Doesn't really want shineys. He just listens to the FUD.
Ads and salesdroids tell him to buy Vista, so he does so that he does not get left behind etc (all the FUD stuff). There's also the factor that he wants "the best". He's shelling out a pile of clams for his new computer and wants that feel-good that he's buying up to date modern stuff.
It is very sad that a company with all MS's resources and abilities can blow $5bn and come up with.... well.... nothing really.
It is just a matter of time. Depending on the technology (eg. flash) it might be a short to medium time or a long time.
If something has an MTBF of 1 million hours (that's 114 years or so), then you'll be a long time dead before it fails.
At this stage, the only reasonable non-volatile solid state alternative is NAND flash which costs approx 2 cents per MByte ($20/Gbyte) and dropping. NAND flash has far slower transfer speeds than HDD, but is far smaller, uses less power and is mechanically robust. NAND flash typically has a lifetime of 100k erasure cycles and needs special file systems to get robustness and long life.
My XP box runs fine with less than 1G and runs pretty well with 1G. It is hard to see how 3G can be gobbled up by some eye candy and other "UI innovations". That an OS needs that much memory is plain crazy. Loading up all that RAM takes a lot of time and shows poor design.
My Linux box has 1GB and very rarely uses swap space.
At one time, a long, long, time ago (Windows 95 era) Microsoft could provide a very snappy experience with a 486 and 64MB or less of RAM. Orders of magnitude more CPU and RAM seem to be compensation for crap software, rather than giving useful improvements.
They'll have no more excuse to be rude fucking assholes!
Too often I see people being cut some slack because they have xxx syndrome. Give it a label and bad behavior is suddenly OK. "No he isn't a rude prick, he's got xxxx, and famous person yyy had this.". "He's not slack about spelling and grammar, he's dyslexic..."
Sure, often said people are bright, but it is no guarantee. If the person is very hard to deal with then you waste a lot of time mopping up. In one place I worked, we had a very bright guy with some condition or other, but it absorbed about 50% of a senior experienced person's time to keep him doing the right stuff. As a result the experienced person had insufficient time to bring their wisdom to bear on the problems.
Alot of people still see DOSing, cracking etc as being not "real crimes" because they happen in cyberspace.
As the internet continues to be extended to provide vital services (including access to emergency services etc), making denial of service illegal makes sense.
OLPCs are designed primarily to go into countries that coincidentally tend to have sub-Western human rights.
OLPCs give the possibility for the masses to communicate and organise in the way that these regimes do not like. Said regimes will want a kill switch etc to control the citizens.
Parent has some very valid points. Wherethere is a system or service, being controlled by its own practiitioners, then that system will evolve so as to cater for the desires of the practitioners. This is something that seems to happen in organisations independent of the scale (ie. families, small companies, large corporations, countries).
Lawyers contruct a legal system that suites them, not one that best protects the citizens.
The court system is constructed to put the courts ahead of anyone else. Contempt of court is a very big deal.
Tax accountants construct a tax system that is too complicated for Joe Average to use, so you need to hire a tax consultant.
There are noscientific claims that this is linked to global warming. The CNN article on this even had an "executive summary" that said this (sorry can't find url).
Perhaps parent looks like a grope for a funny, but it is not.
Sure, general independence is a big issue. However, even if stroke victims have help with many functions such as cooking, dressing, eating etc, being able to do certain things (eg. handle your own genitalia -- sexually or otherwise) at least gives you some sense of self.
Just changing two words: "Allowing employees to visit religous sites may create a hostile work environment and sets you up for a lawsuit from other employees who might see it and be offended. You may be able to get away with it when it's you and a couple of buddies starting up, but when your profits are in the billions, you're a giant stack of cash waiting for the first person to claim religous harassment."
Why should compamies feel that they should be the moral guardians of their employees?
Surely the test should be whether you use company resources for personal reasons. So long as the usage is actuually legal, surely it should not matter what sites you visit. Bible quote website,/., dilbert, tits & ass... what gives any company the right to discriminate?
Well that's pretty high security for most places. Where I work there's a badge-on-display policy but I have not worn my badge in the last ten years.
When I worked in the military everyone was supposed to have badge-on-display and everybody was supposed to look at badges all the time. The top security guy rigged a test: He had an arbitrary soldier replace his picture with one of a baboon. He walked past security points at least 6 times a day and was only discovered after 6 months when he dropped his card and people had a really close look at it.
First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.
I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.
Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.
Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.
For a very illuminating read on this whole business, have a look at "Fabulous Science" by John Waller. Even illustious organisations such as the Royal Society - set up for goal of providing peer review - have been conned or biased (political correctness, partiotism, religious beleifs...). Even Nobel prizes have been awarded for massaged experiments.
Talking of a glocal bandwidth crisis is bullshit. Bandwidth cannot be meaningfully traded/exported etc like, say, oil. To talk of a global oil crisis is meaningful because there is only xxx production worldwide and yyy demand and a country with a surplus (more desire for cash than lots of oil) can stuff the surplus in a tanker and ship it to a country with more desire for oil than cash (typically USA). You can't trade bandwidth like this: if I install some fibre in Mexico, I can't realisticly ship the bandwidth to New York.
There can only meaningfully be a bandwidth issue between the endpoints of a transaction.
Slashdot Mirror
Ads and salesdroids tell him to buy Vista, so he does so that he does not get left behind etc (all the FUD stuff). There's also the factor that he wants "the best". He's shelling out a pile of clams for his new computer and wants that feel-good that he's buying up to date modern stuff.
It is very sad that a company with all MS's resources and abilities can blow $5bn and come up with.... well.... nothing really.
Of course if we count relatively minor failures (like forgetting to take out the trash or pick up dirty underwear), then MTBF is approx 27 minutes!
If something has an MTBF of 1 million hours (that's 114 years or so), then you'll be a long time dead before it fails.
At this stage, the only reasonable non-volatile solid state alternative is NAND flash which costs approx 2 cents per MByte ($20/Gbyte) and dropping. NAND flash has far slower transfer speeds than HDD, but is far smaller, uses less power and is mechanically robust. NAND flash typically has a lifetime of 100k erasure cycles and needs special file systems to get robustness and long life.
My Linux box has 1GB and very rarely uses swap space.
At one time, a long, long, time ago (Windows 95 era) Microsoft could provide a very snappy experience with a 486 and 64MB or less of RAM. Orders of magnitude more CPU and RAM seem to be compensation for crap software, rather than giving useful improvements.
Too often I see people being cut some slack because they have xxx syndrome. Give it a label and bad behavior is suddenly OK. "No he isn't a rude prick, he's got xxxx, and famous person yyy had this.". "He's not slack about spelling and grammar, he's dyslexic..."
Sure, often said people are bright, but it is no guarantee. If the person is very hard to deal with then you waste a lot of time mopping up. In one place I worked, we had a very bright guy with some condition or other, but it absorbed about 50% of a senior experienced person's time to keep him doing the right stuff. As a result the experienced person had insufficient time to bring their wisdom to bear on the problems.
Write me a check Apple!
Remember than no iphones have been sold yet. The analysis needs to wait until some sales figures are available.
As the internet continues to be extended to provide vital services (including access to emergency services etc), making denial of service illegal makes sense.
OLPCs give the possibility for the masses to communicate and organise in the way that these regimes do not like. Said regimes will want a kill switch etc to control the citizens.
Lawyers contruct a legal system that suites them, not one that best protects the citizens.
The court system is constructed to put the courts ahead of anyone else. Contempt of court is a very big deal.
Tax accountants construct a tax system that is too complicated for Joe Average to use, so you need to hire a tax consultant.
Cops have a system that serves cops...
There are noscientific claims that this is linked to global warming. The CNN article on this even had an "executive summary" that said this (sorry can't find url).
Sure, general independence is a big issue. However, even if stroke victims have help with many functions such as cooking, dressing, eating etc, being able to do certain things (eg. handle your own genitalia -- sexually or otherwise) at least gives you some sense of self.
to do the five knuckle shuffle?
Just changing two words: "Allowing employees to visit religous sites may create a hostile work environment and sets you up for a lawsuit from other employees who might see it and be offended. You may be able to get away with it when it's you and a couple of buddies starting up, but when your profits are in the billions, you're a giant stack of cash waiting for the first person to claim religous harassment."
Surely the test should be whether you use company resources for personal reasons. So long as the usage is actuually legal, surely it should not matter what sites you visit. Bible quote website, /., dilbert, tits & ass... what gives any company the right to discriminate?
Lego is surely the coolest toy out there!
An endless stream of toys just encourages unbounded consumerism and listlessness while stifling creativity.
Kids learn and creat more by playing with the box than they do from playing with most toys.
When I worked in the military everyone was supposed to have badge-on-display and everybody was supposed to look at badges all the time. The top security guy rigged a test: He had an arbitrary soldier replace his picture with one of a baboon. He walked past security points at least 6 times a day and was only discovered after 6 months when he dropped his card and people had a really close look at it.
The MS one is big because its running IIS on Vista.
Seeing lots of violence normalises it. Hearing lots of fucking swearing normalises that too.
This is well documented. The idea that gaves and movies etc provide a harmless relief valve are completely without merit.
24/7
First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.
I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.
Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.
Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.
For a very illuminating read on this whole business, have a look at "Fabulous Science" by John Waller. Even illustious organisations such as the Royal Society - set up for goal of providing peer review - have been conned or biased (political correctness, partiotism, religious beleifs...). Even Nobel prizes have been awarded for massaged experiments.
There can only meaningfully be a bandwidth issue between the endpoints of a transaction.