I got the republican message myself and I was baffled because the whole thing was silly. You see, the background "democrat" message was from a "candidate" in Oklahoma, and I live in New Jersey. You can barely distinguish one voice from another and at the end, you end up with a very low signal to noise ratio on the call.
I think that I'm voting green anyway.
Governor General Miguel de La Torre established in Puerto Rico back in the 1820's a policy that stated that "a country that is having fun, does not conspire against the government" ("Pueblo que se divierte, no conspira."). For what you state, it seems to be a common government tactic when they want to do whatever they want with not a lot of scrutiny. For what it's worth. I do not eat a lot of junk food, I barely watch TV and hate American Football. I guess that that could make me a possible target for a federal inquiry.:-/.
Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeler, Perceptive? No wonder they are the 3%, those are the ones that stay in the cave chatting to each other about their feelings when the Sable Tooth tiger ate them.:). (I'm an ISTP:P).
I lived the same experience myself on an old AMD K6 machine with 300 Mb of RAM. I installed Ubuntu and the machine performance was barely "adequate" for use. I even changed the desktop environment from GNOME to XFCE and obtaining marginal improvement. The problem was desktop performance, mostly blamed on Xorg. X without DRI is a dog, and utilizes most of the CPU that you need to actually run the application. At the end I "downgrade" the computer to Windows NT SP6A, and to be quite frank, I'm quite happy with the performance. To compensate the fact that software is being abandoned on Windows NT, I still rely on open source software to get "modern" software to NT. So, I'm running Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, QCAD, Dia and Nethack like any other computer running Linux.
(Big caveat, I do have a 1Ghz computer running Ubuntu).
I IM chat with one of my high school buddies that is serving in Iraq. They get about 1/2 an hour of computer use to email friends and family. My friend logs in and checks the class bulletin board and chats with whomever is online. So far, it has worked. One thing he noticed was the he was not able to run some chat java applets. Other than that, it works well and at least I'm happy to know that he's still well.
I've travelled the globe working in IT (projects in Colombia, India and Autralia). I've also travelled all through the US and Canada.
I work from home. I've worked weeks at home. I do not like it much because it feels like prison, but I do have the flexibility to do so.
I have co-workers that work 4 days a week, part time as developers.
Yes, many people leave because of dealing with BS, also because of early retirement or just change of interets. One of our VP's left to open a B&B. Believe me, money was not an issue for him, but it does happen.
Yes, lot's of jobs are being outsourced, but if you are flexible, know your stuff, keep on learning different skills, you're usually ok.
It is a tough business, agreed, but it's better than show business;).
Ok, so it is the first public institution that requires students to have a laptop. The student will have to pay for it and they'll attempt to use it for something.
This is nothing new, perhaps on public institutions, but other Colleges have been doing that a long time ago.
Well, I remember when my friend went to College at Boston University with his trusty university required laptop. A top of the line Toshiba 286 with grey LCD monitor purchased through the institution. When my friend told me about this requirement, I thought that it was a silly idea. I think he flunk and moved back to a instate College a couple of years later. This was in 1985.
Anyway, when I went to College for my Computer Engineering Degree, I was not required a laptop, I spent endless night in the computer center hacking UNIX code on a top of the line 3B15 mini computer while listening to heavy metal music to keep us awake (it was funny when you started yelling at the ROTC dudes that were doing PT early in the morning in front of the building).
Later on I saved enough money to purchase an 8088 PC Clone so I could run SPICE simulations and run Turbo Pascal at home with two floppy drives and 512K of RAM. It stayed at home, it was there when I needed at night, during the day I did my work at the computer center. I was not required to have a laptop, but having a computer can be really handy if you do have the need.
At the end, I managed to go through college without a laptop, graudate and have a job (so far). I guess that at the end, a laptop in College was not all that important.
I'm also not sure if it is all that handy nowadays. It's a drag to carry, the small ones are hard to type, you have to be a touch typist to be efficient while notes, they're distracting to your peers with the clickity-clak, they present a temptation to do other stuff in class and they could jeopardize your personal safety (I read in the news that a study group got mugged in a college classroom and the first thing that got stolen were their laptops and palmtops). I'm not sure if I would have wanted to have something else to worry about while in College.
So... How come this is newsworthy? Just because it is the first State College to implement such a policy? Well, I guess they're really behind the 8th ball.
That's why when I write an Access Database, I make sure that I keep it to myself and deny that I had anything to do with it if anybody elses gets their hands on it.
But yes, my college professor once told me that there is a "Software Misunderstanding" in which the software development process is underestimated. That's why you have Mr. Pointy Hair coming in and asking Mr. Tech to cook up something quick just for him to have something to write in the performance review. Or when you have a bachelor's in CS and compete against 2 year programming school technical programmers for the same jobs. Or when you see listing in your favorite job hunter website asking for somebody with a MSCS, know how to code device drivers, create programs in Open GL, known system administration in S-390, Unix, Windows, MacOS and BeOS; known 4 different RDBMS and get paid 20K a year. Regrettfully a lot of managers do not understand what it entails to provide good quality software other what they learned in school or while managing a pig farm.
I also think that everything has its place. Full blown commercial grade software must go through software implementation methodology, being this Traditional, Extreme Programming or any other new programming paradigm that some MBA clown comes up with.
But, there are times that you need something simple that you want to use to solve an immediate need. I think that when Average Joe could concentrate into realistically learning how to solve his/her computing problems using easy RAD tools. Nowadays basic computer understading is taught through schools, I do not see this as far fetched and RAD tools have been available since time inmemorial. I think that at this end, this might be a realistic goal for Average Joe if they do not want to become computer scientists themselves.
I think these are all fairly easy to learn and might fit your needs. My personal preferences are:
Python
Gawk
Rexx
Lua
Some people might suggest some other languages, but I think that these scripting languages are straight forward enough to learn and use by "Joe Average"
I couldn't said it better myself. We already went through this before in many incatations:
AmigaVision: Programming with boxes.
HyperCard: Programming with cards.
Basic (gw basic, Atari 2600 basic, ad nauseum basic, VBA)
Other scripting high level languages (Gambas comes to mind) for application
LOGO - Move thy turtle
There are already other implementations of "easy programming" like Flowdesigner and the box programming for the Scribblerbot.
Bottom line. If you're a non programmer, there are ways to "create" code nowadays. But the truth of the matter is that, people without technical inclinations, they're happy of not writing code and complaint when the dumb computer does not do what they told it to do.
233Mhz PC? What's the challenge?! I ran a minimal version of slakware 7 called Basic Linux on a 95Mhz laptop. It was running Dillo, window maker and busybox going wireless via Symphony. The first time I ran Linux was on a 486/75 laptop having a whooping 500 Megabytes hard drive, slakware 3.4. It was running X and Window Maker. Busybox did not exist for that distro. This release of Slakware had a full blown version of the Wingz spreadsheet and TeX. The laptop only had 28 Megabytes or RAM and I ran on that set up for 5 years.
I was running Linux on a 200 Mhz pentium not long ago as well. It got replaced, but I know that if I drop a hard drive, it'll run Linux pretty well. Honestly, it really makes me laugh hard when I read an article about "older" hardware and the challenge to run on a 300 Mhz PC. I had a PC running full blown KDE 3 on an AMD-K6 300. Performance was not snappy, but it was no slouch either. Why is this even newsworthy?
Bottom line:
Yes, you can run Linux on an older hardware and be effective. This has been shown over, and over, and over and over. My pet peeve about "lightweight" distributions is that they're still too bloated for really old hardware.
Anyway, I personally think that:
Any distro with a kernel release level later than 2.4 is not suitable for older hardware unless you turn off of the majority of the drivers and modules.
The same goes with X. I ran X on older hardware, and is still the largest bloat on it. If you are going to X, X-Vesa is the way to go IMHO.
Or ditch X. Probably you're better off running Qtopia with Embedded Qt anyway.
Everything else, it's just how many applications you can fit and as long as you have a suitable compiler and enough imagination, the sky is the limit.
IMO:
The DSL like distros is good for a fast Pentium or later. Everything lower than that, you're better off dusting off a copy of Slackware 3.X and using it.
Standards become legacy in the blink of an programming fad.
Where I worked, we moved from the following programming "standards":
COBOL
PL/1
C
C++
Java
Today we're maintaining a multiple language environment because many of the "legacy" products are still used by customers and they pay us to maintain them.
I can tell by this study that the drivers were not from a place in the world in which traffic laws equate to suggestions and that the driver with bigger guts or vehicle has the right of way (not to mention any specific place, but you know what I'm referring to). After being in several of those places in the world, I'm sure that any of them should be able to ace any driving course, high tech doo dahs or not.
Well, I'm about hitting the 40 year old mark and most of us in my shop are in a director position or a considered a leadership status. If you're not, then, there's is something "wrong" with you. By leadership I usually means a technical leader, either a project/program manager, system architect, lead programmer or lead operations, or somebody that people count of you to be the guru of a given system or solution.
Some folks enjoy doing development or system administration at that age, and if you have the skills, I do not see why not. But because of the wealth of the experience, it is very likely that if you're well like and know your stuff you'll probably end up being on a lead position being either by de-fact or de-jure.
The biggest problem at that age is the "dinosaur" effect. When your technical skills age off and if you do not keep them current, then that's when you end up being perceived as obsolete and a candidate for early retirement.
Personally, I've been keeping myself quite current on UNIX technologies, even though I'm proeficient in PL/1, I'm as good in C, Python or PHP. In addition to that, non programmers skills are important at that time, and personally I'm considering getting an MBA as part of professional development.
There are other routes, many become enterpreneurs, open a Dunkin Donuts or a Burger King; even a Bed and Breakfast or Woodshop. After all the years, you can certainly take a break of looking at a "glass tty".:).
Slashdot Mirror
Luis Anaya, Robot Attorney...
... and I thought that having "The Computer" as the person of the year back in '82 was bad...
I got the republican message myself and I was baffled because the whole thing was silly. You see, the background "democrat" message was from a "candidate" in Oklahoma, and I live in New Jersey. You can barely distinguish one voice from another and at the end, you end up with a very low signal to noise ratio on the call. I think that I'm voting green anyway.
Governor General Miguel de La Torre established in Puerto Rico back in the 1820's a policy that stated that "a country that is having fun, does not conspire against the government" ("Pueblo que se divierte, no conspira."). For what you state, it seems to be a common government tactic when they want to do whatever they want with not a lot of scrutiny. For what it's worth. I do not eat a lot of junk food, I barely watch TV and hate American Football. I guess that that could make me a possible target for a federal inquiry. :-/.
Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeler, Perceptive? No wonder they are the 3%, those are the ones that stay in the cave chatting to each other about their feelings when the Sable Tooth tiger ate them. :). (I'm an ISTP :P).
Are you saying that the acts of the FALN and Macheteros against US servicemen in the 1970's in Puerto Rico are justified?
I lived the same experience myself on an old AMD K6 machine with 300 Mb of RAM. I installed Ubuntu and the machine performance was barely "adequate" for use. I even changed the desktop environment from GNOME to XFCE and obtaining marginal improvement. The problem was desktop performance, mostly blamed on Xorg. X without DRI is a dog, and utilizes most of the CPU that you need to actually run the application. At the end I "downgrade" the computer to Windows NT SP6A, and to be quite frank, I'm quite happy with the performance. To compensate the fact that software is being abandoned on Windows NT, I still rely on open source software to get "modern" software to NT. So, I'm running Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, QCAD, Dia and Nethack like any other computer running Linux.
(Big caveat, I do have a 1Ghz computer running Ubuntu).
... Pong, Zork, Adventure On Mainframe (we still run that one at work)... Now, I'm getting dated...
I can relate to Detroit though :).
I IM chat with one of my high school buddies that is serving in Iraq. They get about 1/2 an hour of computer use to email friends and family. My friend logs in and checks the class bulletin board and chats with whomever is online. So far, it has worked. One thing he noticed was the he was not able to run some chat java applets. Other than that, it works well and at least I'm happy to know that he's still well.
Yes, lot's of jobs are being outsourced, but if you are flexible, know your stuff, keep on learning different skills, you're usually ok.
It is a tough business, agreed, but it's better than show business ;).
I do not know... perhaps the possibility of loosing a body part? ??
This is nothing new, perhaps on public institutions, but other Colleges have been doing that a long time ago.
Well, I remember when my friend went to College at Boston University with his trusty university required laptop. A top of the line Toshiba 286 with grey LCD monitor purchased through the institution. When my friend told me about this requirement, I thought that it was a silly idea. I think he flunk and moved back to a instate College a couple of years later. This was in 1985.
Anyway, when I went to College for my Computer Engineering Degree, I was not required a laptop, I spent endless night in the computer center hacking UNIX code on a top of the line 3B15 mini computer while listening to heavy metal music to keep us awake (it was funny when you started yelling at the ROTC dudes that were doing PT early in the morning in front of the building).
Later on I saved enough money to purchase an 8088 PC Clone so I could run SPICE simulations and run Turbo Pascal at home with two floppy drives and 512K of RAM. It stayed at home, it was there when I needed at night, during the day I did my work at the computer center. I was not required to have a laptop, but having a computer can be really handy if you do have the need.
At the end, I managed to go through college without a laptop, graudate and have a job (so far). I guess that at the end, a laptop in College was not all that important.
I'm also not sure if it is all that handy nowadays. It's a drag to carry, the small ones are hard to type, you have to be a touch typist to be efficient while notes, they're distracting to your peers with the clickity-clak, they present a temptation to do other stuff in class and they could jeopardize your personal safety (I read in the news that a study group got mugged in a college classroom and the first thing that got stolen were their laptops and palmtops). I'm not sure if I would have wanted to have something else to worry about while in College.
So... How come this is newsworthy? Just because it is the first State College to implement such a policy? Well, I guess they're really behind the 8th ball.
Have fun :).
That's why when I write an Access Database, I make sure that I keep it to myself and deny that I had anything to do with it if anybody elses gets their hands on it.
But yes, my college professor once told me that there is a "Software Misunderstanding" in which the software development process is underestimated. That's why you have Mr. Pointy Hair coming in and asking Mr. Tech to cook up something quick just for him to have something to write in the performance review. Or when you have a bachelor's in CS and compete against 2 year programming school technical programmers for the same jobs. Or when you see listing in your favorite job hunter website asking for somebody with a MSCS, know how to code device drivers, create programs in Open GL, known system administration in S-390, Unix, Windows, MacOS and BeOS; known 4 different RDBMS and get paid 20K a year. Regrettfully a lot of managers do not understand what it entails to provide good quality software other what they learned in school or while managing a pig farm.
I also think that everything has its place. Full blown commercial grade software must go through software implementation methodology, being this Traditional, Extreme Programming or any other new programming paradigm that some MBA clown comes up with.
But, there are times that you need something simple that you want to use to solve an immediate need. I think that when Average Joe could concentrate into realistically learning how to solve his/her computing problems using easy RAD tools. Nowadays basic computer understading is taught through schools, I do not see this as far fetched and RAD tools have been available since time inmemorial. I think that at this end, this might be a realistic goal for Average Joe if they do not want to become computer scientists themselves.
My 2 cents...
-
Python
-
Gawk
-
Rexx
-
Lua
Some people might suggest some other languages, but I think that these scripting languages are straight forward enough to learn and use by "Joe Average"As always YMMV.
-
AmigaVision: Programming with boxes.
-
HyperCard: Programming with cards.
-
Basic (gw basic, Atari 2600 basic, ad nauseum basic, VBA)
-
Other scripting high level languages (Gambas comes to mind) for application
-
LOGO - Move thy turtle
There are already other implementations of "easy programming" like Flowdesigner and the box programming for the Scribblerbot.Bottom line. If you're a non programmer, there are ways to "create" code nowadays. But the truth of the matter is that, people without technical inclinations, they're happy of not writing code and complaint when the dumb computer does not do what they told it to do.
233Mhz PC? What's the challenge?! I ran a minimal version of slakware 7 called Basic Linux on a 95Mhz laptop. It was running Dillo, window maker and busybox going wireless via Symphony. The first time I ran Linux was on a 486/75 laptop having a whooping 500 Megabytes hard drive, slakware 3.4. It was running X and Window Maker. Busybox did not exist for that distro. This release of Slakware had a full blown version of the Wingz spreadsheet and TeX. The laptop only had 28 Megabytes or RAM and I ran on that set up for 5 years.
I was running Linux on a 200 Mhz pentium not long ago as well. It got replaced, but I know that if I drop a hard drive, it'll run Linux pretty well. Honestly, it really makes me laugh hard when I read an article about "older" hardware and the challenge to run on a 300 Mhz PC. I had a PC running full blown KDE 3 on an AMD-K6 300. Performance was not snappy, but it was no slouch either. Why is this even newsworthy?
Bottom line:
Yes, you can run Linux on an older hardware and be effective. This has been shown over, and over, and over and over. My pet peeve about "lightweight" distributions is that they're still too bloated for really old hardware.
Anyway, I personally think that:
-
Any distro with a kernel release level later than 2.4 is not suitable for older hardware unless you turn off of the majority of the drivers and modules.
-
The same goes with X. I ran X on older hardware, and is still the largest bloat on it. If you are going to X, X-Vesa is the way to go IMHO.
-
Or ditch X. Probably you're better off running Qtopia with Embedded Qt anyway.
-
Everything else, it's just how many applications you can fit and as long as you have a suitable compiler and enough imagination, the sky is the limit.
IMO:The DSL like distros is good for a fast Pentium or later. Everything lower than that, you're better off dusting off a copy of Slackware 3.X and using it.
Lou
Do I care? No...
Does it says anything useful? hardly...
Why do I do it? To improve my english.
So there...
Where I worked, we moved from the following programming "standards":
Today we're maintaining a multiple language environment because many of the "legacy" products are still used by customers and they pay us to maintain them.
Yeap... I got my brochure from Hassleblad for their 39 megapixel cameras. Yeap, the 30K slightly better 35 mm rig... :).
I can tell by this study that the drivers were not from a place in the world in which traffic laws equate to suggestions and that the driver with bigger guts or vehicle has the right of way (not to mention any specific place, but you know what I'm referring to). After being in several of those places in the world, I'm sure that any of them should be able to ace any driving course, high tech doo dahs or not.
Well, I'm about hitting the 40 year old mark and most of us in my shop are in a director position or a considered a leadership status. If you're not, then, there's is something "wrong" with you. By leadership I usually means a technical leader, either a project/program manager, system architect, lead programmer or lead operations, or somebody that people count of you to be the guru of a given system or solution. Some folks enjoy doing development or system administration at that age, and if you have the skills, I do not see why not. But because of the wealth of the experience, it is very likely that if you're well like and know your stuff you'll probably end up being on a lead position being either by de-fact or de-jure. The biggest problem at that age is the "dinosaur" effect. When your technical skills age off and if you do not keep them current, then that's when you end up being perceived as obsolete and a candidate for early retirement. Personally, I've been keeping myself quite current on UNIX technologies, even though I'm proeficient in PL/1, I'm as good in C, Python or PHP. In addition to that, non programmers skills are important at that time, and personally I'm considering getting an MBA as part of professional development. There are other routes, many become enterpreneurs, open a Dunkin Donuts or a Burger King; even a Bed and Breakfast or Woodshop. After all the years, you can certainly take a break of looking at a "glass tty". :).