Fathers get PCs. Mothers get notebooks. Everyone knows Keanu Reeves has a laptop and that's why he's so good at cribbage. You want your Mom to get her butt kicked? Wuz u raised in Arkansas or sumpthin?
Seriously. If you love your mother you'll get her a (used) notebook. And preferably a notebook without a power brick -- just an AC cord into the back of the laptop. The KISS rule applies. If my mother ever needs to send me her computer, she'll know what part the computer part is because it's the only part. No monitor, no keyboard, no surge protector (well, there is one, but it's hidden under her desk), nothing but "computer".
VPs who spend the bucks want to be absolutely certain that the recipent of said bucks will be there whenever (next year or the year after or...) they feel a need to call up and bitch at somebody. This need usally arises just after a more senior VP has inserted a size-11 in the junior VP's backside because of a serious production issue that the senior VP will have to answer to the CIO/CEO for.
Very little of the cost of software is for the actual software. Most of the cost pays for Bitchin' Rights. Microsoft employs a large number of Bitchee Technicians who possess a wide variety of personal bitch reception styles. These folks don't work for free(-as-in-beer).
IBM has a similar division for the mainframers who expect more bandwidth for their bitchin' bucks. Large accounts have a Bitch Specialist assigned to them so they can develop a personal relationship with the account personnel.
If OSS wants to compete in the Big Business world, it needs a cadre of bitchees and a guarantee that they will be available 24x7.
I "discovered" Mendelson's back in 1980. They have cleaned up their act (and their aisles) a lot since then. (The inevitable crunch of small parts underfoot always made me feel.. well.. like a murderer.)
Yes, their prices are a little high on some things (386 motherboard - $50, but the 1/4-inch of dust is free:), but when you shop in person the "handful rule" usually applies: if you dump a handful of something (10-20 pieces) on the checkout counter, it's about $3-5 for the handful. If you buy just one piece, it's about $2-3 for just the one piece. If this ploy doesn't work, you can always decide that you don't want them after all.
Btw, it's true about the store-mannequin parts! I've never seen anyone actually buying any of those, and for that I am grateful.
Yes, you can use different media players, and they will even "steal" the file association from Windows Media Player, but the ones I can think of are all freebies.
Would you expect to be able to charge for a media player in today's marketplace? Good luck!
That's the issue: other potential vendors are prevented from selling their products.
A lot of mission critical applications block on writes. Take a look at a mail server, or a database server...
Your original comment concerned mission critical servers. Hopefully these servers are not built on the cheap with "home PC" quality components. Many commercial RAID boxes (Fujitsu/Clariion 4900, e.g.) use battery backed-up cache RAM to ensure data integrity whilst eliminating the sync delay for critical writes. The algorithm for performing the delayed writes efficiently is in the RAID box, not in the OS. The only thing the OS needs to be aware of is that the RAID subsystem is battery backed, so the OS can bypass the syncs.
Q: How do we solve the problem of getting the elderly off of Social Security?
A: Send all of our kids to China.
Personally, [note correct use of comma after leading adverb] I've never quite understood the whole concept of "Youth-in-Asia", [note incorrect placement of comma outside of quotes, as techies are want to do] but this seems to be the textbook answer.
I've been a regular WD user since the early '90s. I've had several of them go bad. Most of the failures were after a year or two, but one or two were "early life failures". I've also had some Seagates, Quantums, Maxtors, IBMs and Fujitsus, all of which have died. In my experience, the Maxtors are better than average and the Seagates worse than average as far as failure rates.
The big difference is that the WD and Fujitsu drives were quickly and cheerfully replaced under warranty. None of the others were. Some people might argue that WD has to have a great replacement policy because their drives fail so often. My experience is that WD drives fail about as much as everyone else's.
Yeah, I mirror my data drives and keep a Ghost copy of all my boot drives on bootable CDs for when the inevitable happens, but that's just "due diligence".
I've always thought of Dave Barry as more of a sight-gag kinda guy.
He was in Springfield, OH giving a "lecture" and there was a middle-aged woman acting as an interpreter for the deaf sitting off to the side of the stage doing sign language in real-time.
Dave described how Miami drivers like to give each other the one-finger salute, then immediately turned his head toward the interpreter. The audience followed his gaze and looked over to stage-right as she was finishing his last sentence.
Lexis-Nexis is a division of Reed Elsevier plc, which is a British/Dutch consortium, so don't expect some US flag-waving and a call for US patriotism to get you very far.
Processing and storing the data is not cheap, and I suspect that L-N and WL do this as efficiently as current technology permits. Asking the US govt to provide this service will only give some beltway bandits another means of squeezing more tax dollars out of us for an inferior system. And who's going to handle the state case law that is just as important as the federal data? That's all right at your fingertips on L-N.
L-N and WL get their data electronically from the courts, btw. I have no idea how much that service costs or whether it's available to other services or individuals.
Another problem with software RAID is the depencency on the OS and its configuration files. You lose your OS, you lose your RAID.
Several years ago I set up a RAID-5 with Win NT-4 Server. It worked well enough (there were only two users) until NT-4 tanked and I had to re-install the OS. [pffft!] No more RAID-5 array.
Yeah, there were Resource Kit hacks for getting it back, but it was a real pain.
Software mirroring with NT-4 was almost as tricky to recover from if the primary copy died. If the mirror died, though, it was a piece of cake.
If you want to run a GUI on a P/75, try something more suited to it like fvwm or icewm.
Not trying to be a smart-ass (seriously), but could you please put that suggestion in terms that Ma and Pa Kettle can understand?
I guess that's pretty much the whole issue. Linux needs to be easy. Searching for fvwm or icewm and figuring out how to install them is not an acceptable option.
As one of the "Dads" mentioned in other comments, I spend 10-12 hours per day fighting with mainframes. I don't have the time to fight with a PC all evening, too. All the same, I tried Redhat 7.3 several months ago. I'd heard that Linux was not very CPU hungry, so I put it on a spare P/75 with 72mB of RAM.
Yes, is was fast at the command line level, but when I started KDE it crawled. Five to ten seconds to paint a pull-down menu!
Win95 ran just fine on that P/75. Why won't Linux with GUI?
What is needed is to set a reasonable goal for functionality and performance and ease of use. Win95 (with real USB support added) would be fine for Ma and Pa Kettle. New hardware is cheap. Used hardware is even cheaper (IBM 300PL/P3-600/128mB/10gB for $189 at CompGeeks, P-IIs for $85. Sheese!).
As mentioned elsewhere, consumers are cheapskates, but they expect value for almost nothing. Give them a Linux that runs well on older hardware and you'll have a winner. I can imagine my neighbors' enthusiasm if I told them they could have a decent PC with decent software that would get on the Internet for around $150. (Yeah, they could put illegal copies of Win98 and MS Office on that P-II, but most won't because it's not right.)
You want to create a system for the masses? First you have to draw a line in the dirt, define a realistic goal, and not move on to more interesting things until you accomplish it.
Presumably you paid lots of moola for your house and you expect to have exclusive rights to it. (If you don't expect exclusive rights to your house, you might just find Cowboy Neal at your door with his suitcase...)
As for the roads and bridges, those were built at public cost by the lowest bidder. Would you like to have your music produced under these same terms?
When I was in college back in the sixties, I did this with the dorm room keys. Just compare two or three different room keys to determine the common cuts. In our case, the master cuts were higher than the single-lock cuts. That's where some high-tin-content solder comes in - fill in the master cut with solder, file it down and file it thin. The high tin content makes it hard enough to stand up to two semesters of use.
Of course, once word gets out that you and a couple buddies have master keys, anything that turns up missing from anyone's room will be your fault. You've been warned.
At the end of the school year, break the solder off with pliers and sand the area with fine sandpaper to remove all traces of solder.
But before you trash your master key, be sure to unlock your RA's room and fill it floor-to-ceiling with wadded up newspaper. He'll laugh - oh, how he'll laugh!
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There sure are!! It's called kidnapping.
You'd better free that poor drunk police officer right now.Seriously. If you love your mother you'll get her a (used) notebook. And preferably a notebook without a power brick -- just an AC cord into the back of the laptop. The KISS rule applies. If my mother ever needs to send me her computer, she'll know what part the computer part is because it's the only part. No monitor, no keyboard, no surge protector (well, there is one, but it's hidden under her desk), nothing but "computer".
I use IBMLink almost daily.
Had a heart to heart with your local IBM sales rep?We've talked ... They have hearts??
Picked the brains of his SE?It's already pretty well picked over.
But enough of this gay banter -- what's your point?
Very little of the cost of software is for the actual software. Most of the cost pays for Bitchin' Rights. Microsoft employs a large number of Bitchee Technicians who possess a wide variety of personal bitch reception styles. These folks don't work for free(-as-in-beer).
IBM has a similar division for the mainframers who expect more bandwidth for their bitchin' bucks. Large accounts have a Bitch Specialist assigned to them so they can develop a personal relationship with the account personnel.If OSS wants to compete in the Big Business world, it needs a cadre of bitchees and a guarantee that they will be available 24x7.
Lots of quality parts, well organized, and reasonable prices. They once had a 7-foot-tall functional electron microscope for $2500.
Yes, their prices are a little high on some things (386 motherboard - $50, but the 1/4-inch of dust is free :), but when you shop in person the "handful rule" usually applies: if you dump a handful of something (10-20 pieces) on the checkout counter, it's about $3-5 for the handful. If you buy just one piece, it's about $2-3 for just the one piece. If this ploy doesn't work, you can always decide that you don't want them after all.
Btw, it's true about the store-mannequin parts! I've never seen anyone actually buying any of those, and for that I am grateful.Would you expect to be able to charge for a media player in today's marketplace? Good luck!
That's the issue: other potential vendors are prevented from selling their products.Your original comment concerned mission critical servers. Hopefully these servers are not built on the cheap with "home PC" quality components. Many commercial RAID boxes (Fujitsu/Clariion 4900, e.g.) use battery backed-up cache RAM to ensure data integrity whilst eliminating the sync delay for critical writes. The algorithm for performing the delayed writes efficiently is in the RAID box, not in the OS. The only thing the OS needs to be aware of is that the RAID subsystem is battery backed, so the OS can bypass the syncs.
A: Send all of our kids to China.
Personally, [note correct use of comma after leading adverb] I've never quite understood the whole concept of "Youth-in-Asia", [note incorrect placement of comma outside of quotes, as techies are want to do] but this seems to be the textbook answer.The big difference is that the WD and Fujitsu drives were quickly and cheerfully replaced under warranty. None of the others were. Some people might argue that WD has to have a great replacement policy because their drives fail so often. My experience is that WD drives fail about as much as everyone else's.
Yeah, I mirror my data drives and keep a Ghost copy of all my boot drives on bootable CDs for when the inevitable happens, but that's just "due diligence".I hope nobody's patented this yet, but it works like this:
1. You write words that are chosen specifically for their descriptive qualities.
2. Literate people read these words.3. Little .avi files magically play in the readers' brains.
4. Oh, and, uh... Profit!!
He was in Springfield, OH giving a "lecture" and there was a middle-aged woman acting as an interpreter for the deaf sitting off to the side of the stage doing sign language in real-time.
Dave described how Miami drivers like to give each other the one-finger salute, then immediately turned his head toward the interpreter. The audience followed his gaze and looked over to stage-right as she was finishing his last sentence.She was flipping us off!
Newsprint is sooo much better than a keyboard for those "milk through your nose" laughs.
Maybe they should print Dave's column on napkins.Processing and storing the data is not cheap, and I suspect that L-N and WL do this as efficiently as current technology permits. Asking the US govt to provide this service will only give some beltway bandits another means of squeezing more tax dollars out of us for an inferior system. And who's going to handle the state case law that is just as important as the federal data? That's all right at your fingertips on L-N.
L-N and WL get their data electronically from the courts, btw. I have no idea how much that service costs or whether it's available to other services or individuals.Several years ago I set up a RAID-5 with Win NT-4 Server. It worked well enough (there were only two users) until NT-4 tanked and I had to re-install the OS. [pffft!] No more RAID-5 array.
Yeah, there were Resource Kit hacks for getting it back, but it was a real pain.
Software mirroring with NT-4 was almost as tricky to recover from if the primary copy died. If the mirror died, though, it was a piece of cake.
I understand and I sympathize.
Mom: Son, why are you sitting at your computer dressed in camo?
Son: Because I'm hacking into Al-Iraqui-Pr0n and the Geneva Convention states that soldiers who aren't in uniform can be shot as spys."
Not trying to be a smart-ass (seriously), but could you please put that suggestion in terms that Ma and Pa Kettle can understand?
I guess that's pretty much the whole issue. Linux needs to be easy. Searching for fvwm or icewm and figuring out how to install them is not an acceptable option.
Yes, is was fast at the command line level, but when I started KDE it crawled. Five to ten seconds to paint a pull-down menu!
Win95 ran just fine on that P/75. Why won't Linux with GUI?
What is needed is to set a reasonable goal for functionality and performance and ease of use. Win95 (with real USB support added) would be fine for Ma and Pa Kettle. New hardware is cheap. Used hardware is even cheaper (IBM 300PL/P3-600/128mB/10gB for $189 at CompGeeks, P-IIs for $85. Sheese!).
As mentioned elsewhere, consumers are cheapskates, but they expect value for almost nothing. Give them a Linux that runs well on older hardware and you'll have a winner. I can imagine my neighbors' enthusiasm if I told them they could have a decent PC with decent software that would get on the Internet for around $150. (Yeah, they could put illegal copies of Win98 and MS Office on that P-II, but most won't because it's not right.)
You want to create a system for the masses? First you have to draw a line in the dirt, define a realistic goal, and not move on to more interesting things until you accomplish it.
Yeah, when there are no pre-release bootleg copies being file-traded around, you know it's doomed.
If only you'd had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine...
Obligatory Spacegirl quote.
"Knowing the risks of prolonged computer sessions, I've had my lower extremities amputated, you insensitive clod."
Rick.C
Presumably you paid lots of moola for your house and you expect to have exclusive rights to it. (If you don't expect exclusive rights to your house, you might just find Cowboy Neal at your door with his suitcase...)
As for the roads and bridges, those were built at public cost by the lowest bidder. Would you like to have your music produced under these same terms?
Rick.C
When I was in college back in the sixties, I did this with the dorm room keys. Just compare two or three different room keys to determine the common cuts. In our case, the master cuts were higher than the single-lock cuts. That's where some high-tin-content solder comes in - fill in the master cut with solder, file it down and file it thin. The high tin content makes it hard enough to stand up to two semesters of use.
Of course, once word gets out that you and a couple buddies have master keys, anything that turns up missing from anyone's room will be your fault. You've been warned.
At the end of the school year, break the solder off with pliers and sand the area with fine sandpaper to remove all traces of solder.
But before you trash your master key, be sure to unlock your RA's room and fill it floor-to-ceiling with wadded up newspaper. He'll laugh - oh, how he'll laugh!
Rick.C