Do I know you? Oh, no. Go on. Please do say what you have to say. I'll not disagree with you unless it differs from my personal knowledge or experience.
It has often been the case when I'm studying that the thing I think I'm learning is only peripherally related to the difficult concept the teacher is trying to instill in me. Some times it has taken many years of experience to grasp the benefits he offered in the syllabus. Maybe there's some Xen here. If you understood what he was trying to say, you wouldn't need him.
This (in my opinion) shows there is of course no perfect model...
... sadly, there's some people you can't teach no matter how hard you try. You can expose them to the wisdom of the ages, you can show them the wonders built from science, and they will still ask, "But what of Rapture?".
I interview candidates too. If you don't grok linux, you're not getting in.
Davis also said that given the size of Microsoft, a $150 million commitment amounts to little more than good public relations. "Remember, they spent $450 million on WebTV. The investment still doesn't give Apple a coherent strategy for turning things around."
Sometimes partnerships work out and some times they don't. For example:
The companies also agreed to collaborate on the Java programming language and other programming languages to ensure they run consistently on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. In addition, Apple agreed to make Microsoft's Internet Explorer the default browser for the Macintosh platform.
We all know how MS Java and IE on Mac turned out, don't we?
Davis said the investment means that Apple will now toe Microsoft's line on Java. "If Java is a threat to Windows, and all operating systems, then it's a threat to Apple and the Mac OS."
We all know that Microsoft Java turned out to be a violation of some law or other and was deprecated. And we're only 11 years hence.
And one more quote on whether the investment and its concomitant concessions was a good deal for Apple: it was only 11% of Apple's available cash at the time:
Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said. He added that the company expects to gain a higher percentage of its revenues from software and services in these core markets in the future.
$150M in Apple that week evolves into $4.2B today. If Microsoft kept this one and did as well with their other investments, by now they would own the world.
There are times like the recent article about how Microsoft photoshopped a black guy out of some marketing material destined for Poland where there are no black people, where the frantic voices of slashdot bashing Microsoft I find irrational and too strident.
And then there are the far more numerous articles where there's some real problem with a current Microsoft product where some people feel determined to defend Microsoft no matter how much they must stretch reason or reach to find offense in the poster.
Your post is more of the latter than the former -- and so I must wonder how it became moderated so well. Twice interesting and once overrated. That's maybe more than I would give it.
Ok, it's bad form to reply twice. Go ahead and mod me down.
you really should do your research before passing judgement.
Hunh? Research? WTF are you talking about? That's like asking Exeter to research what happened on St Crispen's day. I don't have to research it you idiot. I was there.
As for proof of offensiveness... I have no proof. Offensiveness is by its nature a subjective measure. I am offended by the idea that one could "understand" a thing without direct observation and investigation. Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of the word "science". There's a chance that we disagree about what the meaning of the word "is" is.
Good for you! My high school was pretty high-tech too. We had an IBM PC in 1979 (OK, technically it was an IBM 5150. They didn't start calling it a PC until later), and a computer science teacher, Alan Schulz who was one of the "boys from Boca" that invented the damned thing. He got us a computer lab (with Apple ]['s of course) and a variety of other machines (does anybody really remember the Timex Sinclair or TI99/4a?). They made him teach math most of the time because computer sciences weren't some serious business endeavor back then. He owned the local Apple store.
He taught me a lot about basic science. Don't accept anything as a "magic black box". Start with an understanding of the transistor and how they build into gates and logic. Proceed to an understanding of machine language -- especially comparison and branch operations. When you know how such things are done on an electrical level it does amazing things for the persistence of your understanding of the rest of it and your ability to detect bullshit. Having struggled through a course where we had to write useful applications that worked in 8 bit opcodes written in pencil on paper in binary I learned some things I'm unlikely to forget. Doing so as the only member of a four-person team to produce anything useful I learned other facts that still give daily service. A few years ago I went back and some of the apps I wrote are still in daily use, though heavily modified of course.
As a historical note, the student computer society (BUHSCCIOBBDT) had fundraisers and bought some stock - IBM, Microsoft and Apple among others. It did quite well.
Logic diagrams, Venn diagrams, and other primitives are still as useful as they ever were. APL is still a write-only language. BASIC is still good for quick mock-ups of what a program will be when you've written it in a real language. Tape still sucks for bandwidth. ADA is still easy to sell and gruesome to program in. Game programming is still about balance between challenge and reward. GOTO is still flamebait. Programmers still play D&D (or some modern equivalent) in high school. Applications are still data structures + algorithms. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I learned then and in years following is now worthless (SNOBOL anyone?) but I'm doing better than some because my excursions from Assembler, C, and C++ have been recreational at most. I've collected scores of languages the way some people collect Happy Meal toys and discovered the same thing such collectors have: 90% of stuff that's manufactured is junk to stuff a landfill with.
I was also fortunate to be in school with folks like Robert Toth and Vince Sherart, who were great minds well ahead of their time. From your post I'm guessing that you're also surrounded by folks who will persist and do well.
Let me put this another way. In every field there's a ton of fakers who subsist by getting in with buzzword proficiency or an MCSE cert and rise to middle management through meeting management. These people serve the purpose of preventing excess productivity, which believe it or not is a socially useful goal. You don't have to be one of those. You can get ahead by knowing how to do stuff. If you proceed in your education from understanding the first causes to the prime forces, then when you have to deal with one of these jerks you can cut him off at the knees by pointing out the things he doesn't know, and in the process make your work environment more fun to be in. As a bonus it's fun to watch them wilt.
If you're studying Electronics Engineering, I believe they expect you to be able to build a crystal radio receiver before you show up, and HAM Radio is definitely a first year course.
Likewise expecting CS students to build their own tools is the essence of teaching them to understand their science. Anything less and the architecture that underpins their understanding can be cut out from under them at any time. College is not a trade certification.
I hate to say this, but the Citrix client is one of my least favorite apps to get running under Linux. Maybe I'm getting forgetful, but I can never remember which directory to copy the certificate to, or what ownership and permissions to use on it. Why Citrix can't get their install right is beyond me.
That said, once it's installed it works beautifully until it's time to update the Citrix client again.
Do you think the average college helpdesk is prepared to answer random Linux questions?
Do you think the average BestBuy employee is prepared to answer software questions?
If you need help with your linux and you can't be bothered to use the Google, just whine about it on any freaking blog on the internet including this one, and your helpful Linux support team will reply instantly. We're at your beck and call. For gosh sakes, the author of the app that's giving you fits might help you, and if you've found a bug somebody might fix it. It's that different.
Linux and BSD are everywhere in the server room. But in the admin section where the MS rep schmoozes with the CIO all the books on the shelf are "Exchange for Dummies" and "JOB: Securing Sharepoint".
If you're taking a programming track and your "Operating Systems" course involves an OS you don't write or rewrite, you're wasting your time.
The very idea that you can even try to understand operating systems without the source code is offensive self-defeating crap.
And if you get exposure to Windows OS source under NDA, then what? Your career as an OS developer is over before you've even graduated. No idea you ever have in that realm will be usable.
The problem with W7 being what Vista should have been is that expectations have changed since Vista was released. "A better Windows than XP" just isn't good enough any more. Vista was a long seven years coming, and it was unsatisfactory. People came to the stunning realization that salvation was not in the offing. Desperation drove them to explore alternatives outside of their comfort zone. IT people everywhere are finally looking outside of their Windows box and realizing - hey! A lot of these unresolved persistent headaches like malware and server glitches and cryptic error messages and license audits are problems we can choose not to have. Now people want stuff that "just works". You know, like a BSD or Linux server... or a Macbook Pro.
Shhh. What's it to us if some clever entrepreneur milks Sony for another 100 million or so for Yet Another Doomed DRM Acronym (YADDA)? Somebody's going to do it - they literally insist on it. It's my turn next and I hope you guys don't spoil my round.
We all breathe. The fact that power consumption is coming down on mainstream PCs is of huge benefit to people generally. It also means more technology uptake in places where power is less available or more expensive, and that's good for the economy. Across a hundred million units bringing power consumption down by 10 Watts is a Gigawatt, or roughly the power delivered by The last US nuclear power plant to come online. Watts matter at home too.
The fossil record doesn't agree with you. The Earth has had several dominant species and has killed them all after a time. If we don't escape the Earth that's our fate. Regardless, this is an IT geek site and anybody posting here should know the value of offsite backups.
Your failure modes omit a number of sufficient extinction level events to wipe out mankind. There are after all the inevitable glaciation, runaway greenhouse, Solar variation, Megavolcanos, cometary impactor, exosolar impactor, global thermonuclear war, galactic local supernova, biogenic apocalypse and the ever popular zombie apocalypse, among others.
Many people share your view that nothing need be done. If it prevails, we deserve to die out. After 4 billion years of trying Gaia deserves a species that can get'er done.
It would be a shame if Best Buy had to forgo all of those back-end co-marketing dollars. But it wouldn't be fair to keep giving them marketing incentives if they're giving preferred placement to the competition now, would it? The other vendors are more than happy to help with consumer education and it just wouldn't be right to let their commitment to the partnership go unrewarded.
Microsoft stock is off 42% over the past decade. This does not look like the type of thing that's a good retirement investment. Of course, past experience does not always guarantee future results. Your mileage may vary. Consult your own investment advisor. For comparison, Apple is up 1000% over the same period.
Just for you: here's an app store for Blender, a 3d modeling program. If you click that on most Debian boxes these days, it'll download Blender from the repository and install it for you appropriately in the menu. I'll leave the rest of the thousands of apps as an exercise for the reader.
Slashdot Mirror
Test to see if macro responds to second reply. Please disregard. But what of buckles?
Do I know you? Oh, no. Go on. Please do say what you have to say. I'll not disagree with you unless it differs from my personal knowledge or experience.
It has often been the case when I'm studying that the thing I think I'm learning is only peripherally related to the difficult concept the teacher is trying to instill in me. Some times it has taken many years of experience to grasp the benefits he offered in the syllabus. Maybe there's some Xen here. If you understood what he was trying to say, you wouldn't need him.
This (in my opinion) shows there is of course no perfect model...
... sadly, there's some people you can't teach no matter how hard you try. You can expose them to the wisdom of the ages, you can show them the wonders built from science, and they will still ask, "But what of Rapture?".
I interview candidates too. If you don't grok linux, you're not getting in.
In 1997 Microsoft invested $150M in Apple.
A quote from that article:
Davis also said that given the size of Microsoft, a $150 million commitment amounts to little more than good public relations. "Remember, they spent $450 million on WebTV. The investment still doesn't give Apple a coherent strategy for turning things around."
Sometimes partnerships work out and some times they don't. For example:
The companies also agreed to collaborate on the Java programming language and other programming languages to ensure they run consistently on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. In addition, Apple agreed to make Microsoft's Internet Explorer the default browser for the Macintosh platform.
We all know how MS Java and IE on Mac turned out, don't we?
Davis said the investment means that Apple will now toe Microsoft's line on Java. "If Java is a threat to Windows, and all operating systems, then it's a threat to Apple and the Mac OS."
We all know that Microsoft Java turned out to be a violation of some law or other and was deprecated. And we're only 11 years hence.
And one more quote on whether the investment and its concomitant concessions was a good deal for Apple: it was only 11% of Apple's available cash at the time:
Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said. He added that the company expects to gain a higher percentage of its revenues from software and services in these core markets in the future.
$150M in Apple that week evolves into $4.2B today. If Microsoft kept this one and did as well with their other investments, by now they would own the world.
There are times like the recent article about how Microsoft photoshopped a black guy out of some marketing material destined for Poland where there are no black people, where the frantic voices of slashdot bashing Microsoft I find irrational and too strident.
And then there are the far more numerous articles where there's some real problem with a current Microsoft product where some people feel determined to defend Microsoft no matter how much they must stretch reason or reach to find offense in the poster.
Your post is more of the latter than the former -- and so I must wonder how it became moderated so well. Twice interesting and once overrated. That's maybe more than I would give it.
Schools unfortunately build their IT infrastructure for the LCD. Its no wonder are children is learning.
Ok, it's bad form to reply twice. Go ahead and mod me down.
you really should do your research before passing judgement.
Hunh? Research? WTF are you talking about? That's like asking Exeter to research what happened on St Crispen's day. I don't have to research it you idiot. I was there.
As for proof of offensiveness... I have no proof. Offensiveness is by its nature a subjective measure. I am offended by the idea that one could "understand" a thing without direct observation and investigation. Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of the word "science". There's a chance that we disagree about what the meaning of the word "is" is.
Good for you! My high school was pretty high-tech too. We had an IBM PC in 1979 (OK, technically it was an IBM 5150. They didn't start calling it a PC until later), and a computer science teacher, Alan Schulz who was one of the "boys from Boca" that invented the damned thing. He got us a computer lab (with Apple ]['s of course) and a variety of other machines (does anybody really remember the Timex Sinclair or TI99/4a?). They made him teach math most of the time because computer sciences weren't some serious business endeavor back then. He owned the local Apple store.
He taught me a lot about basic science. Don't accept anything as a "magic black box". Start with an understanding of the transistor and how they build into gates and logic. Proceed to an understanding of machine language -- especially comparison and branch operations. When you know how such things are done on an electrical level it does amazing things for the persistence of your understanding of the rest of it and your ability to detect bullshit. Having struggled through a course where we had to write useful applications that worked in 8 bit opcodes written in pencil on paper in binary I learned some things I'm unlikely to forget. Doing so as the only member of a four-person team to produce anything useful I learned other facts that still give daily service. A few years ago I went back and some of the apps I wrote are still in daily use, though heavily modified of course.
As a historical note, the student computer society (BUHSCCIOBBDT) had fundraisers and bought some stock - IBM, Microsoft and Apple among others. It did quite well.
Logic diagrams, Venn diagrams, and other primitives are still as useful as they ever were. APL is still a write-only language. BASIC is still good for quick mock-ups of what a program will be when you've written it in a real language. Tape still sucks for bandwidth. ADA is still easy to sell and gruesome to program in. Game programming is still about balance between challenge and reward. GOTO is still flamebait. Programmers still play D&D (or some modern equivalent) in high school. Applications are still data structures + algorithms. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I learned then and in years following is now worthless (SNOBOL anyone?) but I'm doing better than some because my excursions from Assembler, C, and C++ have been recreational at most. I've collected scores of languages the way some people collect Happy Meal toys and discovered the same thing such collectors have: 90% of stuff that's manufactured is junk to stuff a landfill with.
I was also fortunate to be in school with folks like Robert Toth and Vince Sherart, who were great minds well ahead of their time. From your post I'm guessing that you're also surrounded by folks who will persist and do well.
Let me put this another way. In every field there's a ton of fakers who subsist by getting in with buzzword proficiency or an MCSE cert and rise to middle management through meeting management. These people serve the purpose of preventing excess productivity, which believe it or not is a socially useful goal. You don't have to be one of those. You can get ahead by knowing how to do stuff. If you proceed in your education from understanding the first causes to the prime forces, then when you have to deal with one of these jerks you can cut him off at the knees by pointing out the things he doesn't know, and in the process make your work environment more fun to be in. As a bonus it's fun to watch them wilt.
If you're studying Electronics Engineering, I believe they expect you to be able to build a crystal radio receiver before you show up, and HAM Radio is definitely a first year course.
Likewise expecting CS students to build their own tools is the essence of teaching them to understand their science. Anything less and the architecture that underpins their understanding can be cut out from under them at any time. College is not a trade certification.
I hate to say this, but the Citrix client is one of my least favorite apps to get running under Linux. Maybe I'm getting forgetful, but I can never remember which directory to copy the certificate to, or what ownership and permissions to use on it. Why Citrix can't get their install right is beyond me.
That said, once it's installed it works beautifully until it's time to update the Citrix client again.
Do you think the average college helpdesk is prepared to answer random Linux questions?
Do you think the average BestBuy employee is prepared to answer software questions?
If you need help with your linux and you can't be bothered to use the Google, just whine about it on any freaking blog on the internet including this one, and your helpful Linux support team will reply instantly. We're at your beck and call. For gosh sakes, the author of the app that's giving you fits might help you, and if you've found a bug somebody might fix it. It's that different.
I understand that UCSD has a well respected graduate program with a reasonably long history of support for free software.
Linux and BSD are everywhere in the server room. But in the admin section where the MS rep schmoozes with the CIO all the books on the shelf are "Exchange for Dummies" and "JOB: Securing Sharepoint".
If you're taking a programming track and your "Operating Systems" course involves an OS you don't write or rewrite, you're wasting your time.
The very idea that you can even try to understand operating systems without the source code is offensive self-defeating crap.
And if you get exposure to Windows OS source under NDA, then what? Your career as an OS developer is over before you've even graduated. No idea you ever have in that realm will be usable.
The problem with W7 being what Vista should have been is that expectations have changed since Vista was released. "A better Windows than XP" just isn't good enough any more. Vista was a long seven years coming, and it was unsatisfactory. People came to the stunning realization that salvation was not in the offing. Desperation drove them to explore alternatives outside of their comfort zone. IT people everywhere are finally looking outside of their Windows box and realizing - hey! A lot of these unresolved persistent headaches like malware and server glitches and cryptic error messages and license audits are problems we can choose not to have. Now people want stuff that "just works". You know, like a BSD or Linux server... or a Macbook Pro.
Whodathunkit?
Shhh. What's it to us if some clever entrepreneur milks Sony for another 100 million or so for Yet Another Doomed DRM Acronym (YADDA)? Somebody's going to do it - they literally insist on it. It's my turn next and I hope you guys don't spoil my round.
We all breathe. The fact that power consumption is coming down on mainstream PCs is of huge benefit to people generally. It also means more technology uptake in places where power is less available or more expensive, and that's good for the economy. Across a hundred million units bringing power consumption down by 10 Watts is a Gigawatt, or roughly the power delivered by The last US nuclear power plant to come online. Watts matter at home too.
The fossil record doesn't agree with you. The Earth has had several dominant species and has killed them all after a time. If we don't escape the Earth that's our fate. Regardless, this is an IT geek site and anybody posting here should know the value of offsite backups.
Your failure modes omit a number of sufficient extinction level events to wipe out mankind. There are after all the inevitable glaciation, runaway greenhouse, Solar variation, Megavolcanos, cometary impactor, exosolar impactor, global thermonuclear war, galactic local supernova, biogenic apocalypse and the ever popular zombie apocalypse, among others.
Many people share your view that nothing need be done. If it prevails, we deserve to die out. After 4 billion years of trying Gaia deserves a species that can get'er done.
This is a perfect illustration that in the wrong context, especially patent trolls, patents actively hinder progress.
Only if by the wrong context, you intended every possible context. Patents prevent progress.
It would be a shame if Best Buy had to forgo all of those back-end co-marketing dollars. But it wouldn't be fair to keep giving them marketing incentives if they're giving preferred placement to the competition now, would it? The other vendors are more than happy to help with consumer education and it just wouldn't be right to let their commitment to the partnership go unrewarded.
Microsoft stock is off 42% over the past decade. This does not look like the type of thing that's a good retirement investment. Of course, past experience does not always guarantee future results. Your mileage may vary. Consult your own investment advisor. For comparison, Apple is up 1000% over the same period.
No, but it is part of why getting help at the local BestBuy is such an incredible experience.
Click here to install the Linux Software Store with apt:url (if supported).
Just for you: here's an app store for Blender, a 3d modeling program. If you click that on most Debian boxes these days, it'll download Blender from the repository and install it for you appropriately in the menu. I'll leave the rest of the thousands of apps as an exercise for the reader.
Afterwards please remember to email me $0.99.