I agree with you. I've been using computers for about 10 years or so and went through about ever version of Windows. Eventually I got good at finding and installing software. The difficult part for finding software in windows seemed to be finding the place on the Internet to download it. Once I found the installer, it almost always was just a matter of double-clicking on it and the installer would do the rest.
Now with gentoo that I've been using since July, it's just a matter of searching for it on portage, "emerge application," and it's magically there. Yeah, it takes longer because of compiling, but it's time spent by the computer and not me.
I've found it easier to get software using if you look at the whole process. But these solutions always seem to be distro specific and not compatible with every modern linux distro, as in modern windows versions. So yeah, it is easier to install software once you get over the hurdles of installing Gentoo, but that required a lot of reading and dicking around beforehand.
I would still like some standard package manager that would work seamlessly across all distros.
I don't know about that. My school got into that. My professor said the total cost for the whole program was only a couple hundred dollars. It gives students in the computer science department and computer engineers in the engineering department (yes, they are two very different majors!) access to this program.
You basically get a login to a website that allows you to download free ISOs to Windows XP Pro, Office, VS.NET, and some other programs. It's not a bad program for students, but I think it is just to get them used to Microsoft development tools. The computer science department at my school is big on java and C++ using gcc so I don't know how much it's actually used in the classes.
I suspect the $300 increase was just the typical increase in education. My school (small state college) has a low tuition that they advertise and publish, but they jack up the "general service fees" whenever they seem to need more money. I think it's a sly tactic since they could have just increased the tuition since that number is generally what's published. I don't think any school would pay an extra $300 per student to Microsoft just for this program.
As the services they sell become identical between different companies, the only thing they have left to retain customers is customer support. There is usually little difference for most people between banks, phone companies, cable companies, and even computer manufacturers. Especially since I deal with my bank through the Internet or ATM, if I had a problem and customer service didn't help me, I'd look for another bank to sign up for.
This is why sending call centers overseas is such a bad idea because if laptop breaks, I want the problem fixed quickly, not have to translate what the guy in India is telling me what to do.
As more companies only deal with their customers through customer service, this will become a much more important role in where people buy their products and services from. Companies that build a reputation now will benefit in the future.
They do care about getting caught, they just don't think they will. As the RIAA and MPAA go after the big fish, the little fish who downloads a movie here and there doesn't feel they'll waste their time and money on him.
People don't break laws because the penalties aren't harsh enough, the break them because they think they won't get caught.
WTF is the End-License User Agreement? Another crazy tactic by Gates I'd imagine..
Actually, when I saw the headline for this article I thought of the scene where Mr. Anderson receives the phone from the FedEx guy and Morpheus gives him a call. Obviously, on the other end is Gates or perhaps Ballmer using the Microsoft Windows Speech Enhancer to disguise his voice.
"Customer Service...do you want to know what it is?"
Computer science is NOT computer engineering. I'm a CE major and it's pretty much electrical engineering with 3 more CS courses. This is a lot different and more difficult than computer science.
It's comments like your's that have scared me into thinking lots of other people are as ignorant as you and so I'm going to try and double major in CE and EE just to cover all bases.
Benchmarks? It's as simple as this: If you run out of ram, you'll start hard drive caching which is slow as hell. You'll never notice the difference between 512 and 1gb if you're just booting into windows and surfing the web. But if you're doing some heavy graphics work, 2D or 3D, you'll definitely see the speed increase.
Speed increases from memory and cpu are different. A faster cpu (not measured simply by the clock speed) will just about always make things faster, but more ram will only speed things up if you need it.
This is why when Dell was shipping computers with 2 ghz processors and 128 mb of ram while running windows xp...I got a headache.
Nothing earth shattering here. The same old Microsoft and RIAA will perish while desktop linux will make inroads. Then a few other vague things like apple will do something big and voip will become more popular.
I could have just easily said that in north east america, the year will start out cold, get warmer, get hot, get cold, and then finally get really cold. I just wish advertisers would pay me for that.
I don't think so. Long exposures of the night sky produce an interesting effect of star trails. An exposure of only several minutes can produce these trails. They will seem to orbit around the north pole. I've taken pictures like this, but I don't have my scanner so I'll have to google an example. If you use a telephoto lens, the trails will appear longer. If you use a wide angle or even a fish eye, you can see how they all orbit around a central point.
Star trails are really interesting. Reciprocity failure from a long exposure also produces some neat effects and strange colors. This is one of the reasons why silver halide (film) photography will still be of interest for a while.
My bank, Wachovia, doesn't require IE. I don't understand why banks would want to use ActiveX. They get screwed and waste time and money when someone gets phished, so they'd have a lot to gain if all their customers switched to IE.
If other banks are like my bank, then people probably get something in the mail about once a week from them. They could replace a few of those with Firefox ads and probably switch some people over.
Alright, well most people do get their taxes taken out. The reason people file a tax return is to get the taxes they overpaid back. Yes, it's a dumb system that essentially gives the government an interest free loan. It also gives people the chance to claim any deductions. For people with no dependents making under 50k a year, they can use the 1040EZ which is one page and it's simple to use.
I download the PDFs and fill out the form my self because I think it's easier than filling 20 forms online when the servers are running slowly.
As for sales taxes, they are state taxes, not federal. They vary between each of the 50 states. If I buy an item from another state, I don't pay sales tax on it. It's complicated and so I guess to make it easier on all those signs that say $99.99 plus tax. But we get used to it. I know that on everything other than groceries and clothing, I'll pay an extra 6%. If the price is 99 cents, I know it's going to be $1.05. You just get used to it I guess.
And I think the complexity from the tax system is to benefit the government. They keep a LOT of money each year from people who are too lazy to file a return.
I don't use O3 and some people claim it can make things slower. For some systems any O* will turn on -fomit-frame-pointer even though every how-to recommends it.
I do use gcc-3.4.3 which isn't marked stable in portage for x86, but I haven't noticed any trouble with it and the system does "feel" a little faster.
I thought centrino was just a collection of a bunch of things like 802.11b wireless, pentium M, and the 855 chipset. And the Pentium M is very similar to the Pentium III I believe.
Repeaters every.62 miles and modifying the power lines seems way too expensive. What is needed is a cheap way of providing broadband to people in remote areas.
I agree with most of what you said, but I'm having trouble buying this whole "forced to upgrade" idea. I've seen this thrown around here a lot. How many people have been forced to upgrade a Microsoft product as a direct result of a Microsoft action? I guess upgrading from one version of Windows to another because the old one was buggy and unstable might be a reason, but that's not outright forcing anybody. And the reason that printer x or scanner y didn't work is the fault of the printer manufacturer.
Even with Office formats, you're not completely stuck if your version of office can't open the latest version of the.doc format. You can always download openoffice or something else and convert them. I think this perception of Microsoft forcing people to upgrade is overblown. They continually convince people that their next version of some program is going to fix all the old bugs and not have any bugs of it's own. Well, that's the consumers' fault for believe that shit.
"Bill Gates has to step up to the plate and try save his Operating System"
I don't know about that. Last time I walked into a computer store or someone's living room, they were running Windows. I think this statement may be valid in 2008 though, as the guys predicted.
Oh come on now -- it's not that difficult --! Okay so here is how is goes it is explaining how to tag [items|files|stuffs] in a way that should not hopefully be better understanding to persons. Easy? OK. See the old way was difficult (not easy) to understand because people created random things describing stuff to their persons, but this way should help confusion among people.
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I agree with you. I've been using computers for about 10 years or so and went through about ever version of Windows. Eventually I got good at finding and installing software. The difficult part for finding software in windows seemed to be finding the place on the Internet to download it. Once I found the installer, it almost always was just a matter of double-clicking on it and the installer would do the rest.
Now with gentoo that I've been using since July, it's just a matter of searching for it on portage, "emerge application," and it's magically there. Yeah, it takes longer because of compiling, but it's time spent by the computer and not me.
I've found it easier to get software using if you look at the whole process. But these solutions always seem to be distro specific and not compatible with every modern linux distro, as in modern windows versions. So yeah, it is easier to install software once you get over the hurdles of installing Gentoo, but that required a lot of reading and dicking around beforehand.
I would still like some standard package manager that would work seamlessly across all distros.
I don't know about that. My school got into that. My professor said the total cost for the whole program was only a couple hundred dollars. It gives students in the computer science department and computer engineers in the engineering department (yes, they are two very different majors!) access to this program.
You basically get a login to a website that allows you to download free ISOs to Windows XP Pro, Office, VS.NET, and some other programs. It's not a bad program for students, but I think it is just to get them used to Microsoft development tools. The computer science department at my school is big on java and C++ using gcc so I don't know how much it's actually used in the classes.
I suspect the $300 increase was just the typical increase in education. My school (small state college) has a low tuition that they advertise and publish, but they jack up the "general service fees" whenever they seem to need more money. I think it's a sly tactic since they could have just increased the tuition since that number is generally what's published. I don't think any school would pay an extra $300 per student to Microsoft just for this program.
This whole thing was probably conceived to give Paris Hilton more publicity. Who cares? Why does anybody care about her?
As the services they sell become identical between different companies, the only thing they have left to retain customers is customer support. There is usually little difference for most people between banks, phone companies, cable companies, and even computer manufacturers. Especially since I deal with my bank through the Internet or ATM, if I had a problem and customer service didn't help me, I'd look for another bank to sign up for.
This is why sending call centers overseas is such a bad idea because if laptop breaks, I want the problem fixed quickly, not have to translate what the guy in India is telling me what to do.
As more companies only deal with their customers through customer service, this will become a much more important role in where people buy their products and services from. Companies that build a reputation now will benefit in the future.
They do care about getting caught, they just don't think they will. As the RIAA and MPAA go after the big fish, the little fish who downloads a movie here and there doesn't feel they'll waste their time and money on him.
People don't break laws because the penalties aren't harsh enough, the break them because they think they won't get caught.
WTF is the End-License User Agreement? Another crazy tactic by Gates I'd imagine..
Actually, when I saw the headline for this article I thought of the scene where Mr. Anderson receives the phone from the FedEx guy and Morpheus gives him a call. Obviously, on the other end is Gates or perhaps Ballmer using the Microsoft Windows Speech Enhancer to disguise his voice.
"Customer Service...do you want to know what it is?"
Computer science is NOT computer engineering. I'm a CE major and it's pretty much electrical engineering with 3 more CS courses. This is a lot different and more difficult than computer science.
It's comments like your's that have scared me into thinking lots of other people are as ignorant as you and so I'm going to try and double major in CE and EE just to cover all bases.
Benchmarks? It's as simple as this: If you run out of ram, you'll start hard drive caching which is slow as hell. You'll never notice the difference between 512 and 1gb if you're just booting into windows and surfing the web. But if you're doing some heavy graphics work, 2D or 3D, you'll definitely see the speed increase.
Speed increases from memory and cpu are different. A faster cpu (not measured simply by the clock speed) will just about always make things faster, but more ram will only speed things up if you need it.
This is why when Dell was shipping computers with 2 ghz processors and 128 mb of ram while running windows xp...I got a headache.
And almost 14 years later, I'm compiling the 2.6.10 kernel.
Nothing earth shattering here. The same old Microsoft and RIAA will perish while desktop linux will make inroads. Then a few other vague things like apple will do something big and voip will become more popular.
I could have just easily said that in north east america, the year will start out cold, get warmer, get hot, get cold, and then finally get really cold. I just wish advertisers would pay me for that.
I don't think so. Long exposures of the night sky produce an interesting effect of star trails. An exposure of only several minutes can produce these trails. They will seem to orbit around the north pole. I've taken pictures like this, but I don't have my scanner so I'll have to google an example. If you use a telephoto lens, the trails will appear longer. If you use a wide angle or even a fish eye, you can see how they all orbit around a central point.
Star trails are really interesting. Reciprocity failure from a long exposure also produces some neat effects and strange colors. This is one of the reasons why silver halide (film) photography will still be of interest for a while.
Here's a page on star trails I just googled:
http://www.danheller.com/star-trails.html
My bank, Wachovia, doesn't require IE. I don't understand why banks would want to use ActiveX. They get screwed and waste time and money when someone gets phished, so they'd have a lot to gain if all their customers switched to IE.
If other banks are like my bank, then people probably get something in the mail about once a week from them. They could replace a few of those with Firefox ads and probably switch some people over.
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/melbourne/bushfoolh r.wmv
It's a good one. The laughter from The Daily Show's crowd only makes it better.
Alright, well most people do get their taxes taken out. The reason people file a tax return is to get the taxes they overpaid back. Yes, it's a dumb system that essentially gives the government an interest free loan. It also gives people the chance to claim any deductions. For people with no dependents making under 50k a year, they can use the 1040EZ which is one page and it's simple to use.
I download the PDFs and fill out the form my self because I think it's easier than filling 20 forms online when the servers are running slowly.
As for sales taxes, they are state taxes, not federal. They vary between each of the 50 states. If I buy an item from another state, I don't pay sales tax on it. It's complicated and so I guess to make it easier on all those signs that say $99.99 plus tax. But we get used to it. I know that on everything other than groceries and clothing, I'll pay an extra 6%. If the price is 99 cents, I know it's going to be $1.05. You just get used to it I guess.
And I think the complexity from the tax system is to benefit the government. They keep a LOT of money each year from people who are too lazy to file a return.
Wait wait wait, this guy asked for a Linux solution for tax software and your suggestion was to buy windows and install turbotax? Ah, very insightful.
I think that's why ricers are made fun of so much. They add in flags without any knowlege of what they do.
Mine are somewhat conservative:
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -ftracer -mmmx -msse -msse2 -mfpmath=sse"
I don't use O3 and some people claim it can make things slower. For some systems any O* will turn on -fomit-frame-pointer even though every how-to recommends it.
I do use gcc-3.4.3 which isn't marked stable in portage for x86, but I haven't noticed any trouble with it and the system does "feel" a little faster.
actually, that would be a USE flag
I think this article is just as relevant:
m l
http://www.bugnet.com/analysis/reports/win98_1.ht
I thought centrino was just a collection of a bunch of things like 802.11b wireless, pentium M, and the 855 chipset. And the Pentium M is very similar to the Pentium III I believe.
Repeaters every .62 miles and modifying the power lines seems way too expensive. What is needed is a cheap way of providing broadband to people in remote areas.
http://www.users.nac.net/falken/annoying/main.html
"So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems."
Umm...there is no way to remove IE and it is installed by default. Of course there are systems with IE, it doesn't mean people want it or use it.
I agree with most of what you said, but I'm having trouble buying this whole "forced to upgrade" idea. I've seen this thrown around here a lot. How many people have been forced to upgrade a Microsoft product as a direct result of a Microsoft action? I guess upgrading from one version of Windows to another because the old one was buggy and unstable might be a reason, but that's not outright forcing anybody. And the reason that printer x or scanner y didn't work is the fault of the printer manufacturer.
.doc format. You can always download openoffice or something else and convert them. I think this perception of Microsoft forcing people to upgrade is overblown. They continually convince people that their next version of some program is going to fix all the old bugs and not have any bugs of it's own. Well, that's the consumers' fault for believe that shit.
Even with Office formats, you're not completely stuck if your version of office can't open the latest version of the
"Bill Gates has to step up to the plate and try save his Operating System"
I don't know about that. Last time I walked into a computer store or someone's living room, they were running Windows. I think this statement may be valid in 2008 though, as the guys predicted.
Oh come on now -- it's not that difficult --! Okay so here is how is goes it is explaining how to tag [items|files|stuffs] in a way that should not hopefully be better understanding to persons. Easy? OK. See the old way was difficult (not easy) to understand because people created random things describing stuff to their persons, but this way should help confusion among people.
Good? Tag! You're it!