They've been adding improvements steadily over the years, such as journaling and most recently case sensitivity. The more obvious question to me is why doesn't the Linux community just jump all over HFS+
Because the features they're adding to HFS+ are already available in other filesystems? There's nothing in HFS+ that would make linux users want to use it, and some compelling reasons why they would not. (Performance, size limits, lack of an online resizer, etc.)
Submarines, while extreme engineering, aren't as extreme of engineering as rockets - mainly because you can build them much bigger and far heavier for the same cost (which makes things a *lot* simpler), and they aren't exposed to nearly such intense G forces and vibrational loads (the combination of these things with light components at high temperature is particularly nasty).
Actually, nuclear attack submarines are fairly restricted in size and weight, or they get too slow and unmanuverable to successfully attack. They don't have liftoff forces, but they do need to withstand people shooting torpedoes at them. And the reactor cores do need temperature resistant components...
When the dot-com bust came, it came hard on training. Nobody wanted to learn any more.
Well, I guess that's one explanation. Another is that the "training" was never all that useful, and certainly not worth the money people were throwing at it during the 90's. Really good programmers/sysadmins/other don't come out of vendor training programs, they come from on-the-job experience. The idea that you can sit in a classroom for a week (after forking over a couple of grand) and end up with subject matter expertise is ludicrous. Yeah, it's labor intensive, difficult, and expensive to mentor people--but sending people off to a class isn't a bargain if you still need to mentor them once they get back.
Have you ever considered that they couldn't care less about DRM on the media?
What possible reason would Microsoft, or more personally Bill Gates care about it? Seriously. They don't produce movies. They don't produce music.
Where's "-1 Just Plain Wrong" when you need it?
Microsoft & Gates have invested billions of dollars in content distribution (e.g., cable/broadband) and digital rights to a wide variety of works of art, etc. BillG stands to make a(nother) mint if he can get a working DRM and collect a toll every time someone watches a movie.
I know that I will always be one to laugh when I see a 4 year old fridge thrown out and a 40 year old fridge continue to cool like it was brand new. Even if it is only used to cool beer at some summer beachhouse I admire the fact that it was built to last.
I always think it's a real shame when people keep old refrigerators around. Even putting aside the old death-trap fridges with the locking mechanisms that tend to kill children, the power consumption on old fridges is high enough to make the new models pay for themselves in energy savings.
Probably you are living in the wrong country. A lot of WV Beetles from 70s are still running around in Europe. Ditto with Citroen 2CVs, Renault 5s, Fiat 131s (argh, I hate that car).
There are a fair number of old cars running around the US also. I wish there were fewer. Driving behind a thirty year old beetle is a hellish experience filled with noxious fumes and headaches. Cars don't run as long anymore because they are more complicated. The number one reason they are more complicated is beacause of emission controls. These controls are a good thing, because they help make sure that our air is breathable.
I'd object also if the power company paid me $x for electrical right of way and now wants to make $yyyyyyy on selling data over the same poles without giving me any more money.
I guess you got unlucky. But in my case, I've handled a lot of these things, from old to new, and I've always found there to be a fairly recent update for them. If the device is new enough (anything in the G family) then the updates add WPA and other nice functionality.
I think that's what I said--they'll support their latest, but when their next model comes out you're screwed. I'm sure they'll be revving soon to provide a new model that says "802.11i" on the box, at which point you'll never see another update again. Hope they get it right the first time...
Re:But Linksys has a history of good updates
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IEEE Approves 802.11i
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I wouldn't really count Linksys on that bandwagon yet. They've been really good about keeping their firmware up to date even on old devices.
Bullshit. They drop support just about as soon as they can. I've got a first-gen WPA11 for which linksys never released a single firmware update and which never had a reliable driver. I've also got a WAP11 that's in the same boat. You may be confused by the fact that linksys generally keeps the same name when they change the chipset on their products. So they have updates for WAP11's, but only the very latest hardware rev of it. If you buy a linksys product consider it to be disposable.
um , when NASA uses the jetpack, they usually got no tether. Where's the backup there?
You're probably confusing the backup system (SAFER) with the MMU. The backup system is a small backpack, it's not the big flying chair you may be thinking of (which hasn't been used since the 80's IIRC.)
> People who dont want to carry around another thing > to take pictures?
What about people who don't want to carry around anything that takes pictures? It's getting damn hard to find a new cell phone that doesn't have one of those stupid cameras in it. I can only hope it's a short-lived fad.
You pretty much have to turn to the Arab networks to see any of the reality of what's been going on in Iraq. Those networks are, no doubt, slanted against the U.S. but the U.S. networks have been sanitized to the point they aren't giving any information at all about the real situation there. Pretty simply the American media has been completely cowed by the Pentagon through a variety of means.
What does the fact that the pictures were first published by the washington post do to your theory?
What if he doesn't live in a township and owns the river himself?
Heh. The susquehanna is the 16th largest river in the united states, not some backyard trickle. It's a navigable river and a major feeder for the chesapeake bay, which falls under federal authority as well as state and regional environmental regulations. Sticking a dam on it is something I'd probably ask a lawyer about first thing.
We know that when you get into a car, your real-time info is always in the same place, below the windshield, usually behind the steering mechanism (I know there are exceptions). Window controls are usually below the window. Parking brake is in the center console or at your feet. There are simple rules that allow a person to figure out how to drive almost any car.
I hope you realize that it took 30 or 40 years for those "simple rules" to evolve. It's much to early in the life cycle of computers to expect (or force) such consistency of interface. The fact is that we still don't know what a good UI is because we haven't seen one yet. What we have are different interfaces optimized for different purposes, none of which are really good generally. Car interfaces converged because there was a generally "good" interface that worked well for just about everybody with a minimum of training but which didn't greatly impede an experienced user's driving. (And even then, woe to the disabled, short, or tall driver.) Come up with a good interface and then talk about standardizing. As it is you seem stuck in the WIMP model and interested in rearranging the details.
Why would you pay insane amounts in college tuition to learn from uber-intelligent professors about specific technologies when you could do that at a trade school?
Because that's what you need to get a job. Most of the jobs around here require a degree, preferably in computer science. It may be stupid, but if you want a job that's just the way it is. Personally, I blame the fact that the high schools are so pathetic that a college degree is the only way to get a reasonable shot at hiring someone who is functionally literate.
Re:Bang for the buck
on
The Wrong Stuff
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"What could humans do that the robots can't?"
-Move more than 500 meters from their landing site It's really pathetic that we think we're going to explore *an entire planet* with rovers that can move only a few hundred meters in their entire life.
Just how much of the moon's surface do you think the manned missions there explored? Humans in space don't have all the much more latitude for exploration than robots at this time--everything they do is carefully planned out ahead of time because it's really hard to do things when you're in a space suit. Sure, maybe human exploration could get better as technology improves--but so could robots.
-Solve problems on their own during the times NASA ground control is unreachable
Equipment breaks down. It's a lot easier to fix stuff when you have a person right there than to try to debug a robot from a hundred million miles away.
Until the fragile humans die. It's a whole lot easier to just send extra robots. If one breaks, use the next one. The current mars mission's total cost was $820 million -- less than a quarter of the annual cost for the Shuttle program alone. NASA spends a lot more money on safety for manned flight operations than on robots.
3. Rote memorisation. There is no motor memory when using the CLI.
I beg to differ. My fingers can remember key sequences just as easily as mouse sequences. You do it long enough and you don't even think about it.
Funny, I thought that was the same with CLI's. With a GUI, the GUI can at least support exploration of the interface. Click that arrow down, see what happens. A CLI can do none of these things, unless you consider adding random letters after a command, to be "exploration
The trouble is that many (most?) computer users are afraid to explore. Either they don't understand what clicking an interface element will do, or they've done so in the past and had something go horribly wrong. That sort of user is much happier just following a script, and instructions are much easier to write for cli's. Does this line of thought lead to stratification of computer users--of course! There will be some who understand the interface and some who just push buttons. A cli interface is just more up-front about that.
As an example, consider financial data-entry clerks. A few years ago they would have had a green screen into which they enter certain numbers. The interface would have sucked (simple text, limited functionality) but it did what was needed. And the clerks could be really fast--they just entered the numbers in a certain order and then typed a magic key sequence. They didn't have to understand what they did, they just had to know a couple of magic sequences. Today the clerk would get a windows machine. If they're lucky they then get a terminal emulator which gives them the same green screen they used to have, but smaller and with a lousy font. But in addition to knowing the magic key sequences they also have to know how to start the windows machine & the terminal app. That's a little bit of progress. If they're really lucky they get to replace their green screen with a web browser and replace the magic key sequence with a lot of clicking of drop-down boxes & buttons. Their productivity goes through the floor because they're constantly interrupting their workflow in order to mouse around. That's a lot of progress.
What's the point? Simply that many computer users don't care about whether they can explore the interface--they just want to get a job done.
Patches tend to be a nightmare from a support perspective. You end up with an exponential increase in the number of packages you are expected to provide support for, which is beyond the ability of any organization. I'd rather have a stable system with an integrated set of packages than an unstable mess of incompatible patches.
Well, you're wrong about that. Here's a hubble shot of IO. If you can see a poker game there you're the king of ink-blots. Here's another. Compare those to the keck observations I posted earlier and you'll see that hubble's strong point isn't observing planetary bodies; ESO's OWL should be much better for looking at that sort of dim object. And as it turns out, really disant galaxies are better observed in the X-ray spectrum, and NASA has a couple of other satellites for that purpose.
This is true but misleading. Although new Earth-based telescopes can correct for the motion of the atmosphere and approach Hubble's resolution, the atmosphere still filters out huge sections of the spectrum. You can't use adaptive optics to fix that. For any observation which looks at those blocked regions you NEED to go into space or you can't see them at all.
ISTM that you've missed the context for this discussion, which was a reply to a post bemoaning the fact that JWST isn't a suitable replacement for hubble because it lacks visible light capability. There are certainly good reasons to have space-based platforms for observing the non-visible spectrum--which is why NASA has other space telescopes beside HST and why it plans to launch JWST. None for those reasons have much to do with hubble, however.
Tough to call "working right now" technology "inferior" to something that doesn't exist yet. By the way, I don't buy for a second that ground-based telescopes will ever have better imaging than Hubble. Sorry.
No need to apologize. It seems that you're simply unaware that the technology is already working right now and is getting better every year.
Compared to new ground-based telescopes, the Hubble is a technically inferior telescope. But it still gets much better images because it doesn't have the atmosphere. It's not just because it "must be cooler" because it's space-based. No amount of telescope can make up for the atmosphere.
Sure it can--you must not be aware of the advances in adaptive optics. There's a reason that the next-generation space telescope isn't designed for visible-light observations--advances in ground-based technology have overtaken the advantages of a space-based platform. (Specifically, with AO the important factor is more mirror size (to sense dimmer objects) then atmosphere, and a space telescope will never be able to compete with a ground telescope in that area in our lifetimes. Add to that the huge cost savings in not boosting the observatory into orbit --effectively increasing the budget for instruments.) Some informative links:
No, there won't! That's the point. Hubble's replacement is scheduled for 2012 and it sees in infrared. Hubble uses visible light spectrum. There is no scheduled replacement for hubble.
Except, of course, for the new generation of ground-based telescopes with better resolving power than the hubble. It's silly to spend more money on inferior technology just because it's space-based and therefor "must be cooler".
This will all get killed in budget negotiations after the election.
As happened with the Moon shot? If this Bush makes a declaration, he will try and keep it. Otherwise he'll end up compared to his father. Jr. wants to be a JFK and Reagan in one compassionate conservative package.
It was a lot easier to find money for the apollo program when there was a race with the soviets, and especially after kennedy was martyred. If it wasn't for a particular combination of events & luck in the 60's we probably wouldn't have gotten to the moon then either.
As for the budget - the money will be found - since it'll all go to the aerospace/defence industry.
Yeah, but for years the government has given huge sums of money to the aerospace industry for the space program without actually demanding anything in return. It would be really hard to break that cycle--I don't think bush has the will or the balls to make that happen.
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Because the features they're adding to HFS+ are already available in other filesystems? There's nothing in HFS+ that would make linux users want to use it, and some compelling reasons why they would not. (Performance, size limits, lack of an online resizer, etc.)
Actually, nuclear attack submarines are fairly restricted in size and weight, or they get too slow and unmanuverable to successfully attack. They don't have liftoff forces, but they do need to withstand people shooting torpedoes at them. And the reactor cores do need temperature resistant components...
Well, I guess that's one explanation. Another is that the "training" was never all that useful, and certainly not worth the money people were throwing at it during the 90's. Really good programmers/sysadmins/other don't come out of vendor training programs, they come from on-the-job experience. The idea that you can sit in a classroom for a week (after forking over a couple of grand) and end up with subject matter expertise is ludicrous. Yeah, it's labor intensive, difficult, and expensive to mentor people--but sending people off to a class isn't a bargain if you still need to mentor them once they get back.
Where's "-1 Just Plain Wrong" when you need it?
Microsoft & Gates have invested billions of dollars in content distribution (e.g., cable/broadband) and digital rights to a wide variety of works of art, etc. BillG stands to make a(nother) mint if he can get a working DRM and collect a toll every time someone watches a movie.
I always think it's a real shame when people keep old refrigerators around. Even putting aside the old death-trap fridges with the locking mechanisms that tend to kill children, the power consumption on old fridges is high enough to make the new models pay for themselves in energy savings.
There are a fair number of old cars running around the US also. I wish there were fewer. Driving behind a thirty year old beetle is a hellish experience filled with noxious fumes and headaches. Cars don't run as long anymore because they are more complicated. The number one reason they are more complicated is beacause of emission controls. These controls are a good thing, because they help make sure that our air is breathable.
I'd object also if the power company paid me $x for electrical right of way and now wants to make $yyyyyyy on selling data over the same poles without giving me any more money.
I think that's what I said--they'll support their latest, but when their next model comes out you're screwed. I'm sure they'll be revving soon to provide a new model that says "802.11i" on the box, at which point you'll never see another update again. Hope they get it right the first time...
Bullshit. They drop support just about as soon as they can. I've got a first-gen WPA11 for which linksys never released a single firmware update and which never had a reliable driver. I've also got a WAP11 that's in the same boat. You may be confused by the fact that linksys generally keeps the same name when they change the chipset on their products. So they have updates for WAP11's, but only the very latest hardware rev of it. If you buy a linksys product consider it to be disposable.
You're probably confusing the backup system (SAFER) with the MMU. The backup system is a small backpack, it's not the big flying chair you may be thinking of (which hasn't been used since the 80's IIRC.)
How many pre-orders has toyota gotten for the four wheeled suppository?
> People who dont want to carry around another thing
> to take pictures?
What about people who don't want to carry around anything that takes pictures? It's getting damn hard to find a new cell phone that doesn't have one of those stupid cameras in it. I can only hope it's a short-lived fad.
What does the fact that the pictures were first published by the washington post do to your theory?
Heh. The susquehanna is the 16th largest river in the united states, not some backyard trickle. It's a navigable river and a major feeder for the chesapeake bay, which falls under federal authority as well as state and regional environmental regulations. Sticking a dam on it is something I'd probably ask a lawyer about first thing.
I hope you realize that it took 30 or 40 years for those "simple rules" to evolve. It's much to early in the life cycle of computers to expect (or force) such consistency of interface. The fact is that we still don't know what a good UI is because we haven't seen one yet. What we have are different interfaces optimized for different purposes, none of which are really good generally. Car interfaces converged because there was a generally "good" interface that worked well for just about everybody with a minimum of training but which didn't greatly impede an experienced user's driving. (And even then, woe to the disabled, short, or tall driver.) Come up with a good interface and then talk about standardizing. As it is you seem stuck in the WIMP model and interested in rearranging the details.
Because that's what you need to get a job. Most of the jobs around here require a degree, preferably in computer science. It may be stupid, but if you want a job that's just the way it is. Personally, I blame the fact that the high schools are so pathetic that a college degree is the only way to get a reasonable shot at hiring someone who is functionally literate.
Just how much of the moon's surface do you think the manned missions there explored? Humans in space don't have all the much more latitude for exploration than robots at this time--everything they do is carefully planned out ahead of time because it's really hard to do things when you're in a space suit. Sure, maybe human exploration could get better as technology improves--but so could robots.
Until the fragile humans die. It's a whole lot easier to just send extra robots. If one breaks, use the next one. The current mars mission's total cost was $820 million -- less than a quarter of the annual cost for the Shuttle program alone. NASA spends a lot more money on safety for manned flight operations than on robots.
I beg to differ. My fingers can remember key sequences just as easily as mouse sequences. You do it long enough and you don't even think about it.
The trouble is that many (most?) computer users are afraid to explore. Either they don't understand what clicking an interface element will do, or they've done so in the past and had something go horribly wrong. That sort of user is much happier just following a script, and instructions are much easier to write for cli's. Does this line of thought lead to stratification of computer users--of course! There will be some who understand the interface and some who just push buttons. A cli interface is just more up-front about that.
As an example, consider financial data-entry clerks. A few years ago they would have had a green screen into which they enter certain numbers. The interface would have sucked (simple text, limited functionality) but it did what was needed. And the clerks could be really fast--they just entered the numbers in a certain order and then typed a magic key sequence. They didn't have to understand what they did, they just had to know a couple of magic sequences. Today the clerk would get a windows machine. If they're lucky they then get a terminal emulator which gives them the same green screen they used to have, but smaller and with a lousy font. But in addition to knowing the magic key sequences they also have to know how to start the windows machine & the terminal app. That's a little bit of progress. If they're really lucky they get to replace their green screen with a web browser and replace the magic key sequence with a lot of clicking of drop-down boxes & buttons. Their productivity goes through the floor because they're constantly interrupting their workflow in order to mouse around. That's a lot of progress.
What's the point? Simply that many computer users don't care about whether they can explore the interface--they just want to get a job done.
Patches tend to be a nightmare from a support perspective. You end up with an exponential increase in the number of packages you are expected to provide support for, which is beyond the ability of any organization. I'd rather have a stable system with an integrated set of packages than an unstable mess of incompatible patches.
Well, you're wrong about that. Here's a hubble shot of IO. If you can see a poker game there you're the king of ink-blots. Here's another. Compare those to the keck observations I posted earlier and you'll see that hubble's strong point isn't observing planetary bodies; ESO's OWL should be much better for looking at that sort of dim object. And as it turns out, really disant galaxies are better observed in the X-ray spectrum, and NASA has a couple of other satellites for that purpose.
ISTM that you've missed the context for this discussion, which was a reply to a post bemoaning the fact that JWST isn't a suitable replacement for hubble because it lacks visible light capability. There are certainly good reasons to have space-based platforms for observing the non-visible spectrum--which is why NASA has other space telescopes beside HST and why it plans to launch JWST. None for those reasons have much to do with hubble, however.
No need to apologize. It seems that you're simply unaware that the technology is already working right now and is getting better every year.
Here are some pictures
Here are some comparing hubble and keck
Sure it can--you must not be aware of the advances in adaptive optics. There's a reason that the next-generation space telescope isn't designed for visible-light observations--advances in ground-based technology have overtaken the advantages of a space-based platform. (Specifically, with AO the important factor is more mirror size (to sense dimmer objects) then atmosphere, and a space telescope will never be able to compete with a ground telescope in that area in our lifetimes. Add to that the huge cost savings in not boosting the observatory into orbit --effectively increasing the budget for instruments.) Some informative links:
Keck Observatory
European OWL telescope
Except, of course, for the new generation of ground-based telescopes with better resolving power than the hubble. It's silly to spend more money on inferior technology just because it's space-based and therefor "must be cooler".
It was a lot easier to find money for the apollo program when there was a race with the soviets, and especially after kennedy was martyred. If it wasn't for a particular combination of events & luck in the 60's we probably wouldn't have gotten to the moon then either.
Yeah, but for years the government has given huge sums of money to the aerospace industry for the space program without actually demanding anything in return. It would be really hard to break that cycle--I don't think bush has the will or the balls to make that happen.