not colorblind and she is a kindergarten teacher).... Go and try buy something technical with her and see how far you get until it hits "it's ugly" or "so many cables" mantra. I've only been married since July 2005 and I am fully aware of the Wife Acceptance Factor.
Of course, a laptop will not be in permanent visual range of your wife, so it may have a lower WAF, as long as you store it in a pretty bag.;-) Anything from Gucci, Longchamp, or Louis Vuitton will probably do.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
AMEN!
Personally, I now have moved my start bar to the left-hand side of my screen. That way I gain a bit height... But from a 1280x800 screen, that makes a 1000x800 screen or so... Not much difference with my old laptops 4:3 screen that was 1024x786 and a far cry from my dads 4:3 screen at 1600x1200.
On Linux I can't seem to be able to put the menubar to the left because it also rotates the text which makes it unusable. (In Gnome, haven't tried KDE and I might just revert to WindowMaker like in the good olden days)
And that gives them the right to use their company issued laptop to play games? I'm sorry, I don't get that. I have a company issued laptop, and I leave it at work. There are two reasons in giving you a company laptop: You're on the road often or they hope to lure you to work in your spare time. I'm not in the first category, yet I got a laptop. My laptop stays at work, on my desk at all times.
A company laptop is for work. If you want to game, buy a machine yourself. Even in the rare cases I got sent away for a few weeks, I took my company laptop and my personal laptop. Company laptop for work, personal laptop for play. It's not that I cannot install anything on my company laptop, I'm admin on it, works just fine.
Company machines are for work only. Final point.
That's why they stay in their parents basement and post on slashdot ;-)
Economy isn't my forte.... Anyway, the 14 years after creation is the best solution. Time simply should be (very) limited.
I do understand that inflation isn't exponential and the proposed system is.... Still, you do not know what the future holds and it might be that in 64 years (that's 2072), a simple beer might cost as much as 500,000$. You simply don't know.... With my current salary, I could live like a king.... if I had to pay 1950 prices...
Cool idea, but you need way to keep in account the inflation. AFAIK, my parents bought a house for 50000€ in the mid-seventies. Today, that amount gets you a large car at best and nowhere close to a house. In 64 years, $184,467,440,737,095,516.16 might be chump change for any large company.
I pretty much assumed that, but I never tried so I wasn't 100% sure. I added that phrase mainly to counter eventual people that would say "Wait until you rip dvds/edit video/edit photos/....".
I played Portal on that machine and it was very playable at 1024x768... I still have to start Halflife 2, but that's mainly because I lack diskspace, hence the planned upgrade (I have the disk, just not yet the occasion to switch it...)
I love when people do that: I'm a dumpster diver! :-D
My wifes PC (I don't have a PC anymore, I just use hers) is a PC from around 2003. I upgraded it a bit left and right when RAM was on sale, or I'd get a better video card somewhere.... It's a Hyperthreaded P-IV 2.6GHz with 2Gig RAM. 5 years old, and still going strong for everything we do on it. Of course, we don't do stuff like ripping DVDs or edit home video, but for what we do it's absolutely enough. The motherboard even supports SATA: the next upgrade is to replace the 120Gig IDE drive with a 500Gig SATA drive.
I promised my wife a Mac if this one stops working. I don't expect that to happen within the next few years. Bummer for her that I know how to maintain computers ;-)
They teach how to give blowjobs? Isn't that contradictory to abstinence? Anyway, I wish my wife had been sent to such a youth group. *sigh*
Oh, I do understand... but I did't understand before teaching myself. It's one of the reasons I quit teaching as fast as I could. They're not worth my time.
True, but you can achieve exactly the same by explaining what these people believe. Back in school, I got an overview of all major religions and their beliefs. I wasn't however said "this is the one true way". Sending a kid to church is sending it right into the lions lair. You don't have to put a kid in the lions lair to tell them it's dangerous.
Sure they do! I absolutely agree. Be conform, don't speak up, girls are bad at math, etc.... However, believing in something like the Bible is orders of magnitude worse.
Mainly because they didn't have a choice.... Do keep that in mind when using that statement. These days we *do* have a choice, and moving away from barbarian books like the Bible and e Qur'an will only do goo to humanity.
Uh-Oh! I'm sorry, but if you want to raise your kids as free thinking people, it's best to keep them out of brain-washing institutions like churches.
Ah, back in the day, I coded a TSR program that hijacked the PrintScreen key. Upon pressing it, the thing would spew random characters over the screen and you had to reboot (unless you knew what combination would get you out). I hid it in the autoexec.bat.
Fun... Especially, that next time we went to the lab, my computer wasn't there anymore. Probably "in repairs". Hehehe.
Well, they enable lock-in and generate revenue for the companies that own those technologies.
Oh, wait... You meant for us? Nothing...
That was not the point: the point is, it accesses both and presumably interchanges. What you thought to be "on your hardisk only" might end up online. That's not something one wants, and from what I understand this will be completely transparent.
It just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. This is pretty much in the same league as: "Hey, lets make a binary plugin that can do anything a normal binary can do!" That exists, it's called "ActiveX"....
My primary storage (for documents, *not* multimedia stuff) is a USB stick half of which is dedicated to a Truecrypt volume. I have it in my pocket at all times. I can pretty much access my data on any computer manufactured in the last few years.
Am I the only one who frowned and thought about the security issues, when reading that?
So, I looked up the German version and here is my own translation of the song. Of course it doesn't rhyme anymore. ;-)
Do you have some time for me
Then I'll sing you a song
About 99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
Do you perhaps right now think of me
Then I'll sing you a song
About 99 balloons
And that this from that comes
99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
Were considered UFOs from outer space
Because of that a General
Send a fighter squad after them
To Alert if it was that
But on the horizon were
Just 99 balloons
99 fighterjets
Everyone a great fighter
Thought they were Captain Kirk
Then there was a big firework
The neighbours didn't get it
And immediately felt threathened
But on the horizon they were shooting
On 99 balloons
99 war ministers
Match and jerrycan
Thought they were smart men
Anticipated great loot
Yelled: war and we want and power
Who would have thought that
That it would come that far
Because of 99 balloons
99 years of war
Didn't leave a place for winners
War ministers don't exits anymore
And no fighterjets either
Today I walk around
See the world in ashes
I found a balloon
Think of you and let him fly
European Starbucks?
Yeah, I saw a few. I don't see why anyone wants to go there if you can get good coffee cheaper pretty much everywhere else. I refuse to go into a Starbucks, simply for it being the overpriced equivalent of what MacDonalds is to food.
Two bedroom apartment. Everything computer related is relegated to our "office" (being the second bedroom). Computers in the livingroom are a big no-no. I even had to cut back: my beloved AMD Athlon XP 2400+ / 4Gig RAM is gone because it was louder than a vacuum cleaner. Her PC is "only" a P-IV 2.6MHz HT / 2Gig RAM, but it's much quieter. Also, my complete "spare pieces" storage had to go too. My spare pieces storage is now at my parents, which is nice, but if I need something, I always have to drive over.
I fear the day we have kids, I'll have to give away all my gear and go laptop-only.
But as said, you're too recently married. Sooner or later the issue will come up. Believe me.... They close their grip slowly, but tightly.
Where are my days as beer drinking and pizza eating geeky bachelor? *deep sigh*
Well, no, I buy the tech stuff too. However, she'll get bitchy when you come home with something that really doesn't fit. You're too recently married. You'll know what I talk about in a year or two.
It also depends a lot on where and how the device is going to be used. If you do not have an office (in Europe space comes at a premium), the computer is often in the living room. You can bet that an ugly looking Dell box won't come over well. A nice pretty iMac on the other hand (which has much less cables).... I've heard of a few geeks that had to put their PC in a closet so that "it wouldn't be visible". Sad, but true....
Luckily my wife didn't even *know* Apple before meeting me and has an ugly Fujitsu Siemens desktop. She wants a Mac now, and I said I'd buy her one of her current machine doesn't work anymore. The odds to that stand on my side: the machine is from 2003, had a few minor upgrades (more RAM, better graphics card, bigger harddisk) and is managed by me. Unless the motherboard breaks, that machine will be with us for many more years ;-)
Pretty much the same situation for me (except that I'm not colorblind and she is a kindergarten teacher).... Go and try buy something technical with her and see how far you get until it hits "it's ugly" or "so many cables" mantra. I've only been married since July 2005 and I am fully aware of the Wife Acceptance Factor.
Of course, a laptop will not be in permanent visual range of your wife, so it may have a lower WAF, as long as you store it in a pretty bag. ;-) Anything from Gucci, Longchamp, or Louis Vuitton will probably do. ;-)