Recently, a group of norweigan teenage hackers successfully reverse engineered the Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. Upon hearing that the formula for the Burrito Supreme was reverse engineered, Taco Bell representitive Che Chihuahua had Norweigan police arrest the hackers and charge them with theft of trade secrets. Not to be initimidated, hundreds of brave hackers posted on their websites the instructions on how to make a Burrito Supreme, technically known as DeGaSS. In a tactic Castro himself would be proud of, Che, along with MPAA president Jack Valenti, sued a number of web sites, such as 2600 and Slashdot.org, arguing that posting of the DeGaSS amounted to nothing more theft of a trade secret whose only purpose is to steal the intellectual property of Taco Bell. "That's completely ridiculous" said Eric Corley, otherwise known as Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of hacker magazine "2600". "The reverse engineering DeGaSS is about a search for knowledge, not a way to have free, do it yourself burritos." Richard Stallman, head of the the Free Software Foundation and creator of GNachos (Open Recipe nachos) has a different opinion. "You must be able to publish a version of the burrito, so you can share your improvements with other people who can also benefit from it and build on it further". To get around the copyright restrictions of the Burrito Supreme, Scott Adams devised the Dilberito, the first Open Recipe burrito. As true to the Open Recipe movement, all the ingrediants of the Dilberito are published on the web site (dilberito.com). This is in stark contrast to the ingrediants of the Burrito Supreme which, like all Taco Bell food, no one knows what the hell they're made of (though extensive testing has turned up llama DNA and fragments of martian meterorite). As usual with Open Recipe food, the Dilberito provides greater gastro-intestinal stability than that of the closed-recipe Burrito Supreme, as well greater nutritional value. The Open Recipe Dilberito can be easily modified, so it now comes in several distributions, such as Mexican, Indian, and garlic and herb.
Question for all those astrophysicists who read slashdot. If the quaser is 13 billion light years away, and the universe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 billion years old, doesn't that mean that the velocity at which we move away from the quasar is near the speed of light?
I've already been improving gnome faster than the gnome team. I'm currently killing all the poorly choosen keyboard shortcuts in gmc and giving the menus a more consistent layout, modeled after MacOS'. You'll see these things, plus spring-loaded folders (another mac goodie) and anything else I decided to include sometime in the near future. I might even code a set of *real* control panels if I have time. It's about time we had mac people get involved in the shaping of linux's user interface.
What would really kick ass in the open hardware department would be open hardware laptop components. I simply can't think of anything cooler than going to your local Fry's and getting the stuff to build your own laptop.
There are several things that need to change in order for this Battle to be less uphill. For starters, I think people need to stop using "Hacker" anywhere near the word "DVD". I know that the word has been misappopriated to mean someone who breaks into computers, but whenever the general public hears the words "Hacker", "DVD", and "circumvent copy protection", they'll immediately draw the wrong conclusion. They'll think "bunch of freakish computer outlaws came up with a way to Pirate DVD's" not "normal people who want to watch the DVD's they legally buy or rent on something other than windows". The whole issue should be changed from a "Hacker" thing to a Linux thing. Second, I think the multi-billion dollar ipo linux company's need to put their muscle into this conflict, not just make a few token donations to the EFF. Big businesses have no problem coercing people who threaten their interests. With Red Hat and VA technically being big businesses (who have something at stake if we can't have dvd with our linux) they should do everything barring murder to force the movie companys to stand down. Though it's not likely it'll happen, it would be cool if Bob Young did a hostile takover of movie studio then fired the board of directors, just to make a point. Another third hand that should be played is the justice department's anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The linux community should argue to the government that by refusing to let people have DVD players that work with Linux, a serious challenger to Microsoft's dominance is crippled. And Microsoft, given the chance, *will* beat the the fact that Linux can't play DVD's (even if it is because of a stupid legal reason) over the linux community's head. A fourth and final card that should be played is the fact that more and more movie studios are using linux to render their scenes. It would be good publicity to show a list of movies put out by these major studios that have used beowulf clusters to cheaply render their CG scenes. Basically, show the government and the public that by preventing Linux's progress, the movie studios are biting the hand that feeds them. While it would legally do nothing, it would be a good PR move.
A few days ago, I was reading about how all the info from the scanning would be easily in the multi-terabyte range, if not more. I think what would really kick ass would be a story on the logistics of the IT setup NASA is using. Just how big are the disk farms that nasa is using for this stuff? How do they handle the real-time broadcast and subsequent storage such a ridiculously large amount of data? I think stuff like that would make a cool story in itself.
different stabilities: macos > windows || unix
on
Darwin on Crusoe?
·
· Score: 1
You can install hundreds of applications on mac os and it won't screw up anything. Can't do that with windows. I've tried that. With windows, installing anything else besides windows runs the chance of screwing up the registry and the system will either not boot (worse than crashing) or will crash in the same exact way every time the offending action is committed. And remember, mac os has Protected Configuration--configuration data for each program in a seperate file. If configuration data for one program is corrupted, the configuration data for the others remains intact. Just like with linux. Windows bundles the configuration in one file. If while writing configuration data for one program there is a bad write to a registry file, the configuration of many programs might be toasted. The place where mac os really shines, however, is that configuration files are not at all required for programs to run, since they will be instantly regenerated if not found. I dare anyone to delete system.dat or type rm -rf/etc. Finally, mac os has far less shared code than windows or linux. On a mac, you install a program or hardware and it doesn't install files other places that screw things up, or tell you "I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid the code for your mp3 player conflicts with netscape. No music for you!" Desktop users are most concerned with stuff not working. They want an os that is not easy to screw up and will let them add stuff without penalty. Windows and Linux have not yet satisfied those conditions. Windows never will because microsoft will never open up the code to anyone competant enough to change it. Linux, on the other hand, allows somebody to fix its bugs.
I love linux, don't get me wrong, but how the hell can linux be ported to hindi, tamil, whatever when it hasn't been ported to English? Just take a look at your/etc folder. How many of those file names can be found in webster's dictionary? Or take the cryptic linux commands, for example. Is dd a word in the english language? Or mv, cpio, umount, or anything else. One cannot take seriously the idea of porting linux for non-english speakers when it *hasn't* yet been ported for English speakers.
I've got a novel idea. Why don't all us self-respecting geeks in the US go on strike to protest this. That's right. We all stop doing computer work. The nation was worried about a crisis in the year 2000 bringing all the computer systems of a halt. I say lets give them one. The nation will grind to a halt without us computer professionals. Many of the companies filing the lawsuits will lose hundreds of millions of dollars each day they care on this senseless litigation. This strike will also hurt the US government, who arguably could be considered the world's biggest user of computers. If US corporations and the US government will not respect us and the work we do on our own time to make computing a better experience for everyone, then they need not have our help when their computers go down, when their databases need to be sorted, and when they need beowulf clusters setup to render their next movie. While this act of civil disobediance may get us fired, there is nothing any court can do about it. Let the punishment fit the crime.
THEY CAN TAKE AWAY OUR JOBS, BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY OUR FREEDOM.
But remember, young jedi, megahertz alone does not a great chip make. It's not the size of the megahertz, but what you do with it (i.e. chip architecture). Celeron's are CISC architecture, whereas G4's are RISC architecture. RISC chips can do more per cycle than CISC chips. So, for example, if you have a 400mhz RISC chip that can perform an execute every 2 cycles vs. a 600mhz CISC chip that executes every 8 cycles, the 400mhz RISC chip will blow the doors of the 600mhz CISC chip, simply because it can do more with less cycles. Any megahertz gap is not really significant in terms of performance, but is significant in terms of marketing. Because Mr. Everyday computer user thinks that mhz alone equals faster, he'll think that the Pentiums are faster, even though the PowerPC's kick the pentiums butt.
"Don't knock what you don't understand?" You should listen to your own advice, Tom. Stick to writing Perl documentation. Keyboard shortcuts in *real* programs running on *real* GUI's are always specifically bound (depending on the task). Why, you might ask? Because in a *real* GUI, keyboard shortcuts are standardized (and enforced) across the OS and all applications. Because *every* single program in this *real* GUI model has the same key bindings for common operations, you can use a program you have never used before more efficiently, because you don't have to think about which keyboard shortcut you need to use. In this *real* interface model, every program you have ever used might have the keyboard shortcut command+f for find. If you get a new program, within the first minute of learning to use this new program, you will instinctively hit command+f when you want to find something. Because you use this universally implemented shortcut so often, you will be able to punch it damn quickly. A lot of the bad wrap for being slow that GUI's have gotten has been due to M$ Windows, where keyboard shortcuts are poorly chosen and are not standardized across programs. mk p is might be fast, but command+m beats it by a keystroke.;)
The question asked should not be "why should companies be forced to implement ergonomic keyboards and comforatable workstations" but "why haven't these companies jumped on the chance to save money and increase productivity." These OSHA regulations force employers to act in their own best interest. What's more expensive, $50 for a microsoft ergonomic keyboard per worker, or thousands in workman's compensation, lawsuits, and higher employee health insurance premiums, per worker. And if your workers are more comforatable typing at the ergonomic keyboard or that specially designed computer desk, they will tire less quickly and be more productive. Although many companies pride themselves on being technologically advanced, we've all seen how the pointy-haired bosses and accountants are hell bent on grinding away any advances that technology could give them. The business world still can't seem to understand that there are more costs associated with computers than just the equipment itself, and often you have to spend more money now to save twice as much money later on.
I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as a good math textbook. Absolute contradiction in terms. I have struggled through math classes all my life because stupid math textbooks refused to give plentiful, relevant examples. It is really no wonder that math in American schools is hurting as much as it is. The math establishment refuses to act intelligently, then they shake their fingers at the kids parents and society. And this extends to computers. And because you have so many math people in the computer field, the same lack of desire to make anything well-documented, graphical, or user friendly extends to computers. And that math cannot be graphical is complete BS. The universe is graphical, math describes the universe, therefore math *is* graphical. When I want to see silly little greek symbols, I'll take a Greek class.
As a former radioshack employee, let me say that this is one of Microsoft's stupidest mistakes. They will be spending a good deal of money on these "stores within stores" but will see little return. Why is this? Radioshack cannot sell computers. While being perceived as a computer store, Radio Shack is more or less incapable of marketing computers correctly. The reasons:
1. Lack of knowledge of computer buyers. Radioshack tried to sell computers priced higher than same models because those "special" computers would contain "learning software", aka the "Creative Learning Series" computers. That software bundle was not terribly compelling. Most windows buyers I met in the store wanted Microsoft Office/Works bundled with the computer, not corel wordperfect and a bunch of outdated kiddie softare. Radio Shack also didn't believe in the concept of bundling the printer with the monitor and the CPU. Reality check: first time computer buyers who don't know much about computers like everything in a nice, tight bundle, with few details to think about.
2. General incompetancy at displaying the merchandise. The Radio Shack Compaq computers never run windows. There is a really crappy demo running on the Compaq's. That demo was not interesting and it didn't draw anybody's attention, especially when the store was loud. People buy computers, not demos. People want to point click around the GUI. The demo also will often freeze and be unresponsive to mouse clicks, which is not what you want to happen when you're trying to show off a computer to a customer. When they saw the demo lock up, they usually lose interest. Finally, radio shack did not display the price for the entire system (printer, monitor, cpu), they just displayed the price for just the CPU. When people saw the price, they assumed it was for everything. They got turned off when they found out the final price for everything would be much higher than the one on price tag. Especially with the warrenties the customer was forced to buy.
3. Complete incompetancy with computers in general. Our server in the back room, running windows NT, on a very, very, small amount of RAM. Swap was hit constantly. Move the mouse around, instant hard drive chatter. Even more stupidly, none of the computers behind the registers or the server in the back has a cd-rom! If we need to look at the cd which has technical specifications on a piece of merchandise or run any programs that make labels, we have to spend five minutes (which are very valuable in a crowded store)finding the keys to unlock the cabinets which house the real computers, which sit under the display computers. Oh, by the way, those display computers are just shells of the new models. The ones in the cabinets under them are 350mhz PII's running the demos, not the 500mhz machines they might be pushing. Another stupid thing that is done in Radio Shack--all the necessary paperwork for selling cell phones, the bread and butter of the store, is still done on paper in most stores. The contract is filled out and printed by hand, and credit checks must be done over the phone. Only at one store did they have a computer that would do credit checks and print contracts, and that one was a 486 running w/ '95 running Visual Basic programs with 16 megs of ram. Again, the refusal of Radio Shack to use computers for cell phone activation wastes time, and time in retail is money. Finally, they replace "upgrade" the store's software from a mostly user unfriendly SCO based system to a completely non-user friendly windows system. The only advantage the windows based system is Y2k compliant. The manager was not allowed to refer to bugs as bugs, but as "issues".
4. Lack of knowledgable employees. While I was the computer guru in my store, and there were one or two people who knew some stuff about computers, many of them really did not know enough to sell computers on the basis of their knowledge. Imagine when they try to push software. How many will be able to understand what HTML is so they can push those deluxe versions of Frontpage?
5. Image: Radioshack is known as "that store that asks people for their names and addresses." Consumers find this threatening and annoying. Our president, Len Roberts, made the idiotic decision to force us to ask *every* customer whether they want to sign up for sprint long-distance. Is there any better way to tarnish a company's image then to have customers associate Radio Shack with the telemarketers who constantly harrass them at home?
The amusing thing is that Microsoft actually thinks that they are helping to spread their market dominance through this alliance. In all their other alliances, Microsoft usually ends up screwing their partners, but in this case it will be microsoft who will be screwed. And they think they're so clever;)
Linux actually has been working on macs for years. Mklinux was apple's port of linux to the macintosh, using the mach kernel. Then there's the linuxppc distribution, which has also been around for awhile. Then you also have yellow-dog linux distribution, from Terrasoft, and they do some cutting edge server stuff. www.linuxppc.org www.terrasoft.com
are two good places to look. If you're into BSD, you might also want to look at www.macbsd.com. BSD is also out there for the mac.
Definately try it out. It's probably as cheap of a risc based linux solution as you can get.
You don't know the half of it, brother. I used to work at Radio Shack and we had this special order book where we could order stuff for people that is not normally sold in the store. This stuff goes back a *long* time. To give you some idea, you could order a 2600 baud modem for $150. For $40, you could order some of the dungeons and dragon's games from the late 80's.
I used to work at a Radio Shack last year, and I witnessed something you would never believe: people came in actually asking for AOL disks! I couldn't understand how anyone on earth could possibly not find an AOL disk. Anyhow, I promptly told them to go to any bookstore and buy *any* computer magazine. They would walk out with this confused, puzzled look.
I think that while script kiddies/hackers might present some danger, you'll probably still have 99% of houses burned down down because the human owner does something incredibly stupid, like leaving the Sun Microsystems java based(pun intended) coffee maker plugged in while he goes on vacation. Computers are just incapable of matching the powerful stupidity of the naked ape. Do not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity
I haven't used Corel linux, so I can't say for certain, but Corel Linux is based on Debian, a linux distribution that makes the assumption you already know how to use linux. I'd personally advise you to go with Redhat, mandrake, or caldera openlinux for the time being, until it's known for certain whether Corel has corrected Debians usability bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we need the Dilberito? by Ukab the Great
Recently, a group of norweigan teenage hackers successfully reverse engineered the Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. Upon hearing that the formula for the Burrito Supreme was reverse engineered, Taco Bell representitive Che Chihuahua had Norweigan police arrest the hackers and charge them with theft of trade secrets. Not to be initimidated, hundreds of brave hackers posted on their websites the instructions on how to make a Burrito Supreme, technically known as DeGaSS. In a tactic Castro himself would be proud of, Che, along with MPAA president Jack Valenti, sued a number of web sites, such as 2600 and Slashdot.org, arguing that posting of the DeGaSS amounted to nothing more theft of a trade secret whose only purpose is to steal the intellectual property of Taco Bell. "That's completely ridiculous" said Eric Corley, otherwise known as Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of hacker magazine "2600". "The reverse engineering DeGaSS is about a search for knowledge, not a way to have free, do it yourself burritos." Richard Stallman, head of the the Free Software Foundation and creator of GNachos (Open Recipe nachos) has a different opinion. "You must be able to publish a version of the burrito, so you can share your improvements with other people who can also benefit from it and build on it further". To get around the copyright restrictions of the Burrito Supreme, Scott Adams devised the Dilberito, the first Open Recipe burrito. As true to the Open Recipe movement, all the ingrediants of the Dilberito are published on the web site (dilberito.com). This is in stark contrast to the ingrediants of the Burrito Supreme which, like all Taco Bell food, no one knows what the hell they're made of (though extensive testing has turned up llama DNA and fragments of martian meterorite). As usual with Open Recipe food, the Dilberito provides greater gastro-intestinal stability than that of the closed-recipe Burrito Supreme, as well greater nutritional value. The Open Recipe Dilberito can be easily modified, so it now comes in several distributions, such as Mexican, Indian, and garlic and herb.
Question for all those astrophysicists who read slashdot. If the quaser is 13 billion light years away, and the universe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 billion years old, doesn't that mean that the velocity at which we move away from the quasar is near the speed of light?
I've already been improving gnome faster than the gnome team. I'm currently killing all the poorly choosen keyboard shortcuts in gmc and giving the menus a more consistent layout, modeled after MacOS'. You'll see these things, plus spring-loaded folders (another mac goodie) and anything else I decided to include sometime in the near future. I might even code a set of *real* control panels if I have time. It's about time we had mac people get involved in the shaping of linux's user interface.
What would really kick ass in the open hardware department would be open hardware laptop components. I simply can't think of anything cooler than going to your local Fry's and getting the stuff to build your own laptop.
There are several things that need to change in order for this Battle to be less uphill. For starters, I think people need to stop using "Hacker" anywhere near the word "DVD". I know that the word has been misappopriated to mean someone who breaks into computers, but whenever the general public hears the words "Hacker", "DVD", and "circumvent copy protection", they'll immediately draw the wrong conclusion. They'll think "bunch of freakish computer outlaws came up with a way to Pirate DVD's" not "normal people who want to watch the DVD's they legally buy or rent on something other than windows". The whole issue should be changed from a "Hacker" thing to a Linux thing.
Second, I think the multi-billion dollar ipo linux company's need to put their muscle into this conflict, not just make a few token donations to the EFF. Big businesses have no problem coercing people who threaten their interests. With Red Hat and VA technically being big businesses (who have something at stake if we can't have dvd with our linux) they should do everything barring murder to force the movie companys to stand down. Though it's not likely it'll happen, it would be cool if Bob Young did a hostile takover of movie studio then fired the board of directors, just to make a point.
Another third hand that should be played is the justice department's anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The linux community should argue to the government that by refusing to let people have DVD players that work with Linux, a serious challenger to Microsoft's dominance is crippled. And Microsoft, given the chance, *will* beat the the fact that Linux can't play DVD's (even if it is because of a stupid legal reason) over the linux community's head.
A fourth and final card that should be played is the fact that more and more movie studios are using linux to render their scenes. It would be good publicity to show a list of movies put out by these major studios that have used beowulf clusters to cheaply render their CG scenes. Basically, show the government and the public that by preventing Linux's progress, the movie studios are biting the hand that feeds them. While it would legally do nothing, it would be a good PR move.
A few days ago, I was reading about how all the info from the scanning would be easily in the multi-terabyte range, if not more. I think what would really kick ass would be a story on the logistics of the IT setup NASA is using. Just how big are the disk farms that nasa is using for this stuff? How do they handle the real-time broadcast and subsequent storage such a ridiculously large amount of data? I think stuff like that would make a cool story in itself.
that would explain why windows goes haywire once every 28 days.
you don't pay a microsoft tax. Nuff said.
You can install hundreds of applications on mac os and it won't screw up anything. Can't do that with windows. I've tried that. With windows, installing anything else besides windows runs the chance of screwing up the registry and the system will either not boot (worse than crashing) or will crash in the same exact way every time the offending action is committed. And remember, mac os has Protected Configuration--configuration data for each program in a seperate file. If configuration data for one program is corrupted, the configuration data for the others remains intact. Just like with linux. Windows bundles the configuration in one file. If while writing configuration data for one program there is a bad write to a registry file, the configuration of many programs might be toasted. /etc. Finally, mac os has far less shared code than windows or linux. On a mac, you install a program or hardware and it doesn't install files other places that screw things up, or tell you "I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid the code for your mp3 player conflicts with netscape. No music for you!"
The place where mac os really shines, however, is that configuration files are not at all required for programs to run, since they will be instantly regenerated if not found. I dare anyone to delete system.dat or type rm -rf
Desktop users are most concerned with stuff not working. They want an os that is not easy to screw up and will let them add stuff without penalty. Windows and Linux have not yet satisfied those conditions. Windows never will because microsoft will never open up the code to anyone competant enough to change it. Linux, on the other hand, allows somebody to fix its bugs.
Through a mirale of modern science we have found what to do with all those AOL disks
I love linux, don't get me wrong, but how the hell can linux be ported to hindi, tamil, whatever when it hasn't been ported to English? Just take a look at your /etc folder. How many of those file names can be found in webster's dictionary? Or take the cryptic linux commands, for example. Is dd a word in the english language? Or mv, cpio, umount, or anything else. One cannot take seriously the idea of porting linux for non-english speakers when it *hasn't* yet been ported for English speakers.
That's what the spring loaded menus are for. Wish that X had that feature.
I've got a novel idea. Why don't all us self-respecting geeks in the US go on strike to protest this. That's right. We all stop doing computer work. The nation was worried about a crisis in the year 2000 bringing all the computer systems of a halt. I say lets give them one. The nation will grind to a halt without us computer professionals. Many of the companies filing the lawsuits will lose hundreds of millions of dollars each day they care on this senseless litigation. This strike will also hurt the US government, who arguably could be considered the world's biggest user of computers. If US corporations and the US government will not respect us and the work we do on our own time to make computing a better experience for everyone, then they need not have our help when their computers go down, when their databases need to be sorted, and when they need beowulf clusters setup to render their next movie. While this act of civil disobediance may get us fired, there is nothing any court can do about it. Let the punishment fit the crime.
THEY CAN TAKE AWAY OUR JOBS, BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY OUR FREEDOM.
But remember, young jedi, megahertz alone does not a great chip make. It's not the size of the megahertz, but what you do with it (i.e. chip architecture). Celeron's are CISC architecture, whereas G4's are RISC architecture. RISC chips can do more per cycle than CISC chips. So, for example, if you have a 400mhz RISC chip that can perform an execute every 2 cycles vs. a 600mhz CISC chip that executes every 8 cycles, the 400mhz RISC chip will blow the doors of the 600mhz CISC chip, simply because it can do more with less cycles. Any megahertz gap is not really significant in terms of performance, but is significant in terms of marketing. Because Mr. Everyday computer user thinks that mhz alone equals faster, he'll think that the Pentiums are faster, even though the PowerPC's kick the pentiums butt.
"Don't knock what you don't understand?" You should listen to your own advice, Tom. Stick to writing Perl documentation. Keyboard shortcuts in *real* programs running on *real* GUI's are always specifically bound (depending on the task). Why, you might ask? Because in a *real* GUI, keyboard shortcuts are standardized (and enforced) across the OS and all applications. Because *every* single program in this *real* GUI model has the same key bindings for common operations, you can use a program you have never used before more efficiently, because you don't have to think about which keyboard shortcut you need to use. In this *real* interface model, every program you have ever used might have the keyboard shortcut command+f for find. If you get a new program, within the first minute of learning to use this new program, you will instinctively hit command+f when you want to find something. Because you use this universally implemented shortcut so often, you will be able to punch it damn quickly. A lot of the bad wrap for being slow that GUI's have gotten has been due to M$ Windows, where keyboard shortcuts are poorly chosen and are not standardized across programs. mk p is might be fast, but command+m beats it by a keystroke. ;)
who would win? AIBO or the snake? Guess now Sony will now have to build a robotic mongoose to complete the food chain.
The question asked should not be "why should companies be forced to implement ergonomic keyboards and comforatable workstations" but "why haven't these companies jumped on the chance to save money and increase productivity." These OSHA regulations force employers to act in their own best interest. What's more expensive, $50 for a microsoft ergonomic keyboard per worker, or thousands in workman's compensation, lawsuits, and higher employee health insurance premiums, per worker. And if your workers are more comforatable typing at the ergonomic keyboard or that specially designed computer desk, they will tire less quickly and be more productive. Although many companies pride themselves on being technologically advanced, we've all seen how the pointy-haired bosses and accountants are hell bent on grinding away any advances that technology could give them. The business world still can't seem to understand that there are more costs associated with computers than just the equipment itself, and often you have to spend more money now to save twice as much money later on.
I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as a good math textbook. Absolute contradiction in terms.
I have struggled through math classes all my life because stupid math textbooks refused to give plentiful, relevant examples. It is really no wonder that math in American schools is hurting as much as it is. The math establishment refuses to act intelligently, then they shake their fingers at the kids parents and society. And this extends to computers. And because you have so many math people in the computer field, the same lack of desire to make anything well-documented, graphical, or user friendly extends to computers.
And that math cannot be graphical is complete BS. The universe is graphical, math describes the universe, therefore math *is* graphical. When I want to see silly little greek symbols, I'll take a Greek class.
As a former radioshack employee, let me say that this is one of Microsoft's stupidest mistakes. They will be spending a good deal of money on these "stores within stores" but will see little return. Why is this? Radioshack cannot sell computers. While being perceived as a computer store, Radio Shack is more or less incapable of marketing computers correctly. The reasons:
;)
1. Lack of knowledge of computer buyers. Radioshack tried to sell computers priced higher than same models because those "special" computers would contain "learning software", aka the "Creative Learning Series" computers. That software bundle was not terribly compelling. Most windows buyers I met in the store wanted Microsoft Office/Works bundled with the computer, not corel wordperfect and a bunch of outdated kiddie softare. Radio Shack also didn't believe in the concept of bundling the printer with the monitor and the CPU. Reality check: first time computer buyers who don't know much about computers like everything in a nice, tight bundle, with few details to think about.
2. General incompetancy at displaying the merchandise. The Radio Shack Compaq computers never run windows. There is a really crappy demo running on the Compaq's. That demo was not interesting and it didn't draw anybody's attention, especially when the store was loud. People buy computers, not demos. People want to point click around the GUI. The demo also will often freeze and be unresponsive to mouse clicks, which is not what you want to happen when you're trying to show off a computer to a customer. When they saw the demo lock up, they usually lose interest. Finally, radio shack did not display the price for the entire system (printer, monitor, cpu), they just displayed the price for just the CPU. When people saw the price, they assumed it was for everything. They got turned off when they found out the final price for everything would be much higher than the one on price tag. Especially with the warrenties the customer was forced to buy.
3. Complete incompetancy with computers in general. Our server in the back room, running windows NT, on a very, very, small amount of RAM. Swap was hit constantly. Move the mouse around, instant hard drive chatter. Even more stupidly, none of the computers behind the registers or the server in the back has a cd-rom! If we need to look at the cd which has technical specifications on a piece of merchandise or run any programs that make labels, we have to spend five minutes (which are very valuable in a crowded store)finding the keys to unlock the cabinets which house the real computers, which sit under the display computers. Oh, by the way, those display computers are just shells of the new models. The ones in the cabinets under them are 350mhz PII's running the demos, not the 500mhz machines they might be pushing. Another stupid thing that is done in Radio Shack--all the necessary paperwork for selling cell phones, the bread and butter of the store, is still done on paper in most stores. The contract is filled out and printed by hand, and credit checks must be done over the phone. Only at one store did they have a computer that would do credit checks and print contracts, and that one was a 486 running w/ '95 running Visual Basic programs with 16 megs of ram. Again, the refusal of Radio Shack to use computers for cell phone activation wastes time, and time in retail is money. Finally, they replace "upgrade" the store's software from a mostly user unfriendly SCO based system to a completely non-user friendly windows system. The only advantage the windows based system is Y2k compliant. The manager was not allowed to refer to bugs as bugs, but as "issues".
4. Lack of knowledgable employees. While I was the computer guru in my store, and there were one or two people who knew some stuff about computers, many of them really did not know enough to sell computers on the basis of their knowledge. Imagine when they try to push software.
How many will be able to understand what HTML is so they can push those deluxe versions of Frontpage?
5. Image: Radioshack is known as "that store that asks people for their names and addresses." Consumers find this threatening and annoying. Our president, Len Roberts, made the idiotic decision to force us to ask *every* customer whether they want to sign up for sprint long-distance. Is there any better way to tarnish a company's image then to have customers associate Radio Shack with the telemarketers who constantly harrass them at home?
The amusing thing is that Microsoft actually thinks that they are helping to spread their market dominance through this alliance. In all their other alliances, Microsoft usually ends up screwing their partners, but in this case it will be microsoft who will be screwed. And they think they're so clever
Linux actually has been working on macs for years.
Mklinux was apple's port of linux to the macintosh, using the mach kernel. Then there's the linuxppc distribution, which has also been around for awhile. Then you also have yellow-dog linux distribution, from Terrasoft, and they do some cutting edge server stuff.
www.linuxppc.org
www.terrasoft.com
are two good places to look. If you're into BSD, you might also want to look at www.macbsd.com. BSD is also out there for the mac.
Definately try it out. It's probably as cheap of a risc based linux solution as you can get.
You don't know the half of it, brother. I used to work at Radio Shack and we had this special order book where we could order stuff for people that is not normally sold in the store. This stuff goes back a *long* time. To give you some idea, you could order a 2600 baud modem for $150. For $40, you could order some of the dungeons and dragon's games from the late 80's.
I used to work at a Radio Shack last year, and I witnessed something you would never believe: people came in actually asking for AOL disks!
I couldn't understand how anyone on earth could possibly not find an AOL disk. Anyhow, I promptly told them to go to any bookstore and buy *any* computer magazine. They would walk out with this confused, puzzled look.
I think that while script kiddies/hackers might present some danger, you'll probably still have 99% of houses burned down down because the human owner does something incredibly stupid, like leaving the Sun Microsystems java based(pun intended) coffee maker plugged in while he goes on vacation. Computers are just incapable of matching the powerful stupidity of the naked ape.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity
Do we finally find out what Tasty Wheat really tasted like?
Did those kids at the oracle's place serve any special purpose, or where they there just to bend her silverware?
What did the oracle *really* bake in those cookies? I mean,c'mon, what kind of cookie can make you feel *that* much better after eating it?
I haven't used Corel linux, so I can't say for certain, but Corel Linux is based on Debian, a linux distribution that makes the assumption you already know how to use linux. I'd personally advise you to go with Redhat, mandrake, or caldera openlinux for the time being, until it's known for certain whether Corel has corrected Debians usability bugs.