but also of the must-make-earnings-or-else management style.
I think you are right that it is cost-savings, but not in the way you think.
I read that publishing houses need to support many eBook formats, which don't all have a common feature set. Amazon's.mobi does not support everything in.epub, and neither support everything in.pdf. So what do they do? They use design rules that limit you to a common subset of features, which is almost no features at all. This way they only have to create one eBook "master", which ends up having very primitive formatting.
In practice I see even lightly used systems upgraded frequently.
You are of course correct - otherwise Dell would be in even deeper doo-doo than they already are. But I know people who now use their tablet for their web surfing and so they use the slow malware-infested PC much less often. Eventually they will replace it because of what you said, but since they are no longer using it that frequently, it just goes on their to-do list and is not as high a priority. I've seen people complain about their computer for a year before replacing it, in this case using a Nook Color and their phone for internet and email - only replacing the PC when their camera filled up and they wanted to move the pictures to the PC. Obviously, this kind of delay will hurt desktop sales.
And of course, you can get a perfectly serviceable PC for $300-400. Not much profit in that for Dell. Apple doesn't even touch that market for that very reason.
My personal history includes lots of very old computers. My first computer was an Apple ][e (did I do that right?) and it lasted from 1984 until I went to college in 1993, and it was still working. There I bought a Centris 650, which lasted me 3 years when I replaced it with a PowerBook 5300cs, and gave the Centris to my brother for college where it lasted 3 more years before the hard drive went - and at which point it was hopelessly obsolete. The PowerBook was always a piece of crap, but it never "died" - I used it for 3 years and then replaced it, first with a used white box PC that was an even bigger piece of junk and then almost immediately with one of those blue and white G3 towers. That thing lasted for 5 years before its power supply went. Its 2004 replacement, a dual G5, is still going strong - though it just sits in the basement as a server right now. I also bought a G4 iBook in 2006 that I used until I replaced it in 2009 - as far as I know my father-in-law is still using it. The 2009 replacement is a MacBook Pro and it is still running as my primary computer. I married into a 1990 Mac Classic that ran for 11 years before the video ROM went. I gave her the white box PC in 2001 that ran until 2003 when it was deemed not valuable enough to move and the hard drive removed, replaced with a PC that I built from donated parts that was hopelessly undercooled that lasted until 2005 and then exploded fantastically, at which point I built her a new PC with proper components that is still going strong.
So while much of my experience is Apple stuff, I also have PCs and I'd say 5 years no problem. Heck, the work PC I use is from 2004 and the FreeBSD server in my basement is from 2006.
Trying to do much REAL WORK(tm) on a tablet is an exercise in frustration.
What you say is true, but for most people, "real work" means text editing, taxes, Quicken, maybe some photo organizing. Any computer made since 2006 is more than adequate until XP goes dark in 2014. If people get on an 8-year upgrade cycle for desktops/laptops, Dell is in for a real hard decade.
I presumed the "gas" he was talking about was petrol - if it was heating gas then his 5% figure still drops to 4% due to taxes. If most of his costs were petrol then it likely drops to about 2.5 or 3%.
You sure it wasn't taxes? You pay about a buck a liter in petrol taxes over there, plus VAT - roughly doubles the price. I don't know about electricity - but I do know that you pay some carbon tax on that.
I wasn't aware that Wales was poor, being a product of an American public education:) All we know about Wales is that we saw the wedding of the Prince and Princess on TV and they make our street names and towns sound funny: Llanberris, Bala Cynwyd, etc.
Replying to my own post... 80 members, so yeah, pretty small but only 500 funny currency symbols each over ten years each. That's just 50 per year. My guess is that their members don't want that kind of dues increase. I'd think they could have held birthday parties or some such and raised that money, though.
"Law" is being used ironically. It's really not even a guideline, just one man's observation. It has become self-fulfilling, since companies plan their products around it - so it will continue until no longer possible IMHO.
Moore never adjusted his "law", though other Intel executives sometimes refer to the time as 18 months instead of 2 years.
I think "pragmatic" in this case has just means the polar opposite of ideological.
Which is a silly definition, IMHO. A "pragmatic" person just uses a different methodology to pursue their ideology. To give an example in terms of today's politics, a Republican congress member might think that taxes are too high and spending is out of control, but he still might be willing to budge slightly on taxes if it meant really dramatic spending cuts. He's pragmatic, but still ideological. Another republican with similar ideals might be willing to do absolutely nothing at all - blocking all tax increases, even if it means that ultimately taxes automatically go up anyway. This is not pragmatic at all.
And of course you have people all over the spectrum.
Thanks for finding the story, but just because some crazy man imported gypsy moths to try and make new silk worms does not mean that gypsy moths are silkworms!
LOL, yes I'm aware of that danger. Unless I'm wiping out an entire folder recursively or something, I don't bother with the -f flag. FreeBSD has a -I now (capital i) which only prompts you if more than 3 files are going to be deleted. This isn't available on Mac, but I think Linux has it as well.
It depends on your application, but the concept behind CSS is that no, HTML is just supposed to organize the content. You give the different parts id names and classes, then use CSS to lay everything out.
The idea is that your content then stays the same no matter what device the user connects with, varying only the css. So if someone visits with an iPhone you might serve a single-panel version of your css while someone with a regular browser gets the 3-panel job. And if you are good about it, you can use the same css on every page, so this saves time sending the markup for every request and reduces the number of files you have to keep updated.
I don't do much public-facing stuff, so I can't really speak with any authority about how this works in practice, but I will tell you that it has been pretty easy to rig up our internal web apps for use on mobile devices by making mostly css changes. It also makes initial (ugly) development go faster when you aren't worried about how things look. And you can use canned css/javascript frameworks for all the wow stuff later on.
Re:But what use would I have for it?
on
FreeDOS 1.1 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
Mostly I've used it for running old games (via DOSBox), but I've encountered it when using BIOS updates and other standalone boot utilities.
So no Chrome, no Firefox, but also not a list I could really find a fault with (except for useless duplicates and general Bing uselessness). Firefox is mentioned in the #1 and #3 links.
What? Gypsy Moth is Lymantria dispar. Silk worm is Bombyx mori. There are many types of mulberry, and while I'm sure the others have been introduced, there is a species of mulberry tree native to CT.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure that Google is Skynet, but instead of nuking us it will just embarrass us all to death once it achieve sentience.
I think people with LaTeX content go the TeX->XHTML->ePub route.
but also of the must-make-earnings-or-else management style.
I think you are right that it is cost-savings, but not in the way you think.
I read that publishing houses need to support many eBook formats, which don't all have a common feature set. Amazon's .mobi does not support everything in .epub, and neither support everything in .pdf. So what do they do? They use design rules that limit you to a common subset of features, which is almost no features at all. This way they only have to create one eBook "master", which ends up having very primitive formatting.
In practice I see even lightly used systems upgraded frequently.
You are of course correct - otherwise Dell would be in even deeper doo-doo than they already are. But I know people who now use their tablet for their web surfing and so they use the slow malware-infested PC much less often. Eventually they will replace it because of what you said, but since they are no longer using it that frequently, it just goes on their to-do list and is not as high a priority. I've seen people complain about their computer for a year before replacing it, in this case using a Nook Color and their phone for internet and email - only replacing the PC when their camera filled up and they wanted to move the pictures to the PC. Obviously, this kind of delay will hurt desktop sales.
And of course, you can get a perfectly serviceable PC for $300-400. Not much profit in that for Dell. Apple doesn't even touch that market for that very reason.
My personal history includes lots of very old computers. My first computer was an Apple ][e (did I do that right?) and it lasted from 1984 until I went to college in 1993, and it was still working. There I bought a Centris 650, which lasted me 3 years when I replaced it with a PowerBook 5300cs, and gave the Centris to my brother for college where it lasted 3 more years before the hard drive went - and at which point it was hopelessly obsolete. The PowerBook was always a piece of crap, but it never "died" - I used it for 3 years and then replaced it, first with a used white box PC that was an even bigger piece of junk and then almost immediately with one of those blue and white G3 towers. That thing lasted for 5 years before its power supply went. Its 2004 replacement, a dual G5, is still going strong - though it just sits in the basement as a server right now. I also bought a G4 iBook in 2006 that I used until I replaced it in 2009 - as far as I know my father-in-law is still using it. The 2009 replacement is a MacBook Pro and it is still running as my primary computer. I married into a 1990 Mac Classic that ran for 11 years before the video ROM went. I gave her the white box PC in 2001 that ran until 2003 when it was deemed not valuable enough to move and the hard drive removed, replaced with a PC that I built from donated parts that was hopelessly undercooled that lasted until 2005 and then exploded fantastically, at which point I built her a new PC with proper components that is still going strong.
So while much of my experience is Apple stuff, I also have PCs and I'd say 5 years no problem. Heck, the work PC I use is from 2004 and the FreeBSD server in my basement is from 2006.
Trying to do much REAL WORK(tm) on a tablet is an exercise in frustration.
What you say is true, but for most people, "real work" means text editing, taxes, Quicken, maybe some photo organizing. Any computer made since 2006 is more than adequate until XP goes dark in 2014. If people get on an 8-year upgrade cycle for desktops/laptops, Dell is in for a real hard decade.
I presumed the "gas" he was talking about was petrol - if it was heating gas then his 5% figure still drops to 4% due to taxes. If most of his costs were petrol then it likely drops to about 2.5 or 3%.
You sure it wasn't taxes? You pay about a buck a liter in petrol taxes over there, plus VAT - roughly doubles the price. I don't know about electricity - but I do know that you pay some carbon tax on that.
The electricity isn't expensive, the Kenyans are poor. Nuclear power isn't going to help here, since they already have cheap power.
I wasn't aware that Wales was poor, being a product of an American public education :) All we know about Wales is that we saw the wedding of the Prince and Princess on TV and they make our street names and towns sound funny: Llanberris, Bala Cynwyd, etc.
Replying to my own post... 80 members, so yeah, pretty small but only 500 funny currency symbols each over ten years each. That's just 50 per year. My guess is that their members don't want that kind of dues increase. I'd think they could have held birthday parties or some such and raised that money, though.
That's a car, financed over 10 years instead of 5. Must be a pretty small society.
"Law" is being used ironically. It's really not even a guideline, just one man's observation. It has become self-fulfilling, since companies plan their products around it - so it will continue until no longer possible IMHO.
Moore never adjusted his "law", though other Intel executives sometimes refer to the time as 18 months instead of 2 years.
At what point will we stop hearing about it?
When you stop reading a site dedicated to geeks, computer professionals and computer enthusiasts.
I think "pragmatic" in this case has just means the polar opposite of ideological.
Which is a silly definition, IMHO. A "pragmatic" person just uses a different methodology to pursue their ideology. To give an example in terms of today's politics, a Republican congress member might think that taxes are too high and spending is out of control, but he still might be willing to budge slightly on taxes if it meant really dramatic spending cuts. He's pragmatic, but still ideological. Another republican with similar ideals might be willing to do absolutely nothing at all - blocking all tax increases, even if it means that ultimately taxes automatically go up anyway. This is not pragmatic at all.
And of course you have people all over the spectrum.
Thanks for finding the story, but just because some crazy man imported gypsy moths to try and make new silk worms does not mean that gypsy moths are silkworms!
Yeah, I got your joke... I just thought it was funny because I lived there and those guys were always so S-H-A-D-Y. :)
LOL, yes I'm aware of that danger. Unless I'm wiping out an entire folder recursively or something, I don't bother with the -f flag. FreeBSD has a -I now (capital i) which only prompts you if more than 3 files are going to be deleted. This isn't available on Mac, but I think Linux has it as well.
Agreed. I alias rm to 'rm -i' so that I have to at least type -f if I really mean it :)
It gives you some utilities that the built-in DOS doesn't have,
It means, however, that ZFS is now forked.
True, but this is only a problem if you were planning on ever getting Oracle gear... since this is about free solutions, that shouldn't be an issue :)
Besides, the current ZFS implementation in FreeBSD is compatible with Oracle's version - so it's not currently a practical concern.
It depends on your application, but the concept behind CSS is that no, HTML is just supposed to organize the content. You give the different parts id names and classes, then use CSS to lay everything out.
The idea is that your content then stays the same no matter what device the user connects with, varying only the css. So if someone visits with an iPhone you might serve a single-panel version of your css while someone with a regular browser gets the 3-panel job. And if you are good about it, you can use the same css on every page, so this saves time sending the markup for every request and reduces the number of files you have to keep updated.
I don't do much public-facing stuff, so I can't really speak with any authority about how this works in practice, but I will tell you that it has been pretty easy to rig up our internal web apps for use on mobile devices by making mostly css changes. It also makes initial (ugly) development go faster when you aren't worried about how things look. And you can use canned css/javascript frameworks for all the wow stuff later on.
Mostly I've used it for running old games (via DOSBox), but I've encountered it when using BIOS updates and other standalone boot utilities.
My #2 result on Google is Firefox, and the #1 is actually a news link so I'm not sure that even counts.
Bing gives me: 1. Wikipedia, 2. Opera, 3. Wikipedia again, 4. Safari, 5. CNet, 6. IE, 7. AOL, 8.Opera again, 9. Whatbrowser, 10. Online dictionary
So no Chrome, no Firefox, but also not a list I could really find a fault with (except for useless duplicates and general Bing uselessness). Firefox is mentioned in the #1 and #3 links.
What? Gypsy Moth is Lymantria dispar. Silk worm is Bombyx mori. There are many types of mulberry, and while I'm sure the others have been introduced, there is a species of mulberry tree native to CT.