My monitor at work is a 17-inch, 2048x1536@85Hz
That's as close a pixel density to your laptop as I've ever seen. CRTs win for gamers because of the refresh rates. Even lcds with less than a 5ms rate still look like ass playing Oblivion.
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant to say that the new suvs from ford get better mpg than most of the ford cars do, which is interesting. You are right, 27 is nothing to boast about, but it is better than the model year before it.
I'm not defending owning an suv for the bling, but new versions are actually pretty good on gas. For example, My ford 500 gets about 21mpg, advertised 20/21 (city/expressway). The new ford explorer (an suv) is advertised 26/27 mpg. So, actually, it should be noted that not all suvs are bad with gas consumption, thought I can't speak for the navigator.
Several of the people I commute to work with have suv's, and they actually use them to drop four kids off at school, and bring the spouse to his/her job location before they get to work. Although these people make up a minority of the suv owners at work. I think that instead of expecting less suvs, and less improper usage, we will simply see more people using them properly. Also, please remember that just because they own an suv doesn't mean they must fill every seat with a human every time they go out. That's a rediculous expectation.
With a majority of the american population being obese, I would think that sales of larger vehicles would be expected. For example, I myself am quite overweight (I'm getter better), and I found it entirely uncomfortable to drive anything other than a full-sized car or suv/truck. I actually got cramps from test drives with fuel-efficient vehicles. This is especially important factor for people with long commutes (2 hours round for me). I actually considered moving somewhere else so I could use a prius, until I realized that I don't fit in one.
I discovered that, upon question their purchase, most of my suv-owning coworkers falsely believe that they perform better in crashes, and are therefore safer that mini-vans.
I'm talking about ford in particular. But yeah, european-made cars are better. Although more expensive, which is the main concern for most-middle income americans. The ford 500 cost me 26 grand. The Veyron is a $1M show car, and is not for sale so that doesn't count. I can't find any "M8" on BMW's website, so I'll assume the same there.
And Ford owns Aston-Martin, so kudos for me:)
It isn't SUV's in particular. Well, at least if you own a ford. For example, I bought my Ford 500 last November. IT gets 18mpg, 21 on the highway; advertised 20/21. The new SUV's from Ford boast 26/27mpg, which is significantly better than their latest car. Of course, the trucks still suck.
When I installed Beta 2, it left xp alone. When the computer boots, I get a screen that asks me to pick between "Microsoft Windows" or "Earlier version of windows", the latter of which brings me to xp. I don't think it would be so tolerant with partitions if the other os wasn't a microsoft product though.
"I meet computer users who don't even know linux exists for example." Just the other day I found out my aunt doesn't know what a Macintosh Computer is. Not a single clue (I was dumbfounded).
Funny, I tried that on a friends new dell, and task manager says that they are critical processes and can't be stopped.
The whole computer freezes and blue screens if I try safe-mode, right out of the box. My aunt and my mother have dells too, and it's the same story.
Our school was driven by a different conflict anyways. Graphics was always so snooty, and the got all the funding (that they don't need. I refuse to believe photoshop costs the $2mill a year they got).
They started the whole "up with macintosh" plague. Drafting was the only shop with windows, and every day we had to explain why macs don't run CAD stuff. Even that, I don't know about. I never tried to install cad software on a mac to see if it took it.
I guess MA is bloated with money. The state just throws money at the schools and lets them play with it. So, whatever happens, chances are it will change by the next financial quarter anyways. I think of our school as better than it really is because we tie in with the community. When we are seniors, the shops get together and build houses. Drafting makes the prints, House Carpentry, Building and grounds, Electrical, Plumbing, and the rest build about 20 houses each year, and sell them for break-even to families that need them. About 3/4 of the graduationg class get a job halfway through their senior year, and spend one week at work and then one week at school. It's very impressive compared to any other school in the state. About 800 kids apply every year, even though we only take three hundred-ish.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that M$ is not the way to go. But that doesn't change the fact that there weren't any problems with the drafting comps. If it makes me look less-biased, I'll point out that at work we have wintel boxes, and they are ridden with shit. Steaming piles of it, in fact. Between the popups (even when IE is closed), the constantly changing ads on my wallpaper, and the spam in my outlook inbox it's hard to get any work done. That's the honest truth. In drafting, our instructor actually managed our computers seperately from the rest of the school network. He bought his own parts for the computers and rans his own blue cables all over the halls.
I wanted to illuminate the point-of-view of the school administrations in MA. They all think the same, except for the colleges.
And, I'll say it a third time. I'm a student. In this particular argument in the adminisphere, I was lucky to witness exactly what their reasoning was, so I posted it. It is altogether unsettling that posting the absolute truth about my school's pov on IT generates sheer hatred from the/. community. I never said that the people running my school knew what they were doing. That would be an outright lie.
I can't believe I have to say this again. I didn't do the deeming. I wasn't my decision, I'm just a student. Don't flame me like an incestous redneck.
I posted what the administration gave as it's reasons for persuing IT the way it did. Don't shoot the messenger. How many adults actually know what they are doind anyways? Ever heard of the adminisphere?
We probably could have bought a new lathe for the machine shop with that money, they really needed one. But, it wasn't up to me. Don't forget that our shop was the one that asked about the switch. We wantedf to explore linux. I thought it would look great as a side note in my senior project.
AND YES THE NOVELL SERVER WAS HOOKED UP TO THE NET. We played unreal tournemant during lunch break. The electronics kids played starcraft. We used to stream movies all day when our teacher wasn't looking. It was later our tenure there that we realized he knew about it anyways, which sucked.
I believe it is that easy. But the admins don't know that. They don't know anything about linux, and they only have the information that gets handed down from technology sponsors, which are probably working for M$ anyways.
http://www.montytech.net/
Look for yourself. It's huge. We serve a giant chunk of the state. The site should have everything you need to put out the flames.
A million dollars for computers is not bad. That's pretty standard for MA. My elementary school, Houghton/Chocksett, cost $18 mill. to build. Maybe where you live no one pays there taxes, so there is no money for computers?
The middle school doesn't have a website, but you can google it. Actually, just last year they renovated it for $1 mill: http://www.wrsd.net/Minutes/062705Special.pdf
Go ahead. You have never been to a vocational school eh? We are a vocational school. 21 shops, and all but four had 30 comps. Machine shop, Plumbing, Electrical, and building & grounds had about 5 each. The other shops had 15 for the freshman, 15 for the juniors. Then the next week they had academics, while 15 sophomores and 15 seniors took shop.
We had about 310+/- kids per class, and four classes.
The schools serves Sterling, Fitchburg, Winchester, Leomenster, Clinton, Holden, Westminster, Athol, Orange, Gardner, Templeton, and Phillipston.
The only other high school that large is Wachusset Regional High School, and they aren't vocational. They handle about the same # of kids, from the other half of the state. The other vocational schools serve about one town, like Hudson Catholic or Barry Tech.
Whatever, whenever they held the meeting that led to their decision, I doubt they knew anything about linux. How could they know that it is actually the same (cool, I didn't know that).
You gotta figure, when you talk about operating systems to anyone outside of the IT department, which wasn't consulted in this in any way, people look at it like a completely different monster. Not a smaller, nicer monster that is the equivelant of the trunk-monkey for computers.
Drafting wants the computers for engineering, graphics needs it for graphics, the rest need them for spreadsheets and the interweb. Like I said, it was deemed to be too steep a learning curve. I didn't do the deeming.
meh, since I graduated I've gotten used to bad decisions without fore-thought coming from the adminisphere.
But I'm right, unless someone else from MA wants to argue with me, most schools here (below college) use macintosh. Everyone here @/. hates windows, but I've never had a problem. I must be the only person on the planet that's never seen a blue screen of death, which I still don't understand fuss-wise.
No, that's a part of the budget that says "OK, the quarter is over, we actually have $$$$$ left over. What else can we buy?"
Most of the time though, it goes towards road-work. We have been quadruple over-budget (for the predicted snow-plow funds) here the last 3 winters in a row.
*sighs*
I suppose I should have worded that differently. Look, every year you have to teach the damn freshmen how to use linux. It's not like you can set them up, and expect everyone to figure it out. We don't have anyone who knew how to use linux, which means they would have to get somebody to head a sub-division of the computer literacy class.
And yes, you are right. I have never run linux. When I see an article about bleeding-edge games working on linux w/out trouble I will gladly switch. Until then, I have no room for a second computer, and I don't feel like building a shuttle that I can stick under my bed, or wherever there is a cubic foot of spare room.
I never said that there was no gui for linux. I never said I ran it. Don't put words in my mouth.
And, like I said, in the four years I was there (Montachusset REgional Vocational Technical High School) we NEVER had a single problem with the cmoputers in drafting. We never ever had to reinstall windows ever, we never had to update them, they run solidworks 05 with 512md of ram. We had 60 wintel boxes, no viruses, spyware, whatever. Not once. EVER.
In fact, the only outbreak we had was when some dude in Automotive tech dowloaded p0rn on a mac in their shop, and a virus took out the "x server" that keep students files.
My post dealt with what the administration told me when I asked about switching to linux. I had never used it, (still haven't). The drafting team thought it would be a nice change to make blueprints on linux machines, and my post is basically what the dean said to us. We figured that linux was a state-of-the-art os that would generate publicity at the VICA competitions.
And when I said you can't leave it alone, I was talking about the need to teach all the kids how to use it. I even said that (I now know you didn't read the whole post). Every kid can walk into a computer lab and run winodws, it's not like that for linux. Even the custodial staff could teach kids how to use windows. We would need someone whos knows linux to teach them how to use it. That salary would be more than your $1875, which is non-existant because we never had to "maintain" the wintel boxes anyways. We bought them, plugged them in, and that's it.
Mostly, my article flamed macs anyways, I never said anything bad about linux.
Thanks for flaming methough, makes me feel good about the human race. Oh, and before I leave, I would like to state that I didn't make anargument, I stated a fact about what the administration of my high school thinks about going to open-source work.
I'm from MA, and the schools I went to all outfitted themselves with macs. Schools (other than colleges) don't have the budget necessary to get an IT team to set the school up in linux. During one of our shop's arguments with the dean (drafting, as the only windows shop we were under constant administrative fire) he actually showed us the budget charts; It would cost more to pay someone to set everything up with linux than it does to just buy something that doesn't need to be configured. The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it. Each new class of kids has to be taught how to use it. The learning curve between windows and macs was deemed to be much smaller.
My school decided that having all macintosh computers would be something they could boast about. Unfortunately, schools are required (some law, according to the dean) to pay an absolute premium for the macs. Schools get no mac discount in MA. My high school had 500+/- computers, and they paid $2200 for every one. A windows box would have cost them $500 each. With the limited budgets of schools it is hard to justify running anything except windows.
Interestingly enough, the macs always gave the IT shop trouble. In the four years I was there, each machine had needed repairs of some sort done at least twice. My shop (Drafting) was the only shop that had all windows computers, and we never had any problems. Our prints were kept on an old novell server, that worked flawlessly every day.
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My monitor at work is a 17-inch, 2048x1536@85Hz That's as close a pixel density to your laptop as I've ever seen. CRTs win for gamers because of the refresh rates. Even lcds with less than a 5ms rate still look like ass playing Oblivion.
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant to say that the new suvs from ford get better mpg than most of the ford cars do, which is interesting. You are right, 27 is nothing to boast about, but it is better than the model year before it.
I'm not defending owning an suv for the bling, but new versions are actually pretty good on gas. For example, My ford 500 gets about 21mpg, advertised 20/21 (city/expressway). The new ford explorer (an suv) is advertised 26/27 mpg. So, actually, it should be noted that not all suvs are bad with gas consumption, thought I can't speak for the navigator. Several of the people I commute to work with have suv's, and they actually use them to drop four kids off at school, and bring the spouse to his/her job location before they get to work. Although these people make up a minority of the suv owners at work. I think that instead of expecting less suvs, and less improper usage, we will simply see more people using them properly. Also, please remember that just because they own an suv doesn't mean they must fill every seat with a human every time they go out. That's a rediculous expectation. With a majority of the american population being obese, I would think that sales of larger vehicles would be expected. For example, I myself am quite overweight (I'm getter better), and I found it entirely uncomfortable to drive anything other than a full-sized car or suv/truck. I actually got cramps from test drives with fuel-efficient vehicles. This is especially important factor for people with long commutes (2 hours round for me). I actually considered moving somewhere else so I could use a prius, until I realized that I don't fit in one. I discovered that, upon question their purchase, most of my suv-owning coworkers falsely believe that they perform better in crashes, and are therefore safer that mini-vans.
I'm talking about ford in particular. But yeah, european-made cars are better. Although more expensive, which is the main concern for most-middle income americans. The ford 500 cost me 26 grand. The Veyron is a $1M show car, and is not for sale so that doesn't count. I can't find any "M8" on BMW's website, so I'll assume the same there. And Ford owns Aston-Martin, so kudos for me :)
It isn't SUV's in particular. Well, at least if you own a ford. For example, I bought my Ford 500 last November. IT gets 18mpg, 21 on the highway; advertised 20/21. The new SUV's from Ford boast 26/27mpg, which is significantly better than their latest car. Of course, the trucks still suck.
Don't be so sure. I can get fiber in my neighborhood for $600 a month.
When I installed Beta 2, it left xp alone. When the computer boots, I get a screen that asks me to pick between "Microsoft Windows" or "Earlier version of windows", the latter of which brings me to xp. I don't think it would be so tolerant with partitions if the other os wasn't a microsoft product though.
"I meet computer users who don't even know linux exists for example." Just the other day I found out my aunt doesn't know what a Macintosh Computer is. Not a single clue (I was dumbfounded).
Funny, I tried that on a friends new dell, and task manager says that they are critical processes and can't be stopped. The whole computer freezes and blue screens if I try safe-mode, right out of the box. My aunt and my mother have dells too, and it's the same story.
Our school was driven by a different conflict anyways. Graphics was always so snooty, and the got all the funding (that they don't need. I refuse to believe photoshop costs the $2mill a year they got). They started the whole "up with macintosh" plague. Drafting was the only shop with windows, and every day we had to explain why macs don't run CAD stuff. Even that, I don't know about. I never tried to install cad software on a mac to see if it took it. I guess MA is bloated with money. The state just throws money at the schools and lets them play with it. So, whatever happens, chances are it will change by the next financial quarter anyways. I think of our school as better than it really is because we tie in with the community. When we are seniors, the shops get together and build houses. Drafting makes the prints, House Carpentry, Building and grounds, Electrical, Plumbing, and the rest build about 20 houses each year, and sell them for break-even to families that need them. About 3/4 of the graduationg class get a job halfway through their senior year, and spend one week at work and then one week at school. It's very impressive compared to any other school in the state. About 800 kids apply every year, even though we only take three hundred-ish.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that M$ is not the way to go. But that doesn't change the fact that there weren't any problems with the drafting comps. If it makes me look less-biased, I'll point out that at work we have wintel boxes, and they are ridden with shit. Steaming piles of it, in fact. Between the popups (even when IE is closed), the constantly changing ads on my wallpaper, and the spam in my outlook inbox it's hard to get any work done. That's the honest truth. In drafting, our instructor actually managed our computers seperately from the rest of the school network. He bought his own parts for the computers and rans his own blue cables all over the halls. I wanted to illuminate the point-of-view of the school administrations in MA. They all think the same, except for the colleges. And, I'll say it a third time. I'm a student. In this particular argument in the adminisphere, I was lucky to witness exactly what their reasoning was, so I posted it. It is altogether unsettling that posting the absolute truth about my school's pov on IT generates sheer hatred from the /. community. I never said that the people running my school knew what they were doing. That would be an outright lie.
I can't believe I have to say this again. I didn't do the deeming. I wasn't my decision, I'm just a student. Don't flame me like an incestous redneck. I posted what the administration gave as it's reasons for persuing IT the way it did. Don't shoot the messenger. How many adults actually know what they are doind anyways? Ever heard of the adminisphere? We probably could have bought a new lathe for the machine shop with that money, they really needed one. But, it wasn't up to me. Don't forget that our shop was the one that asked about the switch. We wantedf to explore linux. I thought it would look great as a side note in my senior project. AND YES THE NOVELL SERVER WAS HOOKED UP TO THE NET. We played unreal tournemant during lunch break. The electronics kids played starcraft. We used to stream movies all day when our teacher wasn't looking. It was later our tenure there that we realized he knew about it anyways, which sucked.
I believe it is that easy. But the admins don't know that. They don't know anything about linux, and they only have the information that gets handed down from technology sponsors, which are probably working for M$ anyways.
http://www.montytech.net/ Look for yourself. It's huge. We serve a giant chunk of the state. The site should have everything you need to put out the flames. A million dollars for computers is not bad. That's pretty standard for MA. My elementary school, Houghton/Chocksett, cost $18 mill. to build. Maybe where you live no one pays there taxes, so there is no money for computers? The middle school doesn't have a website, but you can google it. Actually, just last year they renovated it for $1 mill: http://www.wrsd.net/Minutes/062705Special.pdf
Go ahead. You have never been to a vocational school eh? We are a vocational school. 21 shops, and all but four had 30 comps. Machine shop, Plumbing, Electrical, and building & grounds had about 5 each. The other shops had 15 for the freshman, 15 for the juniors. Then the next week they had academics, while 15 sophomores and 15 seniors took shop. We had about 310+/- kids per class, and four classes. The schools serves Sterling, Fitchburg, Winchester, Leomenster, Clinton, Holden, Westminster, Athol, Orange, Gardner, Templeton, and Phillipston. The only other high school that large is Wachusset Regional High School, and they aren't vocational. They handle about the same # of kids, from the other half of the state. The other vocational schools serve about one town, like Hudson Catholic or Barry Tech.
Whatever, whenever they held the meeting that led to their decision, I doubt they knew anything about linux. How could they know that it is actually the same (cool, I didn't know that). You gotta figure, when you talk about operating systems to anyone outside of the IT department, which wasn't consulted in this in any way, people look at it like a completely different monster. Not a smaller, nicer monster that is the equivelant of the trunk-monkey for computers. Drafting wants the computers for engineering, graphics needs it for graphics, the rest need them for spreadsheets and the interweb. Like I said, it was deemed to be too steep a learning curve. I didn't do the deeming. meh, since I graduated I've gotten used to bad decisions without fore-thought coming from the adminisphere. But I'm right, unless someone else from MA wants to argue with me, most schools here (below college) use macintosh. Everyone here @ /. hates windows, but I've never had a problem. I must be the only person on the planet that's never seen a blue screen of death, which I still don't understand fuss-wise.
No, that's a part of the budget that says "OK, the quarter is over, we actually have $$$$$ left over. What else can we buy?" Most of the time though, it goes towards road-work. We have been quadruple over-budget (for the predicted snow-plow funds) here the last 3 winters in a row.
*sighs* I suppose I should have worded that differently. Look, every year you have to teach the damn freshmen how to use linux. It's not like you can set them up, and expect everyone to figure it out. We don't have anyone who knew how to use linux, which means they would have to get somebody to head a sub-division of the computer literacy class. And yes, you are right. I have never run linux. When I see an article about bleeding-edge games working on linux w/out trouble I will gladly switch. Until then, I have no room for a second computer, and I don't feel like building a shuttle that I can stick under my bed, or wherever there is a cubic foot of spare room.
I never said that there was no gui for linux. I never said I ran it. Don't put words in my mouth. And, like I said, in the four years I was there (Montachusset REgional Vocational Technical High School) we NEVER had a single problem with the cmoputers in drafting. We never ever had to reinstall windows ever, we never had to update them, they run solidworks 05 with 512md of ram. We had 60 wintel boxes, no viruses, spyware, whatever. Not once. EVER. In fact, the only outbreak we had was when some dude in Automotive tech dowloaded p0rn on a mac in their shop, and a virus took out the "x server" that keep students files. My post dealt with what the administration told me when I asked about switching to linux. I had never used it, (still haven't). The drafting team thought it would be a nice change to make blueprints on linux machines, and my post is basically what the dean said to us. We figured that linux was a state-of-the-art os that would generate publicity at the VICA competitions. And when I said you can't leave it alone, I was talking about the need to teach all the kids how to use it. I even said that (I now know you didn't read the whole post). Every kid can walk into a computer lab and run winodws, it's not like that for linux. Even the custodial staff could teach kids how to use windows. We would need someone whos knows linux to teach them how to use it. That salary would be more than your $1875, which is non-existant because we never had to "maintain" the wintel boxes anyways. We bought them, plugged them in, and that's it. Mostly, my article flamed macs anyways, I never said anything bad about linux. Thanks for flaming methough, makes me feel good about the human race. Oh, and before I leave, I would like to state that I didn't make anargument, I stated a fact about what the administration of my high school thinks about going to open-source work.
I'm from MA, and the schools I went to all outfitted themselves with macs. Schools (other than colleges) don't have the budget necessary to get an IT team to set the school up in linux. During one of our shop's arguments with the dean (drafting, as the only windows shop we were under constant administrative fire) he actually showed us the budget charts; It would cost more to pay someone to set everything up with linux than it does to just buy something that doesn't need to be configured. The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it. Each new class of kids has to be taught how to use it. The learning curve between windows and macs was deemed to be much smaller. My school decided that having all macintosh computers would be something they could boast about. Unfortunately, schools are required (some law, according to the dean) to pay an absolute premium for the macs. Schools get no mac discount in MA. My high school had 500+/- computers, and they paid $2200 for every one. A windows box would have cost them $500 each. With the limited budgets of schools it is hard to justify running anything except windows. Interestingly enough, the macs always gave the IT shop trouble. In the four years I was there, each machine had needed repairs of some sort done at least twice. My shop (Drafting) was the only shop that had all windows computers, and we never had any problems. Our prints were kept on an old novell server, that worked flawlessly every day.