If you care so much about money, perhaps you should go into finance instead of computer science. If you have no passion for what you do, what are you doing in an "enthusaists" forum anyway?
I believe in doing what you love and not worry about money. In our field, it's actually quite easy to accomplish.
And I'm sick of this "IT" this "IT" that; everytime someone tells me that he works in "IT," I'd ask them exactly what they do. None of them knows crap about technology or computers. I'm sick of the constant whining by "HTML Coders." They deserve what they got for dropping school/job/whatever to join the dotCom gold rush.
I'm damn sick of computer science students not knowing shit about computers. If you came into this field for the money, what right do you have whinning about your income? The field no longer offer you the good pay; then leave. Switch to investment banking or car repair or strip dancing. Stop whinning.
A poet never think about striking rich; they do what they feel passionate about. Programmers shouldn't be any different. If Linus didn't get paid for Linux, why should you demand a certain pay? If I were the recruiter, I will reject you whinners because only failures worry about salaries, not the work to accomplish. Be thankful that we are damn lucky to be able to make a good living doing what we love.
It's bad times. So what? I know of people who can't wait to retire and I know of people who just love doing what they do and refuse to retire. Your happiness is your choice.
The motives behind RIAA's lawsuit is very simple: The big 5 are losing money in such great rate, that the investors are prepared to sell them out. Any good sign is important to thier survival.
The big five is merging into four. Top execs were replaced by new execs under pressure to turn a profit in a tough market. The RIAA has no way to prepare for the big change in technology.
In a way, MP3s are a tide changing "dominant design." When dominant design happens, the old industry dies. Digital cameras killed Polaroid just like CDs killed vinyls just like mp3s kills RIAA. What you are seeing is the last struggle of the dying industry.
The RIAA is frantically looking for a new way to make a profit, and I'm sure they've heard your argument. But it's too late. It's like teaching a 20 year old elephant to dance: What is the point?
Musicals bring back our imagination. In the times when everything can be realistically drawn by computers, it's refreshing to be encouraged to let our imagination to fill out the blank.
Moulin Rouge is completely different from your usual Broadway style musical like "Chicago" or "Sound of music" etc. Do you know that people in Moulin Rouge can't see if thier lives depend upon it? And they really can't dance, either. There are a lot of visual effects that are absolutely non-traditional.
Moulin Rough is an experiment. Chicago is a Broadway type musical. They are two different things.
But I do hope that Chicago got Best Picture and Zeta-Jones gets an Oscar. She's surprisingly talented. And for those who enjoy Chicago, take a look at "Cabaret".
You guys know that SuSE is struggling to make some profit.
I use both Office X and office XP for biz school work. (unfortunately)
For start, the UI is entirely different. Templates look totally different. For example, the panels in OfficeX powerpoint looks totally different. OfficeX has "sub-bullet-indent" and I never found that in OfficeXP. Plus, there are a lot of add-ons and 3rd party software that has no OfficeX port. StatPlus for excel for statistics analysis is one of the progs that I have to use to compensate Excel's weak statistics features.
Man, I miss ASCII text but it just isn't gona happen in business.
Question: What if the terrorists ram a Boeing 747 into Microsoft database server which stores the keys? Will all the machines in the world be useless and mountain afghans rule the world?
One thing though. Microsoft is losing less than 1 billion dollars on XBox so far. But Microsoft have some 47 billion dollars of cash on hand.
1 billion / 150 = 6,666,666
That is, if 6 million geeks go out, throw in $200 hard earned cash and purchase one Xbox without buying any games, MS will lose about 1 billion, which really doesn't sting much for Bill Gates. However, the mod chip is likely to do hefty damage because you can bet that 1 out of each 2 Xboxes sold will be modded and it signals that the prospect of profit is dim.
Now look at Linux and BSD. No one needs to throw in $200 investment to slap Microsoft in the face.
But then again, a DivX-VCD-mp3CD set top box sounds like a nice idea. When we come up with even more worth idea for Xbox, I hope the hack will be ready.
Any creative method to screw Microsoft in every possible way is satisfying and I root for those Xbox hackers... on the sideline that is. I hope that I can get an Xbox for $5 next year to put next to the Microsoft Bob CD.
Exactly! For the fun of it. Not many people believed that Linux would have made it in the mid 90's, but everyone was happy to waste hours and hours on it anyway.
I feel that this is the biggest difference between the open source spirit and communism - that an open source developer only serves his/her own interest, but a communist is contributing to the group. The former motivates; the later does not.
If you can smash pie on Bill Gate's face as a hobbie, wouldn't you be happy to spend hours and hours doing it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's a real-time higher quality MP3 encoder on the market. Most recording device handles mp3 only in low frequency mono.
Honestly I can't see why not, because a high end computer seems to be able to do it quite fast. The problem would be the flood of lawsuite for such chip maker. If anyone knows of such thing, please do let me know.
"One nation, under no freaking god, indivisible..."
Or as Satanists put it:
"One nation, under Satan, indivisible..."
Or perhaps like the hippies say, "One nation, under the Beatles, indivisible..." (Charles Manson believed it.)
Have you ever thought about other possibilities? Like, people who don't believe in any type of god but believe that something else might rule? Do we really need to spend time debating on the stupid phrase? Nah. I say get rid of the pledge.
The Apple lawsuit threats against looks and feel. (Gosh! I LOVED that KDE pencil drawing theme so much that I actually installed KDE to find that Apple took it out saying that it is an internal research theme of thiers.) Apple's anti-Linux commercials. (Sending all other UNIXes to/dev/null) Apple people laughing at X Window system, while they know that Apple leech the community and refuse to share Aqua. (If you don't wanna share Aqua, fine. But why flame X? Did we ask for humiliation?)... there's one too many disappointments.
I'm asking, how much of these Apple behavior it takes for people to realize that Apple is not on our side and Steve has not changed a bit?
Oh, i forgot to mention another thing: Monitors wear out. You cannot buy a used 10 year old 21" workstation monitor and expect it to be crisp. The chemicals on the screen will expire in a few years. Make sure you shut the monitor when you are not using it, to extend its life.
I am a programmer. I too have extremely weak eyes. How bad? Two summers ago, I went to summer intern at a company that bought us brand new 17" SONY trinitron monitors and I ended up in the doctors'. I spend over 50% of my computer budget on monitors. (which is what EVERYONE should do.) I have spent a lot of time on this subject. Let me tell you what I find.
1. Lighting is VERY important. make sure you have ambient light.
2. the size of the monitor is also very important, but CRISPNESS is more important. You must make sure that the monitor is CRISP. You cannot really tell if a monitor is CRISP without looking at it. Two monitors with the same pitch distance can be very different when you actually look at them.
3. You MUST get them with full 3 year warranty. Monitors are so fragile, that it may be already broken during shipment, before you open the box. Monitors, especially big ones, have an extremely high lemon rate. If you spend money on a monitor and you are not satisfied with the image quality, insist on taking it back. You must move it *very* carefully.
4. LCD vs. CRT. Well. LCD technology is simply not there yet. When IBM shows me the 300dpi monitor I'll take a close look and maybe change my mind. The truth is, For the price you pay for a LCD with high quality digital signals, you'd be so better off with two beautiful 20" high end monitor. Another thing is, in Linux, you can configure 10 different resolutions, all the way from 1200x1600 to 400x600. LCDs cannot scale good. When a LCD is displaying any size that is different from it's own, it interpolates. This anti-aliasing kills your eyes because your eyes tend to think that it is out of focus.
5. Video card counts. You must get a Matrox. Make damn sure that it doesn't get under 85MHz. Better get higher rates. Hand tune your monitor carefully.
6. Monitor cables counts a lot, too. Best is high quality BNC cables, they are about $100.
7. Do yourself a favour, use OPERA as your browser. you can zoom in any size you want with your numeric keypad. Right now I'm typing in half-inch letters.
8. one thing great about two huge monitors is that you can set one of them at really low resolution, so when you switch to windows. *shame* like VC++ you can see BIG letters.
9. Picking a monitor is likely shopping for fruit. You must hand pick yours. Even the exact same model have different crispness. Pick a good one.
My school have 20" Trinitron monitors everywhere, but they tire my eyes. If you set up your monitor configuration correctly, you are not likely to be tired for a long long time.
What's the best CRT monitor? Well I really dislike Trinitron tubes because many of them actually flashes due to the little string that holds the grills turned lose. I heard many many good words about high end EIZO, but they are at $2000 range.
I know that you are a student, and this sounds very expensive. You must sacrifice everything else to get a good monitor setup if you want to still see in 10 years. It's also a great investment because it last longer than any other parts of your computer, Good luck.
Another huge earth quake hit Taiwan. Let's pray for them.
It was widely reported that the first "draft" of the movie came in at 4+ hours long. Dave created an online petition for fans to sign. At issue? Dave wants Warner Bros. and Christopher Columbus to know we fans want a director's cut Harry Potter DVD. 4 hours.
From what you have said, I'm sure you have not submitted any patches before. Here's something you should know. I think there's a problem with your assumption that programmers submit patches ONLY because they are bored, have too much time, and are totally passionate about the program and know every detail of the code.
The truth,
1. You don't need to understand that whole program structure in order to fix a bug. you look at pieces of it that's causing problems. As long as the code is reasonably documented and well interfaced within, it shouldn't be too hard to find that piece.
2. People submit patches not because they are crazy about the program, but because it bothers them enough to get off thier butt and fix it for good. In short, to the patcher, the patch SAVES him a lot of time and trouble. Say, if some bug makes you restart your apache every 3-5 days because some part of it breaks, you would really want to fix it so that you don't have to restart it again. What drives programmers, especially UNIX programmers, is convenience.
I don't think a lot of people are rushing to download Micheal Jackson's mp3. Like me, if I didn't see this post, I wouldn't have downloaded the mp3 at 196k/s and now am listening to this crapy song over my crapy ass soundcard.
So you see, Jackson's team just wanted to stir a little bit of something, ANYTHING, to get attention. They know all too well that the protection won't work. They just hope that the new young techno savvy kids will download it out of curiosity... after all, all Jackson fans are, what, over 30?
It works with any OS because all the keystroke programming is done on the keyboard hardware. I use one with a Linux box. Really it's the coolest thing you'll ever see and it's OUT OF PRODUCTION. So whatever out there is what's left.
As a keyboard enthusiast, I can recommend a few keyboards. The best keyboards are the ones that uses machanical switches. This includes the "Buckling Spring" and "quiet buckling spring" and "ALPS" switches.
Buckling Spring: these are the old IBM clicker keyboards, now made by www.pckeyboard.com. They have a lot of different styles to choose from. They recently came up with a programmable keyboard. They also have quiet buckling spring keyboards if noise is a concern.
ALPS switches: The most famous company that makes ALPS swtiches was Nothgate. Unfortunately Northgate went out of bussiness. Right now, there are a few manufacturers that makes keyboards with ALPS switches - Focus keyboard(Focus 2001 keyboard), Ortek/Adesso (MCK-142 pro), Avant (Avant Prime corresponds to Northgate Omnikey101, Avant Stellar corresponds to Northgate Omnikey Ultra).
For programmers, I HIGHLY recommend the Adesso/Ortek MCK-142 Pro. http://www.monu-cad.com/keyboard.htm These have 24 programmable keys, you don't need software to program it. I know the price is steep but it's going to save you lots and lots of time in years.
Re:Vertical markets with nice profit margins
on
Compaq Shifts Focus
·
· Score: 2
I worked for one of the biggest oil services company and they are not exactly making easy money. There are only two big oil field service companies in the world which means the market is duopoly. (They do anything but selling the oil).
Niche markets don't make a load of money unless they are also monopoly. Competition drives the price down, regardless of the type of product. This is why Microsoft makes more than any oil companies.
Actually ShadowRealm, MrG and Purity are so called "release groups." These groups "release" movies. So thesecorresponding newsgroups are where thier people post thier releases.
Not that I know it myself I overheard it from another cubical.:P
Right on! If we charged money for the code, then the users would have been the customers. But no, that's not how it works. In open source, the users are peers and freeloaders. We write what we need when the situation bugs us enough to do so. We don't owe anyone the customer service.
"but I paid $70 for Red Hat!." Well, did you pay for the office apps you want? No? quit whining. Yes? Whine to Red Hat.
Telling the programmers that thier FREE code isn't good enough is sort of like our showing you our new born baby and you say, "What an ugly baby. If I pay MS $x then I can get a beautiful baby." It hurts. It doesn't help anyone and we get pissed off.
Many "users" tend to believe that they are the customers and demand things. They don't realize that they are actually "freeloading" the contributors. Customers, by definition, PAYS. Open source programmers are not taking a penny and therefore not responsible for whatever the user's complaint is. So there's no good free office software? You can either buy one or write one but you cannot whine because we don't owe you nothin'. If MS has a office suit that you like, go for it. We will let you know when we make a good one. Wierd, when I tell people to go for MS product, they think I have attitude problems and I am trying to be leet.
Open Source applications take time. When they aren't ready, they aren't ready; you cannot pressure us into making something. The user base doesn't want to give us time and the user base doesn't want to help. IBM says they will invest 1 billion in Linux, but doing PR stuffs instead of writing us a good office suite, so even IBM (the big customer?) have no right to whine about the office suite. And luckily, they don't. I am almost sure that if they did try to write office it will bomb, too. What makes you think other people have the right to pressure the programmers? You are giving the same "suggestions" again and again and again and again. That does not help. So either start coding or throw some money at office application sellers, now quit bugging us, OK?
The real problem is that Apple supporters would come back and flaim open source OSes.
As we all know, Apple fans traditionally consider everything other than Mac stuffs are inferior. Regardless of the past court cases, Apple threatens open source community with thier "look and feel" creations. Unfortunately most Mac people are not technically oriented to realize that UNIX, what they called "inferior OS" is the base of thier new Mac operating system.
This really piss me off. I mean, I know BSD license have no problem with Apple using thier code. We don't care if Apple is free loading UNIX code, but will Apple fans PLEASE stop coming at us and telling me how inferior UNIX is? UNIX people don't deserve this.
Slashdot Mirror
If you care so much about money, perhaps you should go into finance instead of computer science. If you have no passion for what you do, what are you doing in an "enthusaists" forum anyway?
I believe in doing what you love and not worry about money. In our field, it's actually quite easy to accomplish.
And I'm sick of this "IT" this "IT" that; everytime someone tells me that he works in "IT," I'd ask them exactly what they do. None of them knows crap about technology or computers. I'm sick of the constant whining by "HTML Coders." They deserve what they got for dropping school/job/whatever to join the dotCom gold rush.
I'm damn sick of computer science students not knowing shit about computers. If you came into this field for the money, what right do you have whinning about your income? The field no longer offer you the good pay; then leave. Switch to investment banking or car repair or strip dancing. Stop whinning.
A poet never think about striking rich; they do what they feel passionate about. Programmers shouldn't be any different. If Linus didn't get paid for Linux, why should you demand a certain pay? If I were the recruiter, I will reject you whinners because only failures worry about salaries, not the work to accomplish. Be thankful that we are damn lucky to be able to make a good living doing what we love.
It's bad times. So what? I know of people who can't wait to retire and I know of people who just love doing what they do and refuse to retire. Your happiness is your choice.
The motives behind RIAA's lawsuit is very simple: The big 5 are losing money in such great rate, that the investors are prepared to sell them out. Any good sign is important to thier survival.
The big five is merging into four. Top execs were replaced by new execs under pressure to turn a profit in a tough market. The RIAA has no way to prepare for the big change in technology.
In a way, MP3s are a tide changing "dominant design." When dominant design happens, the old industry dies. Digital cameras killed Polaroid just like CDs killed vinyls just like mp3s kills RIAA. What you are seeing is the last struggle of the dying industry.
The RIAA is frantically looking for a new way to make a profit, and I'm sure they've heard your argument. But it's too late. It's like teaching a 20 year old elephant to dance: What is the point?
Musicals bring back our imagination. In the times when everything can be realistically drawn by computers, it's refreshing to be encouraged to let our imagination to fill out the blank.
Moulin Rouge is completely different from your usual Broadway style musical like "Chicago" or "Sound of music" etc. Do you know that people in Moulin Rouge can't see if thier lives depend upon it? And they really can't dance, either. There are a lot of visual effects that are absolutely non-traditional.
Moulin Rough is an experiment. Chicago is a Broadway type musical. They are two different things.
But I do hope that Chicago got Best Picture and Zeta-Jones gets an Oscar. She's surprisingly talented. And for those who enjoy Chicago, take a look at "Cabaret".
You guys know that SuSE is struggling to make some profit.
I use both Office X and office XP for biz school work. (unfortunately)
For start, the UI is entirely different. Templates look totally different. For example, the panels in OfficeX powerpoint looks totally different. OfficeX has "sub-bullet-indent" and I never found that in OfficeXP. Plus, there are a lot of add-ons and 3rd party software that has no OfficeX port. StatPlus for excel for statistics analysis is one of the progs that I have to use to compensate Excel's weak statistics features.
Man, I miss ASCII text but it just isn't gona happen in business.
Question: What if the terrorists ram a Boeing 747 into Microsoft database server which stores the keys? Will all the machines in the world be useless and mountain afghans rule the world?
One thing though. Microsoft is losing less than 1 billion dollars on XBox so far. But Microsoft have some 47 billion dollars of cash on hand.
1 billion / 150 = 6,666,666
That is, if 6 million geeks go out, throw in $200 hard earned cash and purchase one Xbox without buying any games, MS will lose about 1 billion, which really doesn't sting much for Bill Gates. However, the mod chip is likely to do hefty damage because you can bet that 1 out of each 2 Xboxes sold will be modded and it signals that the prospect of profit is dim.
Now look at Linux and BSD. No one needs to throw in $200 investment to slap Microsoft in the face.
But then again, a DivX-VCD-mp3CD set top box sounds like a nice idea. When we come up with even more worth idea for Xbox, I hope the hack will be ready.
Any creative method to screw Microsoft in every possible way is satisfying and I root for those Xbox hackers... on the sideline that is. I hope that I can get an Xbox for $5 next year to put next to the Microsoft Bob CD.
Exactly! For the fun of it. Not many people believed that Linux would have made it in the mid 90's, but everyone was happy to waste hours and hours on it anyway.
I feel that this is the biggest difference between the open source spirit and communism - that an open source developer only serves his/her own interest, but a communist is contributing to the group. The former motivates; the later does not.
If you can smash pie on Bill Gate's face as a hobbie, wouldn't you be happy to spend hours and hours doing it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's a real-time higher quality MP3 encoder on the market. Most recording device handles mp3 only in low frequency mono.
Honestly I can't see why not, because a high end computer seems to be able to do it quite fast. The problem would be the flood of lawsuite for such chip maker. If anyone knows of such thing, please do let me know.
Yes, the Church of Satan in SF was said to have established because the guy wanted to take advantage of these church tax break rules.
Or as anti-christs would put it:
"One nation, under no freaking god, indivisible..."
Or as Satanists put it:
"One nation, under Satan, indivisible..."
Or perhaps like the hippies say, "One nation, under the Beatles, indivisible..." (Charles Manson believed it.)
Have you ever thought about other possibilities? Like, people who don't believe in any type of god but believe that something else might rule? Do we really need to spend time debating on the stupid phrase? Nah. I say get rid of the pledge.
DivX codec changes so frequently, what are you gona do, flash your card every month?
I own an iBook.
/dev/null) Apple people laughing at X Window system, while they know that Apple leech the community and refuse to share Aqua. (If you don't wanna share Aqua, fine. But why flame X? Did we ask for humiliation?)... there's one too many disappointments.
The Apple lawsuit threats against looks and feel. (Gosh! I LOVED that KDE pencil drawing theme so much that I actually installed KDE to find that Apple took it out saying that it is an internal research theme of thiers.) Apple's anti-Linux commercials. (Sending all other UNIXes to
I'm asking, how much of these Apple behavior it takes for people to realize that Apple is not on our side and Steve has not changed a bit?
I'm sure these people foresee that the site is a huge crack-bait, so they installed apache to avoid millions of crack attemps each hour.
Oh, i forgot to mention another thing: Monitors wear out. You cannot buy a used 10 year old 21" workstation monitor and expect it to be crisp. The chemicals on the screen will expire in a few years. Make sure you shut the monitor when you are not using it, to extend its life.
I am a programmer. I too have extremely weak eyes. How bad? Two summers ago, I went to summer intern at a company that bought us brand new 17" SONY trinitron monitors and I ended up in the doctors'. I spend over 50% of my computer budget on monitors. (which is what EVERYONE should do.) I have spent a lot of time on this subject. Let me tell you what I find.
1. Lighting is VERY important. make sure you have ambient light.
2. the size of the monitor is also very important, but CRISPNESS is more important. You must make sure that the monitor is CRISP. You cannot really tell if a monitor is CRISP without looking at it. Two monitors with the same pitch distance can be very different when you actually look at them.
3. You MUST get them with full 3 year warranty. Monitors are so fragile, that it may be already broken during shipment, before you open the box. Monitors, especially big ones, have an extremely high lemon rate. If you spend money on a monitor and you are not satisfied with the image quality, insist on taking it back. You must move it *very* carefully.
4. LCD vs. CRT. Well. LCD technology is simply not there yet. When IBM shows me the 300dpi monitor I'll take a close look and maybe change my mind. The truth is, For the price you pay for a LCD with high quality digital signals, you'd be so better off with two beautiful 20" high end monitor. Another thing is, in Linux, you can configure 10 different resolutions, all the way from 1200x1600 to 400x600. LCDs cannot scale good. When a LCD is displaying any size that is different from it's own, it interpolates. This anti-aliasing kills your eyes because your eyes tend to think that it is out of focus.
5. Video card counts. You must get a Matrox. Make damn sure that it doesn't get under 85MHz. Better get higher rates. Hand tune your monitor carefully.
6. Monitor cables counts a lot, too. Best is high quality BNC cables, they are about $100.
7. Do yourself a favour, use OPERA as your browser. you can zoom in any size you want with your numeric keypad. Right now I'm typing in half-inch letters.
8. one thing great about two huge monitors is that you can set one of them at really low resolution, so when you switch to windows. *shame* like VC++ you can see BIG letters.
9. Picking a monitor is likely shopping for fruit. You must hand pick yours. Even the exact same model have different crispness. Pick a good one.
This is what my room looks like.
My school have 20" Trinitron monitors everywhere, but they tire my eyes. If you set up your monitor configuration correctly, you are not likely to be tired for a long long time.
What's the best CRT monitor? Well I really dislike Trinitron tubes because many of them actually flashes due to the little string that holds the grills turned lose. I heard many many good words about high end EIZO, but they are at $2000 range.
I know that you are a student, and this sounds very expensive. You must sacrifice everything else to get a good monitor setup if you want to still see in 10 years. It's also a great investment because it last longer than any other parts of your computer, Good luck.
Another huge earth quake hit Taiwan. Let's pray for them.
from a fan page,
It was widely reported that the first "draft" of the movie came in at 4+ hours long. Dave created an online petition for fans to sign. At issue? Dave wants Warner Bros. and Christopher Columbus to know we fans want a director's cut Harry Potter DVD. 4 hours.
The petition
From what you have said, I'm sure you have not submitted any patches before. Here's something you should know. I think there's a problem with your assumption that programmers submit patches ONLY because they are bored, have too much time, and are totally passionate about the program and know every detail of the code.
The truth,
1. You don't need to understand that whole program structure in order to fix a bug. you look at pieces of it that's causing problems. As long as the code is reasonably documented and well interfaced within, it shouldn't be too hard to find that piece.
2. People submit patches not because they are crazy about the program, but because it bothers them enough to get off thier butt and fix it for good. In short, to the patcher, the patch SAVES him a lot of time and trouble. Say, if some bug makes you restart your apache every 3-5 days because some part of it breaks, you would really want to fix it so that you don't have to restart it again. What drives programmers, especially UNIX programmers, is convenience.
I don't think a lot of people are rushing to download Micheal Jackson's mp3. Like me, if I didn't see this post, I wouldn't have downloaded the mp3 at 196k/s and now am listening to this crapy song over my crapy ass soundcard.
So you see, Jackson's team just wanted to stir a little bit of something, ANYTHING, to get attention. They know all too well that the protection won't work. They just hope that the new young techno savvy kids will download it out of curiosity... after all, all Jackson fans are, what, over 30?
Agreed?
It works with any OS because all the keystroke programming is done on the keyboard hardware. I use one with a Linux box. Really it's the coolest thing you'll ever see and it's OUT OF PRODUCTION. So whatever out there is what's left.
Bullshit. All the programming is done on the keyboard. I use it with ANY operating systems. This one I have it hooked up to the linux box.
As a keyboard enthusiast, I can recommend a few keyboards. The best keyboards are the ones that uses machanical switches. This includes the "Buckling Spring" and "quiet buckling spring" and "ALPS" switches. Buckling Spring: these are the old IBM clicker keyboards, now made by www.pckeyboard.com. They have a lot of different styles to choose from. They recently came up with a programmable keyboard. They also have quiet buckling spring keyboards if noise is a concern. ALPS switches: The most famous company that makes ALPS swtiches was Nothgate. Unfortunately Northgate went out of bussiness. Right now, there are a few manufacturers that makes keyboards with ALPS switches - Focus keyboard(Focus 2001 keyboard), Ortek/Adesso (MCK-142 pro), Avant (Avant Prime corresponds to Northgate Omnikey101, Avant Stellar corresponds to Northgate Omnikey Ultra). For programmers, I HIGHLY recommend the Adesso/Ortek MCK-142 Pro. http://www.monu-cad.com/keyboard.htm These have 24 programmable keys, you don't need software to program it. I know the price is steep but it's going to save you lots and lots of time in years.
I worked for one of the biggest oil services company and they are not exactly making easy money. There are only two big oil field service companies in the world which means the market is duopoly. (They do anything but selling the oil). Niche markets don't make a load of money unless they are also monopoly. Competition drives the price down, regardless of the type of product. This is why Microsoft makes more than any oil companies.
Actually ShadowRealm, MrG and Purity are so called "release groups." These groups "release" movies. So thesecorresponding newsgroups are where thier people post thier releases.
:P
Not that I know it myself I overheard it from another cubical.
Right on! If we charged money for the code, then the users would have been the customers. But no, that's not how it works. In open source, the users are peers and freeloaders. We write what we need when the situation bugs us enough to do so. We don't owe anyone the customer service.
"but I paid $70 for Red Hat!." Well, did you pay for the office apps you want? No? quit whining. Yes? Whine to Red Hat.
Telling the programmers that thier FREE code isn't good enough is sort of like our showing you our new born baby and you say, "What an ugly baby. If I pay MS $x then I can get a beautiful baby." It hurts. It doesn't help anyone and we get pissed off.
Many "users" tend to believe that they are the customers and demand things. They don't realize that they are actually "freeloading" the contributors. Customers, by definition, PAYS. Open source programmers are not taking a penny and therefore not responsible for whatever the user's complaint is. So there's no good free office software? You can either buy one or write one but you cannot whine because we don't owe you nothin'. If MS has a office suit that you like, go for it. We will let you know when we make a good one. Wierd, when I tell people to go for MS product, they think I have attitude problems and I am trying to be leet.
Open Source applications take time. When they aren't ready, they aren't ready; you cannot pressure us into making something. The user base doesn't want to give us time and the user base doesn't want to help. IBM says they will invest 1 billion in Linux, but doing PR stuffs instead of writing us a good office suite, so even IBM (the big customer?) have no right to whine about the office suite. And luckily, they don't. I am almost sure that if they did try to write office it will bomb, too. What makes you think other people have the right to pressure the programmers? You are giving the same "suggestions" again and again and again and again. That does not help. So either start coding or throw some money at office application sellers, now quit bugging us, OK?
The real problem is that Apple supporters would come back and flaim open source OSes.
As we all know, Apple fans traditionally consider everything other than Mac stuffs are inferior. Regardless of the past court cases, Apple threatens open source community with thier "look and feel" creations. Unfortunately most Mac people are not technically oriented to realize that UNIX, what they called "inferior OS" is the base of thier new Mac operating system.
This really piss me off. I mean, I know BSD license have no problem with Apple using thier code. We don't care if Apple is free loading UNIX code, but will Apple fans PLEASE stop coming at us and telling me how inferior UNIX is? UNIX people don't deserve this.