Linux is a threat to Unix, not MS
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If you look at usage surveys you'll find the majority of people buying Linux are replacing Unix installs. Linux basically has been taking from Unix market share especially in niche markets. Linux has done more to kill SGI (irix) and place the hurt on Sun in the server and speciality workstation market.
That being said, most of the *iux developers I know today, including myself, dumped Linux for Apple especially on laptops. Granted this was 3 - 4 years ago and OSX versus Linux of the day was no contest. However, I haven't known of anyone that's gone back from OSX to linux. Some have linux boxes they use as cheap test boxes, but I even converted my old x86 box into a FreeBSD server for my house.
Still if I am going to pick between a Linux box or getting a Macmini or is it MiniMac...anyway, I think I'm going to spend the money on the Mac. Again it comes down to needs and software. iLife is a great set of tools for home use. Its easy to use, simple, and works. Linux has come a long way since I started using it circa Slackware 2, but it still has aways to go as well.
I say this with a grain of salt: but the some in the rabid Pro-Linux community is still hurting the image. There are still those that want it in the realm of the uber-geek hacker. As the song "Every OS sucks" by three-dead trolls in a baggie says: "Linux or Lineux, I'm not sure how to you say it or install it or how to use it, but its for elitest nerdy smucks".
Chances are MySQL will continue to be my DB of choice for most of my web-based developement. Why? Two major reasons: still more widely available with most web-hosting packages these days and MySQL select speeds. While in the past 3 years the folks at MySQL have been adding features to make MySQL look more like a complete DB package, I think a lot of people forget that MySQL is an extremely niche product. Orginally it sacfriced features for speed, especially on select queries. That makes it ideal for web content hosting where select queries, at least on my sites, out number update and insert queries at least 40 to 1.
Now wanting to develop a database system for an internal intranet for a business to run an OSS CRM or ERP solution, unless specifically developed for and only for MySQL, PostgreSQL's fetures are ideal especially since the ratio of selects vs other queries are not going to be like hosting a website CMS.
The/. crowd always seem to want to make things "This is better than that" and vice-versa rather than "there is the right tool for the right job".
Um, I am on Mac (please note next paragraph in orginal post) and I can get any Office document just fine. Most Mac users, especially in the professional world, HAVE MS Office for Mac. So not seeing what the problem is here...
That is safe bet. I have both. However I do use MS Office about 99.9% of the time. I have OpenOffice more or less to track its process. Its getting there, but not quite there yet. I know on the PC side of things I converted my Father to OpenOffice and it works great for his needs of tracking his stocks in the spreadsheet and writing the occational letter in office.
While all the hoopla is great on the ablity to carry 550+ passangers at a time, I can't wait for the first fully loaded one to crash and that insurance settlement. And it will happen eventually most likely due to pilot error.
The other thing is that these planes are going to be the new "ultimate target" for any group with SA-7's and a grudge.
This is extremely true in the technology field. However, during the Internet boom why did so many of those companies fail? I can tell you this much from my own experience. I was a self-taught computer geek and got in early developing websites and PERL programming in high school. Help several local.com companies get off the ground. 14 out 18 are gone today. I then went to college and studied Business and German. In my econ and strategy classes why so many of those businesses failed suddenly made sense. Most of their founders dropped out of college to start these companies.
The idea the internet would allow small companies to compete equally with large companies turned out to be a myth. Amazon.com is really nothing more than an extremely large mail order company whose's catalog is all electronic and used technology to help reduce costs over other competitors.
Fast forward now to 2005. 10 years of web programming/html/javascripts, 9 years PERL, 6 years PHP/MySQL developement and 4 years as a *iux systems admin. I applied to several of the same jobs as my friends with CIS/CS degrees with maybe some basic web design and basic understaning of databases opposed to my years I had delt with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Guess who got the jobs? Hint: It wasn't me. (side note I got into an international management training program, but guess what my programming experience counts for: ZIP!)
really hate to sound like a troll and all, but if 98% of the business world continues to use MS formated documents, MS formats will remain the defacto standard. Being able to communicate is critical in today's world.
I switched to Mac about 3 years ago and really for the first 6 months, Apple Works 6 did just about everything I needed. Then I started getting to where PowerPoint was a must have for presentations and the spreadsheet would export data to excel but not the equations. So I bought Office V.x and frankly was plesantly surpised with an MS product that worked.
I work as a consultant and being able to share information with clients is a must! While we can debate the goods/evils of file formats etc. here in the world of geekdom, in the real world communication is key to me being able to put food on my table.
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much. It is a chicken or the egg arugement.
depends on the subject matter as well. My degrees are in International Business and German. Completed 158 hours in 4 years. While experiences like an internship while studing abroad didn't hurt, it was the degrees that got me the interview. The foot in the door. From there it was experience and personality that got me hired.
Re:Education no longer matters
on
Who Needs Harvard?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Well, if you don't have at least a Bacholers Degree, we aren't even going to look at your resume. It takes a work ethic and motivation to get a degree. A BA/BS means that "hey this person had at least enough drive to get the degree, we can probably train them to do whatever we need".
So to say that education is less desirable than motivation and work ethic is a fallacy since it takes motivation and work ethic to get an education.
Since when was there privacy on the internet?
on
Carnivore No More
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Maybe back in the days of ARPAnet when it was military only, but people somehow think that the internet, with its *free-flow* of information, should be private. How can there be a free-flow of information and privacy? This has been stated before: with the internet it's not whether or not you have privacy, but to what degree. Another question: Is there a "right" to privacy on the internet? If so by whom was this granted? By just using something that provides "free-flow" of information and ideas, do we give up privacy inexchange to access to those ideas and information about others? Can someone else write an unauthorized biography about you and post it for all to see as if you were a celebrity or historical figure? If they can't doesn't it effect the "free-flow" of ideas and information that so many taughted about the Internet?
For those who think that email encryption is the answer in this or that key, just remember...it wouldn't be "public" if folks at intel agencis couldn't already break it.
For those who don't like the idea of Big Brother, it's already here. Employers can now readily and fairly cheaply get your credit report before they even decide whether to interview you. Same goes for other background checks. It's not like this information was not available before, it's just much easier to gain access to it these days. And its going to get worse, not better.
On another level, there has long been the arguement that the Internet was beyond borders and therefore cannot nor should not have any government interferance. The net should police itself, etc. and so on and so forth. Free-for-all melees never end well for anyone. Yesterday there was an article about people giving up on the Internet because of all the spyware, spam, etc.. If I weren't looking for a different job, chances are I wouldn't even check my email on a regular basis unless someone IMed me or called me and told me they were sending something my way. I have relatively good anti-spam protection and still 90% of the stuff I get is crap. But I degress.
I've been doing the same the past couple years after I purchased my iBook and not looked back. However I do have one concern with the potential of the MiniMac and its this:
Right now Macintosh enjoys relative virus/adware invunerablity because is it really worth spending the time, effort, and money on 5% of the market share, a majority of which are "power users"? Right now the answer is "NO". There are viruses and other bad stuff out there for mac, just not as many and not transmitted as often.
If Apple's OSX reaches a 15% market-share, I think people will start to see more people targeting the system as it will be large enough not to ignore. The same would happen if that 15% chunk was Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or Commadore 64 for that matter.
I know my internet usage has dwendled to about an hour a day to check email, look at a couple news sites, and AIM. I don't even email people anymore unless its something specific: I use AIM. 98% of all the email I get is crap. So I am wondering how much spam is being sent to me that is being filtered out.
YEah, but who in the target market really is going to need a gig of ram, bluetooth, or the 1.42Ghz chip? I mean at that point, get a full blown iMac and be done with it. Chances are people who will be buying these machines will be people like my dad. Already has a monitor, keyboard, mouse and looking for an updated computer to replace his 6 year old compaq.
So long as it checks emails and stock quotes he doesn't care. The fact that he won't have to deal with every virus under the sun too looks attractive at $500.
As far as other home users. I am still using a 2.5 year old 700Mhz g3 ibook with 256MB ram. I run iPhoto with 2k pictures fine, import DV home movies for editing just fine. Sure it maybe a little sluggish and if I have 10 apps running it will slow down, but it continues to get the job done. Really the only thing I am lacking is a superdrive.
Well do you know how infrequently people came across intruders in their homes. Have any nice statistics to back it up? Do you know how many people did or did not get to their weapons? Again any stats to back it up? And how many people had shitty cheap guns that blew up in their faces? Again stats?
I could on but here is the bottom line: in the United States of America: it is a RIGHT to own a firearm. Let me say it again: IT IS A RIGHT. I could walk down the street with holstered colt.45 automatic or single action revolver and so long as I'm not pointing it at people or being threatened, there is nothing law enforcement could do.
Responsiblity in owning and using a weapon is really what is at stake. Unfortunately my biggest complaint is that too many people DON'T really know how to use a firearm. Personally, I feel that EVERYONE should be instructed by a professional at somepoint in their life on how to shoot a gun.
I grew up shooting rifles and shotguns on my grandparents' 300 acres of farm. I was taught from age 7 how to respect a firearm. I own a M1911, Sig P228, and Walther P99 Chambered.40S&W today. I also have a compound bow and a dozen tipped arrows in my bedroom. If I were to shoot someone with either weapon does it really matter? Unless I had reasonable justification for self-defense I'd be going to jail on half a dozen counts by either missile.
People have been murdering and killing each other since recorded history began and a full 6000 years (at least) before the advent of firearms. Banning guns, types of guns, etc. are not going to change this. Did the assault weapons ban really have that great of an effect on crime rates? Second off, I could have walked into most gun dealers and readily purchased just about any of those "banned" weapons.
While firefox maybe a bit better for this reason, here is an idea: Keep It Simple Stupid. I installed Mozilla about a year ago on my Dad's older computer to replace IE and its done its job. Not a single virus and much less spyware.
Intergrated search bar would be nice and faster rendering. That's it. When I installed Mozilla, Firefox was whatever it was three names ago and still in earlier stages.
Just remember: 99% of web-users, aka not the 1% on slashdot, use the internet to check email, read the news, check stock quotes, look at porn, and shop. So long as sites work and rendered correctly and quickly: they could give a flying fuck. Yeah I know poorly rendered sites are usually poorly coded for IE first, and nothing second, and yes that is the designer's fault, but with 90%+ of the world using IE, then items like Mozilla really need to be able to render menus etc. correctly.
That's not uncommon in certain industries. I know several smaller businesses and others around still using NT 4.0. Reason being is that was the best to use in 1998 when they purchased the systems and until the hardware is shot, they see no reason to upgrade.
I know a number of firms that are running NT 4 on Alpha. They can't upgrade. Eventually they are going to have to port, but that's another story.
I see people here always ripping on, "ooh this is a prime market for Linux". No its not. Which is easier and cheaper: to retrain your entire in an entirely different type of operating system or upgrading to a newer version of what you had? Sure there are differences between NT4, 2k, 2k3, but chances are the learning curve isn't going to be as much.
Analogy like this: Take a football(american) player going from High School->College->NFL. There are differences at all three levels with slightly different rules, hash marks, etc. however, the game is basically the same. Now take the High School or college player and teach the to play Rugby. There are some basics that are the same: ball, running, scoring of points by running across goal line, but its a totally different ball game.
Ona 5 1/4" floppy. Orginially for the Apple IIe, but somehow converted to work on an IBM XT compatiable. It was standard fair when I was in grade school and even into middle school. Yeah, this is off topic, but. I hadn't seen anything about LOGO in years...
Yesterday there was a story about a priacy ring and people being sentance to 15 years for charging for access to pirated materials. There were a number of highly modded post about how wrong it was to sentance that guy to years in prison and a few posts about the evils of the DMCA and closed source software that always accompanies just stories.
Today we have this story where someone was selling pirated software taking credit from the creator, but because this wasn't some giant software company overwhelming there are modded responses about "way to go", "stick it to 'em", etc. etc.
My questions is what is the difference between yesterday and today? Both folks committed copyright, trademark, and fraud, but because its the work of some smaller outfit it is more of an evil than the same thing happening to "Evil giant corperations"?
Piracy is theft. Fraud is Fraud. Infrigement is Infrigement. End of story. It doesn't matter if its small guy or giant huge megacorp.
I hope that the creator(s) of this program nail this guy and take 'em to the cleaners. Its times like these that lawyers are not an evil word and lawsuits in federal court aren't either.
Actually Memphis would probably be worse hit than St. Louis, but it would be pretty bad hear if a circa 1812 hit again. (I don't remember the exact date...life long resident of STL and remember the prediction back in 1990).
Anyway, the soil around downtown St. Louis is fairly loose with a lime stone base. If the right type of large earthquake hits in New Madrid, the entire soil base will turn to the consistancy of Jello. Many of the building downtown are still old double rowed brick that would just collapse and even some of the newer buildings wouldn't last.
We have no modern notion of what a 11 or 12 on the richter scale will do...
Bingo. This is where I typically draw the line in copyright infringement between civil cases and criminal cases. If a kid is hosting it freely on a service, sue 'em. We can argue the extent of copyright laws and we should have them in some other thread. As of now, copyright infringement is against the law, but its a civil (violation of a contract in my book) offense.
Now, when people are making money by distributing unauthorized copies of programs, movies, music, etc. then I have to say that it should be treated as a civil statues by the RIAA/MPAA, but there are some areas of white collar crime such a fraud and conspirecy to commit a crime. Punish them as such.
If this was an organized crime ring, then chances are there are multiple felony offenses such as fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, wire fraud, etc. etc. that can add up in prison time.
I generally have to agree. I had used solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD systems before switching to OSX about 2.5 years ago. Granted I'm still running on my G3 iBook so the great power of the G5 chips are of little conquence, I've been developing for *iux web systems for 2 years now on Mac.
That coupled with the ablity to stay connected to the rest of the business world via MS Office for Mac and Adobe tools along with fine opensource apps such as Blender, and Apple only software like Final Cut Pro has been great.
What has happened to Unix is that Apple has developed the better *iux desktop system that coupled with the new G5's has been the final death nail into SGI coffin and put the hurt on SUN. Back in the days at McDonnell Douglas (now boeing), much of the engineering development was done on extremely expensive Sun workstations that could easily run $20k a peice. Today, a lot of development and code is being written on $3000 - $4000 PowerMac G5's.
While Apple remains expensive for many consumer users, in engineering and scientific fields, the PowerMacs with OSX are extremely inexpensive. Many of my friends in scientific fields have flocked to Macs with OS X in the past three years.
Bravo on nailing this on the head. Sudden climate change has happened in the past for a varity of reasons. The Minoans were likely wiped out with in a generation, maybe two by a large volcanic eruption (at least that is the going theory).
Some of the biggest people I know that are for conversvation are often dispised my several evniromentalist factions: hunters and fishers. Hunters like to hunt, but do they want to wipe out all the deer or their habitat? Overwhelming they would say 'no' because they want to take their kids and grand kids hunting as well. Fisherman are the same way.
Giving money to ducks unlimited compared to the sirrea club is no question in my book. Ducks Unlimited will use the money to buy land to keep it wild wetlands and duck habitats by making it private property. I like that idea and fully support it. I give annual dues and buy a couple shirts, etc.. The Sierra Club's goal seems to be cause a massive stink about things and try and convence polititions that NO humans should enter certain areas. If that's the case, then make the sierra club should see about buying some of these lands and making them private property off limits to everyone.
Anything ending in an "ism" can almost always bedefined as a religon. After all "Atheism" is a religon that doesn't believe in a deity.
Depends on one's needs. In the last 5 years I've gone from one of those rabid pro-linux people to one of more pragmatic in the last two years after I purchased my iBook.
Why? In my case, OpenOffice was comming along, but wasn't there yet, GIMP's development had kinda stagnated. Didn't notice any difference much from 1998-2002. I never got everything working under linux the way it should and my time to play with such things was getting less and less. For server side things I was switching more and more to FreeBSD and OpenBSD for stuff. When OSX 10.1 came along, it was exactly what I wanted especially on a laptop. All the hardware worked, no having to custom compile or write drivers. Plus, I had access to commonly used software such as Microsoft Office for Mac, Adobe, etc. and I had a Unix core that I could develop in PERL, PHP, MySQL/PosgreSQL, and use some cool mac only stuff like Final Cut Pro along with the iLife stuff. Hell I could even run Windows in a window if I needed too. I needed a jack of all trades that worked so I could spend my time making money by fixing everyone else's systems.
With that said, there are places in businesses where Linux would make a lot of sense and cents. Retail stores with several checkout systems would make a lot of sense to use thin linux systems with good point of sale software could really add up in savings very quickly because the cheapest computers these days have more than enough horse power to do this.
Others doing specific data-entry work in a billing department also could use such systems. Eddie Ball, the gutiar string maker, switched over to linux several years ago and things have worked out well. One thing he toughted back in the day was the fact that if an employee didn't need a web browser, they didn't get one. Helps keep workers from goofing off and productive.
For mass Linux deployement Linux still lacks support from many major software vendor, some hardware vendors, and still lacks a true universial and standard desktop interface.
Slashdot Mirror
That being said, most of the *iux developers I know today, including myself, dumped Linux for Apple especially on laptops. Granted this was 3 - 4 years ago and OSX versus Linux of the day was no contest. However, I haven't known of anyone that's gone back from OSX to linux. Some have linux boxes they use as cheap test boxes, but I even converted my old x86 box into a FreeBSD server for my house.
Still if I am going to pick between a Linux box or getting a Macmini or is it MiniMac...anyway, I think I'm going to spend the money on the Mac. Again it comes down to needs and software. iLife is a great set of tools for home use. Its easy to use, simple, and works. Linux has come a long way since I started using it circa Slackware 2, but it still has aways to go as well.
I say this with a grain of salt: but the some in the rabid Pro-Linux community is still hurting the image. There are still those that want it in the realm of the uber-geek hacker. As the song "Every OS sucks" by three-dead trolls in a baggie says: "Linux or Lineux, I'm not sure how to you say it or install it or how to use it, but its for elitest nerdy smucks".
Now wanting to develop a database system for an internal intranet for a business to run an OSS CRM or ERP solution, unless specifically developed for and only for MySQL, PostgreSQL's fetures are ideal especially since the ratio of selects vs other queries are not going to be like hosting a website CMS.
The /. crowd always seem to want to make things "This is better than that" and vice-versa rather than "there is the right tool for the right job".
Um, I am on Mac (please note next paragraph in orginal post) and I can get any Office document just fine. Most Mac users, especially in the professional world, HAVE MS Office for Mac. So not seeing what the problem is here...
That is safe bet. I have both. However I do use MS Office about 99.9% of the time. I have OpenOffice more or less to track its process. Its getting there, but not quite there yet. I know on the PC side of things I converted my Father to OpenOffice and it works great for his needs of tracking his stocks in the spreadsheet and writing the occational letter in office.
The other thing is that these planes are going to be the new "ultimate target" for any group with SA-7's and a grudge.
The idea the internet would allow small companies to compete equally with large companies turned out to be a myth. Amazon.com is really nothing more than an extremely large mail order company whose's catalog is all electronic and used technology to help reduce costs over other competitors.
Fast forward now to 2005. 10 years of web programming/html/javascripts, 9 years PERL, 6 years PHP/MySQL developement and 4 years as a *iux systems admin. I applied to several of the same jobs as my friends with CIS/CS degrees with maybe some basic web design and basic understaning of databases opposed to my years I had delt with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Guess who got the jobs? Hint: It wasn't me. (side note I got into an international management training program, but guess what my programming experience counts for: ZIP!)
I switched to Mac about 3 years ago and really for the first 6 months, Apple Works 6 did just about everything I needed. Then I started getting to where PowerPoint was a must have for presentations and the spreadsheet would export data to excel but not the equations. So I bought Office V.x and frankly was plesantly surpised with an MS product that worked.
I work as a consultant and being able to share information with clients is a must! While we can debate the goods/evils of file formats etc. here in the world of geekdom, in the real world communication is key to me being able to put food on my table.
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much. It is a chicken or the egg arugement.
depends on the subject matter as well. My degrees are in International Business and German. Completed 158 hours in 4 years. While experiences like an internship while studing abroad didn't hurt, it was the degrees that got me the interview. The foot in the door. From there it was experience and personality that got me hired.
So to say that education is less desirable than motivation and work ethic is a fallacy since it takes motivation and work ethic to get an education.
For those who think that email encryption is the answer in this or that key, just remember...it wouldn't be "public" if folks at intel agencis couldn't already break it.
For those who don't like the idea of Big Brother, it's already here. Employers can now readily and fairly cheaply get your credit report before they even decide whether to interview you. Same goes for other background checks. It's not like this information was not available before, it's just much easier to gain access to it these days. And its going to get worse, not better.
On another level, there has long been the arguement that the Internet was beyond borders and therefore cannot nor should not have any government interferance. The net should police itself, etc. and so on and so forth. Free-for-all melees never end well for anyone. Yesterday there was an article about people giving up on the Internet because of all the spyware, spam, etc.. If I weren't looking for a different job, chances are I wouldn't even check my email on a regular basis unless someone IMed me or called me and told me they were sending something my way. I have relatively good anti-spam protection and still 90% of the stuff I get is crap. But I degress.
Right now Macintosh enjoys relative virus/adware invunerablity because is it really worth spending the time, effort, and money on 5% of the market share, a majority of which are "power users"? Right now the answer is "NO". There are viruses and other bad stuff out there for mac, just not as many and not transmitted as often.
If Apple's OSX reaches a 15% market-share, I think people will start to see more people targeting the system as it will be large enough not to ignore. The same would happen if that 15% chunk was Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or Commadore 64 for that matter.
I know my internet usage has dwendled to about an hour a day to check email, look at a couple news sites, and AIM. I don't even email people anymore unless its something specific: I use AIM. 98% of all the email I get is crap. So I am wondering how much spam is being sent to me that is being filtered out.
Or this has just become an ego trip for the ueber-wealthy to see who can get geek bragging rights.
So long as it checks emails and stock quotes he doesn't care. The fact that he won't have to deal with every virus under the sun too looks attractive at $500.
As far as other home users. I am still using a 2.5 year old 700Mhz g3 ibook with 256MB ram. I run iPhoto with 2k pictures fine, import DV home movies for editing just fine. Sure it maybe a little sluggish and if I have 10 apps running it will slow down, but it continues to get the job done. Really the only thing I am lacking is a superdrive.
I could on but here is the bottom line: in the United States of America: it is a RIGHT to own a firearm. Let me say it again: IT IS A RIGHT. I could walk down the street with holstered colt .45 automatic or single action revolver and so long as I'm not pointing it at people or being threatened, there is nothing law enforcement could do.
Responsiblity in owning and using a weapon is really what is at stake. Unfortunately my biggest complaint is that too many people DON'T really know how to use a firearm. Personally, I feel that EVERYONE should be instructed by a professional at somepoint in their life on how to shoot a gun.
I grew up shooting rifles and shotguns on my grandparents' 300 acres of farm. I was taught from age 7 how to respect a firearm. I own a M1911, Sig P228, and Walther P99 Chambered .40S&W today. I also have a compound bow and a dozen tipped arrows in my bedroom. If I were to shoot someone with either weapon does it really matter? Unless I had reasonable justification for self-defense I'd be going to jail on half a dozen counts by either missile.
People have been murdering and killing each other since recorded history began and a full 6000 years (at least) before the advent of firearms. Banning guns, types of guns, etc. are not going to change this. Did the assault weapons ban really have that great of an effect on crime rates? Second off, I could have walked into most gun dealers and readily purchased just about any of those "banned" weapons.
Intergrated search bar would be nice and faster rendering. That's it. When I installed Mozilla, Firefox was whatever it was three names ago and still in earlier stages.
Just remember: 99% of web-users, aka not the 1% on slashdot, use the internet to check email, read the news, check stock quotes, look at porn, and shop. So long as sites work and rendered correctly and quickly: they could give a flying fuck. Yeah I know poorly rendered sites are usually poorly coded for IE first, and nothing second, and yes that is the designer's fault, but with 90%+ of the world using IE, then items like Mozilla really need to be able to render menus etc. correctly.
That's my advice
I know a number of firms that are running NT 4 on Alpha. They can't upgrade. Eventually they are going to have to port, but that's another story.
I see people here always ripping on, "ooh this is a prime market for Linux". No its not. Which is easier and cheaper: to retrain your entire in an entirely different type of operating system or upgrading to a newer version of what you had? Sure there are differences between NT4, 2k, 2k3, but chances are the learning curve isn't going to be as much.
Analogy like this: Take a football(american) player going from High School->College->NFL. There are differences at all three levels with slightly different rules, hash marks, etc. however, the game is basically the same. Now take the High School or college player and teach the to play Rugby. There are some basics that are the same: ball, running, scoring of points by running across goal line, but its a totally different ball game.
...lego my ego? God it must be 3 AM and a couple adult beverages...oh wait .
Ona 5 1/4" floppy. Orginially for the Apple IIe, but somehow converted to work on an IBM XT compatiable. It was standard fair when I was in grade school and even into middle school. Yeah, this is off topic, but. I hadn't seen anything about LOGO in years...
correction: whatever it takes to ring church bells in Boston.
Today we have this story where someone was selling pirated software taking credit from the creator, but because this wasn't some giant software company overwhelming there are modded responses about "way to go", "stick it to 'em", etc. etc.
My questions is what is the difference between yesterday and today? Both folks committed copyright, trademark, and fraud, but because its the work of some smaller outfit it is more of an evil than the same thing happening to "Evil giant corperations"?
Piracy is theft. Fraud is Fraud. Infrigement is Infrigement. End of story. It doesn't matter if its small guy or giant huge megacorp.
I hope that the creator(s) of this program nail this guy and take 'em to the cleaners. Its times like these that lawyers are not an evil word and lawsuits in federal court aren't either.
Anyway, the soil around downtown St. Louis is fairly loose with a lime stone base. If the right type of large earthquake hits in New Madrid, the entire soil base will turn to the consistancy of Jello. Many of the building downtown are still old double rowed brick that would just collapse and even some of the newer buildings wouldn't last.
We have no modern notion of what a 11 or 12 on the richter scale will do...
Now, when people are making money by distributing unauthorized copies of programs, movies, music, etc. then I have to say that it should be treated as a civil statues by the RIAA/MPAA, but there are some areas of white collar crime such a fraud and conspirecy to commit a crime. Punish them as such.
If this was an organized crime ring, then chances are there are multiple felony offenses such as fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, wire fraud, etc. etc. that can add up in prison time.
That coupled with the ablity to stay connected to the rest of the business world via MS Office for Mac and Adobe tools along with fine opensource apps such as Blender, and Apple only software like Final Cut Pro has been great.
What has happened to Unix is that Apple has developed the better *iux desktop system that coupled with the new G5's has been the final death nail into SGI coffin and put the hurt on SUN. Back in the days at McDonnell Douglas (now boeing), much of the engineering development was done on extremely expensive Sun workstations that could easily run $20k a peice. Today, a lot of development and code is being written on $3000 - $4000 PowerMac G5's.
While Apple remains expensive for many consumer users, in engineering and scientific fields, the PowerMacs with OSX are extremely inexpensive. Many of my friends in scientific fields have flocked to Macs with OS X in the past three years.
Some of the biggest people I know that are for conversvation are often dispised my several evniromentalist factions: hunters and fishers. Hunters like to hunt, but do they want to wipe out all the deer or their habitat? Overwhelming they would say 'no' because they want to take their kids and grand kids hunting as well. Fisherman are the same way.
Giving money to ducks unlimited compared to the sirrea club is no question in my book. Ducks Unlimited will use the money to buy land to keep it wild wetlands and duck habitats by making it private property. I like that idea and fully support it. I give annual dues and buy a couple shirts, etc.. The Sierra Club's goal seems to be cause a massive stink about things and try and convence polititions that NO humans should enter certain areas. If that's the case, then make the sierra club should see about buying some of these lands and making them private property off limits to everyone.
Anything ending in an "ism" can almost always bedefined as a religon. After all "Atheism" is a religon that doesn't believe in a deity.
Why? In my case, OpenOffice was comming along, but wasn't there yet, GIMP's development had kinda stagnated. Didn't notice any difference much from 1998-2002. I never got everything working under linux the way it should and my time to play with such things was getting less and less. For server side things I was switching more and more to FreeBSD and OpenBSD for stuff. When OSX 10.1 came along, it was exactly what I wanted especially on a laptop. All the hardware worked, no having to custom compile or write drivers. Plus, I had access to commonly used software such as Microsoft Office for Mac, Adobe, etc. and I had a Unix core that I could develop in PERL, PHP, MySQL/PosgreSQL, and use some cool mac only stuff like Final Cut Pro along with the iLife stuff. Hell I could even run Windows in a window if I needed too. I needed a jack of all trades that worked so I could spend my time making money by fixing everyone else's systems.
With that said, there are places in businesses where Linux would make a lot of sense and cents. Retail stores with several checkout systems would make a lot of sense to use thin linux systems with good point of sale software could really add up in savings very quickly because the cheapest computers these days have more than enough horse power to do this.
Others doing specific data-entry work in a billing department also could use such systems. Eddie Ball, the gutiar string maker, switched over to linux several years ago and things have worked out well. One thing he toughted back in the day was the fact that if an employee didn't need a web browser, they didn't get one. Helps keep workers from goofing off and productive.
For mass Linux deployement Linux still lacks support from many major software vendor, some hardware vendors, and still lacks a true universial and standard desktop interface.