I always read the article before upvoting or (rarely) downvoting. I never comment or vote on comments if I haven't read the article. I will read just the comment section from time to time and then read the article. Just from doing that it's possible to tell the vast majority of comments are people stating their own opinion of the article based on the title or simply reacting to comments. It's really sad.
I have to agree. I spent 4 years in Linux hell during the mid 2000s and was never able to get away from Windows completely. There was always some proprietary software for work that I had to run on Windows. In addition to that, I had tons of problems with video drivers, audio, poorly written wannabe apps that never lived up to the hype. I finally had to give up on Linux when I was assigned a major upgrade project and my laptop X display kept dying. I've looked at Linux desktops every now and again over the last few years and while great strides have been made, I just have needs that can't be met by Linux. If you can use it, great for you. It just didn't work for me.
Probably not. Serial is s$#t simple and utterly reliable in dire circumstances. I'm a network engineer at a large university and have spent the last 3 years setting up an "out-of-band" network that includes serial access to all of our network devices. The bit rates can be increased to upload firmware when necessary. Cabling is straightforward and follows the old DTE/DCE standards. The new devices that have USB Type A physical interfaces that I have come across still RS-232 signaling, requiring special cables. We recently had to make a batch of these custom cables to accommodate access to serial ports on new blade chassis SAN equipment. Like it or not, RS-232 serial ports will be around for a good, long while.
I work as a technical manager at a major university so I've got a perspective from both sides of the issue. If you are interested in research computing or pursuing a PhD, go for the MS in Computer Science. If you are interested in working in the field, you'll have plenty of opportunities for technical training and skill honing while working and I'd recommend getting and MBA, MPA or some other degree with a management/business/accounting focus. Those skills will be valuable down the road.
Good luck!
What has happened to common sense in this country? Each one of these morons on the school board should be defeated in the next election.
Please read "The Death of Common Sense" by Philip K Howard.
Thank you
Exactly. I have a blackjack. I have the notifications enabled, but I ignore them in the evening unless I am expecting something or I have some other need to get something important done. There is no law that says you need to react to the thing when it beeps or vibrates.
I agree with everything that you stated about Windows, but the simple fact that you need to use rdesktop to connect to a Windows machine to get "essential Windows software" indicates the very difficulty the author and others have experienced in trying to use Linux in a Windows environment. Until we don't have to use Terminal Services to connect to a Windows machine and run software or use applications that are tied to the proprietary functionality of Windows, Linux will be a less acceptable or unacceptable alternative.
The guy never stated that everything in Windows works perfectly. He stated that he had trouble integrating Linux into a corporate IT environment that is predominately Windows. I can easily do about 95% of what I need to do in one of the BSDs or Linux Distributions. It's the other 5% that are critical to my job that are so much trouble using an Open Source OS that it becomes a hindrance.
If one of the BSDs or a Linux distribution works for you, that is great. For many of us, it is just an impossible fight.
I've been a hardcore desktop Linux user since the summer of 2001. I've been swimming upstream in an MS Windows environment the entire time. I've been fortunate because I've been able to make things mostly work and I don't do a lot of work in Microsoft Office. Our organization recently moved from a Lotus Notes environment to Exchange.
It wasn't long before we were told we had to use the collaborative features such as tasks and calendars. Since Evolution does not work at all except for basic calendaring, contacts, and email I've more or less been forced to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook as a client. The web client features suck as bad as Evolution. I'm in the process of migrating back to Windows, using Vista (which is a total disappointment, but that is a topic for another discussion).
I've tried Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and Ubuntu. All of them perform great as a basic desktop OS but integrate poorly into an MS Enterprise environment. I'll keep a dual boot laptop and a test machine in my lab at work to keep my skills up to speed and hopefully figure out a way to better integrate Linux in the MS Enterprise world.
In my experience hardware support is often more difficult using Windows XP that Linux. As a recent example, one of my colleagues as been experiencing a lot of trouble with cutting and pasting to a Cisco router using a KeySpan USB to RS232 adapter. It required several reboots and driver installs. ON my Kubuntu laptop, I plug it in, ttyUSB0 appears, I start Minicom and get to work. I have had other experiences similar to this with network adapters and hard drives. More often that not, I have found that it "just works" with Linux and requires major work with Windows.
Having cut my computing teeth on the Apple// series, I also long for the days of writing on the Apple. Appleworks was my tool of choice, mostly for research papers and lesson plans, since I was a technical educator at the time. I wrote some of my best stuff on a//c with Appleworks 2.0. WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos was as close to the Apple experience as I ever got. I now use vi to compose, then clean it up and format with some other tool just like the author.
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I always read the article before upvoting or (rarely) downvoting. I never comment or vote on comments if I haven't read the article. I will read just the comment section from time to time and then read the article. Just from doing that it's possible to tell the vast majority of comments are people stating their own opinion of the article based on the title or simply reacting to comments. It's really sad.
I have to agree. I spent 4 years in Linux hell during the mid 2000s and was never able to get away from Windows completely. There was always some proprietary software for work that I had to run on Windows. In addition to that, I had tons of problems with video drivers, audio, poorly written wannabe apps that never lived up to the hype. I finally had to give up on Linux when I was assigned a major upgrade project and my laptop X display kept dying. I've looked at Linux desktops every now and again over the last few years and while great strides have been made, I just have needs that can't be met by Linux. If you can use it, great for you. It just didn't work for me.
Autocorrect?
Probably not. Serial is s$#t simple and utterly reliable in dire circumstances. I'm a network engineer at a large university and have spent the last 3 years setting up an "out-of-band" network that includes serial access to all of our network devices. The bit rates can be increased to upload firmware when necessary. Cabling is straightforward and follows the old DTE/DCE standards. The new devices that have USB Type A physical interfaces that I have come across still RS-232 signaling, requiring special cables. We recently had to make a batch of these custom cables to accommodate access to serial ports on new blade chassis SAN equipment. Like it or not, RS-232 serial ports will be around for a good, long while.
I work as a technical manager at a major university so I've got a perspective from both sides of the issue. If you are interested in research computing or pursuing a PhD, go for the MS in Computer Science. If you are interested in working in the field, you'll have plenty of opportunities for technical training and skill honing while working and I'd recommend getting and MBA, MPA or some other degree with a management/business/accounting focus. Those skills will be valuable down the road. Good luck!
What has happened to common sense in this country? Each one of these morons on the school board should be defeated in the next election. Please read "The Death of Common Sense" by Philip K Howard. Thank you
Exactly. I have a blackjack. I have the notifications enabled, but I ignore them in the evening unless I am expecting something or I have some other need to get something important done. There is no law that says you need to react to the thing when it beeps or vibrates.
I agree with everything that you stated about Windows, but the simple fact that you need to use rdesktop to connect to a Windows machine to get "essential Windows software" indicates the very difficulty the author and others have experienced in trying to use Linux in a Windows environment. Until we don't have to use Terminal Services to connect to a Windows machine and run software or use applications that are tied to the proprietary functionality of Windows, Linux will be a less acceptable or unacceptable alternative.
The guy never stated that everything in Windows works perfectly. He stated that he had trouble integrating Linux into a corporate IT environment that is predominately Windows. I can easily do about 95% of what I need to do in one of the BSDs or Linux Distributions. It's the other 5% that are critical to my job that are so much trouble using an Open Source OS that it becomes a hindrance. If one of the BSDs or a Linux distribution works for you, that is great. For many of us, it is just an impossible fight.
I've been a hardcore desktop Linux user since the summer of 2001. I've been swimming upstream in an MS Windows environment the entire time. I've been fortunate because I've been able to make things mostly work and I don't do a lot of work in Microsoft Office. Our organization recently moved from a Lotus Notes environment to Exchange.
It wasn't long before we were told we had to use the collaborative features such as tasks and calendars. Since Evolution does not work at all except for basic calendaring, contacts, and email I've more or less been forced to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook as a client. The web client features suck as bad as Evolution. I'm in the process of migrating back to Windows, using Vista (which is a total disappointment, but that is a topic for another discussion).
I've tried Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and Ubuntu. All of them perform great as a basic desktop OS but integrate poorly into an MS Enterprise environment. I'll keep a dual boot laptop and a test machine in my lab at work to keep my skills up to speed and hopefully figure out a way to better integrate Linux in the MS Enterprise world.
In my experience hardware support is often more difficult using Windows XP that Linux. As a recent example, one of my colleagues as been experiencing a lot of trouble with cutting and pasting to a Cisco router using a KeySpan USB to RS232 adapter. It required several reboots and driver installs. ON my Kubuntu laptop, I plug it in, ttyUSB0 appears, I start Minicom and get to work. I have had other experiences similar to this with network adapters and hard drives. More often that not, I have found that it "just works" with Linux and requires major work with Windows.
Having cut my computing teeth on the Apple // series, I also long for the days of writing on the Apple. Appleworks was my tool of choice, mostly for research papers and lesson plans, since I was a technical educator at the time. I wrote some of my best stuff on a //c with Appleworks 2.0. WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos was as close to the Apple experience as I ever got. I now use vi to compose, then clean it up and format with some other tool just like the author.