seriously? score 5 for informative? what about score 6 for freaking hilarious?? ahh man, i think the slashdot gods missed the joke on that one... or am i really the only one that laughed out loud, jumped through hoops to log in, then got depressed to realize there was nothing i could do but comment?
i quite my job in the winter of 2003. i, too, am studying computer engineering after 6 years in the workplace. the difference between us is that i never got an undergraduate degree in the first place: i flunked out of my first college.
of my experiences that would be interesting to you, i can say this: profesors tend to be very interested in hearing about what is happening in the real world. grab their interest and speak your mind about what you perceive is happening in the field you want to study. you have been closer to that field than most of their other applicants.
secondly, and something you didn't ask about at all, you are now older than most of the other students. i hope this affects you as it did me. every project or task seems more approachable as some part of your mind holds onto the idea that, "if some 20 year old kid (18 in my case) can do it, i can do it easily"!
this fades a bit with time. i have been at umass amherst for 4 semesters and the effect has mostly worn off as i view the rest of the students as peers. it was certainly an advantage in the begining though as with the old saying, "perception is nine tenths of reality". be just arrogant enough to show that you know your experiences are worth something - something the others don't have.
indeed BeOS was and still is superior. everything was thought out to provide users with a feeling of confidence - a deserved feeling. try this on for size:
download a 600MB Divx rip of some DVD you've been waiting to see. while it's downloading, change the filename in the filesystem. the app you use to download the file never knows or cares - data just dumps to the right place and the proper i-nodes are extended and updated. move the file - go ahead, don't be afraid. click and drag - drop it on another drive. a completely seperate physical disk. what do ya know? the download app still hasn't any reason to worry, the OS seamlessly links the downloaded data to the file, wherever you've put it. throw it out. yup, put it in the trash can and hit 'empty trash'. still, the data streams properly. never a glitch. how about this: on a pentium 2 400Mhz box i can play a Divx while burning a CD and still watch as Seti@Home gets plenty of left over CPU cycles. why? because with fine-grained multithreading i really do have more spare CPU cycles. fewer cycles are tossed out the window by being allocated to processes that are not ready to use them.
what about simple Focus settings? ever try to type a URL in Internet Explorer as the crappy site you're viewing uses pop-unders? why can't you type? because windows pulls focus away and sends it to the other window. when focus returns to the window you wanted, you aren't in the adress bar anymore. theis NEVER happens in BeOS. i don't mean ideally speaking, i mean never. use a script to launch 1000 apps, and start typing into the first app as it is launched, my typing continues to affect that app which had the focus when i started typeing. it is just "The Right Way" and how it was done in BeOS.
just better? ok - that works for telling your friend to try it. don't want to create huge expectations. leave something of a wow effect instead of "well, i already knew it could cure cancer - no big deal"
but BeOS is dead - no more wow effect to be had out there. might as well give away the punchline now: if a person runs BeOS for 7 days they will feel pain and hatred when they next try to use Windows, MacOS and even *gasp* linux.
this turned into a rant aimed at non-beos users. sorry, i suppose i should copy/paste and move it to a reply to someone else's post somewhere but i'm too lazy. your observations are good and true:)
i have had to answer this question in person a thousand times now and i think you'll agree with my answer after a moment of unbiased-towards-OSS-thought.
IF Be had 'eaten microsofts lunch' that would not have killed the beast of redmond. microsoft could operate for many, many years with Zero gross income (especially if their accountants realized the zero days were coming before they happened). with that, the developers of the world are split between:
1. I only know MFC; and 2. Only diversity will save us.
the MFC (microsoft's fucking clones) would still develop for windows since thats all they know. they aren't programming for the joy of perfection but rather to complete a task and they know a method already. they won't switch.
the 'diversity' people on the other hand are much more astute and will do whatever they feel miht possibly prevent another platform monopoly - unless they ARE the monopoly.
therefore, would it be POSSIBLE for Be have been in microsoft's posistion at all? the question, "would they use their power to make the world a better place"? supposes that they have monopoly power. it is irrelevant. they would not have been given monopoly power. their morals would never have been tested.
and with that said, yes - i do believe that they would have wanted to make the world a better place. i also think that microsoft wants to make the world a better place. the question is, what is this better place. how might microsoft's description of it differ from Be's? we all know the linear progress of microsoft's 'take over everything' plan. but what of Be, Inc? a group of creative highly respected geeks who constantly re-write core OS features because they claim, "we did not do it The Right Way the first time", can only have a brighter, more beautiful image of "the world [being] a better place".
BeOS DID WORK with 90% of the hardware. it was the 10% remainder (like Lucent Modems) that fouled things up. if you had anything within 3 years of the release date of the OS you had a 90% chance of it working respectably and a good 75% of it working perfectly.
and you cant tell me i'm wrong - i SOLD BEOS FOR 3 YEARS! all of my machines ran BeOS without me worrying about what hardware to buy simply because i bought good and new hardware.
what, did you buy an emachine last month and try to run BeOS R3 on it?!?!?
FUD is only to be used on the living - don't sling bullshit-covered-mud at a dead OS. thats like calling out, "Amiga ahd horrible multi-tasking code"!!!
and did Be kill themselves "with remarkable efficiency"? hardly. they were in business for 10 years. 1990 - 2000. thats a slow crawl towards killing oneself. and when you're fighting an overwhelming battle you have to send all of your troops to the current task. better to win one one part than lose at them all. so the focus shift? yeah - well if they'd split their dev and support teams into groups for each BeOS and BeIA we would be blaming them for that mistake rather than blaming microsoft. two weak teams can't win. one strong team just might.
i wanted to share this: i first learned of BeOS at an MCSE course in Braintree, MA. i was taking the courses because, having no formal education, i doubted my ability to fix Windows.
stupid. thats all i can say about the MCSE track. anyone who EVER wants to impress me these days with an "I'm Microsoft certified" does irrepairable harm to their 'worth' in my eyes. it's ok to BE certified, just don't be proud of it - after taking the clases you chould know better than to ever admit that you wasted such time on such a bogus 'education' in which buttons to click on. the whole course track had me so pissed off (and broke, it cost $8000) that i stood up ranting one day, much like your post above. a fellow by the name of Andrew, sitting at the desk in front of me, turned and offered a BeOS R3 Demo CD. my life changed. i bacame a religious zealot and in 7 days i had removed everything 'Microsoft' from my computers (i ran a computer shop then - took windows off the demo machines in favor of BeOS too!) and i have NEVER run microsoft-anythin since that day.
i lost all of my extra money in the stock market by purchasing BeOS and AMD stocks. *sigh*
so - i'm with you. FUCK YOU BILL GATES! i've said it before and i'll say it again - give me one chance, just ONE and i'll kick his skinny ass. wouldn't prove anything - but dam would it be healing for me to watch him stutter and spit and cry out, "Please! PLease stop"!
i purposefully left windows myself - moved onto beos (see username...) so i can't say, without bias, that you are wrong. but dam i hope you are.
albeit the average (maybe even the above average) consumer is an absolute dolt. hands down, no arguing this - people don't WANT to bother 'picking' an operating system, nor a harddrive manufacturer. to most people, that would be analagous to 'choosing' the vendor of the fabric for the interior of their car. "who gives a hoot"!?
despite this obtuse lack of will, these same consumers have to at lesat LOOK at the friggin thing they are about to pay $$ for. if i walk into a car dealership and find a brand new porsche for $5000 you better believe that i'm going to be looking closely at the emblem and make sure it REALLY says what i thought i read.
your 'family member' obviusly didn't even look at the label. the Lindows logo doesn't even resemble microsoft. "windows lindows its all the same thing?!" bullshit - if you don't read the label you aren't even comparing and concluding similarity, you are just assuming that 'everything is microsoft'
and that there is the real problem. just about everything IS microsoft - so it has beoome a 'safe' assumption for people who don't want to be bothered. and breaking this homogenious market into unique segments which can interoperate enough to 'get the job done' is what i see lindows doing. all the other linux's are there if you WANT linux specifically - but we aren't selling to these people at *name your store here*, we're selling computers to the kinds of people who drive 50mph in the fast lane on the highway just so they don't have to look around as they drive. we're selling to people who actually WANT to be numb to the world and all the options out there. we're selling to people who would prefer being dumb enough to never have an opinion.
absolutely....i wouldn't dream of surfing to, may, MSN or Yahoo via my 9600 baud cell-modem powered VisorPrism. with google (and cached pages) the internet is still usable over tiny bandwidth - both link and display varieties.
sorry - bad math in my prior post. Read $899 minus $150 equals $749. It's actually NOT cheaper...try calling 1-800-DELLBLOWS and ask the operator why the 'strating price' cannot be reached.
i just went to Dell's website... the CHEAPEST advertised laptop "starts at $699 after a $150 rebate( Inspiron 2650C ). I went through ALL of the options and picked the lowest, cheapest and bottom of every category (except RAM which i kept at 256MB for comparison). Somehow I end up at $899 minus a rebate of $150 and I have $649.
Ahh...cheaper and the faster 1.6GHz Celeron you were talking about... but at 7.25lbs there is a somewhat weighter problem here that you must have overlooked....(compared to 2.9lbs from LindowsOS)
there are three real reasons i keep my pda on me 24/7:
1 i use a visor+visorphone. it's my only phone (i cut my landline years ago)
2 i have gone back to college and i use it to keep track of assignments. translate the whole syllabus into 4.0Student and i never have to look anywhere else to see what my next assisgnment is - or how well i'm doing in class.
3 email and websurfing at any occasion. this may sound sick, but the next time you're sitting on _The_Can_ ask yourself, "would i mind being able to read slashdot and read/reply to my email whist i sit and meditate"?
i sold my business and started working for someone else when i decided to go back to school. the problem with taking time off from your own business is that the grey matter wears out. running a business you've got enough to worry about that a lot of people out there can't handle it...college is the same. put them together and you've got to be more motivated than i am to pull it off.
look for 'Introducing Physics' published by Totem books (they're British if i recall). they've got a great series of quick reads about everything under the sun. very shallow read but hits most every point - good to help you figure out exactly what it is you don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
seriously? score 5 for informative? what about score 6 for freaking hilarious?? ahh man, i think the slashdot gods missed the joke on that one... or am i really the only one that laughed out loud, jumped through hoops to log in, then got depressed to realize there was nothing i could do but comment?
i quite my job in the winter of 2003. i, too, am studying computer engineering after 6 years in the workplace. the difference between us is that i never got an undergraduate degree in the first place: i flunked out of my first college.
of my experiences that would be interesting to you, i can say this:
profesors tend to be very interested in hearing about what is happening in the real world. grab their interest and speak your mind about what you perceive is happening in the field you want to study. you have been closer to that field than most of their other applicants.
secondly, and something you didn't ask about at all, you are now older than most of the other students. i hope this affects you as it did me. every project or task seems more approachable as some part of your mind holds onto the idea that, "if some 20 year old kid (18 in my case) can do it, i can do it easily"!
this fades a bit with time. i have been at umass amherst for 4 semesters and the effect has mostly worn off as i view the rest of the students as peers. it was certainly an advantage in the begining though as with the old saying, "perception is nine tenths of reality". be just arrogant enough to show that you know your experiences are worth something - something the others don't have.
indeed BeOS was and still is superior. everything was thought out to provide users with a feeling of confidence - a deserved feeling. try this on for size:
:)
download a 600MB Divx rip of some DVD you've been waiting to see. while it's downloading, change the filename in the filesystem. the app you use to download the file never knows or cares - data just dumps to the right place and the proper i-nodes are extended and updated. move the file - go ahead, don't be afraid. click and drag - drop it on another drive. a completely seperate physical disk. what do ya know? the download app still hasn't any reason to worry, the OS seamlessly links the downloaded data to the file, wherever you've put it. throw it out. yup, put it in the trash can and hit 'empty trash'. still, the data streams properly. never a glitch. how about this: on a pentium 2 400Mhz box i can play a Divx while burning a CD and still watch as Seti@Home gets plenty of left over CPU cycles. why? because with fine-grained multithreading i really do have more spare CPU cycles. fewer cycles are tossed out the window by being allocated to processes that are not ready to use them.
what about simple Focus settings? ever try to type a URL in Internet Explorer as the crappy site you're viewing uses pop-unders? why can't you type? because windows pulls focus away and sends it to the other window. when focus returns to the window you wanted, you aren't in the adress bar anymore. theis NEVER happens in BeOS. i don't mean ideally speaking, i mean never. use a script to launch 1000 apps, and start typing into the first app as it is launched, my typing continues to affect that app which had the focus when i started typeing. it is just "The Right Way" and how it was done in BeOS.
just better? ok - that works for telling your friend to try it. don't want to create huge expectations. leave something of a wow effect instead of "well, i already knew it could cure cancer - no big deal"
but BeOS is dead - no more wow effect to be had out there. might as well give away the punchline now: if a person runs BeOS for 7 days they will feel pain and hatred when they next try to use Windows, MacOS and even *gasp* linux.
this turned into a rant aimed at non-beos users. sorry, i suppose i should copy/paste and move it to a reply to someone else's post somewhere but i'm too lazy. your observations are good and true
i have had to answer this question in person a thousand times now and i think you'll agree with my answer after a moment of unbiased-towards-OSS-thought.
IF Be had 'eaten microsofts lunch' that would not have killed the beast of redmond. microsoft could operate for many, many years with Zero gross income (especially if their accountants realized the zero days were coming before they happened). with that, the developers of the world are split between:
1. I only know MFC; and
2. Only diversity will save us.
the MFC (microsoft's fucking clones) would still develop for windows since thats all they know. they aren't programming for the joy of perfection but rather to complete a task and they know a method already. they won't switch.
the 'diversity' people on the other hand are much more astute and will do whatever they feel miht possibly prevent another platform monopoly - unless they ARE the monopoly.
therefore, would it be POSSIBLE for Be have been in microsoft's posistion at all? the question, "would they use their power to make the world a better place"? supposes that they have monopoly power. it is irrelevant. they would not have been given monopoly power. their morals would never have been tested.
and with that said, yes - i do believe that they would have wanted to make the world a better place. i also think that microsoft wants to make the world a better place. the question is, what is this better place. how might microsoft's description of it differ from Be's? we all know the linear progress of microsoft's 'take over everything' plan. but what of Be, Inc? a group of creative highly respected geeks who constantly re-write core OS features because they claim, "we did not do it The Right Way the first time", can only have a brighter, more beautiful image of "the world [being] a better place".
you idiot.
BeOS DID WORK with 90% of the hardware. it was the 10% remainder (like Lucent Modems) that fouled things up. if you had anything within 3 years of the release date of the OS you had a 90% chance of it working respectably and a good 75% of it working perfectly.
and you cant tell me i'm wrong - i SOLD BEOS FOR 3 YEARS! all of my machines ran BeOS without me worrying about what hardware to buy simply because i bought good and new hardware.
what, did you buy an emachine last month and try to run BeOS R3 on it?!?!?
FUD is only to be used on the living - don't sling bullshit-covered-mud at a dead OS. thats like calling out, "Amiga ahd horrible multi-tasking code"!!!
and did Be kill themselves "with remarkable efficiency"? hardly. they were in business for 10 years. 1990 - 2000. thats a slow crawl towards killing oneself. and when you're fighting an overwhelming battle you have to send all of your troops to the current task. better to win one one part than lose at them all. so the focus shift? yeah - well if they'd split their dev and support teams into groups for each BeOS and BeIA we would be blaming them for that mistake rather than blaming microsoft. two weak teams can't win. one strong team just might.
in a word: thanks
reading that let me rant vicariously through you.
i wanted to share this: i first learned of BeOS at an MCSE course in Braintree, MA. i was taking the courses because, having no formal education, i doubted my ability to fix Windows.
stupid. thats all i can say about the MCSE track. anyone who EVER wants to impress me these days with an "I'm Microsoft certified" does irrepairable harm to their 'worth' in my eyes. it's ok to BE certified, just don't be proud of it - after taking the clases you chould know better than to ever admit that you wasted such time on such a bogus 'education' in which buttons to click on. the whole course track had me so pissed off (and broke, it cost $8000) that i stood up ranting one day, much like your post above. a fellow by the name of Andrew, sitting at the desk in front of me, turned and offered a BeOS R3 Demo CD. my life changed. i bacame a religious zealot and in 7 days i had removed everything 'Microsoft' from my computers (i ran a computer shop then - took windows off the demo machines in favor of BeOS too!) and i have NEVER run microsoft-anythin since that day.
i lost all of my extra money in the stock market by purchasing BeOS and AMD stocks. *sigh*
so - i'm with you. FUCK YOU BILL GATES! i've said it before and i'll say it again - give me one chance, just ONE and i'll kick his skinny ass. wouldn't prove anything - but dam would it be healing for me to watch him stutter and spit and cry out, "Please! PLease stop"!
fucker.
i purposefully left windows myself - moved onto beos (see username...) so i can't say, without bias, that you are wrong. but dam i hope you are.
albeit the average (maybe even the above average) consumer is an absolute dolt. hands down, no arguing this - people don't WANT to bother 'picking' an operating system, nor a harddrive manufacturer. to most people, that would be analagous to 'choosing' the vendor of the fabric for the interior of their car. "who gives a hoot"!?
despite this obtuse lack of will, these same consumers have to at lesat LOOK at the friggin thing they are about to pay $$ for. if i walk into a car dealership and find a brand new porsche for $5000 you better believe that i'm going to be looking closely at the emblem and make sure it REALLY says what i thought i read.
your 'family member' obviusly didn't even look at the label. the Lindows logo doesn't even resemble microsoft. "windows lindows its all the same thing?!" bullshit - if you don't read the label you aren't even comparing and concluding similarity, you are just assuming that 'everything is microsoft'
and that there is the real problem. just about everything IS microsoft - so it has beoome a 'safe' assumption for people who don't want to be bothered. and breaking this homogenious market into unique segments which can interoperate enough to 'get the job done' is what i see lindows doing. all the other linux's are there if you WANT linux specifically - but we aren't selling to these people at *name your store here*, we're selling computers to the kinds of people who drive 50mph in the fast lane on the highway just so they don't have to look around as they drive. we're selling to people who actually WANT to be numb to the world and all the options out there. we're selling to people who would prefer being dumb enough to never have an opinion.
and thats the world as i see it.
-jared
absolutely....i wouldn't dream of surfing to, may, MSN or Yahoo via my 9600 baud cell-modem powered VisorPrism. with google (and cached pages) the internet is still usable over tiny bandwidth - both link and display varieties.
sorry - bad math in my prior post. Read $899 minus $150 equals $749. It's actually NOT cheaper...try calling 1-800-DELLBLOWS and ask the operator why the 'strating price' cannot be reached.
i just went to Dell's website... the CHEAPEST advertised laptop "starts at $699 after a $150 rebate( Inspiron 2650C ). I went through ALL of the options and picked the lowest, cheapest and bottom of every category (except RAM which i kept at 256MB for comparison). Somehow I end up at $899 minus a rebate of $150 and I have $649.
Ahh...cheaper and the faster 1.6GHz Celeron you were talking about... but at 7.25lbs there is a somewhat weighter problem here that you must have overlooked....(compared to 2.9lbs from LindowsOS)
there are three real reasons i keep my pda on me 24/7:
1 i use a visor+visorphone. it's my only phone (i cut my landline years ago)
2 i have gone back to college and i use it to keep track of assignments. translate the whole syllabus into 4.0Student and i never have to look anywhere else to see what my next assisgnment is - or how well i'm doing in class.
3 email and websurfing at any occasion. this may sound sick, but the next time you're sitting on _The_Can_ ask yourself, "would i mind being able to read slashdot and read/reply to my email whist i sit and meditate"?
of course, even that is just theory. we don't "know"it, our theories CAN predict it...and can also be used to predict other possibilities.
- there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics!
i thought momentum conservation would force the INSIDE to spin more slowly than the outside.
i sold my business and started working for someone else when i decided to go back to school. the problem with taking time off from your own business is that the grey matter wears out. running a business you've got enough to worry about that a lot of people out there can't handle it...college is the same. put them together and you've got to be more motivated than i am to pull it off.
look for 'Introducing Physics' published by Totem books (they're British if i recall). they've got a great series of quick reads about everything under the sun. very shallow read but hits most every point - good to help you figure out exactly what it is you don't know.