No you are right, that was the old iTunes that had things locked up with DRM because the Music Studios would demand such a thing to allow the iTunes Music store to come to be. Now Apple has been able to let sanity prevail and you can now purchase music that is unlocked.
On the other hand we can now see a world where MS does not mount a serious competition with Apple and what do we get? A draconian environment like the iPhone or iPad. Where Apple controls the hardware and the software, you must program the way Apple approves of to even have a chance of being able to sell your app to iPod users... IF Apple will allow you to.
If the iPod some how crushed Microsoft on the desktop, (and now it would have to crush linux as well), we would only be able to buy $600 of hardware marked up to $1200 and be beholden to Apple. If they wanted to remove all MP3 players from the iStore and deactivate any mp3 playing software you had purchased, they could. The can lock out any format they want? Take a look at Flash.
On know both sides of the story. Yes, they make sure apps are written with a compiler so that if they change the CPU that is used, all apps can be easily recompiled. They can block shitty apps from making it into the store, they can prevent viruses and spyware.
But they also choke out innovation, kill competition and can dictate by fiat in a well thought out, or arbitrary and capricious manner. The end result is still the same. If either Apple or Microsoft had their way, you would pay through the nose for hardware and/or software. They would control what you can do and they would block all competition.
I will not answer for Joe Sixpack. I will answer for me. The two things that have motivated me in regards to Apple and Microsoft is fear and freedom.
I want to live in a world where the reality is that hardware and software is mostly commoditized. In Microsoft's world, Hardware is cheap, but Microsoft owns the OS and all the data. It does not matter if Windows and Office could turn a profit at $25.00 a copy, Microsoft wants to sell them at $400.00 a pop. They do not want me to have the freedom to choose something else. I fear living in a world where Microsoft makes all the rules.
Then there is Apple. Who promise a Utopia where everything just works(tm). And it does. I just have to live with One Vendor, One OS and one Standard. In Apples vision of the world, It costs me even more than Micorosft's. The hardware is expensive, and Apple wants me to pay for my music and other data over and over again.
I have rejected both visions. If hardware and software can be made inexpensive, then why should either company have the right to run a monopoly and mark up the prices 200% or 400% or 800%?
So what is it about the Windows security model that's inferior to the Linux one?
Because from day one Windows was designed to be a single user operating system. Originally designed to run on very slow hardware and trying to create a user friendly computer interface. At every juncture where the choices were 1) ease of use, 2) speed and 3) security they were decided in that order. The first time they even looked at security was in the early 90's when people started slapping networking on top of Windows 3.1.
While it may be true the the NT line actually thought about security, you then mix in a bunch of legacy compatibility and security issues to maintain backwards compatibility. Trying to secure Windows is like securing a skyscraper where there are no locks on any door for the first 30 floors. You start securing from the 31st floor on up, and you have to admit that from the basement up to floor 30 are so insecure they should be considered compromised by default.
Whereas Unix was designed from day one to be a multi-user multitasking environment. The day the first line of code for Linux was written, there was almost 20 years of Unix security being rolled into it. Remember that is to be contrasted with the 6 years of Windows development where security was job 3.
You still missed the point, the only reason they have a compromised modem/router is because they use windows.
The average user does not know enough to keep their windows system from becoming compromised. Once that happens it is possible for EVIL software to compromise the router or modem. So even if you clean up the computer, the router/modem is still compromised.
If the average user started with an uninfected linux system and an uninfected router/modem. They would not become compromised at all. So they would never have to worry about a compromised router/modem being a problem in the first place.
Not character assassination. Actions speak louder than words. If any president wanted to get things done, he could have the Attorney General champion for the oil industry in court. He could tell congress that he wants a bill on his desk that has drilling in it in the next 3 months. Instead he formed a task force. To quote from one of my favorite poems. To DECIDE means to take action, MAKING A DECISION does not change a thing, but makes people happy.
And I did not comment on how good of a policy it is. I just commented on the fact that he is not serious about making it happen. I am willing to admit if I am a small and bitter man. But I think you will have to mark your calendar. If any place he recommended to be studied is actually cleared for drilling (not including court battles by environmental groups) before 2020, I can admit I have unfairly impugned his character.
On the other hand, it will be 10 years before I can be proved right, and in 2020 empty promises of drilling 6 to 8 years ago won't really matter.
Obama proposed that they launch a task force to study a proposal to drill. You would think that is an actual prelude to drilling.
In reality here is what happens. In the short term, many individuals in East Coast States are friendly to Obama because there could be drilling coming their way. Obama does not risk actual drilling right now, because anyplace where they are ready to drill and even a little action would allow drilling to happen, is not on his proposed study list. And by the time the task force which has been hand picked to say "no, can't drill there" is done, it will be 2020.
So where we could drill today, we won't. We will talk about drilling in other places for 10 years, but then we won't do that either.
This is just a chance to talk out of both sides of his mouth. To the pro-drill group he gets to sound good. The the anti-drill group, he can say "just look at the results", you know I am on your side.
Ran Corporate version 9, 10 and 11, then with 12 it all fell apart. The replication database should only grow to 5 gigs in size. But it keeps growing till there is no space on the servers hard drive. We had to literally uninstall it, reinstall it, configure it and run it for 3 months till the database filled a 200 gig hard drive. 3 times. After 9 months and a promised "fix" always soon to be released but never actually seeing the light of day, we switched to Kaspersky.
I was 17 years old and had a job at K-Mart. At the time, the Commodore-64 was around $500.00 and the Vic-20 was $150.00. So I decided to purchase a Vic-20.
As it turns out, the K-Mart lay away program did not allow you to purchase electronics that way. I did not want to wait to come up with $150.00 money in my pocket would be spent before it was saved. There was a Federated store across that that I could purchase a Vic-20 for the same $150.00.
So I got paid every Friday, and I would go on Saturday across town and make a $50 payment on my VIC. I had paid off $100 and had $50 to go. I got my paycheck on Friday night, and found out at the same time that the price on the VIC-20 had just dropped form $150.00 down to $100.00. The restock fee was $50.00 over at Federated. So my choices at that point were to a) go, ask for my money back, pay the restock fee and buy the computer outright with the money I had in hand. Total cost: $150.00. Or b) make my last payment, total cost $150.00.
Essentially I had purchased a computer that went down in price by 33% the moment I bought it. It was a good lesson. That is ALWAYS the decision you make when you buy a computer. There is always something newer coming along at a lower price. Sometimes it is worth waiting 3 months before purchasing, sometimes you just as well buy it now and be using it for the next 3 months instead of waiting for the next 3 months.
And generally speaking, waiting 3 months to purchase a Microsoft product that they are not already selling to stores 3 months before they ship. That my friend is always a bad idea.
Embedded system programmers often work on systems that do not have floating point math. Same for many mini-computers and micro-computers of the past. There are several programming languages designed to cope with a situation like this. How do to math without floating point and do it FAST.
I have been programming in FORTH since the mid 80's and one of the first things you are taught is how to tackle problems like this using only integers and integer math.
I would just LOVE to see them port Windows CE. Since the thing does not even have the concept of a "current" directory. That is NOT server class software.
Since they will have to write something to run on ARM, might I suggest they take the time to create their own SSH server so it will be possible to administer one of these things like a real computer? This comment is not meant as flame bait. I take care of both Windows and Linux servers remotely. If you have to do it graphically, nonmachine is as fast as RDP so you are not stuck with VNCs performance issues. But when there are bandwidth issues, ssh is much faster than RDP for administrative tasks.
The only network cards I have every had a problem with were wireless cards.
Typically, I keep a stash of old video cards and network cards around. The Belkin FD-7050 wirless USB works out of the box on linux and I can pick 3 of them up for about $20.00 on ebay.
So I work around it or I don't do it. Hardware replacement is an option. When the choice is "take it to a shop and spend $150.00 having them clean it up" or "pay me $10" for the wirless card and I will toss Linux on your system and you will never have another virus again. More and more people are opting for Linux.
I forgot to mention, I am taking an OS class. I am required to run a VM setup at home, the school will only provide support for Virtual PC, but you can run what you want, but if you get in trouble you are on your own.
I need a setup that will let me have 3 active running VMs with Windows Server 2008. So if you don't have at least 3 gigs of RAM, you are chained to a computer on campus to do any classwork and must have a portable hard drive as well.
Is it to much to ask for some baseline requirements for running Linux? There is ZERO slack or excuse for not being able to run 3 VMS of Server 2008, surely one copy of Linux is doable?
The question is unfair. He is asking for a bulletproof way to run Linux at home. No matter how old the computer is, how much space is on the hard drive, if they have USB or not. He just wants it to work everywhere. We can't make dual boot bulletproof. We can't make usb bulletproof. We can't make a virtual machine bullet proof.
That is just to bad, and it is an unfair standard to boot. How much "required" windows software is there? At the community college I attend, Microsoft Office 2007 is a requirement. Computer to old, to bad, get a new one or use a lab on campus. The same is true if you don't have enough room on your drive, enough RAM, or your OS is buggy. To bad, you must do what you need to run Office 2007, or fake it very well. Because it is expected. If you have a problem and you are running office 2003 or Open Office, to bad. There is only support for Office 2007.
The school has set a baseline standard in choosing Office 2007, it is assumed if you are a student, you will run a platform that can support that, if not. To bad, there are computers on campus you can use.
Expecting a minimum standard for Office Software but expecting every student who runs a system that does not have office on it, who currently do there homework in the library, to now have the right to complain that Linux is not bootable at home does not really seem fair to Linux.
You have to have some kind of minimum standard. Like having 256 megs of RAM and at least 6gig on the Hard drive, so you can do a wubi install of Xubuntu. Or that you can boot from a USB drive to run Linux from flash, or you can run an installer to set up a dual boot of Slax (you cant get much lighter on resources than that).
People that don't meet the minimum standard have to find some way to cope. Otherwise I have the answer for you.
The instructor goes to any students home and gets Linux working for them. I know I can install Linux on almost any PC hardware made after 2001 with at least 256 megs of ram, and if I use the right Linux 128 megs of ram. But really. I think it is a bit over the top to expect the instructor to fix every students computer so they can boot Linux in some way on it. Instead of having some sort of baseline requirement for a PC.
I second slax. For one thing it is very easy to add more software to. You can easily set up a dual boot environment with it, you can set it up to boot from a USB drive, or you can run it in a VM. It is light on resources.
I have an installer that on XP systems adds a slax folder and moves ntldr to ntldrxp, and sets up grub4dos as ntldr. At that point the system can be dual booted to slax. It is capable of backup and reimaging the hard drive, doing data recovery work, running antivirus on an infected XP system, or deleting files that are usually not writable.
Slax is an excellent base that you can do almost anything you want with. It is modular and makes a great teaching tool.
The big whitelist registry works for stuff like www.pbs.org (good) and www.playboy.com (bad). But the Internet is a big place.
http://myisp.com/Jim is a personal home page about Millard Filmore because Jim finds him cool. (good)
http://myisp.com/Bob is a personal home page about the local Raceway...and where Bob writes snuff erotica. (bad)
And even if we could split it down to portions of a website. What if Jim decides to add a page to his site about women Millard Filmore would want to have sexual relations with, including photos. How would this registry keep up with this?
Currently it is to big of a problem. with no real answer short of monitoring what your kids look at yourself, or lock it all down and make them ask for every resource they need.
starts thinking like a Democrat, or more accurately: like a sane person
When in a boat that is taking on water, you try to do 2 things. 1) Patch the leak and 2) Bail out the water.
The Chicago school district is in much the same boat (pun intended). More money in the right spots would help, but also a lot of that money is thrown at "bad" teachers. To keep things going they are trying to "pump" more money. But they are not fixing the base problem. They have lots of bad teachers.
It does not matter if it is the Unions that won't let you identify bad teachers and get rid of them. Or if it is the school district itself lacks the will to discover and remove bad teachers. I know parents play their part as well, choice of teaching materials, school policies.
The current way of doing things is to just throw more money at it, (much of it consumed at the administration level) and hope enough cash sticks to the good teachers that everything will somehow work out.
The bottom line is to fix the system. To do that they need to fire bad teachers and replace them with better teachers. While they are at that, yes, more money would not hurt.
I think the big thing to take away from this is that Mayor Daily IS the Chicago Political Machine. To do business as a politician you have to be in his good graces and of the same mind.
Obama is cut from the same cloth. Much of his staff grew up as part of Chicago Politics. As a rule, what is popular in Chicago does NOT play well in the rest of the country. So Obama can't say these things himself. But watch how he governs. His mindset and agenda are the same.
If you agree with that agenda then you should be very happy with his presidency. If you don't agree with his agenda, at the very least you should not be surprised by it.
Which is why those misty-eyed dreamers at the London Stock Exchange recently dumped Windows for Linux. But what do they know about the realities of modern business?
They know not to trust their data to a system built with Microsoft Technology. Even if the "stellar minds from Microsoft" come and help fine tune it.
Really, and according the the SI system how many bits are in a nibble? Or a byte? How many bytes are in a page? Things were measured in units based on bits, then in system where octal made sense. Then using hex made sense. Using decimal at this point never made sense. As more memory was being addressed we move up from routinely addressing 256 bytes, to 512 bytes, to 1024 bytes.
At this point you could call it a mistake that they decided to call 1024bytes a kilobyte. Notice the word BYTE has magic properties at this point. It tells us that we are not using 1000 units to a K, but instead using 1024 units to a K.
But since the only people who were dealing with this were folks who were technical and knew what it meant. It would be have been better if they had chosen another term. Alas, they did not and to this day people who obtain any proficiency with computers have to learn this. Many people learn to use computers don't learn this and it has been a problem.
Then vendors have been unscrupulous and started selling some forms of memory and hard drives based on 1000 units and not 1024 units. Thus they could advertise something as more when it was not.
It would be like if the people who sold canned peas and canned carrots decided that there were 15 ounces in a pound. Or brown eggs are sold in dozens of 11 eggs.
The problem is that in the IT sector this is now standard, RAM in 1024 units, USB Drives in 1000 units. The consumer is endlessly confused. For the end user it would be better for us to switch units of measurement. For those who do serious work and need to maintain some relationship with things on a binary level.
It's a mess. And Shuttleworth having to show he is the big man on campus now by making a decision like this by fiat is NOT helping. Slackware, Arch or Gentoo will likely be picking up more users. Even the a novice who has only been around for 1 or two releases is going to get tired of the Queen of Hearts "Off with their heads" attitude is really starting to piss people off.
Since I am now ranting about Shuttleworth lets go all the way. In 2 years time since he announced that Linux could overtake the Mac what have we got? Changes to notifications that have been backported to Gnome and KDE. Working at improving boot times, that is no where near what had been promised. Now every step and every change keeps making Ubuntu look more and more like a cheap Mac Ripoff. And now "off with there heads, off with their heads". The Queen says Mono apps are best. The Queen says standard apps like the gimp don't belong in a standard install. The Queen wants the buttons on the right hand side. The Queen wants everything to be colored like a mac.The Queen wants to number things different.
Every other Linux Distro uses 1024k units and Ubuntu will be the only one to use 1000k units. Is it really Linux for human beings? Does it make it more usable? Is everyone else wrong?
And even if Shuttleworth is right on this point (which I am not ready to concede). What is the next proclamation that the Queen will pull out of her butt and expect everyone to swallow?
Oh I am sure somewhere out there are young people who are learning things that will drive technology in the future. To do that, they will have to understand the under-the-hood stuff. And I KNOW there are young programmers out there. I just don't know any.
I have worked with Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, helped in classes at High School, Jr High School and grade school. I admit I live in a county with less than 100,000 people. I just have not found anyone under 30 that programs or has a great grasp of what really goes on under the hood of a computer programming wise.
I tangently knew some geeks when I was in in High-School (I was such an outsider, I did not even fit in with the geeks). I know what they had for equipment and the kind of things they were into. I have seen what the High Schools around here has to offer. These kids do not hold a candle to the kids of my generation.
I am glad the masses use them as a tool. I am just saying overall, people who choose to go into the IT Field are lacking skills I take for granted and I learned on my Commodore 64.
They know how to program a firewall or create a skin for the sims. But they have no idea of what memory mapped I/O or an interrupt is.
Yet every day, I put young pups to shame. It does not matter if it is troubleshooting hardware, or software. It does not matter if it is dealing with programing or configuring. My mental map of the problem is different than theirs.
The skills I learned back in the 80's on a computer that you could understand, I still use today. My "concept" of what a computer is was formed by understanding the whole. RAM, ROM, interrupts, I/O, how the CPU works. All from a machine with 64K or RAM and 20K of ROM.
Under the hood, under all of that abstraction. Is a PC that is very much like a C64. With the C64 people learned mastery of their system. With the PC, so much hardware is out there. It is impossible to learn it all inside out and take advantage of every feature of it. So greater power has always been obtained in the PC world by moving to faster hardware, not by utilizing the current hardware better. It is all abstraction running on very fast, underutilized hardware.
The techs coming out of college for the last 20 years do not understand a computer conceptually like those who learned this stuff in the 70's or 80's. When it comes to trouble shooting all of this abstraction, many folks have no idea that there is anything beneath the abstraction.
I recently attended a college programming class as a requirement for a degree. The instructor gave us a quiz at one point and there was only 5 students out of 60 that passed. Why? Because most students did not know how to write a program on a piece of paper. Without intellisense holding their hand they could not code. I learned to program from the manual that came with my C64. I learned to program better by typing in programs from Compute! Magazine. I have written hundreds of pages of code on paper and typed it into a computer at a later time. It is a skill I take for granted. Without the abstraction of Intellisense most of the class was rendered useless.
Something has been gained, but something has also been lost. When I was a kid I dreamed of computers that could do a 10th of what they do now. I learned everything I could about them. Lived, dreamed, ate, slept computers, computers, computers. Now days. My kids can buy a laptop with 3 gigs of RAM for the price of a C64 and 1541 drive. And what do they do with it? Program? Nope. They learn their friends on FaceBook, not programming. They play games, not write them. They pirate music, not create it.
It looks like those who understand a computer and really make it do something will always remain a small, elite Priesthood.
Price is everything. I think this will be a net gain for netbooks.
In the one corner. We will Apple who will sell you a stripped down iPad for $600 or a decent iPad for $800. Or you can get the Striped down unit with 3g added to it from AT&T with a wireless contract for 2 years. Very cool, very slick, no flash, no cam, just great working apps you have to buy but integrate well. Apps and data will not move in/out well unless you own a 1500 mac.
People with want one, people will desire it and think that they need a portable wireless device. So the netbook they never cared about before becomes a must have device. Becuase....
In the other corner is the netbook. For the most part under $600. I am sure a netbook with detachable keyboard, touch screen, cam, 3g and 2gis of ram can be sold for under $500. Every other wireless carrier in the country who can't offer an iPad can offer one of these with a better priced wireless plan.
So I WANT an iPad that will end up being the low end scrungy one that will cost me $80.00 a month for 2 years and I will have to change cell phone companies or have 2 cell phone compnaies. And I will have to live without flash.
Or I can get a unit with a 2 year plan from my current cell phone company for $50.00 a month AND have flash and a cam.
I think when people have the money to liberate $200 to $500 for a netbook but can't really come up with $600-$800 for an iPad the netbook will be looking pretty good.
The under 22 crowd will be the ones interested in a device that costs more than a laptop but can't sync with their other computer.
Lets also not forget the very thing that drives innovation on the Interet...Porn. The small screen on an iPhone/iTouch is a little to small to decently view porn. The iPad is a better size. With no flash player and Apple blocking any decent porn app that would come through the app store and even a $200 netbook supports a 7 to 9 inch screen AND flash. Lets not forget no cam for taking pictures of the girlfriend. Where is a red blooded young American boy to turn for some gripping single player action?
What do you attribute the glacier receding to during the period of 1850 to 1900? The dozen cars that came to be in the 1890's or all the coal burned in England?
As an event isolated from other factors it tends to show that in the last 160 years they have been shrinking with a good 80 of them before man was creating massive CO2 emissions.
Well they don't talk about what will happen next. To mine an ore that is 20 million an ounce can be done on a plant with no life. Humans will just come back and pound the planet from orbit with nukes. Then take what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
No you are right, that was the old iTunes that had things locked up with DRM because the Music Studios would demand such a thing to allow the iTunes Music store to come to be. Now Apple has been able to let sanity prevail and you can now purchase music that is unlocked.
On the other hand we can now see a world where MS does not mount a serious competition with Apple and what do we get? A draconian environment like the iPhone or iPad. Where Apple controls the hardware and the software, you must program the way Apple approves of to even have a chance of being able to sell your app to iPod users ... IF Apple will allow you to.
If the iPod some how crushed Microsoft on the desktop, (and now it would have to crush linux as well), we would only be able to buy $600 of hardware marked up to $1200 and be beholden to Apple. If they wanted to remove all MP3 players from the iStore and deactivate any mp3 playing software you had purchased, they could. The can lock out any format they want? Take a look at Flash.
On know both sides of the story. Yes, they make sure apps are written with a compiler so that if they change the CPU that is used, all apps can be easily recompiled. They can block shitty apps from making it into the store, they can prevent viruses and spyware.
But they also choke out innovation, kill competition and can dictate by fiat in a well thought out, or arbitrary and capricious manner. The end result is still the same. If either Apple or Microsoft had their way, you would pay through the nose for hardware and/or software. They would control what you can do and they would block all competition.
I will not answer for Joe Sixpack. I will answer for me. The two things that have motivated me in regards to Apple and Microsoft is fear and freedom.
I want to live in a world where the reality is that hardware and software is mostly commoditized. In Microsoft's world, Hardware is cheap, but Microsoft owns the OS and all the data. It does not matter if Windows and Office could turn a profit at $25.00 a copy, Microsoft wants to sell them at $400.00 a pop. They do not want me to have the freedom to choose something else. I fear living in a world where Microsoft makes all the rules.
Then there is Apple. Who promise a Utopia where everything just works(tm). And it does. I just have to live with One Vendor, One OS and one Standard. In Apples vision of the world, It costs me even more than Micorosft's. The hardware is expensive, and Apple wants me to pay for my music and other data over and over again.
I have rejected both visions. If hardware and software can be made inexpensive, then why should either company have the right to run a monopoly and mark up the prices 200% or 400% or 800%?
So what is it about the Windows security model that's inferior to the Linux one?
Because from day one Windows was designed to be a single user operating system. Originally designed to run on very slow hardware and trying to create a user friendly computer interface. At every juncture where the choices were 1) ease of use, 2) speed and 3) security they were decided in that order. The first time they even looked at security was in the early 90's when people started slapping networking on top of Windows 3.1.
While it may be true the the NT line actually thought about security, you then mix in a bunch of legacy compatibility and security issues to maintain backwards compatibility. Trying to secure Windows is like securing a skyscraper where there are no locks on any door for the first 30 floors. You start securing from the 31st floor on up, and you have to admit that from the basement up to floor 30 are so insecure they should be considered compromised by default.
Whereas Unix was designed from day one to be a multi-user multitasking environment. The day the first line of code for Linux was written, there was almost 20 years of Unix security being rolled into it. Remember that is to be contrasted with the 6 years of Windows development where security was job 3.
You still missed the point, the only reason they have a compromised modem/router is because they use windows.
The average user does not know enough to keep their windows system from becoming compromised. Once that happens it is possible for EVIL software to compromise the router or modem. So even if you clean up the computer, the router/modem is still compromised.
If the average user started with an uninfected linux system and an uninfected router/modem. They would not become compromised at all. So they would never have to worry about a compromised router/modem being a problem in the first place.
Not character assassination. Actions speak louder than words. If any president wanted to get things done, he could have the Attorney General champion for the oil industry in court. He could tell congress that he wants a bill on his desk that has drilling in it in the next 3 months. Instead he formed a task force. To quote from one of my favorite poems. To DECIDE means to take action, MAKING A DECISION does not change a thing, but makes people happy.
http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Miscellaneous_Jokes/32095_nay-lad-deciding-s-not-your-ploy-for-that-s-a-risky-game.html
And I did not comment on how good of a policy it is. I just commented on the fact that he is not serious about making it happen. I am willing to admit if I am a small and bitter man. But I think you will have to mark your calendar. If any place he recommended to be studied is actually cleared for drilling (not including court battles by environmental groups) before 2020, I can admit I have unfairly impugned his character.
On the other hand, it will be 10 years before I can be proved right, and in 2020 empty promises of drilling 6 to 8 years ago won't really matter.
Obama proposed that they launch a task force to study a proposal to drill. You would think that is an actual prelude to drilling.
In reality here is what happens. In the short term, many individuals in East Coast States are friendly to Obama because there could be drilling coming their way. Obama does not risk actual drilling right now, because anyplace where they are ready to drill and even a little action would allow drilling to happen, is not on his proposed study list. And by the time the task force which has been hand picked to say "no, can't drill there" is done, it will be 2020.
So where we could drill today, we won't. We will talk about drilling in other places for 10 years, but then we won't do that either.
This is just a chance to talk out of both sides of his mouth. To the pro-drill group he gets to sound good. The the anti-drill group, he can say "just look at the results", you know I am on your side.
Ran Corporate version 9, 10 and 11, then with 12 it all fell apart. The replication database should only grow to 5 gigs in size. But it keeps growing till there is no space on the servers hard drive. We had to literally uninstall it, reinstall it, configure it and run it for 3 months till the database filled a 200 gig hard drive. 3 times. After 9 months and a promised "fix" always soon to be released but never actually seeing the light of day, we switched to Kaspersky.
Let me tell you about my first computer purchase.
I was 17 years old and had a job at K-Mart. At the time, the Commodore-64 was around $500.00 and the Vic-20 was $150.00. So I decided to purchase a Vic-20.
As it turns out, the K-Mart lay away program did not allow you to purchase electronics that way. I did not want to wait to come up with $150.00 money in my pocket would be spent before it was saved. There was a Federated store across that that I could purchase a Vic-20 for the same $150.00.
So I got paid every Friday, and I would go on Saturday across town and make a $50 payment on my VIC. I had paid off $100 and had $50 to go. I got my paycheck on Friday night, and found out at the same time that the price on the VIC-20 had just dropped form $150.00 down to $100.00. The restock fee was $50.00 over at Federated. So my choices at that point were to a) go, ask for my money back, pay the restock fee and buy the computer outright with the money I had in hand. Total cost: $150.00. Or b) make my last payment, total cost $150.00.
Essentially I had purchased a computer that went down in price by 33% the moment I bought it. It was a good lesson. That is ALWAYS the decision you make when you buy a computer. There is always something newer coming along at a lower price. Sometimes it is worth waiting 3 months before purchasing, sometimes you just as well buy it now and be using it for the next 3 months instead of waiting for the next 3 months.
And generally speaking, waiting 3 months to purchase a Microsoft product that they are not already selling to stores 3 months before they ship. That my friend is always a bad idea.
Embedded system programmers often work on systems that do not have floating point math. Same for many mini-computers and micro-computers of the past. There are several programming languages designed to cope with a situation like this. How do to math without floating point and do it FAST.
I have been programming in FORTH since the mid 80's and one of the first things you are taught is how to tackle problems like this using only integers and integer math.
I would just LOVE to see them port Windows CE. Since the thing does not even have the concept of a "current" directory. That is NOT server class software.
Since they will have to write something to run on ARM, might I suggest they take the time to create their own SSH server so it will be possible to administer one of these things like a real computer? This comment is not meant as flame bait. I take care of both Windows and Linux servers remotely. If you have to do it graphically, nonmachine is as fast as RDP so you are not stuck with VNCs performance issues. But when there are bandwidth issues, ssh is much faster than RDP for administrative tasks.
The only network cards I have every had a problem with were wireless cards.
Typically, I keep a stash of old video cards and network cards around. The Belkin FD-7050 wirless USB works out of the box on linux and I can pick 3 of them up for about $20.00 on ebay.
So I work around it or I don't do it. Hardware replacement is an option. When the choice is "take it to a shop and spend $150.00 having them clean it up" or "pay me $10" for the wirless card and I will toss Linux on your system and you will never have another virus again. More and more people are opting for Linux.
I forgot to mention, I am taking an OS class. I am required to run a VM setup at home, the school will only provide support for Virtual PC, but you can run what you want, but if you get in trouble you are on your own.
I need a setup that will let me have 3 active running VMs with Windows Server 2008. So if you don't have at least 3 gigs of RAM, you are chained to a computer on campus to do any classwork and must have a portable hard drive as well.
Is it to much to ask for some baseline requirements for running Linux? There is ZERO slack or excuse for not being able to run 3 VMS of Server 2008, surely one copy of Linux is doable?
You sir, should be shot. Even using the word poulsbo should be a punishable offense...wait, didn't I just use the P word?
The question is unfair. He is asking for a bulletproof way to run Linux at home. No matter how old the computer is, how much space is on the hard drive, if they have USB or not. He just wants it to work everywhere. We can't make dual boot bulletproof. We can't make usb bulletproof. We can't make a virtual machine bullet proof.
That is just to bad, and it is an unfair standard to boot. How much "required" windows software is there? At the community college I attend, Microsoft Office 2007 is a requirement. Computer to old, to bad, get a new one or use a lab on campus. The same is true if you don't have enough room on your drive, enough RAM, or your OS is buggy. To bad, you must do what you need to run Office 2007, or fake it very well. Because it is expected. If you have a problem and you are running office 2003 or Open Office, to bad. There is only support for Office 2007.
The school has set a baseline standard in choosing Office 2007, it is assumed if you are a student, you will run a platform that can support that, if not. To bad, there are computers on campus you can use.
Expecting a minimum standard for Office Software but expecting every student who runs a system that does not have office on it, who currently do there homework in the library, to now have the right to complain that Linux is not bootable at home does not really seem fair to Linux.
You have to have some kind of minimum standard. Like having 256 megs of RAM and at least 6gig on the Hard drive, so you can do a wubi install of Xubuntu. Or that you can boot from a USB drive to run Linux from flash, or you can run an installer to set up a dual boot of Slax (you cant get much lighter on resources than that).
People that don't meet the minimum standard have to find some way to cope. Otherwise I have the answer for you.
The instructor goes to any students home and gets Linux working for them. I know I can install Linux on almost any PC hardware made after 2001 with at least 256 megs of ram, and if I use the right Linux 128 megs of ram. But really. I think it is a bit over the top to expect the instructor to fix every students computer so they can boot Linux in some way on it. Instead of having some sort of baseline requirement for a PC.
I second slax. For one thing it is very easy to add more software to. You can easily set up a dual boot environment with it, you can set it up to boot from a USB drive, or you can run it in a VM. It is light on resources.
I have an installer that on XP systems adds a slax folder and moves ntldr to ntldrxp, and sets up grub4dos as ntldr. At that point the system can be dual booted to slax. It is capable of backup and reimaging the hard drive, doing data recovery work, running antivirus on an infected XP system, or deleting files that are usually not writable.
Slax is an excellent base that you can do almost anything you want with. It is modular and makes a great teaching tool.
Not possible to make such a list.
The big whitelist registry works for stuff like www.pbs.org (good) and www.playboy.com (bad). But the Internet is a big place.
http://myisp.com/Jim is a personal home page about Millard Filmore because Jim finds him cool. (good)
http://myisp.com/Bob is a personal home page about the local Raceway...and where Bob writes snuff erotica. (bad)
And even if we could split it down to portions of a website. What if Jim decides to add a page to his site about women Millard Filmore would want to have sexual relations with, including photos. How would this registry keep up with this?
Currently it is to big of a problem. with no real answer short of monitoring what your kids look at yourself, or lock it all down and make them ask for every resource they need.
When in a boat that is taking on water, you try to do 2 things. 1) Patch the leak and 2) Bail out the water.
The Chicago school district is in much the same boat (pun intended). More money in the right spots would help, but also a lot of that money is thrown at "bad" teachers. To keep things going they are trying to "pump" more money. But they are not fixing the base problem. They have lots of bad teachers.
It does not matter if it is the Unions that won't let you identify bad teachers and get rid of them. Or if it is the school district itself lacks the will to discover and remove bad teachers. I know parents play their part as well, choice of teaching materials, school policies.
The current way of doing things is to just throw more money at it, (much of it consumed at the administration level) and hope enough cash sticks to the good teachers that everything will somehow work out.
The bottom line is to fix the system. To do that they need to fire bad teachers and replace them with better teachers. While they are at that, yes, more money would not hurt.
I think the big thing to take away from this is that Mayor Daily IS the Chicago Political Machine. To do business as a politician you have to be in his good graces and of the same mind.
Obama is cut from the same cloth. Much of his staff grew up as part of Chicago Politics. As a rule, what is popular in Chicago does NOT play well in the rest of the country. So Obama can't say these things himself. But watch how he governs. His mindset and agenda are the same.
If you agree with that agenda then you should be very happy with his presidency. If you don't agree with his agenda, at the very least you should not be surprised by it.
Which is why those misty-eyed dreamers at the London Stock Exchange recently dumped Windows for Linux. But what do they know about the realities of modern business?
They know not to trust their data to a system built with Microsoft Technology. Even if the "stellar minds from Microsoft" come and help fine tune it.
Really, and according the the SI system how many bits are in a nibble? Or a byte? How many bytes are in a page? Things were measured in units based on bits, then in system where octal made sense. Then using hex made sense. Using decimal at this point never made sense. As more memory was being addressed we move up from routinely addressing 256 bytes, to 512 bytes, to 1024 bytes.
At this point you could call it a mistake that they decided to call 1024bytes a kilobyte. Notice the word BYTE has magic properties at this point. It tells us that we are not using 1000 units to a K, but instead using 1024 units to a K.
But since the only people who were dealing with this were folks who were technical and knew what it meant. It would be have been better if they had chosen another term. Alas, they did not and to this day people who obtain any proficiency with computers have to learn this. Many people learn to use computers don't learn this and it has been a problem.
Then vendors have been unscrupulous and started selling some forms of memory and hard drives based on 1000 units and not 1024 units. Thus they could advertise something as more when it was not.
It would be like if the people who sold canned peas and canned carrots decided that there were 15 ounces in a pound. Or brown eggs are sold in dozens of 11 eggs.
The problem is that in the IT sector this is now standard, RAM in 1024 units, USB Drives in 1000 units. The consumer is endlessly confused. For the end user it would be better for us to switch units of measurement. For those who do serious work and need to maintain some relationship with things on a binary level.
It's a mess. And Shuttleworth having to show he is the big man on campus now by making a decision like this by fiat is NOT helping. Slackware, Arch or Gentoo will likely be picking up more users. Even the a novice who has only been around for 1 or two releases is going to get tired of the Queen of Hearts "Off with their heads" attitude is really starting to piss people off.
Since I am now ranting about Shuttleworth lets go all the way. In 2 years time since he announced that Linux could overtake the Mac what have we got? Changes to notifications that have been backported to Gnome and KDE. Working at improving boot times, that is no where near what had been promised. Now every step and every change keeps making Ubuntu look more and more like a cheap Mac Ripoff. And now "off with there heads, off with their heads". The Queen says Mono apps are best. The Queen says standard apps like the gimp don't belong in a standard install. The Queen wants the buttons on the right hand side. The Queen wants everything to be colored like a mac.The Queen wants to number things different.
Every other Linux Distro uses 1024k units and Ubuntu will be the only one to use 1000k units. Is it really Linux for human beings? Does it make it more usable? Is everyone else wrong?
And even if Shuttleworth is right on this point (which I am not ready to concede). What is the next proclamation that the Queen will pull out of her butt and expect everyone to swallow?
Oh I am sure somewhere out there are young people who are learning things that will drive technology in the future. To do that, they will have to understand the under-the-hood stuff. And I KNOW there are young programmers out there. I just don't know any.
I have worked with Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, helped in classes at High School, Jr High School and grade school. I admit I live in a county with less than 100,000 people. I just have not found anyone under 30 that programs or has a great grasp of what really goes on under the hood of a computer programming wise.
I tangently knew some geeks when I was in in High-School (I was such an outsider, I did not even fit in with the geeks). I know what they had for equipment and the kind of things they were into. I have seen what the High Schools around here has to offer. These kids do not hold a candle to the kids of my generation.
I am glad the masses use them as a tool. I am just saying overall, people who choose to go into the IT Field are lacking skills I take for granted and I learned on my Commodore 64.
They know how to program a firewall or create a skin for the sims. But they have no idea of what memory mapped I/O or an interrupt is.
Yet every day, I put young pups to shame. It does not matter if it is troubleshooting hardware, or software. It does not matter if it is dealing with programing or configuring. My mental map of the problem is different than theirs.
The skills I learned back in the 80's on a computer that you could understand, I still use today. My "concept" of what a computer is was formed by understanding the whole. RAM, ROM, interrupts, I/O, how the CPU works. All from a machine with 64K or RAM and 20K of ROM.
Under the hood, under all of that abstraction. Is a PC that is very much like a C64. With the C64 people learned mastery of their system. With the PC, so much hardware is out there. It is impossible to learn it all inside out and take advantage of every feature of it. So greater power has always been obtained in the PC world by moving to faster hardware, not by utilizing the current hardware better. It is all abstraction running on very fast, underutilized hardware.
The techs coming out of college for the last 20 years do not understand a computer conceptually like those who learned this stuff in the 70's or 80's. When it comes to trouble shooting all of this abstraction, many folks have no idea that there is anything beneath the abstraction.
I recently attended a college programming class as a requirement for a degree. The instructor gave us a quiz at one point and there was only 5 students out of 60 that passed. Why? Because most students did not know how to write a program on a piece of paper. Without intellisense holding their hand they could not code. I learned to program from the manual that came with my C64. I learned to program better by typing in programs from Compute! Magazine. I have written hundreds of pages of code on paper and typed it into a computer at a later time. It is a skill I take for granted. Without the abstraction of Intellisense most of the class was rendered useless.
Something has been gained, but something has also been lost. When I was a kid I dreamed of computers that could do a 10th of what they do now. I learned everything I could about them. Lived, dreamed, ate, slept computers, computers, computers. Now days. My kids can buy a laptop with 3 gigs of RAM for the price of a C64 and 1541 drive. And what do they do with it? Program? Nope. They learn their friends on FaceBook, not programming. They play games, not write them. They pirate music, not create it.
It looks like those who understand a computer and really make it do something will always remain a small, elite Priesthood.
Price is everything. I think this will be a net gain for netbooks.
In the one corner. We will Apple who will sell you a stripped down iPad for $600 or a decent iPad for $800. Or you can get the Striped down unit with 3g added to it from AT&T with a wireless contract for 2 years. Very cool, very slick, no flash, no cam, just great working apps you have to buy but integrate well. Apps and data will not move in/out well unless you own a 1500 mac.
People with want one, people will desire it and think that they need a portable wireless device. So the netbook they never cared about before becomes a must have device. Becuase....
In the other corner is the netbook. For the most part under $600. I am sure a netbook with detachable keyboard, touch screen, cam, 3g and 2gis of ram can be sold for under $500. Every other wireless carrier in the country who can't offer an iPad can offer one of these with a better priced wireless plan.
So I WANT an iPad that will end up being the low end scrungy one that will cost me $80.00 a month for 2 years and I will have to change cell phone companies or have 2 cell phone compnaies. And I will have to live without flash.
Or I can get a unit with a 2 year plan from my current cell phone company for $50.00 a month AND have flash and a cam.
I think when people have the money to liberate $200 to $500 for a netbook but can't really come up with $600-$800 for an iPad the netbook will be looking pretty good.
The under 22 crowd will be the ones interested in a device that costs more than a laptop but can't sync with their other computer.
Lets also not forget the very thing that drives innovation on the Interet...Porn. The small screen on an iPhone/iTouch is a little to small to decently view porn. The iPad is a better size. With no flash player and Apple blocking any decent porn app that would come through the app store and even a $200 netbook supports a 7 to 9 inch screen AND flash. Lets not forget no cam for taking pictures of the girlfriend. Where is a red blooded young American boy to turn for some gripping single player action?
What do you attribute the glacier receding to during the period of 1850 to 1900? The dozen cars that came to be in the 1890's or all the coal burned in England?
As an event isolated from other factors it tends to show that in the last 160 years they have been shrinking with a good 80 of them before man was creating massive CO2 emissions.
Well they don't talk about what will happen next. To mine an ore that is 20 million an ounce can be done on a plant with no life. Humans will just come back and pound the planet from orbit with nukes. Then take what they want.
The navi will all be dead now in 6 to 10 years.
A very uplifting story overall.