On the pro photographer side I can tell you one thing: CMYK is still a requirement for anything that is going to print. GIMP STILL doesn't support CMYK, so for anyone who is doing anything in the professional world that has to go to print, GIMP is not nor ever will be an option.
With OS 10.7, my version of CS1 no longer works (PPC). Frankly I stopped paying much attention because Photoshop 7 did everything I ever needed. So I downloaded GIMP and that does everything I need (minor tweaks, removing white edges for transparent backgrounds, etc.).
I have a friend who is a developer for a hedge fund where they pay him and a few others north of $250k each per year (it is NYC) to try and and shave milliseconds off transactions. They spend big bucks trying anything to reduce a transaction time from 4ms to 3ms or lower.
At first I tried calling 'cloud computing' time-share 2.0. The name never caught on with the younger developers, but got some laughs from the guys who were a bit older than I am, and a raised eye-brow or two. (I'm in my mid 30's, but my parents worked around the computers in the glory days of room sized main frames).
Cloud computing can be useful. We're using a CDN to serve up the relatively static HTML/JS/CSS client and "cloud computing" for the web services layer to handle traffic spikes. On major event days (say when we're doing 4 - 5 events on a day) is when it gets hammered. It would cost quite a bit for dedicated equipment and expertise to handle those types of loads only to sit idle 95% of the time. Now the database cluster is all dedicated hardware which we've spent some money on. I've been involved in a couple horrible project that attempted to scale databases on "cloud computing" before things were frankly ready. I think enough hiccups are understood now that we'll likely explore it later this year.
Just started a new project which required an API to essentially pass information from a database and CSV files to an HTML client in JSON. Broke out the basic script I wrote in Perl circa 2002 to do just that. Since 2002 I've made two major changes to the script: added JSON support (originally it returned XML because back then it was all about XML) and replaced some rather nasty els if statements with switch statements when that became standard in Perl 5.10. The sub routines vary from project to project (i.e the queries), but the other life saver has been CPAN. Every time I've ever needed to interface with some new service, there seems to be a Perl Module for that...Facebook, twitter, whatever...there always seems to be "a perl module for that".
I'm the senior programmer on the project with a couple younger kids with CS degrees about a year out of college. They were trying to push to use nodejs for the back end and I said no, we were going to use Perl for the web services/api/cgi-script/server-side-process-term-of-the-year. I got some disgusted looks for using "old and broken" instead of "new hotness". Then I chuckled that I had heard it all before. The world was going to be Java, which is true in the Enterprise world, then it was all about PHP, then Python, then C#, then Ruby on Rails and yet this very simple framework I wrote a decade ago in perl still works just as it did back then. As I told them was I don't feel like having to rewrite the damn thing because no one is going to deprecate a function like split() in favor of calling it explode() or suddenly you find out that the flavor of the year suddenly can't scale as advertised.
A major selling point was DBD::CSV, a perl module that allowed CSV to be queried with SQL statements. Yes, it doesn't support all the features, but does support the basics like "SELECT this.column FROM file.name Where some.column = some.value". Which means when all the CSV eventually do get imported into the database (that will be a few months as there is something like 500k csv files on the server) it won't take much to switch out to use the database.
What they fail to understand is that what the client cares about is out the "app" looks on the HTML side. How it the data gets from the database/file servers to the client they don't care and frankly not what they are paying us for. What will make them happy is how it looks. So long as the backend is "fast enough" to deliver data over a cell network they don't care. We aren't having to execute financial transactions where milliseconds matter.
10k armed ciitizens, no. 20,000,000 armed citizens on the other hand is a different story. And believe the number of firearm owners is about 80,000,000 in the united states. By contrast the entire armed forces of the US is what, about 3M including all active duty, reserve, and gaurd forces?
i.e the 3g iPad and mobile hotspots. I have a moblie hotspot. It's extremely useful for my line of work as I'm not tied to an office. I pay $50 a month for 6GB of data and have yet to use more than 4GB in a month. Granted I still have cable at home and that's where I do major downloading like software updates, etc..
I always thought the hold up on ZFS and DTrace on linux was the fact the CDDL and GPL didn't play nicely with each other. It was never a technical reason.
I've been running both on FreeBSD for a couple years now. Still don't have any production machines with ZFS yet, but I've found DTrace to be a life saver on more than a few occations.
And why can't it be both Israel as well the regime? Some, and I'd even say most of the assassinations over the past decade, have been the work of Israel. But there are one or two cases where the targets happened to be supporters of the Green Movement that makes one have to sit back and say "hmmmm." Specifically I'm thinking of the assassination of Professor Ali Mohammad.
Then you aren't the target market for the app store. The App store is for common joe six pack who frankly doesn't need to editing their apache config files in the first place. Sandboxing apps from the app store makes a lot of sense from a security stand point for the average user.
My guess is that in the future you'll need a Mac Developers account to access the core features of OSX if you want to do any customizations.
This is what I discovered. It actually got to the point where to do "work" i left the house and went to my favorite cafe in town. They had wifi, but I have a mobile hotspot as well for another means of connecting if they happen to be having issues or their connection is over saturated.
It's 10 minutes away by bike, or about 5 by car if the weather is bad and usually my routine is wake up about 7AM, check email for anything important overnight, go take a shower and grab a snack for breakfast, get to the cafe about 9AM. Get a cup of coffee and another snack, lunch around 1PM and usually done with the tasks of the day by 2 or 3 PM.
Then it's back home with my phone handy incase someone calls or emails.
Poor windows support? I'm running Windows 7 Pro (Bootcamp partition) and OSX right now via Parallels seamlessly at the moment. I do my android development on the windows side of the house as well as some work in Visual Studio. Sure, if I have to build something large I'll boot into windows, but for most of I work I can run Windows throughout he virtual machine just fine. Furthermore I can travel with just my laptop and do my work from anywhere I have an internet connection (which with my mobile hotspot is pretty much anywhere I have a cell signal).
And restrictive about getting things on a box? Okay a couple times I've had to create ACC versions of MP3's for whatever reason. Usually took less than 5 minutes for iTunes to do the conversions and whatever song I wanted was on the iDevice of my choice. Mostly though, any of the music I want to buy is already on iTunes and for $1.29 a song I get what I want. Click buy once and it automatically syncs and downloads to my iPhone, Mac Book Pro, iMac, and iPad. I've sat and watch it do it to all 4 devices at the same time.
I have no problems connecting to other macs or PC's on my home network. OSX seems to find my HP windows 7 box as well as my FreeBSD file server without any problems.
Honestly, that's why I bought my first mac over 10 years ago. I wanted a Unix based laptop where all the hardware actually worked and since I've never really looked back. Why? Because for 10 years my macs have pretty much stayed out of my way and let me get work done. Which is something I've grown even more appreciative of as I've gotten older and want to spend time doing things other than messing with computers. Mac App Store, great, let's me know when app updates come out. Also guess what, I bought Cyberduck through the App store. I've used the program for years always meaning to donate, but that was a hassle through paypal since I don't link Paypal to my bank account. With the App store, it was one click and I was more than happy to give the cyberduck project money for their years of work. If updates for the apps I use on a regular basis it lets me know that an update is available with a pretty good overview of what changes have been made.
There is no privacy. That's the price of modern convenience. Some of us warned folks 10+ years ago this day was coming. Most largely ignored it because of "Ooh, shiny" or "convenience".
Genie's out of the bottle. Good luck getting it back in.
That's where the gas/electric hybrids like the Volt come in. The ability to use battery for most if not all of your daily commute. A gasoline engine that can keep the car going for longer trips.
It's expensive right now, hence why I went with a vehicle with their E-assit rather than the volt. ($14k less that the volt and I'm getting an overall MPG of 36 right now with mixed city/highway driving). I'd be hard pressed to recover that $14k price difference unless gas goes to about $6 a gallon in the next 5 years. It very well may get that high, but who knows.
That being said, I fully suspect my next car will be a Volt like vehicle that can run around town mostly on battery, but has the ability to travel long ranged when needed.
I have about 14 friends who got first generation droid phones back before the iPhone came to Verizon. The reason was it was the closest to an iPhone Verizon had and they were not going to go to AT&T. Given the difference in coverage in that area, Verizon had an advantage. That was 2010. I was back visiting recently and what surprised me was the fact they ALL had iPhones now. Every single one when they went to renew their contracts chose the iPhone over the newer droids.
Yeah I know, circumstantial evidence I know, but in the same time frame I've known exactly 1 of my friends who left the iPhone for the Droid Razr. Now a lot of my friends have left AT&T (including myself) for other carriers, but they've stayed with the iPhone.
I've noticed the same with my mobile hotspot and typically leave 4G off unless I'm plugging it into my laptop. On 3G the device pretty much lasts all day with typical surfing. On 4G it's drained in a couple hours.
One reason is that I've read that among smart phone users, that those with Android tend to use a lot more data than the average iPhone user. My guess is that's because the average iPhone user is closer to "joe six pack" who is likely downing a few apps and songs, but mostly doing light surfing and checking email. Whereas a lot of android users are more geekish and tend to use the data side more.
I know with my iPhone I've averaged about 450MB of data per month over the life of my last contract and only once went over 1GB. Only reason I know this is I remember when AT&T dumped the unlimited data plan I was a bit irked as I'd never really needed 2GB, but 200MB wasn't enough and wishing they had a 500MB plan. Which is probably what their numbers showed that an average user probably used around 400MB a month so force them to get the higher option.
This past spring I was shopping for a new small business account. My contract for my iPhone had expired with AT&T so I did my shopping. One of the major things I wanted was tethering so I could connect my laptop or iPad (wifi only) when I needed to on the road.
Sprint sold me on a mobile plan for the iPhone which is about $70 a month plus a 3g/4g Mobile hotspot instead of tethering. Even with both lines it's still about $40 a month cheaper than either AT&T or Verizon with 6GB of transfer vs 4GB for "tethering". Not to mention the deposit for a new small business account was a lot less with Sprint vs. AT&T or Verizon.
So I have 4G speeds with the iPhone via the hotspot if I want them. Or if I'm getting close to my data limit, I can do more of my business with the iPhone's unlimited data at 3G speeds.
Actually countries that are Civil Law (based on the old Roman system) do. Every time something new comes up, they create a new law/statue for the problem. They don't rely on case law like we do in the US under a Common Law system. There are very few Common Law Countries actually. It's basically commonwealth countries (US, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, and the UK that are Common Law countries.
All my non-geek friends really have no idea what Google+ is other than it's something Google is doing, but unlike services like Gmail or Google Docs or Google Maps (all three are exactly what it says on the tin and they can relate to that) they have no idea what Google+ is. I've run across more than few people who thought it was some kind of new enhanced search engine that you had to pay to use with no ads.
Personally I've not spent a lot of time on Google+. I have an account, but all my family and friends are on Facebook.
Right after the AT&T and Cingular merger the new company did away with customer retention departments all together. As the smaller regional providers were gobbled up the same thing happened to the point where I read a few years ago it cost a cell phone provider on average $650 in marketing and other expenses to gain 1 new customer. I forget the number, but the cost to provide customers with a little better upgrade or some form of loyalty discount if they paid their bills on time for 2 years would cost them FAR less than $650 per customer, but they wouldn't do it....
For a few years AT&T and the magic bullet: the iPhone.
But now it's not the magic bullet. My AT&T contract on my 3G expired last December. I am now a Sprint customer with the 4S. Most of the iPhone users I know are leaving AT&T and droves for Verizon or Sprint.
Slashdot Mirror
This almost sounds like Rearden Metal in Atlas Shrugged...
I always though Ayn Rand as supposed to be a nutter not a prophet...
On the pro photographer side I can tell you one thing: CMYK is still a requirement for anything that is going to print. GIMP STILL doesn't support CMYK, so for anyone who is doing anything in the professional world that has to go to print, GIMP is not nor ever will be an option.
With OS 10.7, my version of CS1 no longer works (PPC). Frankly I stopped paying much attention because Photoshop 7 did everything I ever needed. So I downloaded GIMP and that does everything I need (minor tweaks, removing white edges for transparent backgrounds, etc.).
I have a friend who is a developer for a hedge fund where they pay him and a few others north of $250k each per year (it is NYC) to try and and shave milliseconds off transactions. They spend big bucks trying anything to reduce a transaction time from 4ms to 3ms or lower.
At first I tried calling 'cloud computing' time-share 2.0. The name never caught on with the younger developers, but got some laughs from the guys who were a bit older than I am, and a raised eye-brow or two. (I'm in my mid 30's, but my parents worked around the computers in the glory days of room sized main frames).
Cloud computing can be useful. We're using a CDN to serve up the relatively static HTML/JS/CSS client and "cloud computing" for the web services layer to handle traffic spikes. On major event days (say when we're doing 4 - 5 events on a day) is when it gets hammered. It would cost quite a bit for dedicated equipment and expertise to handle those types of loads only to sit idle 95% of the time. Now the database cluster is all dedicated hardware which we've spent some money on. I've been involved in a couple horrible project that attempted to scale databases on "cloud computing" before things were frankly ready. I think enough hiccups are understood now that we'll likely explore it later this year.
Just started a new project which required an API to essentially pass information from a database and CSV files to an HTML client in JSON. Broke out the basic script I wrote in Perl circa 2002 to do just that. Since 2002 I've made two major changes to the script: added JSON support (originally it returned XML because back then it was all about XML) and replaced some rather nasty els if statements with switch statements when that became standard in Perl 5.10. The sub routines vary from project to project (i.e the queries), but the other life saver has been CPAN. Every time I've ever needed to interface with some new service, there seems to be a Perl Module for that...Facebook, twitter, whatever...there always seems to be "a perl module for that".
I'm the senior programmer on the project with a couple younger kids with CS degrees about a year out of college. They were trying to push to use nodejs for the back end and I said no, we were going to use Perl for the web services/api/cgi-script/server-side-process-term-of-the-year. I got some disgusted looks for using "old and broken" instead of "new hotness". Then I chuckled that I had heard it all before. The world was going to be Java, which is true in the Enterprise world, then it was all about PHP, then Python, then C#, then Ruby on Rails and yet this very simple framework I wrote a decade ago in perl still works just as it did back then. As I told them was I don't feel like having to rewrite the damn thing because no one is going to deprecate a function like split() in favor of calling it explode() or suddenly you find out that the flavor of the year suddenly can't scale as advertised.
A major selling point was DBD::CSV, a perl module that allowed CSV to be queried with SQL statements. Yes, it doesn't support all the features, but does support the basics like "SELECT this.column FROM file.name Where some.column = some.value". Which means when all the CSV eventually do get imported into the database (that will be a few months as there is something like 500k csv files on the server) it won't take much to switch out to use the database.
What they fail to understand is that what the client cares about is out the "app" looks on the HTML side. How it the data gets from the database/file servers to the client they don't care and frankly not what they are paying us for. What will make them happy is how it looks. So long as the backend is "fast enough" to deliver data over a cell network they don't care. We aren't having to execute financial transactions where milliseconds matter.
The next year they shot off rockets, one hit a car at a local dealership and damaged it, and that was the end of rockets in school.
In these times, I'm afraid the lawyers won't let them...
10k armed ciitizens, no. 20,000,000 armed citizens on the other hand is a different story. And believe the number of firearm owners is about 80,000,000 in the united states. By contrast the entire armed forces of the US is what, about 3M including all active duty, reserve, and gaurd forces?
i.e the 3g iPad and mobile hotspots. I have a moblie hotspot. It's extremely useful for my line of work as I'm not tied to an office. I pay $50 a month for 6GB of data and have yet to use more than 4GB in a month. Granted I still have cable at home and that's where I do major downloading like software updates, etc..
I always thought the hold up on ZFS and DTrace on linux was the fact the CDDL and GPL didn't play nicely with each other. It was never a technical reason.
I've been running both on FreeBSD for a couple years now. Still don't have any production machines with ZFS yet, but I've found DTrace to be a life saver on more than a few occations.
And why can't it be both Israel as well the regime? Some, and I'd even say most of the assassinations over the past decade, have been the work of Israel. But there are one or two cases where the targets happened to be supporters of the Green Movement that makes one have to sit back and say "hmmmm." Specifically I'm thinking of the assassination of Professor Ali Mohammad.
Then you aren't the target market for the app store. The App store is for common joe six pack who frankly doesn't need to editing their apache config files in the first place. Sandboxing apps from the app store makes a lot of sense from a security stand point for the average user.
My guess is that in the future you'll need a Mac Developers account to access the core features of OSX if you want to do any customizations.
This is what I discovered. It actually got to the point where to do "work" i left the house and went to my favorite cafe in town. They had wifi, but I have a mobile hotspot as well for another means of connecting if they happen to be having issues or their connection is over saturated.
It's 10 minutes away by bike, or about 5 by car if the weather is bad and usually my routine is wake up about 7AM, check email for anything important overnight, go take a shower and grab a snack for breakfast, get to the cafe about 9AM. Get a cup of coffee and another snack, lunch around 1PM and usually done with the tasks of the day by 2 or 3 PM.
Then it's back home with my phone handy incase someone calls or emails.
Poor windows support? I'm running Windows 7 Pro (Bootcamp partition) and OSX right now via Parallels seamlessly at the moment. I do my android development on the windows side of the house as well as some work in Visual Studio. Sure, if I have to build something large I'll boot into windows, but for most of I work I can run Windows throughout he virtual machine just fine. Furthermore I can travel with just my laptop and do my work from anywhere I have an internet connection (which with my mobile hotspot is pretty much anywhere I have a cell signal).
And restrictive about getting things on a box? Okay a couple times I've had to create ACC versions of MP3's for whatever reason. Usually took less than 5 minutes for iTunes to do the conversions and whatever song I wanted was on the iDevice of my choice. Mostly though, any of the music I want to buy is already on iTunes and for $1.29 a song I get what I want. Click buy once and it automatically syncs and downloads to my iPhone, Mac Book Pro, iMac, and iPad. I've sat and watch it do it to all 4 devices at the same time.
I have no problems connecting to other macs or PC's on my home network. OSX seems to find my HP windows 7 box as well as my FreeBSD file server without any problems.
Honestly, that's why I bought my first mac over 10 years ago. I wanted a Unix based laptop where all the hardware actually worked and since I've never really looked back. Why? Because for 10 years my macs have pretty much stayed out of my way and let me get work done. Which is something I've grown even more appreciative of as I've gotten older and want to spend time doing things other than messing with computers. Mac App Store, great, let's me know when app updates come out. Also guess what, I bought Cyberduck through the App store. I've used the program for years always meaning to donate, but that was a hassle through paypal since I don't link Paypal to my bank account. With the App store, it was one click and I was more than happy to give the cyberduck project money for their years of work. If updates for the apps I use on a regular basis it lets me know that an update is available with a pretty good overview of what changes have been made.
There is no privacy. That's the price of modern convenience. Some of us warned folks 10+ years ago this day was coming. Most largely ignored it because of "Ooh, shiny" or "convenience".
Genie's out of the bottle. Good luck getting it back in.
That's where the gas/electric hybrids like the Volt come in. The ability to use battery for most if not all of your daily commute. A gasoline engine that can keep the car going for longer trips.
It's expensive right now, hence why I went with a vehicle with their E-assit rather than the volt. ($14k less that the volt and I'm getting an overall MPG of 36 right now with mixed city/highway driving). I'd be hard pressed to recover that $14k price difference unless gas goes to about $6 a gallon in the next 5 years. It very well may get that high, but who knows.
That being said, I fully suspect my next car will be a Volt like vehicle that can run around town mostly on battery, but has the ability to travel long ranged when needed.
And the US your GSM options are T-Mobile and AT&T. Verizon and Sprint are both CDMA.
I have about 14 friends who got first generation droid phones back before the iPhone came to Verizon. The reason was it was the closest to an iPhone Verizon had and they were not going to go to AT&T. Given the difference in coverage in that area, Verizon had an advantage. That was 2010. I was back visiting recently and what surprised me was the fact they ALL had iPhones now. Every single one when they went to renew their contracts chose the iPhone over the newer droids.
Yeah I know, circumstantial evidence I know, but in the same time frame I've known exactly 1 of my friends who left the iPhone for the Droid Razr. Now a lot of my friends have left AT&T (including myself) for other carriers, but they've stayed with the iPhone.
I've noticed the same with my mobile hotspot and typically leave 4G off unless I'm plugging it into my laptop. On 3G the device pretty much lasts all day with typical surfing. On 4G it's drained in a couple hours.
One reason is that I've read that among smart phone users, that those with Android tend to use a lot more data than the average iPhone user. My guess is that's because the average iPhone user is closer to "joe six pack" who is likely downing a few apps and songs, but mostly doing light surfing and checking email. Whereas a lot of android users are more geekish and tend to use the data side more.
I know with my iPhone I've averaged about 450MB of data per month over the life of my last contract and only once went over 1GB. Only reason I know this is I remember when AT&T dumped the unlimited data plan I was a bit irked as I'd never really needed 2GB, but 200MB wasn't enough and wishing they had a 500MB plan. Which is probably what their numbers showed that an average user probably used around 400MB a month so force them to get the higher option.
This past spring I was shopping for a new small business account. My contract for my iPhone had expired with AT&T so I did my shopping. One of the major things I wanted was tethering so I could connect my laptop or iPad (wifi only) when I needed to on the road.
Sprint sold me on a mobile plan for the iPhone which is about $70 a month plus a 3g/4g Mobile hotspot instead of tethering. Even with both lines it's still about $40 a month cheaper than either AT&T or Verizon with 6GB of transfer vs 4GB for "tethering". Not to mention the deposit for a new small business account was a lot less with Sprint vs. AT&T or Verizon.
So I have 4G speeds with the iPhone via the hotspot if I want them. Or if I'm getting close to my data limit, I can do more of my business with the iPhone's unlimited data at 3G speeds.
Ironically those high mpg diesels aren't available in the US due to emissions standards....
Actually countries that are Civil Law (based on the old Roman system) do. Every time something new comes up, they create a new law/statue for the problem. They don't rely on case law like we do in the US under a Common Law system. There are very few Common Law Countries actually. It's basically commonwealth countries (US, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, and the UK that are Common Law countries.
All my non-geek friends really have no idea what Google+ is other than it's something Google is doing, but unlike services like Gmail or Google Docs or Google Maps (all three are exactly what it says on the tin and they can relate to that) they have no idea what Google+ is. I've run across more than few people who thought it was some kind of new enhanced search engine that you had to pay to use with no ads.
Personally I've not spent a lot of time on Google+. I have an account, but all my family and friends are on Facebook.
Right after the AT&T and Cingular merger the new company did away with customer retention departments all together. As the smaller regional providers were gobbled up the same thing happened to the point where I read a few years ago it cost a cell phone provider on average $650 in marketing and other expenses to gain 1 new customer. I forget the number, but the cost to provide customers with a little better upgrade or some form of loyalty discount if they paid their bills on time for 2 years would cost them FAR less than $650 per customer, but they wouldn't do it....
For a few years AT&T and the magic bullet: the iPhone.
But now it's not the magic bullet. My AT&T contract on my 3G expired last December. I am now a Sprint customer with the 4S. Most of the iPhone users I know are leaving AT&T and droves for Verizon or Sprint.