So why is there development going into the Mono framework? Why is not everybody using a cross-platform Microsoft.NET implementation? Because it's not free, it's riddled with patents and the licensing is very restrictive. Even the Mono framework is not free from patent encumbrance even though Microsoft "promises" to not do it. As history has shown, Microsoft (and other companies) will break their promises whenever money gets tight.
That's Miguel's problem and the reason many don't choose the.NET platform. I don't choose.NET in my projects for the same reason.
I got the census papers. Besides the obvious: what's your name, race and address there are no other questions. I can lie about race if I wanted to because it's saying which race you consider yourself to be part of. I'm not a US citizen, yet I consider myself part of one of the races on the list. If you're afraid you're going to be corralled up, you could do the same thing, say you are "Other" or whatever is closest to your skin color (African-American/Negro (yes that's one of the options on there) for anyone not-white and not-native american)
All other questions (SSN, birth date, birth place) are not part of the census so if anyone asks they are not acting on behalf of the census office.
It also circumvents current laws that most countries have regarding home copies (either subsidized through taxes levied on blank media) and fair use by stating that all copies (regardless of commercial gain) are 'illegal'.
Actually, back in the day, all we booted from was SSD (a few kB of ROM) because spinning media (floppy's and 'hard' drives) were freakin' expensive, not to mention gigantic and slow. This made stuff like instant-boot very normal to have back in the day. In the mean time we decayed to using ever faster spinning media until the hardware couldn't go any faster (15k drives since 1997) and the capacity couldn't increase (perpendicular recording a couple of years ago) and we waited minutes for our OS'es to boot. Now we're back at SSD's which don't really scale very well for large amounts of data (smaller chips means more expensive and more potential errors) until somebody finds a better format for storing large amounts of data cheaply (probably in the realm of 3D optical storage) which will slow us down again a bit.
No. This could mean two things - somebody sues and whatever games/platforms the now 'closed' engine runs becomes open source or somebody sues and EULA's/software licenses get declared non-binding.
I believe the reason the Mac does this is because you don't need those 3 buttons as often. According to the Apple Design Guidelines, the initial window size (when you open the program) should be adjusted to the size of the content that's going to be in it. Scrolling to left-right or excessive whitespace should not exist (according to the specs). Since the underlying layers use PDF-like properties to render window content, all content should be uniform regardless of the media it's being carried on (print or screen).
I don't know if there are similar guidelines in Gnome/Windows but it seems that a lot of developers on those platforms don't really care so you're continuously adjusting windows, so it should probably be on the right.
Quite honestly, we need to get rid of those people like Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Fox networks. They do nothing good and are probably the main cause of current religious and racial influence on the political process in this country - besides also being a source for a lot of Comedy Central writers.
I would be glad if they left, so they can go live in a country without health care, where the government doesn't socialize or meddle with anything, where you are free to carry and use your guns. You know, places like Somalia, Iraq, Mexico or Sudan.
I would think that over the next 10 years, most people in the Westerner world will have some form of a internet-enabled device and know how to use a website. Currently there are some people that don't - those people that exited the workforce before the early 90's (which would mean they are currently aged 70+) - everyone else including my grandmother has or knows at least how to use a computer in some fashion.
What would've ended up happening is that they would've purchased 15k licenses for Windows desktop @ $500/piece and 500 licenses for Windows Server @ $10000, 100 SQL licenses @ $5000, 200 SharePoints @ $15000 and 30000 all-in-one CAL's @ $1200/client. Then they would've sent disks to each department so they could install them but some local departments would've already purchased what they needed on their department credit cards, a bunch of them would go to Dell and buy all new machines and servers with licenses so they can run the new software only to discover it's already been pre-installed and overall maybe 1000 desktops and 50 servers would get the software with licenses central IT purchased.
This happens all over in government, educational institutions and large companies. The organization ends up spending 1000% of the necessary cost on the 'upgrade' while Microsoft double-dips on just about every level of the organization. But the higher-ups don't know/don't want to know so nothing ever gets done about it and the process repeats every 3 years.
Whether they would've stayed with Microsoft or not, the overhaul was necessary and would've saved them money no matter what. Switching to another platform doesn't really matter - there is virtually no cost associated with 'user-training' - that is FUD spread by the sales associates of whoever tries to sell you their stuff and maybe an excuse from the end-users that don't want to work, people really aren't that stupid, they will figure out what they need to do to get their job done or they will deserve getting fired for not doing their job
Processor speeds are increasing. However they are irrelevant for most home-and-garden computer varieties. Heck, I actively look for processors that have less power and are smaller for home (Mac Mini vs. Mid-Tower).
I also work with a biomedics lab and I'm actively looking for a "quiet" 4-way or 8-way workstation which can also fit a couple of nVidia Tesla's - something you need a 1.5-2kW power supply for. I'm waiting for the new Xeon's to come out first though since they think the current generation 2-way quad cores are not enough for them and a small cluster of them doesn't have fast enough interconnects.
You have possession of the car - take the frackin' thing out as soon as it is legally 'yours' (whether or not it's still being financed - do not do it on lease cars).
Yes, because you would essentially become a movie theater. I think all current (legal) DVD's have the warning that you can use it for private viewings but not for public viewing in movie theaters, churches, festivals, bars,... because at that point you would have to pay a different set of royalties.
That's the same mentality that short-term managers have had for the last few decades and businesses are currently reaping the problems associated with it (Microsoft format/vendor lock-in, riding/investing on a bubble, offering long-standing companies up on the stock market altar to gain IPO money - then slowly dying).
As always, government is a few years behind on inheriting those business-processes so over the next few decades you'll see the government slowly killing itself while selling out to the highest bidder.
Same thing we have been saying for years: Technology advances, get over it, find a better business model or quit. Buggy whips!
The problem is, the current market doesn't need the middle man anymore. The middle man makes the media crappy and monotone to appeal for a large audience so they can make a quick buck, people want better stuff. Eventually the pendulum is going to swing back as 'indie' filmmakers trying to make a quick buck are going to be distributing their own stuff overloading the consumer with crappy, monotone media - the consumer is going to start looking at a more centralized source which will aggregate several of these media sources and filter out the bad stuff until they see the need to make a quick buck by overloading their loyal customers with crap again.
Eventually it all comes around but for now we don't need the middle man anymore. Just as we don't need buggy makers anymore but we have wanted fossil-fuel-powered buggy makers for the last few decades and the next few decades we're going to need electric-powered buggy makers. All-in-all, we need buggy's, it's just that the type and kind has changed.
I've got LED's too and unless you buy the very cheap ones not even available at Home Depot, they are very good. They are much faster than CFL's (full brightness almost instantaneous), they use 3W vs. 60W and give out very good quality light (halogen-like). The only problem is that they're very directional (15 degree angle) so they are only good for track and recessed lighting (spotlights).
Philips also makes omnidirectional chandelier lights (1W) which they finally made dimmable so I can try them out whenever I got 6*$20 to spare.
I don't know. Users don't seem to be able to 'break' Linux. I have installed Linux on a couple of family members' computers and I haven't had a single complaint since. Also at work, we use both Mac and Linux with about 3 Windows workstations, 8 dual boots and 6 virtual machines. I am at the Windows installs at least every other day troubleshooting some type of complaint, error or problem. I am only at the Mac's when Adobe messes up (Found out yesterday that InDesign doesn't support scratch disks larger than 2TB) and I am only at the Linux workstations when somebody doesn't understand a MATLAB error message (which has been once last year).
I think the main problem with Windows in my environment is even though people are smart (PhD's and whatnot), Windows likes to retain settings from one session to the other (volume settings, display settings, hardware settings,...) and the interfaces to change those settings are very inconveniently placed, inconsistent, change by vendor (sound card interfaces change between the RealTek, Creative and Microsoft drivers, ATi and NVidia also like their own control panels) and not very unified (the selection of the sound card responsible for output is in control panel, while all the volume controls are in a separate window). Scripting of system functions is hard to do (unlike Apple's AppleScript or Linux/Unix you-can-always-do-everything-from-command-line) and central control is expensive (you need Windows Server @ the price of 2 more machines and a full-time admin to manage it.
I wonder how the track width across different countries is going to work. If I remember correctly, that was a similar problem when connecting the UK to Europe. On the other hand, if this becomes cheap enough for car travel (which it probably already is), Eurasia might become a unified economic powerhouse over the next half century while the US will become a third world country (unless the US decides to invest in itself).
I used to work for a contracting company and what the customer pays is on average 2 to 5 times as much as you earn. I don't really see the point in anybody outsourcing to a contract company except maybe for temp jobs. However I see people that have been contracting for the same company over 10 years. Think of the money they could've saved by just hiring them outright.
Most likely none. You will still have to pay your $20 co-pay or pay up until you meet the deductible full charge. The insurance company however will have reduced rates for these types of service provided by their doctors. So they will be billed less ($100 instead of $500) and they will be able to generate more money. Next thing they're going to start staffing their own 'doctors' (probably med students that just finished school) on an hourly rate with a 6 months turnover (so they won't have to provide benefits) and later some manager is going to find out that doctors in India charge 300 rupees instead of 300 dollars per visit.
Depending on what you're used to on existing devices and who is typing, these results will vary wildly. I'm used to a physical keyboard on my phone so I have trouble whenever I try to use something else. I tried tactile feedback screens once and the vibrations felt funny making me go even slower.
I've got a really flat, sensitive keyboard with repeat all the way up and key delay all the way down and a trackball mouse. Most people that try to type on it or use my mouse can't because the keyboard is too sensitive and they don't know what to do with the mouse (some try to move the whole unit, some just look at it and seem to poke at it). I however can type faster on it than any other keyboard and be precise in even difficult 3D shooters.
These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens. Not everybody implements the on-screen keyboard in the same way either.
Dunno what the big deal is though, this law would bring nothing new.
As a legal immigrant I already have such a card. It has biometric information encoded in the biggest magnetic strip ever (practically the whole back of the card) as well as a visible picture and a visible fingerprint. The biometric information you can get out of the magnet card: prints for all 10 fingers + palm and retina scans, home country, alien number, birthdate, sex, immigration status, date of approval and when approval expires. DHS also keeps on file my blood type, pre-existing conditions, results from blood tests (STD's etc.), original birth certificates, marriage certificates, both US and foreign police reports, birth certificates, children and parents, transcript of interviews, foreign and US school records...
So they want to phase it in among 'illegal' immigrants? Well, that's gonna be difficult since they're ILLEGAL. They already are circumventing the current laws which state that you have to get such a card (also known as a green card or work visa) before you even start working in the US. Most of them would not be eligible to work in the US anyway but they're here anyway.
I am turning away from classic RAID1 and RAID5 for good though. I manage a couple of terabytes worth of data currently on FibreChannel with dedicated RAID controllers, redundant BBU, RAID checksum scrubs and all the bells and whistles $20-50k per 3U can buy and it has happened more than once that a hard drive in an array (most RAID5 arrays are 7 disks or smaller, RAID1 arrays are usually 2+1 disks) had failed and during restore you "notice" kind of really hard another disk had rotted bits or somehow manages to return corrupt data resulting in loss of the whole array.
Then there is the issue that vendors will either go out of business or take certain products of the market (we have only 7 years worth of hardware) and then you have to start looking at eBay to find second-hand replacement parts.
I started using ZFS on a backup system and I really like the scrubbing features and end-to-end checksums. Sure it has it's caveats but it is really nice about letting you know when something is going wrong and it works with the simplest, cheapest hardware around. For the price of 2TB proprietary solutions I got 24TB worth of space.
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So why is there development going into the Mono framework? Why is not everybody using a cross-platform Microsoft .NET implementation? Because it's not free, it's riddled with patents and the licensing is very restrictive. Even the Mono framework is not free from patent encumbrance even though Microsoft "promises" to not do it. As history has shown, Microsoft (and other companies) will break their promises whenever money gets tight.
That's Miguel's problem and the reason many don't choose the .NET platform. I don't choose .NET in my projects for the same reason.
I got the census papers. Besides the obvious: what's your name, race and address there are no other questions. I can lie about race if I wanted to because it's saying which race you consider yourself to be part of. I'm not a US citizen, yet I consider myself part of one of the races on the list. If you're afraid you're going to be corralled up, you could do the same thing, say you are "Other" or whatever is closest to your skin color (African-American/Negro (yes that's one of the options on there) for anyone not-white and not-native american)
All other questions (SSN, birth date, birth place) are not part of the census so if anyone asks they are not acting on behalf of the census office.
It also circumvents current laws that most countries have regarding home copies (either subsidized through taxes levied on blank media) and fair use by stating that all copies (regardless of commercial gain) are 'illegal'.
Actually, back in the day, all we booted from was SSD (a few kB of ROM) because spinning media (floppy's and 'hard' drives) were freakin' expensive, not to mention gigantic and slow. This made stuff like instant-boot very normal to have back in the day. In the mean time we decayed to using ever faster spinning media until the hardware couldn't go any faster (15k drives since 1997) and the capacity couldn't increase (perpendicular recording a couple of years ago) and we waited minutes for our OS'es to boot. Now we're back at SSD's which don't really scale very well for large amounts of data (smaller chips means more expensive and more potential errors) until somebody finds a better format for storing large amounts of data cheaply (probably in the realm of 3D optical storage) which will slow us down again a bit.
No. This could mean two things - somebody sues and whatever games/platforms the now 'closed' engine runs becomes open source or somebody sues and EULA's/software licenses get declared non-binding.
I believe the reason the Mac does this is because you don't need those 3 buttons as often. According to the Apple Design Guidelines, the initial window size (when you open the program) should be adjusted to the size of the content that's going to be in it. Scrolling to left-right or excessive whitespace should not exist (according to the specs). Since the underlying layers use PDF-like properties to render window content, all content should be uniform regardless of the media it's being carried on (print or screen).
I don't know if there are similar guidelines in Gnome/Windows but it seems that a lot of developers on those platforms don't really care so you're continuously adjusting windows, so it should probably be on the right.
Quite honestly, we need to get rid of those people like Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Fox networks. They do nothing good and are probably the main cause of current religious and racial influence on the political process in this country - besides also being a source for a lot of Comedy Central writers.
I would be glad if they left, so they can go live in a country without health care, where the government doesn't socialize or meddle with anything, where you are free to carry and use your guns. You know, places like Somalia, Iraq, Mexico or Sudan.
I would think that over the next 10 years, most people in the Westerner world will have some form of a internet-enabled device and know how to use a website. Currently there are some people that don't - those people that exited the workforce before the early 90's (which would mean they are currently aged 70+) - everyone else including my grandmother has or knows at least how to use a computer in some fashion.
What would've ended up happening is that they would've purchased 15k licenses for Windows desktop @ $500/piece and 500 licenses for Windows Server @ $10000, 100 SQL licenses @ $5000, 200 SharePoints @ $15000 and 30000 all-in-one CAL's @ $1200/client. Then they would've sent disks to each department so they could install them but some local departments would've already purchased what they needed on their department credit cards, a bunch of them would go to Dell and buy all new machines and servers with licenses so they can run the new software only to discover it's already been pre-installed and overall maybe 1000 desktops and 50 servers would get the software with licenses central IT purchased.
This happens all over in government, educational institutions and large companies. The organization ends up spending 1000% of the necessary cost on the 'upgrade' while Microsoft double-dips on just about every level of the organization. But the higher-ups don't know/don't want to know so nothing ever gets done about it and the process repeats every 3 years.
Whether they would've stayed with Microsoft or not, the overhaul was necessary and would've saved them money no matter what. Switching to another platform doesn't really matter - there is virtually no cost associated with 'user-training' - that is FUD spread by the sales associates of whoever tries to sell you their stuff and maybe an excuse from the end-users that don't want to work, people really aren't that stupid, they will figure out what they need to do to get their job done or they will deserve getting fired for not doing their job
Processor speeds are increasing. However they are irrelevant for most home-and-garden computer varieties. Heck, I actively look for processors that have less power and are smaller for home (Mac Mini vs. Mid-Tower).
I also work with a biomedics lab and I'm actively looking for a "quiet" 4-way or 8-way workstation which can also fit a couple of nVidia Tesla's - something you need a 1.5-2kW power supply for. I'm waiting for the new Xeon's to come out first though since they think the current generation 2-way quad cores are not enough for them and a small cluster of them doesn't have fast enough interconnects.
You have possession of the car - take the frackin' thing out as soon as it is legally 'yours' (whether or not it's still being financed - do not do it on lease cars).
Yes, because you would essentially become a movie theater. I think all current (legal) DVD's have the warning that you can use it for private viewings but not for public viewing in movie theaters, churches, festivals, bars, ... because at that point you would have to pay a different set of royalties.
That's the same mentality that short-term managers have had for the last few decades and businesses are currently reaping the problems associated with it (Microsoft format/vendor lock-in, riding/investing on a bubble, offering long-standing companies up on the stock market altar to gain IPO money - then slowly dying).
As always, government is a few years behind on inheriting those business-processes so over the next few decades you'll see the government slowly killing itself while selling out to the highest bidder.
Belgium? (only those acquainted with Belgian immigration problems would understand this)
Same thing we have been saying for years: Technology advances, get over it, find a better business model or quit. Buggy whips!
The problem is, the current market doesn't need the middle man anymore. The middle man makes the media crappy and monotone to appeal for a large audience so they can make a quick buck, people want better stuff. Eventually the pendulum is going to swing back as 'indie' filmmakers trying to make a quick buck are going to be distributing their own stuff overloading the consumer with crappy, monotone media - the consumer is going to start looking at a more centralized source which will aggregate several of these media sources and filter out the bad stuff until they see the need to make a quick buck by overloading their loyal customers with crap again.
Eventually it all comes around but for now we don't need the middle man anymore. Just as we don't need buggy makers anymore but we have wanted fossil-fuel-powered buggy makers for the last few decades and the next few decades we're going to need electric-powered buggy makers. All-in-all, we need buggy's, it's just that the type and kind has changed.
I've got LED's too and unless you buy the very cheap ones not even available at Home Depot, they are very good. They are much faster than CFL's (full brightness almost instantaneous), they use 3W vs. 60W and give out very good quality light (halogen-like). The only problem is that they're very directional (15 degree angle) so they are only good for track and recessed lighting (spotlights).
Philips also makes omnidirectional chandelier lights (1W) which they finally made dimmable so I can try them out whenever I got 6*$20 to spare.
I don't know. Users don't seem to be able to 'break' Linux. I have installed Linux on a couple of family members' computers and I haven't had a single complaint since. Also at work, we use both Mac and Linux with about 3 Windows workstations, 8 dual boots and 6 virtual machines. I am at the Windows installs at least every other day troubleshooting some type of complaint, error or problem. I am only at the Mac's when Adobe messes up (Found out yesterday that InDesign doesn't support scratch disks larger than 2TB) and I am only at the Linux workstations when somebody doesn't understand a MATLAB error message (which has been once last year).
I think the main problem with Windows in my environment is even though people are smart (PhD's and whatnot), Windows likes to retain settings from one session to the other (volume settings, display settings, hardware settings, ...) and the interfaces to change those settings are very inconveniently placed, inconsistent, change by vendor (sound card interfaces change between the RealTek, Creative and Microsoft drivers, ATi and NVidia also like their own control panels) and not very unified (the selection of the sound card responsible for output is in control panel, while all the volume controls are in a separate window). Scripting of system functions is hard to do (unlike Apple's AppleScript or Linux/Unix you-can-always-do-everything-from-command-line) and central control is expensive (you need Windows Server @ the price of 2 more machines and a full-time admin to manage it.
I wonder how the track width across different countries is going to work. If I remember correctly, that was a similar problem when connecting the UK to Europe. On the other hand, if this becomes cheap enough for car travel (which it probably already is), Eurasia might become a unified economic powerhouse over the next half century while the US will become a third world country (unless the US decides to invest in itself).
I used to work for a contracting company and what the customer pays is on average 2 to 5 times as much as you earn. I don't really see the point in anybody outsourcing to a contract company except maybe for temp jobs. However I see people that have been contracting for the same company over 10 years. Think of the money they could've saved by just hiring them outright.
Most likely none. You will still have to pay your $20 co-pay or pay up until you meet the deductible full charge. The insurance company however will have reduced rates for these types of service provided by their doctors. So they will be billed less ($100 instead of $500) and they will be able to generate more money. Next thing they're going to start staffing their own 'doctors' (probably med students that just finished school) on an hourly rate with a 6 months turnover (so they won't have to provide benefits) and later some manager is going to find out that doctors in India charge 300 rupees instead of 300 dollars per visit.
seven days after he'd being given two weeks notice that he was being dismissed
So, you have this super-secure database system that is really important so the country doesn't get overrun by terrorists and then you do this!
Congratulations, you've just defined Objective-C/Smalltalk/PHP Classes & Functions and probably a host of other so-called 'object-oriented' languages.
This IDE just seems to make OO simpler by diagramming your program ala Visio instead of coding the interactions.
Depending on what you're used to on existing devices and who is typing, these results will vary wildly. I'm used to a physical keyboard on my phone so I have trouble whenever I try to use something else. I tried tactile feedback screens once and the vibrations felt funny making me go even slower.
I've got a really flat, sensitive keyboard with repeat all the way up and key delay all the way down and a trackball mouse. Most people that try to type on it or use my mouse can't because the keyboard is too sensitive and they don't know what to do with the mouse (some try to move the whole unit, some just look at it and seem to poke at it). I however can type faster on it than any other keyboard and be precise in even difficult 3D shooters.
These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens. Not everybody implements the on-screen keyboard in the same way either.
Dunno what the big deal is though, this law would bring nothing new.
As a legal immigrant I already have such a card. It has biometric information encoded in the biggest magnetic strip ever (practically the whole back of the card) as well as a visible picture and a visible fingerprint. The biometric information you can get out of the magnet card: prints for all 10 fingers + palm and retina scans, home country, alien number, birthdate, sex, immigration status, date of approval and when approval expires. DHS also keeps on file my blood type, pre-existing conditions, results from blood tests (STD's etc.), original birth certificates, marriage certificates, both US and foreign police reports, birth certificates, children and parents, transcript of interviews, foreign and US school records...
So they want to phase it in among 'illegal' immigrants? Well, that's gonna be difficult since they're ILLEGAL. They already are circumventing the current laws which state that you have to get such a card (also known as a green card or work visa) before you even start working in the US. Most of them would not be eligible to work in the US anyway but they're here anyway.
I am turning away from classic RAID1 and RAID5 for good though. I manage a couple of terabytes worth of data currently on FibreChannel with dedicated RAID controllers, redundant BBU, RAID checksum scrubs and all the bells and whistles $20-50k per 3U can buy and it has happened more than once that a hard drive in an array (most RAID5 arrays are 7 disks or smaller, RAID1 arrays are usually 2+1 disks) had failed and during restore you "notice" kind of really hard another disk had rotted bits or somehow manages to return corrupt data resulting in loss of the whole array.
Then there is the issue that vendors will either go out of business or take certain products of the market (we have only 7 years worth of hardware) and then you have to start looking at eBay to find second-hand replacement parts.
I started using ZFS on a backup system and I really like the scrubbing features and end-to-end checksums. Sure it has it's caveats but it is really nice about letting you know when something is going wrong and it works with the simplest, cheapest hardware around. For the price of 2TB proprietary solutions I got 24TB worth of space.