After the midwest turns to desert again (for most of its geologic history it has been) it would be nice to have huge tracts of arable land nearby. When Canada thaws it will be that.
I recommend we send Ballmer as a special envoy to Canada. If he handles it like Yahoo the negotiations will be short.
This reserve may be difficult to tap fully because of the nature of the rocks. I wonder if nuclear weapons would help. I guess it depends on how and where they were deployed.
How many tons of CO2 would be created with the burning of 500 billion barrels of oil? BTW, 500 billion barrels of oil would be about 1/6th of the world's oil reserves.
Is there really that much oxygen in the atmoshpere to burn all that? Let's see. The earth's atmosphere weighs 5 quadrillion metric tons... OK, no worries there.
but, but, the global warmings! The sea level could rise 50 feet in the next century. [checks current elevation of homestead] OK, that's fine.
But it would be hot! [checks average temps for homestead] ok, yeah, I can get behind that.
What about the polar bears? [checks polar bear shares in 401K] We're looking good!
But my fingers are skinny. The keyboard is not perfect but I can adapt to almost anything. This is going to be a personal call. See if you can try it first.
packaged to minimize price, rather than maximize performance as has been the trend in personal computer sales for the past twenty years or more.
The reversal of the trend is one thing that makes it new. Also, it's not just price. It's also weight and watts. Those two considerations in combination with the low price transform what people are willing the do with the thing, where they're willing to take it and hence how much they're able to take it for granted. It's not "The Precious Notebook" any more. It's just another ubiquitous appliance -- a lifestyle accessory like an iPod or satellite radio.
Besides, if the folks that get these things didn't have PC's before its "new to them". Don't try so hard to pick a nit.
Is that it can install the OS, standard apps, open office, and a whole bunch of this free stuff in 1/10th of the minimum required for Vista, and it still looks this good.
Wait. No. It doesn't surprise me at all. Never mind.
I just walked out of a major retailer. Yep. Three C2D laptops under $450, two more under $500. All of them with big screens, DVD, 2GB RAM, decent HDDs. Several different brands. HP is going to have to try harder. The sub $500 notebook has already fully arrived.
Producing this video must have cost a fortune in CGI then. This one too. Those Linux eee geeks must have an unlimited budget to mock up fakes like this one.
It's amazing how they can make that stuff look like it's happening on a puny little eee when, as you observe, that's clearly not possible.
Is it too conservative to point out that you don't introduce new technology to a culture by selling it to the poorest of them, or even the "average"?
Is it too liberal to suggest that in some cases governments might invest in technology for students to improve their nation's future position in the world?
Is it anti-american to point out that $500 today isn't any more than $250 was three years ago to the rest of the world because their currency is up and ours is down? Those GDP numbers need some serious adjustment for recent changes in global currencies.
Whatever. There are cheaper options but the more diversity in the market the better from my point of view. Just keep the watts down. I don't want the third world burning 350W of carbon per schoolkid just to join us online. The gamers with their >1HP monster gaming rigs are bad enough.
Did 68000 and x86 assembler myself, but still fun either way.
I wrote an interpreter for 6502 assembler once on a lark. That was fun. I wonder what happened to it.
I personally like Lisp/Scheme quite a bit.
After looking at the picture of 6000 pages of OOXML specification the 50 pages used to define Scheme seems positively terse. Certainly high art there.
While I did find snobol interesting you couldn't say I'm pining for it. The spitbol package for GNAT did make it easier to use from Ada. I knew one of the guys that worked on the IronMan implementation of Ada. I stole his girlfriend for a while. Oh Lottie! I haven't forgotten you.
Of course for terse nobody has yet beaten APL. Now that's when programmers were real men worthy of respect.
'Tis the dream of each programmer
Before his life is done,
To write three lines of APL
And make the damn thing run.
Ok, that's enough memory lane time for me. All languages aren't really the same. Except that they are. Kids these days, they should stay off my lawn.
After you learn your second programming language, you should try a mixed language project. This teaches you how things fit together and which language structure best fits which parts of a project.
After three or four you start to see the consistency. At that point you should probably write your own programming languages to better serve your needs.
After about three or four of your own languages you begin to understand the beauty of lex and yacc and hopefully the epiphany will hit you:
Programming languages are ultimately all the same. Use what works. But avoid COBOL if at all possible.
A computer is a good general purpose tool. He wants to use this tool to do generic things -- office work, accounting, games. He didn't ask "how do I do these things?" He asked "How do I run these specific programs that require Windows in Linux?" The thing is, he did know the answer. He's a pro and he's had this argument on Slashdot a thousand times. He just wants me to trot out the same tired answers again for the sake of the readers who haven't heard. And you know these answers too. You're just badgering me because you think you'll prove my answer is wrong. You won't, because the question wasn't "how do I run these programs without Windows?" He could have asked that but he didn't.
Since we're here, let's look at why they don't run in Linux. Is it because Linux is not a good general purpose OS? No. Is it because Linux is not flexible, fast, resourceful enough? No. Why then? Because the people who write the programs specifically wrote them to not run in Linux. Why did they do that? To trap him into using another OS and its complete cradle to grave end to end integrated system with all its negatives.
Now the whole point of this thread is that XP is dying, Vista is a horror soon to end and we have no clue whether the next version of Windows is better or worse. Escaping the trap seems a reasonable thing to do to at least many of the people in this thread.
If you run Linux and create a base VM with Windows XP, activate it and keep it going, nothing bad is going to happen to it. It won't expire. It won't deactivate. It will continue to run your important programs that you've already bought from now until the end of time. As you get new equipment you can move the VM to it without going through the reinstall process. You can conveniently make waypoint images of your VM and roll them back if it gets corrupted. It's safe because you don't have to browse the web in it and you can limit its access to the network. If it turns out the next version of Windows is the best thing since sliced bread, you can upgrade to that.
With this answer you're not Windows free, but you are off the upgrade train from hell. Specifically to the question you are "running these programs in Linux." When your needs grow you can implement new programs in your Linux environment, where the pressure to keep moving you along is not present. As solutions to these problems are available in Linux you can migrate your workflows there. Eventually in your Windows VM there will be nothing left to migrate and you can delete it. The Citrix answer is similar except that the VM is in the server room and your desktop machine can be something less powerful or more mobile, or you can take the savings of not running Windows on it and apply them to doing more and better work.
And so the answer to the question, "how to run these programs that require Windows in Linux?" (this is the actual question he asked) is, with a VM and XP as a compatibility layer. You don't have quit Windows cold turkey. You can switch it out gradually in stages, painlessly, with the option to go back if you feel you must. But if you want to do this you have to act now because soon XP won't be available as a retail package you can install in a VM.
The alternative is to keep shuffling along the Windows upgrade train on Microsoft's schedule accepting whatever comes whether you like it or not. Escaping the trap will never be easier than it is now. But if that's not your thing and you want a ride on the Windows 7 Express, fine. Happy trails.
The answer lies within the question. The reason you're not getting an answer from anyone here is because it's answered by the question.
It's obvious to everybody else here. Examine the question again and you might see it now. If not there's nothing anybody here can do to help you see it.
We've been having this same flamewar twice a week for years, and all the posters in this thread know it. All the same people are throwing up all the same strawmen on both sides of the issue.
Do you really think that DAldredge doesn't know about Citrix and Xen and VMware? He's been posting on Slashdot since 1999. He's interested in the macroeconomics of the software business which means he's probably in the trade. I know it and he knows it and you know it too. He's making fun of twitter and pushing his agenda. I'm making fun of him and pushing mine.
It's all a show for the lurkers and the newbies, for karma and ego and the joy of struggle. We know we aren't going to win over each other. The best we can do is get the issues in front of everybody else.
It's a discussion blog. That's what it's for. If we gave it up we'd have to go outside or something [shudder]. You wouldn't want this many pasty faced geeks wandering the streets would you? It'd look like a scene from Sean of the Dead.
Citrix is a helper for Remote Desktop. You use it from a client box to, for example, run Windows applications on the server _as if_ they were in your computer. It's cross platform. With it you can use Office from your Linux desktop until your migration is complete. It has a lot of other neat useful features too.
for flight sim I recommend Xplane. It's cross platform and you can try it for free.
You can create UT2k4 mods just fine in Linux. Did you want to be more specific? Do you know of one that won't run in a vm?
We can forgive you for not knowing that any PC that can play games is a general purpose PC. You are a victim of marketing. The thing you don't know is that "anything a program can do, another program can do." It's part of the basic premise of computing.
There will be a gap where Windows owns gaming. The gap is closing. We're changing paradigm from texture mapping to ray tracing, and the ray tracing architecture must be open, seeing as how it was invented 50 years ago. Texture mapping was a stopgap to get us through the period where processors weren't fast enough to do ray tracing. That time is over.
Slashdot Mirror
That's easy - when you wouldn't use them and everybody knows it.
did I win a prize?
So there's a good explanation for all that stuff under the north pole? This is a serious question. I'm not arguing - I want to know.
The region has sufficient water to deal with this issue. There are challenges here but his is not one of them.
There is also enough geothermal energy here that we don't even need the petroleum if we could convert and store it properly.
After the midwest turns to desert again (for most of its geologic history it has been) it would be nice to have huge tracts of arable land nearby. When Canada thaws it will be that.
I recommend we send Ballmer as a special envoy to Canada. If he handles it like Yahoo the negotiations will be short.
I wonder what this does for theories of for oil. Some people theorize that petroleum is left over from the formation of the earth, rather than created by the fossilization of carbon life forms.
This reserve may be difficult to tap fully because of the nature of the rocks. I wonder if nuclear weapons would help. I guess it depends on how and where they were deployed.
How many tons of CO2 would be created with the burning of 500 billion barrels of oil? BTW, 500 billion barrels of oil would be about 1/6th of the world's oil reserves.
Is there really that much oxygen in the atmoshpere to burn all that? Let's see. The earth's atmosphere weighs 5 quadrillion metric tons... OK, no worries there.
but, but, the global warmings! The sea level could rise 50 feet in the next century. [checks current elevation of homestead] OK, that's fine.
But it would be hot! [checks average temps for homestead] ok, yeah, I can get behind that.
What about the polar bears? [checks polar bear shares in 401K] We're looking good!
But the crops! The crops won't grow! [Checks map of world showing land in permafrost] Looks like a net gain to me.
Ok, yeah! We have more oil! Can we exploit it faster than we have more people?
But my fingers are skinny. The keyboard is not perfect but I can adapt to almost anything. This is going to be a personal call. See if you can try it first.
Can you get the Zonbu at zombo?
The reversal of the trend is one thing that makes it new. Also, it's not just price. It's also weight and watts. Those two considerations in combination with the low price transform what people are willing the do with the thing, where they're willing to take it and hence how much they're able to take it for granted. It's not "The Precious Notebook" any more. It's just another ubiquitous appliance -- a lifestyle accessory like an iPod or satellite radio.
Besides, if the folks that get these things didn't have PC's before its "new to them". Don't try so hard to pick a nit.
Is that it can install the OS, standard apps, open office, and a whole bunch of this free stuff in 1/10th of the minimum required for Vista, and it still looks this good.
Wait. No. It doesn't surprise me at all. Never mind.
I just walked out of a major retailer. Yep. Three C2D laptops under $450, two more under $500. All of them with big screens, DVD, 2GB RAM, decent HDDs. Several different brands. HP is going to have to try harder. The sub $500 notebook has already fully arrived.
Linux doesn't draw that much of a premium yet.
Producing this video must have cost a fortune in CGI then. This one too. Those Linux eee geeks must have an unlimited budget to mock up fakes like this one.
It's amazing how they can make that stuff look like it's happening on a puny little eee when, as you observe, that's clearly not possible.
Is it too conservative to point out that you don't introduce new technology to a culture by selling it to the poorest of them, or even the "average"?
Is it too liberal to suggest that in some cases governments might invest in technology for students to improve their nation's future position in the world?
Is it anti-american to point out that $500 today isn't any more than $250 was three years ago to the rest of the world because their currency is up and ours is down? Those GDP numbers need some serious adjustment for recent changes in global currencies.
Whatever. There are cheaper options but the more diversity in the market the better from my point of view. Just keep the watts down. I don't want the third world burning 350W of carbon per schoolkid just to join us online. The gamers with their >1HP monster gaming rigs are bad enough.
I just discovered a secret. Most schoolkids don't even live in the US. Shocker!
I wrote an interpreter for 6502 assembler once on a lark. That was fun. I wonder what happened to it.
After looking at the picture of 6000 pages of OOXML specification the 50 pages used to define Scheme seems positively terse. Certainly high art there.
While I did find snobol interesting you couldn't say I'm pining for it. The spitbol package for GNAT did make it easier to use from Ada. I knew one of the guys that worked on the IronMan implementation of Ada. I stole his girlfriend for a while. Oh Lottie! I haven't forgotten you.
Of course for terse nobody has yet beaten APL. Now that's when programmers were real men worthy of respect.
Ok, that's enough memory lane time for me. All languages aren't really the same. Except that they are. Kids these days, they should stay off my lawn.
point. click. root.
After you learn your second programming language, you should try a mixed language project. This teaches you how things fit together and which language structure best fits which parts of a project.
After three or four you start to see the consistency. At that point you should probably write your own programming languages to better serve your needs.
After about three or four of your own languages you begin to understand the beauty of lex and yacc and hopefully the epiphany will hit you:
Programming languages are ultimately all the same. Use what works. But avoid COBOL if at all possible.
A computer is a good general purpose tool. He wants to use this tool to do generic things -- office work, accounting, games. He didn't ask "how do I do these things?" He asked "How do I run these specific programs that require Windows in Linux?" The thing is, he did know the answer. He's a pro and he's had this argument on Slashdot a thousand times. He just wants me to trot out the same tired answers again for the sake of the readers who haven't heard. And you know these answers too. You're just badgering me because you think you'll prove my answer is wrong. You won't, because the question wasn't "how do I run these programs without Windows?" He could have asked that but he didn't.
Since we're here, let's look at why they don't run in Linux. Is it because Linux is not a good general purpose OS? No. Is it because Linux is not flexible, fast, resourceful enough? No. Why then? Because the people who write the programs specifically wrote them to not run in Linux. Why did they do that? To trap him into using another OS and its complete cradle to grave end to end integrated system with all its negatives.
Now the whole point of this thread is that XP is dying, Vista is a horror soon to end and we have no clue whether the next version of Windows is better or worse. Escaping the trap seems a reasonable thing to do to at least many of the people in this thread.
If you run Linux and create a base VM with Windows XP, activate it and keep it going, nothing bad is going to happen to it. It won't expire. It won't deactivate. It will continue to run your important programs that you've already bought from now until the end of time. As you get new equipment you can move the VM to it without going through the reinstall process. You can conveniently make waypoint images of your VM and roll them back if it gets corrupted. It's safe because you don't have to browse the web in it and you can limit its access to the network. If it turns out the next version of Windows is the best thing since sliced bread, you can upgrade to that.
With this answer you're not Windows free, but you are off the upgrade train from hell. Specifically to the question you are "running these programs in Linux." When your needs grow you can implement new programs in your Linux environment, where the pressure to keep moving you along is not present. As solutions to these problems are available in Linux you can migrate your workflows there. Eventually in your Windows VM there will be nothing left to migrate and you can delete it. The Citrix answer is similar except that the VM is in the server room and your desktop machine can be something less powerful or more mobile, or you can take the savings of not running Windows on it and apply them to doing more and better work.
And so the answer to the question, "how to run these programs that require Windows in Linux?" (this is the actual question he asked) is, with a VM and XP as a compatibility layer. You don't have quit Windows cold turkey. You can switch it out gradually in stages, painlessly, with the option to go back if you feel you must. But if you want to do this you have to act now because soon XP won't be available as a retail package you can install in a VM.
The alternative is to keep shuffling along the Windows upgrade train on Microsoft's schedule accepting whatever comes whether you like it or not. Escaping the trap will never be easier than it is now. But if that's not your thing and you want a ride on the Windows 7 Express, fine. Happy trails.
But you might try GnuCash
The answer lies within the question. The reason you're not getting an answer from anyone here is because it's answered by the question.
It's obvious to everybody else here. Examine the question again and you might see it now. If not there's nothing anybody here can do to help you see it.
This should be fun.
We've been having this same flamewar twice a week for years, and all the posters in this thread know it. All the same people are throwing up all the same strawmen on both sides of the issue.
Do you really think that DAldredge doesn't know about Citrix and Xen and VMware? He's been posting on Slashdot since 1999. He's interested in the macroeconomics of the software business which means he's probably in the trade. I know it and he knows it and you know it too. He's making fun of twitter and pushing his agenda. I'm making fun of him and pushing mine.
It's all a show for the lurkers and the newbies, for karma and ego and the joy of struggle. We know we aren't going to win over each other. The best we can do is get the issues in front of everybody else.
It's a discussion blog. That's what it's for. If we gave it up we'd have to go outside or something [shudder]. You wouldn't want this many pasty faced geeks wandering the streets would you? It'd look like a scene from Sean of the Dead.
Cygwin is a Windows port of some GNU utilities.
Citrix is a helper for Remote Desktop. You use it from a client box to, for example, run Windows applications on the server _as if_ they were in your computer. It's cross platform. With it you can use Office from your Linux desktop until your migration is complete. It has a lot of other neat useful features too.
You should try ArcGIS or my personal least favorite ICVerify. They're sick. Somebody should talk to them.
Let me show you it.
Don't be bitter.
for flight sim I recommend Xplane. It's cross platform and you can try it for free.
You can create UT2k4 mods just fine in Linux. Did you want to be more specific? Do you know of one that won't run in a vm?
We can forgive you for not knowing that any PC that can play games is a general purpose PC. You are a victim of marketing. The thing you don't know is that "anything a program can do, another program can do." It's part of the basic premise of computing.
There will be a gap where Windows owns gaming. The gap is closing. We're changing paradigm from texture mapping to ray tracing, and the ray tracing architecture must be open, seeing as how it was invented 50 years ago. Texture mapping was a stopgap to get us through the period where processors weren't fast enough to do ray tracing. That time is over.