The quote you are replying to is taken out of context. The context of the question was obviously software development. The sentence before Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so." was,
"But, I look out at the world and I say who is doing the innovative stuff over the last few years?"
This changes things, and I have no opinion on who has been the most innovative with software in the last few years.
I just got back from vacation and experienced this problem. I could only check my bank balance via the internet, and in order to make hotel reservations I would have had to give my credit card number over a (very) public telephone or in full view of 50 people in an internet cafe. What I ended up doing with the bank balance was having a family member I trusted look the information that I needed. I will have them do this with reservations in the future. There really has to be some system where you can secretly pay for things via internet cafes and verify your identity, maybe through an attached thumb print device.
I've also had this problem and found that xmgrace is by far the best program to use, although it only does 2D. It can prepare publication-quality plots and lets you get the formatting just right, unlike, say, tecplot. Xmgrace also has data processing features (derivative, multiplication, etc). You can also make templates.
The only downside is that the advanced features of xmgrace aren't obvious at first -- it took me quite a while to figure out things like greek letters, templates, etc.
From my experience, if you meet the requirements of the game you're playing, having the proper window manager or distro doesn't really matter. I use KDE which is not considered light-weight and have had no trouble. Just close every running application before playing your game if you have a resource crunch, or add more swap.
I use Gentoo, but again any distribution will work.
As other people have mentioned, this might not work as well as you hope. I've also been forced to maintain a "Wintendo" because my games just won't work, or fiddling with Wine is too time consuming.
I'm interested in doing basically the same thing as this guy, but in Germany. I will get my MS in Electrical Engineering very soon. I speak German, but it's admittedly a little rusty.
My problem seems two-fold: I want an entry-level job, and I've had trouble finding opportunities on par with the US.
Can anyone who has been through this offer some suggestions?
These people are overreacting. The fact is that on average wikipedia IS trustworthy. The point of any encyclopedia is to get an overview of a topic or to find pointers to more authoritative sources, and wikipedia is excellent for this purpose. It's also excellent because readers know very well that they are receiving information that anyone can alter.
Like the others have said, the fact that someone can change minor details in articles is unimportant to the purpose of wikipedia. If you need authoritative information, get a primary source and get over it!
This is the problem with the closed source drivers; for me it's not about controlling one's computer, it's about making the hardware I paid for work. It's about customer service. nVidia supposedly has the best drivers under Linux, but getting bug fixes or technical support are next to impossible. Either nVidia should open their drivers(ideal) so users can attempt to maintain them or they and other graphics companies should provide high-quality linux drivers for their customers.
Preface: I prefer to use Linux. It's the operating system that annoys me the least. I am mostly happy with the open source community.
Still, I have some complaints with the open source community that the author missed:
1. There is no central mechanism for routing feedback. If there was a web site where users could complain about ALL open source software, and vote for complaints (think Transgaming), Open Source software would be better.
2. The open source community should have another web site for matching volunteers' skills to ALL open source projects (think Distributed Proofreaders).
3. Generally open source authors are not innovative enough. Most user-level free software is written in response to already existing commercial software. (If anyone can suggest new open source software that is both innovative and useful, please respond).
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The quote you are replying to is taken out of context. The context of the question was obviously software development. The sentence before Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so." was, "But, I look out at the world and I say who is doing the innovative stuff over the last few years?" This changes things, and I have no opinion on who has been the most innovative with software in the last few years.
I just got back from vacation and experienced this problem. I could only check my bank balance via the internet, and in order to make hotel reservations I would have had to give my credit card number over a (very) public telephone or in full view of 50 people in an internet cafe.
What I ended up doing with the bank balance was having a family member I trusted look the information that I needed. I will have them do this with reservations in the future.
There really has to be some system where you can secretly pay for things via internet cafes and verify your identity, maybe through an attached thumb print device.
I've also had this problem and found that xmgrace is by far the best program to use, although it only does 2D.
It can prepare publication-quality plots and lets you get the formatting just right, unlike, say, tecplot. Xmgrace also has data processing features (derivative, multiplication, etc). You can also make templates.
The only downside is that the advanced features of xmgrace aren't obvious at first -- it took me quite a while to figure out things like greek letters, templates, etc.
From my experience, if you meet the requirements of the game you're playing, having the proper window manager or distro doesn't really matter. I use KDE which is not considered light-weight and have had no trouble. Just close every running application before playing your game if you have a resource crunch, or add more swap.
I use Gentoo, but again any distribution will work.
As other people have mentioned, this might not work as well as you hope. I've also been forced to maintain a "Wintendo" because my games just won't work, or fiddling with Wine is too time consuming.
Regardless, give it your best shot and good luck!
I'm interested in doing basically the same thing as this guy, but in Germany. I will get my MS in Electrical Engineering very soon. I speak German, but it's admittedly a little rusty.
My problem seems two-fold: I want an entry-level job, and I've had trouble finding opportunities on par with the US.
Can anyone who has been through this offer some suggestions?
These people are overreacting. The fact is that on average wikipedia IS trustworthy. The point of any encyclopedia is to get an overview of a topic or to find pointers to more authoritative sources, and wikipedia is excellent for this purpose. It's also excellent because readers know very well that they are receiving information that anyone can alter.
Like the others have said, the fact that someone can change minor details in articles is unimportant to the purpose of wikipedia. If you need authoritative information, get a primary source and get over it!
This is the problem with the closed source drivers; for me it's not about controlling one's computer, it's about making the hardware I paid for work. It's about customer service. nVidia supposedly has the best drivers under Linux, but getting bug fixes or technical support are next to impossible.
Either nVidia should open their drivers(ideal) so users can attempt to maintain them or they and other graphics companies should provide high-quality linux drivers for their customers.
Still, I have some complaints with the open source community that the author missed:
1. There is no central mechanism for routing feedback. If there was a web site where users could complain about ALL open source software, and vote for complaints (think Transgaming), Open Source software would be better.
2. The open source community should have another web site for matching volunteers' skills to ALL open source projects (think Distributed Proofreaders).
3. Generally open source authors are not innovative enough. Most user-level free software is written in response to already existing commercial software. (If anyone can suggest new open source software that is both innovative and useful, please respond).