I wouldn't worry, if only because Africa will be mostly dead of AIDs in under 50 years (bonus: end of the expansion of the Sahara!). That's where most of the population growth is going to be projected to be. And the Chinese, G-d bless 'em, are being kind enough to totally destroy their demographics to keep their population down. Now, if we can kick some sense into the Arab and South Asian world, I bet all of those projections by the WWF will be so out of whack that we'll be able to laugh at them.
I can never understand: why has X11 not progressed in configuration tools?
The desktop environments are pretty good about configuration. You can find what you need with a minimum of hassle. It's not as easy as perhaps it could be, but an experienced Windows user is not going to have serious problems, and even a newbie will eventually figure it out in roughly the same time as they would in Windows.
Applications are, by and large, pretty good. A few (xawtv comes to mind) need to progress a little more, but generally, I don't need to drop to a command line for anything anymore.
But, _X11_, what the hell has been going on? I have to memorize weird key presses to switch resolution? I can't configure my mouse to 3 button-emulate without the command line?
WE CAN FIX THIS! A single package of utils, maybe called "XChange" which includes stuff that'll let you change GUI config options with the ease you can in Windows (one of the few places I give MS serious props - they make changing resolution pretty fast!) would go a huge ways into making Linux (or X11 if you prefer) into a far more usable system for newbies.
I can't even see this as being terribly difficult to write, either.
-Erwos
I would _really_ consider jumping ship to MacOS X if they came out with an x86 version. But I see no point in jumping to a proprietary hardware platform with a somewhat proprietary OS in exchange for my free OS and free (as in relatively open) hardware platform right now.
I am a student. I don't have lots of money. I can buy an x86 for half the price of a comparable Mac.
But _legalizing_ drugs won't prevent overdoses. We have plenty of _legal_ drugs right now that people overdose and kill themselves with all the time. We have plenty of _legal_ drugs that are abused with horrible consquences. Why should we add these illegal drugs, that for the most part, have negligible medical use and a criminal underworld attached to them to the list of legal ones?
Education does not work. If it's harmful but feels good, people will do it.
I _totally_ agree. I'm sorry if it sounded like I advocated just sending in everything we've got in there and wait to win. That's definitely not how you fight in a jungle. But, even a BIG dent is better than what's happening now, which is nothing.
The cartels might have lots of resources, but I guarantee you they don't approach anything our government has. The quality of their troops definitely doesn't come anywhere near ours, to say the least.
-Erwos
You read an article like this, and you can only imagine why people would want to legalize drugs and legitimize criminal scum like this. Let's see... the cartels have a monopoly on the North American drug trade. All drugs are legalized. Do you magically think the cartels will all fold up and go out of business? No, they'll try to maintain that monopoly, and you'll have a little mini-Colombia in the USA. I wonder how many American pharmecutical factories would be torched...
I hate to break it to all the apologists who always sympathize with the underdog (even when they're so blatantly wrong as like in this case), but _drug dealers are killers_. They kill with drugs, they kill by shooting people in the head. You do not "put them out of business" by legalizing drugs. You put them out of business by arresting them and putting them in front of a judge, or perhaps far more satisfyingly, shooting each and every one of the bastards in the heads.
To hell with "out of Colombia". To hell with "what will the rest of the world think?". It's amazing that Nader-lovers and other socialists can spew the crap they do, really. According to them, the US _deserved_ 9/11. That sort of talk is _morally repugnant_. Next thing you know, Israeli babies who get slaughtered in suicide bombing attacks deserved it, too! Oh, wait, they already do say that! I could care less that the "poor people of Colombia who've been horribly hurt by globalization, and now need to turn to drugs for money". That's totally inane. YOUR SUFFERING DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO HURT OTHER _INNOCENT_ PEOPLE. Really! If the rest of the world thinks that saving your citizens' lives through force is wrong, then I really could care less what they think. Better to be alone and doing the right thing than being wrong with everyone else. Moral relativism will kill us all someday.
My countrymen are _dying_ because our country is too damn timid to go in and fix a problem, as the last resort, with the barrel of a gun. Drug dealers are taking over a country with the fruit of their deadly labors, and _terrorizing_ it. Diplomacy doesn't work unless you've got a solution when it fails. Diplomacy has failed - the friendly drug dealers aren't listening to us or the Colombian government. We need to start giving them another sort of talk - the type with lead teeth.
For all those who'd like to convince me otherwise, I've had this sort of discussion a hundred times before, and I've listened, too. I just _don't agree_. Yes, people can disagree and be educated and not fanatical. Don't even bother wasting your misguided fingers on me by typing out some response I've already heard before. Go pamphlet a campus with pro-Nader flyers or something that'll be far more entertaining than reading your responses.
Before you all crucify me for my views, realize that I am not totally against the legalization of marijuana. I just do not believe that legalizing crack cocaine and kow-towing to drug dealer scum will help anyone in this world, and would prefer to deal with them in a more terminal way, or arrest them.
My apologies for being forceful. I understand what the other side of the issue is... I just seriously do not agree.
I've used J&N Computer Services several times, and they are just phenomenal. The prices are not the absolute lowest, but you can be assured of high quality no matter what you buy. Their systems are especially well-done.
Microsoft's monopoly is not really only through its evil business tactics. Where it really comes from is their brainwashing of consumers.
MS has consistently lied to consumers about the competition. Open source, Real, everyone and everything. Consumers have been taught to reflexively think "Windows", and nothing is going to change that except the complete dismantling of MS's monopoly with source release.
The funny thing about Honors programs is that they tend to be easier than those for the normal folk. Here's why:
Your average Calc class in University of Maryland at College Park (which is where I go to school) is composed of a few hundred people. The average _Honors_ Calc class has a fraction of that, maybe 40 kids. Now, it's easier to learn in a smaller class. Thus, people who get into Honors have a much better chance of doing better at Calc than me because _they get a smaller class_.
My second semester, I was in a 300 person Calc class. Grade? D. The next semester was summer - I retook it, and got an A. While I will say it was a touch easier in general, make no mistake about it - the thing that mattered the most was the smaller class size.
If my crap GPA (2.53 right now?) means I can't work for some well-known firm right out of college, oh well. I'll just have to work for 40k a year at some smaller place until my GPA stops mattering. It's a lot better than not having work at all.
It'd be nice if we could start some sort of mass movement to not put up Linux servers until the Linux client is out. The lack of tools is bad enough - if they want servers, they need to deliver clients.
In fact, if it did that for every game, we might see more Linux ports done in-house. Just a thought.
Every country in the world plays the demographics game. Do you think the Jordanians would let the Palestinians just mass emigrate to Jordan? Get real. The Jordanians want a Jordanian state, and the mass influx of Palestinians would turn it into a Palestinian state. They don't want that, and that's why the Jordanian border is more or less closed to that sort of thing.
But let's take it closer to home (or at least mine). Remember back in the early 1900's, we had those laws to forbid Asians from immigrating? That's because, surprise, our fine country, the US of A, was trying to keep demographics the same out in the northwest.
You will find the attitude of "let's keep a state" all over the world. I don't begrudge anyone for trying to keep the character of their country. There's nothing evil about it, and the Earth is big enough for all sorts of countries, provided they give equal rights to all their peoples (which, coincidentally, the Israelis most certainly do). Why do you think it "racist" or "bigoted" to do so? Is it "racist and bigoted" to have a Muslim state, and severely limit the immigration of Christians and Jews?
"it's not really anywhere near the magnitude of Nazi gas chambers, but..." It's not even the same freaking thing, and the two are totally incomparable. If Hitler had just wanted to send all the Jews and untermenschen to British Mandate Palestine, I don't think everyone would curse his name as a genocidal maniac.
Not allowing immigration != genocide. Think about that.
If I had to make a guess, Babylonian, considering it's only the most hard-core of people who bother with Yerushalmi (Jerusalem, pardon) nowadays. Or at least that was my impression in yeshiva.
You can't do work and be paid for it on the Sabbath. However, you can be paid for the work ya do the other 6 days of the week. So, usually how it works is, you get paid "for the preparation", but not for actually doing it. (Obviously, you still need to, but that's now what you're being paid for.) A small distinction, but an important one in the eyes of Jewish law.
The Orthodox Jewish community is far more split on "creationism" than most people think.
Pretty much everyone outside of the extreme right-wing fringes (mostly yeshiva-orthodox and the chassidim) soundly reject creationism as silly, and simply believe that "day" is allegorical for some larger period time. There has been much writing on this topic, such as "Genesis and the Big Bang", and a book Aryeh Kaplan wrote (whose title I forget at this very moment).
When you start moving rightwards, you'll find people who believe dinosaurs never existed and that the bones are just a test of G-d to the faithful. But, be assured, it's not some sort of monolithic belief with Orthodox Jews as to "what really happened".
"just like he would add a log to the fire he started before the sabbath"
This is where the entire argument falls apart, because that is explicity prohibited by Jewish law. Actually, it falls apart a bit back, because Sabbath restrictions are based around what they did in the tabernacle, not starting fire (although starting fire is something they did in the tabernacle, and this is forbidden).
The short and easy answer is: you can't touch your computer at all on the Sabbath, and in theory, probably shouldn't even think about it (as you shouldn't be thinking of anything related to the rest of the week on the Sabbath). There are other issues such as "binyan" (building) which come into play with regards to completing circuits.
Divorce via email in Jewish law isn't binding because the husband physically needs to give the "get" (divorce document) to the wife. She also needs to be aware that she is being handed it. E-mail runs into problems due to these things.
For more information, go look at the Talmud, in specific, tractate "gittin".
You do realize that Debian is/was used by eBay for quite a while, right? I agree - Debian's market share isn't very high, but there's no real difference between "business linux" and "consumer linux" (as you seem to want to ascribe Debian as being). That lack of market share could change in a New York minute if there's compelling reason to change.
I cannot even fathom what the UnitedLinux group is thinking (or smoking, as the case may be).
They want to compete with RedHat, so they decide to band together into some sort of great coalition that will give RH a run for their money. They forget that if people are given the choice of downloading something for free and paying support if they want, or paying for something and get support that they might not care for, they're going to choose the former.
There isn't really all that much money (note: there is _some_, just not that much) you can make selling stuff which is freely downloadable from the web. There _is_ a lot of money in supporting all that stuff. UL apparently doesn't realize this, even though the four of them have been losing money on that same plan of "sell the software, not just the support".
My prediction: RH and/or Debian will trash them (the UL consortium) in their own markets within 5 years. All it'll take is a single serious push to internationalize their (Deb, RH) distros and people everywhere will suddenly be confronted with paying or not paying - and we all know what the choice will be.
-Erwos
They have _consistently_ kept the important engineering in-house. There's zero reason to believe that NSA would contract out the crown jewels of communications research to _CSC_ AFAIK.
But, you're right, research was a slip that accidentally got left in. They do contract out research. You are correct that they fund all sorts of people's _research_.
-Erwos
This interview is definitely a fake.
He throws around real sub-contractor names in an effort to sound believable. However, NSA doesn't contract out the honest-to-God engineering and research work. They contract out the IT-sorta stuff. Thus, there's no way this could be true.
How do I know? Mostly because I'm friends with people who work at CSC and NSA.
-Erwos
I've discovered that most problems dealing with school networks could be quickly and easily solved by just throwing Linux on them. G-d knows that if I went back to my small parochial school as IT man in charge, Windows would be off them ASAP. I've seen what a useless OS it is for people who want to abuse the system.
Forget about ease of use, which always seems to be the biggest whine about switching from Windows to Linux. Make them teach classes on how to use X properly if you have to, even though it should be brain-dead simple to operate GNOME/KDE and OpenOffice if you know MS Windows. Knowledge of the internals of a *nix will serve the kids far better than Windows in the future. Screw the teachers if they don't like it - school's about educating the students properly, not serving their warezing asses.
Think about the gains from Linux integration: 1. Security issues vanish due to general lack of virii and strict permissions. 2. People are generally caught offguard with Linux if they're used to Windows, and won't even think of hunting down gnutella and such. "There are games for Linux? " 3. You won't need to upgrade all the computer hardware every 2 years to keep up with the latest version of Windows and MS Office. 4. You'll save the school money. You'd be surprised what sort of reaction you'll get when you tell the administration you can chop their revenues to 10% of what they used to pay, _and_ eliminate all those nasty issues with the BSA.
You won't be able to up and change all the computers one summer. But you should be able to gradually change them one month at a time, and let people get used to the idea.
When spec'ing a system, consider the following two things: 1. Overpowering a system is not bad if it doubles the lifetime of said system. No, web designers don't need a 1.4ghz Athlon today - but if your company can put off upgrades for another couple years, you've saved them a good amount of money more than if you had put an 800mhz Celeron in. At the same time, though, most people don't need a SB Live!, and you can skimp a bit on that. 2. When using integrated components on a motherboard, _always_ leave yourself an out if something on the motherboard fails. If the onboard video dies (I've seen it happen!), make sure you've got a PCI slot to slap a G200 into. This doesn't mean you need to keep the system like that, but a quick half-hour fix until you get time to do a mobo replacement can be a life-saver. 3. RAM, RAM, and more RAM. This cannot be impressed enough. 4. Remember that not all upgrades need to be "performance oriented". Your graphic designers will love you if you give them a nice 19 inch monitor to work with more than a GF4. 5. Reliability. You want things that are stable. This is harder than you think. Buy a test system and test it thoroughly before you commit to a thousand of the things. Stability is more than just your motherboard chipset.
There are publicly-available algorithms which should obiviate the need for any sort of equipment other than a webcam facing your head to do this sort of tracking. I've not personally worked with them, but my father swears that they work amazingly well. He's done some work with them, so I suppose he'd know. So, yes, this sort of thing is a "potential Linux project", if no one's already working on it. I do not know if anyone is.
I think that the bigger issue would be the _quality_ of equipment needed. If your web cam is only taking 18 shots a second (as some of the cheapo ones do), I'm not sure you'd be able to get very smooth mouse movement. There's also the question of background movement, that sort of thing, which the solution mentioned in the article shouldn't have a problem with.
As a college student who regularly throws together 1000 lines of code every two weeks for CS projects (no, 1000 lines isn't much in absolute terms, but it is when you've got four other classes to deal with), I find that I do my best work when I have a list of tasks in front of me, and I can move down that list and knock them off one by one. Obviously, this is somewhat difficult to do sometimes, but having something like: 1. Write class Movie blahblahblah 2. Write class ArtsyMovie:public Movie blahblahblah 3. Write class Theater blahblahblah That's what makes me go into the zone. It's that feeling that I'm making clearly definable progress. Generally, if I can keep moving for 3 or 4 steps, I'm good for 3 hours of work. However, if I get interrupted before then, the process starts all over.
Obviously, lots of Mountain Dew and big monitors are useful, too. If I'm working on a particularly bad-ass project, I'll flip on my second monitor so I have somewhere to stash extra windows.
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I wouldn't worry, if only because Africa will be mostly dead of AIDs in under 50 years (bonus: end of the expansion of the Sahara!). That's where most of the population growth is going to be projected to be. And the Chinese, G-d bless 'em, are being kind enough to totally destroy their demographics to keep their population down. Now, if we can kick some sense into the Arab and South Asian world, I bet all of those projections by the WWF will be so out of whack that we'll be able to laugh at them.
-Erwos
I can never understand: why has X11 not progressed in configuration tools? The desktop environments are pretty good about configuration. You can find what you need with a minimum of hassle. It's not as easy as perhaps it could be, but an experienced Windows user is not going to have serious problems, and even a newbie will eventually figure it out in roughly the same time as they would in Windows. Applications are, by and large, pretty good. A few (xawtv comes to mind) need to progress a little more, but generally, I don't need to drop to a command line for anything anymore. But, _X11_, what the hell has been going on? I have to memorize weird key presses to switch resolution? I can't configure my mouse to 3 button-emulate without the command line? WE CAN FIX THIS! A single package of utils, maybe called "XChange" which includes stuff that'll let you change GUI config options with the ease you can in Windows (one of the few places I give MS serious props - they make changing resolution pretty fast!) would go a huge ways into making Linux (or X11 if you prefer) into a far more usable system for newbies. I can't even see this as being terribly difficult to write, either. -Erwos
I would _really_ consider jumping ship to MacOS X if they came out with an x86 version. But I see no point in jumping to a proprietary hardware platform with a somewhat proprietary OS in exchange for my free OS and free (as in relatively open) hardware platform right now.
I am a student. I don't have lots of money. I can buy an x86 for half the price of a comparable Mac.
-Erwos
But _legalizing_ drugs won't prevent overdoses. We have plenty of _legal_ drugs right now that people overdose and kill themselves with all the time. We have plenty of _legal_ drugs that are abused with horrible consquences. Why should we add these illegal drugs, that for the most part, have negligible medical use and a criminal underworld attached to them to the list of legal ones?
Education does not work. If it's harmful but feels good, people will do it.
-Erwos
I _totally_ agree. I'm sorry if it sounded like I advocated just sending in everything we've got in there and wait to win. That's definitely not how you fight in a jungle. But, even a BIG dent is better than what's happening now, which is nothing. The cartels might have lots of resources, but I guarantee you they don't approach anything our government has. The quality of their troops definitely doesn't come anywhere near ours, to say the least. -Erwos
You read an article like this, and you can only imagine why people would want to legalize drugs and legitimize criminal scum like this. Let's see... the cartels have a monopoly on the North American drug trade. All drugs are legalized. Do you magically think the cartels will all fold up and go out of business? No, they'll try to maintain that monopoly, and you'll have a little mini-Colombia in the USA. I wonder how many American pharmecutical factories would be torched...
I hate to break it to all the apologists who always sympathize with the underdog (even when they're so blatantly wrong as like in this case), but _drug dealers are killers_. They kill with drugs, they kill by shooting people in the head. You do not "put them out of business" by legalizing drugs. You put them out of business by arresting them and putting them in front of a judge, or perhaps far more satisfyingly, shooting each and every one of the bastards in the heads.
To hell with "out of Colombia". To hell with "what will the rest of the world think?". It's amazing that Nader-lovers and other socialists can spew the crap they do, really. According to them, the US _deserved_ 9/11. That sort of talk is _morally repugnant_. Next thing you know, Israeli babies who get slaughtered in suicide bombing attacks deserved it, too! Oh, wait, they already do say that! I could care less that the "poor people of Colombia who've been horribly hurt by globalization, and now need to turn to drugs for money". That's totally inane. YOUR SUFFERING DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO HURT OTHER _INNOCENT_ PEOPLE. Really! If the rest of the world thinks that saving your citizens' lives through force is wrong, then I really could care less what they think. Better to be alone and doing the right thing than being wrong with everyone else. Moral relativism will kill us all someday.
My countrymen are _dying_ because our country is too damn timid to go in and fix a problem, as the last resort, with the barrel of a gun. Drug dealers are taking over a country with the fruit of their deadly labors, and _terrorizing_ it. Diplomacy doesn't work unless you've got a solution when it fails. Diplomacy has failed - the friendly drug dealers aren't listening to us or the Colombian government. We need to start giving them another sort of talk - the type with lead teeth.
For all those who'd like to convince me otherwise, I've had this sort of discussion a hundred times before, and I've listened, too. I just _don't agree_. Yes, people can disagree and be educated and not fanatical. Don't even bother wasting your misguided fingers on me by typing out some response I've already heard before. Go pamphlet a campus with pro-Nader flyers or something that'll be far more entertaining than reading your responses.
Before you all crucify me for my views, realize that I am not totally against the legalization of marijuana. I just do not believe that legalizing crack cocaine and kow-towing to drug dealer scum will help anyone in this world, and would prefer to deal with them in a more terminal way, or arrest them.
My apologies for being forceful. I understand what the other side of the issue is... I just seriously do not agree.
-Erwos
For parts, Mwave is unbeatable.
-Erwos
Microsoft's monopoly is not really only through its evil business tactics. Where it really comes from is their brainwashing of consumers.
MS has consistently lied to consumers about the competition. Open source, Real, everyone and everything. Consumers have been taught to reflexively think "Windows", and nothing is going to change that except the complete dismantling of MS's monopoly with source release.
-Erwos
The funny thing about Honors programs is that they tend to be easier than those for the normal folk. Here's why:
Your average Calc class in University of Maryland at College Park (which is where I go to school) is composed of a few hundred people. The average _Honors_ Calc class has a fraction of that, maybe 40 kids. Now, it's easier to learn in a smaller class. Thus, people who get into Honors have a much better chance of doing better at Calc than me because _they get a smaller class_.
My second semester, I was in a 300 person Calc class. Grade? D. The next semester was summer - I retook it, and got an A. While I will say it was a touch easier in general, make no mistake about it - the thing that mattered the most was the smaller class size.
If my crap GPA (2.53 right now?) means I can't work for some well-known firm right out of college, oh well. I'll just have to work for 40k a year at some smaller place until my GPA stops mattering. It's a lot better than not having work at all.
-Erwos
It'd be nice if we could start some sort of mass movement to not put up Linux servers until the Linux client is out. The lack of tools is bad enough - if they want servers, they need to deliver clients.
In fact, if it did that for every game, we might see more Linux ports done in-house. Just a thought.
-Erwos
I kid you not. Last I checked, the Jordanian border was closed to the Palestinians.
-Erwos
Every country in the world plays the demographics game. Do you think the Jordanians would let the Palestinians just mass emigrate to Jordan? Get real. The Jordanians want a Jordanian state, and the mass influx of Palestinians would turn it into a Palestinian state. They don't want that, and that's why the Jordanian border is more or less closed to that sort of thing.
But let's take it closer to home (or at least mine). Remember back in the early 1900's, we had those laws to forbid Asians from immigrating? That's because, surprise, our fine country, the US of A, was trying to keep demographics the same out in the northwest.
You will find the attitude of "let's keep a state" all over the world. I don't begrudge anyone for trying to keep the character of their country. There's nothing evil about it, and the Earth is big enough for all sorts of countries, provided they give equal rights to all their peoples (which, coincidentally, the Israelis most certainly do). Why do you think it "racist" or "bigoted" to do so? Is it "racist and bigoted" to have a Muslim state, and severely limit the immigration of Christians and Jews?
"it's not really anywhere near the magnitude of Nazi gas chambers, but..."
It's not even the same freaking thing, and the two are totally incomparable. If Hitler had just wanted to send all the Jews and untermenschen to British Mandate Palestine, I don't think everyone would curse his name as a genocidal maniac.
Not allowing immigration != genocide. Think about that.
-Erwos
If I had to make a guess, Babylonian, considering it's only the most hard-core of people who bother with Yerushalmi (Jerusalem, pardon) nowadays. Or at least that was my impression in yeshiva.
-Erwos
Actually, a correction:
You can't do work and be paid for it on the Sabbath. However, you can be paid for the work ya do the other 6 days of the week. So, usually how it works is, you get paid "for the preparation", but not for actually doing it. (Obviously, you still need to, but that's now what you're being paid for.) A small distinction, but an important one in the eyes of Jewish law.
-Erwos
The Orthodox Jewish community is far more split on "creationism" than most people think.
Pretty much everyone outside of the extreme right-wing fringes (mostly yeshiva-orthodox and the chassidim) soundly reject creationism as silly, and simply believe that "day" is allegorical for some larger period time. There has been much writing on this topic, such as "Genesis and the Big Bang", and a book Aryeh Kaplan wrote (whose title I forget at this very moment).
When you start moving rightwards, you'll find people who believe dinosaurs never existed and that the bones are just a test of G-d to the faithful. But, be assured, it's not some sort of monolithic belief with Orthodox Jews as to "what really happened".
-Erwos
"just like he would add a log to the fire he started before the sabbath"
This is where the entire argument falls apart, because that is explicity prohibited by Jewish law. Actually, it falls apart a bit back, because Sabbath restrictions are based around what they did in the tabernacle, not starting fire (although starting fire is something they did in the tabernacle, and this is forbidden).
The short and easy answer is: you can't touch your computer at all on the Sabbath, and in theory, probably shouldn't even think about it (as you shouldn't be thinking of anything related to the rest of the week on the Sabbath). There are other issues such as "binyan" (building) which come into play with regards to completing circuits.
-Erwos
Divorce via email in Jewish law isn't binding because the husband physically needs to give the "get" (divorce document) to the wife. She also needs to be aware that she is being handed it. E-mail runs into problems due to these things.
For more information, go look at the Talmud, in specific, tractate "gittin".
-Erwos
You do realize that Debian is/was used by eBay for quite a while, right? I agree - Debian's market share isn't very high, but there's no real difference between "business linux" and "consumer linux" (as you seem to want to ascribe Debian as being). That lack of market share could change in a New York minute if there's compelling reason to change.
-Erwos
I cannot even fathom what the UnitedLinux group is thinking (or smoking, as the case may be). They want to compete with RedHat, so they decide to band together into some sort of great coalition that will give RH a run for their money. They forget that if people are given the choice of downloading something for free and paying support if they want, or paying for something and get support that they might not care for, they're going to choose the former. There isn't really all that much money (note: there is _some_, just not that much) you can make selling stuff which is freely downloadable from the web. There _is_ a lot of money in supporting all that stuff. UL apparently doesn't realize this, even though the four of them have been losing money on that same plan of "sell the software, not just the support". My prediction: RH and/or Debian will trash them (the UL consortium) in their own markets within 5 years. All it'll take is a single serious push to internationalize their (Deb, RH) distros and people everywhere will suddenly be confronted with paying or not paying - and we all know what the choice will be. -Erwos
They have _consistently_ kept the important engineering in-house. There's zero reason to believe that NSA would contract out the crown jewels of communications research to _CSC_ AFAIK. But, you're right, research was a slip that accidentally got left in. They do contract out research. You are correct that they fund all sorts of people's _research_. -Erwos
This interview is definitely a fake. He throws around real sub-contractor names in an effort to sound believable. However, NSA doesn't contract out the honest-to-God engineering and research work. They contract out the IT-sorta stuff. Thus, there's no way this could be true. How do I know? Mostly because I'm friends with people who work at CSC and NSA. -Erwos
I've discovered that most problems dealing with school networks could be quickly and easily solved by just throwing Linux on them. G-d knows that if I went back to my small parochial school as IT man in charge, Windows would be off them ASAP. I've seen what a useless OS it is for people who want to abuse the system.
Forget about ease of use, which always seems to be the biggest whine about switching from Windows to Linux. Make them teach classes on how to use X properly if you have to, even though it should be brain-dead simple to operate GNOME/KDE and OpenOffice if you know MS Windows. Knowledge of the internals of a *nix will serve the kids far better than Windows in the future. Screw the teachers if they don't like it - school's about educating the students properly, not serving their warezing asses.
Think about the gains from Linux integration:
1. Security issues vanish due to general lack of virii and strict permissions.
2. People are generally caught offguard with Linux if they're used to Windows, and won't even think of hunting down gnutella and such. "There are games for Linux? "
3. You won't need to upgrade all the computer hardware every 2 years to keep up with the latest version of Windows and MS Office.
4. You'll save the school money. You'd be surprised what sort of reaction you'll get when you tell the administration you can chop their revenues to 10% of what they used to pay, _and_ eliminate all those nasty issues with the BSA.
You won't be able to up and change all the computers one summer. But you should be able to gradually change them one month at a time, and let people get used to the idea.
-Erwos
When spec'ing a system, consider the following two things:
1. Overpowering a system is not bad if it doubles the lifetime of said system. No, web designers don't need a 1.4ghz Athlon today - but if your company can put off upgrades for another couple years, you've saved them a good amount of money more than if you had put an 800mhz Celeron in. At the same time, though, most people don't need a SB Live!, and you can skimp a bit on that.
2. When using integrated components on a motherboard, _always_ leave yourself an out if something on the motherboard fails. If the onboard video dies (I've seen it happen!), make sure you've got a PCI slot to slap a G200 into. This doesn't mean you need to keep the system like that, but a quick half-hour fix until you get time to do a mobo replacement can be a life-saver.
3. RAM, RAM, and more RAM. This cannot be impressed enough.
4. Remember that not all upgrades need to be "performance oriented". Your graphic designers will love you if you give them a nice 19 inch monitor to work with more than a GF4.
5. Reliability. You want things that are stable. This is harder than you think. Buy a test system and test it thoroughly before you commit to a thousand of the things. Stability is more than just your motherboard chipset.
-Erwos
There are publicly-available algorithms which should obiviate the need for any sort of equipment other than a webcam facing your head to do this sort of tracking. I've not personally worked with them, but my father swears that they work amazingly well. He's done some work with them, so I suppose he'd know. So, yes, this sort of thing is a "potential Linux project", if no one's already working on it. I do not know if anyone is.
I think that the bigger issue would be the _quality_ of equipment needed. If your web cam is only taking 18 shots a second (as some of the cheapo ones do), I'm not sure you'd be able to get very smooth mouse movement. There's also the question of background movement, that sort of thing, which the solution mentioned in the article shouldn't have a problem with.
-Erwos
As a college student who regularly throws together 1000 lines of code every two weeks for CS projects (no, 1000 lines isn't much in absolute terms, but it is when you've got four other classes to deal with), I find that I do my best work when I have a list of tasks in front of me, and I can move down that list and knock them off one by one. Obviously, this is somewhat difficult to do sometimes, but having something like:
1. Write class Movie blahblahblah
2. Write class ArtsyMovie:public Movie blahblahblah
3. Write class Theater blahblahblah
That's what makes me go into the zone. It's that feeling that I'm making clearly definable progress. Generally, if I can keep moving for 3 or 4 steps, I'm good for 3 hours of work. However, if I get interrupted before then, the process starts all over.
Obviously, lots of Mountain Dew and big monitors are useful, too. If I'm working on a particularly bad-ass project, I'll flip on my second monitor so I have somewhere to stash extra windows.
-Erwos