I can't decide if you're implying that I'm stating the obvious, or if you're trying to bait me into a high school physics lesson that doesn't apply here.
The glass rotates around its center of gravity so that the heavier side is oriented in the direction it is being pulled.
Ugrade costs: the district I work for pays something like $65 per license. Educational licensing is quite affordable.
Hardware: We run XP on P2/400 Mhz systems with 128 MB RAM (out of 160 PCs, 35 are P2s. The rest are Athlon XP or newer). It's slow to boot and multitasking is a definite no, but for students the age you're talking about and the applications they'll be using, it's fine.
Why we don't use Linux: Because we as techs would have to learn it so we could teach it to the teachers so they could teach it to the students, and because Ubuntu is actually slower on older systems than XP Pro.
I've sort of become the resident Linux advocate here. I've been working for a month to get some flavor of Linux on our old G3 Macs to revitalize them as thin clients so we can get them counted by the state (G4 is the lowest accepted by the state, thin clients are an exception).
FYI: We have about 2,500 students and maybe 650 computers (plus maybe 100 that can't be counted on the numbers we give the state), grades K-12.
...use Linux as my primary OS: Because documentation is weak, support is nonexistent, and the interfaces--until recently--have not been nearly as intuitive as Windows and Mac OS. The biggest problem is documentation and support. I know dozens of people who have installed Linux, played with it some, and found themselves unable to do what they want to do and unable to find out how. They can't even find out how to get help inside the OS, and the only support they can get is via community forums, which are notorious for not answering tough or oft-repeated questions. Windows puts a "Help and support" link right in the start menu, making it a lot more user-friendly in that sense...use OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office: Let's start with an example. In OOo, start a blank document. Do the same in Word. Now let's change both pages to landscape format.
OOo: Click file...hmm...no "page setup". Let's try properties. Nope. How about printer settings...not there either. Okay, try the help index. Type "landscape" and choose the "landscape and portrait" section. It says go to Format -> Styles and Formatting, then create a new style, set it as landscape, name it, and save it. I notice as I go into the format menu that there's a "Page" option which lets me set the document to landscape like I want about as quickly as Word does.
I went through this very process when a user asked me how to do that when we switched to OpenOffice. Now, OOo *has* an easy-to-use landscape option, but it's not where Word puts it and it's not in the documentation when you type "landscape".
"Only white" indeed. Next thing you know, anyone with a colored DS will have to go to the back of the bus. They'll have special sections in the theaters. When does it stop? Do we have to have "Only white" water fountains before people see the truth???
You're missing one crucial detail: your balls aren't connected (pause for chuckles). If you drop an object that is heavier on one side that the other, the heavy side will strike the ground first (assuming the two sides are level when dropped, other forces can of course overpower gravity).
Two objects will fall at the same rate in a vacuum but an irregular, unbalanced object dropped inside an atmosphere will tend to land on its heavier side.
But congrats on applying that high school physics education:D
Knowing this, if I saw an empty glass falling, I knew I had one bounce to try and save it but the bounces weren't always too high. Years of hacky sack training on sipas finally became useful. Now, there is a move I was taught that we called a "lazy man" that involved kicking the foot out but actually using the ankle movement to kick the bag up into the air. There were a few times when a glass dropped and after the first bounced I lazy manned it up and caught it and I was a god for 10 minutes at least in the back of the kitchen. Sure, there were times when it just looked like I was booting a glass into the wall but it was worth it. I always wondered if those saved glasses would ever get another bounce if they dropped again.
I'm going to venture a guess here. The bottom of the glass is the heaviest and strongest part, especially on restaurant glasses made for heavy use and frequent washing. It stands to reason that the glass would turn so that the bottom hit the ground first. The bottom strikes the ground unevenly, recoils, and the glass is thrown into a spin. When it strikes the ground again, it's with the much more fragile side of the glass.
I'm a little confused about some of those prices. Specifically, if Ultimate has all the features of Business, why would Business cost $400 and Ultimate $190?
Windows ME's whole problem was that they cobbled together too many apps into an OS. It wasn't inherently unstable, it was all the packaged crap that caused it to be the shortest-lived OS in Microsoft's history.
Starter will be the most stripped-down installation, which would indicate to me that it would be the most stable. I'd like to get my hands on a copy just to see what's different about it.
# Vista Business - XP Pro # Vista Enterprise - XP Pro with enterprise utilities that people have been wanting # Vista Home Basic - for grandma's aging PC that won't run the latest, greatest stuff # Vista Home Premium - Essentially the replacement for XP MCE. # Vista Ultimate - XP Pro for home users # Vista Starter - for when even Basic won't run on your PC.
I don't know...Kerry seemed hard pressed to state his own views even during the official debates; he spent too much time on the offensive, a sure sign that his own agenda wasn't solid. If you're going to criticize an administration for bein inept and disorganized, the LAST thing you should do is come across to the centrists as being aimless and allowing others to control your focus. In the end, he looked like more of the same, and at least Bush was a known quantity.
Bush ending up winning by several million votes, iirc. That was too large a margin to be voting fraud.
Dean was too far left, and Dems knew it. He was unelectable because people viewed him as being unrealistic regarding the Iraq war. They were waiting for a way to out him, and got rid of him as soon as they could.
Considering the volume of theater cams and low-res DVD rips available from any give torrent site, exactly how do they think this will stem piracy at all?
Possible responses of your average movie pirate: A) "Oh no, I can't find a copy of the movie at 1920 x 1080, I guess I'll just have to go out and buy it!" B) "Well, crap. No hi-res, looks like I'll just have to watch this 960 x 540 version." C) "I have seen the error of my ways! I repent my sins of piracy! Forgive me, lords of MPAA!"
And you can't forget D:
D) "Huh...they've got a full HD-DVD rip out for the movie I want. Damn that's a huge file. Better go get a cup of coffee. In France."
In short, in what way does Bush actually represent Republican ideals?
He appeals to a lot of Republicans on a moral level (though I tend to think that's a bit contrived). That, and he's closer to Republican ideals than Gore or Kerry, both of whom were really lousy candidates from the Dems.
Gore's mistake was being vice president first. He had eight long years to stick his foot in his mouth, and he did it quite well. Especially as environmental policy is concerned. He proved to be out of touch with the American people and what they want. That's why he lost.
Kerry was (and is) a weak politician. The only thing I have ever heard out of him is criticism. He attacks and attacks and attacks, and never really makes his own views known...it's only after people spend months calling him a flipflopper and asking what he believes that he comes out and says it. During the campaigns, he spent all his time talking about what Bush did wrong, but never really expressed how he would do it right.
I actually wanted a good moderate Democrat to run, but all we got was the extremes of both sides. I voted Libertarian on the presidential election in 2004:)
(My friends call me a Republitarian, if you're wondering what my political stance is)
This is almost certainly an issue with the software, unless it's being claimed that voting officials tampered with the machines early. If the code weren't some secret proprietary mess, this probably could have been avoided.
I'm not looking forward to the idiocy this is going to trigger on the political debate boards. The tin foil brigade will be out in force again with this news.
John would not buy MS Windows XP Home. John would buy a computer with Windows XP Home on it (seriously - how many people actually buy and install an OS outside of Slashdot). The people who configured his computer will have installed a web browser, a media player, etc.
Two weeks ago, I had to do a reinstall for a user who had bought XP Home ***UPGRADE*** several years ago. I have no idea what the sales volume of upgrade packages was with XP, but upgrades seem to do well enough for MS to have sold them about as long as they've sold Windows.
The MS upgrades are a lot cheaper than the new OS, especially to the uninitiated who don't know how to get an OEM license. They're more common than you realize.
This is why it's good to be a diverse, hands-on IT worker. They're always going to need someone to fix their computers, train them, and just be a general jack-of-all-trades IT guy. The more you can do, the more economical an employee you are.
It's important to note that we are nowhere near approaching market saturation as computers are concerned.
There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all; that number is shrinking every day. And more and more households are building home networks, some even going so far as to add servers. Home automation is becoming practical and affordable, meaning even more IT-related equipment is going into the home.
Schools are still trying to catch up to the digital revolution as well. The local district has a 4:1 student to PC ratio, and their target is 1:1. They'll be buying PCs as quickly as budget allows. The more they buy, the more they'll spend on IT--and most of that will necessarily be in the immediate area.
And of course businesses are investing more and more into IT as they stop seeing it as a money sink and start viewing it as a way to increase efficiency or even as an investment.
The outsourcing we're seeing is simply the offloading of what jobs can be done without being on site. There is a lot more IT work that requires proximity than work that can be sent overseas.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed a perfectly good opportunity to use the word "teledildonics".
I can't decide if you're implying that I'm stating the obvious, or if you're trying to bait me into a high school physics lesson that doesn't apply here.
The glass rotates around its center of gravity so that the heavier side is oriented in the direction it is being pulled.
Just you.
Ugrade costs: the district I work for pays something like $65 per license. Educational licensing is quite affordable.
Hardware: We run XP on P2/400 Mhz systems with 128 MB RAM (out of 160 PCs, 35 are P2s. The rest are Athlon XP or newer). It's slow to boot and multitasking is a definite no, but for students the age you're talking about and the applications they'll be using, it's fine.
Why we don't use Linux: Because we as techs would have to learn it so we could teach it to the teachers so they could teach it to the students, and because Ubuntu is actually slower on older systems than XP Pro.
I've sort of become the resident Linux advocate here. I've been working for a month to get some flavor of Linux on our old G3 Macs to revitalize them as thin clients so we can get them counted by the state (G4 is the lowest accepted by the state, thin clients are an exception).
FYI: We have about 2,500 students and maybe 650 computers (plus maybe 100 that can't be counted on the numbers we give the state), grades K-12.
Yes, I'm complaining that it's not just like Windows. That's exactly what I meant when I said:
/sarcasm
"...the interfaces--until recently--have not been nearly as intuitive as Windows and Mac OS. The biggest problem is documentation and support."
And in case it's not obviously dripping from this post:
I mean... how many of them own 3 or 4 iPods? And yet they scoff at other people doing the exact same thing.
This was the first thing I thought of. I know several people who have:
iPod
iPod Mini
iPod Shuffle
iPod Nano
iPod Video
It still amazes me sometimes how people can be such willing consumer trendwhores.
...use Linux as my primary OS: Because documentation is weak, support is nonexistent, and the interfaces--until recently--have not been nearly as intuitive as Windows and Mac OS. The biggest problem is documentation and support. I know dozens of people who have installed Linux, played with it some, and found themselves unable to do what they want to do and unable to find out how. They can't even find out how to get help inside the OS, and the only support they can get is via community forums, which are notorious for not answering tough or oft-repeated questions. Windows puts a "Help and support" link right in the start menu, making it a lot more user-friendly in that sense. ..use OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office: Let's start with an example. In OOo, start a blank document. Do the same in Word. Now let's change both pages to landscape format.
Word: Click file, choose Page setup, click landscape, click OK. Done.
OOo: Click file...hmm...no "page setup". Let's try properties. Nope. How about printer settings...not there either. Okay, try the help index. Type "landscape" and choose the "landscape and portrait" section. It says go to Format -> Styles and Formatting, then create a new style, set it as landscape, name it, and save it. I notice as I go into the format menu that there's a "Page" option which lets me set the document to landscape like I want about as quickly as Word does.
I went through this very process when a user asked me how to do that when we switched to OpenOffice. Now, OOo *has* an easy-to-use landscape option, but it's not where Word puts it and it's not in the documentation when you type "landscape".
Now I'm *really* not buying it.
"Only white" indeed. Next thing you know, anyone with a colored DS will have to go to the back of the bus. They'll have special sections in the theaters. When does it stop? Do we have to have "Only white" water fountains before people see the truth???
You're missing one crucial detail: your balls aren't connected (pause for chuckles). If you drop an object that is heavier on one side that the other, the heavy side will strike the ground first (assuming the two sides are level when dropped, other forces can of course overpower gravity).
:D
Two objects will fall at the same rate in a vacuum but an irregular, unbalanced object dropped inside an atmosphere will tend to land on its heavier side.
But congrats on applying that high school physics education
I'm going to venture a guess here. The bottom of the glass is the heaviest and strongest part, especially on restaurant glasses made for heavy use and frequent washing. It stands to reason that the glass would turn so that the bottom hit the ground first. The bottom strikes the ground unevenly, recoils, and the glass is thrown into a spin. When it strikes the ground again, it's with the much more fragile side of the glass.
You won't format your posts, either :p
I'm a little confused about some of those prices. Specifically, if Ultimate has all the features of Business, why would Business cost $400 and Ultimate $190?
It probably will be, though.
Windows ME's whole problem was that they cobbled together too many apps into an OS. It wasn't inherently unstable, it was all the packaged crap that caused it to be the shortest-lived OS in Microsoft's history.
Starter will be the most stripped-down installation, which would indicate to me that it would be the most stable. I'd like to get my hands on a copy just to see what's different about it.
...all those versions actually make sense.
# Vista Business - XP Pro
# Vista Enterprise - XP Pro with enterprise utilities that people have been wanting
# Vista Home Basic - for grandma's aging PC that won't run the latest, greatest stuff
# Vista Home Premium - Essentially the replacement for XP MCE.
# Vista Ultimate - XP Pro for home users
# Vista Starter - for when even Basic won't run on your PC.
I was just gonna say "In breaking news, the popular Slashdot meme 'But will it run Linux?' was finally found to not apply to a hardware article."
Simple solution: don't make them programmable, and don't network them. No communication + no writing = no virus risk.
Just wait til Apple enters the market.
It'll cost twice as much, and only models will be able to install it.
(lol cliches)
I'll just read the walkthroughs to get the plot points to follow the story and wait til they reduce the price and/or package multiple episodes.
Kind of like the Sims expansions, but, you know, interesting.
I don't know...Kerry seemed hard pressed to state his own views even during the official debates; he spent too much time on the offensive, a sure sign that his own agenda wasn't solid. If you're going to criticize an administration for bein inept and disorganized, the LAST thing you should do is come across to the centrists as being aimless and allowing others to control your focus. In the end, he looked like more of the same, and at least Bush was a known quantity.
Bush ending up winning by several million votes, iirc. That was too large a margin to be voting fraud.
Dean was too far left, and Dems knew it. He was unelectable because people viewed him as being unrealistic regarding the Iraq war. They were waiting for a way to out him, and got rid of him as soon as they could.
Considering the volume of theater cams and low-res DVD rips available from any give torrent site, exactly how do they think this will stem piracy at all?
Possible responses of your average movie pirate:
A) "Oh no, I can't find a copy of the movie at 1920 x 1080, I guess I'll just have to go out and buy it!"
B) "Well, crap. No hi-res, looks like I'll just have to watch this 960 x 540 version."
C) "I have seen the error of my ways! I repent my sins of piracy! Forgive me, lords of MPAA!"
And you can't forget D:
D) "Huh...they've got a full HD-DVD rip out for the movie I want. Damn that's a huge file. Better go get a cup of coffee. In France."
He appeals to a lot of Republicans on a moral level (though I tend to think that's a bit contrived). That, and he's closer to Republican ideals than Gore or Kerry, both of whom were really lousy candidates from the Dems.
Gore's mistake was being vice president first. He had eight long years to stick his foot in his mouth, and he did it quite well. Especially as environmental policy is concerned. He proved to be out of touch with the American people and what they want. That's why he lost.
Kerry was (and is) a weak politician. The only thing I have ever heard out of him is criticism. He attacks and attacks and attacks, and never really makes his own views known...it's only after people spend months calling him a flipflopper and asking what he believes that he comes out and says it. During the campaigns, he spent all his time talking about what Bush did wrong, but never really expressed how he would do it right.
I actually wanted a good moderate Democrat to run, but all we got was the extremes of both sides. I voted Libertarian on the presidential election in 2004 :)
(My friends call me a Republitarian, if you're wondering what my political stance is)
This is almost certainly an issue with the software, unless it's being claimed that voting officials tampered with the machines early. If the code weren't some secret proprietary mess, this probably could have been avoided.
I'm not looking forward to the idiocy this is going to trigger on the political debate boards. The tin foil brigade will be out in force again with this news.
Two weeks ago, I had to do a reinstall for a user who had bought XP Home ***UPGRADE*** several years ago. I have no idea what the sales volume of upgrade packages was with XP, but upgrades seem to do well enough for MS to have sold them about as long as they've sold Windows.
The MS upgrades are a lot cheaper than the new OS, especially to the uninitiated who don't know how to get an OEM license. They're more common than you realize.
This is why it's good to be a diverse, hands-on IT worker. They're always going to need someone to fix their computers, train them, and just be a general jack-of-all-trades IT guy. The more you can do, the more economical an employee you are.
Louisiana?
Mmmmm...gumbo.
It's important to note that we are nowhere near approaching market saturation as computers are concerned.
There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all; that number is shrinking every day. And more and more households are building home networks, some even going so far as to add servers. Home automation is becoming practical and affordable, meaning even more IT-related equipment is going into the home.
Schools are still trying to catch up to the digital revolution as well. The local district has a 4:1 student to PC ratio, and their target is 1:1. They'll be buying PCs as quickly as budget allows. The more they buy, the more they'll spend on IT--and most of that will necessarily be in the immediate area.
And of course businesses are investing more and more into IT as they stop seeing it as a money sink and start viewing it as a way to increase efficiency or even as an investment.
The outsourcing we're seeing is simply the offloading of what jobs can be done without being on site. There is a lot more IT work that requires proximity than work that can be sent overseas.