In Australia, we were encouraged to buy textbooks in highschool and uni but not overly penalised if we bought second-hand. Assignment questions were handed out separately and not those from the book; the ones in the book we'd use during classes to revise with.
I'm very glad not to have had American university lecturers, from the sound of things.
Funnily enough, I know I don't want fsdn.com's content because the side bar is annoying bloatware that cripples the utility of the site. I'm very glad to have NoScript on the case, blocking it for me. (Which makes me wonder how many other horror websites there are out there whose horrible bloat I've been saved from by virtue of my browsers blocking XSS.)
Then they walk around the ranch a little, and the Aussie shows off his herd of cattle. The Texan immediately says, "We have longhorns that are at least twice as large as your cows".
The conversation has, meanwhile, almost died [...]
I'm not surprised. It must be tough when you're always having to compensate for the small size of your teensy tiny little State;-)
Western Australia: Area 2,645,615 km Queensland, Australia: Area 1,730,648 km Northern Territory, Australia: Area 1,349,129 km Alaska, USA: Area 1,717,854 km South Australia: Area 983,482 km New South Wales, Australia: Area 800,642 km Texas, USA: Area 695,622 km
Oh FFS, the year is 2009 not 1999. Linux being used for servers in big business and multinationals is not newsworthy. Linux is a mainstream server platform. This is a "dog bites man" story and isn't worth our attention.
No, your hypothetical was an extremely poor one. Seriously, Windows 95?
It sounds like you would be OK with 99% of your potential users being unable to run your application? Good for you.
What on earth are you talking about. The apps software I write supports Windows 98-Seven (and, for what it's worth: Mac OS X, Linux, ReactOS and a boatload of other Unixes via WINE emulation). Windows 95 is dead, dude.
The Firefox team is not me, and I am not the Firefox team. Supporting only what you know you can support is a wise move in anyone's books though.
Who is to say that 15 years from now the majority of people won't "still" be running Windows 7 for perfectly good reasons instead of upgrading to Windows 8/9 or the latest Windows 10? It could happen and developers will have to deal with it.
My prediction is, in 15 years time, the then-mature ReactOS will completely own the Windows OS market and will have done so for close to a decade. Microsoft will, if they're smart, have moved on to other things by then.
You should be for supporting the *most popular* operating systems. What would happen if you designed an application just for Windows 7, but 99% of your potential customer base was running Windows 95? No one would buy your app.
If they're running Windows 95 in 2009 as their main system (not in a virtual machine), you can be pretty certain they don't buy any hardware or software at all, so losing them is painless financially.
Personally, I like being able to have my software run on Windows 98-Seven (and ReactOS and WINE) but I'm just one of the little guys with the luxury of being able to set my own priorities. The Mozilla devs, they have funding restrictions on staff and a maze of proprietory API licenses to choose between... oh wait, no they don't. The simple reality is the Firefox team can't find anybody to keep the unsexy and dull backwards compatibility code working, so they're giving everyone fair warning that they're dropping support now rather than hoping for the best and be accused of dropping the ball (in a potentially dangerous/insecure way) later. Fair enough, really.
It's impossible to have a "XP compatible OS" since the OS would have to support WIN32 API. The WIN32 API is copyrighted so if Microsoft doesn't license it to you, you can't use it.
ReactOS and WINE have already reimplimented the Windows API from scratch as open source, thus there aren't copyright issues.
ReactOS already runs a surprising number of Windows apps, and WINE's been rather successful at running Windows apps on Linux and other Unix-like OSes.
Frankly, I believe the US chose to have him tried by Iraqis precisely because they could have him convicted and executed for more expediently there than in the US.
It wasn't a US trial they were most fearful of, it was a UN trial. The case against Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia was comparatively more clean-cut than the one against Saddam, yet, Milosevic put up an extremely good defence. Had he not died while on trial, there's every chance he would have either left the court a free man or found guilty on only relatively minor charges.
In addition to that, Saddam knew where all the American bones were buried: It was the US who sold him those WMD in the 1980s, and he was hand-shaking chums with Rumsfeld and other bigwigs at the time. All of this would have been thrown into the open in a fair trial and made George W Bush's top brass directly complicit to the commission of war crimes were he found guilty. Far better for the US to have Saddam's trial over and done quickly with a kangaroo court.
Personally, I used to go through 4-5 globes per year, in each socket. Never mind the financial savings (which are certainly there), the big benefit is not having to stuff around on ladders changing light globes all the time.
CFL globes have lasted very well and I don't regret switching one bit. I couldn't imagine going back to those primitive tungsten things that expended more heat than light and were, in practice, designed with predetermined obsolescence more in mind than quality (ie, made so as to break regularly to ensure greater sales).
It amazes me that Americans would be resistant to CFL globes. They simply make so much sense. (But then, I guess the USA is the country still desperately grappling to cope with that old 19th century debate on Evolution in the 21st century and clinging to Imperial measures when everyone else abandoned them in the mid-20th. Hope you all catch up someday, guys.)
Applications and games software (the typical uses for C and C++) will be increasingly outsourced to cheaper labour markets and these cheaper labour markets are catching up in their skillsets and experience. You'll be increasingly unable to point to these programmers and class them as incompetent or unable to communicate with Westerners.
Open source software development is increasingly wiping bare the number of market segments available for commercial software development. Yes, more free software for all, but, fewer employment opportunities in software development except in increasingly tighter market niches which will by definition sustain fewer jobs. FOSS activists will typically point to app support as the employment generator, which makes little sense as: (1) what leads people into software development is completely different to what makes people survive and succeed as phone jockeys, and, (2) if the software is any good, you'll be putting your support dept out of business.
The market for Java programmers is woefully overstated. Scratch many job ads and you'll find Java is a "shovelware" skillset that managers include as a requirement for web software developers whether or not they actually use it. Some other scripting language (Perl, PHP, etc) is the usual tool of choice by a large multiple.
Unfortunately, you'll be graduating into a truly awful economic environment without the prior experience you'll need to secure job interviews. If you're not extremely lucky, the gap between your graduation and your first job will grow and begin to stick out like a sore thumb. Take anything you're offered in a computing field right now before this 'Great Recession' really takes hold to keep your toe in the door. Best of luck.
So, who else is shocked that Team $10 laptop didn't actually have the magic bullet? No hands?
Pick me, Fatcat!
Couple of Zilog 380s or a cheap later model Motorolla 68k chips, Micro SD card support for storage, specialised TV-out SVGA so they can hook it up to their TV, a second-hand keyboard they can probably find for nix. Add one of the GPL microcomputer GUI OSes like BeOS or AmigaOS (or whatever GPL clones exist if licenses are too pricey) and you're laughing.
For a tenner, you're going to get a microcomputer with whatever modern era storage and RAM is cheap. That's more than enough for working online, education software, and business needs. It's certainly more than what sufficed for Western consumers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
If you're expecting a desktop or laptop with high spec modern components for cheap, you're not looking at the what the market can afford there. Nor are you looking at what its current competitors are already doing for $12 with much smaller volumes and no government subsidies.
First thing you'd do when initiating that page would be to plug "System requirements Windows WINE" into Google and start wading through results. I know my apps would certainly be there somewhere (I make a point of testing against Windows 98-Seven, WINE and ReactOS).
there's a scenario about Australia (or any random non-African continent) being colonised by a single woman, pregnant with a male foetus, being blown on a raft/ boat/ flood debris raft across from Indonesia. Not impossible, but decidedly implausible.
Particularly when you know that (as most people in this part of the world learn in school) that Australia was originally settled after people walked here from Indonesia. Back then, the sea level was lower and there was a land bridge between the two.
What alternative is there? You can't stay on XP forever - eventually support will go away, patches will stop, fire and blood will rain from the skies, etc. Eventually, IT will have to move to a new OS [...]
ReactOS is getting better and better all the time. Given a couple of years (and assuming their developers list snowballs as so many other successful GPL projects do) and some donations from folks with a little spare folding, this is the OS I'd be shifting people onto.
Fundamentally, what most people want is an OS platform they can install their Windows apps onto and which looks familiar. ReactOS provides that (enough even at this early stage to support apps including Firefox and Thunderbird), currently in an amazingly tiny footprint of under 30M. Who'd want to run that resource heavy game or app on Vista or Windows 7 when they can squeeze much better performance out of a trim (and free) GPL Windows, eh?
It was University policy that they owned any patents they filed for on your behalf, but you would get 50% of the royalties.
Given the cost of registering then protecting your patent in the courts would be prohibitive to all and near impossible for most ordinary salary earners (let alone students on their student grants!), that's actually quite a sound deal they're offering.
What you're seeming to neglect, in the desperate hope that OSS software can now compete on cost, is that the cost of desktop software licenses easily pales compared to all the other costs involved in hiring and retaining staff; salary being the biggest component.
If an accountant is looking for fat to trim, software isn't going to be it. That runs the risk of incurring large costs in either finding people with skills in those unfamiliar software apps in their CV or retraining people to use them. Risk is the last thing these people will be thinking of. It's conservative choice time. Nope, it's layoffs.
Very small business and the home market are where people will start looking at cutting back on software costs. Unfortunately, that same thing will also bite everyone who supplies software and services to these markets in their day jobs which pay the rent so they can code OSS in their spare time. There are no silver linings in the oncoming recession.
If OSS is going to compete, it has to be on quality. In many areas it already does. In many, it doesn't. Publicise the former, encourage the latter to improve and contribute if you're able.
At the very top end, sure. The Mac Minis, on the other hand, are way overpriced and under-specced. Hardware from two years ago at "average consumer desktop of today" prices. Woeful stuff considering the only alternative for a Mac desktop system (table lamps don't count) is the Mac Pro at a hefty USD $2800.
Oh, for goodness sake: try to at least catch up to the twentieth century, will you.
Yes, look, I know you're still agonising over whether to teach creationism in school science classes and burn witches over there, but, you must surely realise the consequences of your letting the world leave you behind, right?
There are tons of fake Nikes coming from Asia that are honestly way worse in quality, durability, and comfort.
Probably more scary for American companies like Nike: the fakes are often of better quality manufacture, and often considerably.
I definitely remember back in the 1980s and 1990s the cheapie Bali cassette albums were always far better quality than what the big studios were releasing. They used high quality tape, decent glue and strong cassette cartridges. Meanwhile the big studios used whatever was cheapest in order to inflate their profits that extra bit further.
What makes you think he uses a Mac? You have heard of paid product placement, right?
Apple is especially aggressive at product placement. In popular TV shows and higher budget movies, the only time you won't see a Mac on the desk is if the computer is evil or is scripted to fail in some way.
In any country you go to, no matter who the American president is, you'll find anti-Americans, and it's probably worse today, of course, but I doubt Obama will solve your problems.
I think you'll find that people overseas judge Americans by their country's foreign policy. That said, there's very little between McCain and Obama on foreign policy anyway (one is planning on withdrawing from Iraq before attacking Iran, the other apparently plans to have both wars ongoing concurrently). So yeah, America's name will remain Mud either way.
How the robot reacts in relation to eye contact will be just as much of a problem as it is depending on which culture you grew up in as a human.
For example, Anglo Australians show engagement and respect authority figures by keeping eye contact when you're speaking to them. Aboriginal Australians, by contrast, have it in their culture that you shouldn't keep eye contact with authority figures as it implies insubordination. Lord knows how trouble that miscommunication has caused in less enlightened times...
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In Australia, we were encouraged to buy textbooks in highschool and uni but not overly penalised if we bought second-hand. Assignment questions were handed out separately and not those from the book; the ones in the book we'd use during classes to revise with.
I'm very glad not to have had American university lecturers, from the sound of things.
And I know that fsdn.com is also a trusted site.
Funnily enough, I know I don't want fsdn.com's content because the side bar is annoying bloatware that cripples the utility of the site. I'm very glad to have NoScript on the case, blocking it for me. (Which makes me wonder how many other horror websites there are out there whose horrible bloat I've been saved from by virtue of my browsers blocking XSS.)
"Lunix is the crappiest OS since the days of Dos 6.2"
Honestly, what did you expect from a small Unix for the Commodore 64 microcomputer? Frankly, I think its features list is pretty damned impressive considering the hardware they're targeting.
There is no such limit.
Certainly true for the US, but, not true for some other parts of the world.
The Aussie shows off his big wheat field and the Texan says, "Oh! We have wheat fields that are at least twice as large".
I doubt it ;-)
Then they walk around the ranch a little, and the Aussie shows off his herd of cattle. The Texan immediately says, "We have longhorns that are at least twice as large as your cows".
Not quite twice the size, but, they're a larger breed. Mind you, Australia has the world's largest cattle station :-)
The conversation has, meanwhile, almost died [...]
I'm not surprised. It must be tough when you're always having to compensate for the small size of your teensy tiny little State ;-)
Western Australia: Area 2,645,615 km
Queensland, Australia: Area 1,730,648 km
Northern Territory, Australia: Area 1,349,129 km
Alaska, USA: Area 1,717,854 km
South Australia: Area 983,482 km
New South Wales, Australia: Area 800,642 km
Texas, USA: Area 695,622 km
Oh FFS, the year is 2009 not 1999. Linux being used for servers in big business and multinationals is not newsworthy. Linux is a mainstream server platform. This is a "dog bites man" story and isn't worth our attention.
You missed the point. That was hypothetical.
No, your hypothetical was an extremely poor one. Seriously, Windows 95?
It sounds like you would be OK with 99% of your potential users being unable to run your application? Good for you.
What on earth are you talking about. The apps software I write supports Windows 98-Seven (and, for what it's worth: Mac OS X, Linux, ReactOS and a boatload of other Unixes via WINE emulation). Windows 95 is dead, dude.
The Firefox team is not me, and I am not the Firefox team. Supporting only what you know you can support is a wise move in anyone's books though.
Who is to say that 15 years from now the majority of people won't "still" be running Windows 7 for perfectly good reasons instead of upgrading to Windows 8/9 or the latest Windows 10? It could happen and developers will have to deal with it.
My prediction is, in 15 years time, the then-mature ReactOS will completely own the Windows OS market and will have done so for close to a decade. Microsoft will, if they're smart, have moved on to other things by then.
You should be for supporting the *most popular* operating systems. What would happen if you designed an application just for Windows 7, but 99% of your potential customer base was running Windows 95? No one would buy your app.
If they're running Windows 95 in 2009 as their main system (not in a virtual machine), you can be pretty certain they don't buy any hardware or software at all, so losing them is painless financially.
Personally, I like being able to have my software run on Windows 98-Seven (and ReactOS and WINE) but I'm just one of the little guys with the luxury of being able to set my own priorities. The Mozilla devs, they have funding restrictions on staff and a maze of proprietory API licenses to choose between... oh wait, no they don't. The simple reality is the Firefox team can't find anybody to keep the unsexy and dull backwards compatibility code working, so they're giving everyone fair warning that they're dropping support now rather than hoping for the best and be accused of dropping the ball (in a potentially dangerous/insecure way) later. Fair enough, really.
It's impossible to have a "XP compatible OS" since the OS would have to support WIN32 API. The WIN32 API is copyrighted so if Microsoft doesn't license it to you, you can't use it.
ReactOS and WINE have already reimplimented the Windows API from scratch as open source, thus there aren't copyright issues.
ReactOS already runs a surprising number of Windows apps, and WINE's been rather successful at running Windows apps on Linux and other Unix-like OSes.
Frankly, I believe the US chose to have him tried by Iraqis precisely because they could have him convicted and executed for more expediently there than in the US.
It wasn't a US trial they were most fearful of, it was a UN trial. The case against Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia was comparatively more clean-cut than the one against Saddam, yet, Milosevic put up an extremely good defence. Had he not died while on trial, there's every chance he would have either left the court a free man or found guilty on only relatively minor charges.
In addition to that, Saddam knew where all the American bones were buried: It was the US who sold him those WMD in the 1980s, and he was hand-shaking chums with Rumsfeld and other bigwigs at the time. All of this would have been thrown into the open in a fair trial and made George W Bush's top brass directly complicit to the commission of war crimes were he found guilty. Far better for the US to have Saddam's trial over and done quickly with a kangaroo court.
Personally, I used to go through 4-5 globes per year, in each socket. Never mind the financial savings (which are certainly there), the big benefit is not having to stuff around on ladders changing light globes all the time.
CFL globes have lasted very well and I don't regret switching one bit. I couldn't imagine going back to those primitive tungsten things that expended more heat than light and were, in practice, designed with predetermined obsolescence more in mind than quality (ie, made so as to break regularly to ensure greater sales).
It amazes me that Americans would be resistant to CFL globes. They simply make so much sense. (But then, I guess the USA is the country still desperately grappling to cope with that old 19th century debate on Evolution in the 21st century and clinging to Imperial measures when everyone else abandoned them in the mid-20th. Hope you all catch up someday, guys.)
Applications and games software (the typical uses for C and C++) will be increasingly outsourced to cheaper labour markets and these cheaper labour markets are catching up in their skillsets and experience. You'll be increasingly unable to point to these programmers and class them as incompetent or unable to communicate with Westerners.
Open source software development is increasingly wiping bare the number of market segments available for commercial software development. Yes, more free software for all, but, fewer employment opportunities in software development except in increasingly tighter market niches which will by definition sustain fewer jobs. FOSS activists will typically point to app support as the employment generator, which makes little sense as: (1) what leads people into software development is completely different to what makes people survive and succeed as phone jockeys, and, (2) if the software is any good, you'll be putting your support dept out of business.
The market for Java programmers is woefully overstated. Scratch many job ads and you'll find Java is a "shovelware" skillset that managers include as a requirement for web software developers whether or not they actually use it. Some other scripting language (Perl, PHP, etc) is the usual tool of choice by a large multiple.
Unfortunately, you'll be graduating into a truly awful economic environment without the prior experience you'll need to secure job interviews. If you're not extremely lucky, the gap between your graduation and your first job will grow and begin to stick out like a sore thumb. Take anything you're offered in a computing field right now before this 'Great Recession' really takes hold to keep your toe in the door. Best of luck.
Except if you bothered to do a fair comparison, Apple hardware isn't more expensive than a similarly-configured Dell.
Only because Dell would charge a hefty finders fee to locate the outdated parts. Seriously, how long since that last Mac Mini refresh?
So, who else is shocked that Team $10 laptop didn't actually have the magic bullet? No hands?
Pick me, Fatcat!
Couple of Zilog 380s or a cheap later model Motorolla 68k chips, Micro SD card support for storage, specialised TV-out SVGA so they can hook it up to their TV, a second-hand keyboard they can probably find for nix. Add one of the GPL microcomputer GUI OSes like BeOS or AmigaOS (or whatever GPL clones exist if licenses are too pricey) and you're laughing.
For a tenner, you're going to get a microcomputer with whatever modern era storage and RAM is cheap. That's more than enough for working online, education software, and business needs. It's certainly more than what sufficed for Western consumers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
If you're expecting a desktop or laptop with high spec modern components for cheap, you're not looking at the what the market can afford there. Nor are you looking at what its current competitors are already doing for $12 with much smaller volumes and no government subsidies.
Seriously lame list.
First thing you'd do when initiating that page would be to plug "System requirements Windows WINE" into Google and start wading through results. I know my apps would certainly be there somewhere (I make a point of testing against Windows 98-Seven, WINE and ReactOS).
there's a scenario about Australia (or any random non-African continent) being colonised by a single woman, pregnant with a male foetus, being blown on a raft/ boat/ flood debris raft across from Indonesia. Not impossible, but decidedly implausible.
Particularly when you know that (as most people in this part of the world learn in school) that Australia was originally settled after people walked here from Indonesia. Back then, the sea level was lower and there was a land bridge between the two.
What alternative is there? You can't stay on XP forever - eventually support will go away, patches will stop, fire and blood will rain from the skies, etc. Eventually, IT will have to move to a new OS [...]
ReactOS is getting better and better all the time. Given a couple of years (and assuming their developers list snowballs as so many other successful GPL projects do) and some donations from folks with a little spare folding, this is the OS I'd be shifting people onto.
Fundamentally, what most people want is an OS platform they can install their Windows apps onto and which looks familiar. ReactOS provides that (enough even at this early stage to support apps including Firefox and Thunderbird), currently in an amazingly tiny footprint of under 30M. Who'd want to run that resource heavy game or app on Vista or Windows 7 when they can squeeze much better performance out of a trim (and free) GPL Windows, eh?
It was University policy that they owned any patents they filed for on your behalf, but you would get 50% of the royalties.
Given the cost of registering then protecting your patent in the courts would be prohibitive to all and near impossible for most ordinary salary earners (let alone students on their student grants!), that's actually quite a sound deal they're offering.
What you're seeming to neglect, in the desperate hope that OSS software can now compete on cost, is that the cost of desktop software licenses easily pales compared to all the other costs involved in hiring and retaining staff; salary being the biggest component.
If an accountant is looking for fat to trim, software isn't going to be it. That runs the risk of incurring large costs in either finding people with skills in those unfamiliar software apps in their CV or retraining people to use them. Risk is the last thing these people will be thinking of. It's conservative choice time. Nope, it's layoffs.
Very small business and the home market are where people will start looking at cutting back on software costs. Unfortunately, that same thing will also bite everyone who supplies software and services to these markets in their day jobs which pay the rent so they can code OSS in their spare time. There are no silver linings in the oncoming recession.
If OSS is going to compete, it has to be on quality. In many areas it already does. In many, it doesn't. Publicise the former, encourage the latter to improve and contribute if you're able.
Apple sells good hardware;
At the very top end, sure. The Mac Minis, on the other hand, are way overpriced and under-specced. Hardware from two years ago at "average consumer desktop of today" prices. Woeful stuff considering the only alternative for a Mac desktop system (table lamps don't count) is the Mac Pro at a hefty USD $2800.
Oh, for goodness sake: try to at least catch up to the twentieth century, will you.
Yes, look, I know you're still agonising over whether to teach creationism in school science classes and burn witches over there, but, you must surely realise the consequences of your letting the world leave you behind, right?
There are tons of fake Nikes coming from Asia that are honestly way worse in quality, durability, and comfort.
Probably more scary for American companies like Nike: the fakes are often of better quality manufacture, and often considerably.
I definitely remember back in the 1980s and 1990s the cheapie Bali cassette albums were always far better quality than what the big studios were releasing. They used high quality tape, decent glue and strong cassette cartridges. Meanwhile the big studios used whatever was cheapest in order to inflate their profits that extra bit further.
Jerry said 'you know I use a Mac, right?'
What makes you think he uses a Mac? You have heard of paid product placement, right?
Apple is especially aggressive at product placement. In popular TV shows and higher budget movies, the only time you won't see a Mac on the desk is if the computer is evil or is scripted to fail in some way.
In any country you go to, no matter who the American president is, you'll find anti-Americans, and it's probably worse today, of course, but I doubt Obama will solve your problems.
I think you'll find that people overseas judge Americans by their country's foreign policy. That said, there's very little between McCain and Obama on foreign policy anyway (one is planning on withdrawing from Iraq before attacking Iran, the other apparently plans to have both wars ongoing concurrently). So yeah, America's name will remain Mud either way.
How the robot reacts in relation to eye contact will be just as much of a problem as it is depending on which culture you grew up in as a human. For example, Anglo Australians show engagement and respect authority figures by keeping eye contact when you're speaking to them. Aboriginal Australians, by contrast, have it in their culture that you shouldn't keep eye contact with authority figures as it implies insubordination. Lord knows how trouble that miscommunication has caused in less enlightened times...