LTSP is not reinventing the wheel. It deals with all the stuff around X... what it takes to put together a lightweight graphical terminal (booting off the network, booting from ROM, etc), handle users and authentication, etc.
Graph paper showed up in my 6th, 8th, and 10th grade math classes, the last being about ten years ago.
Then again, if your 18-yo brother was drinking beer in a pub, perhaps we are in different areas of the world...
It's one of their main functions to set the balance based on what they hear back from their employees. As has been common to the human experience, they hear more clearly from large groups of employees speaking in unison.
Further, one of management's main feedback mechanisms for how well they're doing their job is the economic performance of the company (this only became true for middle management after stock options became more widespread, in the 70s IIRC). If most of the employers treat their employees similarly, then no matter how bad that treatment is employers will see relatively little change in their bottom line (from employees leaving or underperforming).
Thus, an additional feedback mechanism is needed, or rather employees need a mechanism for leaving or underperforming without losing the ability to support their families. Collective savings help employees impact the bottom line (by underperforming, etc.) without endangering their families, meaning management gets more appropriate feedback. Union agreements with management to hire only union employees also protects this mechanism.
With that said, laws can tip the balance giving unions too much power, reducing the degree to which management has a voice, or giving them too little. It's important to recognize that unions in moderation are mostly a good thing, but their power shouldn't outstrip their value.
Unions are a check against overzealous management. What most people don't realize is that management is a check against overzealous workers and unions, too. Management has to balance what workers are paid, how workers are treated, etc., with the continuing viability of the business. If workers are paid too well, the company fails to make the profit necessary to grow for new business, etc. If the workers are paid too little, they lack motivation, leave, etc. and the company fails. Laws that empower unions or management too much disrupt this balance.
That's mostly a software issue, and the differences between the t68i and the t68 are a) software and b) cosmetics. Yes, from everything I've read, the t68i is much better in this regard.
multiple recordings at once: touche, but that does make the hardware price extremely high.
TiVo uses a proprietary wrapper around their MPEG2 streams; you can remove the wrapper and viola, you can record SVCD or DVD.
Dscalar: if you have an HDTV, have it do the deinterlacing.
DVD: whooptydoo. DVD players cost only a little more than DVD drives, and are generally much better at DVD playback to boot.
DivX: OK, maybe you care about that... I'm pretty content not pirating movies, and movies that I wanted to archive, I'd archive in a better format.
SageTV 'past viewing habits' - the point of the thumbs up/thumbs down is so that things don't become implicitly enjoyed; infomercials anyone? Further, recording a show with a TiVo gives it an implicit thumbs-up.
no monthly fee: by your own estimate, the SageTV setup costs more than a TiVo with lifetime subscription. Oops.
stream audio and video: yay, that's great. Series 2 TiVos can do that too. Regardless, once again I'll take separate components for $200, Alex.
Problems with SageTV:
unhackable, based on Windows. Want caller ID, weather display, etc.? Too bad.
no web interface, as best I can tell. What do I do when I'm out having fun and remember that I wanted to record a show in 30 minutes? With TiVo, I use my PDA to tell it to record.
It's pretty much roll-your-own, but lispme provides access to a reasonable set of mathematical functions, and lisp in general is well-suited to functional programming (that is, building your own calculations).
"It has a better UI!" is not valid, since the competitor in question has comparable UI and UI's are subjective by nature.
Well, that's the problem, you're wrong. UIs can be judged by well established, well regarded, and quantitative metrics... that is, UIs are not subjective by nature. That you completely discount UI explains why you discount the iPod.
Then the reviewers have already had their expectations lowered beyond recognition.
On the iPod you can browse by artist (and select an album of theirs, or a song in an album of theirs), by album (and then by song), by genre (and browse by artist, and then by album, and then by song), and even by composer. This is how people look for music, not according to a fixed directory structure. A fixed hierarchy doesn't handle albums with mixed artists well; you either have to put each song with the appropriate artist, eliminate the 'artist' level of of the hierarchy, or introduce that most productive of musical groups, "Mixed Artists". All three have drawbacks that disappear when you allow fluid hierarchy.
Further, the iRiver has inferior input design; do you really want to use up and down buttons to scroll through a thousand songs (or even 100 albums)?
Finally, it has inferior software on the computer end... you say elsewhere how wonderful the 'drag and drop' interface of the iRiver's software is. Drag and drop? The thing is designed to hold all of your music, so why does there have to be some kind of 'select what music to install' step? Why not just automatically synchronize everything on the iRiver with everything on the computer, and be done with it?
The iRiver has a few interesting features (simple test of an 'interesting feature': "yeah, I'd like that feature on my iPod"), but it fails at the most basic level, just like a lot of other mp3 players do, which is why consumers mostly pick the iPod.
For those of you bitching about the 3650... don't worry, this 7600 is as available in the US (GSM 1900, remember?) as the 7650, the grown-up older brother of the 3650.
Which is to say, we're not getting any of the better phones.
What if it's just a case of a different corporate culture? My view tends to be that thas sort of thing is indicative of a larger cultural difference between the employee and the rest of the company, and fixing it from that employee's point of view may be breaking it from the rest of the company's point of view (I'm not just talking about "from management's point of view"). If you think you can find a workplace with a more compatible culture, go there as a first choice rather than try to change the culture of the current workplace.
Then again (and I've seen this too) it might be a small percentage of the company with particular power that takes a particular view; the head of HR, head of billing, or something like that. Maybe that person or group of people is the one failing to fit into the company culture, but with the power to dictate. Maybe convincing them that another approach is better (for that company), going over their heads, or similar is a better approach.
But just saying "this is how I want the company to be, period" doesn't solve problems.
It might be better, then, to make it hop online whenever a CF card is inserted (that is, at the end of the trip), rather than "as soon as it gets in range". A light laptop with a PCMCIA slot running Linux should be able to run arbitrary commands at insertion just fine.
The alternative seems to be playing with war-driving tools to initiate an action when it sees the right WiFi network...
the WebDAV server is separately maintained from the regular server, and is a revision or two behind. Maybe it's usable, but it's not the target of their main development efforts, it appears.
I bought the TT because I was already using Bluetooth and wanted something that didn't use an external adapter (I was using a Vx with the blue5, and I didn't want to use an SDIO card that stuck out of the top, either). What does the T2 add? A better screen (the TT's screen has been good enough for me, readable in all lighting conditions I've tried), and more memory (I already have a 128MB SD card, and I'm still using less than 8MB of internal memory).
The T2 looks like a product that might sway people not quite convinced to buy the TT, but I'm waiting for something like what the rumors have suggested: virtual graffiti area, 400MHz processor, and so on.
Proper typing (that is, how people have typed for over a century successfully) has you only making contact with the keys on contact, which is not different whether there are edges or not.
The primary tactile feedback necessary for touch-typing is the home-row dimple. To help align your hands, this keyboard has a dimple for each finger. Should work fine.
Yup. I first learned by typing listings in. I started with the book of games that came with the computer, then it was from some funky "read a book about a 'hacker' and write programs that follow the action" book, then from a book of, well, listings.
30+ pages of listings, type it in and run it. Extra information on how to tailor particular bits to your computer's BASIC, since they weren't all the same. (for that reason, even having a disk wouldn't be all that great)
It seems tedious, but putting in the time typing the code means you've got a lot of time just sitting there, looking at the code, and your natural reaction will be to try to understand it, relate the current line to previous lines, predict the upcoming lines. It's no different from following a recipe; it's a completely different kind of learning experience than reading a recipe.
Go look at modern education theory, and you'll see a lot of talk about how physical manipulation and direct action are great - some of the best - ways to learn.
Sample code on disk is great in some cases, but introductory programming is not one of them. You should type every line you use when you're starting out.
Sorry, Bluetooth isn't dead, and it's not surviving as a way to connect a headset to a cell phone (only).
What the article seems to completely fail to realize is that 802.11b (and every 802.11* standard with which I'm familiar) is completely inappropriate for the low-power uses to which Bluetooth is put. Do I want my cell phone's battery to be drained by an 11MBps bandwidth, 50m range radio in addition to its cellular radio? I don't think so; secondary radios should have as little impact on the primary function as possible.
What about my PDA? Well, nope, not there either.
I wouldn't mind these devices using protocols on top of IP rather than their own system to implement the various profiles, but to be honest, it's not a very big issue. Plus, of course, there are some applications (headsets, keyboards and mice) where I am not at all convinced that IP is the right way to go.
Range is not as important for these applications, the powerful addressing of IP (4 or 6) is not as important, but power consumption and requisite computational power are. And Bluetooth isn't perfect, but it performs better for these applications than WiFi.
I really like CUPS and it is quite nice on the "system" side.
Yes, it can do almost as much as lpr could do 20 years ago. For example, using the CUPS version of lpq, I can almost imagine what it would be like, being able to actually see what's in a remote queue.
I should be presented with a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (for instance print on both sides, etc).
Sounds to me like you're bitching about X, and the complete lack of any strong, standard API that might be able to provide standard print dialogs. Using OS X, I do get a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (as recorded in CUPS' PPD for that printer). I can also access those some printers, and all their options, using lp or lpr (the CUPS versions) from bash.
I've never met someone over 35 who could reasonably keep up with late-breaking security issues, let alone the technologies involved, due to lifestyle requirements (family, friends, house, etc.)
Uh... what sort of idiot are you?
Let me guess: you're in HR, right?
21 year olds (like you, apparently) are more likely to think of security as putting out fires, rather than building fire-safe buildings in the first place.
That makes it seem as if security is something that should not 'bother' desktop users.
No, no, no. OSS is not a security solution; talking about OSS on the desktop is not talking about security on the desktop. Please, listen to me: open source software does nothing, by itself, for security.
This isn't a good enough reason for asking only the sort of questions like "what can Microsoft do to improve its security track record" though:-/
What? You want to talk about security on the desktop, then you have to accept that by and large Microsoft is the desktop, which means you have to talk about Microsoft writing more secure software. Talking about Microsoft was never my idea of 'everything to talk about' - but if you want to emphasize security on the desktop, that's what you have to deal with.
I think it might provide a good way to steer the discussion towards security practises that are nice.
OK, let's talk about that. Letting the user introduce their own changes to software that has already been audited is not a good security practice. Letting random third parties have at your source code, play with it, and release it with the same name - possibly with trojans included - is not a good security practice.
OSS is not about best security practices; OSS allows secure practices, but does nothing to actually encourage them. It doesn't discourage them either; OSS has nothing to do with security.
I like open source software! I hack on OSS, and as a programmer in an academic environment, most of the software I write is under a very liberal BSDish license. But open source software is not a security solution. If you equate OSS with security, you might find yourself using NIS (as implemented on Open/Net/FreeBSD and Linux) to distribute password information across your network, you might find yourself using the version of sendmail (OSS) that enabled the great Worm of the '80s on your mail server. OSS is completely neutral about security.
My point wasn't that "OSS is more secure" but that this (more or less) would be one of the first things I'd ask a security expert about.
My point is that discussing whether they would recommend OSS systems on desktops is not directly relevant to security concerns. An expert on security may, or may not, be able to offer reasonable arguments pro or con, may have spent little prior critical thinking time evaluating the subject, and may or may not be able to show their expertise in security through the discussion.
It doesn't communicate to the other people reading the question and answer anything useful regarding security. It may or may not give you a view into the security expert's views on the security process, and if they're good talkers but not good security experts they can make sure it doesn't reveal their lack of expertise.
A better question in that context would be a critique of Microsoft's security practices; "What could Microsoft do better about security?" This is a no-brainer to someone familiar with the field, it focuses the reader's attention on concrete, "this could be better" steps, and makes them aware of better practices, all together. It's not a good way to determine the real quality of a security consultant, but it's a good way to separate white-hat poseurs from security experts.
rational user model, greater choice, higher quality, easier upkeep and lower cost.
Yes, these are trivial matters compared to the power of auditing code for errors, open review of algorithm, and awareness of security issues to begin with. OSS allows the first two, but the trick is not whether it is allowed, but whether it happens.
In a security-conscious group like the OpenBSD team, this stuff happens. At Red Hat, not so much. Whether or not it's OSS doesn't have much impact.
Slashdot Mirror
LTSP is not reinventing the wheel. It deals with all the stuff around X... what it takes to put together a lightweight graphical terminal (booting off the network, booting from ROM, etc), handle users and authentication, etc.
Graph paper showed up in my 6th, 8th, and 10th grade math classes, the last being about ten years ago. Then again, if your 18-yo brother was drinking beer in a pub, perhaps we are in different areas of the world...
It's one of their main functions to set the balance based on what they hear back from their employees. As has been common to the human experience, they hear more clearly from large groups of employees speaking in unison.
Further, one of management's main feedback mechanisms for how well they're doing their job is the economic performance of the company (this only became true for middle management after stock options became more widespread, in the 70s IIRC). If most of the employers treat their employees similarly, then no matter how bad that treatment is employers will see relatively little change in their bottom line (from employees leaving or underperforming).
Thus, an additional feedback mechanism is needed, or rather employees need a mechanism for leaving or underperforming without losing the ability to support their families. Collective savings help employees impact the bottom line (by underperforming, etc.) without endangering their families, meaning management gets more appropriate feedback. Union agreements with management to hire only union employees also protects this mechanism.
With that said, laws can tip the balance giving unions too much power, reducing the degree to which management has a voice, or giving them too little. It's important to recognize that unions in moderation are mostly a good thing, but their power shouldn't outstrip their value.
Unions are a check against overzealous management. What most people don't realize is that management is a check against overzealous workers and unions, too. Management has to balance what workers are paid, how workers are treated, etc., with the continuing viability of the business. If workers are paid too well, the company fails to make the profit necessary to grow for new business, etc. If the workers are paid too little, they lack motivation, leave, etc. and the company fails. Laws that empower unions or management too much disrupt this balance.
That's mostly a software issue, and the differences between the t68i and the t68 are a) software and b) cosmetics. Yes, from everything I've read, the t68i is much better in this regard.
Then here's a response to you:
Problems with SageTV:
It's pretty much roll-your-own, but lispme provides access to a reasonable set of mathematical functions, and lisp in general is well-suited to functional programming (that is, building your own calculations).
Well, that's the problem, you're wrong. UIs can be judged by well established, well regarded, and quantitative metrics... that is, UIs are not subjective by nature. That you completely discount UI explains why you discount the iPod.
Then the reviewers have already had their expectations lowered beyond recognition.
On the iPod you can browse by artist (and select an album of theirs, or a song in an album of theirs), by album (and then by song), by genre (and browse by artist, and then by album, and then by song), and even by composer. This is how people look for music, not according to a fixed directory structure. A fixed hierarchy doesn't handle albums with mixed artists well; you either have to put each song with the appropriate artist, eliminate the 'artist' level of of the hierarchy, or introduce that most productive of musical groups, "Mixed Artists". All three have drawbacks that disappear when you allow fluid hierarchy.
Further, the iRiver has inferior input design; do you really want to use up and down buttons to scroll through a thousand songs (or even 100 albums)?
Finally, it has inferior software on the computer end... you say elsewhere how wonderful the 'drag and drop' interface of the iRiver's software is. Drag and drop? The thing is designed to hold all of your music, so why does there have to be some kind of 'select what music to install' step? Why not just automatically synchronize everything on the iRiver with everything on the computer, and be done with it?
The iRiver has a few interesting features (simple test of an 'interesting feature': "yeah, I'd like that feature on my iPod"), but it fails at the most basic level, just like a lot of other mp3 players do, which is why consumers mostly pick the iPod.
For those of you bitching about the 3650... don't worry, this 7600 is as available in the US (GSM 1900, remember?) as the 7650, the grown-up older brother of the 3650.
Which is to say, we're not getting any of the better phones.
That's arguable.
What if it's just a case of a different corporate culture? My view tends to be that thas sort of thing is indicative of a larger cultural difference between the employee and the rest of the company, and fixing it from that employee's point of view may be breaking it from the rest of the company's point of view (I'm not just talking about "from management's point of view"). If you think you can find a workplace with a more compatible culture, go there as a first choice rather than try to change the culture of the current workplace.
Then again (and I've seen this too) it might be a small percentage of the company with particular power that takes a particular view; the head of HR, head of billing, or something like that. Maybe that person or group of people is the one failing to fit into the company culture, but with the power to dictate. Maybe convincing them that another approach is better (for that company), going over their heads, or similar is a better approach.
But just saying "this is how I want the company to be, period" doesn't solve problems.
It might be better, then, to make it hop online whenever a CF card is inserted (that is, at the end of the trip), rather than "as soon as it gets in range". A light laptop with a PCMCIA slot running Linux should be able to run arbitrary commands at insertion just fine.
The alternative seems to be playing with war-driving tools to initiate an action when it sees the right WiFi network...
well, disregard that... it looks like the WebDAV support was rolled in.
the WebDAV server is separately maintained from the regular server, and is a revision or two behind. Maybe it's usable, but it's not the target of their main development efforts, it appears.
I bought the TT because I was already using Bluetooth and wanted something that didn't use an external adapter (I was using a Vx with the blue5, and I didn't want to use an SDIO card that stuck out of the top, either). What does the T2 add? A better screen (the TT's screen has been good enough for me, readable in all lighting conditions I've tried), and more memory (I already have a 128MB SD card, and I'm still using less than 8MB of internal memory).
The T2 looks like a product that might sway people not quite convinced to buy the TT, but I'm waiting for something like what the rumors have suggested: virtual graffiti area, 400MHz processor, and so on.
...based on their proprietary technology.
Oh, like a monopoly.
Nope.
Proper typing (that is, how people have typed for over a century successfully) has you only making contact with the keys on contact, which is not different whether there are edges or not.
The primary tactile feedback necessary for touch-typing is the home-row dimple. To help align your hands, this keyboard has a dimple for each finger. Should work fine.
Yup. I first learned by typing listings in. I started with the book of games that came with the computer, then it was from some funky "read a book about a 'hacker' and write programs that follow the action" book, then from a book of, well, listings.
30+ pages of listings, type it in and run it. Extra information on how to tailor particular bits to your computer's BASIC, since they weren't all the same. (for that reason, even having a disk wouldn't be all that great)
It seems tedious, but putting in the time typing the code means you've got a lot of time just sitting there, looking at the code, and your natural reaction will be to try to understand it, relate the current line to previous lines, predict the upcoming lines. It's no different from following a recipe; it's a completely different kind of learning experience than reading a recipe.
Go look at modern education theory, and you'll see a lot of talk about how physical manipulation and direct action are great - some of the best - ways to learn.
Sample code on disk is great in some cases, but introductory programming is not one of them. You should type every line you use when you're starting out.
Sorry, Bluetooth isn't dead, and it's not surviving as a way to connect a headset to a cell phone (only).
What the article seems to completely fail to realize is that 802.11b (and every 802.11* standard with which I'm familiar) is completely inappropriate for the low-power uses to which Bluetooth is put. Do I want my cell phone's battery to be drained by an 11MBps bandwidth, 50m range radio in addition to its cellular radio? I don't think so; secondary radios should have as little impact on the primary function as possible.
What about my PDA? Well, nope, not there either.
I wouldn't mind these devices using protocols on top of IP rather than their own system to implement the various profiles, but to be honest, it's not a very big issue. Plus, of course, there are some applications (headsets, keyboards and mice) where I am not at all convinced that IP is the right way to go.
Range is not as important for these applications, the powerful addressing of IP (4 or 6) is not as important, but power consumption and requisite computational power are. And Bluetooth isn't perfect, but it performs better for these applications than WiFi.
Yes, it can do almost as much as lpr could do 20 years ago. For example, using the CUPS version of lpq, I can almost imagine what it would be like, being able to actually see what's in a remote queue.
Sounds to me like you're bitching about X, and the complete lack of any strong, standard API that might be able to provide standard print dialogs. Using OS X, I do get a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (as recorded in CUPS' PPD for that printer). I can also access those some printers, and all their options, using lp or lpr (the CUPS versions) from bash.
Yes. Just tonight, in fact, after spending all day doing CUPS programming on OS X, I drank heavily.
What's on the docket for tomorrow? Track down the latest bug, see if that's the only thing left, and then - you guessed it - drink heavily.
Hopefully I'll be done inside a week, and I can stop dealing with CUPS programming until Panther comes out.
Uh... what sort of idiot are you?
Let me guess: you're in HR, right?
21 year olds (like you, apparently) are more likely to think of security as putting out fires, rather than building fire-safe buildings in the first place.
Not able to handle the technology? Pah.
No, no, no. OSS is not a security solution; talking about OSS on the desktop is not talking about security on the desktop. Please, listen to me: open source software does nothing, by itself, for security.
What? You want to talk about security on the desktop, then you have to accept that by and large Microsoft is the desktop, which means you have to talk about Microsoft writing more secure software. Talking about Microsoft was never my idea of 'everything to talk about' - but if you want to emphasize security on the desktop, that's what you have to deal with.
OK, let's talk about that. Letting the user introduce their own changes to software that has already been audited is not a good security practice. Letting random third parties have at your source code, play with it, and release it with the same name - possibly with trojans included - is not a good security practice.
OSS is not about best security practices; OSS allows secure practices, but does nothing to actually encourage them. It doesn't discourage them either; OSS has nothing to do with security.
I like open source software! I hack on OSS, and as a programmer in an academic environment, most of the software I write is under a very liberal BSDish license. But open source software is not a security solution. If you equate OSS with security, you might find yourself using NIS (as implemented on Open/Net/FreeBSD and Linux) to distribute password information across your network, you might find yourself using the version of sendmail (OSS) that enabled the great Worm of the '80s on your mail server. OSS is completely neutral about security.
My point is that discussing whether they would recommend OSS systems on desktops is not directly relevant to security concerns. An expert on security may, or may not, be able to offer reasonable arguments pro or con, may have spent little prior critical thinking time evaluating the subject, and may or may not be able to show their expertise in security through the discussion.
It doesn't communicate to the other people reading the question and answer anything useful regarding security. It may or may not give you a view into the security expert's views on the security process, and if they're good talkers but not good security experts they can make sure it doesn't reveal their lack of expertise.
A better question in that context would be a critique of Microsoft's security practices; "What could Microsoft do better about security?" This is a no-brainer to someone familiar with the field, it focuses the reader's attention on concrete, "this could be better" steps, and makes them aware of better practices, all together. It's not a good way to determine the real quality of a security consultant, but it's a good way to separate white-hat poseurs from security experts.
Yes, these are trivial matters compared to the power of auditing code for errors, open review of algorithm, and awareness of security issues to begin with. OSS allows the first two, but the trick is not whether it is allowed, but whether it happens.
In a security-conscious group like the OpenBSD team, this stuff happens. At Red Hat, not so much. Whether or not it's OSS doesn't have much impact.