Let's put it this way. Within one week of taking my first day of a "basic" programming course in HS, I had dropped out and switched to art (And I'm totally non-artistic). The teacher a.) refused to shake my hand when I introduced myself b.) never called on me when I had my hand raised for a question or for an answer c.) only called on me during the two times I was not paying attention, d.) argued with me when I had given a perfectly acceptable alternative workflow that would half the work, and e.) Refused to reccomend that I be put in a more advanced class, despite the fact that I knew more than 20% of the students in the more advanced class. I decided I'd MUCH prefer taking a lousy class I had no interest in than taking a lousy class I was absolutely interested in.
Flash forward. Another HS. They stuck me in "typing classes" and "word processing".
And what do I do today? I'm an IT person.
I'll NEVER take another IT class in highschool (because I'm too old) or in college without first speaking to the teachers in-depth and deciding if a.) taking the class will teach me anything b.) the teacher will be willing to teach me anything and c.) if the class is equal to or above my current level of knowledge.
I've found that it's beneficial to introduce myself with a full list of my creds, experiences, and a categorical list of what I do and do not know. I seem to get a MUCH better education/reaction from tech guys that way than if I tried to be a modest lil' girl. The problem with most women is that they're either so timid, or they lie about what they know to come across better. Fools.
In addition, most Mac users are still accustomed to a lower-power OS, where not much damage could be done by too many things. OS X is a new breed, and old work/play habits are still being used.
Not to insult the people new to the Mac, who have come over because of OS X, or those who *DO* understand the meaning of 'beta', but most Mac and Windows users think of "Beta" as pre-release, as in "It might crash before you can save your file". They don't realize that the potential exists to cause extremely wide-spread damage and data loss.
A company with the userbase that Apple or Microsoft have, should spend a LOT more time educating their userbase as to what "Beta" means before making it as easy to download as it is. If the casual user (I'm thinking about some of my non-computer-inclined friends, some co-workers, my mother.. You know. Average.) were to see "Beta", either they a.) know what the word means in this context due to extensive exposure to long lectures on the topic courtesy of the resident geek, b.) know that in green it's the second letter of the alphabet, and assume "Beta" means "Second release", or "Version 2" or c.) Looks up "Beta" in the dictionary and sees that it's the second letter in the alphabet, is totally confused as to what the heck it means, and downloads it because Apple says it's cool, fabulous, and faster than anything out there.
Those users are also those that are most likely to be screwed by a major software bug. They don't know what "backup" means, they don't know how to "backup", even if they do know what it means, and they think computers are rock-solid stable things that will never lose anything of theirs.
If these people make up even 10 percent of your total market, you have a MAJOR obligation to inform them of what "Beta" means, and make sure they actually understand that it can result in extensive damage. Apple doesn't. It's three clicks from the main page until it's downloaded, and no place does it say in big red letters "CAUTION".
*Laughs* Just don't do this if you have a Compaq or other brand that you buy at a retail chain, or if your "repair center" reccomended by the OEM of your computer is a large company like CompUSA. CompUSA will take one look at the computer, and if anything doesn't appear to be original equiptment, they'll freak and say you've violated your warranty.
Even if it's just a freakin' NIC card. *GR*
Even more fun, is to swap the cases, and then try to get it serviced. =]
I like building my own much better--I don't have to take it anywhere to get it fixed, I just have to pick up the parts. It's just so much more... Carefree. I know I won't hurt my data, and I know what's inside the computer.
For the average Joe who can't fix their computer on their own, though, there should definitely be some sort of regulation that repair centers need to comply with. The stuff I've seen go on in those places is enough to curdle my blood.
*laughs* I'm a girl. I don't NEED to know anything between the covers.:p
Besides, if a girl were to go to bed with a Slashdot goon, all she'd have to do is whisper Linux commands, and he'd be in heaven.:p That is something one CAN learn from OReilly books.
Last I checked NOTHING was "definitive", even the big thousand-plus-page books that you could break your back carrying. There's always more information than a book can possibly hold, and more ways to present it than you can shake a stick at. (And we know how Slashdotters love to shake sticks.)
OReilly books aren't definitive, but they do a damned good job of covering the bases and then some--and most importantly, they're written in a concise lucid manner that's hard to come by in tech books where too many people's brains are fried from long hours and one too many tubs of Penguin mints.
I have a number of non OReilly books sitting on my bookshelf, they probably outnumber the OReilly books--and they're great. No complaints. But the books that are on my desk day in and day out are the ones with funny little animals on the covers, and nearly everything I need to know between the covers.
Generally, what an OReilly book doesn't cover, I can find out with a few minutes of research on the internet, and all those other great books I have? Unfortunately they collect dust most of the time.
(The only non-OReilly book currently on my desk is the ever-present PHP Developer's Dictionary--SAMS)
I SSH in about once a year, no reason to have SSH up and running all the time. Besides, if she crashes out of X, she can just type in the command to start SSH for me--I showed her how, and she's done it once (and half a million times for practice) so all's good in that arena.
Not much maintainence is necessary, her system stays remarkably clean (thank heaven for permissions)I usually clean stuff up when I go up to visit, or when she calls me in for an emergency. I've actually only been called in twice, the previous average was about 4-5 times a month.
If the paper knew that there was a strong liklihood of swamping his business with people who just stopped by for a quick gander and had no interest in buying... And that the car dealership had to pay 50 cents per x number of people who stepped onto the lot, even if it was only for 5 seconds, then yes. There would be a potential of a lawsuit.
While the area is very murky for businesses or newspapers--Free advertising!--it's a lot less murky for the individual homesites Slashdot often brings down. Those users often pay a lot more for their bandwidth than a business, because they don't buy it in bulk. They also don't tend to obtain any income from the site.
The cost can be both subjective and objective. It depends on the methodology used to obtain and analyze the results. If the methods are faulty, then the results and analysis are subjective, if the methods are reasonably accurate and the analysis is intelligent and thorough, then it's objective.
It's just as with any other type of research. If it's done properly then it's much closer to objective. If not, then it's subjective and can prove anything that the researchers set out to prove.
Platform is much like religion. It's impossible to prove that one is "better" "cheaper" or "faster" most of the time, and those who research those questions usually go into it with a NUMBER of preconceived notions as to what they want to prove.
The study would need to be conducted by an impartial third party--which seldom exists amongst geeks. =] Let's face it, most of us have our platform of choice, and we'll bite anyone who has anything negative to say about it.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I absolutely am aware that a lot of OSS titles are available for Win/WinXP, I use them on a regular basis as my job frequently requires my desktop OS to be Windows. They run wonderfully. The reason I choose to run them under Linux for my mother has more to do with "If I'm not running Windows-only Apps, why do I want to put this woman on a less secure system that she messes up on a regular basis by accidentally "deleting her modem" and other such motherisms. She is a typical "home user" of Windows. She knows enough to get into trouble, but not enough to get out of it. The WinXP Home edition (Which came with her computer) method of dealing with "user permissions" is meagre, awkward, and not something I want to deal with.
As for Remote Help/desktop, I refuse to leave those turned on, as I see them as a major security hazard when combined with a number of other "features" of Windows. Teaching my mother to turn them on and off or implimenting a similar method as the one I use for her to turn SSH on and off for me is a possibility, but one I don't really wish to look into because Windows boxes are very hard to lock down to a point where I'd feel secure putting a clueless 50-something year old women on with a always-up DSL line. Security concerns combined with the necessity to upgrade her to WinXP Pro (to prevent her from damaging her system with cluelessness), install Norton Antivirus ($40 or therebouts) and deal with various other Windows concerns... It's just not worth it for a system that she won't use. Particularly when you consider that Windows needs to be cleaned up and disinfected every year or so.
As for Outlook Express. Ugh. I used it once for a while, and disliked it quite intensely. If I was going to put her on any free email client, it would be Mozilla. She's quite happy with Evolution, however, and I'll leave it at that.
Linux is well within her budget, and it gives her a lot of confidence--she can't do anything wrong, outside of dropping the computer on the floor--so it helps her overcome some of her computer fears.
-Sara
Re:No, I mean subjective
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Read the m-w.com definition--There's actually a long speil on the topic of "subjective". The definition that I like, and that pertains to this discussion is "modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background--a subjective account of the incident"-- The reason I chose this in relation to the discussion about cost is simply that depending on the person, certain expenses will matter more than others, and certain things will add up in more ways than others.
Person A sees Linux as being an awkward unweildy solution, and hires three people to oversee a single Linux Server because he/she/or-it cannot understand "command line" and "easy" in relation to eachother. Person A hires one person to oversee the Windows computer--hence, the cost of operation of the Windows computer is significantly less, and the Linux admins have a whole lot of spare time in which they can build robots out of spare parts, and play war games with Nerf guns.
Person B sees things in an entirely different light, and hires the same number of people, only the Windows machine gets the larger staff.
Person C is entirely competant and doesn't bother hiring anyone. Instead he converts the Windows server over to Linux and takes care of the job himself. Or maybe he converts it over to Windows. Whatever the story is.
In every scenario, the SUBJECTIVE opinions and ideas of the managerial staff is the sole reason for the higher or lower budgets per OS.
All things being equal, and with competant staff, the management cost is going to be lower for Linux, simply because of the lower cost of the OS, the software that runs under it, the increased performance-without-increased-resources issue, and any number of other issues.
In the "real world" where subjectivity reigns, the outcome of the situation will very likely be completely different, with different experiences depending on different people, the skillset of the people, salaries asked, etc. Call it the subjectivity of the Gods.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The same thing with Mac users moving to Windows, and Windows users moving to the Mac, and Linux users moving to either platform--There are things that the new platform does not have, things that work exactly the same, and things that the new platform has that the old one doesn't. The trick is using the platform long enough to discover the workflow, and realize "Hey, this is really good for..." and "Hm. This isn't that great for.. and.., but I can make it work by doing a, b, and c."
Any company that moves to a new platform just because of hype is looking for a major disappointment, because NO platform today can live up to the hype of its supporters. First-time Windows users will find the Luna interface to be scary, certain things to be counter-intuitive, etc. First time Mac users will pull out their hair over certain permission-schemes, their eyes will ache from the animation and oversaturated bright colors and whites, etc. First time Linux users will type in "dir" and be totally confused as to why it doesn't behave like DOS.
After a while, any of these complaints go away--and the view of the OS becomes more practical. "Does it do what I need it to do?" "Does it work the way I need it to work?" "I know it's not the BEST in every area, but is it the BEST in the areas I require excellence in the most?"
Hype is a good thing and a bad thing. It gets the ball rolling, but it also encourages disappointment in those who absorb hype as 100% truths. Those who don't accept hype as an absolute truth, however, still exist--and they come over with realistic expectations and find many exciting things that exist on their new platform that they could only imagine on their old one.
A smart man will be a smart man, and a foolish one will be a foolish one. Guess which one will be disappointed. And guess which one the Linux community doesn't really want in the first place, no matter HOW nice it would be to have championed the Number-One OS of the future.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A number of games run under Linux.. linuxgames.com talks about some of them, and more can be found with a simple google search.
As for "tasks", I've found that my mother can make much better use of Redhat Linux 8.0 than she can of WinXP. Supporting it for her is easier as well--"Hi mom, turned SSH on for me? Great--remember that green piece of paper with instructions on how to give me your IP?" For her limited word processing needs (She writes a weekly article for a local newspaper), there's Abiword and openoffice. For email there's Kmail or Evolution, or any other number of excellent email applications. There's free solitaire games that she loves, etc. Windows--to get the same functionality for this woman--I'd have to pay quite a bit more. I'd have to purchase Microsoft Word and pay for a LOT of features that she can't use, Outlook--again the same, and download a number of buggy shareware games that would likely cause issues for her down the line.
It's not the "casual home user" that is tied to Windows. It's the office user whose environment requires MS-Office ONLY features that have not yet been implemented in the OSS solutions available on Linux. It's the user that has specific requirements as far as software, which in turn has specific requirements in therms of OS.
For the casual home user, or even for the middle-of-the-line home user, Linux is *wonderful*. For the advanced user? More of the same.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What does Lightwave have to do with anything? If you're using it to prove a point that not everything runs under Linux, you're correct. Most "consumer" or "small studio" apps such as Lightwave do not run on Linux. However, there are viable alternatives that sometimes (oftentimes) end up being better, more powerful, or beneficial in other ways. To counter your "Lightwave", there's Maya. Maya runs under Linux. A number of large animation houses use a Maya-Linux combination to keep costs down and increase productivity. Let's face it. Something that allows you to exit the GUI and render from the command line is a VERY good thing in terms of squeezing out as much out of your systems as you can.
As the article said, Linux keeps costs down as far as staffing goes. Instead of having 4 people on staff for Windows, 4 people for Mac, and 4 for Linux, you can pretty much fire the Mac and Windows admins, because Linux admins tend to be multiple-platform aware, so you get more for your money--even if you have to pay them more.
In addition to that, Linux is the most open and accessable platform. If something needs to be done on that platform, it pretty much can be done for free or implemented using an OSS solution, whereas with Windows you'll be required to either develop the resources in-house or purchase additional software/development services.
Yes, it's still a choice which one you want to run. But unlike Windows, it doesn't cost you anything to throw a copy of Linux onto your machine and dual-boot. There's no reason why you can't have a copy of Linux on the workstation of every person who might use it--you might even find that the copies of Windows go unused as Linux has come a LONG way in the past couple of years in terms of usability, compatibility, etc. You don't need to be a geek anymore--Windows often requires far more geekiness than Linux.
Err. I've heard of several people whose cubes went into meltdown. It's not even multiple degrees of separation where it's such and such a figurative person who I've never heard of other than to hear that their cube melted. At most, this is 3 degrees of separation. If it's "rare", then I must know quite a few of the "few".
As for my Athlon melting if I didn't provide it with proper cooling, I was merely saying that I could run my Athlon silently too if I followed the path that Apple went with the cube. It's just not smart to remove all cooling, and the G4 Cube was not a very triumphant success in this area. As for "banks", I meant anything over 3 of them in close proximity, and once again--it wasn't my personal experience, as I never purchased a cube. Merely something I heard from someone whose employer had.
As for the "feature" comment, it's only a feature if it works reliably. If the computer likes to go into meltdown at an oddly high rate, then it's not a feature.
There are athlons that run silently using a combination of a special power supply, quiet HDD, a heatsink with no moving parts, and an aluminum case, THOSE have the "feature". The cube did not.
It was silent because it lacked proper heat control methods. This is why a number of them had issues with overheating when used in an environment where several of them were needed in close quarters. I'm remembering singed plastic, and the necessity of cooled cabinets for large banks of them.
If I put a fan-less heatsink on my Athlon, removed the case fans, and disabled the power supply fan, it'd run silent, too. Of course, I'd probably have a dysfunctional machine on my hands quite quickly.:p
Hehe by "not my type" I meant "Probably doesn't have root privs on one or more machines, and thinks *nix is a relative to one of the Charlie Brown characters." Oh, and she's a bit heavy.
Put a brain in her, and throw her on a treadmill, then get back to me. =]
I have the unfortunate tendency to associate events and memories with sounds. Not with visual things, or with smells, or touch. Sure, those things can spark memory--but when I hear a sound I recognize, it brings back everything I associate with the memory/event. The smells, the colors, the light, the feeling, the temperature, etc.
It's funny. I was deaf-without-hearing-aids from 5 to 21. My recollections of those periods are very vague. Once I got my hearing aids, I could "touch" being 5 and younger MUCH better than I could "touch" the week or two before I got the hearing aids.
If I want to remember something that happened in that period, and I just can't remember, I have to take off my hearing aids for an hour or two.
For the longest time, my "first memory" was when I was 5 and was in the process of becoming deaf (3-day process) due to chickenpox. I clearly remembered laying on the couch and being pissed off that I couldn't go easter egg hunting (it was Easter weekend) and being pissed that everyone was speaking really quiet to annoy me.
It's only recently that I'm able to remember anything from a timeperiod before that. Stuff like having my diaper changed, which must have been early 'cuz I was potty trained almost as soon as I could walk. I remember getting a kewpie doll for my 2nd birthday and throwing it out the car window 2 days later. And how everyone jumped out of the car to look for it, and I was terribly amused. Until I realized they couldn't find it. Then I was pissed.
When did I start remembering these things? When I got hearing aids for the first time a year and a half ago. Something about not having my hearing as a stimuli made me forget these incidents. Getting hearing aids brought certain sounds back into my life, and unlocked the doors my memories were hiding behind.
My "argument" was not that Damiam was suggesting that slashdot do as K5 does. It was that, while it works at K5 for whatever combination of reasons, I don't think that it would help at Slashdot, which was my original question--whether community ranking of stories would work on Slashdot, which I don't think it would.
The reason? Because kuro5hin, for whatever reason, seems to attract a much brighter audience (in general) than Slashdot. Slashdot has a large percentage of trolls and complete losers that would just make the ranking-of-stories system as unreliable as the ranking-of-comments system has become.
Something about Slashdot makes trolls very trollish, and I think that even some of our more intelligent posters double up as trolls on their free time under an alternate user name. Anything that is user-controlled on Slashdot is going to be heavily trolled.
That said, I do think that user-moderated stories would be a nice thing, if only because it would give yet another way of offering feedback to the community, even if it's totally inefficient due to the waste-of-humanity called the troll.
I like your creative combination of fellatios and fallacious, though. A false statement that orally stimulates the male genitals, I suppose.:p I know it's rude to comment on spelling, but that combination was just too amusing to pass up. =]
Then go hang out at kuro5hin. The community is a different model. Like the GPL license and the BSD license. Depending on what your aim of the moment is, one will suit your needs more. One will be less restrictive, one will be more restrictive.
Just because kuro5hin does it doesn't mean Slashdot needs to. Kuro5hin also seems to have a different "troll" population (with Slashdot having far more/more obnoxious trolls) If Slashdot were to follow this, the editors would still be *VERY* necessary to filter out the troll posts that might get by as trolls launched a concerted attack to have a story posted about CmdrTaco running off with Jeb Bush to Tallahassee.
Personally, I think that the editors do a remarkably good job, considering all the bull that must come their way. Think about it. The largest population on Slashdot is probably the trolls. (Or at least the most vocal part). Imagine the sheer number of insane stories they must post. The very fact that Slashdot doesn't have 10 stories every day about a new Apple computer running off of a microprocessor made of fig newtons and toothpicks is quite amazing.
If you think the community could do any better--do you really think that even if they had a system like "Metamoderate", where 10 stories were displayed and the user had to rank them "Troll" or "Good", and if 20 people ranked "good", then the story would be posted, that it would be any better? Odd as it may be, Taco and the fuzzy little editors of Slashdot are probably among the top 10% intelligence-wise.
Yes, I know this is offtopic, but if someone can post something complaining about the quality of/.'s editors and get a score of 4, then perhaps I can at least stay at 1 and offer my difference of opinion.
A lot of people are still using cheaper/older monitors. They've been told that monitors don't need to be upgraded until they die, so they're on old 14 inch 800x600 max monitors that can only refresh up to 65 at max resolution, and 70 at 640x480. They plug these suckers into their brand-new speedy P4 computers, and don't seem to give a damn.
This is why it defaults "lower". Actually, XP does a good job of defaulting higher.. My box defaulted to 75 and 1024x768 (17 inch monitor) which, of course, I upped to 85 @ 1152x864
While I agree that WinXP should be better at detecting and auto-implementing these things, it's still way ahead of the ballgame in this area. Plug an older or even newer monitor into a Mac, and you've got a 50-50 shot of ending up with "Out of Sync" message on the screen. Better odds with OS X, but I'm still seeing it after swapping my monitor out with an older monitor that likes being set at 1024x768. WinXP? Swap it out with a 21 inch monitor set to a scary-high rez, then with a 12 inch LCD screen that can only display 256 colors and at 640x480, and it recognizes these limitations and adjusts accordingly. Which is good--cuz if you can't access the damned computer 'cuz the monitor's set too high and the OS isn't dealing with it, then you can't do a whole hell of a lot. If you can access it, and the monitor's set too low, then hey... That's fixable, no?
Slashdot Mirror
Let's put it this way. Within one week of taking my first day of a "basic" programming course in HS, I had dropped out and switched to art (And I'm totally non-artistic). The teacher a.) refused to shake my hand when I introduced myself b.) never called on me when I had my hand raised for a question or for an answer c.) only called on me during the two times I was not paying attention, d.) argued with me when I had given a perfectly acceptable alternative workflow that would half the work, and e.) Refused to reccomend that I be put in a more advanced class, despite the fact that I knew more than 20% of the students in the more advanced class. I decided I'd MUCH prefer taking a lousy class I had no interest in than taking a lousy class I was absolutely interested in.
Flash forward. Another HS. They stuck me in "typing classes" and "word processing".
And what do I do today? I'm an IT person.
I'll NEVER take another IT class in highschool (because I'm too old) or in college without first speaking to the teachers in-depth and deciding if a.) taking the class will teach me anything b.) the teacher will be willing to teach me anything and c.) if the class is equal to or above my current level of knowledge.
I've found that it's beneficial to introduce myself with a full list of my creds, experiences, and a categorical list of what I do and do not know. I seem to get a MUCH better education/reaction from tech guys that way than if I tried to be a modest lil' girl. The problem with most women is that they're either so timid, or they lie about what they know to come across better. Fools.
-Sara
WMP, QT Low,, QT High
s /thrill/_ttd/video/index.cfm
Those link seems to be working, even though the slashdot ones don't.
Of course, now that I just embedded those in a Slashdot page, the links are promptly dead. However, the main page still seems to function, and lets you choose the same options listed above. http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/inside_park/ride
-Sara
In addition, most Mac users are still accustomed to a lower-power OS, where not much damage could be done by too many things. OS X is a new breed, and old work/play habits are still being used.
Not to insult the people new to the Mac, who have come over because of OS X, or those who *DO* understand the meaning of 'beta', but most Mac and Windows users think of "Beta" as pre-release, as in "It might crash before you can save your file". They don't realize that the potential exists to cause extremely wide-spread damage and data loss.
A company with the userbase that Apple or Microsoft have, should spend a LOT more time educating their userbase as to what "Beta" means before making it as easy to download as it is. If the casual user (I'm thinking about some of my non-computer-inclined friends, some co-workers, my mother.. You know. Average.) were to see "Beta", either they a.) know what the word means in this context due to extensive exposure to long lectures on the topic courtesy of the resident geek, b.) know that in green it's the second letter of the alphabet, and assume "Beta" means "Second release", or "Version 2" or c.) Looks up "Beta" in the dictionary and sees that it's the second letter in the alphabet, is totally confused as to what the heck it means, and downloads it because Apple says it's cool, fabulous, and faster than anything out there.
Those users are also those that are most likely to be screwed by a major software bug. They don't know what "backup" means, they don't know how to "backup", even if they do know what it means, and they think computers are rock-solid stable things that will never lose anything of theirs.
If these people make up even 10 percent of your total market, you have a MAJOR obligation to inform them of what "Beta" means, and make sure they actually understand that it can result in extensive damage. Apple doesn't. It's three clicks from the main page until it's downloaded, and no place does it say in big red letters "CAUTION".
It should.
-Sara
*Laughs* Just don't do this if you have a Compaq or other brand that you buy at a retail chain, or if your "repair center" reccomended by the OEM of your computer is a large company like CompUSA. CompUSA will take one look at the computer, and if anything doesn't appear to be original equiptment, they'll freak and say you've violated your warranty.
Even if it's just a freakin' NIC card. *GR*
Even more fun, is to swap the cases, and then try to get it serviced. =]
I like building my own much better--I don't have to take it anywhere to get it fixed, I just have to pick up the parts. It's just so much more... Carefree. I know I won't hurt my data, and I know what's inside the computer.
For the average Joe who can't fix their computer on their own, though, there should definitely be some sort of regulation that repair centers need to comply with. The stuff I've seen go on in those places is enough to curdle my blood.
-Sara
*laughs* I'm a girl. I don't NEED to know anything between the covers. :p
:p That is something one CAN learn from OReilly books.
Besides, if a girl were to go to bed with a Slashdot goon, all she'd have to do is whisper Linux commands, and he'd be in heaven.
-Sara
Last I checked NOTHING was "definitive", even the big thousand-plus-page books that you could break your back carrying. There's always more information than a book can possibly hold, and more ways to present it than you can shake a stick at. (And we know how Slashdotters love to shake sticks.)
OReilly books aren't definitive, but they do a damned good job of covering the bases and then some--and most importantly, they're written in a concise lucid manner that's hard to come by in tech books where too many people's brains are fried from long hours and one too many tubs of Penguin mints.
I have a number of non OReilly books sitting on my bookshelf, they probably outnumber the OReilly books--and they're great. No complaints. But the books that are on my desk day in and day out are the ones with funny little animals on the covers, and nearly everything I need to know between the covers.
Generally, what an OReilly book doesn't cover, I can find out with a few minutes of research on the internet, and all those other great books I have? Unfortunately they collect dust most of the time.
(The only non-OReilly book currently on my desk is the ever-present PHP Developer's Dictionary--SAMS)
-Sara
I SSH in about once a year, no reason to have SSH up and running all the time. Besides, if she crashes out of X, she can just type in the command to start SSH for me--I showed her how, and she's done it once (and half a million times for practice) so all's good in that arena.
Not much maintainence is necessary, her system stays remarkably clean (thank heaven for permissions)I usually clean stuff up when I go up to visit, or when she calls me in for an emergency. I've actually only been called in twice, the previous average was about 4-5 times a month.
-Sara
If the paper knew that there was a strong liklihood of swamping his business with people who just stopped by for a quick gander and had no interest in buying... And that the car dealership had to pay 50 cents per x number of people who stepped onto the lot, even if it was only for 5 seconds, then yes. There would be a potential of a lawsuit.
While the area is very murky for businesses or newspapers--Free advertising!--it's a lot less murky for the individual homesites Slashdot often brings down. Those users often pay a lot more for their bandwidth than a business, because they don't buy it in bulk. They also don't tend to obtain any income from the site.
-Sara
The cost can be both subjective and objective. It depends on the methodology used to obtain and analyze the results. If the methods are faulty, then the results and analysis are subjective, if the methods are reasonably accurate and the analysis is intelligent and thorough, then it's objective.
It's just as with any other type of research. If it's done properly then it's much closer to objective. If not, then it's subjective and can prove anything that the researchers set out to prove.
Platform is much like religion. It's impossible to prove that one is "better" "cheaper" or "faster" most of the time, and those who research those questions usually go into it with a NUMBER of preconceived notions as to what they want to prove.
The study would need to be conducted by an impartial third party--which seldom exists amongst geeks. =] Let's face it, most of us have our platform of choice, and we'll bite anyone who has anything negative to say about it.
-Sara
I absolutely am aware that a lot of OSS titles are available for Win/WinXP, I use them on a regular basis as my job frequently requires my desktop OS to be Windows. They run wonderfully. The reason I choose to run them under Linux for my mother has more to do with "If I'm not running Windows-only Apps, why do I want to put this woman on a less secure system that she messes up on a regular basis by accidentally "deleting her modem" and other such motherisms. She is a typical "home user" of Windows. She knows enough to get into trouble, but not enough to get out of it. The WinXP Home edition (Which came with her computer) method of dealing with "user permissions" is meagre, awkward, and not something I want to deal with.
As for Remote Help/desktop, I refuse to leave those turned on, as I see them as a major security hazard when combined with a number of other "features" of Windows. Teaching my mother to turn them on and off or implimenting a similar method as the one I use for her to turn SSH on and off for me is a possibility, but one I don't really wish to look into because Windows boxes are very hard to lock down to a point where I'd feel secure putting a clueless 50-something year old women on with a always-up DSL line. Security concerns combined with the necessity to upgrade her to WinXP Pro (to prevent her from damaging her system with cluelessness), install Norton Antivirus ($40 or therebouts) and deal with various other Windows concerns... It's just not worth it for a system that she won't use. Particularly when you consider that Windows needs to be cleaned up and disinfected every year or so.
As for Outlook Express. Ugh. I used it once for a while, and disliked it quite intensely. If I was going to put her on any free email client, it would be Mozilla. She's quite happy with Evolution, however, and I'll leave it at that.
Linux is well within her budget, and it gives her a lot of confidence--she can't do anything wrong, outside of dropping the computer on the floor--so it helps her overcome some of her computer fears.
-Sara
Read the m-w.com definition--There's actually a long speil on the topic of "subjective". The definition that I like, and that pertains to this discussion is "modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background--a subjective account of the incident"-- The reason I chose this in relation to the discussion about cost is simply that depending on the person, certain expenses will matter more than others, and certain things will add up in more ways than others.
Person A sees Linux as being an awkward unweildy solution, and hires three people to oversee a single Linux Server because he/she/or-it cannot understand "command line" and "easy" in relation to eachother. Person A hires one person to oversee the Windows computer--hence, the cost of operation of the Windows computer is significantly less, and the Linux admins have a whole lot of spare time in which they can build robots out of spare parts, and play war games with Nerf guns.
Person B sees things in an entirely different light, and hires the same number of people, only the Windows machine gets the larger staff.
Person C is entirely competant and doesn't bother hiring anyone. Instead he converts the Windows server over to Linux and takes care of the job himself. Or maybe he converts it over to Windows. Whatever the story is.
In every scenario, the SUBJECTIVE opinions and ideas of the managerial staff is the sole reason for the higher or lower budgets per OS.
All things being equal, and with competant staff, the management cost is going to be lower for Linux, simply because of the lower cost of the OS, the software that runs under it, the increased performance-without-increased-resources issue, and any number of other issues.
In the "real world" where subjectivity reigns, the outcome of the situation will very likely be completely different, with different experiences depending on different people, the skillset of the people, salaries asked, etc. Call it the subjectivity of the Gods.
-Sara
The same thing with Mac users moving to Windows, and Windows users moving to the Mac, and Linux users moving to either platform--There are things that the new platform does not have, things that work exactly the same, and things that the new platform has that the old one doesn't. The trick is using the platform long enough to discover the workflow, and realize "Hey, this is really good for..." and "Hm. This isn't that great for .. and .., but I can make it work by doing a, b, and c."
Any company that moves to a new platform just because of hype is looking for a major disappointment, because NO platform today can live up to the hype of its supporters. First-time Windows users will find the Luna interface to be scary, certain things to be counter-intuitive, etc. First time Mac users will pull out their hair over certain permission-schemes, their eyes will ache from the animation and oversaturated bright colors and whites, etc. First time Linux users will type in "dir" and be totally confused as to why it doesn't behave like DOS.
After a while, any of these complaints go away--and the view of the OS becomes more practical. "Does it do what I need it to do?" "Does it work the way I need it to work?" "I know it's not the BEST in every area, but is it the BEST in the areas I require excellence in the most?"
Hype is a good thing and a bad thing. It gets the ball rolling, but it also encourages disappointment in those who absorb hype as 100% truths. Those who don't accept hype as an absolute truth, however, still exist--and they come over with realistic expectations and find many exciting things that exist on their new platform that they could only imagine on their old one.
A smart man will be a smart man, and a foolish one will be a foolish one. Guess which one will be disappointed. And guess which one the Linux community doesn't really want in the first place, no matter HOW nice it would be to have championed the Number-One OS of the future.
-Sara
A number of games run under Linux.. linuxgames.com talks about some of them, and more can be found with a simple google search.
As for "tasks", I've found that my mother can make much better use of Redhat Linux 8.0 than she can of WinXP. Supporting it for her is easier as well--"Hi mom, turned SSH on for me? Great--remember that green piece of paper with instructions on how to give me your IP?" For her limited word processing needs (She writes a weekly article for a local newspaper), there's Abiword and openoffice. For email there's Kmail or Evolution, or any other number of excellent email applications. There's free solitaire games that she loves, etc. Windows--to get the same functionality for this woman--I'd have to pay quite a bit more. I'd have to purchase Microsoft Word and pay for a LOT of features that she can't use, Outlook--again the same, and download a number of buggy shareware games that would likely cause issues for her down the line.
It's not the "casual home user" that is tied to Windows. It's the office user whose environment requires MS-Office ONLY features that have not yet been implemented in the OSS solutions available on Linux. It's the user that has specific requirements as far as software, which in turn has specific requirements in therms of OS.
For the casual home user, or even for the middle-of-the-line home user, Linux is *wonderful*. For the advanced user? More of the same.
-Sara
What does Lightwave have to do with anything? If you're using it to prove a point that not everything runs under Linux, you're correct. Most "consumer" or "small studio" apps such as Lightwave do not run on Linux. However, there are viable alternatives that sometimes (oftentimes) end up being better, more powerful, or beneficial in other ways. To counter your "Lightwave", there's Maya. Maya runs under Linux. A number of large animation houses use a Maya-Linux combination to keep costs down and increase productivity. Let's face it. Something that allows you to exit the GUI and render from the command line is a VERY good thing in terms of squeezing out as much out of your systems as you can.
As the article said, Linux keeps costs down as far as staffing goes. Instead of having 4 people on staff for Windows, 4 people for Mac, and 4 for Linux, you can pretty much fire the Mac and Windows admins, because Linux admins tend to be multiple-platform aware, so you get more for your money--even if you have to pay them more.
In addition to that, Linux is the most open and accessable platform. If something needs to be done on that platform, it pretty much can be done for free or implemented using an OSS solution, whereas with Windows you'll be required to either develop the resources in-house or purchase additional software/development services.
Yes, it's still a choice which one you want to run. But unlike Windows, it doesn't cost you anything to throw a copy of Linux onto your machine and dual-boot. There's no reason why you can't have a copy of Linux on the workstation of every person who might use it--you might even find that the copies of Windows go unused as Linux has come a LONG way in the past couple of years in terms of usability, compatibility, etc. You don't need to be a geek anymore--Windows often requires far more geekiness than Linux.
-Sara
Err. I've heard of several people whose cubes went into meltdown. It's not even multiple degrees of separation where it's such and such a figurative person who I've never heard of other than to hear that their cube melted. At most, this is 3 degrees of separation. If it's "rare", then I must know quite a few of the "few".
As for my Athlon melting if I didn't provide it with proper cooling, I was merely saying that I could run my Athlon silently too if I followed the path that Apple went with the cube. It's just not smart to remove all cooling, and the G4 Cube was not a very triumphant success in this area. As for "banks", I meant anything over 3 of them in close proximity, and once again--it wasn't my personal experience, as I never purchased a cube. Merely something I heard from someone whose employer had.
As for the "feature" comment, it's only a feature if it works reliably. If the computer likes to go into meltdown at an oddly high rate, then it's not a feature.
There are athlons that run silently using a combination of a special power supply, quiet HDD, a heatsink with no moving parts, and an aluminum case, THOSE have the "feature". The cube did not.
-Sara
It was silent because it lacked proper heat control methods. This is why a number of them had issues with overheating when used in an environment where several of them were needed in close quarters. I'm remembering singed plastic, and the necessity of cooled cabinets for large banks of them.
:p
If I put a fan-less heatsink on my Athlon, removed the case fans, and disabled the power supply fan, it'd run silent, too. Of course, I'd probably have a dysfunctional machine on my hands quite quickly.
-Sara
Hehe by "not my type" I meant "Probably doesn't have root privs on one or more machines, and thinks *nix is a relative to one of the Charlie Brown characters." Oh, and she's a bit heavy.
Put a brain in her, and throw her on a treadmill, then get back to me. =]
-Sara
I don't know.. Looks rather tasteful to me. Oh, wait. I'm confusing "tasteful" and "tasty" again.
(Seriously, not my type. But couldn't resist. =] )
-Sara
I have the unfortunate tendency to associate events and memories with sounds. Not with visual things, or with smells, or touch. Sure, those things can spark memory--but when I hear a sound I recognize, it brings back everything I associate with the memory/event. The smells, the colors, the light, the feeling, the temperature, etc.
It's funny. I was deaf-without-hearing-aids from 5 to 21. My recollections of those periods are very vague. Once I got my hearing aids, I could "touch" being 5 and younger MUCH better than I could "touch" the week or two before I got the hearing aids.
If I want to remember something that happened in that period, and I just can't remember, I have to take off my hearing aids for an hour or two.
-Sara
For the longest time, my "first memory" was when I was 5 and was in the process of becoming deaf (3-day process) due to chickenpox. I clearly remembered laying on the couch and being pissed off that I couldn't go easter egg hunting (it was Easter weekend) and being pissed that everyone was speaking really quiet to annoy me.
It's only recently that I'm able to remember anything from a timeperiod before that. Stuff like having my diaper changed, which must have been early 'cuz I was potty trained almost as soon as I could walk. I remember getting a kewpie doll for my 2nd birthday and throwing it out the car window 2 days later. And how everyone jumped out of the car to look for it, and I was terribly amused. Until I realized they couldn't find it. Then I was pissed.
When did I start remembering these things? When I got hearing aids for the first time a year and a half ago. Something about not having my hearing as a stimuli made me forget these incidents. Getting hearing aids brought certain sounds back into my life, and unlocked the doors my memories were hiding behind.
-Sara
Ok. Let me clarify myself.
:p I know it's rude to comment on spelling, but that combination was just too amusing to pass up. =]
My "argument" was not that Damiam was suggesting that slashdot do as K5 does. It was that, while it works at K5 for whatever combination of reasons, I don't think that it would help at Slashdot, which was my original question--whether community ranking of stories would work on Slashdot, which I don't think it would.
The reason? Because kuro5hin, for whatever reason, seems to attract a much brighter audience (in general) than Slashdot. Slashdot has a large percentage of trolls and complete losers that would just make the ranking-of-stories system as unreliable as the ranking-of-comments system has become.
Something about Slashdot makes trolls very trollish, and I think that even some of our more intelligent posters double up as trolls on their free time under an alternate user name. Anything that is user-controlled on Slashdot is going to be heavily trolled.
That said, I do think that user-moderated stories would be a nice thing, if only because it would give yet another way of offering feedback to the community, even if it's totally inefficient due to the waste-of-humanity called the troll.
I like your creative combination of fellatios and fallacious, though. A false statement that orally stimulates the male genitals, I suppose.
-Sara
Then go hang out at kuro5hin. The community is a different model. Like the GPL license and the BSD license. Depending on what your aim of the moment is, one will suit your needs more. One will be less restrictive, one will be more restrictive.
Just because kuro5hin does it doesn't mean Slashdot needs to. Kuro5hin also seems to have a different "troll" population (with Slashdot having far more/more obnoxious trolls) If Slashdot were to follow this, the editors would still be *VERY* necessary to filter out the troll posts that might get by as trolls launched a concerted attack to have a story posted about CmdrTaco running off with Jeb Bush to Tallahassee.
-Sara
Personally, I think that the editors do a remarkably good job, considering all the bull that must come their way. Think about it. The largest population on Slashdot is probably the trolls. (Or at least the most vocal part). Imagine the sheer number of insane stories they must post. The very fact that Slashdot doesn't have 10 stories every day about a new Apple computer running off of a microprocessor made of fig newtons and toothpicks is quite amazing.
/.'s editors and get a score of 4, then perhaps I can at least stay at 1 and offer my difference of opinion.
If you think the community could do any better--do you really think that even if they had a system like "Metamoderate", where 10 stories were displayed and the user had to rank them "Troll" or "Good", and if 20 people ranked "good", then the story would be posted, that it would be any better? Odd as it may be, Taco and the fuzzy little editors of Slashdot are probably among the top 10% intelligence-wise.
Yes, I know this is offtopic, but if someone can post something complaining about the quality of
-Sara
How much did the women go for? :p
-Sara
A lot of people are still using cheaper/older monitors. They've been told that monitors don't need to be upgraded until they die, so they're on old 14 inch 800x600 max monitors that can only refresh up to 65 at max resolution, and 70 at 640x480. They plug these suckers into their brand-new speedy P4 computers, and don't seem to give a damn.
This is why it defaults "lower". Actually, XP does a good job of defaulting higher.. My box defaulted to 75 and 1024x768 (17 inch monitor) which, of course, I upped to 85 @ 1152x864
While I agree that WinXP should be better at detecting and auto-implementing these things, it's still way ahead of the ballgame in this area. Plug an older or even newer monitor into a Mac, and you've got a 50-50 shot of ending up with "Out of Sync" message on the screen. Better odds with OS X, but I'm still seeing it after swapping my monitor out with an older monitor that likes being set at 1024x768. WinXP? Swap it out with a 21 inch monitor set to a scary-high rez, then with a 12 inch LCD screen that can only display 256 colors and at 640x480, and it recognizes these limitations and adjusts accordingly. Which is good--cuz if you can't access the damned computer 'cuz the monitor's set too high and the OS isn't dealing with it, then you can't do a whole hell of a lot. If you can access it, and the monitor's set too low, then hey... That's fixable, no?
-Sara