Actually if you have a Redhat subscription you get excellent telephone or email support on all applications as well as the OS however you are going to pay for it with the cost being determined on if you are a home or corporate user, the actual coverage and the type of hardware you are running the Redhat software on. See the following costs. For the home user you can do the support yourself if you can, but for the corporate customer a support contact is essential.
For many companies support costs are not important if the perceived value of their data exceeds the cost of hardware, software and their support. If you are the IT manager and you make the suggestion to your company that they don't need software support you are placing yourself in a very risky position because one IT issue with regard to software (OS or otherwise) even if it is not your fault and you are going to get the blame.
While I have focused on Linux support many corporations want Microsoft support if they have Microsoft OS's on some of their hardware even though the actual support may actually be (to some) quite poor.
Because companies *need* to pay someone, for liability sake (don't ask me, ask the lawyers). Would you rather companies continue to give money to Microsoft?
You are right the old saying in IT was "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" now it's different and the new saying is "Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft".
Actually many machines today, even from two or more years ago don't come with a recovery disk. If you read the blurb that comes with the machine (usually in quite large letters) you can create a recovery disk (actually a DVD) which in the case of XP may be just one DVD although all the Vista recovery disks I have made require two DVD's.
No matter what you think of MS Windows, making a recovery disk is essential because at some stage you are going to have a hard disk failure or just as bad a corrupted file-system (yes NTFS can get this).
To actually make a Vista recovery disk for my laptop took over three hours and you are only allowed to do this once. To bad if your so called recovery DVD gets trashed so you need to use an imaging tool such as Norton Ghost to image your disk so you can do a bare metal recovery and this requires an outage. Not that big a deal with a home computer but an absolute pita on commercial production machines.
Creating a recovery image is fine if your basic OS is small (say one to two DVD's) but it becomes almost impossible if you have huge amounts of data so you need to structure (be honest how many MS Windows users do this) your system disk in to one or more parts with say 15GB (3 DVD's) for C:\ and the other disks being backed up by more conventional means to a backup media such as tape (not cheap) or a large hard disk or array. I have not even covered what is required to do a regular backup and as disks get bigger this is starting to become just too difficult for the average home user.
While I use Linux at home and at work the above problem also applies to Linux/Unix machines as well, although at the moment most people that use Linux on their home machines do know how to do proper backups but this will change with novices who want to remain novices using Linux instead of MS Windows.
I have used Open Office and the math entry part is what I would classify as adequate for simple math, however there are much better GUI typesetters such as Framemaker but you have to pay for it. Even Microsoft has a document preparation system and it also costs. I have not used it but talking to those who have Framemaker is preferred.
Because LaTeX is a "mark-up language" many people who are used to a GUI find it a bit difficult to get into it, however if you buy the LaTeX book the first page is rather good in that it actually gives you basic hints of how not to read it. The problem is that for math there is no alternative but to read the book.
Granted you have to get your head around using LaTeX particularly with regard to maths however if you are required to display math on a paper I would assume if anyone is smart enough to write and understand mathematical formulas then writing the those formulas in LaTeX would be a fairly straight forward. Even if you don't have the LaTeX book which IMHO is essential there are plenty of web examples such as here and here.
Well, apparently you haven't really used YUM on any real servers.. it's a pain in the ass compared to the ease and speed of apt-get.
Well I have, on Enterprise class blades and servers and "yum" works very well. I have even a yum for RHEL4-U1 and when you have a controlled repository (CentOS and Redhat) it makes multi site management of hundreds of machines very easy especially when you have deal with panicky Management and application people who could be anywhere in the world. A normal yum update takes anything from a few minutes to about 20 minutes (RHEL4-U1 to RHEL4-U6) and you don't have to stop the applications. Of course a new kernel requires a reboot (approx 5 minutes).
Also, when installing packages on x86_64 servers, you need to add.x86_64 to every package you're going to install to prevent YUM installing the i386 versions too. Also, sometimes YUM forgets or gets confused with the repository updates, and you need to do manual 'yum clean all' runs to fix the cached information
If you have a 64 bit or even 32 bit system you don't have to specify the architecture yum knows all about that unless someone has stuffed up your repo configurations. The only time you may have to specify the architecture is when you need to install i386 packages on a x86_64 operating system and even then yum usually gets it right. This is only needed on machines when you want 32 bit compatibility on a 64 bit operating system. I have rarely seen this on 64 bit enterprise systems, although I have seen (all to often) i386 OS's on 64 bit machines and if you did this you would be crazy to install x86_64 packages.
I rarely get issues using "yum" unless I download a package from a site that does not play fair. Basically I only enable my generic repo's and turn off all others. I only enable a repo such as "Livna" when I want specific packages. Enabling all repos is just asking for trouble.
Even if you get a conflict with a package the easiest way to manage this is note down the package name and remove it using yum although you have to be careful since it may want to remove a lot of dependent packages that you really want. If this happens then you should remove the package(s) using "rpm" with the "--nodeps" option. When you have done your update then you can try and install the errant packages using "yum" preferably.
The only reason I could think of switching to Fedora from Ubuntu is if you had a nVidia 8200 motherboard. The Fedora Core 9 kernel version (2.6.25) supports it, and the one in Ubuntu 8.04 (2.6.24) does not.
You only have generic support for Nvidia cards so you should use the repo "Livna" which provides much better drivers. Whenever I get a new kernel I enable the "Livna" repo to actually do the update since you have to go to "Livna' anyway to get the drivers. Less hassels and only one reboot for the new kernel with the new Nvidia drivers to work properly. Total down time 5 minutes.
KDE support in Fedora may be better as well, I haven't looked at it in a while so I'm not sure. KDE is stagnant as hell in Ubuntu/Kubuntu land for now (no LTS support for KDE in 8.04, etc.), due to all the churn with the very beta-like and some would say ill-planned KDE 4.0 release.
If you put on Fedora 9, KDE 4.0 is IMHO annoying (I switched to Gnome) so you are best off sticking with Fedora 8 which has KDE 3.5 and you can even run Compriz Fusion quite well (the Wow is now!!) if you like that.
Then why doesn't Fedora fix that? It seems like an obvious flaw, since my Ubuntu box automatically alerts me to any updates available, whether I last ran apt-get update a month ago or two minutes ago.
Fedora has had that for quite some time. I use Fedora 9 now but I have been getting update alerts since Fedora 6 although you can turn it off. Of course you could always check every day or week or whenever you felt like it with "yum update" (I never allow auto updates) since I like to see the size of the download and what packages I am getting for the update. You need to be root to actually do updates hence the reason why I don't allow auto updates and I may want to do the actual update at a time outside my peak ISP rates.
Can't say about Fedora 5 back but you could easily run a cron job to warn of any updates although "yum update" at a time I feel like it works for me.
Actually it has nothing to do with RPM vs Deb. It's apt vs yum. Install apt-rpm in Fedora and see how fast you can install stuff
(Actually, it has to do with yum updating the package lists every run vs apt just doing it with apt-get update).
I find that yum works very well on Fedora, CentOS and Redhat and it is very fast. In a nutshell the way yum works and I assume apt-get works in a similar way, is to query the target repo for its latest application database (normally in lite mySQL) and compare against the client machines database of what is available on the repo and installed on the clinet to see if anything need to be updated. If there is a requirement to update a particular package, that package plus any required dependencies is selected for down load. If the repos database and the client database are the same and there is no request for an install then nothing will be done.
Actually in Fedora etc you can run "yum update" and this works just like "app-get update". From what I can gather apt-get is supposed to be slightly better than yum although I have not been able to tell the difference and I have used apt-get on other Linux distributions.
One thing I have found with yum is you should never allow auto updates (my personal choice) and only allow the base repos to be active such you need to specify the repo that has a package that the base repos don't have. If you do this then you have less hassles with repos that don't play fair.
You can do what you like if your Linux distribution is on a machine you own but in a corporate environment auto updates are just crazy (if you do this get your CV in order). To manage a large number of Linux machines you have to have a controlled repository setup and mandatory change request to be authorised by all interested parties before you can even attempt any update. Good PR and management skills are needed along with a solid brick wall to talk to when all parties can't agree:-)
Try this Born script, it's not elegant but it works:
for f in $(rpm -qa) ; do I=$(rpm -qi $f|grep License) ; echo $I $f | cut -d" " -f4- ; done
Your get something like the following:
License: GPL acl-2.2.47-1.fc9.x86_64
License: GPLv3+ and GPLv2+ with exceptions libgfortran-4.3.0-8.x86_64
License: LGPL libthai-0.1.9-4.fc9.x86_64
License: MIT libXext-1.0.4-1.fc9.x86_64
You can be a little more creative and find out how many different licenses and number off (quite a few) are on the system or what ever you really want. I am quite sure many can point out the virtues of Perl or other languages but what I did was very quick (maybe dirty) and it works well.
Pipe the above script (surround in brackets first) into "awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c" and the result is quite interesting. Let the flames wars begin:-)
You could probably make a bash script to add that data to the metadeta, and convert the whole repo with it.
But, of course, intel doesn't use bash - it's not a compiled language.
You are right Intel doesn't use Bash but all Linux distributions do.
I run Fedora 9 on my laptop and definately would not recommend it for the novice user, however if you wish to learn a distribution based on Redhat rpm's then it is excellent. I did find that on install Fedora 9 worked for nearly all the applications I used including wireless. For those apps that did not work the Fedora forums were great.
When you run "rpm -qi package_name" then you can see what the License is for the package as well as the Signature and a host of other information. Another feature (there are plenty) of rpm is the "-R" (or --requires) to find out the rpm packages it depends on although it is usually much more useful to use "yum" to combine the appropriate packages rather than depend solely on the "rpm" command.
You can make a very good argument that Vista is crap technology, but lack of sales is not something they really have to worry about. Microsoft has sold something like 100 - 150 million copies of Vista.
The problem with this is how many copies of Vista came with new PC's? Also if a business has a corporate license then they have the right to the total number of Vista licenses that they paid for and this counts as Vista licenses sold even if the corporation does not install Vista.
It would be much more telling if Microsoft let out the number of Vista licenses paid for by the home user to upgrade their XP machines. I won't hold my breath on this though.
If this technology is going to have any chance of being successful then Microsoft should have a patent on it. I did a quick search and could not find one but then again finding a patent can be rather difficult considering the Lawyer speak you have to get your head around. I'm ok with a number (sort of obvious) but you have to know what it is to start with.
At the moment OLED is a possible contender to LCD and Plasma screens however the cost of OLED screens is still much higher then LCD and it is still limited to small sizes. Also from what I have read OLED has a shorter lifespan than LCD and Plasma although given money and time OLED may become more competitive. Still the article wasn't that detailed so it is very difficult to draw any conclusions except the engineers said that commercial production is 5 years away and given that time OLED, SED (there are others as well) as well as LCD and Plasma research won't be standing still.
Personally I think this research has come to the table far to late to be a viable competitive display but you never know.
Teach him python (or ruby, or whatever else that is high-level and easy).
It's the same as basic was twenty years ago, just much more powerful, easyer to learn and more fun.
I beg to differ here, higher level languages are fine for someone who has some experience in programming, you can very quickly turn off the beginner. For someone to start programming a simple shell language such as Bash or Ksh is much more suitable since you can easily write simple and even powerful scripts that you can test very easily and quickly and gain confidence as you go. I always recommend courses in formal programming to learn the fundamentals and best practices of using simpler and even more advanced languages.
You are right there are no short-cuts although I would suggest he become familiar with the basics of using a *nix system such as how to use the command line and why this is still preferred for certain tasks. This is not to say that GUI should be disdained but you should be able to point out when a GUI is the best solution to a problem and also when the command line may be the better way to go.
Now to programming. It is easier to explain the basics and it is very easy to show by example (keep it simple at first and let him get comfortable) if you use the shell (ie. bash, ksh or just sh - there are others but ksh/bash/sh are the most common) as a basic introduction to programming. You can later on get into languages like Perl and eventually C although I would recommend a formal course on the basics of programming before any he tries to learn a language that need to be compiled. As to more advanced languages it is very difficult to recommend one since the choice of a language should depend on what you as the programmer want to achieve, although as you probably know you may not have any choice in the matter.
I don't think the Wii remote is all that useful for a computer mouse. Of course you could always try the following mouse since IMHO it is definately sexier and is more flexible than a Wii remote and it works on all PC's now.
Personally, I think hemp should be more commonly used to create paper. It grows quickly, and has many uses. Hell, even the US constitution is written on hemp.
You are spot on with this comment. The problem with hemp is the fact that it is called hemp and this word is synonymous with marijuana so in the eyes of the public it is bad and for some competing business this is a good thing to foster. What many people fail to realise is that linen which is still a prized fabric is actually made from hemp and linen can last quite a long time (well over 100 years) because of its hard wearing properties (maybe that is why some business don't want to compete with it). Many beneficial products can be made from the hemp plant (not the one you get marijuana from) and today many countries are starting to realise that this plant has been much maligned. For more information on hemp this site is a good start.
Anyway back on topic. I get software informational updates from HP and also from other vendors and most vendors do provide a cardboard box with one or two slips of paper. This IMHO is annoying because I have no use for the box and in many cases the slips of paper are just as useless. From my personal experience the best vendor for reducing waste is Redhat. (others may have different experiences) I only get email advisories which is all I want. Actually many years ago HP did this as well.
Oh and what happened to "quote", even "blockquote" does not work properly?
I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.
Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious. And also, I'd like to know the worldwide numbers for 2008, if you have any source. Thanks.
This list currently contains 616 titles. According to this list, there are currently 266 games released in North America, 272 games released in Europe and 172 games released in Japan for the Wii.
235 are exclusive, 12 are console exclusive and 348 are not exclusive.
Think about it: Most games we see today are just repetitions of the same concept except even shinier. It's like - and I say this knowing there are really good designers out there - the industry has lost it's ability to innovate.
I wish I could tell you you are not right but your post echo's my sentiments exactly.
I have a BC PS3 and I find I end up playing PS2 games and worse still PS2 games that came out over a year ago. There are quite a few PS2 games that I really like that I feel this will keep me going for over a year to come. This saves me a considerable amount of money as well. My sons like GTA4 though, although this is not a game I am interested in. I am not that interested in FPS games nor am I interested in games such a Metal Gear Solid 4 since I was never a fan of the series (I did like the original Metal Gear on the NES though).
I even have a Gamecube but only have a few IMHO good games so it has a tendency to gather dust. As for the Wii I refuse to pay for overly milked franchises and most of the other games I am not interested in. I guess I am getting jaded even though I still enjoy playing some of the old NES and SNES games under emulation so graphics is not an over-riding deal for me. I have even looked at the Xbox 360 and while I am no fan of Microsoft I cannot justify buying one since there are only a few games that I am interested in and for me to buy Microsoft I want more than a few games.
I have never been that interested in the Metal Gear Solid series although I did actually like the original on the NES. As for Warhawk I am not that interested either. I prefer action/adventure and RPG's and it is rare that the games I like playing have many (if any) cutscenes. Why I don't buy a Wii (I can easily afford it) is that I am sick of the endless milking of a franchises such as Zelda, Metroid and Mario. Actually many games on all the consoles do this although every once in a while something good comes along. On the Wii I have yet to see one game that would make me purchase the machine (I already have a SNES, N64, Gamecube and a backwards compatible PS3). Even though I do have a PS3 I predominately play PS2 games and they do look good on my HDTV although my sons do like GTA4 which is not really my style of game.
I live in Australia and just about all new games that are remotely any good cost between AU$100 and AU$120 although Wii games do vary from AU$90 to AU$100. This could be acceptable if the Australian dollar was weak but the AU$ is almost the same as the US$. Because of this there is no way I am going to pay AU$100 for a game (importing is the best way) and am quite happy to wait until the price drops usually within six months. One thing I have noticed is that Wii games take anything upto a year to drop in price unless the game is a real stinker.
The DS which is a hand-held and belongs in a different category to the Wii which is a console. If you wish to compare then you need to compare the DS (75.8 million world wide) to the PSP (38.3 million world wide). Before the fan-boys start waving the flag there are few reasons why the DS leads the PSP. The first reason the DS's Nintendo brand is synonymous with gaming and the second is if you consider that most parents when choosing a hand-held for their child would chose the DS because it is cheaper and can take more punishment than the PSP.
The Wii is actually in a category of its own since it is the only Standard Definition console out of the PS3 and Xbox 360. It is also very popular since the majority of its games cater to the casual gamer. I have had nearly every Nintendo machine since the NES and have enjoyed many games on them. What has turned me off the Wii is that the only games that are interesting to me have been milked again and again to the point were I don't want to play the latest Zelda, Metroid or Mario game. Even the graphics which should appear better then the Gamecube's (which I have) appear to have been poorly implemented and on a large screen HDTV the graphics appear to be worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually if you have a Redhat subscription you get excellent telephone or email support on all applications as well as the OS however you are going to pay for it with the cost being determined on if you are a home or corporate user, the actual coverage and the type of hardware you are running the Redhat software on. See the following costs. For the home user you can do the support yourself if you can, but for the corporate customer a support contact is essential.
For many companies support costs are not important if the perceived value of their data exceeds the cost of hardware, software and their support. If you are the IT manager and you make the suggestion to your company that they don't need software support you are placing yourself in a very risky position because one IT issue with regard to software (OS or otherwise) even if it is not your fault and you are going to get the blame.
While I have focused on Linux support many corporations want Microsoft support if they have Microsoft OS's on some of their hardware even though the actual support may actually be (to some) quite poor.
Because companies *need* to pay someone, for liability sake (don't ask me, ask the lawyers). Would you rather companies continue to give money to Microsoft?
You are right the old saying in IT was "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" now it's different and the new saying is "Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft".
Actually many machines today, even from two or more years ago don't come with a recovery disk. If you read the blurb that comes with the machine (usually in quite large letters) you can create a recovery disk (actually a DVD) which in the case of XP may be just one DVD although all the Vista recovery disks I have made require two DVD's.
No matter what you think of MS Windows, making a recovery disk is essential because at some stage you are going to have a hard disk failure or just as bad a corrupted file-system (yes NTFS can get this).
To actually make a Vista recovery disk for my laptop took over three hours and you are only allowed to do this once. To bad if your so called recovery DVD gets trashed so you need to use an imaging tool such as Norton Ghost to image your disk so you can do a bare metal recovery and this requires an outage. Not that big a deal with a home computer but an absolute pita on commercial production machines.
Creating a recovery image is fine if your basic OS is small (say one to two DVD's) but it becomes almost impossible if you have huge amounts of data so you need to structure (be honest how many MS Windows users do this) your system disk in to one or more parts with say 15GB (3 DVD's) for C:\ and the other disks being backed up by more conventional means to a backup media such as tape (not cheap) or a large hard disk or array. I have not even covered what is required to do a regular backup and as disks get bigger this is starting to become just too difficult for the average home user.
While I use Linux at home and at work the above problem also applies to Linux/Unix machines as well, although at the moment most people that use Linux on their home machines do know how to do proper backups but this will change with novices who want to remain novices using Linux instead of MS Windows.
I have used Open Office and the math entry part is what I would classify as adequate for simple math, however there are much better GUI typesetters such as Framemaker but you have to pay for it. Even Microsoft has a document preparation system and it also costs. I have not used it but talking to those who have Framemaker is preferred.
Because LaTeX is a "mark-up language" many people who are used to a GUI find it a bit difficult to get into it, however if you buy the LaTeX book the first page is rather good in that it actually gives you basic hints of how not to read it. The problem is that for math there is no alternative but to read the book.
Granted you have to get your head around using LaTeX particularly with regard to maths however if you are required to display math on a paper I would assume if anyone is smart enough to write and understand mathematical formulas then writing the those formulas in LaTeX would be a fairly straight forward. Even if you don't have the LaTeX book which IMHO is essential there are plenty of web examples such as here and here.
Stupid bickering amongst "which packaging system is better" is a sure way to keep people away from your OS.
Sort of reminds me of the vi verses emacs flamewars of the 1980's. Of course we all know edlin is better uncle Bill told us so ;-)
Well, apparently you haven't really used YUM on any real servers .. it's a pain in the ass compared to the ease and speed of apt-get.
Well I have, on Enterprise class blades and servers and "yum" works very well. I have even a yum for RHEL4-U1 and when you have a controlled repository (CentOS and Redhat) it makes multi site management of hundreds of machines very easy especially when you have deal with panicky Management and application people who could be anywhere in the world. A normal yum update takes anything from a few minutes to about 20 minutes (RHEL4-U1 to RHEL4-U6) and you don't have to stop the applications. Of course a new kernel requires a reboot (approx 5 minutes).
Also, when installing packages on x86_64 servers, you need to add .x86_64 to every package you're going to install to prevent YUM installing the i386 versions too. Also, sometimes YUM forgets or gets confused with the repository updates, and you need to do manual 'yum clean all' runs to fix the cached information
If you have a 64 bit or even 32 bit system you don't have to specify the architecture yum knows all about that unless someone has stuffed up your repo configurations. The only time you may have to specify the architecture is when you need to install i386 packages on a x86_64 operating system and even then yum usually gets it right. This is only needed on machines when you want 32 bit compatibility on a 64 bit operating system. I have rarely seen this on 64 bit enterprise systems, although I have seen (all to often) i386 OS's on 64 bit machines and if you did this you would be crazy to install x86_64 packages.
I rarely get issues using "yum" unless I download a package from a site that does not play fair. Basically I only enable my generic repo's and turn off all others. I only enable a repo such as "Livna" when I want specific packages. Enabling all repos is just asking for trouble.
Even if you get a conflict with a package the easiest way to manage this is note down the package name and remove it using yum although you have to be careful since it may want to remove a lot of dependent packages that you really want. If this happens then you should remove the package(s) using "rpm" with the "--nodeps" option. When you have done your update then you can try and install the errant packages using "yum" preferably.
The only reason I could think of switching to Fedora from Ubuntu is if you had a nVidia 8200 motherboard. The Fedora Core 9 kernel version (2.6.25) supports it, and the one in Ubuntu 8.04 (2.6.24) does not.
You only have generic support for Nvidia cards so you should use the repo "Livna" which provides much better drivers. Whenever I get a new kernel I enable the "Livna" repo to actually do the update since you have to go to "Livna' anyway to get the drivers. Less hassels and only one reboot for the new kernel with the new Nvidia drivers to work properly. Total down time 5 minutes.
KDE support in Fedora may be better as well, I haven't looked at it in a while so I'm not sure. KDE is stagnant as hell in Ubuntu/Kubuntu land for now (no LTS support for KDE in 8.04, etc.), due to all the churn with the very beta-like and some would say ill-planned KDE 4.0 release.
If you put on Fedora 9, KDE 4.0 is IMHO annoying (I switched to Gnome) so you are best off sticking with Fedora 8 which has KDE 3.5 and you can even run Compriz Fusion quite well (the Wow is now!!) if you like that.
Then why doesn't Fedora fix that? It seems like an obvious flaw, since my Ubuntu box automatically alerts me to any updates available, whether I last ran apt-get update a month ago or two minutes ago.
Fedora has had that for quite some time. I use Fedora 9 now but I have been getting update alerts since Fedora 6 although you can turn it off. Of course you could always check every day or week or whenever you felt like it with "yum update" (I never allow auto updates) since I like to see the size of the download and what packages I am getting for the update. You need to be root to actually do updates hence the reason why I don't allow auto updates and I may want to do the actual update at a time outside my peak ISP rates.
Can't say about Fedora 5 back but you could easily run a cron job to warn of any updates although "yum update" at a time I feel like it works for me.
Actually it has nothing to do with RPM vs Deb. It's apt vs yum. Install apt-rpm in Fedora and see how fast you can install stuff (Actually, it has to do with yum updating the package lists every run vs apt just doing it with apt-get update).
I find that yum works very well on Fedora, CentOS and Redhat and it is very fast. In a nutshell the way yum works and I assume apt-get works in a similar way, is to query the target repo for its latest application database (normally in lite mySQL) and compare against the client machines database of what is available on the repo and installed on the clinet to see if anything need to be updated. If there is a requirement to update a particular package, that package plus any required dependencies is selected for down load. If the repos database and the client database are the same and there is no request for an install then nothing will be done.
:-)
Actually in Fedora etc you can run "yum update" and this works just like "app-get update". From what I can gather apt-get is supposed to be slightly better than yum although I have not been able to tell the difference and I have used apt-get on other Linux distributions.
One thing I have found with yum is you should never allow auto updates (my personal choice) and only allow the base repos to be active such you need to specify the repo that has a package that the base repos don't have. If you do this then you have less hassles with repos that don't play fair.
You can do what you like if your Linux distribution is on a machine you own but in a corporate environment auto updates are just crazy (if you do this get your CV in order). To manage a large number of Linux machines you have to have a controlled repository setup and mandatory change request to be authorised by all interested parties before you can even attempt any update. Good PR and management skills are needed along with a solid brick wall to talk to when all parties can't agree
Try this Born script, it's not elegant but it works:
:-)
for f in $(rpm -qa) ; do I=$(rpm -qi $f|grep License) ; echo $I $f | cut -d" " -f4- ; done
Your get something like the following:
License: GPL acl-2.2.47-1.fc9.x86_64
License: GPLv3+ and GPLv2+ with exceptions libgfortran-4.3.0-8.x86_64
License: LGPL libthai-0.1.9-4.fc9.x86_64
License: MIT libXext-1.0.4-1.fc9.x86_64
You can be a little more creative and find out how many different licenses and number off (quite a few) are on the system or what ever you really want. I am quite sure many can point out the virtues of Perl or other languages but what I did was very quick (maybe dirty) and it works well.
Pipe the above script (surround in brackets first) into "awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c" and the result is quite interesting. Let the flames wars begin
You could probably make a bash script to add that data to the metadeta, and convert the whole repo with it. But, of course, intel doesn't use bash - it's not a compiled language.
You are right Intel doesn't use Bash but all Linux distributions do.
I run Fedora 9 on my laptop and definately would not recommend it for the novice user, however if you wish to learn a distribution based on Redhat rpm's then it is excellent. I did find that on install Fedora 9 worked for nearly all the applications I used including wireless. For those apps that did not work the Fedora forums were great.
When you run "rpm -qi package_name" then you can see what the License is for the package as well as the Signature and a host of other information. Another feature (there are plenty) of rpm is the "-R" (or --requires) to find out the rpm packages it depends on although it is usually much more useful to use "yum" to combine the appropriate packages rather than depend solely on the "rpm" command.
You can make a very good argument that Vista is crap technology, but lack of sales is not something they really have to worry about. Microsoft has sold something like 100 - 150 million copies of Vista.
The problem with this is how many copies of Vista came with new PC's? Also if a business has a corporate license then they have the right to the total number of Vista licenses that they paid for and this counts as Vista licenses sold even if the corporation does not install Vista.
It would be much more telling if Microsoft let out the number of Vista licenses paid for by the home user to upgrade their XP machines. I won't hold my breath on this though.
I would be very surprised if Microsoft did not patent this (IMHO they would be crazy if they did not), has anyone found the patent number?
If this technology is going to have any chance of being successful then Microsoft should have a patent on it. I did a quick search and could not find one but then again finding a patent can be rather difficult considering the Lawyer speak you have to get your head around. I'm ok with a number (sort of obvious) but you have to know what it is to start with.
At the moment OLED is a possible contender to LCD and Plasma screens however the cost of OLED screens is still much higher then LCD and it is still limited to small sizes. Also from what I have read OLED has a shorter lifespan than LCD and Plasma although given money and time OLED may become more competitive. Still the article wasn't that detailed so it is very difficult to draw any conclusions except the engineers said that commercial production is 5 years away and given that time OLED, SED (there are others as well) as well as LCD and Plasma research won't be standing still.
Personally I think this research has come to the table far to late to be a viable competitive display but you never know.
Teach him python (or ruby, or whatever else that is high-level and easy).
It's the same as basic was twenty years ago, just much more powerful, easyer to learn and more fun.
I beg to differ here, higher level languages are fine for someone who has some experience in programming, you can very quickly turn off the beginner. For someone to start programming a simple shell language such as Bash or Ksh is much more suitable since you can easily write simple and even powerful scripts that you can test very easily and quickly and gain confidence as you go. I always recommend courses in formal programming to learn the fundamentals and best practices of using simpler and even more advanced languages.
You are right there are no short-cuts although I would suggest he become familiar with the basics of using a *nix system such as how to use the command line and why this is still preferred for certain tasks. This is not to say that GUI should be disdained but you should be able to point out when a GUI is the best solution to a problem and also when the command line may be the better way to go.
Now to programming. It is easier to explain the basics and it is very easy to show by example (keep it simple at first and let him get comfortable) if you use the shell (ie. bash, ksh or just sh - there are others but ksh/bash/sh are the most common) as a basic introduction to programming. You can later on get into languages like Perl and eventually C although I would recommend a formal course on the basics of programming before any he tries to learn a language that need to be compiled. As to more advanced languages it is very difficult to recommend one since the choice of a language should depend on what you as the programmer want to achieve, although as you probably know you may not have any choice in the matter.
I don't think the Wii remote is all that useful for a computer mouse. Of course you could always try the following mouse since IMHO it is definately sexier and is more flexible than a Wii remote and it works on all PC's now.
You are spot on with this comment. The problem with hemp is the fact that it is called hemp and this word is synonymous with marijuana so in the eyes of the public it is bad and for some competing business this is a good thing to foster. What many people fail to realise is that linen which is still a prized fabric is actually made from hemp and linen can last quite a long time (well over 100 years) because of its hard wearing properties (maybe that is why some business don't want to compete with it). Many beneficial products can be made from the hemp plant (not the one you get marijuana from) and today many countries are starting to realise that this plant has been much maligned. For more information on hemp this site is a good start .
Anyway back on topic. I get software informational updates from HP and also from other vendors and most vendors do provide a cardboard box with one or two slips of paper. This IMHO is annoying because I have no use for the box and in many cases the slips of paper are just as useless. From my personal experience the best vendor for reducing waste is Redhat. (others may have different experiences) I only get email advisories which is all I want. Actually many years ago HP did this as well.
Oh and what happened to "quote", even "blockquote" does not work properly?
I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.
Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious. And also, I'd like to know the worldwide numbers for 2008, if you have any source. Thanks.
I thought most people knew this site.
What, several hundred isn't enough for you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_games
From the web page:
This list currently contains 616 titles. According to this list, there are currently 266 games released in North America, 272 games released in Europe and 172 games released in Japan for the Wii.
235 are exclusive, 12 are console exclusive and 348 are not exclusive.
Think about it: Most games we see today are just repetitions of the same concept except even shinier. It's like - and I say this knowing there are really good designers out there - the industry has lost it's ability to innovate.
I wish I could tell you you are not right but your post echo's my sentiments exactly.
I have a BC PS3 and I find I end up playing PS2 games and worse still PS2 games that came out over a year ago. There are quite a few PS2 games that I really like that I feel this will keep me going for over a year to come. This saves me a considerable amount of money as well. My sons like GTA4 though, although this is not a game I am interested in. I am not that interested in FPS games nor am I interested in games such a Metal Gear Solid 4 since I was never a fan of the series (I did like the original Metal Gear on the NES though).
I even have a Gamecube but only have a few IMHO good games so it has a tendency to gather dust. As for the Wii I refuse to pay for overly milked franchises and most of the other games I am not interested in. I guess I am getting jaded even though I still enjoy playing some of the old NES and SNES games under emulation so graphics is not an over-riding deal for me. I have even looked at the Xbox 360 and while I am no fan of Microsoft I cannot justify buying one since there are only a few games that I am interested in and for me to buy Microsoft I want more than a few games.
I have never been that interested in the Metal Gear Solid series although I did actually like the original on the NES. As for Warhawk I am not that interested either. I prefer action/adventure and RPG's and it is rare that the games I like playing have many (if any) cutscenes. Why I don't buy a Wii (I can easily afford it) is that I am sick of the endless milking of a franchises such as Zelda, Metroid and Mario. Actually many games on all the consoles do this although every once in a while something good comes along. On the Wii I have yet to see one game that would make me purchase the machine (I already have a SNES, N64, Gamecube and a backwards compatible PS3). Even though I do have a PS3 I predominately play PS2 games and they do look good on my HDTV although my sons do like GTA4 which is not really my style of game.
I live in Australia and just about all new games that are remotely any good cost between AU$100 and AU$120 although Wii games do vary from AU$90 to AU$100. This could be acceptable if the Australian dollar was weak but the AU$ is almost the same as the US$. Because of this there is no way I am going to pay AU$100 for a game (importing is the best way) and am quite happy to wait until the price drops usually within six months. One thing I have noticed is that Wii games take anything upto a year to drop in price unless the game is a real stinker.
perhaps because the DS is just too popular.
The DS which is a hand-held and belongs in a different category to the Wii which is a console. If you wish to compare then you need to compare the DS (75.8 million world wide) to the PSP (38.3 million world wide). Before the fan-boys start waving the flag there are few reasons why the DS leads the PSP. The first reason the DS's Nintendo brand is synonymous with gaming and the second is if you consider that most parents when choosing a hand-held for their child would chose the DS because it is cheaper and can take more punishment than the PSP.
The Wii is actually in a category of its own since it is the only Standard Definition console out of the PS3 and Xbox 360. It is also very popular since the majority of its games cater to the casual gamer. I have had nearly every Nintendo machine since the NES and have enjoyed many games on them. What has turned me off the Wii is that the only games that are interesting to me have been milked again and again to the point were I don't want to play the latest Zelda, Metroid or Mario game. Even the graphics which should appear better then the Gamecube's (which I have) appear to have been poorly implemented and on a large screen HDTV the graphics appear to be worse.