I am a VB/VC++ developer. Every windows machine I have ever used (since '92) has needed to reboot (either crashed or started behaving oddly) daily. Losing 2-10 hours a week due to reboots is unacceptable. And a reinstall on average every 1-2 months! Installation : Windows (9x/NT depends on the job) Office Visual Studio.
My Mac (which I develop on) needs to be rebooted about weekly.... Reinstalls once every other year or so.(I upgrade the OS more often than I need to re-install.)
Linux, don't know yet, it's on order from LinuxPPC.com.. but I"m hoping it's more acceptable.
[ machines from Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and Homebrewed... (the homebrewed has worked best!)
Looks like pretty much all the Linux community sites have managed to sell out in one form or another. Not much independant content available anymore. Perhaps it is time to move on for an old individualist like me... That is hysterical, could someone moderate this up.... "Gee all the creative folks sold out, an individualist like me might as well follow." BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
That said, while CompUSA has no place deciding what my children play, they definitely have a place deciding what they sell to children. It's analagous to stores selling cigarettes to minors. It's not really their responsibility to make sure kids aren't smoking, but they have no right selling my kids something objectionable. Actually it is a stores responsiblity to make sure they don't sell cigarettes to childern... becuase it's the law. OTHO, how is CompUSA supposed to know what parents do or don't find objectionable? Sorry, it's still the parents responsiblity. Why should we let a corporation make our morale descisions? Until the rating system is written into law, CompUSA has no more responsiblity for childern playing Half-life than the playboy channel does for kids seeing naked women if the adults left the channel on. Would you say that it's okay for Sam Goody's to sell a porno to a 12 year old? Of course not! If you did, I'd say you're a sicko. A parent depends on outlets to be responisible in what they sell. It's not a crutch for parenting, it's just assistance. Again, it's the law that selling porno to childern is illegal. Until the people who oppose violent/sexy games get together and force the gov. to change the law, that's the way it is. This sensational stuff about "Ohhh scarey: Our Childern can buy Quake." Is just a way to sell magazines. CompUsa is not legally or morally (and as far as I'm concerned) culpable for selling video games. It's that simple. As for whether that should be changed... I defy anyone to show me 1 piece of well-established, ethical, scientifically conducted research that shows a statistically significant correlation between exposure to violence as a child and poor mental health. As of yet, this correlation has not been proven (which is not true for exposure to pornography as a child or in the case of cigarettes their health.) RobK
Having said that I think stores like CompUSA have a very real responsibility to watch who the sell games like this to. There are certain things that kids just shouldn't be buying. There'd be WAY more outrage if the game contained sexual content, rather than violent content, but the principles of mature-viewing are the same in both cases.
I don't want CompUSA deciding which games my kids play, thank you.
Why is that parents in America no longer want to raise their children. I'll tell you what, if I'd tried to bring a game in to my house that my mom thought was too violent or too sexy... it would be gone. Plain and simple. (And oddly she was much more liberal than these ratings.)
If you had the sex, you bear the responsiblity to raise your kids. Don't push it off on the government, the corporations or the poor over-worked teachers. If you do, don't be suprised if they take the 'easiest' route. Think 1984 or farenheit 451.
Freedome of choice goes like this: I feel at age 12, my kids should be be allowed to play quake. (not Q2 or Q3, but Q1). You may disagree.
Either you are a) from the future or b) on drugs and didn't bring enough for everyone.
Apple has not even announced the iPalm. What you must be refering to is the iBook (the consumer laptop). They are two very different things. The iPalm is the rumor 'Newton replacement' (I'd suggest checking out www.ogradys.com or www.macosrumors.com to anyone interested.
Not that jr. here is brilliant or anything. (And this is offtopic so I won't be offended if it's mod'ted down). But discover did an article in '89 or '90 on why so called brilliant people (Einstien, Heminway, Fitzgerald, Poe, etc.) couldn't spell or follow basic grammar rules....
They claimed that it was a very minor case of dyslexia that was so slight that it went undiagnosed.
Personally my first computer (a commodore 64) was purchased for me because I was A+'ing everything but spelling in elementary school. To this day I still can't spell worth a hill of beans.... ALL PRAISE SPELL/GRAMMAR checkers!
Woah now little buffalo, you give MTV WAAAAHAY to much credit here. Even the Enquirer checks facts on occasion, and as for hip...I think Husker Du was still together the last time you could call MTV hip.... (possibly even Joy Division). MTV seriously has been a joke since 1984ish, I mean look at the "stars" they have built-up to the point of a frenzy and then tore apart... (Vinilla Ice, Snow, Debbie Gibson, Tiffiny, Milli Vanilli, etc.). It's definately not cool to shove these people down our throats and then turn around and make them into a joke. [I'm not a fan of any of the above, but I do feel sorry for them because of the way they were butt-raped by the music industry.]
I found your article interesting and insightful. Although I see a couple differences I think change the equation.
I agree that the current boom is much like the space race driven engineering boom of the 60-70's. How ever, an unemployed programmer can start creating new, marketable products much more cheaply and easily than a new physical product can be brought to market. So it seems to me that at the end of the boom we will see our salaries stop exploding (from $6/hour to $30/hour in the last 3 years, thank you), but there will still be jobs for the competent programmers (the learn visual basic in 24 hours crowd may have some problems though).
The other point is that according to an article from here, ( I think it was really at salon) a lot of techies are leaving the industry because it's a "boring maintence" job.
Mind you, I'm not trading in my stock portfolio for a new BMW just yet, but I think this boom may last much longer than the engineering boom of the 60's and 70's.
Friends of the family are getting a second mortage in December. They plan on spending it all on one big vacation. And thanks to Y2k,of course they feel completely safe that the bank will magikally forget that the loan happened!!!!
It seems my communications skills were a little lax yesterday.
The point I was trying to make is that you don't use a sledgehammer to cut diamonds... you use the apporpriate tool. And I can tell you (i used to be in jewelry), a sledgehammer is a hell of a lot cheaper than jewelers tools and gem cutting equipment! This is like saying you get so much more hammer for so much less, obviously the sledgehammer is the better tool.
For a _consumer_ the specs are just about right, they can do everything they would need to (homework, excel spreadsheets, word stuff, etc.)
This isn't meant to be a developers or gamers machine (which would need a larger harddrive, more mem, and so on and so on.) The buyers of this item don't need anything that we consider important. (The same with the iMac, which is apparent by it's suprising success.) Who knows it may sell an extra 100,000 just because it has a handle to allow Mom/Dad to more easily lug it out to the pool.
Oddly, the only ones I could find with an AMD K6-III and a 14" screen were in the $1800 range, not the $1599 range apple was shooting for. But even granting you that point:
With the Rage Mobility chip? With Wireless networking being only $100 option? With the neat design (no latch, it opens like a cell phone. Not the color, if I get one I'm painting it black and maybe put a Merciful Release symbol on it....) With a cool little built-in handle? I'm sorry, say what you want about the color but the no-latch design and the handle are things I'd _love_ to see in their pro series...
Did you look at the full specs of all the laptops? To say that there are laptops out there with those screens in that price range is very misleading considering the other cool features this machine has.
---Warning: Impending Rant--- I'm getting sick and tired of the minorities in the Linux, Windows, OS/2, Amiga, Purple-Assed Baboon, And Mac comunities that do a knee-jerk response of disliking anything outside their community. It's ridiculous.
We are supposed to be intelligent, logical people the design and support (well some of us) software and hardware. Can't we look at this for what it is? Just like the iMac, this is supposed to be a laptop that your Mom will use. Not you, your Mom. Does your mom need the highest res and biggest (physically) screen? Mine doesn't. Do you reallly think, honestly and truely that Apple didn't do some market research about this? Come on, they've rested their entire bussiness future on the four product lines. Do you really think they are that dumb?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because (for example) Amiga does something doesn't mean it's bad. It may be good for that community, or for even the larger geek community or it might be bad. Before going off half-cocked and lambasting it, check your facts. Make sure you understand the market it's in, etc.
Sorry, that was my regularly scheduled rant.
For the record, I don't consider myself part of any "community." I don't feel any one OS is good for everything. I've used Amigas considerably, use Windows for my job, have a Mac with Linux installed at home....
Slashdot Mirror
if !(agree)
{
if strcmp(context, 'Pro-Open Source')
cout communismAccusation
else
if strcmp(context, 'Pro-Mac')
cout justAnArtistDontUnderstand
else
if strcmp(context, 'Pro-Amiga')
cout getOutOfTheDarkAges
else
if goodDay
cout idiot
else
cout asshole
_________________
Is is just me or are the micorsoft employees err... I mean AC's being unsually active today???
So, how much of a discount did you get on
your MS stock options?
What a tool.
Wouldn't it be nice if the suit could
some how force the GPL'ing of the AmigaOS
instead of getting the cash????
(This coming from someone who didnt' stop using
their A2000 7Mhz machine till late '97.)
What about streaming quicktime4?
It automagically scales to your availible bandwidth (56K gets postage stamp, T1 gets a decent sized window).
All we need is to convice Apple to do a linux version....
I am a VB/VC++ developer.
Every windows machine I have ever used (since '92) has needed to reboot (either crashed or started behaving oddly) daily. Losing 2-10 hours a week due to reboots is unacceptable.
And a reinstall on average every 1-2 months!
Installation :
Windows (9x/NT depends on the job)
Office
Visual Studio.
My Mac (which I develop on) needs to be rebooted about weekly.... Reinstalls once every other year or so.(I upgrade the OS more often than I need to re-install.)
Linux, don't know yet, it's on order from LinuxPPC.com.. but I"m hoping it's more acceptable.
[ machines from Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and Homebrewed... (the homebrewed has worked best!)
Looks like pretty much all the Linux community sites have managed to sell out in one form or another. Not much independant content available anymore. Perhaps it is time to move on for an old individualist like me... That is hysterical, could someone moderate this up.... "Gee all the creative folks sold out, an individualist like me might as well follow." BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
That said, while CompUSA has no place deciding what my children play, they definitely have a place deciding what they sell to children. It's analagous to stores selling cigarettes to minors. It's not really their responsibility to make sure kids aren't smoking, but they have no right selling my kids something objectionable. Actually it is a stores responsiblity to make sure they don't sell cigarettes to childern... becuase it's the law. OTHO, how is CompUSA supposed to know what parents do or don't find objectionable? Sorry, it's still the parents responsiblity. Why should we let a corporation make our morale descisions? Until the rating system is written into law, CompUSA has no more responsiblity for childern playing Half-life than the playboy channel does for kids seeing naked women if the adults left the channel on. Would you say that it's okay for Sam Goody's to sell a porno to a 12 year old? Of course not! If you did, I'd say you're a sicko. A parent depends on outlets to be responisible in what they sell. It's not a crutch for parenting, it's just assistance. Again, it's the law that selling porno to childern is illegal. Until the people who oppose violent/sexy games get together and force the gov. to change the law, that's the way it is. This sensational stuff about "Ohhh scarey: Our Childern can buy Quake." Is just a way to sell magazines. CompUsa is not legally or morally (and as far as I'm concerned) culpable for selling video games. It's that simple. As for whether that should be changed... I defy anyone to show me 1 piece of well-established, ethical, scientifically conducted research that shows a statistically significant correlation between exposure to violence as a child and poor mental health. As of yet, this correlation has not been proven (which is not true for exposure to pornography as a child or in the case of cigarettes their health.) RobK
I don't want CompUSA deciding which games my kids play, thank you.
Why is that parents in America no longer want to raise their children. I'll tell you what, if I'd tried to bring a game in to my house that my mom thought was too violent or too sexy... it would be gone. Plain and simple. (And oddly she was much more liberal than these ratings.)
If you had the sex, you bear the responsiblity to raise your kids. Don't push it off on the government, the corporations or the poor over-worked teachers. If you do, don't be suprised if they take the 'easiest' route. Think 1984 or farenheit 451.
Freedome of choice goes like this: I feel at age 12, my kids should be be allowed to play quake. (not Q2 or Q3, but Q1). You may disagree.
That's your right and mine.
Oops, my bad.
Sorry about that.
RobK
Either you are a) from the future or b) on drugs and didn't bring enough for everyone.
Apple has not even announced the iPalm. What you must be refering to is the iBook (the consumer laptop). They are two very different things. The iPalm is the rumor 'Newton replacement' (I'd suggest checking out www.ogradys.com or www.macosrumors.com to anyone interested.
Not that jr. here is brilliant or anything.
(And this is offtopic so I won't be offended if it's mod'ted down). But discover did an article in '89 or '90 on why so called brilliant people (Einstien, Heminway, Fitzgerald, Poe, etc.) couldn't spell or follow basic grammar rules....
They claimed that it was a very minor case of dyslexia that was so slight that it went undiagnosed.
Personally my first computer (a commodore 64) was purchased for me because I was A+'ing everything but spelling in elementary school. To this day I still can't spell worth a hill of beans.... ALL PRAISE SPELL/GRAMMAR checkers!
Woah now little buffalo, you give MTV WAAAAHAY to much credit here. Even the Enquirer checks facts on occasion, and as for hip...I think Husker Du was still together the last time you could call MTV hip.... (possibly even Joy Division). MTV seriously has been a joke since 1984ish, I mean look at the "stars" they have built-up to the point of a frenzy and then tore apart... (Vinilla Ice, Snow, Debbie Gibson, Tiffiny, Milli Vanilli, etc.). It's definately not cool to shove these people down our throats and then turn around and make them into a joke. [I'm not a fan of any of the above, but I do feel sorry for them because of the way they were butt-raped by the music industry.]
Wow! I never noticed motorola named it's
products after Anime....
This just gives me another reason to wait to get a PalmOS thingy.
roblimo,
I found your article interesting and insightful. Although I see a couple differences I think change the equation.
I agree that the current boom is much like the space race driven engineering boom of the 60-70's. How ever, an unemployed programmer can start creating new, marketable products much more cheaply and easily than a new physical product can be brought to market. So it seems to me that at the end of the boom we will see our salaries stop exploding (from $6/hour to $30/hour in the last 3 years, thank you), but there will still be jobs for the competent programmers (the learn visual basic in 24 hours crowd may have some problems though).
The other point is that according to an article from here, ( I think it was really at salon) a lot of techies are leaving the industry because it's a "boring maintence" job.
Mind you, I'm not trading in my stock portfolio for a new BMW just yet, but I think this boom may last much longer than the engineering boom of the 60's and 70's.
Thanks for listenin to me babble,
RobK
Secondly,
Or just possibly avoiding getting caught breaking an NDA.
If I'm posting sensitive stuff I usually go anon, just so it's not blatantly obvious that I'm an idiot.
Friends of the family are getting a second mortage in December. They plan on spending it all on one
big vacation. And thanks to Y2k,of course they feel completely safe that the bank will magikally forget that the loan happened!!!!
It seems my communications skills were a little lax yesterday.
The point I was trying to make is that you don't use a sledgehammer to cut diamonds... you use the apporpriate tool. And I can tell you (i used to be in jewelry), a sledgehammer is a hell of a lot cheaper than jewelers tools and gem cutting equipment! This is like saying you get so much more hammer for so much less, obviously the sledgehammer is the better tool.
For a _consumer_ the specs are just about right, they can do everything they would need to (homework, excel spreadsheets, word stuff, etc.)
This isn't meant to be a developers or gamers machine (which would need a larger harddrive, more mem, and so on and so on.) The buyers of this item don't need anything that we consider important. (The same with the iMac, which is apparent by it's suprising success.) Who knows it may sell an extra 100,000 just because it has a handle to allow Mom/Dad to more easily lug it out to the pool.
Oddly, the only ones I could find with an AMD K6-III and a 14" screen were in the $1800 range, not the $1599 range apple was shooting for. But even granting you that point:
With the Rage Mobility chip? With Wireless networking being only $100 option? With the neat design (no latch, it opens like a cell phone. Not the color, if I get one I'm painting it black and maybe put a Merciful Release symbol on it....) With a cool little built-in handle? I'm sorry, say what you want about the color but the no-latch design and the handle are things I'd _love_ to see in their pro series...
Did you look at the full specs of all the laptops? To say that there are laptops out there with those screens in that price range is very misleading considering the other cool features this machine has.
---Warning: Impending Rant---
I'm getting sick and tired of the minorities in the Linux, Windows, OS/2, Amiga, Purple-Assed Baboon, And Mac comunities that do a knee-jerk response of disliking anything outside their community. It's ridiculous.
We are supposed to be intelligent, logical people the design and support (well some of us) software and hardware. Can't we look at this for what it is? Just like the iMac, this is supposed to be a laptop that your Mom will use. Not you, your Mom. Does your mom need the highest res and biggest (physically) screen? Mine doesn't. Do you reallly think, honestly and truely that Apple didn't do some market research about this? Come on, they've rested their entire bussiness future on the four product lines. Do you really think they are that dumb?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because (for example) Amiga does something doesn't mean it's bad. It may be good for that community, or for even the larger geek community or it might be bad. Before going off half-cocked and lambasting it, check your facts. Make sure you understand the market it's in, etc.
Sorry, that was my regularly scheduled rant.For the record, I don't consider myself part of any "community." I don't feel any one OS is good for everything. I've used Amigas considerably, use Windows for my job, have a Mac with Linux installed at home....
Sorry for taking up so much time,RobK
Umm, That's just plain
A) RUDE
B) WRONG
I've used linux since 1995, at home, along with Windows, Mac and Amiga. I've found linux a joy.
At work, I program for the win family of fecal matter... i mean products.
To claim people who use windows are stupid is just fucking ignorant.