Dual citizenship can be an iffy thing. Australia doesn't require relinquishing prior citizenship to become Australian, but usually (or at least used to - I haven't checked recently) requires you to relinquish Australian citizenship if you subsequently acquire another nationality.
Whatever happens, even in the unlikely circumstance that the Australian Government should capriciously grant him citizenship, he will have to deal with a monopoly. Seems to me that for a supposedly smart guy, Woz hasn't thought this through.
To elaborate, (1) When I migrated to Australia in 1987, the typical procedure was to apply through an Australian Consulate for a migrant visa, which after a qualifying period, was upgraded to permanent resident status. Only after a period of two years was it possible to apply for Australian citizenship. I am given to understand that conditions for such an application are now much stricter and more onerous.
(2) The NBN (although IMO a very nice idea) is being implemented very patchily, and has never enjoyed the support of the opposition party in Federal Parliament, so may well end up being shitcanned after the next election, leaving the majority of households to fight for whatever best connection they can find, exactly as before. If Woz chooses to live close to a metropolitan area, he is likely to find a good ADSL2 connection from one or other of the major players such as Internode or iiNet, but that might be as good as he'll get.
That, ultimately, is what lies behind this kind of thing: Facebook wants to make money. If it knows exactly who you are, it thinks it can make more money from you.
This should be obvious enough, but sometimes the obvious needs pointing out:
Facebook can't make any money out of you if you don't use it.
Deliberately naming names to indict the guilty...:-|
Bendigo Bank here in Australia truncates your password to just 8 characters, and like several other banks that I have come across, it also disallows punctuation or whitespace characters. So just enough characters to spell "FuckMeUp".
At least they do have the grace to offer one-time-key widgets, (FWIW), at a price...
Platform isn't about some magical choice between closed and open source. Its not some walled garden vs free for all marketplaces. People buy a phone that works for them.
...Which is fine, except that if you use your phone as anything other than a machine for making calls, you are likely to have a struggle if you ever need to load all that content purchased with iTunes in mind on another device.
Written with recent experience in mind: most of my music is ripped from CDs and DRM-free, but the (fortunately small amount of) content I bought through iTunes or Audible (during a 2-year period when I was using a hand-me-down Macbook) caused a real headache when I needed to migrate the collection back to a Linux box after the Mac machine crapped itself.
I quite like MacOS in the sense that the combination of apps that more or less "just work" with an environment where I can pull up a terminal and use the computer like any other *nix box. But the way Apple locks you into their system is just plain nasty, and I'm not going to be sucked into it again.
focusing on physical keyboards and long battery life was a "failure" on RIMs part
A couple of years ago I mistakenly bought a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro on the strength of its physical keyboard, but I found it such a struggle to use with my ageing eyesight that it was actually a relief when the machine died and I was able to justify replacing it with a Samsung device.
Probably no one on/. has even heard of either the company or the OS.
You seem to be forgetting that a number of us/.ers are old farts of the deepest dye. I cut my programming teeth on the Burroughs B3700 which by the 1990s had a lot in common with the Newcomen steam engine.
Incidentally, Burroughs later became a component of Unisys, along with Sperry/Univac, another heavy horse of which I have fond memories...
Read it, Stick a bloody great big sticker on the front that says this is to be handed around for free and must not be sold, Give it to someone (anyone!). I encourage everyone else to do this as well.
This is fine up to a point, but it's a bit of a raw deal for the author when you're dealing with etexts of any kind. My own "code" (FWIW) is that if the author is deceased, the publisher has no moral right to insist on milking readers for the full purchase price of any book when they are under no obligation to pass royalties on to the author, so I have no qualms about using Bittorrent to obtain those texts.
...but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.
Which is pretty much why I rip the DRM out of any book I buy (for futureproofing) and only use my reader device offline, using Calibre to manage content.
This survey seems (admittedly without having read TFA) to be skewed by the "if fired" clause. Now, I would have thought most admins would have their privileges revoked if they were being sacked, but here's a question:
How many of us, if on the receiving end of unjust treatment, would honestly not at least entertain the fantasy of "getting back" at that company? Be honest, now.
Thought so.
Since the company invests a lot of trust in its sysadmins, it should at least treat them respectfully, since trust has to work both ways.
Gnome3 and Unity was unforgivable, it broke my work flow and didn't offer anything better. This is a sin in a business/effecient enviroment.
Gnome 3 didn't just break my work flow. I found it a complete show-stopper. I never tried Unity, since I seem to be one of the minority of Linux users who don't care for Ubuntu.
Even Windows 95 at least had the advantage that anyone could just sit down and use it without having to RTFM. Gnome 3 completely ignored this principle in order to push some obscure philosophical agenda, and succeeded mostly in pissing off a lot of formerly loyal supporters.
I had been one of these happy Gnome users since about 1997, and until comparatively recently had always shunned KDE as cluttered, gaudy and ugly.
When Gnome became unusable, I spent a couple of months revisiting XFCE, but as KDE has really got its act together, I am now quite happy with that.
Since the OP is supposedly looking for a machine for his sister, he should start there and ask what she wants it to do. In all likelihood, she will never want to customise it, so he should be looking at the simplest or most reliable way of fitting the tool to the job. Sure, there might be issues like bulk or styling to take into account, but again that needs her input. Enough with the patronising.
I first played with Mandrake in about 2000 (or thereabouts) and sort of liked it as a variant of RedHat, with a few bells and whistles to make it easier for the newbie. However, I was more than happy to dump it in favour of a return to Slackware, which has only comparatively recently been replaced by Arch Linux on most of my machines.
Fair enough. I have an old (1930s) gold Omega that belonged to my maternal grandfather, which Granny wore for some 50+ years after he was shot down over the Mediterranean during WWII. I never met the original owner, but the freight of both family history and quality of workmanship make this thing so much more than a toy.
...terribly crippled by only permitting programs up to some ridiculously small size, like 5 kB...
Isn't that meant as a challenge? Like, for instance, tossing out that API and using Assembly? You should be able to get anything worth doing in less than 1kB.
Damn, kids these days have no sense of adventure...
Setting aside *nix for the moment, one could always embrace your fundamental and innermost nerdiness and check out some of the offerings at The Unemployed Philosophers Guild. (I have the Leonardo and Dali watches...)
You may be right. Until quite recently, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro where I had anticipated that the hardware keyboard would be a plus, but I was pathetically grateful when the machine died and I was able to replace it with a (Samsung) device where I could actually see the keypad.
Oh, and yes, I am nearly 50, so eyesight is an issue. But FWIW, the Galaxy Nexus is an awesome phone, and I'm really happy with it.
I actually thought tethering was built in on all Android phones.
I don't know how this works for USians, but if you're a Telstra customer, your telco specifically states in their TOS that they have no problem with tethering.
However, my last Android phone (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro) was a POS with locked-down firmware that neither the manufacturer nor telco had any intention of upgrading, so I was stuck with no tethering for a while. But, my new Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Android version 4.x) has native tethering that works well, and (Yippee!!) Telstra hasn't felt the need to fill the machine up with crapware that I need to root the device to get rid of. Wonders never cease...
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Dual citizenship can be an iffy thing. Australia doesn't require relinquishing prior citizenship to become Australian, but usually (or at least used to - I haven't checked recently) requires you to relinquish Australian citizenship if you subsequently acquire another nationality.
okay but what is he going to be doing in Australia with 100Mb/s that he cant do in America with a slower connection.
Given that Woz is (according to TFS) not connected to a broadband service at his home, nothing.
Sorry, the deadly creatures and the super hot chicks are a package deal. ;)
I can cope with the drop-bears and other creatures, it's just the deadly hot chicks you have to watch out for... :-)
Whatever happens, even in the unlikely circumstance that the Australian Government should capriciously grant him citizenship, he will have to deal with a monopoly. Seems to me that for a supposedly smart guy, Woz hasn't thought this through.
To elaborate,
(1) When I migrated to Australia in 1987, the typical procedure was to apply through an Australian Consulate for a migrant visa, which after a qualifying period, was upgraded to permanent resident status. Only after a period of two years was it possible to apply for Australian citizenship. I am given to understand that conditions for such an application are now much stricter and more onerous.
(2) The NBN (although IMO a very nice idea) is being implemented very patchily, and has never enjoyed the support of the opposition party in Federal Parliament, so may well end up being shitcanned after the next election, leaving the majority of households to fight for whatever best connection they can find, exactly as before. If Woz chooses to live close to a metropolitan area, he is likely to find a good ADSL2 connection from one or other of the major players such as Internode or iiNet, but that might be as good as he'll get.
Why not simply make a point of saying in your CV that you don't have a facebook account?
This line, buried in TFA (!) says enough:
That, ultimately, is what lies behind this kind of thing: Facebook wants to make money. If it knows exactly who you are, it thinks it can make more money from you.
This should be obvious enough, but sometimes the obvious needs pointing out:
Facebook can't make any money out of you if you don't use it.
Deliberately naming names to indict the guilty... :-|
Bendigo Bank here in Australia truncates your password to just 8 characters, and like several other banks that I have come across, it also disallows punctuation or whitespace characters. So just enough characters to spell "FuckMeUp".
At least they do have the grace to offer one-time-key widgets, (FWIW), at a price...
There used to be intelligent life in Britain, but I moved to Australia 25 years ago. ;-)
Platform isn't about some magical choice between closed and open source. Its not some walled garden vs free for all marketplaces. People buy a phone that works for them.
...Which is fine, except that if you use your phone as anything other than a machine for making calls, you are likely to have a struggle if you ever need to load all that content purchased with iTunes in mind on another device.
Written with recent experience in mind: most of my music is ripped from CDs and DRM-free, but the (fortunately small amount of) content I bought through iTunes or Audible (during a 2-year period when I was using a hand-me-down Macbook) caused a real headache when I needed to migrate the collection back to a Linux box after the Mac machine crapped itself.
I quite like MacOS in the sense that the combination of apps that more or less "just work" with an environment where I can pull up a terminal and use the computer like any other *nix box. But the way Apple locks you into their system is just plain nasty, and I'm not going to be sucked into it again.
focusing on physical keyboards and long battery life was a "failure" on RIMs part
A couple of years ago I mistakenly bought a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro on the strength of its physical keyboard, but I found it such a struggle to use with my ageing eyesight that it was actually a relief when the machine died and I was able to justify replacing it with a Samsung device.
Probably no one on /. has even heard of either the company or the OS.
You seem to be forgetting that a number of us /.ers are old farts of the deepest dye. I cut my programming teeth on the Burroughs B3700 which by the 1990s had a lot in common with the Newcomen steam engine.
Incidentally, Burroughs later became a component of Unisys, along with Sperry/Univac, another heavy horse of which I have fond memories...
Does *anyone* actually use Bing? I mean, other than on TV shows where they're paid to...
Read it, Stick a bloody great big sticker on the front that says this is to be handed around for free and must not be sold, Give it to someone (anyone!). I encourage everyone else to do this as well.
This is fine up to a point, but it's a bit of a raw deal for the author when you're dealing with etexts of any kind. My own "code" (FWIW) is that if the author is deceased, the publisher has no moral right to insist on milking readers for the full purchase price of any book when they are under no obligation to pass royalties on to the author, so I have no qualms about using Bittorrent to obtain those texts.
...but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.
Which is pretty much why I rip the DRM out of any book I buy (for futureproofing) and only use my reader device offline, using Calibre to manage content.
This survey seems (admittedly without having read TFA) to be skewed by the "if fired" clause. Now, I would have thought most admins would have their privileges revoked if they were being sacked, but here's a question:
How many of us, if on the receiving end of unjust treatment, would honestly not at least entertain the fantasy of "getting back" at that company? Be honest, now.
Thought so.
Since the company invests a lot of trust in its sysadmins, it should at least treat them respectfully, since trust has to work both ways.
Being on the man side of that equation...
...all depends on your point of view. As H.H. Munro famously said, "I hate children. They're so human."
... or maybe it's just that older children have more fathers. :)
Gnome3 and Unity was unforgivable, it broke my work flow and didn't offer anything better. This is a sin in a business/effecient enviroment.
Gnome 3 didn't just break my work flow. I found it a complete show-stopper. I never tried Unity, since I seem to be one of the minority of Linux users who don't care for Ubuntu.
Even Windows 95 at least had the advantage that anyone could just sit down and use it without having to RTFM. Gnome 3 completely ignored this principle in order to push some obscure philosophical agenda, and succeeded mostly in pissing off a lot of formerly loyal supporters.
I had been one of these happy Gnome users since about 1997, and until comparatively recently had always shunned KDE as cluttered, gaudy and ugly.
When Gnome became unusable, I spent a couple of months revisiting XFCE, but as KDE has really got its act together, I am now quite happy with that.
Since the OP is supposedly looking for a machine for his sister, he should start there and ask what she wants it to do. In all likelihood, she will never want to customise it, so he should be looking at the simplest or most reliable way of fitting the tool to the job. Sure, there might be issues like bulk or styling to take into account, but again that needs her input. Enough with the patronising.
I first played with Mandrake in about 2000 (or thereabouts) and sort of liked it as a variant of RedHat, with a few bells and whistles to make it easier for the newbie. However, I was more than happy to dump it in favour of a return to Slackware, which has only comparatively recently been replaced by Arch Linux on most of my machines.
Fair enough. I have an old (1930s) gold Omega that belonged to my maternal grandfather, which Granny wore for some 50+ years after he was shot down over the Mediterranean during WWII. I never met the original owner, but the freight of both family history and quality of workmanship make this thing so much more than a toy.
...terribly crippled by only permitting programs up to some ridiculously small size, like 5 kB...
Isn't that meant as a challenge? Like, for instance, tossing out that API and using Assembly? You should be able to get anything worth doing in less than 1kB.
Damn, kids these days have no sense of adventure...
Thus, I'd say use the unix philosophy...
Setting aside *nix for the moment, one could always embrace your fundamental and innermost nerdiness and check out some of the offerings at The Unemployed Philosophers Guild. (I have the Leonardo and Dali watches...)
Hardware qwerty is a flaw now a days.
You may be right. Until quite recently, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro where I had anticipated that the hardware keyboard would be a plus, but I was pathetically grateful when the machine died and I was able to replace it with a (Samsung) device where I could actually see the keypad.
Oh, and yes, I am nearly 50, so eyesight is an issue. But FWIW, the Galaxy Nexus is an awesome phone, and I'm really happy with it.
I actually thought tethering was built in on all Android phones.
I don't know how this works for USians, but if you're a Telstra customer, your telco specifically states in their TOS that they have no problem with tethering.
However, my last Android phone (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro) was a POS with locked-down firmware that neither the manufacturer nor telco had any intention of upgrading, so I was stuck with no tethering for a while. But, my new Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Android version 4.x) has native tethering that works well, and (Yippee!!) Telstra hasn't felt the need to fill the machine up with crapware that I need to root the device to get rid of. Wonders never cease...