Lots of good stuff in this thread but this is the best.
I think the going-to-college-by-default contributes to a lot of our problems with education. When everyone goes to college and pretty much expects to do well (on account of the grade inflation at their high school), the whole system gets dumbed down to the extent that college grads seem to have the same basic english&math skills that incoming freshmen used to have.
Seriously, I've been too afraid to look in the last few years: what % of college grads can write 2 pages of text that argues a point, backs it up with logic and evidence, and is basically "correct" in terms of grammar and word usage.
(Hint: I know it's low 'cause I think only about 40% of CEOs can do this)
My confidence in smooth Linux migrations for ordinary users took a pretty good hit over thanksgiving, when (for kicks mostly) I booted my mother's machine with Austrumi.
My mother uses the computer *only for checking her hotmail and clicking the links she's sent by friends. I don't think she could do a google search without help. I set the firefox startup page to her hotmail account, and for good measure invited her to gmail.
Well a day later I basically had a mutiny on my hands. My mother was very put off about having to find the "Compose" link in gmail. Incidentally, she's also kinda put off by the 2-3 dozen spam messages in her hotmail box every day. My brother insisted that i "put it back". Near as I can tell, he was looking at his fantasy football web pages and got a dialog about mismatched certificates, and concluded that I had broken the machine.
What I'm saying is that there's a class of user for whom change == malfunction. Some of these people are CEOs, btw.
It takes a lot of energy to convince people that using open, standard formats to store files somehow gives "preferential treatment for specific vendor products"
Something tell me that the guys who run multibillion dollar foundation might've thought of that. My guess is that the principle could do more good in the hands of organizations (especially, IMO, OLPC;) than sitting in a bank. That is: even more good that the interest the bank pays on it.
I agree with you. Nobody's going to give Russia an ultimatum unless they do something *really bad, like for example unauthorized copying of people's intellectual property.
I don't know much of the financial details, but I suspect IBM would welcome a Very Quick dispatch of the case.
IBM has already spent quite a bit defending themselves from this BS over three years. They have counterclaims that may allow them to recover expense, but if it goes on too long SCO's net worth (after they are utterly crushed) might not be enough. Keep in mind a big chunk of SCO's gross revenue might be owed to Novell up-front.
"Microsoft's Live.com has my blogs listed in the correct order, while Google does not (Live.com lists scobleizer.com, which is my currently-kept-up-blog first, while Google lists scoble.weblogs.com as first, despite the fact that I haven't updated that blog for more than a year)." -Scoble in TFA
I agree that people should learn more about security in CS classes, but I can't see how this could benefit MS.
Unless they mean "teach security" as in... teach ppl which buttons to click in the Microsoft Genuine Security Center Experience(TM) in order that they might (hopefullly) delay their zombification by a day or two.
Seriously, wouldn't the first lesson in a security course be "you can't audit what you can't see", i.e. the internals of a proprietary OS?
11/28/2006 10:22:00 PM Posted by Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher, Software Engineers
Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months. For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people's minds.
Google Answers taught us exactly how many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline, why flies survive a good microwaving, and why you really shouldn't drink water emitted by your air conditioner. Even closer to home, we learned one afternoon that our building might be on fire.
The people who participated in Google Answers -- more than 800 of them over the years -- are a passionate group committed to helping people find the information they need, and we applaud them for sharing their incredible knowledge with everyone who wrote in.
If you have a chance, we encourage you to browse through the questions posted over the last 4+ years. Although we won't be accepting any new questions, the existing Qs and As are available. We'll stop accepting new Answers to questions by the end of the year.
Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users. We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want.
Dvorak claimed that the GPL somehow made it so that "one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain". If Thurott is clueless, we need a new word for Dvorak.
Wrong. Dvorak persistently gets fundamental, entry-level facts wrong about the matters he reports. There is also a video (I'm too lazy to link it) in which he confesses that his main purpose in writing is to piss people off and drive traffic.
Paul Thurott is an example of someone with a favorable opinion of MS, whose opinion is generally respected here because it is usually well-researched
You're right, the reasons to upgrade your kernel are not always obvious (until e.g. a 2.6 major release version or something) and the benefits are not always tangible.
But the good news is that upgrading the various Linuces is pretty much as easy as "yum upgrade" or the equivalent. So you don't have to fret and stress over whether it'll be worth it.
When nobody knows how the internals really work, the process involves considerable risk.
I don't have a problem with your decision to be locked-in if you want. The problem comes later, when you decide you don't want to be locked in anymore, so you try out OOo and complain that it's "broken" 'cause it can't display your.doc files the way Word did.
The problem is not that $39 is really unreasonable. The problem is that the lock-in makes it so that more and more can be added to that $39 as time rolls on.
Slashdot Mirror
"If our company had a choice we would continue to do business with this vendor."
Lots of good stuff in this thread but this is the best. I think the going-to-college-by-default contributes to a lot of our problems with education. When everyone goes to college and pretty much expects to do well (on account of the grade inflation at their high school), the whole system gets dumbed down to the extent that college grads seem to have the same basic english&math skills that incoming freshmen used to have. Seriously, I've been too afraid to look in the last few years: what % of college grads can write 2 pages of text that argues a point, backs it up with logic and evidence, and is basically "correct" in terms of grammar and word usage. (Hint: I know it's low 'cause I think only about 40% of CEOs can do this)
My confidence in smooth Linux migrations for ordinary users took a pretty good hit over thanksgiving, when (for kicks mostly) I booted my mother's machine with Austrumi. My mother uses the computer *only for checking her hotmail and clicking the links she's sent by friends. I don't think she could do a google search without help. I set the firefox startup page to her hotmail account, and for good measure invited her to gmail. Well a day later I basically had a mutiny on my hands. My mother was very put off about having to find the "Compose" link in gmail. Incidentally, she's also kinda put off by the 2-3 dozen spam messages in her hotmail box every day. My brother insisted that i "put it back". Near as I can tell, he was looking at his fantasy football web pages and got a dialog about mismatched certificates, and concluded that I had broken the machine. What I'm saying is that there's a class of user for whom change == malfunction. Some of these people are CEOs, btw.
heh. you took the words out of my mouth.
In related news, has anyone fixed the usability issues that Dvorak discovered for us in CSS?
It takes a lot of energy to convince people that using open, standard formats to store files somehow gives "preferential treatment for specific vendor products"
Something tell me that the guys who run multibillion dollar foundation might've thought of that. My guess is that the principle could do more good in the hands of organizations (especially, IMO, OLPC ;) than sitting in a bank. That is: even more good that the interest the bank pays on it.
I agree with you. Nobody's going to give Russia an ultimatum unless they do something *really bad, like for example unauthorized copying of people's intellectual property.
I don't know much of the financial details, but I suspect IBM would welcome a Very Quick dispatch of the case.
IBM has already spent quite a bit defending themselves from this BS over three years. They have counterclaims that may allow them to recover expense, but if it goes on too long SCO's net worth (after they are utterly crushed) might not be enough. Keep in mind a big chunk of SCO's gross revenue might be owed to Novell up-front.
"For them it is like the court case that found MS guilty of abusing its monolopic position in the PC OS market never happened."
That may be because the 2001 settlement took all of the teeth out of the remedy, so MS may as well have been acquitted.
lol. I want my 30 seconds and 15 IQ points back.
"Microsoft's Live.com has my blogs listed in the correct order, while Google does not (Live.com lists scobleizer.com, which is my currently-kept-up-blog first, while Google lists scoble.weblogs.com as first, despite the fact that I haven't updated that blog for more than a year)." -Scoble in TFA
& mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search- 8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=f irefox-a
I searched "scoble blog" at live.com and google
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=scoble+blog
http://www.google.com/search?q=scoble+blog&ie=utf
both have the weblogs link first.
I agree that people should learn more about security in CS classes, but I can't see how this could benefit MS.
Unless they mean "teach security" as in... teach ppl which buttons to click in the Microsoft Genuine Security Center Experience(TM) in order that they might (hopefullly) delay their zombification by a day or two.
Seriously, wouldn't the first lesson in a security course be "you can't audit what you can't see", i.e. the internals of a proprietary OS?
That is pretty much all. I played it with my brothers last weekend. Good God, I pity its competitors.
Good luck. I never quite got the appeal of Ubuntu (pretty die-hard fedora guy), but I understand it's helping many such as yourself cut the shackles.
This issue is quite common. I don't know the status of Cedega, as I'm not much of a gamer, but I undertand it's very useful.
Make it better. The less piracy of windows there is in the world, the more people will get into free alternatives
Adieu to Google Answers
11/28/2006 10:22:00 PM
Posted by Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher, Software Engineers
Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months. For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people's minds.
Google Answers taught us exactly how many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline, why flies survive a good microwaving, and why you really shouldn't drink water emitted by your air conditioner. Even closer to home, we learned one afternoon that our building might be on fire.
The people who participated in Google Answers -- more than 800 of them over the years -- are a passionate group committed to helping people find the information they need, and we applaud them for sharing their incredible knowledge with everyone who wrote in.
If you have a chance, we encourage you to browse through the questions posted over the last 4+ years. Although we won't be accepting any new questions, the existing Qs and As are available. We'll stop accepting new Answers to questions by the end of the year.
Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users. We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want.
Dvorak claimed that the GPL somehow made it so that "one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain". If Thurott is clueless, we need a new word for Dvorak.
"we're competing with windows 98 on looks"e lease=645&slide=2
who's this *we?
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?r
"Right, because there's no tech company in the world that actually innovates"
... I'm too lazy to look. Are you?
Did GP say 100% of the feats in engineering or "the finest feats"
Wrong. Dvorak persistently gets fundamental, entry-level facts wrong about the matters he reports. There is also a video (I'm too lazy to link it) in which he confesses that his main purpose in writing is to piss people off and drive traffic.
Paul Thurott is an example of someone with a favorable opinion of MS, whose opinion is generally respected here because it is usually well-researched
You're right, the reasons to upgrade your kernel are not always obvious (until e.g. a 2.6 major release version or something) and the benefits are not always tangible.
But the good news is that upgrading the various Linuces is pretty much as easy as "yum upgrade" or the equivalent. So you don't have to fret and stress over whether it'll be worth it.
When nobody knows how the internals really work, the process involves considerable risk.
Firefox prevented this site from opening 3 popup windows.
Blatant Shill. Stop linking him. Stop completely. Please
I don't have a problem with your decision to be locked-in if you want. The problem comes later, when you decide you don't want to be locked in anymore, so you try out OOo and complain that it's "broken" 'cause it can't display your .doc files the way Word did.
The problem is not that $39 is really unreasonable. The problem is that the lock-in makes it so that more and more can be added to that $39 as time rolls on.