I guess you'd rather have an amateur operate on you than a professional? Or how about an amateur build a bridge?
Professional means something more than what you ascribe to it. I understand that in our modern world, people use words willy nilly without any consideration for its actual meaning. Often professional means some formal education, experience and recognition by peers of this achievement.
This is the case with doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants. And if go to continental Europe, with actors, dancers, musicians, etc.
Peer review systems are not broken by pay per view models. Most peer reviewers are other professionals in that particular field. They already have access to the necessary journals, and most likely have already read the studies being sited by the one being reviewed. They know the assumptions, have their own political / scientific agenda, and want to put their 'mark' on the study. That is what complicates the process. But by and large it works.
Often the reviewers do point out flawed assumptions, a need for subsequent investigations, further analysis, etc. This is important. We can easily get into a zone where we see only our point of view.
The pay per view model interferes when the layman wants to read primary publications. This can be useful, but not normally. We need to realize that in biology, chemistry, etc. the disciplines have become so specialized that even other scientists working in a similar field cannot provide good critique of the data analysis and discussion. I don't mean to sound elitist here at all. It would be great if people were really interested in a topic that they would read a lot of what's published.
But in this day, with the sheer number of publications involved, even the primary researchers are having a hard time keeping up with the publications. Sometimes there are over 10 primary publications in a month on a particular topic. To read each and analyze it, while reviewing other studies, plus doing your own research. Wow...that is not easy.
I'm not sure where you got that idea from. "Typically" implies majority. The truth is a number of homeless about equal to the mentally ill do not like shelters because they are afraid of them. (I say this from having worked at CMHA.)
Shelters aren't hotel rooms. You have 20 - 30 packed into a room (within fire limits) and you rarely get a secure locker to put your belongings in. Also, in the cases where you do, it isn't a valet. No one is there to make sure you aren't persuaded to open your locker.
The available options are quite poor. I'm not saying they need Royal York treatment here. But a better option with some high guarantees of safety will see a number going to shelters during the cold winter months. It is a measure of a society's progress when you see how cities treat their most vulnerable. Toronto does a horrible job and too many people think, 'If they just try, they'll be fine.' It is a serious problem with difficult but attainable solutions - if we want it.
No. I don't mean it's the same thing as coping the CD. But from the point of view of the creator, it can be the same thing. I'm looking at it this way:
Forgetting plagarism, conside this scenario: I wrote an A paper and then you copied it, sold it without my permission and made some money from it. I think that's the same as copying a CD and selling it and making a money off of it.
The basis of the article is Windows XP and how great it is and how useful it'll be for the user. He completely ignores any of the new research being done in the psychology, or HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)field.
We're at the dawn of how our lives will be shaped by computer. Have you ever wonderered why you need to use the crappy keyboard/mouse interface to do stuff on the computer? How about why do you need to phone the video store to check if they have the movie you want in stock? I can think a ton of things that have the data in digitial format but don't have the connection from the datasource to the user. That's going to be the next big change.
Of course, computers will get new OS's, new games and new toys. Then imagine the day when everything is integrated. We are no where near that day and as that starts to happen we'll notice major improvements. Another thing to note, we think a computer is a commodity. Unfortunately, it's not in a lot of other places. It'll be as computer start to become really cheap. That should make things very interesting.
Finally, when we are able to access information smartly we'll see improvements too.
A lot of people are jumping up and down claiming that addiction is bad and that one should not have this problem. Can you ask the successful entrepreneur how many hours they spent working on or coding that project that everyone said would fail? How about the virtuoso pianist? But would we say they were wrong to spend that time? I don't think we would. I definitely would not.
Addiction can be really helpful. I think a lot of these people who get addicted to games, ebay, chatting, etc. have a very introspective personality or don't have a large social circle. It's not their personality that's flawed but just their lifestyle. Having known a bunch of people who've gotten addicted, I can say that it just takes time or the right change. This girl I knew really was into chatting. Once she met a guy she really liked, she pretty much got over it. Similar things have happend to a bunch of other people.
And to leave you, how many of you guys go to Chapters or Barnes and Noble regularly? If you do, you probably know of people who go and spend all their freetime there. They are addicted to reading. I guess context makes all the differenec.
Here in Ontario, there is a Software Engineering degree that is acredited as an official Engineering degree. After graduating from that, if you're going to be building large scale public software you'd have to get a P.Eng. That's basically a license to practise your engineering discpline when it affects large number of Doe's.
Perhaps the IEEE legislation will open that up to a large number of the practising software engineers in the world. But in the end, most engineers won't need it. Only the manager who'll be putting his neck on the line will need to have the designation just like it's with P.Eng.
True. You're talking about real large scale software. I know of a couple of companies who actually do the rental model. For some reason, the customer actually thinks this is better. The problem is, since it takes 2 years and millions to deploy, once it's deployed, they'll be happy to do anything for you:)
What you're suggesting is a maintanace nightmare. I've been involved in projects where the customer gets the code. They hire some 3rd rate engineers to modify the source and then call us when something goes wrong. Do you know how long it takes for us to even find out that they modified our code? We can't have a clause that says once you touch code, we don't help you because we do charge large amounts.
That being said, going open source for general purpose software is a great idea. Some of the software that we've made would be great for open source. It can be used across verticals and the equivalent open source project is either still in the infancy or is just bad. At another company I worked, there was a proposal to do just that. I hope they followed through.
I'm confused about what you're saying. Are you saying you break your problem into small chunks, solve those chunks in the language most suitable, and put them together? If so, how do you call the other chunks? Using exec() or other synonymous calls or using CORBA or SOAP? That's the main problem I have with this.
If I'm solving a large problem, your solution makes sense. I can use CORBA or SOAP to do the parameter passing and the solution will be elegant. The only problem will be the learning curve. I'd have to learn the protocol used. However, it'll pay off in the long run because each is solving the problem the most elegantly. You'd save performance and maintence costs. (Provided you're actually know the multiple languages well and even then, in a large team it'll be iffy.) In a large program, using exec() is probably not acceptable. (Unless, you really know what you're doing.)
But what if I'm solving a small problem that nonetheless can be broken down into smaller chunks that can be best solved using different languages. Would I? Probably not, because the solution you're proposing would complicate the entire development cycle. I'd have to build the small chunks and then try and assimilate them together some how. The problems that I can encounter are a lot and it's not worthit. Also, the increase in performance will be negligible because it is a small problem.
Having said that, for fun, I'm thinking of doing what you're proposing. I know it'll be complicated and I'll have headaches, but it's fun programming something like that.
I think this depends on where you're working and what kind of mentality the company has. I work at a Healtcare software company. We don't encourage people to stay late just for the fun of it, and we have no flex time. This means, pretty might the entire team is here by 10 and gone by 6. This helps us get to know each other better because usually as we all get in, we can chit chat a bit as a team. When you have flex time, people are coming and going at various time. I've worked at companies where I see people only at meetings. I don't think you can get to know people that way.
Another factor is age. Honestly, someone in late 20's to mid 30's are interested in a lot different things than people who are younger. People who are in their early 20's generally aren't interested in the weekend bbq. They have plans to go out somewhere, either clubbing or some party. Not to say that the older people don't, but they just don't as often. But for the people in the older 20's certainly go out in the weekend. It's not common in my team for someone to drop by to someone elses home in the evening for dinner or some drinks.
But finally, it is a symptom of the field we're in. A lot of people, because of various factors end up working long hours. When you do this, the last thing you want to do is meet your coworker again in the evening.
Unlike what the article says, Java does have a byte keyword.
Re:The true potential for the XBOX
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
I can build a cheap computer to play MP3's for maybe 250. It does nothing else mind you. And why the heck would I use a computer as a DVD player? I have a family. I work on the computer when my family wants to watch movies. I'm not going to stop working so they can watch movies. Ditto with music.
Seriously, I know of very few people who're seriously interested in having a computer in the living room to do everything. Most people like dedicated hardware that can communicate with each other. (That's where blue tooth/802.11 come it)
I believe I mentioned that. Handshaking is the exact scheme I described when I said the deviecs just need to synchronize with other devices it wants to talk to.
The main problem.
on
Clockless Chips
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The main problem with async. design is the asycnchronous part of it. In a typical computer, you have tons of parts that you use interchangably. These parts have operate at different speeds. How would two devices working at different speeds operate smoothly. Generally, this is very hard. But the thing is they can: But the devices themselves need to agree on a few things. But async. design is higly complicated because in a clockless environment you have to pretty much garauntee something like "I'll do this within 2 equivalent clock cycle." or have other types of signalling negotiation. You can't clock on a "clock" to do stuff. You have to clock on a "async" signal.
This is the problem in the large. When you go down to the chip level, there are tons of nightmares. There can be feedback loops causing race conditions that only occur at certain times. There are load problems that might increase complexity so much more than equivalent problems in a clocked design. Clocked design makes things a lot simpler and still designing a chip is extremely diffucult.
But the future I don't think is in clockless design, but "careful clock" design. For example, there are chips which are smart enough to disable sending the clock to certain part of a chip when it knows those parts will never be used. That saves a lot of power. There are chips which aim to spread the clock around carefully thus increasing the speed. And remember, almost 50% of the power in a chip is lost due to the wiring!
Actually, I don't think it's sex per say that parents want to censor. It's usually the pointlessness of it. I see a lot of shows and movies where there's a sex scene for no absolute reason. This is higly relevant to a child because he/she doesn't yet have a viewpoint on sexuality. It's my opinion that if you show a child that sex is just sex with nothing else, the child will learn that. I'd rather filter it out and have my child learn about it and after, he or she can watch it and not really be affected by it.
The same goes for pretty much everything else. There are movies where sex is used well (very few movies though) and those ones, I have no problems with my child watching it.
I completely agree. How is this "news for nerds" or "Stuff that matters"? I couldn't care less about Worldcom and what it's like to work there. I hear people bitching about new articles on Slashdot, but honestly, this is a new low.
But it changes the set. The fact that it doesn't change 0 to N is irrevelant. In set theory, once you add that N+1 element, the set's identity has changed. Once it's identity changes, as far as you should be concerned, it's a new set unless you want to prune the set for each operation.
What you're talking about has zero revelance to programming. Have you ever programmed a huge system? You might have existing hooks in the system but the fact is, when you add new code, shit happens. That's the fact of life. Taking advantage of new hooks adds new states to your program. For a utter garauntee that the system is stable, you'll have to traverse each state and each path in the system. That is not realistic.
A better advice would be, don't switch to the new kernel until there have been real life evidence that the system works. Btw, you're right, we need to add new stuff to the kernel. We need to keep the kernel as up to date as possible. But when you release a stable kernel, the only thing you do to it is add bug fixes. You DO NOT rewrite huge sections of it. Because when you do, the program states have changed and you're testing from ground zero. (Adding bug fixes usually shouldn't change program states. It just fixes problems with the states or state path traversal.)
Right now there are companies exclusively in the business of doing this. There is very little mathematical challenge here. Psychologists and linguists have researched phenomes and related material pretty well.
But there are some implementation issues here. Example, if you have GNU. How do you say it? What about if you have Jekka Pukka Sarasate? If you were to take the literal English pronounciation you might never even be able to understand what it's trying to say. Figuring out how to solve that is an interesting CS problem.
But this is a cool invention. Low power wireless research is just taking off. Before we were trying to figure out how to just transmit wireless well. Now we can have fun with it. I truly look forward to a wireless life:)
The main problem I have with these built in recorders is cataloging the music. I find MP3's/OGG to be an excellent compact storage of music. I have a lot of MP3s. Actually, I have more MP3's than I can listen to and keep track of without a tool. For most POP music, the file name is enough for keeping track of pertinent information. But when you get into classical music and some traditional celtic music, the file name isn't enough.
I'm assuming this hardware will allow me to specify a name for the piece. How about adding scans of the CD jewel case? How about information found in the jacket covers? I would never buy this or other such CD-RW because of that. I'm too poor to buy all the CDs I'd want. So, when I rip music, I try to imitate the orginal CD look as much as possible. Maybe for those people who just want to build a quick and dirty collection, this hardware would be good.
I'm glad a big consumer name company is openly saying that they've switched to Linux and saved money. But this is just the beginning. As the slump proceeds and managers want to streamline expenses, Linux is the logical alternative. Most companies that don't write Windows only software are already using a generic library that doesn't tie them to windows. It might take a bit of a startup time to switch to Linux initially but once done, it's smooth. Linux is already a pleasure to program in and it'll only get better with time.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you'd rather have an amateur operate on you than a professional? Or how about an amateur build a bridge?
Professional means something more than what you ascribe to it. I understand that in our modern world, people use words willy nilly without any consideration for its actual meaning. Often professional means some formal education, experience and recognition by peers of this achievement.
This is the case with doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants. And if go to continental Europe, with actors, dancers, musicians, etc.
I've always had my ID checked when boarding. This includes airports in Canada, Newark and Europe.
Peer review systems are not broken by pay per view models. Most peer reviewers are other professionals in that particular field. They already have access to the necessary journals, and most likely have already read the studies being sited by the one being reviewed. They know the assumptions, have their own political / scientific agenda, and want to put their 'mark' on the study. That is what complicates the process. But by and large it works.
Often the reviewers do point out flawed assumptions, a need for subsequent investigations, further analysis, etc. This is important. We can easily get into a zone where we see only our point of view.
The pay per view model interferes when the layman wants to read primary publications. This can be useful, but not normally. We need to realize that in biology, chemistry, etc. the disciplines have become so specialized that even other scientists working in a similar field cannot provide good critique of the data analysis and discussion. I don't mean to sound elitist here at all. It would be great if people were really interested in a topic that they would read a lot of what's published.
But in this day, with the sheer number of publications involved, even the primary researchers are having a hard time keeping up with the publications. Sometimes there are over 10 primary publications in a month on a particular topic. To read each and analyze it, while reviewing other studies, plus doing your own research. Wow...that is not easy.
My 2 Canadian cents.
I'm not sure where you got that idea from. "Typically" implies majority. The truth is a number of homeless about equal to the mentally ill do not like shelters because they are afraid of them. (I say this from having worked at CMHA.)
Shelters aren't hotel rooms. You have 20 - 30 packed into a room (within fire limits) and you rarely get a secure locker to put your belongings in. Also, in the cases where you do, it isn't a valet. No one is there to make sure you aren't persuaded to open your locker.
The available options are quite poor. I'm not saying they need Royal York treatment here. But a better option with some high guarantees of safety will see a number going to shelters during the cold winter months. It is a measure of a society's progress when you see how cities treat their most vulnerable. Toronto does a horrible job and too many people think, 'If they just try, they'll be fine.' It is a serious problem with difficult but attainable solutions - if we want it.
No. I don't mean it's the same thing as coping the CD. But from the point of view of the creator, it can be the same thing. I'm looking at it this way:
Forgetting plagarism, conside this scenario: I wrote an A paper and then you copied it, sold it without my permission and made some money from it. I think that's the same as copying a CD and selling it and making a money off of it.
Don't you agree?
Well, if you were also getting an A grade by handing in the said paper then her scenario is valid. Of course, I still have no problem with it.
Me.
The basis of the article is Windows XP and how great it is and how useful it'll be for the user. He completely ignores any of the new research being done in the psychology, or HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)field.
We're at the dawn of how our lives will be shaped by computer. Have you ever wonderered why you need to use the crappy keyboard/mouse interface to do stuff on the computer? How about why do you need to phone the video store to check if they have the movie you want in stock? I can think a ton of things that have the data in digitial format but don't have the connection from the datasource to the user. That's going to be the next big change.
Of course, computers will get new OS's, new games and new toys. Then imagine the day when everything is integrated. We are no where near that day and as that starts to happen we'll notice major improvements. Another thing to note, we think a computer is a commodity. Unfortunately, it's not in a lot of other places. It'll be as computer start to become really cheap. That should make things very interesting.
Finally, when we are able to access information smartly we'll see improvements too.
A lot of people are jumping up and down claiming that addiction is bad and that one should not have this problem. Can you ask the successful entrepreneur how many hours they spent working on or coding that project that everyone said would fail? How about the virtuoso pianist? But would we say they were wrong to spend that time? I don't think we would. I definitely would not.
Addiction can be really helpful. I think a lot of these people who get addicted to games, ebay, chatting, etc. have a very introspective personality or don't have a large social circle. It's not their personality that's flawed but just their lifestyle. Having known a bunch of people who've gotten addicted, I can say that it just takes time or the right change. This girl I knew really was into chatting. Once she met a guy she really liked, she pretty much got over it. Similar things have happend to a bunch of other people.
And to leave you, how many of you guys go to Chapters or Barnes and Noble regularly? If you do, you probably know of people who go and spend all their freetime there. They are addicted to reading. I guess context makes all the differenec.
Here in Ontario, there is a Software Engineering degree that is acredited as an official Engineering degree. After graduating from that, if you're going to be building large scale public software you'd have to get a P.Eng. That's basically a license to practise your engineering discpline when it affects large number of Doe's.
Perhaps the IEEE legislation will open that up to a large number of the practising software engineers in the world. But in the end, most engineers won't need it. Only the manager who'll be putting his neck on the line will need to have the designation just like it's with P.Eng.
True. You're talking about real large scale software. I know of a couple of companies who actually do the rental model. For some reason, the customer actually thinks this is better. The problem is, since it takes 2 years and millions to deploy, once it's deployed, they'll be happy to do anything for you :)
Me.
What you're suggesting is a maintanace nightmare. I've been involved in projects where the customer gets the code. They hire some 3rd rate engineers to modify the source and then call us when something goes wrong. Do you know how long it takes for us to even find out that they modified our code? We can't have a clause that says once you touch code, we don't help you because we do charge large amounts.
That being said, going open source for general purpose software is a great idea. Some of the software that we've made would be great for open source. It can be used across verticals and the equivalent open source project is either still in the infancy or is just bad. At another company I worked, there was a proposal to do just that. I hope they followed through.
Me.
I'm confused about what you're saying. Are you saying you break your problem into small chunks, solve those chunks in the language most suitable, and put them together? If so, how do you call the other chunks? Using exec() or other synonymous calls or using CORBA or SOAP? That's the main problem I have with this.
If I'm solving a large problem, your solution makes sense. I can use CORBA or SOAP to do the parameter passing and the solution will be elegant. The only problem will be the learning curve. I'd have to learn the protocol used. However, it'll pay off in the long run because each is solving the problem the most elegantly. You'd save performance and maintence costs. (Provided you're actually know the multiple languages well and even then, in a large team it'll be iffy.) In a large program, using exec() is probably not acceptable. (Unless, you really know what you're doing.)
But what if I'm solving a small problem that nonetheless can be broken down into smaller chunks that can be best solved using different languages. Would I? Probably not, because the solution you're proposing would complicate the entire development cycle. I'd have to build the small chunks and then try and assimilate them together some how. The problems that I can encounter are a lot and it's not worthit. Also, the increase in performance will be negligible because it is a small problem.
Having said that, for fun, I'm thinking of doing what you're proposing. I know it'll be complicated and I'll have headaches, but it's fun programming something like that.
Me
I think this depends on where you're working and what kind of mentality the company has. I work at a Healtcare software company. We don't encourage people to stay late just for the fun of it, and we have no flex time. This means, pretty might the entire team is here by 10 and gone by 6. This helps us get to know each other better because usually as we all get in, we can chit chat a bit as a team. When you have flex time, people are coming and going at various time. I've worked at companies where I see people only at meetings. I don't think you can get to know people that way.
Another factor is age. Honestly, someone in late 20's to mid 30's are interested in a lot different things than people who are younger. People who are in their early 20's generally aren't interested in the weekend bbq. They have plans to go out somewhere, either clubbing or some party. Not to say that the older people don't, but they just don't as often. But for the people in the older 20's certainly go out in the weekend. It's not common in my team for someone to drop by to someone elses home in the evening for dinner or some drinks.
But finally, it is a symptom of the field we're in. A lot of people, because of various factors end up working long hours. When you do this, the last thing you want to do is meet your coworker again in the evening.
Me.
Unlike what the article says, Java does have a byte keyword.
I can build a cheap computer to play MP3's for maybe 250. It does nothing else mind you. And why the heck would I use a computer as a DVD player? I have a family. I work on the computer when my family wants to watch movies. I'm not going to stop working so they can watch movies. Ditto with music.
Seriously, I know of very few people who're seriously interested in having a computer in the living room to do everything. Most people like dedicated hardware that can communicate with each other. (That's where blue tooth/802.11 come it)
Me.
I believe I mentioned that. Handshaking is the exact scheme I described when I said the deviecs just need to synchronize with other devices it wants to talk to.
The main problem with async. design is the asycnchronous part of it. In a typical computer, you have tons of parts that you use interchangably. These parts have operate at different speeds. How would two devices working at different speeds operate smoothly. Generally, this is very hard. But the thing is they can: But the devices themselves need to agree on a few things. But async. design is higly complicated because in a clockless environment you have to pretty much garauntee something like "I'll do this within 2 equivalent clock cycle." or have other types of signalling negotiation. You can't clock on a "clock" to do stuff. You have to clock on a "async" signal.
This is the problem in the large. When you go down to the chip level, there are tons of nightmares. There can be feedback loops causing race conditions that only occur at certain times. There are load problems that might increase complexity so much more than equivalent problems in a clocked design. Clocked design makes things a lot simpler and still designing a chip is extremely diffucult.
But the future I don't think is in clockless design, but "careful clock" design. For example, there are chips which are smart enough to disable sending the clock to certain part of a chip when it knows those parts will never be used. That saves a lot of power. There are chips which aim to spread the clock around carefully thus increasing the speed. And remember, almost 50% of the power in a chip is lost due to the wiring!
me.
Actually, I don't think it's sex per say that parents want to censor. It's usually the pointlessness of it. I see a lot of shows and movies where there's a sex scene for no absolute reason. This is higly relevant to a child because he/she doesn't yet have a viewpoint on sexuality. It's my opinion that if you show a child that sex is just sex with nothing else, the child will learn that. I'd rather filter it out and have my child learn about it and after, he or she can watch it and not really be affected by it.
The same goes for pretty much everything else. There are movies where sex is used well (very few movies though) and those ones, I have no problems with my child watching it.
I completely agree. How is this "news for nerds" or "Stuff that matters"? I couldn't care less about Worldcom and what it's like to work there. I hear people bitching about new articles on Slashdot, but honestly, this is a new low.
Me.
But it changes the set. The fact that it doesn't change 0 to N is irrevelant. In set theory, once you add that N+1 element, the set's identity has changed. Once it's identity changes, as far as you should be concerned, it's a new set unless you want to prune the set for each operation.
What you're talking about has zero revelance to programming. Have you ever programmed a huge system? You might have existing hooks in the system but the fact is, when you add new code, shit happens. That's the fact of life. Taking advantage of new hooks adds new states to your program. For a utter garauntee that the system is stable, you'll have to traverse each state and each path in the system. That is not realistic.
A better advice would be, don't switch to the new kernel until there have been real life evidence that the system works. Btw, you're right, we need to add new stuff to the kernel. We need to keep the kernel as up to date as possible. But when you release a stable kernel, the only thing you do to it is add bug fixes. You DO NOT rewrite huge sections of it. Because when you do, the program states have changed and you're testing from ground zero. (Adding bug fixes usually shouldn't change program states. It just fixes problems with the states or state path traversal.)
Me.
Have some respect and s
Actually, Exchange does have group ware capabilities. Lotus Notes is a full blown Workflow engine. Exchange is not. That's the main difference.
Right now there are companies exclusively in the business of doing this. There is very little mathematical challenge here. Psychologists and linguists have researched phenomes and related material pretty well.
:)
But there are some implementation issues here. Example, if you have GNU. How do you say it? What about if you have Jekka Pukka Sarasate? If you were to take the literal English pronounciation you might never even be able to understand what it's trying to say. Figuring out how to solve that is an interesting CS problem.
But this is a cool invention. Low power wireless research is just taking off. Before we were trying to figure out how to just transmit wireless well. Now we can have fun with it. I truly look forward to a wireless life
Me..
Actually, IE 6.0 doesn't come with a Java VM. If you want to run an applet, you must download a JRE from Sun.
The main problem I have with these built in recorders is cataloging the music. I find MP3's/OGG to be an excellent compact storage of music. I have a lot of MP3s. Actually, I have more MP3's than I can listen to and keep track of without a tool. For most POP music, the file name is enough for keeping track of pertinent information. But when you get into classical music and some traditional celtic music, the file name isn't enough.
I'm assuming this hardware will allow me to specify a name for the piece. How about adding scans of the CD jewel case? How about information found in the jacket covers? I would never buy this or other such CD-RW because of that. I'm too poor to buy all the CDs I'd want. So, when I rip music, I try to imitate the orginal CD look as much as possible. Maybe for those people who just want to build a quick and dirty collection, this hardware would be good.
I'm glad a big consumer name company is openly saying that they've switched to Linux and saved money. But this is just the beginning. As the slump proceeds and managers want to streamline expenses, Linux is the logical alternative. Most companies that don't write Windows only software are already using a generic library that doesn't tie them to windows. It might take a bit of a startup time to switch to Linux initially but once done, it's smooth. Linux is already a pleasure to program in and it'll only get better with time.