That seems like a stretch. There's the old adage of "quantity versus quality". I would contend that a competent user with one properly kitted machine (be it a Mac or a PC) can accomplish far more than a fool with a dozen boxes. With virtual machines and multi-booting, a proficient user only *needs* one box for most scenarios. Now, if you're running something more complex at home, with multiple servers, NFS, etc, that's another story. The real mark of proficiency isn't how many machines they have, it is what they are doing with those machines (ie, are they a large family with 5/6 machines being used by the kids to play games?)
And as far as OS X itself is concerned, I essentially have a Linux machine, with all common Linux tools available to me, with the additional plus of a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows, though some people feel that it is.)
*gags* Give me my vanilla XFCE UI any day. That annoying little app bar on Macs, having to quit the app through the menu bar (can't just click the little close button like the rest of the world, eh?), etc. The UI is my *biggest* complaint about Macs. God, I'd even take KDE 4.X over it.
Of course, how silly of me. Clearly there can only be *two* possible methods.
I mean, you certainly couldn't use a web-based interface like Webmin, that doesn't require you to run X11. Or be doing DB admin work through phpmyadmin. And you certainly couldn't tunnel a VNC connection through SSH. And we all know there's no way to tell the X11 server not to accept connections from anywhere other than localhost, right (*cough* -nolisten tcp)? And it's not like admins ever remote into user machines, right? And there's *certainly* no possible way you can block port 6000 on your company firewall, allowing only internal connections.
Let me guess, you're the type who thinks that the console port is the *only* acceptable way to manage a switch, those crazy web interfaces be damned. This is 2009, you can have a GUI on Linux boxes without opening the gates of Hell.
For those who don't want to read the report, this GAO study from 2003-2004 indicated that college textbooks were a 6 *billion* dollar industry, plus another several billion for K-12.
This industry has a lot of weight to throw around when it comes to pressuring congressmen.
Well, there's a big difference between an app with a text interface and "using the command line" (in the sense the OP was referring to). The OP wasn't talking about hitting "N" to create a new entry, he was talking about typing in commands like "egrep '^(0|1)+ [a-zA-Z]+$' searchfile.txt" to get their work done
And I think you might be overestimating the number of *end* users still working with the old VT100 emulators. Both of the banks I use provide a shiny point-and-click interface for all the tellers, loan processors, etc. As do my supermarkets (all checkout stations are P-A-C), and almost every retail store I've been to that isn't located in Elk Snout, TN.
Yes, behind the scene, a lot of businesses still have have pure terminal apps. But most industries started migrating away from these interfaces for the end users many years ago. Take airlines, for example. 5 years ago, flight attendants used an old-school text interface to manage trips. Nowadays, they use a shiny PHP/ASP/etc app (depending on the airline).
Well, ATI cards have some issues still. One that comes to mind: WoW under wine. The minimap displays solid white because of an issue with pixel buffers in the ATI Catalyst drivers.
Not saying ATI sucks, but they do still have some issues that need to be addressed, particularly on the Linux side of the pond.
Actually, libraries have far more books than you would think.
Did you go to college? You can check out books from their library as an alumnus. Do you live near a uni? Most large university libraries have plans that let community residents check out books, and they are usually cheap (for example, the plans at UCF are only $5/month, allowing up to 10 books at a time). Don't live near a uni? Any major public uni will do interlibrary loans with your local public library, for free.
A good sized uni has a huge collection of books (UCF has around 2 million) in addition to other resources (periodicals, microfiche, etc) and there are many free or dirt cheap ways to access them without being a current student.
Well yeah, it is optional, but for typical tasks, the console is usually faster than the interfaces for things like Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, etc. Most Windows admins have *some* knowledge of the command line.
You don't have to use the command line for the typical daily tasks, but this also holds true for Linux.
I'll agree that MS has done some things really well. The UI is decent, AD rocks, etc.
KDE does have some very annoying issues, as does Gnome, XFCE, etc. I'm not enough of a fanboy to worship any of them. I'll use whatever works best for me. And for me, that means a mixed environment. I've got Windows boxes, Linux boxes and BSD boxes.
And I'm fine with changes, even major ones. As long as they do them in such a way that I can tell my users to "enable classic mode" if they don't like the changes.
Granted, it *is* still a pretty big change from the current setup. I probably should have said "very seldom see" instead of "don't see". TBH, I was really thinking about the WM changes when I made that statement. I didn't mean for third-party apps to get lumped in (since the Mozilla change will affect both operating systems).
And I hear ya on KDE. I never cared for gnome, but KDE 4.x is even less appealing, IMO. They've made some major strides since the 4.0 release, but I still don't care for it. So now my nice shiny 4GB RAM, 1GB video card system is running XFCE. Such a waste of video memory =)
Wait, when would an end-user need to use the command for any of his daily tasks? Office apps? Email? Browsing porn on company time? Okay, maybe if he's looking at ASCII porn in elinks. Sure, the IT guys will spend some time in the command line, but you see the same thing in Windows administration.
And what work environment are we talking about where end-users are permitted to install *anything* on their machines? That's a huge best practice violation. If they want something installed, they submit a request to the helpdesk, who install it for them. The EXACT SAME way it is done in any decent Windows environment.
Time adjustment is a non-issue. How long did it take people to adjust from XP to Vista, or 98 to XP? Hell, the #1 most common help ticket we get at work is people who can't figure out how to do something in Office 2007 because of the retarded ribbon. They knew where the command was in the menus in 2003. Linux takes time to adjust, but once done, you don't have to keep readjusting every time a new release comes out. The typical adjustment is one of interface issues, and with the exception of KDE 3.5->4.X, you just don't see the major UI changes in Linux that you do in Windows.
I'm not saying either method is more efficient, I'm just pointing out that we can't draw any conclusions without looking at the entire process.
The possibility that comes to mind, however, is this: --Cooking food changes the chemical structure of the food. For example, the collagen in meat is converted to a more gelatinous form, which requires less energy to digest. Call this change in energy delta-Y. --At the same time, enzymes in the food are partially destroyed during the cooking process, which must be replaced with enzymes produced by the body. Call the energy required to produce these enzymes X. --If X is less than delta-Y, then we have a net gain. --To use simple numbers, (and I'm pulling these out of my ass): if we reduce the energy required to digest meat by 25% by cooking it, but see a 10% increase in energy required to account for the initial production of enzymes, then we still have a positive gain in energy.
The big question in all this, that no one has shown numbers for (or maybe I missed it), is what percentage of total energy required to digest food does the production of the enzymes account for? If enzyme production is only 1% of the total energy required, it is a whole different story than if it accounted for 70%. Without any hard numbers, we can't really say anything conclusive.
On the other hand, this entire argument is meaningless since we are missing a key piece of information: the difference in energy gain during digestion of raw vs cooked foods.
If the energy cost of manufacturing enzymes is less than the energy gained by digesting cooked food over raw food (ie, a cell structure permitting more efficient digestion), you still have a net *gain* in energy over eating raw meat, making cooked foods the better choice.
As far as falling asleep goes, that is caused by what we eat, not by the redirection of energy to producing enzymes. Starchy/sugary foods cause blood pressure to spike, and involves a chain of chemical processes starting with a release of insulin from the pancreas and eventually resulting in the brain converting tryptophan into serotonin in the brain. You can avoid this by cutting back on sugars and starches and eating more vegetables, proteins, etc. It's not about enzymes, it is linked to the fact that sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream quickly.
I never quite understood why it tanked like it did. I enjoyed Mirror's Edge. Granted, it was pretty short, and really relied on you falling to your death a lot to reach a reasonable play time.
I took them as vacation days, but still filled out timesheet entries so I got paid for the time I spent working (I'm a contractor, I don't get "paid" vacations).
I can't even go away for a DAY without people noticing (I'm the sole IT guy). Why? Because no matter how much warning I give, someone will wait till the absolute last nanosecond on a project, and need me to do something.
I took two days off in July to go on a golf trip. Every night I spent VPN'ed in to the network doing stuff because something just *had* to be done immediately (the biggest problem with engineers: they can't wait for anything or ask in advance).
Won't forget? I couldn't write a capital S or G in cursive on demand without stopping to think nowadays.
As far as time goes, I'm talking about adults here. You know, the ones working 50-60 hours a week, have kids, etc. Not college students who waste all their time playing video games and refreshing Facebook.
Let's apply the same argument to semaphore, or morse code, or ASL. They're all skills, and if little Timmy joins the Merchant Marine or is transported back to 1860 it might even be a useful skill. But forcing him to spend several years on a skill we know full well he'll likely never use again seems like a waste. There must be something more useful that he could be taught in that time.
And that original speed gain was nullified over time by the addition of extra strokes for looks. Do away with the superfluous strokes, and it might actually be faster.
I'll take my cursive-block hybrid for speed any day.
Slashdot Mirror
We apologise for the fault in the previous post. Those responsible have been sacked.
That seems like a stretch. There's the old adage of "quantity versus quality". I would contend that a competent user with one properly kitted machine (be it a Mac or a PC) can accomplish far more than a fool with a dozen boxes. With virtual machines and multi-booting, a proficient user only *needs* one box for most scenarios. Now, if you're running something more complex at home, with multiple servers, NFS, etc, that's another story. The real mark of proficiency isn't how many machines they have, it is what they are doing with those machines (ie, are they a large family with 5/6 machines being used by the kids to play games?)
And as far as OS X itself is concerned, I essentially have a Linux machine, with all common Linux tools available to me, with the additional plus of a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows, though some people feel that it is.)
*gags* Give me my vanilla XFCE UI any day. That annoying little app bar on Macs, having to quit the app through the menu bar (can't just click the little close button like the rest of the world, eh?), etc. The UI is my *biggest* complaint about Macs. God, I'd even take KDE 4.X over it.
Of course, how silly of me. Clearly there can only be *two* possible methods.
I mean, you certainly couldn't use a web-based interface like Webmin, that doesn't require you to run X11. Or be doing DB admin work through phpmyadmin. And you certainly couldn't tunnel a VNC connection through SSH. And we all know there's no way to tell the X11 server not to accept connections from anywhere other than localhost, right (*cough* -nolisten tcp)? And it's not like admins ever remote into user machines, right? And there's *certainly* no possible way you can block port 6000 on your company firewall, allowing only internal connections.
Let me guess, you're the type who thinks that the console port is the *only* acceptable way to manage a switch, those crazy web interfaces be damned. This is 2009, you can have a GUI on Linux boxes without opening the gates of Hell.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-806
For those who don't want to read the report, this GAO study from 2003-2004 indicated that college textbooks were a 6 *billion* dollar industry, plus another several billion for K-12.
This industry has a lot of weight to throw around when it comes to pressuring congressmen.
Well, there's a big difference between an app with a text interface and "using the command line" (in the sense the OP was referring to). The OP wasn't talking about hitting "N" to create a new entry, he was talking about typing in commands like "egrep '^(0|1)+ [a-zA-Z]+$' searchfile.txt" to get their work done
And I think you might be overestimating the number of *end* users still working with the old VT100 emulators. Both of the banks I use provide a shiny point-and-click interface for all the tellers, loan processors, etc. As do my supermarkets (all checkout stations are P-A-C), and almost every retail store I've been to that isn't located in Elk Snout, TN.
Yes, behind the scene, a lot of businesses still have have pure terminal apps. But most industries started migrating away from these interfaces for the end users many years ago. Take airlines, for example. 5 years ago, flight attendants used an old-school text interface to manage trips. Nowadays, they use a shiny PHP/ASP/etc app (depending on the airline).
Well, ATI cards have some issues still. One that comes to mind:
WoW under wine. The minimap displays solid white because of an issue with pixel buffers in the ATI Catalyst drivers.
Not saying ATI sucks, but they do still have some issues that need to be addressed, particularly on the Linux side of the pond.
Actually, libraries have far more books than you would think.
Did you go to college? You can check out books from their library as an alumnus.
Do you live near a uni? Most large university libraries have plans that let community residents check out books, and they are usually cheap (for example, the plans at UCF are only $5/month, allowing up to 10 books at a time).
Don't live near a uni? Any major public uni will do interlibrary loans with your local public library, for free.
A good sized uni has a huge collection of books (UCF has around 2 million) in addition to other resources (periodicals, microfiche, etc) and there are many free or dirt cheap ways to access them without being a current student.
Well yeah, it is optional, but for typical tasks, the console is usually faster than the interfaces for things like Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, etc. Most Windows admins have *some* knowledge of the command line.
You don't have to use the command line for the typical daily tasks, but this also holds true for Linux.
I'll agree that MS has done some things really well. The UI is decent, AD rocks, etc.
KDE does have some very annoying issues, as does Gnome, XFCE, etc. I'm not enough of a fanboy to worship any of them. I'll use whatever works best for me. And for me, that means a mixed environment. I've got Windows boxes, Linux boxes and BSD boxes.
And I'm fine with changes, even major ones. As long as they do them in such a way that I can tell my users to "enable classic mode" if they don't like the changes.
Well, the Mozilla ribbon isn't quite what comes to mind when you hear the word nowadays:
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2009/09/24/no-ribbon-planned-for-the-firefox-ui/
Granted, it *is* still a pretty big change from the current setup. I probably should have said "very seldom see" instead of "don't see". TBH, I was really thinking about the WM changes when I made that statement. I didn't mean for third-party apps to get lumped in (since the Mozilla change will affect both operating systems).
And I hear ya on KDE. I never cared for gnome, but KDE 4.x is even less appealing, IMO. They've made some major strides since the 4.0 release, but I still don't care for it. So now my nice shiny 4GB RAM, 1GB video card system is running XFCE. Such a waste of video memory =)
Switch to grub if you can. I've found grub to be *much* easier to work with than lilo.
Wait, when would an end-user need to use the command for any of his daily tasks? Office apps? Email? Browsing porn on company time? Okay, maybe if he's looking at ASCII porn in elinks. Sure, the IT guys will spend some time in the command line, but you see the same thing in Windows administration.
And what work environment are we talking about where end-users are permitted to install *anything* on their machines? That's a huge best practice violation. If they want something installed, they submit a request to the helpdesk, who install it for them. The EXACT SAME way it is done in any decent Windows environment.
Time adjustment is a non-issue. How long did it take people to adjust from XP to Vista, or 98 to XP? Hell, the #1 most common help ticket we get at work is people who can't figure out how to do something in Office 2007 because of the retarded ribbon. They knew where the command was in the menus in 2003. Linux takes time to adjust, but once done, you don't have to keep readjusting every time a new release comes out. The typical adjustment is one of interface issues, and with the exception of KDE 3.5->4.X, you just don't see the major UI changes in Linux that you do in Windows.
I'm not saying either method is more efficient, I'm just pointing out that we can't draw any conclusions without looking at the entire process.
The possibility that comes to mind, however, is this:
--Cooking food changes the chemical structure of the food. For example, the collagen in meat is converted to a more gelatinous form, which requires less energy to digest. Call this change in energy delta-Y.
--At the same time, enzymes in the food are partially destroyed during the cooking process, which must be replaced with enzymes produced by the body. Call the energy required to produce these enzymes X.
--If X is less than delta-Y, then we have a net gain.
--To use simple numbers, (and I'm pulling these out of my ass): if we reduce the energy required to digest meat by 25% by cooking it, but see a 10% increase in energy required to account for the initial production of enzymes, then we still have a positive gain in energy.
For example, consider this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VNH-4PF6B6Y-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a45168786fdaed44067b0781c320b9e3
I realize this is a study involving snakes, so take it it with a *big* grain of salt.
The big question in all this, that no one has shown numbers for (or maybe I missed it), is what percentage of total energy required to digest food does the production of the enzymes account for? If enzyme production is only 1% of the total energy required, it is a whole different story than if it accounted for 70%. Without any hard numbers, we can't really say anything conclusive.
On the other hand, this entire argument is meaningless since we are missing a key piece of information: the difference in energy gain during digestion of raw vs cooked foods.
If the energy cost of manufacturing enzymes is less than the energy gained by digesting cooked food over raw food (ie, a cell structure permitting more efficient digestion), you still have a net *gain* in energy over eating raw meat, making cooked foods the better choice.
As far as falling asleep goes, that is caused by what we eat, not by the redirection of energy to producing enzymes. Starchy/sugary foods cause blood pressure to spike, and involves a chain of chemical processes starting with a release of insulin from the pancreas and eventually resulting in the brain converting tryptophan into serotonin in the brain. You can avoid this by cutting back on sugars and starches and eating more vegetables, proteins, etc. It's not about enzymes, it is linked to the fact that sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream quickly.
I never quite understood why it tanked like it did. I enjoyed Mirror's Edge. Granted, it was pretty short, and really relied on you falling to your death a lot to reach a reasonable play time.
I took them as vacation days, but still filled out timesheet entries so I got paid for the time I spent working (I'm a contractor, I don't get "paid" vacations).
Very interesting. I think I'll have to take a look at da Vinci's notes now (I'm a lefty, and hand cramps have always been an issue).
Yeah, the letters are terrible. And that's not even my handwriting. Throw in personal variations on the letters, and they get even worse.
It's no wonder we all prefer printed over cursive.
You've answered your own question: planning.
I can't even go away for a DAY without people noticing (I'm the sole IT guy). Why? Because no matter how much warning I give, someone will wait till the absolute last nanosecond on a project, and need me to do something.
I took two days off in July to go on a golf trip. Every night I spent VPN'ed in to the network doing stuff because something just *had* to be done immediately (the biggest problem with engineers: they can't wait for anything or ask in advance).
I can't even *comprehend* 5 weeks of vacation.
Won't forget? I couldn't write a capital S or G in cursive on demand without stopping to think nowadays.
As far as time goes, I'm talking about adults here. You know, the ones working 50-60 hours a week, have kids, etc. Not college students who waste all their time playing video games and refreshing Facebook.
Let's apply the same argument to semaphore, or morse code, or ASL. They're all skills, and if little Timmy joins the Merchant Marine or is transported back to 1860 it might even be a useful skill. But forcing him to spend several years on a skill we know full well he'll likely never use again seems like a waste. There must be something more useful that he could be taught in that time.
"If cursive writing is eliminated, what are we going to put on the line that's not marked "Print name"?"
The same thing we put now. A capital letter followed by a squiggly line =)
I was taught the standard script:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cursive.svg
The extraneous strokes are most obvious in capital letters.
Nowadays, it is both.
I just signed a car loan last week. I had to both print and sign my name at each location in the paperwork.
And that original speed gain was nullified over time by the addition of extra strokes for looks. Do away with the superfluous strokes, and it might actually be faster.
I'll take my cursive-block hybrid for speed any day.