Until recently I had an old PowerBook G4 and a Macbook Pro. When the Powerbook died I had to make a choice of forking out significant money to replace it with another apple product or get something cheaper. The Macbook Pro allows me to do iOS development which I need for work, the second machine is really more for wife and kids so it's not that important what it runs but I still like the idea of having a Unix/Linux system.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ubuntu listed several laptops on their site that would work with their distro so I ended up getting a Dell Inspiron 15 which I re-partitioned. After that I installed Ubuntu 11.04 without a problem and everything works after installation.
Wife and kids use the Windows 7 partition and I use the Ubuntu partition when I use it which is actually quite often. The machine is obviously not as nice as a Macbook Pro but it costs only a third of what the smallest Macbook Pro costs and as far as I've been able to tell it works just as well for most purposes.
If you're after a good Unix/Linux experience for a reasonable price I think this is a good option.
Coupled with Microsoft's long standing campaign to influence social media discussions in technical forums, like this one. Instead of investing that money in making better products, we've come to the point where success has to include not only dominating the market, but influencing social media and the regulatory environment. It's almost like their operating system business is an afterthought for Microsoft these days. They're not about building better products as much as hanging on to their market share and putting down competition.
It seems to me that's not a very good business model. North American car companies have tried that game too and we all know how much good that has done them. Instead of building cars with better fuel economy and overall quality they have lobbied for lower fuel efficiency standards and political means to keep competitors out of the market. In the end car companies that make better cars come out on top.
It would be interesting to find out why they run the company that way. Is it because they have lost touch with what consumers want? Or is it because they really believe that this is how you beat the competition?
For now my money is on any company that is not as heavily invested in desktop OS' as Microsoft. I would not be surprised if in ten years your OS and computing device will be as relevant to your user experience as what brand of TV you use today is relevent to how you watch TV. It will have only minor influence on how you experience your networked world.
I'm not sure what to think of the comparison of flying and driving statistics. Those statistics assume every driver has the same chance of getting into an accident as any other driver. This is obviously not the case (ask insurance companies) because some drivers are simply a lot better than other drivers even if they don't control all of the environment factors.
I assume the same can be said about system administration. It depends on the organization. Some organizations are very good at it and might do as well or better than Google. Others, well, you get the picture.
This may be the case where you work and it may apply to the tools you use but I'm not sure this is a universal problem.
In general the reason that open source tools replace commercial ones is not only a matter of price but also a matter of quality. The open source tools are getting very good and even if a commercial one is a bit better the difference may not be enough to warrant the purchase.
I also think that you should have a conversation with your employer/manager, I believe it's better spending the money than frustrating developers with poor tools and your employer should understand that in the long run he saves money by making his developers/employees happy and productive. You have to find an effective way of communicating that though, read your "how to manage managers manual" before you start yelling at him:)
On a last note, in the company I work for we seem to have an opposite problem at times, we sometimes are required to use commercial tools even when better FOSS alternatives are avialable, go figure...
I thought doors that swing both ways were mostly designed as props for physical comedy routines.
On a more serious note, you assume North Americans can never compete with Indians when FOSS is part of the mix. That is a bit of a sad statement and I hope that will not be the case. Obviously it changes the landscape but I sure hope that we will find that companies with North American developers will find ways to compete in that environment.
If you believe in a free market economy you will have to apply that across the board and not in isolation. The more wealth gets distributed across the globe the smaller the differences that create these opportunities in low cost countries will be.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I have found over time that there are many people who do not really understand why you would dislike or even hate (bit strong maybe) Microsoft. Most of those people do not actually program computers themselves so they don't get annoyed when some MS product gets in their way, they just assume that it behaves the way it's supposed to behave because it's all they've ever used.
For me it took an introduction to Unix many moons ago to understand computers could be a lot more useful than DOS or Windows operated pieces of hardware and it took the disabling of my OS/2 boot manager by the first Windows 95 install to understand that MS was willing to screw their customers on purpose to get their market share. People were actually made to believe OS/2 and Windows 95 could not live on the same machine which was obviously nonsense.
Add to that the subsequent BS about piracy, "bad" Open Source, DRM, supporting SCO and now the deal with Novell that seems to be another underhanded attempt to screw the Open Source community and you have quite a few reasons to dislike MS.
In Canada where we get the service through Rogers cable (they partner with Yahoo on their internet offering) we get 2GB of space on our mail accounts. Having said that I find I'm currently only using 430 Mb on my Gmail account and a fraction of that on my Yahoo mail account. Maybe I should get a life, on the other hand, it might show I have one... you decide.
Although I prefer Gmail as my main mail account I think the Yahoo mail interface is not bad at all. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread they seem to be going for a desktop look and they're doing a decent job.
There was a case like that in Canada which concerned Roundup resistent Canola from Monsanto http://www.percyschmeiser.com/court%20costs.htm and the farmer lost. The judge decided the farmer should have figured out that he had GE crop whether he bought it or not.
In this case of course the farmer simply used the crop. As you mention it would be interesting to find out if he could have someone pay for the removal of the GE crop if he did not plant it. Trespassing or illegal dumping seems a bit of a stretch but it would seem to me that either the neighbor from where it blew over or Monsanto should be made to pay for removing it.
There are more links out there if you 'google' for it.
I'm surprised nobody has brought up Progress yet. It's a database with 4GL and its own query language. I always found it a lot easier to work in than SQL although as anything else, it's not perfect.
Because of the productivity of the language it has a steady following and there are quite a few people who sell applications (financial, manufacturing) written in Progress.
Slashdot Mirror
Until recently I had an old PowerBook G4 and a Macbook Pro. When the Powerbook died I had to make a choice of forking out significant money to replace it with another apple product or get something cheaper. The Macbook Pro allows me to do iOS development which I need for work, the second machine is really more for wife and kids so it's not that important what it runs but I still like the idea of having a Unix/Linux system.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ubuntu listed several laptops on their site that would work with their distro so I ended up getting a Dell Inspiron 15 which I re-partitioned. After that I installed Ubuntu 11.04 without a problem and everything works after installation.
Wife and kids use the Windows 7 partition and I use the Ubuntu partition when I use it which is actually quite often. The machine is obviously not as nice as a Macbook Pro but it costs only a third of what the smallest Macbook Pro costs and as far as I've been able to tell it works just as well for most purposes.
If you're after a good Unix/Linux experience for a reasonable price I think this is a good option.
It seems to me that's not a very good business model. North American car companies have tried that game too and we all know how much good that has done them. Instead of building cars with better fuel economy and overall quality they have lobbied for lower fuel efficiency standards and political means to keep competitors out of the market. In the end car companies that make better cars come out on top.
It would be interesting to find out why they run the company that way. Is it because they have lost touch with what consumers want? Or is it because they really believe that this is how you beat the competition?
For now my money is on any company that is not as heavily invested in desktop OS' as Microsoft. I would not be surprised if in ten years your OS and computing device will be as relevant to your user experience as what brand of TV you use today is relevent to how you watch TV. It will have only minor influence on how you experience your networked world.
I think you're forgetting one option; you could become an entrepeneur. Then again, I might be 'Jumping to Conclusions'.
I'm not sure what to think of the comparison of flying and driving statistics. Those statistics assume every driver has the same chance of getting into an accident as any other driver. This is obviously not the case (ask insurance companies) because some drivers are simply a lot better than other drivers even if they don't control all of the environment factors.
I assume the same can be said about system administration. It depends on the organization. Some organizations are very good at it and might do as well or better than Google. Others, well, you get the picture.
Strangely enough on first reading I thought this article was about a new 'pocket protector' that 3M had developed. Should I seek some help now?
English is my second language but even I know that the last sentence you wrote is very poor English.
/. and you're English is broken and you claim to be an English teacher. Somehow I get the feeling you're just making this stuff up ...
So you post on
This may be the case where you work and it may apply to the tools you use but I'm not sure this is a universal problem. In general the reason that open source tools replace commercial ones is not only a matter of price but also a matter of quality. The open source tools are getting very good and even if a commercial one is a bit better the difference may not be enough to warrant the purchase.
:)
...
I also think that you should have a conversation with your employer/manager, I believe it's better spending the money than frustrating developers with poor tools and your employer should understand that in the long run he saves money by making his developers/employees happy and productive. You have to find an effective way of communicating that though, read your "how to manage managers manual" before you start yelling at him
On a last note, in the company I work for we seem to have an opposite problem at times, we sometimes are required to use commercial tools even when better FOSS alternatives are avialable, go figure
I thought doors that swing both ways were mostly designed as props for physical comedy routines.
On a more serious note, you assume North Americans can never compete with Indians when FOSS is part of the mix. That is a bit of a sad statement and I hope that will not be the case. Obviously it changes the landscape but I sure hope that we will find that companies with North American developers will find ways to compete in that environment.
If you believe in a free market economy you will have to apply that across the board and not in isolation. The more wealth gets distributed across the globe the smaller the differences that create these opportunities in low cost countries will be.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I have found over time that there are many people who do not really understand why you would dislike or even hate (bit strong maybe) Microsoft. Most of those people do not actually program computers themselves so they don't get annoyed when some MS product gets in their way, they just assume that it behaves the way it's supposed to behave because it's all they've ever used.
For me it took an introduction to Unix many moons ago to understand computers could be a lot more useful than DOS or Windows operated pieces of hardware and it took the disabling of my OS/2 boot manager by the first Windows 95 install to understand that MS was willing to screw their customers on purpose to get their market share. People were actually made to believe OS/2 and Windows 95 could not live on the same machine which was obviously nonsense.
Add to that the subsequent BS about piracy, "bad" Open Source, DRM, supporting SCO and now the deal with Novell that seems to be another underhanded attempt to screw the Open Source community and you have quite a few reasons to dislike MS.
In Canada where we get the service through Rogers cable (they partner with Yahoo on their internet offering) we get 2GB of space on our mail accounts. Having said that I find I'm currently only using 430 Mb on my Gmail account and a fraction of that on my Yahoo mail account. Maybe I should get a life, on the other hand, it might show I have one ... you decide.
Although I prefer Gmail as my main mail account I think the Yahoo mail interface is not bad at all. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread they seem to be going for a desktop look and they're doing a decent job.
Does that mean, from an intelligent design point of view, we're still in beta? How do I get access to bugzilla for this project?
There was a case like that in Canada which concerned Roundup resistent Canola from Monsanto http://www.percyschmeiser.com/court%20costs.htm and the farmer lost.
The judge decided the farmer should have figured out that he had GE crop whether he bought it or not.
In this case of course the farmer simply used the crop. As you mention it would be interesting to find out if he could have someone pay for the removal of the GE crop if he did not plant it. Trespassing or illegal dumping seems a bit of a stretch but it would seem to me that either the neighbor from where it blew over or Monsanto should be made to pay for removing it.
There are more links out there if you 'google' for it.
I'm surprised nobody has brought up Progress yet. It's a database with 4GL and its own query language. I always found it a lot easier to work in than SQL although as anything else, it's not perfect. Because of the productivity of the language it has a steady following and there are quite a few people who sell applications (financial, manufacturing) written in Progress.