This is one feature I've been waiting for. Hopefully it will be compatible with iChat AV, since that is my main method of voice chatting over the internet.
However, to be honest, I think the one feature GAIM _really_ needs is multithreading. For instance, when I've got multiple windows open, and one (or multiple ones) are using the gaim-encryption plugin, all the other windows/conversations have to wait for _one_ conversation to finish decrypting/encrypting the message before the rest will continue. It's highly annoying, and since most networking libraries are inherently multithreaded, it doesn't seem like it should be a problem. I'm hoping someone can put that in, soon, as I'm pretty sure it will alleviate some of GAIM's performance issues as well. Hell, I can even help debug the threading on the code level, if someone is willing to start a fork.;-) (hint hint)
...others aren't making much as well. I can't say for other people/colleges, but all of my friends that graduated from UT & UTD from computer science (doesn't matter BA or BS) and MIS are making ~$40K. Some are even under. Eep.
On an interesting note, all of my friends that graduated from EE are making ~$50K. (funny thing is half of them are doing coding jobs and I've seen the quality of their code... it ain't a pretty picture:-X )
It seems like to me IMHO that most companies are getting MIS and Computer Science majors confused...
I wish it wasn't April Fool's, 'cuz that device looks like it would be AWESOME. (granted they could make it fit in the palm of your hand and make it touchscreen)
It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space.
Um, low cost of living? The Austin area may be "inexpensive" compared to California or NY, but the only place you'll get a good rate is if you live in the ghetto, where I live. Only then are you able to get decent 1-1's for about ~$600ish. I meant it, though, when I said "ghetto," so bring your gun. There's a good chance you will need it. This is Texas after all:-P
(FYI I recently bought a 9mm for some home defense because of some recent turbulence in the area... thank god I move in July)
While we're on the business of discussing distcc, I've gotta say... Xcode supports it quite nicely (including the pretty GUI distcc Monitor), and _ALL_ it takes is checking two boxes in the preference panel. I'm serious.
The only problem is, we have found that most of the time the AOL users are reporting our email as spam on accident!
...well, maybe because to some people it _IS_ spam? In my opinion, half of the time companies send emails out, it is unwanted. Some might even call it spam;) And with modern mail filters, isn't it easier to just hit "mark as junk mail" (or however your client calls it) than to actually go through the "unsubscribe" process?
It does seem bad that all it takes is a few clicks from a few lazy users to get email blocked for _ALL_ of AOL's customers, so maybe it would be wiser for them to implement some sort of local junk mail scheme, where it's a bit more cumbersome to globally mark mail as junk for all AOL users? Just a thought...
It's Florida... Remember the 2000 election? "Home of the chads!" What more can I say?...only in Florida;)
I for one will be boycotting EB Games until she gets her money back. Their games are overpriced anyways, and usually a lot cheaper at Best Buy, where they don't make a profit on consumer media (they are a staple product used to lure the customers in to buy things like computers and washing machines)
He's got a point... right now the industry is being outsourced left and right, and the job market is ridiculous. Most people (such as myself) are trying to get _OUT_ of the industry.
How bad is being a physician? I'd think you're probably making more than the average starting salary for programmers (keep in mind most of the people I know aren't even getting the average).
Tea is a much healthier alternative to soda & coffee, that is if you can't kick the habit. Maybe eventually, after you wane yourself off of soda & coffee and drink only tea, you can wane yourself off of caffeine completely.
I never leave home without one of my two rOtring all-in-ones. They're very stylish and durable all-in-one pens, with a black pen, red pen, blue pen, and pencil in one, and a black pen, pencil, highlighter, and stylus in the other. They haven't failed me yet, and the lifetime warranty is great (I damaged one of them, and they sent me a new one no questions asked).
They're a bit pricy at $40 each, but hey, they're worth it (and no where near as expensive as some of those Mont Blancs).
....that I've had Doug Burger and Steve Keckler as professors here at UT, and not only do they know their stuff, but they're great professors as well, and they really seem to intimately care about the technology. They have a great sense of humor too (such as Dr. Burger complaining that he doesn't even have root access to his own machines:-P)
...TV is sooooo choked with advertisements that it has become a pain to watch. If I want to be entertained, I'll go rent or buy a DVD rather than watch 10 minutes of a movie on cable, then watch 5 minutes of advertisements (or more), repeat. There is just _WAY_ too much advertising on TV.
Of course, I'm sure companies will just see this situation as "Oh, I guess we need to put more advertisements on the web." As if there weren't already pop-up ads galore. Good thing that I haven't seen a pop-up ad in years, otherwise I'd be really annoyed.:-)
In the end, the internet is better than television at conveying things like information and/or news because it is much faster and more efficient. And I won't even begin to get into the more addictive side of the internet, such as online multiplayer games (*cough* Counterstrike *cough*);-)
An on-die memory controller isn't necessarily better, because it'll lock the processor to a certain memory bus, and you can't change the memory bus without changing the processor.
...and considering AMD's successive memory bus speed jumping lately, that might not be a good thing... ("266" MHz DDR -> "333" MHz DDR -> "400" MHz DDR, hmmmm.....)
Still, I believe that Apple has a legitimate claim to the Unix name, and that, contrary to what you say, OS X probably qualifies as a UNIX; at least as much as, say, Solaris does.
I don't agree. OS X is based on a BSD kernel (a modified version of 4.4-LITE, iirc). This means that technically, OS X isn't UNIX per-se; it is BSD. Hence, let us look at BSD. It was created at Berkeley as one of many UNIX-like derivatives. It's _NOT_ UNIX, as they had to take out all of AT&T's proprietary UNIX code and come up with their own equivalent code (iirc, once again). Now let's go back to OS X: since it is based on BSD, it would only be [a] UNIX if BSD is [a] UNIX, since it is directly BSD, and not directly UNIX per-se. HOWEVER, BSD plain and simply _is_not_ UNIX. Therefore, since OS X is based on BSD, which is not [a] UNIX, then OS X is by definition not [a] UNIX.
If that doesn't convince you, we can also look at the alternative argument that Apple still needs to be certified in order to use the trademark "UNIX." Sun and IBM both do, with Solaris and HP-UX, iirc. To say that "OS X probably qualifies as a UNIX; at least as much as, say, Solaris does" is very subjective; it might be true technologically (I doubt it, but that's my own subjective opinion), but it certainly isn't true, as far as being certified goes.
Bottom line, I feel that Apple is asking for a little bit too much here. It really isn't like they're asking for very much money, nor are they going about this in a distasteful fashion (*cough* SCO *cough*). The Open Group is being pretty fair about it, imho (well, as far as corporations can be). Plus, if Apple were to win, GNU would henceforth be known as GIU (GIU Is Unix), not to mention every other OS out there. (GIU/Debian? Zeta UNIX? BSD UNIX? Linux UNIX? Oh, here's a good one... Microsoft UNIX! --hey, they have a command prompt, that counts don't it??)
All sarcasm aside, I don't personally feel Apple has a strong case, much less _tons_ of money. I forsee them losing more money in the court battles than in just licensing it (for even a decade), if they haven't already. But please, let me know if I'm wrong on any of my "facts."
...what's wrong with Debian Unstable? I'm using it on my laptop, and it has all the bleeding-edge packages you could want, and you could always throw in your own custom 2.4.20 kernel (or use one from the unstable tree). It has Gnome 2.2, KDE 3.1, XFree86 4.3 (iirc), AA'd fonts, etc. Check HERE for a _comprehensive_ list of packages (and deps). Why pay a bunch of money for Libranet (which mainly uses packages from the Debian tree, IIRC) when you could just use the unstable tree, which, in my experience, is stable _most_ of the time?
(shameless Gentoo plug):...or you could just use Gentoo, which will solve all your problems and help you succeed in your quest for World Domina... er, Peace... at the same time being bleeding-edge AND _very_ stable.;)
Thank you:-) I don't wanna ruin my karma, hence the AC. Only took me two years (of only checking the front page)
...but to stay on topic, it sounds good, I will wait a week before even attempting to download it and throw it on a spare partition on my server. Quick question, is this ProPolice by Hiroaki Etoh which is integrated into OpenBSD's 'system compiler' the same as the stack protector patch for GCC developed by Hiroaki Etoh at IBM, as previously mentioned on/. concerning the new Trusted Debian 1.0 release, just without the fancy 'ProPolice' name?
Well, the link is down (thank you Slashdot), so I figure I'd go ahead and give some of my personal opinions on it, since I bought one about two months ago...
Overall, I'm mostly satisfied with it. I've got GNU/Debian running on it perfectly (other than the damn Battery Charge Monitor, ugh). And at the time, I thought the cost was very nice ($2000 with a $300 mail in rebate). They had the rebate because yes, they ARE discontinuing the product (I doubt you can find one in stores now) so they can review the line to see if they want to put out more laptops from vpr Matrix. It runs fast and smooth, and with great hardware and Linux support, I shouldn't complain. I also like how you can disable Speedstep in the BIOS, although since I am unfamiliar with modern laptops, that might be a common option. Finally, I have to admit, it is _VERY_ stylish for an x86 laptop (my original plan was to get a TiBook, and I regret not doing so), and for the most part, I guess it's lighter than most other laptops with similar features.
HOWEVER, there are _quite_ a few issues with it. For one, the damn built-in NIC doesn't work 99% of the time. I have resorted to using my external PCMCIA NIC (or wireless, when it is available). Seems pretty bad to me, but mine could just be defective (or I could have just fsck'd it up testing out all those Linux drivers, heh). Also, the keyboard is VERY fragile, ugh. Keys pop off all the time -- there are 4 posts, one in each corner under every key... the bottom 2 hinge onto the board and the top two snap on... those top two break very easily. What I find questionable is the fact that Best Buy salesmen were trying to tell me the keyboard is very fragile and really used that to try to get me to buy the warranty (I didn't, but I might go back to get it, ugh). Also... (and I should've done my research on this ahead of time) it uses an Ali chipset, which I'm _not_ very fond of. Getting apm working properly is a B*TCH. (I haven't succeeded thus far)
Overall, I made a decision, and I'm stuck with it, so I guess I better be happy with the vpr Matrix 200A5. Since hindsight is 20/20, looking back, I should have waited, for pretty much all other laptop manufacturers have put out better stuff out there (though not as light or stylish) for considerably cheaper since I bought it. My original plan was to buy the 15" PowerBook, which I didn't for various reasons, so I bought the 200A5 instead. I regret it. I would've boughten the 17" PowerBook, but cost is an issue for me. My suggestion to other people? Stay away from it (if you can even find one), and get either a PowerBook instead, or if you like x86, get a Toshiba or a Compaq/HQ or whatnot. There are some very nice laptops out on the market with better hardware specs and cheaper prices. Just my $.02.
...is it rainproof? If you get rained on with the backpack on (which happens often to students), does it still work? I know the material is, but what about the part with the controls? For all you iPod owners out there, it's a pretty cool contraption. I'd still rather have the jacket though.
Talking about PC becoming neurotic, in my computer architecture class, my professor discussed factors that can affect the operation of a CPU. One such factor was alpha particles from the sun (I'm not kidding). Since transistors and wires in CPUs are getting so small nowadays (what,.13 or.15 micron, last I checked? even smaller for wire traces), they actually have a risk of having electrons knocked off their datapaths and onto others, potentially changing a logical 1 to a logical 0, and vice-versa. Hence, the reason for Space Shuttles to have triple-redundancy. Don't think you need ECC? Think again.
Slashdot Mirror
However, to be honest, I think the one feature GAIM _really_ needs is multithreading. For instance, when I've got multiple windows open, and one (or multiple ones) are using the gaim-encryption plugin, all the other windows/conversations have to wait for _one_ conversation to finish decrypting/encrypting the message before the rest will continue. It's highly annoying, and since most networking libraries are inherently multithreaded, it doesn't seem like it should be a problem. I'm hoping someone can put that in, soon, as I'm pretty sure it will alleviate some of GAIM's performance issues as well. Hell, I can even help debug the threading on the code level, if someone is willing to start a fork. ;-) (hint hint)
On an interesting note, all of my friends that graduated from EE are making ~$50K. (funny thing is half of them are doing coding jobs and I've seen the quality of their code... it ain't a pretty picture :-X )
It seems like to me IMHO that most companies are getting MIS and Computer Science majors confused...
Word up to your mother, Spidey
...doesn't Microsoft now also own the Trademark on "DOS" ?
I wish it wasn't April Fool's, 'cuz that device looks like it would be AWESOME. (granted they could make it fit in the palm of your hand and make it touchscreen)
Um, low cost of living? The Austin area may be "inexpensive" compared to California or NY, but the only place you'll get a good rate is if you live in the ghetto, where I live. Only then are you able to get decent 1-1's for about ~$600ish. I meant it, though, when I said "ghetto," so bring your gun. There's a good chance you will need it. This is Texas after all :-P
(FYI I recently bought a 9mm for some home defense because of some recent turbulence in the area... thank god I move in July)
While we're on the business of discussing distcc, I've gotta say... Xcode supports it quite nicely (including the pretty GUI distcc Monitor), and _ALL_ it takes is checking two boxes in the preference panel. I'm serious.
...well, maybe because to some people it _IS_ spam? In my opinion, half of the time companies send emails out, it is unwanted. Some might even call it spam ;) And with modern mail filters, isn't it easier to just hit "mark as junk mail" (or however your client calls it) than to actually go through the "unsubscribe" process?
It does seem bad that all it takes is a few clicks from a few lazy users to get email blocked for _ALL_ of AOL's customers, so maybe it would be wiser for them to implement some sort of local junk mail scheme, where it's a bit more cumbersome to globally mark mail as junk for all AOL users? Just a thought...
I for one will be boycotting EB Games until she gets her money back. Their games are overpriced anyways, and usually a lot cheaper at Best Buy, where they don't make a profit on consumer media (they are a staple product used to lure the customers in to buy things like computers and washing machines)
How bad is being a physician? I'd think you're probably making more than the average starting salary for programmers (keep in mind most of the people I know aren't even getting the average).
Just a thought.
They're a bit pricy at $40 each, but hey, they're worth it (and no where near as expensive as some of those Mont Blancs).
...sounds like portable vertigo, to me! _Exactly_ what I need at 40,000 feet in the air with my ears popping and my stomach ill with air-sickness.
....that I've had Doug Burger and Steve Keckler as professors here at UT, and not only do they know their stuff, but they're great professors as well, and they really seem to intimately care about the technology. They have a great sense of humor too (such as Dr. Burger complaining that he doesn't even have root access to his own machines :-P)
...I'm switching to Ernie Ball strings. No better way to show your support than with cold, hard cash :-)
The government owes SCO money? The government's response should be entertaining... :)
Of course, I'm sure companies will just see this situation as "Oh, I guess we need to put more advertisements on the web." As if there weren't already pop-up ads galore. Good thing that I haven't seen a pop-up ad in years, otherwise I'd be really annoyed. :-)
In the end, the internet is better than television at conveying things like information and/or news because it is much faster and more efficient. And I won't even begin to get into the more addictive side of the internet, such as online multiplayer games (*cough* Counterstrike *cough*) ;-)
...and considering AMD's successive memory bus speed jumping lately, that might not be a good thing... ("266" MHz DDR -> "333" MHz DDR -> "400" MHz DDR, hmmmm.....)
I don't agree. OS X is based on a BSD kernel (a modified version of 4.4-LITE, iirc). This means that technically, OS X isn't UNIX per-se; it is BSD. Hence, let us look at BSD. It was created at Berkeley as one of many UNIX-like derivatives. It's _NOT_ UNIX, as they had to take out all of AT&T's proprietary UNIX code and come up with their own equivalent code (iirc, once again). Now let's go back to OS X: since it is based on BSD, it would only be [a] UNIX if BSD is [a] UNIX, since it is directly BSD, and not directly UNIX per-se. HOWEVER, BSD plain and simply _is_not_ UNIX. Therefore, since OS X is based on BSD, which is not [a] UNIX, then OS X is by definition not [a] UNIX.
If that doesn't convince you, we can also look at the alternative argument that Apple still needs to be certified in order to use the trademark "UNIX." Sun and IBM both do, with Solaris and HP-UX, iirc. To say that "OS X probably qualifies as a UNIX; at least as much as, say, Solaris does" is very subjective; it might be true technologically (I doubt it, but that's my own subjective opinion), but it certainly isn't true, as far as being certified goes.
Bottom line, I feel that Apple is asking for a little bit too much here. It really isn't like they're asking for very much money, nor are they going about this in a distasteful fashion (*cough* SCO *cough*). The Open Group is being pretty fair about it, imho (well, as far as corporations can be). Plus, if Apple were to win, GNU would henceforth be known as GIU (GIU Is Unix), not to mention every other OS out there. (GIU/Debian? Zeta UNIX? BSD UNIX? Linux UNIX? Oh, here's a good one... Microsoft UNIX! --hey, they have a command prompt, that counts don't it??)
All sarcasm aside, I don't personally feel Apple has a strong case, much less _tons_ of money. I forsee them losing more money in the court battles than in just licensing it (for even a decade), if they haven't already. But please, let me know if I'm wrong on any of my "facts."
(shameless Gentoo plug): ...or you could just use Gentoo, which will solve all your problems and help you succeed in your quest for World Domina... er, Peace... at the same time being bleeding-edge AND _very_ stable. ;)
...but to stay on topic, it sounds good, I will wait a week before even attempting to download it and throw it on a spare partition on my server. Quick question, is this ProPolice by Hiroaki Etoh which is integrated into OpenBSD's 'system compiler' the same as the stack protector patch for GCC developed by Hiroaki Etoh at IBM, as previously mentioned on /. concerning the new Trusted Debian 1.0 release, just without the fancy 'ProPolice' name?
HOWEVER, there are _quite_ a few issues with it. For one, the damn built-in NIC doesn't work 99% of the time. I have resorted to using my external PCMCIA NIC (or wireless, when it is available). Seems pretty bad to me, but mine could just be defective (or I could have just fsck'd it up testing out all those Linux drivers, heh). Also, the keyboard is VERY fragile, ugh. Keys pop off all the time -- there are 4 posts, one in each corner under every key... the bottom 2 hinge onto the board and the top two snap on... those top two break very easily. What I find questionable is the fact that Best Buy salesmen were trying to tell me the keyboard is very fragile and really used that to try to get me to buy the warranty (I didn't, but I might go back to get it, ugh). Also... (and I should've done my research on this ahead of time) it uses an Ali chipset, which I'm _not_ very fond of. Getting apm working properly is a B*TCH. (I haven't succeeded thus far)
Overall, I made a decision, and I'm stuck with it, so I guess I better be happy with the vpr Matrix 200A5. Since hindsight is 20/20, looking back, I should have waited, for pretty much all other laptop manufacturers have put out better stuff out there (though not as light or stylish) for considerably cheaper since I bought it. My original plan was to buy the 15" PowerBook, which I didn't for various reasons, so I bought the 200A5 instead. I regret it. I would've boughten the 17" PowerBook, but cost is an issue for me. My suggestion to other people? Stay away from it (if you can even find one), and get either a PowerBook instead, or if you like x86, get a Toshiba or a Compaq/HQ or whatnot. There are some very nice laptops out on the market with better hardware specs and cheaper prices. Just my $.02.
...is it rainproof? If you get rained on with the backpack on (which happens often to students), does it still work? I know the material is, but what about the part with the controls? For all you iPod owners out there, it's a pretty cool contraption. I'd still rather have the jacket though.
Talking about PC becoming neurotic, in my computer architecture class, my professor discussed factors that can affect the operation of a CPU. One such factor was alpha particles from the sun (I'm not kidding). Since transistors and wires in CPUs are getting so small nowadays (what, .13 or .15 micron, last I checked? even smaller for wire traces), they actually have a risk of having electrons knocked off their datapaths and onto others, potentially changing a logical 1 to a logical 0, and vice-versa. Hence, the reason for Space Shuttles to have triple-redundancy. Don't think you need ECC? Think again.