Anyone who would base their business on free software has got to be entirely insane.
If you want to run a real business you need to make sure you're hosting with a company that has paid real money for their operating system. None of this toy software written by a bunch of amateur hackers.
I'm sure that everyone caught the dissapointment that Todd felt from the community. People got on his back too much, something which I don't believe he expected.
Todd is not the only one. A big part of the reason I went with MassLinux was their use and support of Linux and OSS. At the time, I was a strong supporter of Linux as a Windows replacement.
Now, however, I am sitting here with a new $3500 laptop that I'm not even sure I'm going to bother loading Linux on, even though my original intent was for it to be a Linux-only machine.
How is that possible? Donated bandwidth, users sending in next month's fees ahead of time, class action lawsuit--any of these things could have helped.
To be honest, had I known the situation, say, two weeks ago, I would have gladly sent in some money to keep them going. All for Linux and Linux for all, or some pseudo-religious nonsense like that.
However, evidently users were pissed off and left Todd to stand as a one man mountain to bear the brunt of the sorting out and accusations.
That's not quite accurate. MassLinux left the users high and dry. We had no way to get in touch with Todd or anyone else at MassLinux. Todd didn't return phone calls, and for some reason I didn't call his home number (which I had, actually) in the middle of the night.
I still don't know who is involved other than Todd. Chris Gann seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Sam McClellan claims he has no relationship to MassLinux other than as a customer, even though he bought the company (according to legal documents presented to others.) The phone number listed in whois belongs to a company someone from MassLinux used to work at a year ago.
Accusations are all we had, since we had no facts whatsoever. All I knew was that I didn't exist, internet-wise.
We didn't leave Todd anywhere -- we didn't have him. We had no valid contact info. We had no info whatsoever. By the time I got ahold of his home number, I was already moving my sites.
Sure, I feel bad for Todd. I feel bad about the blight on Linux that MassLinux caused. I would like to know who is to blame -- not so much for the outage, but for the lack of contact and info.
What they should have done is on the day they were cut off, go to the local library, a friend's house, whereever, and set up a hotmail account, a web page at geocities, and posted a message(s) to appropriate newsgroups. They should have fired off a message to slashdot, linux today, etc. Then I would have gotten a list of all of the accounts they hosted and sat down to call them. Each and everyone.
But I run a real, service-oriented business. Not a mickey-mouse ISP using a toy operating system, which is the impression they have created.
C'mon guys, it's the holidays and we can't even give a little.
Sorry, I already gave, and I'm too busy getting my web sites set up again to worry about the holidays.
But there was an opportunity after they were cut off for them to act in a responsible and professional manner towards their paying customers, and they failed, repeatedly, to take that opportunity. Instead of stepping forward and explaining the situation right away (even through a story on/.), they let rumors fly and people were left hanging for a week before we even saw a question on/. They should have sent email and let their customers know what was going on. That's where I feel masslinux was way in the wrong, and I feel that the customers deserved a contact address that worked way before now - 2 weeks after the fact.
Thank you. The problem is not so much the outage as it is the way they handled it! Or, more correctly, didn't handle it. You said it much more eloquently than I did.
I see alot of people asking why they didn't get emails from us explaining the outage, the short answer, we didn't have connectivity
Come on, you're telling me that not one person at an entire ISP didn't have a separate dial-up account? That no one had an old account at a university? That you had no friends with dial-up accounts? That you local libraries, universities, government, etc. have no public access whatsoever? Or was it that Hotmail, altavista, yahoo, etc. suddenly quit offerring free e-mail?
Are you saying no one there had any free AOL CD's laying around?
And your telephone service got cut at the same time? and the post office suddenly ran completely out of stamps?
Oh, wait, I remember, you ran MassLinux from a deserted island, and the Professor was too busy building Mr. Howell a new golf cart to make you a transmitter, right?
Todd Lauder seems like a nice guy (that's what I thought, anyway, before all this happened.) So let's say that what he says is what happened.
Okay, stuff happens.
The problem is that no one bothered to contact the customers.
They had access to the computers, so they had access to e-mail addresses. They could have checked whois (or their own records) for phone numbers. They could have sent out snail-mail letters, if necessary. What's the cost of a few stamps compared to going out of business?
The big problem I faced was that I didn't know what happened. For the first few days, I had to sit there and wonder if I should move my domain or not.
Had I received an e-mail, a phone call, a letter, or even spotted a message in a newsgroup (I searched!) explaining what was up, I probably would have gotten someone to host a temporary page saying "technical difficulties" or something, gotten my domain pointed at it, and waited it out.
In fact, I got a couple of offers (based on my posts here and in newsgroups) to host my entire site for free, and in reality, I could have set something up at home on my DSL connection.
But I didn't know.
So, I assumed the worst and set up my sites with a new ISP. With no news, no contact, I had to assume they had taken the money and run.
Meanwhile, with the outage going on, day by day by day, more and more of my users were slipping away from me. I don't know if I will bother continuing, because of the same reasons MassLinux offered.
Luckily for me, this is not what pays my mortgage, so I will survive. I feel for those for whom this is not the case.
As to lawsuits, yeah, I was definitely planning something to at least get back what I had paid them, possibly something more for all the time I had to devote to setting up and reconfiguring my sites elsewhere. (I've still got a couple that aren't set up quite right yet.)
Amazon is merely a catalog company using the web instead of a print catalog. Sure, there are a lot of really great advantages to doing that, but nothing earth shattering.
eBay, on the other hand, really did put technology to create something that simply wasn't possible before. How in the world would you have found another waffle collector (for example) before eBay?
Whether you like/approve of/use eBay or not, you have to admit that it is a more innovative application of e-commerce than Amazon.
Just a quick explanation of what I meant when I said that "I actually thought they "got it"." -- The eToys site appears to offer in-house written descriptions which, while still designed to sell the product, offer a little better information than the stock package descriptions that ToySmart uses. They also provide their own opinions of the age range a toy is suitable for (toy companies are often clueless on this.) I like their site, it's easy to use, and it's got a lot of information. It's too bad I have to go elsewhere.
I'm honestly surprised that no one has realized that this is the same idea that Robert A Heinlein (All Hail!) put forth in his book "Door into Summer" many years ago.
I wanted one then, and I want one now.
If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. A little outdated technology-wise, but still an excellent story with good engineering, time travel, and a cat. What more could you ask for?
I grew up celebrating christmas. At the time, my mother was catholic. (Born methodist, she converted on her 18th birthday.) Later, she went through various other religions, such as several touchy-feely-christian variants (we almost ended up moving to Indiana!), Jews for Jesus, and finally ending up being Russian Orthodox when she died.
My dad, meanwhile, had been born jewish (in germany, raised from the age of 13 in a jewish orphanage here in San Francisco) but agreed to let the kids be raised catholic (etc.) and to go to mass. He slept; we nudged him when he started to snore too loudly. Now, he is in a nursing home, the Jewish Home for the Aged. We have to remind him that he's buying chanukkah gifts for the kids, not christmas gifts.
Now I am antagotheistic. (Mostly athiest, but I sincerely hope there is a god so I can beat the living shit out of him.) My wife is more agnostic/athiestic. We mostly celebrate the solstice, but have a christmas tree and give christmas gifts, and so on.) When someone says "Merry Christmas" to us, we say thanks and offer the same to them.
As far as I'm concerned, the christians commandeered the pagan solstice holidays, so there is no reason I can't commandeer christmas for my own use. Turnabout is fair play. Also, I'm far too lazy to explain to people that I don't believe in Christ, so I don't celebrate christmas, etc. That can also lead to having to sit through attempts at being converted, etc. Better just to say Merry Christmas and know in your mind that you really mean May the coming seasons bring you much happiness.
Actually, the tech team here at eToys all reads Slashdot already.
Perhaps then the tech team knows they should be looking around for new positions? 8^)
But seriously, this isn't something the MIS staff did, it's the legal department. And unfortunately, most such departments don't know any other way to do business besides playing mean and dirty.
It's really too bad, because eToys is a nice site with some good info. I actually thought they "got it".
My father had a serious stroke in July. He is now, unfortunately, confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. (The ongoing story can be found at if you care.)
So this year I figured he and I could sit down in front of his computer and do his holiday gift shopping on-line. It would be fun and he could be the coolest dude at the home.
Naturally, we figured that much of our shopping (I plan to do my shopping online as well) would be done at eToys.com -- It seems easy to use, has good info, etc.
That was until I spotted the story at telling a tale of corporate greed, censorship, and bullying.
Needless to say, I will be taking my business (and my father's) elsewhere. (There is, of course, toysmart.com, toysrus.com, kbkids.com, etc.)
Just so you know, the consensus at Slashdot is pretty clearly negative towards eToys. And you might think that Slashdot is just a few geeks who don't matter, but that would show your own naivite' -- you've obviously never heard of the Slashdot effect. (Check with your tech staff, or do a web search.)
Remember also, that as more and more of Joe Public turns to online shopping, the people that they will turn to for advice and assistance will be those very same geeks.
I don't know about other webmasters, and I certainly don't run a site as a profit-making enterprise, but I do check (when I have time) my logs. Not only do I want to see what pages people are looking at, I am interested in seeing where they came from.
I have to laugh at all the perverts who end up at my site after doing a search for the Mitchell Brothers' adult theatre. (I mention them on my page because of the great (G-rated) murals on the outside of their building.)
What if all the gazillions of Slashdot readers went to the eToys web site but didn't buy anything? If their webmaster checked the logs, he/she would see tons of hits, all originating from this story. Presumably they would check out the story and think "Omigod, look at all these people that aren't buying anything, and it's because we screwed eToy!"
Normally, they might just think, "Oh, the only people that will really care about eToy are a handfull of geeks, so we can go harass eToy," but if they see how many people really do read Slashdot, they might just change their minds.
Just a thought. In any case, I'm going to slide on over and not buy anything. (Funny thing is, I was going to buy some toys for my niece from them, until now.)
I've been carrying a laptop of one type or another for over 15 years. As a 6 foot, 275 pound, fairly active person, size and weight is of little matter to me. In fact, the larger size would allow for a larger keyboard, a full-size numeric keypad, and so on.
A 20" screen would mean a laptop somewhere around 16"x12" or so, about the size of two letter size pages. I would be more than happy to carry such a computer in order to have room for more sessions on the screen at the same time, or to have/. loaded next something I get paid for. 8^)
My copy of "Auto Repair for Dummies" has Copyright dates of 1988, 1983, 1976, and the publisher is Ten Speed Press. Of course, there's a note that says:
Title by permission of Phillip R. Martin, author of
Auto Mechanics for the Complete Dummy, (c)1974.
Anyway, it's Auto Repair for Dummies, by Deanna Sclar, and it's a classic. Too bad Deanna didn't get on IDG's butt about the title...
On the other side, a friend of mine is one of the authors of the Windows 98 Bible. Then IDG decides to call their book by the same name, even though they were asked to change the name of their later book.
When most people touch the mouse, they can't help but move it. What's keeping the applications of today from having toolbars fade away after an input timeout and come back as soon as the mouse is moved slightly (in most cases, that would be when it's touched).
That's why those of us who require accuracy and efficiency use a trackball, which does not move when you put your hand on it or press one of the buttons.
As to
moreover, I stuggle to think of even one piece of real functionality that this mouse would enable, that cannot be done today.
Well, certainly, there is nothing that could not be done with an existing pointing device -- a simple way to emulate it would be to move the pointer to the corner and have that event trigger the effects.
Similarly, when my father first became a CPA, he did tax returns and audits by hand on paper. When the technology became available, he switched to a computer. Improving efficiency is what technology is all about.
I was thinking of buying a handheld for my wife for her 30th birthday coming up in a few weeks. Of the Palm's, I'm looking at the Vx, pretty much the top of the line, except for the wireless connectivity of the VII (which she doesn't need.)
Then, along comes the Visor, with what looks like pretty much the same specs as teh Vx, except a little heavier, but for nearly half the price. Seems almost too good to be true.
So, my question is, aside from the ordering problems, and potential new-product-troubles, is there any reason not to get a Visor instead of a Vx?
schools that offer programming in languages like ColdFusion, ASP, JavaScript, Java, and Perl, along with courses like system administration, unix, databases, and networking.
First, almost all of those courses are offered at the school I'm currently (re-)attending. I'm taking Java and Unix System Administration. My professor is the head of the internet group at Wells Fargo Bank. The school is City College of San Francisco.
If you just want to learn those specific skills, check out your local community college, or just pick up a book and learn it on your own. At your age, you should have no problem picking up a new language or system from reading a book and playing with it on your own. (I didn't when I was your age.)
But, if you don't already understand the concepts, don't concentrate on learning a language. Learn the ideas behind it. If you don't understand the concepts, memorizing the syntax for Java, Perl, or even COBOL won't help you.
As others have said, get an education, not a skill.
But, when you ask about:
A College that deals with all computers all the time with cutting edge machines and cutting edge topics.
You're missing something. You can go to some place like MIT and learn all that really cool stuff like robotics and AI and all that, but when you get your Bachelors and start perusing DICE for jobs, you won't find too many of them out there.
Despite what another poster said, there are still an awful lot of COBOL jobs out there, as well as the newer stuff like Java. Not too many positions for people to design robots that can destroy other robots, at least not if you're fresh out of college.
So keep that in mind -- big uni's may have lots of really cool stuff, but they may not be what the real world is using.
On the other hand, there is a huge benefit to knowing more than just technical stuff. I can't begin to count the number of times the years spent hanging out in my dad's CPA office has helped me as a programmer.
Even stuff like literature and music help -- Having an extensive vocabulary and excellent grammar/spelling skills have helped make me a successful consultant, and my eclectic musical background has helped sharpen my logic skills.
So, to sum up, if you need specific skills, go to a community college. (I was having some trouble with learning Java on my own, (even after nearly 20 years in the business) but I am doing much better in the classroom setting.)
But, if you need a general education, both technically and otherwise, consider a four-year school. Concentrate on the concepts, and don't skimp on the other subjects.
Interesting that this christian has studied the bible so intensely, but as a hardcore computer operator, doesn't care enough to know what hexidecimal is.
No matter, should a problem arise, I'm sure he can always call on the almighty to get the system up and running again.
It's a weird thing that computers, in this age when we record every darn thing ever done and collect cereal boxes or Band-Aid boxes, would have an unclear ancestry. Of course, I blame it on military secrecy.
Coming up soon is the Vintage Computer Festival where collectors, historians, and enthusiasts will gather for a week-end full of speakers, exhibits, and trading. Don't miss it if you possibly can!
To debate what was the first computer, who invented it, and so on, check out the Vintage Computer Festival coming up October 2-3 in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
There are a lot of people out there (including myself) working feverishly to preserve the history of the computer industry.
If you have any interest in the subject, or want to find out about your professional roots, check out the VCF. It's also a perfect opportunity to show your kids what it was like back in the good old days before widely available internet access, GUI's, and virtually unlimited computer resources.
There will be exhibits, speakers, and a very active marketplace where you can pick up software, accessories, and even complete systems. One of the speakers will be Konrad Zuse's son, who will surely discuss his father's computers and their place in history relative to ENIAC.
The first working, fully programmable general purpose computer was Konrad Zuse's Z3 (Germany, 1941).
And now you have a chance to hear Konrad Zuse's son talk about his father's work! Check out the Vintage Computer Festival coming October 2-3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the Silicon Valley.
Take a look at the web site at www.vintage.org for more info.
This is an event you simply don't want to miss if you are a computer historian, or just want to learn more about the history of our industry. The VCF will feature speakers, exhibits, and a marketplace where you can reacquire your past.
I bought it for $1.89 from Linux Mall. (Actually, I bought a bunch of different distros; I'm using SuSE.)
The thing is, not only did I not expect support from Red Hat, I knew that to get that price I couldn't even call Linux Mall to talk to a real person about my order. That's why it was cheap.
Red Hat probably (hopefully?) pays their tech support team a fair bit of money to answer questions for Red Hat users. Where do they get the money to do that? By selling that same $1.89 CD in a pretty box for $30+.
I hope it's obvious that if RH offers support to everyone using the RH distro, they will quickly go out of business. So they limit support to people who have paid for it by buying an Official RH package.
Red Hat Linux: $1.89. You want support with that? Another $30, please.
The problem that initiated this article is that some people are selling the equivalent of those $1.89 CD's on Amazon and eBay and so on, and either accidentally or intentially implying that purchasers are getting the Official product with support included.
To protect those purchasers, RH is simply saying "Don't call it Official if it isn't. Don't give your buyers the impression that they can call for support."
I would really like to build a small low power Linux box that I could leave on all the time at home.
After looking around for something small and low-power that I could afford, I gave up and did as someone else suggested. I used a laptop with a dead screen.
I actually have 4 laptops all (more or less) the same -- my main one and three others I bought used. One I bought had a busted screen, but I bought it for the memory/battery/power supply.
When I wanted to set up a linux box to serve as my internet gateway, I dug it out, popped the drive into one of my others, loaded linux, and stuck the drive back into the one with the broken LCD. I used one of my SlimSCSI's to connect to a CD-ROM drive to load Linux; it now has two PCMCIA ethernet cards in it.
It's a 486DX2-50 with 8mb of memory and a 340MB hard drive. I think you really need about 500mb, but I managed to fit everything. 8MB of RAM is enough, but I wouldn't complain about more.
By putting the hard drive into another laptop, I was able to use that screen and keyboard, but you could also use an external monitor. In production, it sits on 4 plastic soda bottle caps (for better ventilation) on a shelf in the corner. I have it hooked up to a six-port OmniView switch box, so I can use the exact same monitor/keyboard I'm using right now to work it. I can also telnet to it from any other computer on the network, or from the outside (I have a DSL connection.)
Anyway, it works great, and a working 486 laptop with a broken screen shouldn't be too expensive. Have fun!
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who would base their business on free software has got to be entirely insane.
If you want to run a real business you need to make sure you're hosting with a company that has paid real money for their operating system. None of this toy software written by a bunch of amateur hackers.
Todd is not the only one. A big part of the reason I went with MassLinux was their use and support of Linux and OSS. At the time, I was a strong supporter of Linux as a Windows replacement.
Now, however, I am sitting here with a new $3500 laptop that I'm not even sure I'm going to bother loading Linux on, even though my original intent was for it to be a Linux-only machine.
To be honest, had I known the situation, say, two weeks ago, I would have gladly sent in some money to keep them going. All for Linux and Linux for all, or some pseudo-religious nonsense like that.
That's not quite accurate. MassLinux left the users high and dry. We had no way to get in touch with Todd or anyone else at MassLinux. Todd didn't return phone calls, and for some reason I didn't call his home number (which I had, actually) in the middle of the night.
I still don't know who is involved other than Todd. Chris Gann seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Sam McClellan claims he has no relationship to MassLinux other than as a customer, even though he bought the company (according to legal documents presented to others.) The phone number listed in whois belongs to a company someone from MassLinux used to work at a year ago.
Accusations are all we had, since we had no facts whatsoever. All I knew was that I didn't exist, internet-wise.
We didn't leave Todd anywhere -- we didn't have him. We had no valid contact info. We had no info whatsoever. By the time I got ahold of his home number, I was already moving my sites.
Sure, I feel bad for Todd. I feel bad about the blight on Linux that MassLinux caused. I would like to know who is to blame -- not so much for the outage, but for the lack of contact and info.
What they should have done is on the day they were cut off, go to the local library, a friend's house, whereever, and set up a hotmail account, a web page at geocities, and posted a message(s) to appropriate newsgroups. They should have fired off a message to slashdot, linux today, etc. Then I would have gotten a list of all of the accounts they hosted and sat down to call them. Each and everyone.
But I run a real, service-oriented business. Not a mickey-mouse ISP using a toy operating system, which is the impression they have created.
Sorry, I already gave, and I'm too busy getting my web sites set up again to worry about the holidays.
You could always appeal to slashdot readers for donations... again...
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Thank you. The problem is not so much the outage as it is the way they handled it! Or, more correctly, didn't handle it. You said it much more eloquently than I did.
Come on, you're telling me that not one person at an entire ISP didn't have a separate dial-up account? That no one had an old account at a university? That you had no friends with dial-up accounts? That you local libraries, universities, government, etc. have no public access whatsoever? Or was it that Hotmail, altavista, yahoo, etc. suddenly quit offerring free e-mail?
Are you saying no one there had any free AOL CD's laying around?
And your telephone service got cut at the same time? and the post office suddenly ran completely out of stamps?
Oh, wait, I remember, you ran MassLinux from a deserted island, and the Professor was too busy building Mr. Howell a new golf cart to make you a transmitter, right?
Sucks to be so out of touch, doesn't it?
Okay, stuff happens.
The problem is that no one bothered to contact the customers.
They had access to the computers, so they had access to e-mail addresses. They could have checked whois (or their own records) for phone numbers. They could have sent out snail-mail letters, if necessary. What's the cost of a few stamps compared to going out of business?
The big problem I faced was that I didn't know what happened. For the first few days, I had to sit there and wonder if I should move my domain or not.
Had I received an e-mail, a phone call, a letter, or even spotted a message in a newsgroup (I searched!) explaining what was up, I probably would have gotten someone to host a temporary page saying "technical difficulties" or something, gotten my domain pointed at it, and waited it out.
In fact, I got a couple of offers (based on my posts here and in newsgroups) to host my entire site for free, and in reality, I could have set something up at home on my DSL connection.
But I didn't know.
So, I assumed the worst and set up my sites with a new ISP. With no news, no contact, I had to assume they had taken the money and run.
Meanwhile, with the outage going on, day by day by day, more and more of my users were slipping away from me. I don't know if I will bother continuing, because of the same reasons MassLinux offered.
Luckily for me, this is not what pays my mortgage, so I will survive. I feel for those for whom this is not the case.
As to lawsuits, yeah, I was definitely planning something to at least get back what I had paid them, possibly something more for all the time I had to devote to setting up and reconfiguring my sites elsewhere. (I've still got a couple that aren't set up quite right yet.)
eBay, on the other hand, really did put technology to create something that simply wasn't possible before. How in the world would you have found another waffle collector (for example) before eBay?
Whether you like/approve of/use eBay or not, you have to admit that it is a more innovative application of e-commerce than Amazon.
Plus, eBay actually makes money.
I wanted one then, and I want one now.
If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. A little outdated technology-wise, but still an excellent story with good engineering, time travel, and a cat. What more could you ask for?
My dad, meanwhile, had been born jewish (in germany, raised from the age of 13 in a jewish orphanage here in San Francisco) but agreed to let the kids be raised catholic (etc.) and to go to mass. He slept; we nudged him when he started to snore too loudly. Now, he is in a nursing home, the Jewish Home for the Aged. We have to remind him that he's buying chanukkah gifts for the kids, not christmas gifts.
Now I am antagotheistic. (Mostly athiest, but I sincerely hope there is a god so I can beat the living shit out of him.) My wife is more agnostic/athiestic. We mostly celebrate the solstice, but have a christmas tree and give christmas gifts, and so on.) When someone says "Merry Christmas" to us, we say thanks and offer the same to them.
As far as I'm concerned, the christians commandeered the pagan solstice holidays, so there is no reason I can't commandeer christmas for my own use. Turnabout is fair play. Also, I'm far too lazy to explain to people that I don't believe in Christ, so I don't celebrate christmas, etc. That can also lead to having to sit through attempts at being converted, etc. Better just to say Merry Christmas and know in your mind that you really mean May the coming seasons bring you much happiness.
Perhaps then the tech team knows they should be looking around for new positions? 8^)
But seriously, this isn't something the MIS staff did, it's the legal department. And unfortunately, most such departments don't know any other way to do business besides playing mean and dirty.
It's really too bad, because eToys is a nice site with some good info. I actually thought they "got it".
I have to laugh at all the perverts who end up at my site after doing a search for the Mitchell Brothers' adult theatre. (I mention them on my page because of the great (G-rated) murals on the outside of their building.)
What if all the gazillions of Slashdot readers went to the eToys web site but didn't buy anything? If their webmaster checked the logs, he/she would see tons of hits, all originating from this story. Presumably they would check out the story and think "Omigod, look at all these people that aren't buying anything, and it's because we screwed eToy!"
Normally, they might just think, "Oh, the only people that will really care about eToy are a handfull of geeks, so we can go harass eToy," but if they see how many people really do read Slashdot, they might just change their minds.
Just a thought. In any case, I'm going to slide on over and not buy anything. (Funny thing is, I was going to buy some toys for my niece from them, until now.)
I've been carrying a laptop of one type or another for over 15 years. As a 6 foot, 275 pound, fairly active person, size and weight is of little matter to me. In fact, the larger size would allow for a larger keyboard, a full-size numeric keypad, and so on.
A 20" screen would mean a laptop somewhere around 16"x12" or so, about the size of two letter size pages. I would be more than happy to carry such a computer in order to have room for more sessions on the screen at the same time, or to have /. loaded next something I get paid for. 8^)
Anyway, it's Auto Repair for Dummies, by Deanna Sclar, and it's a classic. Too bad Deanna didn't get on IDG's butt about the title...
On the other side, a friend of mine is one of the authors of the Windows 98 Bible. Then IDG decides to call their book by the same name, even though they were asked to change the name of their later book.
Personally, I would tell IDG to go to hell.
That's why those of us who require accuracy and efficiency use a trackball, which does not move when you put your hand on it or press one of the buttons.
As to
Well, certainly, there is nothing that could not be done with an existing pointing device -- a simple way to emulate it would be to move the pointer to the corner and have that event trigger the effects.
Similarly, when my father first became a CPA, he did tax returns and audits by hand on paper. When the technology became available, he switched to a computer. Improving efficiency is what technology is all about.
I was thinking of buying a handheld for my wife for her 30th birthday coming up in a few weeks. Of the Palm's, I'm looking at the Vx, pretty much the top of the line, except for the wireless connectivity of the VII (which she doesn't need.)
Then, along comes the Visor, with what looks like pretty much the same specs as teh Vx, except a little heavier, but for nearly half the price. Seems almost too good to be true.
So, my question is, aside from the ordering problems, and potential new-product-troubles, is there any reason not to get a Visor instead of a Vx?
First, almost all of those courses are offered at the school I'm currently (re-)attending. I'm taking Java and Unix System Administration. My professor is the head of the internet group at Wells Fargo Bank. The school is City College of San Francisco.
If you just want to learn those specific skills, check out your local community college, or just pick up a book and learn it on your own. At your age, you should have no problem picking up a new language or system from reading a book and playing with it on your own. (I didn't when I was your age.)
But, if you don't already understand the concepts, don't concentrate on learning a language. Learn the ideas behind it. If you don't understand the concepts, memorizing the syntax for Java, Perl, or even COBOL won't help you.
As others have said, get an education, not a skill.
But, when you ask about:
You're missing something. You can go to some place like MIT and learn all that really cool stuff like robotics and AI and all that, but when you get your Bachelors and start perusing DICE for jobs, you won't find too many of them out there.
Despite what another poster said, there are still an awful lot of COBOL jobs out there, as well as the newer stuff like Java. Not too many positions for people to design robots that can destroy other robots, at least not if you're fresh out of college.
So keep that in mind -- big uni's may have lots of really cool stuff, but they may not be what the real world is using.
On the other hand, there is a huge benefit to knowing more than just technical stuff. I can't begin to count the number of times the years spent hanging out in my dad's CPA office has helped me as a programmer.
Even stuff like literature and music help -- Having an extensive vocabulary and excellent grammar/spelling skills have helped make me a successful consultant, and my eclectic musical background has helped sharpen my logic skills.
So, to sum up, if you need specific skills, go to a community college. (I was having some trouble with learning Java on my own, (even after nearly 20 years in the business) but I am doing much better in the classroom setting.)
But, if you need a general education, both technically and otherwise, consider a four-year school. Concentrate on the concepts, and don't skimp on the other subjects.
No matter, should a problem arise, I'm sure he can always call on the almighty to get the system up and running again.
Sorry... It was early...
Actually, there are a lot of people who do collect computers/A> and are working to preserve the history of the computer industry. For example, see if you know what the first personal computer was!
Coming up soon is the Vintage Computer Festival where collectors, historians, and enthusiasts will gather for a week-end full of speakers, exhibits, and trading. Don't miss it if you possibly can!
There are a lot of people out there (including myself) working feverishly to preserve the history of the computer industry.
If you have any interest in the subject, or want to find out about your professional roots, check out the VCF. It's also a perfect opportunity to show your kids what it was like back in the good old days before widely available internet access, GUI's, and virtually unlimited computer resources.
There will be exhibits, speakers, and a very active marketplace where you can pick up software, accessories, and even complete systems. One of the speakers will be Konrad Zuse's son, who will surely discuss his father's computers and their place in history relative to ENIAC.
And now you have a chance to hear Konrad Zuse's son talk about his father's work! Check out the Vintage Computer Festival coming October 2-3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the Silicon Valley.
Take a look at the web site at www.vintage.org for more info.
This is an event you simply don't want to miss if you are a computer historian, or just want to learn more about the history of our industry. The VCF will feature speakers, exhibits, and a marketplace where you can reacquire your past.
The thing is, not only did I not expect support from Red Hat, I knew that to get that price I couldn't even call Linux Mall to talk to a real person about my order. That's why it was cheap.
Red Hat probably (hopefully?) pays their tech support team a fair bit of money to answer questions for Red Hat users. Where do they get the money to do that? By selling that same $1.89 CD in a pretty box for $30+.
I hope it's obvious that if RH offers support to everyone using the RH distro, they will quickly go out of business. So they limit support to people who have paid for it by buying an Official RH package.
Red Hat Linux: $1.89. You want support with that? Another $30, please.
The problem that initiated this article is that some people are selling the equivalent of those $1.89 CD's on Amazon and eBay and so on, and either accidentally or intentially implying that purchasers are getting the Official product with support included.
To protect those purchasers, RH is simply saying "Don't call it Official if it isn't. Don't give your buyers the impression that they can call for support."
Duh.
Have you got your tickets to VCF 3.0 yet?
After looking around for something small and low-power that I could afford, I gave up and did as someone else suggested. I used a laptop with a dead screen.
I actually have 4 laptops all (more or less) the same -- my main one and three others I bought used. One I bought had a busted screen, but I bought it for the memory/battery/power supply.
When I wanted to set up a linux box to serve as my internet gateway, I dug it out, popped the drive into one of my others, loaded linux, and stuck the drive back into the one with the broken LCD. I used one of my SlimSCSI's to connect to a CD-ROM drive to load Linux; it now has two PCMCIA ethernet cards in it.
It's a 486DX2-50 with 8mb of memory and a 340MB hard drive. I think you really need about 500mb, but I managed to fit everything. 8MB of RAM is enough, but I wouldn't complain about more.
By putting the hard drive into another laptop, I was able to use that screen and keyboard, but you could also use an external monitor. In production, it sits on 4 plastic soda bottle caps (for better ventilation) on a shelf in the corner. I have it hooked up to a six-port OmniView switch box, so I can use the exact same monitor/keyboard I'm using right now to work it. I can also telnet to it from any other computer on the network, or from the outside (I have a DSL connection.)
Anyway, it works great, and a working 486 laptop with a broken screen shouldn't be too expensive. Have fun!