Bahh... I think the "vendor lock-in" for home users is a crock of shit. Linux does everything you want it to and more, whereas Windows comes with nothing useful out of the box. In my opinion, Kubuntu beats XP any day. How much time does the average user need to waste downloading this and that utility in order to do the most basic things? Wireless networking with NetworkManager works better on my Kubuntu laptop than my girlfriend's XP laptop. Furthermore, I'll take the integrated KDE UI over the mish-mash of Windows programs that each implement their own "cartoon" GUIs.
If you pander to just one operating system, as a supposed computer professional, your simply not up to the job in the first place.
He's an editor of a magazine, not an IT professional. Check out his resume; He has a B.S in mathematics and an M.B.A.. While his accomplishments are impressive, I'm not so sure he's the person I would listen to for operating system advice.
Your post reminded me that PC Mag used to be pretty thick too! There was a time when it was almost 1 inch thick; these days, it's about 1/3 the thickness it used to be. So basically, the ratio of content to advertising has gone way down, while the price has gone up.
When you wanted to buy a computer, you used to read PC Mag for the reviews, but these days, you're more likely to go to Tom's Hardware or some similar site for your info. I wonder if PC Mag will eventually go 100% online?
I've decided to try something new. I've jumped over to become CEO of Revision3, the leading Internet television network focused on developing programming for the on-demand generation. Coincidence that he just happens to slam Vista at the same time he's leaving PC Mag? He even admits to giving Vista a "free pass", which basically means he didn't want to piss off MS while he was editor. I used to get PC Mag years ago, but stopped because I felt that the magazine was too biased in favor of MS. Also, his threat to leave Vista for Linux rings hollow to me...
I was surprised to find my high school on Wikipedia. It has an advanced talented and gifted program (TAG) which took the brightest kids and put them together in their own classes.
I ran across a lot of "review" sites where, surprise surprise, the winner of the review was owned by the same people who posted the review.
I ran into the same problem. You'd think Google would be able to remove these fake review sites from the top 10 search results. In any event, I found Hostjury.com to be a good place to get reviews of different hosting service providers.
I see the two cases as completely different. Google is offering a *new* product which did not previously exist, MS is offering a re-branded product that doesn't give you anything new; there was never a free Google phone. On the other hand, you can use MS Works for free right now, the "new and improved" Works will just have ads added to it. You can argue that Google's product is not really new, but where else can you get a free cell phone?
Umm... if you can still get Works without ads, they why would you use the version with ads? MS hasn't added any value to their product, whereas Google is offering a new product that offers a service for free you would otherwise have to pay for. How is that 'nonsensical'?
Also, don't forget that Works was already an existing product that MS has added advertising to. The Google ad-phone is a completely new product that could be useful to certain people. I would think that this product could be targetting the pay-as-you-go market segment, which consists of people who only make occasional use of their phones.
...a large percentage of academic researchers are the types of people who are only in academic research because companies won't hire them for any position worth taking.
What are you basing this on? Have a look at the people at M.I.T., Princeton etc? All the top schools have very bright people doing research there. I think you'll find that a lot of people stay in academia because they don't what to be told how to focus their research efforts by some manager.
I saw a documentary on the biography channel about Bill Gates, and it was amazing how plugged in his mother was. From Mary Maxwell Gates:
She was the first female president of King Countys United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Ways executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors.
The saying "It's not what you know, but who you know." seems to be quite appropriate in this case.
The main reason I settled on boost::program_options was that it was written in C++ for C++, unlike other libraries out there. An added bonus is that it can also accept configuration files via the parse_config_file function.
What about Boost.Program_Options? I thought I'd see a post on it here somewhere, but not one person has mentioned it (yet).
A few months ago, I was looking around for a C++ library for parsing command line options. I checked out get_opt and I thought that there must be something that uses std::string instead of char*. After some googling, I found Boost.Program_Options seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. It supports long and short options (-s,--short) and I was able to start using it quite easily after looking at the tutorials.
I think the opposite can be true. If a Windows user gets addicted to using FOSS apps on their Windows desktop, the next time they need to upgrade their OS, they may decide to switch to Linux. Why pay for Windows to run Amarok, OpenOffice, Firefox etc when Linux will do it for free?
I agree that the MSP430 is a good processor. The micro-processors course at my university has been using it for 2 years. Crossworks for MSP430 is a nice IDE that has an educational license for $299. If that's too steep, you can go with the open source mspgcc.
I would say that you're situation is the exception rather than the rule. Having a degree from an accredited university is like a certification saying 'so-and-so is qualified for job xyz'. Anyone can say they read 'Software Engineering for Dummies' volumes 1 through 10, but does that make them a Software Engineer? Where's the proof that you actually understood the material and can apply it? The argument that anyone can buy a degree off the internet also doesn't hold water as most companies actually care where you get your degree from... there's a reason why MIT grads don't have to look long for employment.
In support of your statement, I saw a news report a few months ago on TV. There's a state/city in the U.S. (I can't remember where) that started setting up public office space with internet connectivity in the suburbs in order to relieve traffic and increase the quality of life of the inhabitants. They figured it would be cheaper to set this up than to upgrade the transportation infrastructure.
On another note, I know someone who works for a company in the New England area and their company is starting to encourage telecommuting in a big way. I also read somewhere that IBM was starting a push in order to cut the cost of office space.
Supposedly, Ubuntu has more newbie-friendly forums.
This is a real plus. One of the reasons I like Gentoo so much are the forums and *really* good documentation.
Lots of Ubuntu improvements do make it back to Debian; the two are still very similar under the hood.
That seems reasonable and likely. I've heard that Ubuntu packages aren't 100% compatible with Debian. If they break compatibility, won't it just create more overhead for everybody?
I guess in the end all the work being done on different distros eventually ends up benefitting everybody.
I installed Debian on a old PII and have a combination of testing/unstable running. If you read up on 'apt pinning', you'll see that with a little effort, you can configure apt so that only specific packages like KDE,Gnome etc will be installed from unstable and the rest (gcc etc) will stay at stable or testing.
Gentoo allows you to do the same thing, but I think it's easier to configure (I may be biased because I've been using it for far longer than Debian).
I personally think that there are too many distros out there. What's the point of a Debian derivative like Ubuntu? Since you use it, can you explain? Wouldn't it be better if the people working on Ubuntu devoted their energies to Debian instead? When I need to install Linux, it's either Debian for slow machines or Gentoo for fast ones.
I use Gentoo for exactly that reason. When compiling/installing a program, the standard configure scripts are used and programs and installed to the standard/default directories (mostly).
I've found that new versions of programs, especially major ones like KDE and Gnome, are available right away. Unlike other distros, you don't have to wait a few weeks for some 3rd party to put together rpms (I went through this with Mandrake a few years ago).
I know Gentoo users have gotten a bad rap, but I've found it to be the best distro for my needs.
Regardless, I find that tabs organize my open webpages better than program grouping on the taskbar. I don't know why I'm defending tabs... FireFox is over 75 million downloads and IE7 has tabs (not to mention Opera). So someone out there also thinks tabs are more user friendly too.
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Bahh... I think the "vendor lock-in" for home users is a crock of shit. Linux does everything you want it to and more, whereas Windows comes with nothing useful out of the box. In my opinion, Kubuntu beats XP any day. How much time does the average user need to waste downloading this and that utility in order to do the most basic things? Wireless networking with NetworkManager works better on my Kubuntu laptop than my girlfriend's XP laptop. Furthermore, I'll take the integrated KDE UI over the mish-mash of Windows programs that each implement their own "cartoon" GUIs.
He's an editor of a magazine, not an IT professional. Check out his resume; He has a B.S in mathematics and an M.B.A.. While his accomplishments are impressive, I'm not so sure he's the person I would listen to for operating system advice.
Your post reminded me that PC Mag used to be pretty thick too! There was a time when it was almost 1 inch thick; these days, it's about 1/3 the thickness it used to be. So basically, the ratio of content to advertising has gone way down, while the price has gone up.
When you wanted to buy a computer, you used to read PC Mag for the reviews, but these days, you're more likely to go to Tom's Hardware or some similar site for your info. I wonder if PC Mag will eventually go 100% online?
I was surprised to find my high school on Wikipedia. It has an advanced talented and gifted program (TAG) which took the brightest kids and put them together in their own classes.
I ran into the same problem. You'd think Google would be able to remove these fake review sites from the top 10 search results. In any event, I found Hostjury.com to be a good place to get reviews of different hosting service providers.
I see the two cases as completely different. Google is offering a *new* product which did not previously exist, MS is offering a re-branded product that doesn't give you anything new; there was never a free Google phone. On the other hand, you can use MS Works for free right now, the "new and improved" Works will just have ads added to it. You can argue that Google's product is not really new, but where else can you get a free cell phone?
Umm... if you can still get Works without ads, they why would you use the version with ads? MS hasn't added any value to their product, whereas Google is offering a new product that offers a service for free you would otherwise have to pay for. How is that 'nonsensical'?
Also, don't forget that Works was already an existing product that MS has added advertising to. The Google ad-phone is a completely new product that could be useful to certain people. I would think that this product could be targetting the pay-as-you-go market segment, which consists of people who only make occasional use of their phones.
...a large percentage of academic researchers are the types of people who are only in academic research because companies won't hire them for any position worth taking.What are you basing this on? Have a look at the people at M.I.T., Princeton etc? All the top schools have very bright people doing research there. I think you'll find that a lot of people stay in academia because they don't what to be told how to focus their research efforts by some manager.
I saw a documentary on the biography channel about Bill Gates, and it was amazing how plugged in his mother was. From Mary Maxwell Gates:
She was the first female president of King Countys United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Ways executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors.The saying "It's not what you know, but who you know." seems to be quite appropriate in this case.
I haven't had any problems with wrong values being returned. Did you properly initialize your variables to default values?
The main reason I settled on boost::program_options was that it was written in C++ for C++, unlike other libraries out there. An added bonus is that it can also accept configuration files via the parse_config_file function.
What about Boost.Program_Options? I thought I'd see a post on it here somewhere, but not one person has mentioned it (yet).
A few months ago, I was looking around for a C++ library for parsing command line options. I checked out get_opt and I thought that there must be something that uses std::string instead of char*. After some googling, I found Boost.Program_Options seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. It supports long and short options (-s,--short) and I was able to start using it quite easily after looking at the tutorials.
I think the opposite can be true. If a Windows user gets addicted to using FOSS apps on their Windows desktop, the next time they need to upgrade their OS, they may decide to switch to Linux. Why pay for Windows to run Amarok, OpenOffice, Firefox etc when Linux will do it for free?
That looks like a really nice editor. Thanks for the tip.
I agree that the MSP430 is a good processor. The micro-processors course at my university has been using it for 2 years. Crossworks for MSP430 is a nice IDE that has an educational license for $299. If that's too steep, you can go with the open source mspgcc.
I would say that you're situation is the exception rather than the rule. Having a degree from an accredited university is like a certification saying 'so-and-so is qualified for job xyz'. Anyone can say they read 'Software Engineering for Dummies' volumes 1 through 10, but does that make them a Software Engineer? Where's the proof that you actually understood the material and can apply it? The argument that anyone can buy a degree off the internet also doesn't hold water as most companies actually care where you get your degree from... there's a reason why MIT grads don't have to look long for employment.
In support of your statement, I saw a news report a few months ago on TV. There's a state/city in the U.S. (I can't remember where) that started setting up public office space with internet connectivity in the suburbs in order to relieve traffic and increase the quality of life of the inhabitants. They figured it would be cheaper to set this up than to upgrade the transportation infrastructure.
On another note, I know someone who works for a company in the New England area and their company is starting to encourage telecommuting in a big way. I also read somewhere that IBM was starting a push in order to cut the cost of office space.
I'm just guessing here, but maybe they added an extra set of registers so that context switches are almost instantaneous?
This is a real plus. One of the reasons I like Gentoo so much are the forums and *really* good documentation.
Lots of Ubuntu improvements do make it back to Debian; the two are still very similar under the hood.That seems reasonable and likely. I've heard that Ubuntu packages aren't 100% compatible with Debian. If they break compatibility, won't it just create more overhead for everybody?
I guess in the end all the work being done on different distros eventually ends up benefitting everybody.
I installed Debian on a old PII and have a combination of testing/unstable running. If you read up on 'apt pinning', you'll see that with a little effort, you can configure apt so that only specific packages like KDE,Gnome etc will be installed from unstable and the rest (gcc etc) will stay at stable or testing.
Gentoo allows you to do the same thing, but I think it's easier to configure (I may be biased because I've been using it for far longer than Debian).
I personally think that there are too many distros out there. What's the point of a Debian derivative like Ubuntu? Since you use it, can you explain? Wouldn't it be better if the people working on Ubuntu devoted their energies to Debian instead? When I need to install Linux, it's either Debian for slow machines or Gentoo for fast ones.
I use Gentoo for exactly that reason. When compiling/installing a program, the standard configure scripts are used and programs and installed to the standard/default directories (mostly). I've found that new versions of programs, especially major ones like KDE and Gnome, are available right away. Unlike other distros, you don't have to wait a few weeks for some 3rd party to put together rpms (I went through this with Mandrake a few years ago). I know Gentoo users have gotten a bad rap, but I've found it to be the best distro for my needs.
VMWare allows you to setup samba so that you can access all the files on your computer.
Regardless, I find that tabs organize my open webpages better than program grouping on the taskbar. I don't know why I'm defending tabs... FireFox is over 75 million downloads and IE7 has tabs (not to mention Opera). So someone out there also thinks tabs are more user friendly too.
Thank you thank you thank you. You're the first reply to my post I read that actually agrees with me! :)