This is not a case of "let's do processing at the database". This isn't "holy crap SQL has functions!" or "try to use set-based queries that return the data you want rather than getting a dozen record sets and looping through them with 'until (RecordSet.eof())'". This is what you do when you've done all that and you still have performance problems because of data size and complexity of queries.
It's a case of needing to maintain data consistency in processing when you have 10,000 concurrent users all changing data but you want to process something very complex with your real time data set. Think things like geocoding in real time all cell phones attached to your cellular network, then running tower load balancing applications that can be made aware of the fact that the data has changed as it's changing and taking that into account. A tower could see that a high data user on an adjacent tower is approaching and could begin preparing for that. The 10s of thousands of spaceships is just a simple example. Let's say you want to resurface the highway system for Los Angeles, and you want to use real time data of the number of cars on the road at different times to model how traffic patterns might change when you close lanes so you can determine how to close the lanes and test the best method for how you should re-route traffic.
The key idea here is that each spaceship or cell phone user or automobile can interact with each other based on their data (in this case, proximity data). How can we write applications that might need to signal 20,000 other processes that their data just changed? RDBMSs are already incredibly good at dealing with data consistency and concurrency, and for large data sets that can interact arbitrarily with the rest of the data, sharding doesn't work.
Now let's say you want to do something really difficult, like modelling the human body at the cellular level. Each cell is it's own process, but each cell can interact with any number of other cells with signalling mechanisms. This chemical signalling would have to be translated to data signalling to the application processes, and it would all need to be kept consistent to maintain the reality of the simulation. Now give the simulation cancer. Now test an experimental treatment. Now do it 500,000 times each for all 10,000 types of cancer and each of the 1,000s of possible cures, and speed up the timeline to go as quickly as possible. You can have entire planetary populations of simulated humans with every disease ever known, and you can try every possible treatment simultaneously. Trillions of simulated humans dying from failed treatments advancing your knowledge in the real world by hundreds of thousands of years in a fraction of the time. Now do the same with astrological bodies, or subatomic particles.
We use simulations now to model things that we understand but can rarely observe, but rarely do we do so as quickly as they occur in the natural world. What will happen when we can model anything and everything... instantly... simultaneously.
You're aware it's a vehicle, right? Installing insulation and a completely new cooling system occupies space, consumes power, adds weight, and costs extra money in both production and maintenance costs.
If you're confused, you're an idiot. The misspelling of "no one" as "noone" is not particularly ambiguous given the context.
If you're not confused, you're just being pedantic to make yourself feel important to the discussion. Add in the commentary about the American education system, and you're also condescending, arrogant, and patronizing. Do you really think that's going to help win people to your side?
Having suffered from moderate dysthymia for the past 20 years with bouts of severe depression, I can safely state three things:
1. Psychologist == psychotherapist. I saw my psychologist 1 hour a week for about 5 years straight when I needed the help.
2. Psychiatrist == pharmacologist. I see my psychologist for 30 minutes every six to twelve months to get a prescription refill. The demand on psychiatrists is high, because very few people are crazy enough to get a PhD and the turn around and get an MD. 12-16 years of school tends to make them only slightly less insane than their patients.
3. Antidepressants allow me to function in society. My condition is an exception, however, because it actually is a chemical imbalance. Without medication I stop going to work/school, then stop spending time with friends, then stop talking to people in any way, then stop cleaning the house, then stop bathing, then stop eating.
Fuck Tom Cruise and fuck the Church of Scientology.
So you're saying the current setup is sufficient? I thought the point was that we might need to be concerned about the people who build up pressure and don't cool off?
Let's see...WiFi screws up airplane, 300 people dead, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use sacks of potatoes or something like that instead of people?"
There's just no pleasing you.
WiFi screws up airplane, 300 potato sacks lost, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use people who can't stop texting for a few minutes instead of sacks of potatoes?"
Wifi screws up airplane, 300 mad texters lost, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use celebutantes?"
Wifi screws up airplane, 300 celebutantes lost, and your first question would be, "How do you know it wasn't the paparazzi on the wings?"
Why not use repulsorlift technology? The same reason main battle tanks don't fly. Too heavy. The armor is "too heavy for blasters" as Luke says, so it's not unreasonable that it's too heavy for repulsors. Why not use a large wheeled or tracked vehicle? An AT-AT would be much more effective in several situations. Their main guns and height mean they are essentially high ground artillery during an attack. That vantage point gives an advantage when assaulting a fortified position. Additionally, an AT-AT would be able to cross a body of water while still fighting much more easily than wheeled vehicle. The walking capability would allow far more rugged terrain to be traversed and would allow the vehicle to approach a fortification, step over the defensive positions and many defensive fortifications/walls, and then unload troops. All the while blasting the enemy with it's forward mounted swivel guns. The best analog to the AT-AT isn't a tank. It's a siege tower. It's a vehicle for assaulting and breaching heavily fortified installations. Remember, at the Battle of Hoth the only thing the AT-ATs had to do was destroy the shield generator. The troops came from the main invasion force which were deployed after the shield went down.
My mother was diagnosed with acute myelodysplastic syndrome in 2006, and the doctors she spoke with talked about this type of treatment. At the time it was not ready for use in humans, however. We did talk for awhile with the doctors about the nature of cancer and this type of treatment.
Many people are aware that cancer is present in almost all people at several times in their lives. The vast majority of cancers are from genetic defects that the body detects as an alien, and it will attack and destroy the mutated cells just as foreign bacteria or a transplanted organ are. Now, the types of cancer that we talk about and that result in terminal illness is from a mutation that is different enough to be deadly and parasitic to the human body, but not different enough to be detected as different.
All cells contain markers that act as identification badges. Last I was aware, there were 10 known genetic markers for humans that determine this identity (only six were known in the 1990's, so this is pretty new stuff). Its these markers that are used to find organ and tissue donors. However, even a perfect 10 out of 10 match is not enough to guarantee that foreign tissue will be detected as alien, so we know that our known list of 10 markers is incomplete. This is why perfect matches still face rejection risks.
The problem then, from a leukemia perspective, is that donor bone marrow will produce white blood cells that see the recipient body as alien, and attack it. That's kind of what you want, since the idea is to kill the cancerous bone marrow, but it's not exactly discriminate about what it will attack. So for leukemia treatment, you don't even want a perfect 10 out of 10 match since that would be counterproductive. Perfect donor bone marrow wouldn't identify the cancer either, and the cancer would relapse.
What this treatment does is gives doctors a way to tell your body that certain cells are aliens by forcefully altering their DNA. Then the body can just fix itself. That's really what medicine does best: allows the body time to fix itself.
"How can this possibly work?" you think. "Aren't all cancers different?" Well, it turns out the answer is "sort of". We categorize cancers based on the kind of tissue that is affected, but that's really not accurate. We should categorize it based on exactly what genetic sequence mutated and in exactly what way. Cancer, then, is literally a family of thousands of diseases with very similar symptoms. Many cancer types are, in fact, mutations of the same segment in the same way. However, now that we are able to sequence the DNA of a human, we ought to be able to accurately categorize each person's individual cancer by sequencing healthy and cancerous cells. We can then design a DNA segment which will only work in the DNA sequence of cancerous cells and that will identify the cells as alien to the body. The body will then attack the cancer, and destroy it. We will, literally, paint a target on the cancer cells for the human body to destroy. The mechanism for delivery of this kind of genetic manipulation is already supplied to us by nature in the form of a retrovirus. In this girl's case, the retrovirus that seeks out her cancerous cell type is HIV, which attacks white blood cells.
This, then, is the most promising path to the cure for cancer. It will not be cured with a single treatment like polio or smallpox, but the method can be applied over and over against every type of cancer.
My mother was given more traditional treatment with a bone marrow transplant. The best match that could be identified was an 8 out of 10 match. Even so she successfully underwent the transplant and survived a year longer than she was given when diagnosed. She then relapsed, and was beginning her second treatment when she died from a massive stroke caused by all the medications required to treat the disease and the anti-rejection drugs and the side effects of the medications. If she had had this kind of option where doctors could reprogram her immune system to seek and destroy the cancerous bone marrow like it's supposed to instead of having to rely on grafted bone marrow that would attack her healthy tissue as well, she might still be alive today.
Do you mean a task can be scripted to run in batches to use a predefined (dynamic or otherwise) input and output condition? Then yes. Do you mean an expert in the specific task at hand with experience using the required tools? Then yes. Do you mean a task can be executed and reach completion faster without the computational overhead of having to load a UI? Then, probably, yes.
For pretty much anything else, it's a wash because the computer isn't the limiting factor. The user is. This isn't the 1970's. Computer time is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. So cheap that nearly every individual is walking around with more computational power idling in their pocket than anybody ever dreamed could possibly exist in the 1970's. Human time is expensive. Humans have to learn to use things, and humans a better at learning to use objects that represent things they can relate to instead of abstract names with little to no concrete meaning. The majority of the world doesn't like command lines. They like a UI that they can understand. That computer experts in this day and age are still fighting this battle shows that while they certainly understand the computer, they don't understand the user at all.
Seriously, you might as well just say "it's faster to grow your own silicon chip specifically dedicated to your task instead of relying on the much slower general purpose processor". The statement is true only in the context of all the background preparation work already having been done. Certainly, there are situations where you need to be an expert, or need to script the task, or actually care about performance overhead, or actually need a dedicated silicon chip. However, to argue that the first steps of any layman should be to become an expert -- regardless of the complexity of the task -- is absolutely ludicrous. "LOL RTFM" is not an appropriate response to someone asking for help. Ever. If that's all you've got just don't say anything and let someone else actually answer the question.
This is the problem with the Linux community. It is assumed that everyone must be technically an expert to use a computer, and that is absurd. I'm not a certified mechanic, but I own a car. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I use an airplane. I'm not a classically trained chef, but I have a kitchen. I'm not plumber, electrician, carpenter, or gardener, but I own a house. Expertise should not a prerequisite to using a computer to accomplish a task.
They don't have to make it impossible. They just have to make it harder than pirating Windows.
Restoring ?:\?indows\?ystem32\?onfig\?OFTWARE and mounting it with Magic Jelly Bean isn't particularly impossible with decent undelete software, but it's quite annoying and vastly more technical compared to scanning The Pirate Bay for 2 seconds and firing up uTorrent.
The only difference between his decision making and the average Linux user changing from Gnome to fluxbox is he paid money for his customization.
More practically: He paid $39 + $5 to upgrade Vista to Win8 with a start menu app. If it actually improves his productivity, this is what you should do 100% of the time. This is what is known as "a wise investment".
You've missed the point I'm making. The point is that TeX is just a domain specific markup language. It's not a panacea for creating documents, and using it doesn't mean you won't fuck around with formatting for hours and hours if you don't like the defaults or keep going back to change things. Indeed, since TeX is a format markup language, using it gives (me at least) hammer and nail problems: it makes everything look like a format problem that I should be fixing with TeX.
I have used LaTeX before (specifically, combined with LyX 1.0 or 1.3, so yeah, like 8-10 years ago). I found that it did not help me reduce the amount of time formatting a document. Rather, it typically just caused me to spend more time thinking about how to get the system to format the document within the constraints of what my professor wanted (regardless of how unreasonable or stupid they were) rather than what the TeX defaults were. If I were knowledgeable enough to be able to sit down and completely define all the formats I wanted to use from now until the end of time once... it would be very fast and easy to use I think. Since I couldn't do that, it just felt like a tremendous amount of work to write a 5-10 page paper with the system when Word did nearly everything I wanted already. Additionally, the LyX installation I used didn't have working spell check or a thesaurus, or a way to easily create bibliography entries, while the Word installations I had access to had all of those (we had EndNote I believe, or something similar) and those are what I consider the program actually helping me to produce the content. That may be due to the LyX installations being broken or incomplete on the workstations I used or that I didn't know how to use them, but it nevertheless has completely tainted my exposure to the system. Looking at LyX 2.0.5 I see that those do exist now.
It's very likely that this attempt to use LaTeX is what caused me to simply correct my deficient workflows, and that that is what made me more effective at writing. I'll admit that. But honestly 9 times out of 10 if someone says "I'm having trouble using Word. I know, I'll use LaTeX!" then they're just in for a world of hurt. Word (or Writer) is not a bad program, and I'm willing to bet that often the problem is with the way the person is using Word and not with Word itself. Changing to a different program or different system won't fix that.
In the end, having to use Word has been much more useful as I've never had to use LaTeX at a job while I've never had a job where Word wasn't used. LaTeX is great for producing professional quality documents, but it's kind of crap for producing collaborative documents or ongoing system documentation that needs to be maintained and updated repeatedly. Stuff that's never printed even as a PDF because that would uselessly lock the content.
If you think you're wasting time fucking around with formatting in Word, you probably don't want to move to LaTeX. LaTeX is for typesetting. It's sole purpose is for designing how a document should look. All it does is formatting. Conversely, it contains very little to aid a writer in producing or editing the content of the document. The only reason I can think you'd really need to move to LaTeX for is if you have very complex layouts such as those in mathematics textbooks.
Honestly, your wife probably just needs to rethink her workflow. She needs to draft the content without worrying about formatting. Then she should revise it. Then format the document. Then do a final edit. You should never be writing and formatting at the same time. That is a tremendous time sink that tends to produce haphazardly written content with haphazardly presented layouts, and using LaTeX will not help. I had to make this change myself when I started doing a lot of documentation. It is difficult at first, but tremendously improves the quality and enjoyment from writing. In Word, you should just use the default font and headings until you know that the content is done. Use inline footnotes temporarily. Use things like [Insert picture here] when drafting. When your content is done you do layout and make things look good.
Detroit is centrally located, has very low wages and costs of living (compared to Los Angeles) and, thanks to the auto industry, has a very well developed distribution network via rail and the St. Lawrence Seaway. It also has a strong manufacturing history.
Yeah, I've heard people complain they can't get ArcGIS or AutoCAD on Linux, or Final Cut Studio on Windows, or Halo 3 on PC. "I can't get the software I want" isn't a problem unique to walled gardens. If you've ever run "apt-get install $mySoftware" and gotten "Package not found" you're familiar with it too. People are used to being unable to get the software they want where they want it and settling for something that is almost -- but not quite -- entirely unlike the software they wanted. A walled garden with a company store doesn't provide a significantly different experience. This should more reveal the failings of current software design and development more than failings of walled gardens.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a case of "let's do processing at the database". This isn't "holy crap SQL has functions!" or "try to use set-based queries that return the data you want rather than getting a dozen record sets and looping through them with 'until (RecordSet.eof())'". This is what you do when you've done all that and you still have performance problems because of data size and complexity of queries.
It's a case of needing to maintain data consistency in processing when you have 10,000 concurrent users all changing data but you want to process something very complex with your real time data set. Think things like geocoding in real time all cell phones attached to your cellular network, then running tower load balancing applications that can be made aware of the fact that the data has changed as it's changing and taking that into account. A tower could see that a high data user on an adjacent tower is approaching and could begin preparing for that. The 10s of thousands of spaceships is just a simple example. Let's say you want to resurface the highway system for Los Angeles, and you want to use real time data of the number of cars on the road at different times to model how traffic patterns might change when you close lanes so you can determine how to close the lanes and test the best method for how you should re-route traffic.
The key idea here is that each spaceship or cell phone user or automobile can interact with each other based on their data (in this case, proximity data). How can we write applications that might need to signal 20,000 other processes that their data just changed? RDBMSs are already incredibly good at dealing with data consistency and concurrency, and for large data sets that can interact arbitrarily with the rest of the data, sharding doesn't work.
Now let's say you want to do something really difficult, like modelling the human body at the cellular level. Each cell is it's own process, but each cell can interact with any number of other cells with signalling mechanisms. This chemical signalling would have to be translated to data signalling to the application processes, and it would all need to be kept consistent to maintain the reality of the simulation. Now give the simulation cancer. Now test an experimental treatment. Now do it 500,000 times each for all 10,000 types of cancer and each of the 1,000s of possible cures, and speed up the timeline to go as quickly as possible. You can have entire planetary populations of simulated humans with every disease ever known, and you can try every possible treatment simultaneously. Trillions of simulated humans dying from failed treatments advancing your knowledge in the real world by hundreds of thousands of years in a fraction of the time. Now do the same with astrological bodies, or subatomic particles.
We use simulations now to model things that we understand but can rarely observe, but rarely do we do so as quickly as they occur in the natural world. What will happen when we can model anything and everything... instantly... simultaneously.
You're aware it's a vehicle, right? Installing insulation and a completely new cooling system occupies space, consumes power, adds weight, and costs extra money in both production and maintenance costs.
Those aren't asteroids. Troll is a comet. Shill is a black hole.
Are you really confused? Seriously, I'm asking.
If you're confused, you're an idiot. The misspelling of "no one" as "noone" is not particularly ambiguous given the context.
If you're not confused, you're just being pedantic to make yourself feel important to the discussion. Add in the commentary about the American education system, and you're also condescending, arrogant, and patronizing. Do you really think that's going to help win people to your side?
So, would you rather be an idiot or an asshole?
This is Slashdot. Sometimes the crazies are out in force. I guess this month's supply of aluminum foil finally arrived.
Welcome to the Internet. We do things differently here.
Having suffered from moderate dysthymia for the past 20 years with bouts of severe depression, I can safely state three things:
1. Psychologist == psychotherapist. I saw my psychologist 1 hour a week for about 5 years straight when I needed the help.
2. Psychiatrist == pharmacologist. I see my psychologist for 30 minutes every six to twelve months to get a prescription refill. The demand on psychiatrists is high, because very few people are crazy enough to get a PhD and the turn around and get an MD. 12-16 years of school tends to make them only slightly less insane than their patients.
3. Antidepressants allow me to function in society. My condition is an exception, however, because it actually is a chemical imbalance. Without medication I stop going to work/school, then stop spending time with friends, then stop talking to people in any way, then stop cleaning the house, then stop bathing, then stop eating.
Fuck Tom Cruise and fuck the Church of Scientology.
So you're saying the current setup is sufficient? I thought the point was that we might need to be concerned about the people who build up pressure and don't cool off?
I am not, however, a raving lunatic that can't come to terms with our current reality.
Whatever are you doing here?
"Too big to fail" was Obama said, didn't he?
No, that was Illinois Republican congressman Stewart McKinney. In 1984. When the biggest bank failure prior to Washington Mutual occurred. "Too big to fail" has been policy since the mid-eighties, and law since 1991.
Presumably Google does advertising business in Ireland. Nevermind that this site exists.
Let's see...WiFi screws up airplane, 300 people dead, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use sacks of potatoes or something like that instead of people?"
There's just no pleasing you.
WiFi screws up airplane, 300 potato sacks lost, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use people who can't stop texting for a few minutes instead of sacks of potatoes?"
Wifi screws up airplane, 300 mad texters lost, and your first question would be, "Why the hell didn't they use celebutantes?"
Wifi screws up airplane, 300 celebutantes lost, and your first question would be, "How do you know it wasn't the paparazzi on the wings?"
It's actually not all that bad.
Why not use repulsorlift technology? The same reason main battle tanks don't fly. Too heavy. The armor is "too heavy for blasters" as Luke says, so it's not unreasonable that it's too heavy for repulsors. Why not use a large wheeled or tracked vehicle? An AT-AT would be much more effective in several situations. Their main guns and height mean they are essentially high ground artillery during an attack. That vantage point gives an advantage when assaulting a fortified position. Additionally, an AT-AT would be able to cross a body of water while still fighting much more easily than wheeled vehicle. The walking capability would allow far more rugged terrain to be traversed and would allow the vehicle to approach a fortification, step over the defensive positions and many defensive fortifications/walls, and then unload troops. All the while blasting the enemy with it's forward mounted swivel guns. The best analog to the AT-AT isn't a tank. It's a siege tower. It's a vehicle for assaulting and breaching heavily fortified installations. Remember, at the Battle of Hoth the only thing the AT-ATs had to do was destroy the shield generator. The troops came from the main invasion force which were deployed after the shield went down.
My mother was diagnosed with acute myelodysplastic syndrome in 2006, and the doctors she spoke with talked about this type of treatment. At the time it was not ready for use in humans, however. We did talk for awhile with the doctors about the nature of cancer and this type of treatment.
Many people are aware that cancer is present in almost all people at several times in their lives. The vast majority of cancers are from genetic defects that the body detects as an alien, and it will attack and destroy the mutated cells just as foreign bacteria or a transplanted organ are. Now, the types of cancer that we talk about and that result in terminal illness is from a mutation that is different enough to be deadly and parasitic to the human body, but not different enough to be detected as different.
All cells contain markers that act as identification badges. Last I was aware, there were 10 known genetic markers for humans that determine this identity (only six were known in the 1990's, so this is pretty new stuff). Its these markers that are used to find organ and tissue donors. However, even a perfect 10 out of 10 match is not enough to guarantee that foreign tissue will be detected as alien, so we know that our known list of 10 markers is incomplete. This is why perfect matches still face rejection risks.
The problem then, from a leukemia perspective, is that donor bone marrow will produce white blood cells that see the recipient body as alien, and attack it. That's kind of what you want, since the idea is to kill the cancerous bone marrow, but it's not exactly discriminate about what it will attack. So for leukemia treatment, you don't even want a perfect 10 out of 10 match since that would be counterproductive. Perfect donor bone marrow wouldn't identify the cancer either, and the cancer would relapse.
What this treatment does is gives doctors a way to tell your body that certain cells are aliens by forcefully altering their DNA. Then the body can just fix itself. That's really what medicine does best: allows the body time to fix itself.
"How can this possibly work?" you think. "Aren't all cancers different?" Well, it turns out the answer is "sort of". We categorize cancers based on the kind of tissue that is affected, but that's really not accurate. We should categorize it based on exactly what genetic sequence mutated and in exactly what way. Cancer, then, is literally a family of thousands of diseases with very similar symptoms. Many cancer types are, in fact, mutations of the same segment in the same way. However, now that we are able to sequence the DNA of a human, we ought to be able to accurately categorize each person's individual cancer by sequencing healthy and cancerous cells. We can then design a DNA segment which will only work in the DNA sequence of cancerous cells and that will identify the cells as alien to the body. The body will then attack the cancer, and destroy it. We will, literally, paint a target on the cancer cells for the human body to destroy. The mechanism for delivery of this kind of genetic manipulation is already supplied to us by nature in the form of a retrovirus. In this girl's case, the retrovirus that seeks out her cancerous cell type is HIV, which attacks white blood cells.
This, then, is the most promising path to the cure for cancer. It will not be cured with a single treatment like polio or smallpox, but the method can be applied over and over against every type of cancer.
My mother was given more traditional treatment with a bone marrow transplant. The best match that could be identified was an 8 out of 10 match. Even so she successfully underwent the transplant and survived a year longer than she was given when diagnosed. She then relapsed, and was beginning her second treatment when she died from a massive stroke caused by all the medications required to treat the disease and the anti-rejection drugs and the side effects of the medications. If she had had this kind of option where doctors could reprogram her immune system to seek and destroy the cancerous bone marrow like it's supposed to instead of having to rely on grafted bone marrow that would attack her healthy tissue as well, she might still be alive today.
Define "faster".
Do you mean a task can be scripted to run in batches to use a predefined (dynamic or otherwise) input and output condition? Then yes.
Do you mean an expert in the specific task at hand with experience using the required tools? Then yes.
Do you mean a task can be executed and reach completion faster without the computational overhead of having to load a UI? Then, probably, yes.
For pretty much anything else, it's a wash because the computer isn't the limiting factor. The user is. This isn't the 1970's. Computer time is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. So cheap that nearly every individual is walking around with more computational power idling in their pocket than anybody ever dreamed could possibly exist in the 1970's. Human time is expensive. Humans have to learn to use things, and humans a better at learning to use objects that represent things they can relate to instead of abstract names with little to no concrete meaning. The majority of the world doesn't like command lines. They like a UI that they can understand. That computer experts in this day and age are still fighting this battle shows that while they certainly understand the computer, they don't understand the user at all.
Seriously, you might as well just say "it's faster to grow your own silicon chip specifically dedicated to your task instead of relying on the much slower general purpose processor". The statement is true only in the context of all the background preparation work already having been done. Certainly, there are situations where you need to be an expert, or need to script the task, or actually care about performance overhead, or actually need a dedicated silicon chip. However, to argue that the first steps of any layman should be to become an expert -- regardless of the complexity of the task -- is absolutely ludicrous. "LOL RTFM" is not an appropriate response to someone asking for help. Ever. If that's all you've got just don't say anything and let someone else actually answer the question.
This is the problem with the Linux community. It is assumed that everyone must be technically an expert to use a computer, and that is absurd. I'm not a certified mechanic, but I own a car. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I use an airplane. I'm not a classically trained chef, but I have a kitchen. I'm not plumber, electrician, carpenter, or gardener, but I own a house. Expertise should not a prerequisite to using a computer to accomplish a task.
Well that certainly sheds new light on the "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" line.
They don't have to make it impossible. They just have to make it harder than pirating Windows.
Restoring ?:\?indows\?ystem32\?onfig\?OFTWARE and mounting it with Magic Jelly Bean isn't particularly impossible with decent undelete software, but it's quite annoying and vastly more technical compared to scanning The Pirate Bay for 2 seconds and firing up uTorrent.
The only difference between his decision making and the average Linux user changing from Gnome to fluxbox is he paid money for his customization.
More practically: He paid $39 + $5 to upgrade Vista to Win8 with a start menu app. If it actually improves his productivity, this is what you should do 100% of the time. This is what is known as "a wise investment".
You've missed the point I'm making. The point is that TeX is just a domain specific markup language. It's not a panacea for creating documents, and using it doesn't mean you won't fuck around with formatting for hours and hours if you don't like the defaults or keep going back to change things. Indeed, since TeX is a format markup language, using it gives (me at least) hammer and nail problems: it makes everything look like a format problem that I should be fixing with TeX.
I have used LaTeX before (specifically, combined with LyX 1.0 or 1.3, so yeah, like 8-10 years ago). I found that it did not help me reduce the amount of time formatting a document. Rather, it typically just caused me to spend more time thinking about how to get the system to format the document within the constraints of what my professor wanted (regardless of how unreasonable or stupid they were) rather than what the TeX defaults were. If I were knowledgeable enough to be able to sit down and completely define all the formats I wanted to use from now until the end of time once... it would be very fast and easy to use I think. Since I couldn't do that, it just felt like a tremendous amount of work to write a 5-10 page paper with the system when Word did nearly everything I wanted already. Additionally, the LyX installation I used didn't have working spell check or a thesaurus, or a way to easily create bibliography entries, while the Word installations I had access to had all of those (we had EndNote I believe, or something similar) and those are what I consider the program actually helping me to produce the content. That may be due to the LyX installations being broken or incomplete on the workstations I used or that I didn't know how to use them, but it nevertheless has completely tainted my exposure to the system. Looking at LyX 2.0.5 I see that those do exist now.
It's very likely that this attempt to use LaTeX is what caused me to simply correct my deficient workflows, and that that is what made me more effective at writing. I'll admit that. But honestly 9 times out of 10 if someone says "I'm having trouble using Word. I know, I'll use LaTeX!" then they're just in for a world of hurt. Word (or Writer) is not a bad program, and I'm willing to bet that often the problem is with the way the person is using Word and not with Word itself. Changing to a different program or different system won't fix that.
In the end, having to use Word has been much more useful as I've never had to use LaTeX at a job while I've never had a job where Word wasn't used. LaTeX is great for producing professional quality documents, but it's kind of crap for producing collaborative documents or ongoing system documentation that needs to be maintained and updated repeatedly. Stuff that's never printed even as a PDF because that would uselessly lock the content.
If you think you're wasting time fucking around with formatting in Word, you probably don't want to move to LaTeX. LaTeX is for typesetting. It's sole purpose is for designing how a document should look. All it does is formatting. Conversely, it contains very little to aid a writer in producing or editing the content of the document. The only reason I can think you'd really need to move to LaTeX for is if you have very complex layouts such as those in mathematics textbooks.
Honestly, your wife probably just needs to rethink her workflow. She needs to draft the content without worrying about formatting. Then she should revise it. Then format the document. Then do a final edit. You should never be writing and formatting at the same time. That is a tremendous time sink that tends to produce haphazardly written content with haphazardly presented layouts, and using LaTeX will not help. I had to make this change myself when I started doing a lot of documentation. It is difficult at first, but tremendously improves the quality and enjoyment from writing. In Word, you should just use the default font and headings until you know that the content is done. Use inline footnotes temporarily. Use things like [Insert picture here] when drafting. When your content is done you do layout and make things look good.
Detroit is centrally located, has very low wages and costs of living (compared to Los Angeles) and, thanks to the auto industry, has a very well developed distribution network via rail and the St. Lawrence Seaway. It also has a strong manufacturing history.
Unfortunately that was done by upping the BMI with jelly donuts. ;)
That would explain why he looks like a R.O.U.S.
Routers of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist....
Pundits dumbed down and ended up dumb.
FTFY.
Yeah, I've heard people complain they can't get ArcGIS or AutoCAD on Linux, or Final Cut Studio on Windows, or Halo 3 on PC. "I can't get the software I want" isn't a problem unique to walled gardens. If you've ever run "apt-get install $mySoftware" and gotten "Package not found" you're familiar with it too. People are used to being unable to get the software they want where they want it and settling for something that is almost -- but not quite -- entirely unlike the software they wanted. A walled garden with a company store doesn't provide a significantly different experience. This should more reveal the failings of current software design and development more than failings of walled gardens.
This is Slashdot. He's not an ordinary idiot. He's an extraordinary idiot.