My first computer, a Commodore 64, had the entire Operating System on ROM and was quick to boot up. My second computer, a Commodore Amiga, had its Kernel stored in ROM, and was also quick to boot up.
Why isn't this sort of thing being done today? Not only would it be a quick boot, but malware would have a harder time corrupting the OS, as the important bits would be locked down in unchangable ROM.
Of course, doing this *would* require a change to today's "We'll fix it later when someone complains" software development model. It would have to be right the first time.
I do pretty much the same by running Windows in a virtual machine in Linux. I keep it cut off from the internet, and use the host for all that dangerous stuff like web browsing and email. Windows remains safely sandboxed.
Oh, and wherever possible, I still use Windows 2000, because I *still* think that XP is unnecessarily bloated. Given *that* opinion, I don't suppose I'll be running Vista or Windows 7 anytime soon. But if I do, it'll be in another sandbox.
... they're done, for all intents and purposes. Whether the reason is fatigue, health issues, or a new full-time job, it appears that PJ is no longer championing legal issues (on-line, at least). A shame, really, since the last few years has seen some of the finest collaborative work on the web, in an area where education and research is sorely needed.
Sorry for the melancholy off-topic guys. Would that the parent post was correct.
... They're the ones with the arrows in their backs! It's changes like this that underscore treating new distro versions as a public beta. Chances are, this or some other new feature will cause someone real pain. It's always a good idea to make sure that that someone is *not* you. Whether it's Fedora or OpenSuse, or Ubuntu, oftentimes features are added that aren't really ready for prime time. Trust no one.
The real source of the problem isn't the development model itself, but in the way Management does its own job. This isn't anything new. Ten years ago, I was working for a small software company (less than 100 employees), and was told by the owner to meet the promised deadline "at any cost". He was quite happy with fixing bugs later "when the customer complains about them", telling me that this would allow them to promise the customer a new (later) deadline. The result was an endless stream of unhappy customers, and a rapidly deteriorating reputation in the field.
In my experience, delivery deadlines are made by management hacks to meet customer requirements, instead of the restrictions placed upon the project by budget (only so much money for resources) and Physics (only so many hours in the day), and not the poor schleps tasked with meeting those impossible dates.
Good. Fast. Cheap. : Pick two. Or, to quote Star Trek's Montgomery Scott: "I canna change the laws of Physics, Captain!"
If you've been laid off, you've spent your retirement funds, you're car is about to be repossessed, and your house is about to be foreclosed, the *last* thing you want to do is go on that trip to the Bahamas you've been planning to take.
We can not afford to spend all this money exploring space, not right now. We should privatize the whole space program, and let somebody make money off it selling tickets to rich SOB's with more money than sense. Only when it has to make a profit for somebody will it find the efficiency and economy it needs to make real progress. At the moment, it's nothing more than a money pit.
The problem is that humans are hard-wired to see patterns in the world around us, even where there is nothing but chaos. So the whole question of finding intelligence in the patterns around us is moot.
The intelligence is more in the mind of the perceiver than in the design itself. There's no one out there, they're not coming.
What's with all the blue color schemes, anyway? Personally, I hate the blue desktops a lot of people seem to favor, finding them cold and lifeless. At least the browns are refreshingly different. Personally, I customize mine to use shades of tan and light brown with a splash of deep emerald green.
That's why I became a Computer Programmer. Why bother calculating the answer yourself when you can have the computer do it for you? After all, there's code out there for almost any math you're likely to need.
If you can't skip those commercials, then you're using the wrong software to play the DVD, the wrong operating system, or both. I use VLC (it has a Windows version, I believe), which skips right to the DVD menu. Problem solved.
Besides, nowadays, most (but not all) DVD's are made so you can skip those movie previews with the press of the "next chapter" button.
I watch all my TV shows and movies on a Linux computer hooked up to a 28 inch LCD monitor. Usually, the show is in a window while I do something else (like right now).
Now, at least the DRM on a DVD is pretty much a joke and easy to bypass, but Blue Ray is a different story. I refuse to buy Vista (along with a Blue Ray drive, if any such exists for less than a king's ransom) just for the privilege of watching a movie in the same tiny window I use right now with the equipment and software I already own.
Obligatory Star Wars reference: "This is not the customer you're looking for. Move along."
I have two problems with KDE4, only one of which is due to the KDE people.
First, I believe the development team should have kept it in Beta until it was feature-complete. Feature complete, in my mind, is at minimum the feature set of 3.x. It shouldn't even be a release candidate until "done" and stable.
Second, distros should avoid including immature projects like KDE 4 until they *are* feature complete and stable. Yeah, Kubuntu, I'm looking at you!
Hopefully, the Gnome folks (and Ubuntu) will wait until everything's ready for prime time before releasing 3.0
When I was a kid I was into comic books big-time. Then a friend of my father's recommended Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter series (A Princess of Mars, etc). I always thought this was a good transition from the usual Superman/Spiderman, etc world of childhood fantasy to the more adult fantasy of ERB.
Another recommendation, although I think it's out of print now, is the Tom Swift Junior adventures by Victor Appleton III. Something like 30 books in that series. While definitely sixties/Cold War in many of its plots, the books are on a level that younger, inexperienced readers can enjoy.
The biggest challenge is just getting pre-teens and teenagers to read on their own. Teachers always assign dead-boring books, which I think is a mistake. The trick is to figure out what level of maturity the kid is at, and what their interests are, and tailor the reading list to that. If the kid's into Star Trek or Star Wars, there are lots of well-written novels available in that area. Just remember, your kids are not you. They *may* have different tastes, which you may not appreciate.
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Use a real geek number: 49152! (C64 FTW)
No, he turned the tables so he could get a better grip on them for throwing.
My first computer, a Commodore 64, had the entire Operating System on ROM and was quick to boot up. My second computer, a Commodore Amiga, had its Kernel stored in ROM, and was also quick to boot up.
Why isn't this sort of thing being done today? Not only would it be a quick boot, but malware would have a harder time corrupting the OS, as the important bits would be locked down in unchangable ROM.
Of course, doing this *would* require a change to today's "We'll fix it later when someone complains" software development model. It would have to be right the first time.
Their cat clicked on the "I agree" button during installation.
Windows 7 will finally be out of Beta when it has the letters "SP1" at the end of the name, not before.
I do pretty much the same by running Windows in a virtual machine in Linux. I keep it cut off from the internet, and use the host for all that dangerous stuff like web browsing and email. Windows remains safely sandboxed.
Oh, and wherever possible, I still use Windows 2000, because I *still* think that XP is unnecessarily bloated. Given *that* opinion, I don't suppose I'll be running Vista or Windows 7 anytime soon. But if I do, it'll be in another sandbox.
... they're done, for all intents and purposes. Whether the reason is fatigue, health issues, or a new full-time job, it appears that PJ is no longer championing legal issues (on-line, at least). A shame, really, since the last few years has seen some of the finest collaborative work on the web, in an area where education and research is sorely needed.
Sorry for the melancholy off-topic guys. Would that the parent post was correct.
They're in text files with a ".h" or a ".c" extension, right?
Oh, wait.
... They're the ones with the arrows in their backs! It's changes like this that underscore treating new distro versions as a public beta. Chances are, this or some other new feature will cause someone real pain. It's always a good idea to make sure that that someone is *not* you. Whether it's Fedora or OpenSuse, or Ubuntu, oftentimes features are added that aren't really ready for prime time. Trust no one.
Sorry about that. Whatever was I thinking of?
The way jobs and the economy is going into the toilet nowadays, I think this would be a much more appropriate topic.
The real source of the problem isn't the development model itself, but in the way Management does its own job. This isn't anything new. Ten years ago, I was working for a small software company (less than 100 employees), and was told by the owner to meet the promised deadline "at any cost". He was quite happy with fixing bugs later "when the customer complains about them", telling me that this would allow them to promise the customer a new (later) deadline. The result was an endless stream of unhappy customers, and a rapidly deteriorating reputation in the field.
In my experience, delivery deadlines are made by management hacks to meet customer requirements, instead of the restrictions placed upon the project by budget (only so much money for resources) and Physics (only so many hours in the day), and not the poor schleps tasked with meeting those impossible dates.
Good. Fast. Cheap. : Pick two. Or, to quote Star Trek's Montgomery Scott: "I canna change the laws of Physics, Captain!"
It's such a great idea, I'm sure it will be even more popular than the first Microsoft Bob! /sarcasm
If you've been laid off, you've spent your retirement funds, you're car is about to be repossessed, and your house is about to be foreclosed, the *last* thing you want to do is go on that trip to the Bahamas you've been planning to take.
We can not afford to spend all this money exploring space, not right now. We should privatize the whole space program, and let somebody make money off it selling tickets to rich SOB's with more money than sense. Only when it has to make a profit for somebody will it find the efficiency and economy it needs to make real progress. At the moment, it's nothing more than a money pit.
The problem is that humans are hard-wired to see patterns in the world around us, even where there is nothing but chaos. So the whole question of finding intelligence in the patterns around us is moot.
The intelligence is more in the mind of the perceiver than in the design itself. There's no one out there, they're not coming.
...Wait, what's the question again?
And here I thought it was "and to the republic for Richard Stands". Thanks for clearing that up. Always wondered who he was.
What's with all the blue color schemes, anyway? Personally, I hate the blue desktops a lot of people seem to favor, finding them cold and lifeless. At least the browns are refreshingly different. Personally, I customize mine to use shades of tan and light brown with a splash of deep emerald green.
Different drummer, and all that.
"There is no copyright on non-creative works"
If *that* were true, you'd be unable to copyright *any* TV programme!
Clickjacking is about the only way they'd be able to get anyone to give their "informed" consent.
That's why I became a Computer Programmer. Why bother calculating the answer yourself when you can have the computer do it for you? After all, there's code out there for almost any math you're likely to need.
If you can't skip those commercials, then you're using the wrong software to play the DVD, the wrong operating system, or both. I use VLC (it has a Windows version, I believe), which skips right to the DVD menu. Problem solved.
Besides, nowadays, most (but not all) DVD's are made so you can skip those movie previews with the press of the "next chapter" button.
Here's a reason that many on /. will understand.
I watch all my TV shows and movies on a Linux computer hooked up to a 28 inch LCD monitor. Usually, the show is in a window while I do something else (like right now).
Now, at least the DRM on a DVD is pretty much a joke and easy to bypass, but Blue Ray is a different story. I refuse to buy Vista (along with a Blue Ray drive, if any such exists for less than a king's ransom) just for the privilege of watching a movie in the same tiny window I use right now with the equipment and software I already own.
Obligatory Star Wars reference: "This is not the customer you're looking for. Move along."
I have two problems with KDE4, only one of which is due to the KDE people.
First, I believe the development team should have kept it in Beta until it was feature-complete. Feature complete, in my mind, is at minimum the feature set of 3.x. It shouldn't even be a release candidate until "done" and stable.
Second, distros should avoid including immature projects like KDE 4 until they *are* feature complete and stable. Yeah, Kubuntu, I'm looking at you!
Hopefully, the Gnome folks (and Ubuntu) will wait until everything's ready for prime time before releasing 3.0
When I was a kid I was into comic books big-time. Then a friend of my father's recommended Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter series (A Princess of Mars, etc). I always thought this was a good transition from the usual Superman/Spiderman, etc world of childhood fantasy to the more adult fantasy of ERB.
Another recommendation, although I think it's out of print now, is the Tom Swift Junior adventures by Victor Appleton III. Something like 30 books in that series. While definitely sixties/Cold War in many of its plots, the books are on a level that younger, inexperienced readers can enjoy.
The biggest challenge is just getting pre-teens and teenagers to read on their own. Teachers always assign dead-boring books, which I think is a mistake. The trick is to figure out what level of maturity the kid is at, and what their interests are, and tailor the reading list to that. If the kid's into Star Trek or Star Wars, there are lots of well-written novels available in that area. Just remember, your kids are not you. They *may* have different tastes, which you may not appreciate.