Somebody's got to be to blame. There seem to be folks in every organization who only exist in case something goes wrong in order to take the beating. If you didn't have a sysadmin, who do you scream at if the e-mail server goes down? Who do you accuse of being inefficient when backups hang up a system for an hour or so? Technology continues to get easier to use, but corporations still need someone with responsibility for that technology.
I'm primarily a Windows guy who has used Macs, at least pre OS-X. I hated them. I had to teach users to learn them, and (IMHO) they were fine for someone who didn't ever want to understand how stuff on their machine worked. I prefered Windows (at least 3.1, 95, and 98) because they still had a useable (if limited) command line, and more customizability than the Macs.
However, with OS-X that has changed. I've not used it much, but the 30 minutes or so I've spent have had me thinking that this is a viable alternative for my next system. Plus the ability to run ProTools in its native development environment has me absolutely drooling.
Still WAY, WAY, WAY too expensive. But the OS is actually making it worth considering for me.
I'll admit that I've been anti-Microsoft for almost as long as I've been using their products. Soon after I learned Windows 3.1, I was put into a situation where I had to administer it. I can recall installing Word 6.0 and having it mess with the WordPerfect configuration files, requiring some creative workarounds. I've grudgingly used MS stuff ever since.
In the past year, I've been split about 50-50 between XP and Linux. I have to say that I MUCH prefer the flexibility of Linux, but there are certainly drawbacks. Hooking up your new digital camera is a hit-or-miss proposition, unless you're willing to spend a couple hours learning about how hardware is mounted. For the most part, if you plug something into an XP machine, it's recognized and runs. It may be unstable, but it normally works.
Recently though, I've looked at the Macs more closely. I loathe Steve Jobs almost as much as Bill Gates, and Apple's policies aren't much better than M$oft's, but the G5 is appealing. The UI beats anything I've seen before, plus it comes with a shell that's darned-near identical to the one I'm coming to know and love in Linux. It's to the point now where I'm considering a G5 for my next machine, even though 5 years ago I swore it would take a full-frontal lobotomy to make me say that.
Speaking as a geek, I guess I dislike Micro$oft in part because it is prevalent, but also because I don't care much for how they've run companies under because they couldn't compete with them technologically. I also prefer being able to get my hands dirty with configuration - XP takes much of that configurability away from you while Linux allows (or expects!) you to get into the middle of it all.
IMHO, for basic useability, I recommend XP to folks getting into computers, or just wanting a machine for e-mail and web surfing. Plug-ins are made for IE first, and pretty much every hardware configuration is recognized or supported. I don't think that Linux (in it's current form) is right for say my grandpa. And I'm afraid that if you make Linux that user-friendly, you'll end up with something not too much different than Windows. The Mac is a useable compromise, but I still believe that the hardware is too expensive for the majority of users. I sure wish Apple would finally allow licenced machines.
Remember when you got your phone from Ma Bell for free and a monthly bill?
I don't think this will work. People complain all of the time about having to upgrade their PC's every few years, but at least after the initial expenditure the pain wears off. Pay-per-month plans will hurt 12 times a year. No thanks.
It is being open minded. There are government agencies that are "MS ONLY". I had a discussion with some computer folks at one who admitted that Linux was more stable, more flexible, and more secure, but the orders from on high forbade them from even messing with it on-site.
That's why I think the army looking at other options is being open minded.
What distro would be appropriate for the soldier of the future? RedHat, Slack, Mandrake, Suse?
Interesting that they're being open-minded about open source. I wish more branches of the government would consider it at least.
It's been a while since I tried, so I apologize if this has since been addressed. However, I wanted to add new launchers to the main menu. I eventually got it to work, but as I recall it took some locating of definition files, copying, and "faking" the menu into adding what I wanted. You couldn't just click on the "add item" and make it work.
I had assumed that if Gnome had allowed for an "add item" option, that it would work and for whatever reason, Fedora was imposing its own requirements in order to get the uniform feel they were trying for between KDE and Gnome.
It's been a while since I tried, so I apologize if this has since been addressed. However, I wanted to add new launchers to the main menu. I eventually got it to work, but as I recall it took some locating of definition files, copying, and "faking" the menu into adding what I wanted. You couldn't just click on the "add item" and make it work.
I had assumed that if Gnome had allowed for an "add item" option, that it would work and for whatever reason, Fedora was imposing its own requirements in order to get the uniform feel they were trying for between KDE and Gnome.
I've been using Fedora for several months now, switching from RH9. Lately I've been considering jumping over to Suse because I always feel like the RH and Fedora teams have pulled out a lot of the customization that I want. If you're going to use the standard menus and default options, stuff seems to work fine, but it seems to block you from adding/changing some things.
I'd started d/ling FC2 last night, but the deluge kept me from completing. Sounds like FC2 is pretty much the same thing with updated programs.
Preferrably a small-format directional-beam cell phone jammer. So when I'm on my way to work on the motorcycle in the mornings, I can hang up as a courtesy to the nice soccer moms chatting on the phone while putting on makeup, eating a breakfast bar and reaching back to wipe the noses of the young'uns. I know of too many close calls for other motorcyclists that involved someone too busy talking to look over their shoulder before controlled-crashing over into the next lane.
MP3 player market not swamped? No flame intended but when the iPod came out I seem to recall quite a few MP3 devices, many of which seemed to be doing very well. When I first heard that Apple was going to come out with one, I figured it would flop due to market saturation.
What Apple did was figure out how to do it really, really well. They found a reason that people would pay more money for their product. Wasn't the iPod the first very-large-storage MP3 device available? I'd expect them to do the same with a PDA - possibly attempting to re-think the entire device.
I've used Palm-type devices for several years now, and tried CE for a while. All of them have been a series of compromises. Palm is shackled with needing helper apps to interface with MS Office stuff, plus (at least on the models I've owned) has really bad screen resolutions. CE also had tradeoffs, which explains why I only owned my Toshiba for 48 hours. Maybe Apple will do a take-no-prisoners PDA?
Problem is, I don't own the problem equipment and every time we lose a drive, the vendor gives us a "huh, that almost NEVER happens". So the folks who are responsible do a quick calculation to figure out of the failure rate is 1 in 1000, and we only have 15 of them, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever have another...
And then a few months later someone else is giving me a call saying "how do we recover what's on this drive, we spilled glycol on it and it won't work..."/em SMACK.
I'll check into the number of writes issue. That could be a showstopper for us. I don't even need all that much, as the drives I'm replacing are sub-1GB. No need for the real spendy ones.
HDD failure can be devastating if a company isn't properly prepared. Yeah, the backup early and often mantra needs to be followed, but at least three times in the past couple of years I've been asked to help get data off of a drive that hadn't been backed up in years and failed for one reason or another. RAID isn't a solution, as the proprietary OS on the tools won't support it. I've thought before that a CF-style drive would solve a bunch of problems, if the reliability was good. Especially if the reader can emulate a HDD from the OS's perspective.
I don't understand going nonlinear even after offending comments are deleted, but I do understand to an extent.
I'm a non-trad student. I've gone back to school after a long absence. I'm back not because I have to be, but because I want to be. As such, I actually look forward to classes again (heck, beats being at work...).
I've encountered some really, really bad instructors. Some who I beleieved were coasting through the class with as little effort as possible. Depending on how the instructor ran the class, their reviews on that site could be positive (easy class, I've heard of some giving all students A's or B's just for showing up) or negative (prof just doesn't seem to care about whether or not students get it).
At the same time, the best instructor I've EVER had is listed, and he was drilled hard. When I read the reviews, I realized why - the guy actually asked you to think. His programming examples couldn't be solved just by reading the book, you had to do some creative thinking and test things a bit on your own in order to make it work. I learned more in that class than in any other so far, but the guy's ratings don't look that great because the class is hard.
So on the one hand, the review site can be a very good feedback method for allowing you to see who you may or may not want to take classes under. But at the same time it doesn't appear that professors have any recourse on the site. Perhaps if there was somewhere that a professor could put up a bio, or a synopsis of his teaching methodology, it might help to frame the comments a bit better.
You mention being under the canopy of a jungle, so this is probably less than helpful. However, never having been under a jungle canopy I don't know how much light you get. But this solar PDA charger would indicate it's at least possible to run a PDA device in remote areas for extended periods. Ever able to find a "hole" in the canopy to see the sun?
I'm not sure what I'd do with it personally, but the concept is cool.
I can see this being used by lots of folks probably not in the original target market: professional hunting guides. All in one unit rangefinder/gps/camera? Make it durable and I bet the hunting crowd would be all over them.
OBVIOUSLY this is a biased article.
See it was written about a power company who switched to Linux and is now willing to tell the world that they should consider the same. There has to be a reason.
AHA! Linux must use more power than Windows. It must, that's got to be the only reason! Every other study we've pai^H^H^H seen has said that Windows is cheaper!
--------You are now leaving the "Redmond Spin Zone"-------
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Somebody's got to be to blame. There seem to be folks in every organization who only exist in case something goes wrong in order to take the beating. If you didn't have a sysadmin, who do you scream at if the e-mail server goes down? Who do you accuse of being inefficient when backups hang up a system for an hour or so? Technology continues to get easier to use, but corporations still need someone with responsibility for that technology.
How many of those SysAdmins are going to be located in India?
However, with OS-X that has changed. I've not used it much, but the 30 minutes or so I've spent have had me thinking that this is a viable alternative for my next system. Plus the ability to run ProTools in its native development environment has me absolutely drooling.
Still WAY, WAY, WAY too expensive. But the OS is actually making it worth considering for me.
In the past year, I've been split about 50-50 between XP and Linux. I have to say that I MUCH prefer the flexibility of Linux, but there are certainly drawbacks. Hooking up your new digital camera is a hit-or-miss proposition, unless you're willing to spend a couple hours learning about how hardware is mounted. For the most part, if you plug something into an XP machine, it's recognized and runs. It may be unstable, but it normally works.
Recently though, I've looked at the Macs more closely. I loathe Steve Jobs almost as much as Bill Gates, and Apple's policies aren't much better than M$oft's, but the G5 is appealing. The UI beats anything I've seen before, plus it comes with a shell that's darned-near identical to the one I'm coming to know and love in Linux. It's to the point now where I'm considering a G5 for my next machine, even though 5 years ago I swore it would take a full-frontal lobotomy to make me say that.
Speaking as a geek, I guess I dislike Micro$oft in part because it is prevalent, but also because I don't care much for how they've run companies under because they couldn't compete with them technologically. I also prefer being able to get my hands dirty with configuration - XP takes much of that configurability away from you while Linux allows (or expects!) you to get into the middle of it all.
IMHO, for basic useability, I recommend XP to folks getting into computers, or just wanting a machine for e-mail and web surfing. Plug-ins are made for IE first, and pretty much every hardware configuration is recognized or supported. I don't think that Linux (in it's current form) is right for say my grandpa. And I'm afraid that if you make Linux that user-friendly, you'll end up with something not too much different than Windows. The Mac is a useable compromise, but I still believe that the hardware is too expensive for the majority of users. I sure wish Apple would finally allow licenced machines.
Remember when you got your phone from Ma Bell for free and a monthly bill? I don't think this will work. People complain all of the time about having to upgrade their PC's every few years, but at least after the initial expenditure the pain wears off. Pay-per-month plans will hurt 12 times a year. No thanks.
Prior conviction for fraud, stealing identities to send out 800 MILLION e-mails. Hope he doesn't drop the soap...
That's why I think the army looking at other options is being open minded.
What distro would be appropriate for the soldier of the future? RedHat, Slack, Mandrake, Suse? Interesting that they're being open-minded about open source. I wish more branches of the government would consider it at least.
I had assumed that if Gnome had allowed for an "add item" option, that it would work and for whatever reason, Fedora was imposing its own requirements in order to get the uniform feel they were trying for between KDE and Gnome.
It's been a while since I tried, so I apologize if this has since been addressed. However, I wanted to add new launchers to the main menu. I eventually got it to work, but as I recall it took some locating of definition files, copying, and "faking" the menu into adding what I wanted. You couldn't just click on the "add item" and make it work. I had assumed that if Gnome had allowed for an "add item" option, that it would work and for whatever reason, Fedora was imposing its own requirements in order to get the uniform feel they were trying for between KDE and Gnome.
I'd started d/ling FC2 last night, but the deluge kept me from completing. Sounds like FC2 is pretty much the same thing with updated programs.
Preferrably a small-format directional-beam cell phone jammer. So when I'm on my way to work on the motorcycle in the mornings, I can hang up as a courtesy to the nice soccer moms chatting on the phone while putting on makeup, eating a breakfast bar and reaching back to wipe the noses of the young'uns. I know of too many close calls for other motorcyclists that involved someone too busy talking to look over their shoulder before controlled-crashing over into the next lane.
What Apple did was figure out how to do it really, really well. They found a reason that people would pay more money for their product. Wasn't the iPod the first very-large-storage MP3 device available? I'd expect them to do the same with a PDA - possibly attempting to re-think the entire device.
I've used Palm-type devices for several years now, and tried CE for a while. All of them have been a series of compromises. Palm is shackled with needing helper apps to interface with MS Office stuff, plus (at least on the models I've owned) has really bad screen resolutions. CE also had tradeoffs, which explains why I only owned my Toshiba for 48 hours. Maybe Apple will do a take-no-prisoners PDA?
Interesting development, regardless.
Problem is, I don't own the problem equipment and every time we lose a drive, the vendor gives us a "huh, that almost NEVER happens". So the folks who are responsible do a quick calculation to figure out of the failure rate is 1 in 1000, and we only have 15 of them, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever have another...
And then a few months later someone else is giving me a call saying "how do we recover what's on this drive, we spilled glycol on it and it won't work..." /em SMACK.
I'll check into the number of writes issue. That could be a showstopper for us. I don't even need all that much, as the drives I'm replacing are sub-1GB. No need for the real spendy ones.
HDD failure can be devastating if a company isn't properly prepared. Yeah, the backup early and often mantra needs to be followed, but at least three times in the past couple of years I've been asked to help get data off of a drive that hadn't been backed up in years and failed for one reason or another. RAID isn't a solution, as the proprietary OS on the tools won't support it. I've thought before that a CF-style drive would solve a bunch of problems, if the reliability was good. Especially if the reader can emulate a HDD from the OS's perspective.
I'm a non-trad student. I've gone back to school after a long absence. I'm back not because I have to be, but because I want to be. As such, I actually look forward to classes again (heck, beats being at work...).
I've encountered some really, really bad instructors. Some who I beleieved were coasting through the class with as little effort as possible. Depending on how the instructor ran the class, their reviews on that site could be positive (easy class, I've heard of some giving all students A's or B's just for showing up) or negative (prof just doesn't seem to care about whether or not students get it).
At the same time, the best instructor I've EVER had is listed, and he was drilled hard. When I read the reviews, I realized why - the guy actually asked you to think. His programming examples couldn't be solved just by reading the book, you had to do some creative thinking and test things a bit on your own in order to make it work. I learned more in that class than in any other so far, but the guy's ratings don't look that great because the class is hard.
So on the one hand, the review site can be a very good feedback method for allowing you to see who you may or may not want to take classes under. But at the same time it doesn't appear that professors have any recourse on the site. Perhaps if there was somewhere that a professor could put up a bio, or a synopsis of his teaching methodology, it might help to frame the comments a bit better.
You mention being under the canopy of a jungle, so this is probably less than helpful. However, never having been under a jungle canopy I don't know how much light you get. But this solar PDA charger would indicate it's at least possible to run a PDA device in remote areas for extended periods. Ever able to find a "hole" in the canopy to see the sun?
I can see this being used by lots of folks probably not in the original target market: professional hunting guides. All in one unit rangefinder/gps/camera? Make it durable and I bet the hunting crowd would be all over them.
OBVIOUSLY this is a biased article. See it was written about a power company who switched to Linux and is now willing to tell the world that they should consider the same. There has to be a reason. AHA! Linux must use more power than Windows. It must, that's got to be the only reason! Every other study we've pai^H^H^H seen has said that Windows is cheaper! --------You are now leaving the "Redmond Spin Zone"-------
I don't know that I would have agreed with selling the WTC wreckage (a bit to morbid, maybe?), but I think e-baying the launch tower is a cool idea.