The best Linux laptop is the one that has all chipsets supported and meets your needs.
I'm typing this on an Alienware M17X-R2 because while six years old it still does what I need it to do and it's well supported. Of course, weighing in around twelve pounds it's essentially a desktop computer and never leaves the desk.
The point is that there are lots of different needs, there is no one right Linux-based laptop. Through what I do for a living I could really use something down in the Chromebook size much of the time as I have to deal with remote datacenters and telecom closets. Such a computer is not well suited to doing massive spreadsheets where screen size and resolution play a huge role and where the ergonomics of the physical keyboard interface matter.
They were called "lamer keys" back in 1997 when we were still playing MS-DOS based games under Windows and pressing the key would essentially crash the computer.
I had pried those keys off and replaced them with blanks that I cut from plastic. Worked marvellously.
How long do you think a student-use device will last in the field?
Also, why would you have to use the same product for succeeding generations? One of the advantages that education has is that you can treat the next upcoming class differently than the previous. Don't like how Apple is treating you for devices you provided to 2016-2017 Third Graders? Get a different device for the 2017-2018 Third Graders.
The biggest problem is how cards for categories were handled. Procedures were simply flawed in that it became possible for cards for already-announced categories to make their way into later presentations.
If I understand correctly, there are two sets of identical cards, so that whichever side the stage is entered-from, the relevant card can be handed to the presenter as they pass. This procedure is flawed. It does not automatically deprecate out a card when that card is used.
There are several ways to correct this procedure. Easiest method is to simply provide the cards to the presenters at a single controlled point, and to collect the spent cards from the presenters at another controlled point. To do this then all presenters either need to enter the stage from the same side, or else the cards need to be given to the presenters at a common place that all presenters must pass through prior to getting backstage to pick which side they enter from. If the Academy wants to prevent anyone from opening the cards between this common handout point and the stage, then they need to provide security or escort from that point to the wings of the stage. If the presenters are able to leave by either side, the escorts take the card and deposit it into a locked box similarly to how ballots are collected, where the card is slid into the box and can't be retrieved without cutting the zip-tie. This prevents casual accidental return of the used card back to the source. It would be simple enough to use this egress method at both sides of the stage, such that it doesn't really matter how they leave, the cards are collected and securely taken out of circulation.
Typography wouldn't really matter if this was done properly.
As a child that grew up in that era, computers in schools were single-taskers. You got your boot floppy with Number Munchers or the like, put it in the computer, turned the computer on, and played the educational game. When you were done, you turned the computer off, took the floppy out, and returned it to where you got it. You couldn't really do anything else with that computer beyond what you were assigned to do.
This model even managed to perpetuate into the GUI era, the earliest Macintoshes like the Mac Plus models my school had lacked internal storage, You still had to boot up with a floppy and then could only do what you were provided with. Granted, there was that puzzle game, but it was difficult to get off-task with the use of the computer.
That started to change when internal storage became the norm, as suddenly programs were loaded that gave the student options. Then networks were introduced, and if there were network shares mapped for the student then one could access whatever was on those. Then the Internet came and now there were thousands of things that one could do, only one of which was the assigned task.
We need computers for students to be limited-purpose machines again, at least in many applications. Children usually have even more trouble than adults making good decisions, and in the case of educational computing, if the entire system can be structured to simply not make that an option then it probably should be structured that way.
Probably get together with the rest of the school districts in the state association and bitch until they start offering special educational price breaks.
The Apple tablets also have problems with SSO and AD environments that use Radius for wireless authentication. Special credentials have to be created on the devices with matching accounts on the authentication server in order to bypass the lack of standard end-user sign-on. This becomes a problem when attempts to streamline result in reusing these generic credentials that the end-user normally never sees and associated problems with credential passing initiated at the device-end causing the account to be locked out, all devices using the credential are then locked out.
Unfortunately it's a headache to create thousands of extra credentials and then keep the association 1:1 with devices, so either you have to deal with the problems of the shared device credentials or else you have to be prepared to manage and keep straight thousands of accounts. Basically a lose/lose situation. The Chrome devices and the Windows devices do not have this problem.
Because blame-storming works when your entire company's service is entirely offline and now your customers leave you.
We felt the effect of the Amazon issue through a service that we've contracted-for. That service provider gets no special consideration in our judgement of them just because the entity they subbed-out to went down.
Our locally-hosted AS/400 has not had an unscheduled outage in something like fifteen years, and that includes at least one full hardware migration. Mind you, there's only one local admin left that knows how to read the chicken bones and tea leaves to run the thing, but it's not exactly impossible to have excellent availability when the right platforms are chosen and are maintained.
It's also perfectly possible for a large enough organization to run separate datacenters at facilities in different geographical areas with redundancy within the facilities and across the two facilities. Hell, it's even possible to tunnel L2 so that the equipment at the different facilities doesn't even know that it's not all at one big happy site, should that sort of thing be necessary.
This is all academic though, the real issue with "cloud computing" is how the failure happens and the conditions. This Amazon outage was annoying, and obviously affected a lot of end users for a day or so, but was recoverable because Amazon was still around to fix it. I'm much more concerned when the cloud provider goes out of business and customers suddenly find the rug permanently ripped out from under them. It is entirely plausible that a cloud provider would attempt to right itself if it was having financial problems, including doing whatever it can to conceal or downplay those problems, such that the end customers might not have much notice that their platforms are going away. I would also be shocked if most users of cloud computing do an adequate job of backing up off of the cloud to their own datacenters; after all, wasn't going to cloud hosting done specifically to avoid having to maintain vast datacenters?
I do not anticipate good things from this era of cloud computing. I expect outages, I expect companies going under because the cloud provider goes under. I honestly expect it to get so bad that ultimtely customers start demanding that the cloud providers create frameworks that allow for interoperability and simple migration from one provider to another, such that a company doesn't have to put all of their eggs into one basket.
There are multiple kinds of visas. I think there are reasonable procedures that could be carried out at arrival for some of those kinds of visas. I don't happen to feel that this particular set of questions was reasonable, but it is not unfair to ask someone here for an occupation-related visa to confirm that they're above-board.
He sat there an hour while someone consulted someone else who consulted someone else who knew someone in Government that knew someone in private industry to ask what kinds of questions would be asked of a software engineer.
In the ensuing game of telephone the declared needs changed. Questions that probably should have been as simple as "What extra include is necessary in C++ over C" and "What is an IDE?" which very few non-programmers could answer anyway were replaced with ones that are harder to answer.
It's actually not an entirely bad idea to confirm that someone coming in for a specific reason for a specific class of visa is here for legitimate purposes, but if the Government is issuing th visas in the first place then it should not be difficult to know what kinds of questions need to be asked, so that there isn't an hour delay, and so that the questions are considered and reasonable.
The laborers needed to dig trenches, installc conduit, and install/terminate fiber can be found locally. The low-level IT support to get equipment physically patched, base-configured, and the cabling dressed cleanly can be found locally. The staff to configure the higher level functions of the L3 network don't have to be local if the first two did their jobs right, and there are also far fewer of this class of job needed to begin with so they too can probably be found locally.
The same arguments against H1B visa immigration abuse in the United States apply everywhere else too; if you have enough local talent then bringing in outside workers results in depressing wages, and if there's no need for outside workers then there's no reason to bring them in.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if I don't want the moon delivered to me?
I mean, "I'll give you the moon," is just a figure of speech...
The best Linux laptop is the one that has all chipsets supported and meets your needs.
I'm typing this on an Alienware M17X-R2 because while six years old it still does what I need it to do and it's well supported. Of course, weighing in around twelve pounds it's essentially a desktop computer and never leaves the desk.
The point is that there are lots of different needs, there is no one right Linux-based laptop. Through what I do for a living I could really use something down in the Chromebook size much of the time as I have to deal with remote datacenters and telecom closets. Such a computer is not well suited to doing massive spreadsheets where screen size and resolution play a huge role and where the ergonomics of the physical keyboard interface matter.
They were called "lamer keys" back in 1997 when we were still playing MS-DOS based games under Windows and pressing the key would essentially crash the computer.
I had pried those keys off and replaced them with blanks that I cut from plastic. Worked marvellously.
It may not seem hard, but it was proven to be hard in practice.
How long do you think a student-use device will last in the field?
Also, why would you have to use the same product for succeeding generations? One of the advantages that education has is that you can treat the next upcoming class differently than the previous. Don't like how Apple is treating you for devices you provided to 2016-2017 Third Graders? Get a different device for the 2017-2018 Third Graders.
Don't say his name two more times!
The biggest problem is how cards for categories were handled. Procedures were simply flawed in that it became possible for cards for already-announced categories to make their way into later presentations.
If I understand correctly, there are two sets of identical cards, so that whichever side the stage is entered-from, the relevant card can be handed to the presenter as they pass. This procedure is flawed. It does not automatically deprecate out a card when that card is used.
There are several ways to correct this procedure. Easiest method is to simply provide the cards to the presenters at a single controlled point, and to collect the spent cards from the presenters at another controlled point. To do this then all presenters either need to enter the stage from the same side, or else the cards need to be given to the presenters at a common place that all presenters must pass through prior to getting backstage to pick which side they enter from. If the Academy wants to prevent anyone from opening the cards between this common handout point and the stage, then they need to provide security or escort from that point to the wings of the stage. If the presenters are able to leave by either side, the escorts take the card and deposit it into a locked box similarly to how ballots are collected, where the card is slid into the box and can't be retrieved without cutting the zip-tie. This prevents casual accidental return of the used card back to the source. It would be simple enough to use this egress method at both sides of the stage, such that it doesn't really matter how they leave, the cards are collected and securely taken out of circulation.
Typography wouldn't really matter if this was done properly.
The entire model from the eighties is gone.
As a child that grew up in that era, computers in schools were single-taskers. You got your boot floppy with Number Munchers or the like, put it in the computer, turned the computer on, and played the educational game. When you were done, you turned the computer off, took the floppy out, and returned it to where you got it. You couldn't really do anything else with that computer beyond what you were assigned to do.
This model even managed to perpetuate into the GUI era, the earliest Macintoshes like the Mac Plus models my school had lacked internal storage, You still had to boot up with a floppy and then could only do what you were provided with. Granted, there was that puzzle game, but it was difficult to get off-task with the use of the computer.
That started to change when internal storage became the norm, as suddenly programs were loaded that gave the student options. Then networks were introduced, and if there were network shares mapped for the student then one could access whatever was on those. Then the Internet came and now there were thousands of things that one could do, only one of which was the assigned task.
We need computers for students to be limited-purpose machines again, at least in many applications. Children usually have even more trouble than adults making good decisions, and in the case of educational computing, if the entire system can be structured to simply not make that an option then it probably should be structured that way.
Probably get together with the rest of the school districts in the state association and bitch until they start offering special educational price breaks.
The Apple tablets also have problems with SSO and AD environments that use Radius for wireless authentication. Special credentials have to be created on the devices with matching accounts on the authentication server in order to bypass the lack of standard end-user sign-on. This becomes a problem when attempts to streamline result in reusing these generic credentials that the end-user normally never sees and associated problems with credential passing initiated at the device-end causing the account to be locked out, all devices using the credential are then locked out.
Unfortunately it's a headache to create thousands of extra credentials and then keep the association 1:1 with devices, so either you have to deal with the problems of the shared device credentials or else you have to be prepared to manage and keep straight thousands of accounts. Basically a lose/lose situation. The Chrome devices and the Windows devices do not have this problem.
Because blame-storming works when your entire company's service is entirely offline and now your customers leave you.
We felt the effect of the Amazon issue through a service that we've contracted-for. That service provider gets no special consideration in our judgement of them just because the entity they subbed-out to went down.
Our locally-hosted AS/400 has not had an unscheduled outage in something like fifteen years, and that includes at least one full hardware migration. Mind you, there's only one local admin left that knows how to read the chicken bones and tea leaves to run the thing, but it's not exactly impossible to have excellent availability when the right platforms are chosen and are maintained.
It's also perfectly possible for a large enough organization to run separate datacenters at facilities in different geographical areas with redundancy within the facilities and across the two facilities. Hell, it's even possible to tunnel L2 so that the equipment at the different facilities doesn't even know that it's not all at one big happy site, should that sort of thing be necessary.
This is all academic though, the real issue with "cloud computing" is how the failure happens and the conditions. This Amazon outage was annoying, and obviously affected a lot of end users for a day or so, but was recoverable because Amazon was still around to fix it. I'm much more concerned when the cloud provider goes out of business and customers suddenly find the rug permanently ripped out from under them. It is entirely plausible that a cloud provider would attempt to right itself if it was having financial problems, including doing whatever it can to conceal or downplay those problems, such that the end customers might not have much notice that their platforms are going away. I would also be shocked if most users of cloud computing do an adequate job of backing up off of the cloud to their own datacenters; after all, wasn't going to cloud hosting done specifically to avoid having to maintain vast datacenters?
I do not anticipate good things from this era of cloud computing. I expect outages, I expect companies going under because the cloud provider goes under. I honestly expect it to get so bad that ultimtely customers start demanding that the cloud providers create frameworks that allow for interoperability and simple migration from one provider to another, such that a company doesn't have to put all of their eggs into one basket.
And he really reacted when she blew him too...
What I'm wondering is what killed or otherwise assimilated crewman that skin was taken from.
Yes, but iostream.h doesn't work in straight C.
We do. That's why so many are in India.
No, but they've been known to tend bar from time to time.
Only if they're fully functional, programmed in multiple techniques...
That's what they all say, at first...
iostream.h? vs stdio.h?
It's been about fifteen years but that's what I remember.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
See! IT WOULD have WORKED!
There are multiple kinds of visas. I think there are reasonable procedures that could be carried out at arrival for some of those kinds of visas. I don't happen to feel that this particular set of questions was reasonable, but it is not unfair to ask someone here for an occupation-related visa to confirm that they're above-board.
Substitute TSA screener.
He sat there an hour while someone consulted someone else who consulted someone else who knew someone in Government that knew someone in private industry to ask what kinds of questions would be asked of a software engineer.
In the ensuing game of telephone the declared needs changed. Questions that probably should have been as simple as "What extra include is necessary in C++ over C" and "What is an IDE?" which very few non-programmers could answer anyway were replaced with ones that are harder to answer.
It's actually not an entirely bad idea to confirm that someone coming in for a specific reason for a specific class of visa is here for legitimate purposes, but if the Government is issuing th visas in the first place then it should not be difficult to know what kinds of questions need to be asked, so that there isn't an hour delay, and so that the questions are considered and reasonable.
The laborers needed to dig trenches, installc conduit, and install/terminate fiber can be found locally. The low-level IT support to get equipment physically patched, base-configured, and the cabling dressed cleanly can be found locally. The staff to configure the higher level functions of the L3 network don't have to be local if the first two did their jobs right, and there are also far fewer of this class of job needed to begin with so they too can probably be found locally.
The same arguments against H1B visa immigration abuse in the United States apply everywhere else too; if you have enough local talent then bringing in outside workers results in depressing wages, and if there's no need for outside workers then there's no reason to bring them in.