Isn't it better to specialise in a few of the varied languages and systems you have worked on, rather than trying to spread yourself thin?
There is truth in the saying 'jack of all trades - master of none'.
So, maybe concentrate on building up the other skills, rather than trying to 'bag' a new technology. I used to try to gain exposure to loads of different technologies but found that when you do so you do at the expense of the 'depth' of knowledge you have in any one.
'course, you maths bods will have noticed that 108Gb/month is quite a bit more than 5Gb/day, but I did say _average_:-)
I forgot to mention that my ISP does throttle the P2P somewhat, much less so in the 'free' hours (before 8am) but it still seems to cap around 300Kbps.
I'm in central Scotland, on an 8Mb wired ADSL service.
Depending on whether I'm doing BitTorrent (who? me? surely not, your honour...) I average around 3-5Gb per night, and that is monitored but not restricted between midnight and 8am.
So, I set Azureus* going my iMac to wake at midnight and to sleep at 8am (though normally I'm up before that anyway).
Last month I downloaded around 108Gb. Previous month it was a LOT less - maybe 30Gb. So, it does depend. However, I'm limited to 15Gb/month between 8am and midnight, but as I work days that limit is fine for me...
I've previously worked a few freelance tech gigs at RBS and the one thing I can say with certainty is that their internal security is extremely tight. Tighter than anywhere else I've worked in my time. The fact that anything gets done, EVER, is a minor miracle in the face of the mountain of red-tape, security, bureaucracy and general faffing with sign-offs and corporate governance that is needed to do pretty much anything.
So, I'm going to pipe up on behalf of RBS, your honour...:-)
Thing is, one thing I categorically don't believe is that the responsibility for handling customer data like this would fall to one individual without direct accountability. Knowing RBS, there would be forms to fill in, checks made, audits done and any handling of customer data would need to be signed off at a high level, and would be entirely traceable. Which is to say that if there's a breach, I don't think it's likely to be a break-down in procedure.
Now, you might laugh about this, but I know how many hoops I had to jump through to get things like dev rights on a developer box ("so, let me get this straight, sir, why do you need to be able to write to the C: drive?" - that sort of dumb thing) so I really doubt that a half-wit in marketing or HR or whatever would be entrusted with such data. It is kept under lock and key and it would certainly be VERY UNUSUAL to be allowed to make a cd copy of customer data. To do so would require sign off from Very Senior Management (at Director level), and hence visibility at EVERY STAGE and accountability for EVERY ACTION would be enforced with *GREAT RIGOUR*...
So my money is that this isn't what it at first appears to be - it could be the case that this is something else and the press have got the wrong end of the stick.
"I've looked at the various display sizes and, if one could get the same DPI on all displays, an arrangment that used a WQXGA (2560x1600) center screen and then two cheaper UXGA (1600x1200) in portrait orientation (1200x1600) on either side might be useful (or other combinations where the portraits' native horizontal is the same as the center's vertical). Unfortunately finding the same DPI is difficult, leading to using CRTs where you can adjust the display settings to match, but which will effectively increase your bezel gap."
One such combination that I know works is the Dell 2001FP (20.1" LCD, rotatable to 1200x1600 portrait) and the large Dell 3007FP (30" LCD, 2560x1600). Requires quite a fair bit of desk space, and to be fair it's an expensive proposition. I would *LOVE* to add that 30" panel inbetween my own dual 2001FPs, but can't justify the expense.
I suspect this arrangement would be fairly optimal as compared to three 2001FPs, as the 'main desktop' is very spacious, and can host the current activity without any real space constraints. The other two panels can host the 'extra' stuff - web, mail, iChat/Skype windows, terminals (termina?) and so on.
Employers may argue that it is an unnecessary expense, but I firmly believe that having a capacious desktop or desktops is no less essential as having a decent amount of genuine desktop. And, if you're doing this professionally (as most of us are) then it seems rather short-sighted to skimp on primary tools.
John (dual panelling at 3200x1200, but wishing for 4960x1600:-)
Is to create your own website with an upload facility. Or your own webmail. Or anything that isn't (a) blocked by services such as Websense, (b) dependent on non-standard ports and (c) isn't publicly known.
Though I've never used it for anything untoward, I did create such a site for storing things like my CV, code samples, etc., which is password protected and not linked from any other website. Works well, and since it's using only port 80, it's generally freely available wherever I am.
The fact is, were there's a will there's a way - if I was of a mind to steal work-related information, as an IT pro I would find a way - either something already available or something I could create. Short of blocking all external access, or allowing only white-listed sites, employer's will always be on the back foot.
I'll probably buy one. iTunes sucks, the iPod is too expensive, the iPod touch scroll thing is a PITA, and MS makes kick ass hardware. Shove your "fanboi" thing up your ass and use your brain. Some people (like me) will like it a hell of a lot better.
"You see, they won't see it as a developer trying to convince them to change browsers, they will just think IE is broken (which just happens to be true)."
Not quite - they'll see it as a website that is broken. I mean, c'mon, from the perspective of your average uninformed user, if a web page doesn't work when countless others appear to work, you'd assume the site is broken.
We, of course, know better. But there's more of THEM than US...
Mark me OffTopic if you will (it's Friday and I'm feeling brave, so I'll take that risk), but when I first read this, I read it as:
"Hackers Serving Rootkits with Bagels"
...and I started to think how cool a hacker café would be... then I got to wondering what else you might be able to order at a hacker café:
Trojan Muffins (secret filling might bring surprise!) DDoS Donuts (very tasty, but eat too many and they gang up on you) L33t Latté (quintuple espresso with a single shot of milk) Keylogger Cakes (be careful, they're watching)
...and so on (I shall spare you the rest).
Ah well, as they say in these parts 'ah'll get me coat'...
Just wondered - 50Hz in the UK, 60Hz in the US, probably other frequencies elsewhere. Voltages: much higher in the UK. Perhaps someone should do a study into whether the problem is worse at higher or lower frequencies - maybe, like with sound, some frequencies are euphonic and others not...??
Mind you, maybe it's just the annoying hum of transformers that's getting everyone down. I know I hate alarm clocks which hum - I once had to create an isolation platform out of an old face-cloth, a book and some cut squash-balls to minimise the annoying hum from an old alarm I had (whilst I was a very poor student). Mind you, I eventually sorted that problem out by blowing it up by connecting a 90wpc stereo amplifier to its speaker (don't ask - it was an experiment, ok?) and fried the lot:-)
Fair point, Suzerain. Fact is, like any relationship (business/personal), any split is rarely all down to one party - the relationship obviously was souring long before the split, and you make good points about the lack of serious development on IBM's part to come up with (a) the mythical vapourware that was the 3GHz G5, and (b) the equally mythical vapourware that was the portable/low-power G5.
In Apple's position? Well, if I were Steve Jobs, I'd probably have hedged my bets by keeping OSX running on all the contemporary CPU architectures too, though I don't know if I'd have had the balls to risk the revolt of the 'faithful' by switching across to Intel.
So, who dumped who? Don't know, and don't really care. You'll probably get a completely different flavour if you spoke to an IBM insider as if you spoke to someone at Apple, so the truth really isn't known, but I suspect that Apple probably 'dumped' IBM in balance (as otherwise IBM would have been happy enough to receive revenues for G5s as it probably made them some profit regardless).
My worry about all this ever increasing storage capacity is the fact that affordable, non-disk based backup systems don't appear to be evolving at the same rate. So, we're in a situation that a full disk backup might span 100 dual layer DVDs, which is a hell of an undertaking. Sure, Blu-Ray and HD DVD might help, but at best estimates they're still lagging a long way back.
As we start using and creating more and more media rich content on our machines, it's going to start getting *very* tricky to ensure that content is backed up, and I suspect a lot of us simply won't bother.
Also, doesn't packing higher densities of data together make it more prone to corruption/problems, and even if it isn't more prone, surely we're going to end up with incredibly large 'baskets' into which we place all of our valuable 'eggs'?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's something I've been worried about for some time - and having a machine with ~700Gb storage at present (most of that free space for now) I worry about how I can safely back this stuff up without buying yet another hard disk. I prefer to spread my risk over different media types - CD/DVD/Hard Disks/Online Solutions - but other than big hard disks, none of the others have evolved anywhere near quickly enough to accommodate these huge capacity drives...
"Microsoft would win because it would mean another copy of Windows sold"
Do you really believe that Joe Public is really going to want to pay the going rate for a full copy of XP Pro specifically to put on their Mac? I don't. I think people who gravitate towards Apple products either see it as a means to an end (home pc, does what they need, quite happy thank you) or are power/regular users who've grown tired of the hassles of the Windows world and/or fancy a change. Like me.
These same people (myself included) won't buy a new copy of WIndows. No, they'll install a copy if they happen to have one (as I do - legit, natch;-) but I'd be very surprised if anyone in this situation would then go out and buy a copy of XP - after all, the reason one would run Windows on a Mac is IN ADDITION to OSX, not INSTEAD - so unless one was already firmly entrenched in the Windows world (and hence already have XP, say) there'd be no compelling reason to want Windows. In my opinion, of course.
"Apple would win because that many more would-be switchers would finally have their last objection to getting a Mac removed."
I concur!
"There's a mind-boggling selection of specialty software that runs in Windows that will never get ported to the Mac, and it's very easy to imagine a near future where Windows XP takes a role very similar to X11 today - That of providing a compatibility layer for apps that for whatever reason never get around to being made native to OS X."
That makes sense, and I largely agree, though I'd argue that once people sample a better system they will find alternatives if they exist. I think the concept of virtualisation which is offered by the Intel roadmap means that we might actually find it possible to run Windows apps with some OSX native compatibility layer - given that the biggest obstacle (hardware architecture) is now more or less unified between the two platforms.
To be fair, I'm not sure the Aero issue is necessarily relevant for a lot of users - it is, after all, only "Eye Candy" and not (AFAICT) in any way a necessity to run Vista - as is certainly the case with Core Image.
When Vista comes out, and assuming I end up upgrading my XP dev box to it, it wouldn't matter a damn as I use Remote Desktop COnnection from my OSX box to do dev work - and the RDC facility 'dumbs down' the 'eye candy' anyway.
That said, I'm no gamer (my bad!) and I'm running an old graphics card on that dev box anyway (and see no need to upgrade) so it wouldn't help much. But, hey, it's the principle and the fact that eye candy such as Aero should only ever be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.
If MS made the mistake of making the eye candy central to effective use of Vista, they'd have made a big mistake and will alienate more users (such as myself and the 'non cutting edge' users (who must, surely, form the bulk of MS' customer base).
I'm sure you meant that in jest, as we all know Apple hedged their bets and essentially two-timed IBM by keeping a fancy woman in Intel as a bit on the side. I guess if IBM claimed to have 'dumped' Apple at any point, it'd be more the actions of a 'spurned lover' trying to save face;-)
"You aren't going to recognize Apple a year from now. And I sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to buy an Intel based Mac unless you plan on selling it on eBay a few years down the line as a novelty item"
Hmmmm... is your surname Dvorak by any chance?:-)
To be fair, computer users generally fall into two camps regarding upgrades - the ones who do (and want to keep 'up with the Jones's') and those who don't (and will keep the machine until it breaks).
If you fall into the 'do' camp, whether you'll end up with a machine which is obselete in 2009 is a moot point - you'll have moved onto something else long before then. If you're a 'don't' type, then you'll be happily using the computer with whatever OS it came with (probably) rather than lusting after whatever's shiniest.
"If you're a Mac user you better start getting over your hate for Microsoft and Windows..."
I don't have hatred for MS or Windows. I just choose the best product for me at a given time (which happens to be OSX for everything except my legacy and web dev work, which requires a PC on which I run XP). Hate's a bad thing, but recognising the flakiness of products such as Windows and the general sloppiness of MS' approach to security, etc., is just being prudent. I choose to avoid that grief as much as possible, and I voted OSX. YMMV.
Surely the concept of 'buy it now' is no different to going onto any online classifieds site and purchasing something. It's just a straightforward purchase then - so what makes this necessarily any different to your conventional single item purchase on (say) Amazon? Just because the goods are on an auction site?
Me dost thing that the US patent system is patently mad...
"'The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.'"
After trying to figure that sentence out, the number of functioning brain-cells left means that I am very much in the market for a nice computer brain hybrid thingy.
So long as Bill Gates' software isn't anywhere near it. Otherwise I might ju-
Illegal Operation. Please reboot this brain and report the fault to Microsoft.
The problem with C# (in my experience) is that it is very fussy (as compared to VB.NET or especially good olde VB6). For instance, I spend a lot of time in C# doing type conversions, which in VB6 were far more straightforward.
If you're coming from a C++ background, C# is most definitely the way to go, but the leap from VB6 to C#.NET is quite a few rungs up the ladder in terms of the discipline that is needed. Another thing that infuriates me is the fact that it's case-sensitive - the number of times I forget this and end up wondering if I'm using the correct class library, because the popup doesn't appear, only to find I've not capitalised it.... grrrrrr!
Fact is, though I set out firmly wanting to side with the pro-C# folks, I am finding that life is simply more straightforward in VB.NET, and I would suggest that anyone moving from VB6 to.NET has enough to worry about without having to deal with fiddly type conversions (System.Data.SqlClient, stand-up, you are a right royal PITA to work with in C#, as I keep having to worry about the differences between SqlInt16, SqlInt32 etc., when by rights I ought to be able to interface with SqlInt32 and not have it fall over if it encounters a sql tinyint).
I do like.NET in general, but it is used by a wide variety of developer types and abilities, and so why make life harder for those for whom VB.NET is the natural choice?
Ah, but it also does many things that users don't want, such as leave gaping holes for nasty software to pollute and break their nice shiny boxen, and I'm fairly sure that most users don't want to spend any time patching or hunting for the latest driver simply to get their boxen to work.
Most users, IME, want to USE the computer without knowing how it works and with the confidence that it will continue to work. Windows, by virtue of its patchy and insecure nature, doesn't really provide a stable enough foundation to allow The Average User to Use The Computer with 100% confidence.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it better to specialise in a few of the varied languages and systems you have worked on, rather than trying to spread yourself thin?
There is truth in the saying 'jack of all trades - master of none'.
So, maybe concentrate on building up the other skills, rather than trying to 'bag' a new technology. I used to try to gain exposure to loads of different technologies but found that when you do so you do at the expense of the 'depth' of knowledge you have in any one.
So, scientists say they may have found Dark Matter, eh?
I bet it was in the last place they looked...
I'll get me coat...
Actually, no, my mathematical brain-cell is clearly AWOL today, as 108Gb/31 is roughly 3.5Gb/day, so I was right the first time.
iMac: £1100ish ;-)
Monthly ISP bill: £15
Getting a _really_ simple sum wrong in front of millions of your geek peers: PRICELESS...
'course, you maths bods will have noticed that 108Gb/month is quite a bit more than 5Gb/day, but I did say _average_ :-)
I forgot to mention that my ISP does throttle the P2P somewhat, much less so in the 'free' hours (before 8am) but it still seems to cap around 300Kbps.
I'm in central Scotland, on an 8Mb wired ADSL service.
Depending on whether I'm doing BitTorrent (who? me? surely not, your honour...) I average around 3-5Gb per night, and that is monitored but not restricted between midnight and 8am.
So, I set Azureus* going my iMac to wake at midnight and to sleep at 8am (though normally I'm up before that anyway).
Last month I downloaded around 108Gb. Previous month it was a LOT less - maybe 30Gb. So, it does depend. However, I'm limited to 15Gb/month between 8am and midnight, but as I work days that limit is fine for me...
j.
* none of this 'Vuze' silliness for me, ho hum...
OK, I have to pipe up on this one.
I've previously worked a few freelance tech gigs at RBS and the one thing I can say with certainty is that their internal security is extremely tight. Tighter than anywhere else I've worked in my time. The fact that anything gets done, EVER, is a minor miracle in the face of the mountain of red-tape, security, bureaucracy and general faffing with sign-offs and corporate governance that is needed to do pretty much anything.
So, I'm going to pipe up on behalf of RBS, your honour... :-)
Thing is, one thing I categorically don't believe is that the responsibility for handling customer data like this would fall to one individual without direct accountability. Knowing RBS, there would be forms to fill in, checks made, audits done and any handling of customer data would need to be signed off at a high level, and would be entirely traceable. Which is to say that if there's a breach, I don't think it's likely to be a break-down in procedure.
Now, you might laugh about this, but I know how many hoops I had to jump through to get things like dev rights on a developer box ("so, let me get this straight, sir, why do you need to be able to write to the C: drive?" - that sort of dumb thing) so I really doubt that a half-wit in marketing or HR or whatever would be entrusted with such data. It is kept under lock and key and it would certainly be VERY UNUSUAL to be allowed to make a cd copy of customer data. To do so would require sign off from Very Senior Management (at Director level), and hence visibility at EVERY STAGE and accountability for EVERY ACTION would be enforced with *GREAT RIGOUR*...
So my money is that this isn't what it at first appears to be - it could be the case that this is something else and the press have got the wrong end of the stick.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Often am, you know... ;-)
"I've looked at the various display sizes and, if one could get the same DPI on all displays, an arrangment that used a WQXGA (2560x1600) center screen and then two cheaper UXGA (1600x1200) in portrait orientation (1200x1600) on either side might be useful (or other combinations where the portraits' native horizontal is the same as the center's vertical). Unfortunately finding the same DPI is difficult, leading to using CRTs where you can adjust the display settings to match, but which will effectively increase your bezel gap."
:-)
One such combination that I know works is the Dell 2001FP (20.1" LCD, rotatable to 1200x1600 portrait) and the large Dell 3007FP (30" LCD, 2560x1600). Requires quite a fair bit of desk space, and to be fair it's an expensive proposition. I would *LOVE* to add that 30" panel inbetween my own dual 2001FPs, but can't justify the expense.
I suspect this arrangement would be fairly optimal as compared to three 2001FPs, as the 'main desktop' is very spacious, and can host the current activity without any real space constraints. The other two panels can host the 'extra' stuff - web, mail, iChat/Skype windows, terminals (termina?) and so on.
Employers may argue that it is an unnecessary expense, but I firmly believe that having a capacious desktop or desktops is no less essential as having a decent amount of genuine desktop. And, if you're doing this professionally (as most of us are) then it seems rather short-sighted to skimp on primary tools.
John (dual panelling at 3200x1200, but wishing for 4960x1600
I remember it well... (nostalgia wells up)
Is to create your own website with an upload facility. Or your own webmail. Or anything that isn't (a) blocked by services such as Websense, (b) dependent on non-standard ports and (c) isn't publicly known.
Though I've never used it for anything untoward, I did create such a site for storing things like my CV, code samples, etc., which is password protected and not linked from any other website. Works well, and since it's using only port 80, it's generally freely available wherever I am.
The fact is, were there's a will there's a way - if I was of a mind to steal work-related information, as an IT pro I would find a way - either something already available or something I could create. Short of blocking all external access, or allowing only white-listed sites, employer's will always be on the back foot.
john
"You see, they won't see it as a developer trying to convince them to change browsers, they will just think IE is broken (which just happens to be true)."
Not quite - they'll see it as a website that is broken. I mean, c'mon, from the perspective of your average uninformed user, if a web page doesn't work when countless others appear to work, you'd assume the site is broken.
We, of course, know better. But there's more of THEM than US...
John
Apple might only have 12% of the market share in US Notebooks, but it's the top 12% :)
John
Spending more than Google, etc., else matters for little if Microsoft don't spend wisely...
I'm not so sure that wisdom is necessarily something Microsoft has quite so much of, however...
Mark me OffTopic if you will (it's Friday and I'm feeling brave, so I'll take that risk), but when I first read this, I read it as:
...and so on (I shall spare you the rest).
"Hackers Serving Rootkits with Bagels"
...and I started to think how cool a hacker café would be... then I got to wondering what else you might be able to order at a hacker café:
Trojan Muffins (secret filling might bring surprise!)
DDoS Donuts (very tasty, but eat too many and they gang up on you)
L33t Latté (quintuple espresso with a single shot of milk)
Keylogger Cakes (be careful, they're watching)
Ah well, as they say in these parts 'ah'll get me coat'...
Just wondered - 50Hz in the UK, 60Hz in the US, probably other frequencies elsewhere. Voltages: much higher in the UK. Perhaps someone should do a study into whether the problem is worse at higher or lower frequencies - maybe, like with sound, some frequencies are euphonic and others not...??
:-)
Mind you, maybe it's just the annoying hum of transformers that's getting everyone down. I know I hate alarm clocks which hum - I once had to create an isolation platform out of an old face-cloth, a book and some cut squash-balls to minimise the annoying hum from an old alarm I had (whilst I was a very poor student). Mind you, I eventually sorted that problem out by blowing it up by connecting a 90wpc stereo amplifier to its speaker (don't ask - it was an experiment, ok?) and fried the lot
John
Fair point, Suzerain. Fact is, like any relationship (business/personal), any split is rarely all down to one party - the relationship obviously was souring long before the split, and you make good points about the lack of serious development on IBM's part to come up with (a) the mythical vapourware that was the 3GHz G5, and (b) the equally mythical vapourware that was the portable/low-power G5.
In Apple's position? Well, if I were Steve Jobs, I'd probably have hedged my bets by keeping OSX running on all the contemporary CPU architectures too, though I don't know if I'd have had the balls to risk the revolt of the 'faithful' by switching across to Intel.
So, who dumped who? Don't know, and don't really care. You'll probably get a completely different flavour if you spoke to an IBM insider as if you spoke to someone at Apple, so the truth really isn't known, but I suspect that Apple probably 'dumped' IBM in balance (as otherwise IBM would have been happy enough to receive revenues for G5s as it probably made them some profit regardless).
John
My worry about all this ever increasing storage capacity is the fact that affordable, non-disk based backup systems don't appear to be evolving at the same rate. So, we're in a situation that a full disk backup might span 100 dual layer DVDs, which is a hell of an undertaking. Sure, Blu-Ray and HD DVD might help, but at best estimates they're still lagging a long way back.
As we start using and creating more and more media rich content on our machines, it's going to start getting *very* tricky to ensure that content is backed up, and I suspect a lot of us simply won't bother.
Also, doesn't packing higher densities of data together make it more prone to corruption/problems, and even if it isn't more prone, surely we're going to end up with incredibly large 'baskets' into which we place all of our valuable 'eggs'?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's something I've been worried about for some time - and having a machine with ~700Gb storage at present (most of that free space for now) I worry about how I can safely back this stuff up without buying yet another hard disk. I prefer to spread my risk over different media types - CD/DVD/Hard Disks/Online Solutions - but other than big hard disks, none of the others have evolved anywhere near quickly enough to accommodate these huge capacity drives...
Worrysome John
"Microsoft would win because it would mean another copy of Windows sold"
;-) but I'd be very surprised if anyone in this situation would then go out and buy a copy of XP - after all, the reason one would run Windows on a Mac is IN ADDITION to OSX, not INSTEAD - so unless one was already firmly entrenched in the Windows world (and hence already have XP, say) there'd be no compelling reason to want Windows. In my opinion, of course.
Do you really believe that Joe Public is really going to want to pay the going rate for a full copy of XP Pro specifically to put on their Mac? I don't. I think people who gravitate towards Apple products either see it as a means to an end (home pc, does what they need, quite happy thank you) or are power/regular users who've grown tired of the hassles of the Windows world and/or fancy a change. Like me.
These same people (myself included) won't buy a new copy of WIndows. No, they'll install a copy if they happen to have one (as I do - legit, natch
"Apple would win because that many more would-be switchers would finally have their last objection to getting a Mac removed."
I concur!
"There's a mind-boggling selection of specialty software that runs in Windows that will never get ported to the Mac, and it's very easy to imagine a near future where Windows XP takes a role very similar to X11 today - That of providing a compatibility layer for apps that for whatever reason never get around to being made native to OS X."
That makes sense, and I largely agree, though I'd argue that once people sample a better system they will find alternatives if they exist. I think the concept of virtualisation which is offered by the Intel roadmap means that we might actually find it possible to run Windows apps with some OSX native compatibility layer - given that the biggest obstacle (hardware architecture) is now more or less unified between the two platforms.
To be fair, I'm not sure the Aero issue is necessarily relevant for a lot of users - it is, after all, only "Eye Candy" and not (AFAICT) in any way a necessity to run Vista - as is certainly the case with Core Image.
When Vista comes out, and assuming I end up upgrading my XP dev box to it, it wouldn't matter a damn as I use Remote Desktop COnnection from my OSX box to do dev work - and the RDC facility 'dumbs down' the 'eye candy' anyway.
That said, I'm no gamer (my bad!) and I'm running an old graphics card on that dev box anyway (and see no need to upgrade) so it wouldn't help much. But, hey, it's the principle and the fact that eye candy such as Aero should only ever be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.
If MS made the mistake of making the eye candy central to effective use of Vista, they'd have made a big mistake and will alienate more users (such as myself and the 'non cutting edge' users (who must, surely, form the bulk of MS' customer base).
John
"2) IBM dumping Apple as a customer"
;-)
:-)
I'm sure you meant that in jest, as we all know Apple hedged their bets and essentially two-timed IBM by keeping a fancy woman in Intel as a bit on the side. I guess if IBM claimed to have 'dumped' Apple at any point, it'd be more the actions of a 'spurned lover' trying to save face
"You aren't going to recognize Apple a year from now. And I sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to buy an Intel based Mac unless you plan on selling it on eBay a few years down the line as a novelty item"
Hmmmm... is your surname Dvorak by any chance?
To be fair, computer users generally fall into two camps regarding upgrades - the ones who do (and want to keep 'up with the Jones's') and those who don't (and will keep the machine until it breaks).
If you fall into the 'do' camp, whether you'll end up with a machine which is obselete in 2009 is a moot point - you'll have moved onto something else long before then. If you're a 'don't' type, then you'll be happily using the computer with whatever OS it came with (probably) rather than lusting after whatever's shiniest.
"If you're a Mac user you better start getting over your hate for Microsoft and Windows..."
I don't have hatred for MS or Windows. I just choose the best product for me at a given time (which happens to be OSX for everything except my legacy and web dev work, which requires a PC on which I run XP). Hate's a bad thing, but recognising the flakiness of products such as Windows and the general sloppiness of MS' approach to security, etc., is just being prudent. I choose to avoid that grief as much as possible, and I voted OSX. YMMV.
Surely the concept of 'buy it now' is no different to going onto any online classifieds site and purchasing something. It's just a straightforward purchase then - so what makes this necessarily any different to your conventional single item purchase on (say) Amazon? Just because the goods are on an auction site?
Me dost thing that the US patent system is patently mad...
John
"'The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.'"
After trying to figure that sentence out, the number of functioning brain-cells left means that I am very much in the market for a nice computer brain hybrid thingy.
So long as Bill Gates' software isn't anywhere near it. Otherwise I might ju-
Illegal Operation. Please reboot this brain and report the fault to Microsoft.
The problem with C# (in my experience) is that it is very fussy (as compared to VB.NET or especially good olde VB6). For instance, I spend a lot of time in C# doing type conversions, which in VB6 were far more straightforward.
.NET has enough to worry about without having to deal with fiddly type conversions (System.Data.SqlClient, stand-up, you are a right royal PITA to work with in C#, as I keep having to worry about the differences between SqlInt16, SqlInt32 etc., when by rights I ought to be able to interface with SqlInt32 and not have it fall over if it encounters a sql tinyint).
.NET in general, but it is used by a wide variety of developer types and abilities, and so why make life harder for those for whom VB.NET is the natural choice?
If you're coming from a C++ background, C# is most definitely the way to go, but the leap from VB6 to C#.NET is quite a few rungs up the ladder in terms of the discipline that is needed. Another thing that infuriates me is the fact that it's case-sensitive - the number of times I forget this and end up wondering if I'm using the correct class library, because the popup doesn't appear, only to find I've not capitalised it.... grrrrrr!
Fact is, though I set out firmly wanting to side with the pro-C# folks, I am finding that life is simply more straightforward in VB.NET, and I would suggest that anyone moving from VB6 to
I do like
John
"Windows does 99% of what users need."
Ah, but it also does many things that users don't want, such as leave gaping holes for nasty software to pollute and break their nice shiny boxen, and I'm fairly sure that most users don't want to spend any time patching or hunting for the latest driver simply to get their boxen to work.
Most users, IME, want to USE the computer without knowing how it works and with the confidence that it will continue to work. Windows, by virtue of its patchy and insecure nature, doesn't really provide a stable enough foundation to allow The Average User to Use The Computer with 100% confidence.
You must be a Leica owner, right?