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Let me summarize this whole section: take all your Macintosh software and hardware investment, throw it out the window (no pun intended). Now purchase brand new hardware and software that claims to perform the same function. After installing that, go through some difficulty moving your existing files and data from your Macintosh to your new Windows NT platform. Finally, realize that the result is not complete or correct, so recreate most of what you've done over the past few years from scratch. "Why do I keep shooting myself in the foot? Because it feels so good once I stop."
I live in New York. Garbage disposals are illegal here. Now I know I'm not missing much.
GE, GE, GE -- they are everywhere. Even you have the same GE range! My mother-in-law, my neighbors, and I all have that range. My mortgage is held by GE Capital; so is my auto lease. When I watch TV, I watch NBC -- owned by GE. I ride to work on electric trains powered by GE motors, past the scenic Hudson river, polluted by GE PCBs. There, I feel better now ...
As I read Philip's argument, it struck me how much his vision of a tuition free school matched the reality at Cooper Union. I know that the reference is redundant, since it's been previously mentioned, but the Cooper is really unique. The school isn't perfect, but it doesn't force students to waste time and effort running some sort of financial gauntlet before granting them an affordable education.Oh, by the way, Cooper also offers free education in the fields of art and architecture. It's not just an engineering school.
At first, I wondered how engineers, designers, product mangers, etc., could build such a useless device. Then suddenly, it stuck me: they work 16 to 18 hours a day and simply don't watch TV, play video games, or do any of the other things that this box supposedly does. If they did, they would see the folly of taking a pile of disparate features of various products and throwing them together without thinking through what the Dimension XTV was trying to be, or even whether it would work reliably in an "average" home."Collaboration" means to "work together." In a sense, the Dimension XTV did function that way: it forced Phillip and Jin to work together with eachother and others so that the machine could be restored to basic functionality. However, I doubt this is what Phillip had in mind.
Just looking at the number of books whose description includes the word "dated" makes me wonder why -- aside from the relative convenience and comfort of "unplugged" reading -- anyone bothers with paper books about computing anymore. Writing a book about a "current" topic seems to be a losing battle. By the time the book is published, the pace development and progress on Internet Time has already reduced the value of the paper and the enclosed CDROM. As far as I can see, the only reason that paper books still appear in such prodigious quanities is that the book trade is trying to squeeze whatever revenue they can from the physical publishing model before it becomes so much history. That, and the problem that no one has figured out how to make money publishing a book exclusively on the web -- yet.Just to clarify the last sentence: I'm not saying that it can't be done, just that it hasn't (for whatever reason) been done. I'm reasonably confident that once the Pow...
Just a comment on integrating NT and Unix. I've used Samba with great success. Currently, I have a network that includes a couple dozen NT workstations at separate locations, one Network Appliance Filer running both NFS and CIFS (SMB), and five Samba 2.0.3 servers. One of the Samba servers functions as both a WINS server and domain master browser while another at a remote location is a local master browser. Net result: two physically and logically separate subnets appear as one "Network Neighborhood" on my NT and Win 95 boxes, and everyone talks to everyone else, sharing files and printers. All this on a "production" network.Admittedly, this took quite a while to get right. No two PCs seemed to function in exactly the same manner, and we do have to contend with some rather amazing problems, but overall the darned thing works. I'm both proud and amazed.
Philip, I'd be happy to make it work for you -- for a suitable fee. However, my cat says we should simpl...
Just so this section doesn't entirely reflect a spirit of happiness and light ...I've pushed this book for the past two months to everyone I know in the computer and web business. No one (execpt for me) has bought it.
I've mentioned the web site to all my computer and photography oriented friends. Only one has actually visited and used it to any extent, and most of his contributions center around darkroom and enlarging techniques -- a topic that photo.net does not really cover.
I followed the link to Creating Cool Web Databases just so I could see what a bad book on this topic looks like. The customer reviews on were either "great" or "bad." One of the "great" reviews posted the name of a web site built using the techniques espoused in that book. The result seems fairly attracti...
Just as an FYI, AOL Server 3.0 is now open source. This, along with improvements in open source database systems, expands the possibilities for db-backed web sites.Thanks, AOL! Thanks also to Philip, who I'm sure had more than a little influence in this decision. ;-)
After the passage of days, weeks, years, etc., when you find yourself staring uncomprehendingly at code written by someone who traded readability for "programmer efficiency," you might begin to wonder if all that trade was such a good idea.I'm not knocking Perl -- cryptic code is possible in any language. Whether cryptic code ever provides a reward without some accompanying "punishment" is debatable.
Those of you who really want a copy of Philip's previous book in German have probably been frustrated. The publisher broke the link -- how annoying:Fehler 404 Leider konnte die angeforderte Seite auf unserem Server nicht gefunden werden.Fortunately, a quick search reveals that they still carry Datenbankgest|tzte Web-Sites in their current catalog.The Idea Factory is out of print, at least according to Amazon.
A number of years ago in a previous job, I used to try to convince people to buy computers, specifically those made by the former Digital Equipment Corporation. When the 64-bit Alpha came out, I had much more difficulty than I expected convincing people they needed this. Prospective non-customers would always ask me, "So, Mr. DEC Representative, why do I need 64 bits? I can do everything with just 32 bits."My stock answer was, "Oh really? Try representing Bill Gates's wealth in 32 bits."
For some reason, the folks at www.infrasturctures.org no longer mirror the cfengine software referred to above. The "canonical" URL for cfengine is http://www.iu.hioslo.no/cfengine/.