Heard all the "gnome3 gets in the way", "doesn't do what I want it to do", "pretty for prettys sake/copying Apple" comments.
I personally like gnome3, a lot, but I still appreciate that every one has their own opinion. But I had an eye-opener the other day...
My 6 yr old son has never really used computers, and when he does, it's playing flash games on the childrens tv website. It's very apparent that he doesn't yet _intuitively_ understand window management, double-clicking, mouse precision and other basic stuff. I haven't taught him, I think he can just as well wait a few years, and postpone the inevitable RSI that his daddy has developed after decades of IT jobs.
But now at the school my wife works at, as well as many other schools throughout Sweden, there is a massive drive to start using iPads as learning tools. Lets' for one second put aside my ire at taxpayer money being spent on ultra expensive high technology to "teach" 2yr olds and up...
One thing that is blindingly obvious, is that the interface of the iPad is _instictively intuitive_ even for very young toddlers. My son can use apps with the touch screen very very well, even after _minimal_ instruction from his teachers, he comes home and uses childrens maths applications for crying out loud!
This more than anything should indicate to naysayers that if a young child can use a UI with minimal instruction, then that UI has done it's job more or less correctly.
I'm not saying that Gnome3 is at that point, but I think it really is a step in the right direction, and I think that more people should give it more of a chance, and try to help the Gnome devs make it better. I really get the impression that the negativity comes from people who are a bit stuck in their ways. Quite normal, but you just need a bit of a shove to give it a chance.
Hehehe... Im not nay saying that your words aren't the utter truth, but it sort of reminds me of a joke I heard about the AV cable industry, where a customer buys a ~$7000 HDMI cable (they do exist), and has it delivered by "a shining white van with trimmings made of sheer gold, that comes floating down from the heavens, and as the delivery guy approaches the door in his shining white garment he appears to be floating above the ground..."
Your account will become the stuff of Legends. Do you think these guys still exist in todays golbalised market? God I would love to be part of that world, because where im at, we are a loong way from that kind of reality (in the infrastructure hosting business).
it doesn't diminish the value of your copy, but it does deny the author/seller that one sale.
One sale. What's that eh? They make enough money anyway don't they, it's not like they're going to go bankrupt or anything? Right?
Boil that down, and it's plain old jealousy of someone elses success. Or a desire to limit an entities success because of jealousy of their success and criticism of they way they operate. But those are _still_ separate issues!
And if you cannt see that the "owner" of something is irrelevant then you need to look harder. The person who wrote the code/filmed the film/sang the song, made a deal with a company or worked for a company purely because that enabled them to distribute their work as widely as possible. If the 'company' gave them a bad deal on that, then that was their choice, and is a separate matter. The fact is that the 'company' then had a legal stake in that work, and was entitled to profit from it.
You know, im just some IT support guy, have nothing to do with media whatsoever, and hate the current state of affairs as much as the next guy, but im constantly amazed at peoples inability to understand all this.
Another common argument is that "hey man, the media companies are dinosaurs living in the technological past, and they just want to retain their monopoly and profits! They won't let us _download_ stuff, and they're forcing us to obtain our media in a non-convenient way, maaan".
All true.
And still, it doesn't give you the right to break the law does it? I just love those "all information should be free" clowns. Buy your own house, get a job and support a family, then come back when you've grown up.
"By using your car, there is the actual cost of repairing it, whereas by pirating software, there is no maintenance that must be done, and no damage caused to it. And of course, this wear on the car is something that I need to pay for in order to keep using it, but if your software is being pirated, there are no costs involved. "
Im in total agreement with TheVelvetFlameBait on this one...
People seem to think that because they are making a copy of the digital media, they are not "stealing" anything, but rather denying the seller of a potential sale. They say "hey, but that sale could have been lost due to other factors like, it was just a poor product". But it wasn't was it? That sale was lost because you copied something and did not pay for it. It is ridiculous to claim otherwise.
You think copying without stealing has no effect? Lets say i'm a film maker and I invest a lot of my time, energy, and a large sum of my own personal money into making a film and I get a media company to distribute it. To make things extrmely simple, lets say every one pirates it and there are zero sales of the film. They didn't actually steal anything substantial or physical, but they denied me as a film maker a potential sale which I would have made a small profit on after the distributor to a large chunk. In this scenario, I may have gone into personal bankruptcy because I invested all I had into making a film, and I made nothing back. In this case, pirates really did ruin my life in a very personal way. In a scenario where pirating my film was very limited or non-existant, I may have made my fortune by making this film, and not simply recuperated my costs.
Now, im fully aware that copyright law sucks, that my scenario is uncommon (but not non-existant), that media companies operate on a whole other level, that media companies are greedy, and that they use morally wrong tactics to try to stop pirating, but the law is the frickin law, and every one of us voted for this by electing the people we did, and not reacting every time the law got changed and copyright got extended.
Copyright needs to change, to reflect common sense again. We need to demonstrate/vote/'vote' with our dollars to get this changed. Copyright serves a valid purpose when used correctly.
But don't for one second think that because copyright law does suck so much in it's current form, that it makes it ok for you to pirate something. You're still breaking the law.
If copyright didn't exist, there would be no incentive for innovation. Most people would give up because as soon as they made something or invented something, their neighbour could make a copy of it (either physical thing or digital data).
Encryption is not a technical issue. It's easy to get GPG running with Thunderbird. Im pretty sure that it's just as easy with other programs/platforms. What I found quite annoying: Having to enter my passphrase when I sent an email, can almost certainly be solved by unlocking your passphrase when logging in (on Gnome at least), like they do with other programs. If it's technically possible to do this already, then it would be quite easy I suspect to build this in for GPG/Enigmail. And hence, not technically challenging to do this for other platforms.
I think the real problem is that it's not installed/setup by default, and the passphrase unlock mechanism is not default or currently NA on some platforms. If it were, then all of this would be purely an awareness problem. If all the above were default, i'd just have to click the button for encryption and my email would zip away.
Funny thing is, during the first year, i'd jump at the ring signal in the middle of the night, and answer the phone with a chirpy voice as if i'd been awake all day. After 4 years, I wake up slowly, and believe that I must sound almost unintelligble to the person from the monitoring team. I don't even bother saying my name anymore, I just grunt to indicate that I have picked up the phone and am listening. That first year was quite nerve wracking, but you get used to it.
I am on-call round the clock from Monday 08:00 until the following Monday 08:00. My team has a rotation schedule so i'm on call every 5 weeks. We only get called up by our monitoring team when a server generates an automatic alarm. It's not people calling in to the help desk for the most part (although they can register a support call if they wish), and as such, alarms can be generated at any point in time during that week. To get called up 3 or 4 times during the middle of the night, and to then have to work 2-3 hrs, is not uncommon. Go back to bed, sleep 20 minutes then get called again: that's a soul destroyer. If we don't get a total of 6hrs sleep between a certain time frame then we are entitled to sleep compensation the following day: i.e. sleep until you're rested then come in. We also get a day off the week after we've been on-call. I think the compensation for this week is quite adequate (fixed fee+overtime if called), but I don't know what other companies give.
I just have my cell phone on, with a specific ring signal for the monitoring group that is very calm. I turn the volume down a bit and put it on vibrate, next to the bed on the floor. At the level it's at, it _very_ rarely wakes my wife or child, but I do wake up to it. However, i'm partially deaf in one ear and recently, whilst sleeping on the deaf side, managed to miss 3 phone calls:) So I suppose I am in need of a better solution as well!
"When I game, I don't want to have to mess around with drivers/tuning/performance/etc. That's my relaxation time"...
And that is exactly why I bought an Xbox 360, and installed Linux on my laptop in 2005. Games were great on the PC, but I got sick and tired of upgrading my motherboard, memory and CPU every time a new graphics card came out that had a different architecture. That and the fact that I needed to constantly upgrade drivers and software to keep compatibility and hopefully fix bugs.
Funnily enough, at that point I completely lost interest in gaming, which I just attribute to growing out of it. But I have never looked back. Drivers? Don't even notice them in Linux. New software/updates? {yum|apt-get} upgrade. So easy. And tha Xbox is just great. 2 seconds to turn on, straight into a game, no messing around.
As for the question of what's keeping me on WIndows, that's easy: It's the people who refuse to release software on Linux that I cannot live without, such as VPN solutions, banking software for secure authentication etc etc. I have the banking thing working, but it sometimes breaks because it's not official software and is at the mercy of the bank who sometimes make changes that break compatibility. And that period of breakage is something that in this day and age, I just cannot tolerate, so I need Windows as a backup.
Plus video editing on Linux truly sucks. I've tried Kino, Cinelerra, Openshot (current) and the rest, and they all without exception make it too hard for casual use. They are all buggy. I am deeply envious of Mac users and their graphics/video editors, but just cannot bring myself to buy a mac.
From a, err, purely objective standpoint, I think all of the negative reactions to the new GUI's are just hogwash. Go on... call me troll if you like, but I for one think Gnome3 is a big step forwards in UI design, that hasn't quite got everything right, but is certainly going in the right direction.
Im wary of Unity because it's a pure Gnome3 copy. Gnome has been developing v3 for ages, along comes Canonical, likes it, but not really, then tries to do their own version. Unity is so close to Gnome3's design it's comical. But they have one disadvantage. They are copying. Gnome3 is the innovator here. So, I don't want to have a buggy DE for several years, so im sticking with the innovator.
I _love_ Gnome3. Admittedly, I have a particular setup that not every one has, but I suspect mine is the majority: 13 - 15" widescreen laptops at 1500x900 or 1376x768 with optional extra LCD screen. I love having all my screen real estate for applications, and the "menu" (shell) in the background. I also love the fact I no longer have to sort folders for applications or worry about thee order. If you don't understand Gnome3's decisions, go read their blog which describes, in detail, their logic and reasoning behind the decisions!
Some people may have much larger screens that I and feel differently, but in that case, you need to specify why, instead of just bitching about your own scenario without going into details.
As for CLI, it has been proven time and again errr... quote needed:) that Graphical Interfaces are much more scalable and efficient at delivering and manipulating information than CLI for complex operations. Don't get me wrong, I spend a _lot_ of time in CLI, but some things sure get tedious when it's complicated or repetetive. In an ideal world, a GUI would be clean and usable, and hide complex operations behind a simple interface, but there would always be a cli equivalent with all the options for scripting. Some things are simply quicker to do in CLI that havin to launch a heavy gui, but you can't really say that one is the be all and end all. We need both.
"One of the reasons KA is so successful and kids like him is that he doesn't talk down to them"
KA is a great leap forward in education, and one of it's greatest strenghts is Salman Khans ability, as you rightly identify, to create a good connection with his audience; to not talk down to them, and to explain base concepts that other teachers would assume were a given. KA needs to be acutely aware that this is one of it's core strengths, and to find other teachers who also possess this admirable quality.
Western education is a broken system. It's methods are based on centuries old techniques, but the modern twist is that education is now sidelined by testing. It is testing, and grades and trying to cram a large syllabus into an inappropriately short time frame that is creating pressure on stundents, and ultimately, going 'against the grain' of the concept of education.
If you deviate from the 'norm' of how a student is expected to digest the information that is taught, then you're a lost cause. As for myself, at 38 and having "gone back to school" via the Khan Academy, I finally realise that I have a short attention span and my mind wanders quite easily (now identified as a healthy condition and proven to be beneficial), so I now understand why I did so poorly in college when my mind wandered for 5 minutes and I completely missed an important piece of information that led to me misunderstanding a large swathe of the syllabus. And it happened often:)
I admire Khan Academy for making learning fun again. For explaining things in an idiot proof fashion without being condescending, and for provding videos so that when my mind does wander, I can just hit the replay button. I'm not really a big fan of technology in education, but KA's methods have me excited for the future of education.
- "Personally, I applaud what they're doing. Maybe they can help unseat Blackboard and other god-awful "Online Education Tools". "
Me too, but before you throw pie at online education tools, check out khanacademy.org.
After registering for the ai-class, and having read the prereqs, I realised i'd have to brush up on my maths. They have Linear Algebra as a prereq, and i've never done it. So I read the slashdot article on the release of ai-class and someone mentioned khanacademy. I think it's a brilliant tool/venture and i'm learning a lot from it. I wish I had it when I was in school!
I only took the basic class because linear algebra is not to be joked away, and they also mentioned some programming, which I don't know, so I felt that I would be way too optimistic to take the full course with assignments.
Now im biased as im an oracle dba, but seriously, how can anyone who knows databases think that oracle is not relevant?
RAC - who else has clustered instances that have been tested under fire for several years DataGuard - who else has disaster recovery solutions that can be up in seconds? Partitioning - tested for decades, very mature, competition came out with it this decade.
I've not even mentioned performance
the list of features is as long as my arm. No other competitor comes close to the level of maturity and testing that Oracles features have undergone in enterprise environments. And as the old saying goes, no-one ever got fired for choosing Oracle: It's got the market mind-share as the technology leader, and yeah, some of it's going to be bs, but a lot is founded on solid technological facts.
Yes, oracle is a dinosaur, as is it's owner, who you just love to hate, but it doesn't change the fact that the technology is really really good, if somewhat arcane to administer.
2011 - robot innovations include self-balancing androids (video on youtube guy trying to push over bot, and it reacts to keep balance), drones, life-like androids (Danish man). etc etc
2020 - 3D printer prints most stuff, commercial applications. Self-balancing androids that look life like begin appearing in hospitals
2030 - 3D printers print anything. Androids look like us. Commercial fabrication plants print autonomously, one in particular owned by the military, daughter company called... Skynet!!!!
Shiiit. I'll soon be a pensioner by 2030, and my chances of doing a Skynet survival course will be nill. Oh well, time to start trainging the boy at least so he can wander the wastes as a nomad for his remainging years.
I agree. I've had a few relatives in homes, and think it's demeaning how they are generally treat, and just plain tragic that the last few years of a persons life should be spent like that. I wish that politicians especially were made to spend time in elderly homes, maybe then there would be some real changes to how the elderly system works.
Actually it is terminal. The brain 'forgets' how to pump the heart; it forgets how to breathe in... etc etc. You can quite easily die 'of' Alzheimers once it's gone far enough.
My wifes mother and uncle have both passed away due to Alzheimers, her other uncle to a related dementia, and it's not a pretty experience. Worst nightmare is that my wife gets it and I have to go through it all over again, this time as a more involved participant.
Found out last year that my grandmother died of Alzheimers, as I've had no contact with that side of my family for a few decades, so it's on both sides of our families, which is just a dandy thought for my son to consider whilst growing up.
When my wifes mother got Alzheimers, the Alzheimers organisation here in Sweden said a cure was 10 years away. 5 years after that date passed, they still say a cure is about 10 years away.
I've been doing PC support for family and friends for over 20 years for free. Recently, I had to move house, I have a 5 yr old and there was just loads of other crap that ate my time for several months. Unfortunately, 3 different people (family/friends) decided that they needed help with their computer during the same period. That's when I started charging. I charge the same hourly rate as a baby sitter, and I still feel cheeky! The thing is, that if I was to charge the same rate as a electrician, or a fridge repair company, then the cost would be unreasonable. They usually charge ~1000 SEK / 100 GBP for services that take up to 1 hour. When I fix a PC, it usually takes a few hours of troubleshooting. Sometimes I've spent up to 20 hours rebuilding the OS, re-installing all programs and reconfiguring modems and printers. It would be unreasonable to charge 20.000 SEK / 200 GBP to re-install a PC: You could buy another PC for that money. And the ahem... 'professional' PC repair companies charge maybe ~2000 SEK for complete re-installs, but then they do't do any config, don't re-install any programs whatsoever.
I think a good approach is to have a reasonable base charge for the first hour, then an hourly rate thereafter, with a maximum ceiling for how much it will cost.
Of course, I would never consider charging my parents or siblings--if I had any--for PC repair, but every other relative, friend or acquintance is free game in my book.
And hey, if it means I get called less, because I started charging, then that's fine by me, because this is the kind of hassle that I really don't need.
And as for getting favours in return... I've been helping friends and family for the last 12 years, and i've never got a favour in return that was in any way equivalent in terms of how much hassle it was for the other party. The most I ever got was a crate of beer. I can honestly say that none of the people I have helped and spent upto 20 hours fixing their PC, would ever consider doing something for me for the same amount of time, and that's not even considering the money aspect.
passwords are just plain bad at what they are supposed to do: authenticate users. But authentication is only half the equation. Important sites like bank sites and such should require identification (proving that it is actually, physically you that is logging in... web cam facial recognition maybe?), as well as authentication (proving by some token that you are authenticated to use that site and have an account there).
Passwords fulfill the authentication part of the equation, but do it badly, because it's very easy to hack etc. I don't know anyone that does identification on the net. It would be better if I didn't have to remember 200 passwords at all. I like the model of "something you physically possess and something you know" as authentication and my "e-legitimation" or e-identification that is contained on a standard chip and pin credit card performs that function very well, because I have a card reader, and a card with a chip on it, which fulfills the physical thing, and I havea 6-digit pin code for the thing I know part. This works great with the 6 or 7 state sites that are tied into e-identification (which is inappropriately named) as it's only authentication.
It would be great if state owned sites or banks could tie in to a state issued ID card. If some sites did not want to rely on national ID they could issue third-party independantly issued cards, so that there could be competition between state issued ID and competitors and run that system in parallel with a national-id system.
Im not saying this to troll for national ID. I belive that ID cards have some great benefits, and the technology is sound, but people jump on the privacy bandwagon, and yes, it's a great concern, but with the right mechanisms in place within the implementation of national-ID, it could make snooping,harvesting,spying etc. very difficult. As to whether private persons could rely on the government to actually implement those mechanisms or not is another issue.
Hasn't this already been hacked on for years though? Didn't we already come to the comclusion that passwords are not the way to go? What happened to the solution?
Slashdot Mirror
Whats the form called where the best people from each field are chosen to represent that field in government?
I am too intellectually limited to interpret the results from the Google, so Im asking here instead.
Heard all the "gnome3 gets in the way", "doesn't do what I want it to do", "pretty for prettys sake/copying Apple" comments.
I personally like gnome3, a lot, but I still appreciate that every one has their own opinion. But I had an eye-opener the other day...
My 6 yr old son has never really used computers, and when he does, it's playing flash games on the childrens tv website. It's very apparent that he doesn't yet _intuitively_ understand window management, double-clicking, mouse precision and other basic stuff. I haven't taught him, I think he can just as well wait a few years, and postpone the inevitable RSI that his daddy has developed after decades of IT jobs.
But now at the school my wife works at, as well as many other schools throughout Sweden, there is a massive drive to start using iPads as learning tools. Lets' for one second put aside my ire at taxpayer money being spent on ultra expensive high technology to "teach" 2yr olds and up...
One thing that is blindingly obvious, is that the interface of the iPad is _instictively intuitive_ even for very young toddlers. My son can use apps with the touch screen very very well, even after _minimal_ instruction from his teachers, he comes home and uses childrens maths applications for crying out loud!
This more than anything should indicate to naysayers that if a young child can use a UI with minimal instruction, then that UI has done it's job more or less correctly.
I'm not saying that Gnome3 is at that point, but I think it really is a step in the right direction, and I think that more people should give it more of a chance, and try to help the Gnome devs make it better. I really get the impression that the negativity comes from people who are a bit stuck in their ways. Quite normal, but you just need a bit of a shove to give it a chance.
IMHO
Hehehe... Im not nay saying that your words aren't the utter truth, but it sort of reminds me of a joke I heard about the AV cable industry, where a customer buys a ~$7000 HDMI cable (they do exist), and has it delivered by "a shining white van with trimmings made of sheer gold, that comes floating down from the heavens, and as the delivery guy approaches the door in his shining white garment he appears to be floating above the ground..."
Your account will become the stuff of Legends. Do you think these guys still exist in todays golbalised market? God I would love to be part of that world, because where im at, we are a loong way from that kind of reality (in the infrastructure hosting business).
another sane voice.
it doesn't diminish the value of your copy, but it does deny the author/seller that one sale.
One sale. What's that eh? They make enough money anyway don't they, it's not like they're going to go bankrupt or anything? Right?
Boil that down, and it's plain old jealousy of someone elses success. Or a desire to limit an entities success because of jealousy of their success and criticism of they way they operate. But those are _still_ separate issues!
And if you cannt see that the "owner" of something is irrelevant then you need to look harder. The person who wrote the code/filmed the film/sang the song, made a deal with a company or worked for a company purely because that enabled them to distribute their work as widely as possible. If the 'company' gave them a bad deal on that, then that was their choice, and is a separate matter. The fact is that the 'company' then had a legal stake in that work, and was entitled to profit from it.
You know, im just some IT support guy, have nothing to do with media whatsoever, and hate the current state of affairs as much as the next guy, but im constantly amazed at peoples inability to understand all this.
Forgot to add one small point:
Another common argument is that "hey man, the media companies are dinosaurs living in the technological past, and they just want to retain their monopoly and profits! They won't let us _download_ stuff, and they're forcing us to obtain our media in a non-convenient way, maaan".
All true.
And still, it doesn't give you the right to break the law does it? I just love those "all information should be free" clowns. Buy your own house, get a job and support a family, then come back when you've grown up.
"By using your car, there is the actual cost of repairing it, whereas by pirating software, there is no maintenance that must be done, and no damage caused to it.
And of course, this wear on the car is something that I need to pay for in order to keep using it, but if your software is being pirated, there are no costs involved. "
Im in total agreement with TheVelvetFlameBait on this one...
People seem to think that because they are making a copy of the digital media, they are not "stealing" anything, but rather denying the seller of a potential sale. They say "hey, but that sale could have been lost due to other factors like, it was just a poor product". But it wasn't was it? That sale was lost because you copied something and did not pay for it. It is ridiculous to claim otherwise.
You think copying without stealing has no effect? Lets say i'm a film maker and I invest a lot of my time, energy, and a large sum of my own personal money into making a film and I get a media company to distribute it. To make things extrmely simple, lets say every one pirates it and there are zero sales of the film. They didn't actually steal anything substantial or physical, but they denied me as a film maker a potential sale which I would have made a small profit on after the distributor to a large chunk. In this scenario, I may have gone into personal bankruptcy because I invested all I had into making a film, and I made nothing back. In this case, pirates really did ruin my life in a very personal way. In a scenario where pirating my film was very limited or non-existant, I may have made my fortune by making this film, and not simply recuperated my costs.
Now, im fully aware that copyright law sucks, that my scenario is uncommon (but not non-existant), that media companies operate on a whole other level, that media companies are greedy, and that they use morally wrong tactics to try to stop pirating, but the law is the frickin law, and every one of us voted for this by electing the people we did, and not reacting every time the law got changed and copyright got extended.
Copyright needs to change, to reflect common sense again. We need to demonstrate/vote/'vote' with our dollars to get this changed.
Copyright serves a valid purpose when used correctly.
But don't for one second think that because copyright law does suck so much in it's current form, that it makes it ok for you to pirate something. You're still breaking the law.
If copyright didn't exist, there would be no incentive for innovation. Most people would give up because as soon as they made something or invented something, their neighbour could make a copy of it (either physical thing or digital data).
damn. not the post you want to read 2 days before flying on an A330.
Encryption is not a technical issue. It's easy to get GPG running with Thunderbird. Im pretty sure that it's just as easy with other programs/platforms. What I found quite annoying: Having to enter my passphrase when I sent an email, can almost certainly be solved by unlocking your passphrase when logging in (on Gnome at least), like they do with other programs. If it's technically possible to do this already, then it would be quite easy I suspect to build this in for GPG/Enigmail. And hence, not technically challenging to do this for other platforms.
I think the real problem is that it's not installed/setup by default, and the passphrase unlock mechanism is not default or currently NA on some platforms. If it were, then all of this would be purely an awareness problem. If all the above were default, i'd just have to click the button for encryption and my email would zip away.
Funny thing is, during the first year, i'd jump at the ring signal in the middle of the night, and answer the phone with a chirpy voice as if i'd been awake all day. After 4 years, I wake up slowly, and believe that I must sound almost unintelligble to the person from the monitoring team. I don't even bother saying my name anymore, I just grunt to indicate that I have picked up the phone and am listening. That first year was quite nerve wracking, but you get used to it.
I am on-call round the clock from Monday 08:00 until the following Monday 08:00. My team has a rotation schedule so i'm on call every 5 weeks. We only get called up by our monitoring team when a server generates an automatic alarm. It's not people calling in to the help desk for the most part (although they can register a support call if they wish), and as such, alarms can be generated at any point in time during that week. To get called up 3 or 4 times during the middle of the night, and to then have to work 2-3 hrs, is not uncommon. Go back to bed, sleep 20 minutes then get called again: that's a soul destroyer. If we don't get a total of 6hrs sleep between a certain time frame then we are entitled to sleep compensation the following day: i.e. sleep until you're rested then come in. We also get a day off the week after we've been on-call. I think the compensation for this week is quite adequate (fixed fee+overtime if called), but I don't know what other companies give.
I just have my cell phone on, with a specific ring signal for the monitoring group that is very calm. I turn the volume down a bit and put it on vibrate, next to the bed on the floor. At the level it's at, it _very_ rarely wakes my wife or child, but I do wake up to it. However, i'm partially deaf in one ear and recently, whilst sleeping on the deaf side, managed to miss 3 phone calls :) So I suppose I am in need of a better solution as well!
"When I game, I don't want to have to mess around with drivers/tuning/performance/etc. That's my relaxation time"...
And that is exactly why I bought an Xbox 360, and installed Linux on my laptop in 2005. Games were great on the PC, but I got sick and tired of upgrading my motherboard, memory and CPU every time a new graphics card came out that had a different architecture. That and the fact that I needed to constantly upgrade drivers and software to keep compatibility and hopefully fix bugs.
Funnily enough, at that point I completely lost interest in gaming, which I just attribute to growing out of it. But I have never looked back. Drivers? Don't even notice them in Linux. New software/updates? {yum|apt-get} upgrade. So easy. And tha Xbox is just great. 2 seconds to turn on, straight into a game, no messing around.
As for the question of what's keeping me on WIndows, that's easy: It's the people who refuse to release software on Linux that I cannot live without, such as VPN solutions, banking software for secure authentication etc etc. I have the banking thing working, but it sometimes breaks because it's not official software and is at the mercy of the bank who sometimes make changes that break compatibility. And that period of breakage is something that in this day and age, I just cannot tolerate, so I need Windows as a backup.
Plus video editing on Linux truly sucks. I've tried Kino, Cinelerra, Openshot (current) and the rest, and they all without exception make it too hard for casual use. They are all buggy. I am deeply envious of Mac users and their graphics/video editors, but just cannot bring myself to buy a mac.
From a, err, purely objective standpoint, I think all of the negative reactions to the new GUI's are just hogwash. Go on... call me troll if you like, but I for one think Gnome3 is a big step forwards in UI design, that hasn't quite got everything right, but is certainly going in the right direction.
Im wary of Unity because it's a pure Gnome3 copy. Gnome has been developing v3 for ages, along comes Canonical, likes it, but not really, then tries to do their own version. Unity is so close to Gnome3's design it's comical. But they have one disadvantage. They are copying. Gnome3 is the innovator here. So, I don't want to have a buggy DE for several years, so im sticking with the innovator.
I _love_ Gnome3. Admittedly, I have a particular setup that not every one has, but I suspect mine is the majority: 13 - 15" widescreen laptops at 1500x900 or 1376x768 with optional extra LCD screen. I love having all my screen real estate for applications, and the "menu" (shell) in the background. I also love the fact I no longer have to sort folders for applications or worry about thee order. If you don't understand Gnome3's decisions, go read their blog which describes, in detail, their logic and reasoning behind the decisions!
Some people may have much larger screens that I and feel differently, but in that case, you need to specify why, instead of just bitching about your own scenario without going into details.
As for CLI, it has been proven time and again errr... quote needed :) that Graphical Interfaces are much more scalable and efficient at delivering and manipulating information than CLI for complex operations. Don't get me wrong, I spend a _lot_ of time in CLI, but some things sure get tedious when it's complicated or repetetive. In an ideal world, a GUI would be clean and usable, and hide complex operations behind a simple interface, but there would always be a cli equivalent with all the options for scripting. Some things are simply quicker to do in CLI that havin to launch a heavy gui, but you can't really say that one is the be all and end all. We need both.
I eagerly await future iterations of Gnome3!
"One of the reasons KA is so successful and kids like him is that he doesn't talk down to them"
KA is a great leap forward in education, and one of it's greatest strenghts is Salman Khans ability, as you rightly identify, to create a good connection with his audience; to not talk down to them, and to explain base concepts that other teachers would assume were a given. KA needs to be acutely aware that this is one of it's core strengths, and to find other teachers who also possess this admirable quality.
Western education is a broken system. It's methods are based on centuries old techniques, but the modern twist is that education is now sidelined by testing. It is testing, and grades and trying to cram a large syllabus into an inappropriately short time frame that is creating pressure on stundents, and ultimately, going 'against the grain' of the concept of education.
If you deviate from the 'norm' of how a student is expected to digest the information that is taught, then you're a lost cause. As for myself, at 38 and having "gone back to school" via the Khan Academy, I finally realise that I have a short attention span and my mind wanders quite easily (now identified as a healthy condition and proven to be beneficial), so I now understand why I did so poorly in college when my mind wandered for 5 minutes and I completely missed an important piece of information that led to me misunderstanding a large swathe of the syllabus. And it happened often :)
I admire Khan Academy for making learning fun again. For explaining things in an idiot proof fashion without being condescending, and for provding videos so that when my mind does wander, I can just hit the replay button. I'm not really a big fan of technology in education, but KA's methods have me excited for the future of education.
- "Personally, I applaud what they're doing. Maybe they can help unseat Blackboard and other god-awful "Online Education Tools". "
Me too, but before you throw pie at online education tools, check out khanacademy.org.
After registering for the ai-class, and having read the prereqs, I realised i'd have to brush up on my maths. They have Linear Algebra as a prereq, and i've never done it. So I read the slashdot article on the release of ai-class and someone mentioned khanacademy. I think it's a brilliant tool/venture and i'm learning a lot from it. I wish I had it when I was in school!
I only took the basic class because linear algebra is not to be joked away, and they also mentioned some programming, which I don't know, so I felt that I would be way too optimistic to take the full course with assignments.
Now im biased as im an oracle dba, but seriously, how can anyone who knows databases think that oracle is not relevant?
RAC - who else has clustered instances that have been tested under fire for several years
DataGuard - who else has disaster recovery solutions that can be up in seconds?
Partitioning - tested for decades, very mature, competition came out with it this decade.
I've not even mentioned performance
the list of features is as long as my arm. No other competitor comes close to the level of maturity and testing that Oracles features have undergone in enterprise environments. And as the old saying goes, no-one ever got fired for choosing Oracle: It's got the market mind-share as the technology leader, and yeah, some of it's going to be bs, but a lot is founded on solid technological facts.
Yes, oracle is a dinosaur, as is it's owner, who you just love to hate, but it doesn't change the fact that the technology is really really good, if somewhat arcane to administer.
Will the Office 365 cloud suite have the "leap year" bug where everything deactivates on leap years?
OMFG, see the links!!
2011 - 3D printer prints glass from sand
2011 - robot innovations include self-balancing androids (video on youtube guy trying to push over bot, and it reacts to keep balance), drones, life-like androids (Danish man). etc etc
2020 - 3D printer prints most stuff, commercial applications. Self-balancing androids that look life like begin appearing in hospitals
2030 - 3D printers print anything. Androids look like us. Commercial fabrication plants print autonomously, one in particular owned by the military, daughter company called ... Skynet!!!!
Shiiit. I'll soon be a pensioner by 2030, and my chances of doing a Skynet survival course will be nill. Oh well, time to start trainging the boy at least so he can wander the wastes as a nomad for his remainging years.
I agree. I've had a few relatives in homes, and think it's demeaning how they are generally treat, and just plain tragic that the last few years of a persons life should be spent like that. I wish that politicians especially were made to spend time in elderly homes, maybe then there would be some real changes to how the elderly system works.
Actually it is terminal. The brain 'forgets' how to pump the heart; it forgets how to breathe in... etc etc. You can quite easily die 'of' Alzheimers once it's gone far enough.
My wifes mother and uncle have both passed away due to Alzheimers, her other uncle to a related dementia, and it's not a pretty experience. Worst nightmare is that my wife gets it and I have to go through it all over again, this time as a more involved participant.
Found out last year that my grandmother died of Alzheimers, as I've had no contact with that side of my family for a few decades, so it's on both sides of our families, which is just a dandy thought for my son to consider whilst growing up.
When my wifes mother got Alzheimers, the Alzheimers organisation here in Sweden said a cure was 10 years away. 5 years after that date passed, they still say a cure is about 10 years away.
Damn you beat me to this post! Damn funny book, and is the bible when it comes to disaster planning.
Not wanting to ruin the 'conclusion', but best long-term strategy is *not* to be the loner with the gun living on his own in a fortress.
Learn survival skills and buy a good knife.
I've been doing PC support for family and friends for over 20 years for free. Recently, I had to move house, I have a 5 yr old and there was just loads of other crap that ate my time for several months. Unfortunately, 3 different people (family/friends) decided that they needed help with their computer during the same period. That's when I started charging. I charge the same hourly rate as a baby sitter, and I still feel cheeky! The thing is, that if I was to charge the same rate as a electrician, or a fridge repair company, then the cost would be unreasonable. They usually charge ~1000 SEK / 100 GBP for services that take up to 1 hour. When I fix a PC, it usually takes a few hours of troubleshooting. Sometimes I've spent up to 20 hours rebuilding the OS, re-installing all programs and reconfiguring modems and printers. It would be unreasonable to charge 20.000 SEK / 200 GBP to re-install a PC: You could buy another PC for that money. And the ahem... 'professional' PC repair companies charge maybe ~2000 SEK for complete re-installs, but then they do't do any config, don't re-install any programs whatsoever.
I think a good approach is to have a reasonable base charge for the first hour, then an hourly rate thereafter, with a maximum ceiling for how much it will cost.
Of course, I would never consider charging my parents or siblings--if I had any--for PC repair, but every other relative, friend or acquintance is free game in my book.
And hey, if it means I get called less, because I started charging, then that's fine by me, because this is the kind of hassle that I really don't need.
And as for getting favours in return... I've been helping friends and family for the last 12 years, and i've never got a favour in return that was in any way equivalent in terms of how much hassle it was for the other party. The most I ever got was a crate of beer. I can honestly say that none of the people I have helped and spent upto 20 hours fixing their PC, would ever consider doing something for me for the same amount of time, and that's not even considering the money aspect.
passwords are just plain bad at what they are supposed to do: authenticate users. But authentication is only half the equation. Important sites like bank sites and such should require identification (proving that it is actually, physically you that is logging in... web cam facial recognition maybe?), as well as authentication (proving by some token that you are authenticated to use that site and have an account there).
Passwords fulfill the authentication part of the equation, but do it badly, because it's very easy to hack etc. I don't know anyone that does identification on the net. It would be better if I didn't have to remember 200 passwords at all. I like the model of "something you physically possess and something you know" as authentication and my "e-legitimation" or e-identification that is contained on a standard chip and pin credit card performs that function very well, because I have a card reader, and a card with a chip on it, which fulfills the physical thing, and I havea 6-digit pin code for the thing I know part. This works great with the 6 or 7 state sites that are tied into e-identification (which is inappropriately named) as it's only authentication.
It would be great if state owned sites or banks could tie in to a state issued ID card. If some sites did not want to rely on national ID they could issue third-party independantly issued cards, so that there could be competition between state issued ID and competitors and run that system in parallel with a national-id system.
Im not saying this to troll for national ID. I belive that ID cards have some great benefits, and the technology is sound, but people jump on the privacy bandwagon, and yes, it's a great concern, but with the right mechanisms in place within the implementation of national-ID, it could make snooping,harvesting,spying etc. very difficult. As to whether private persons could rely on the government to actually implement those mechanisms or not is another issue.
Hasn't this already been hacked on for years though? Didn't we already come to the comclusion that passwords are not the way to go? What happened to the solution?
and now it's happening to all my colleagues... something is happening for sure.