Housing Bubble, credit bubble, public planning, land use, zoning and transportation in the exurban environment. Specific criticism of smart growth, neotradtional, forms based, new urbanism and other top down planner schemes to increase urban extent and density. Ventura County, California specific examples.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Penguin Says No Casey Post
Hot Tickets:
Unbuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/ FreeNAS http://www.freenas.org/ [Don't blow off Novell Linux however]
Base model MacBook with larger HD Airport Extreme and Rendevous (802.11n/WPA2)
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Place Your Bets":
As a Mac based user, who also likes XP, Vista is a HUGE steaming pile o' poop. There are some things I like, but the DRM issues alone are enough to guarantee a Vista machine will never be used in my home (work, who knows. I have a G5 at work, and that will never change as long as I'm there, I make the decisions, we have too much of an invetment in Mac software, and our vendors and ad agencies are all Mac based, going XP ain't worth it).
DRM is bad enough, but Vista's is not only draconian and designed to force hardware upgrades to "compliant" devices and monitors, but the speed hit that Vista suffers from the multiple layers of authorization during playback makes it a joke. I don't want to build a Vista-based home entertainment server and find my plasma isn't "certified".
I am a published artist, so I support the copyrights of others and don't pirate, but I also resent the attitude of the entertainment industry that ALL users are thieves, and with Microsoft are trying to lock down our stereos and dvd players and tvs to conform to their idiotic ideas of "ownership". If I buy a dvd, or download a song, I want the ability to archive it, play it on ALL of my devices, and not have to upgrade a damned thing to play it. I already agreed not to pirate it, so HANDS OFF once the financial transaction has occured. ----
Yeah, DRM is is the partly digested corn in the huge steaming pile. 5 years late 4 times too large all the features promised removed. Instead they spent billions figuring out ways to cripple subsets to spread product features across a confusing product line. They spent billions and years making it harder to work with certain data/files. They spent more on integrating secret and unblocakable backdoors than they did on security. They spent more on lawyers than engineers. Vista = Win ME '07.
win ME. Gawd I hated working with that one. I have tossed all machines with ME. Still have couple win 98(certain legacy software only works on that in our business).
Rob, I noticed a couple months ago that Dell started offering PC's with linux installed vs. Windows. Thought that was a good sign.
I still don't get how M$ gets away with $399 computers with their supposedly $149 OS preinstalled. They are still practicing market cornering tactics that should have had them shut down in '92.
I'm seeing early cracks in the wall. Fry's offers $109 Home Full editions with some build-your-own components. XP Pro costs more than Vista. What does that tell you? It tells me you can have my Win2k SP4 universal install disc when you pry it from my bloody fingers.
Rob beat me to it. Vista is definitely the new ME; which makes XP the new '98. I've been pleasantly surprised at how solid XP has become, and its performance is reasonably good. My system is getting old, but isn't that just what they're designed to do, sigh. I'll probably upgrade to a new processor and a new graphics card later this year, but I'm sticking with XP for probably quite some time.
Hee.. you know, it's funny. I've thought for a long time that Microsoft's lasting contribution to computer science would be to bring Mac and Unix people together in common disgust.
I started using Linux full time back in '96 because I HATED Windows 95. Refused to use a home-machine OS that couldn't run for 20 minutes without something crashing. The guys I worked with thought I was nuts for wasting my time with a "hacker OS" that would never get mainstream respect.
Double-hee. These days, being a Linux geek is an awfully sweet deal - 3rd party support, a mountain of good software, stable installs. And with Wine and VMWare, you can run almost any Windows stuff you want. Getting friggin' Half Life 2 running under CentOS and Wine recently was damned near a religious experience.
Best of all, a guy can just use his damned computer without someone trying to sell him something. A family member bought a laptop not long ago from Best Buy, and it was just obscene how many commercials you had to go through just to use it. Took me the better part of a weekend to get rid of it all - I finally had to just format and reinstall.
I still can't stand Windows. Vista? Hold on while I stop laughing. :)
I'm looking at the iMac not the laptops for a home workstartion because of the nice big iMac screens, and because there are a couple of user habits that I have found that I really cannot break myself, and a two-button mouse is one of them. Every time I try to use an Apple mouse I inevitably get very frustrated and go running back to a nice Kensington 2-button.
I know I could use the macbook as a desktop and plug a keyboad, mouse, and bigger monitor into it, but honestly, if I'm going to do that I might just as well not buy a laptop. At least that's how I see it. YMMV.
Linux -- sorry, not going there. It's great for servers but I don't have the patience to deal with it as a desktop OS. And Open office sucks monkey balls. Not as hard as Vista does, but it still sucks. We tried to use it here at the office but bit by bit we ended up with a copy on MS Office on everyone's desktop instead.
I got a bunch of PCs on a network for video and audio stuff. Some apps demand XP. On graphics PCs dedicated to those picky apps, I use XP, stripped to the bone with the Fisher-Price GUI turned off. On other PCs, I use 2K, which FLIES in comparision to XP. 2K is my fave Microsoft OS. VISTA is too scary to even approach.
A couple of weeks back Dell started offering preinstalled XP on PCs again due to overwhelming demand. That's cool. Bite it, VISTA.
Re: >>Info please. Non-tinfoil-hat-brigade info by preference, but whatever.<<
The info came from an article I read several hard drive and bookmark wipes ago. It was plausibly presented by sources I trusted - but it could still be bunk, of course.
funny you mention zone alarm. i wanted a 3rd party firewall on our winserver 03. Partly due to window firewall being a pain in the ass(could not get FTP to work and took a LONG time to do the work around via alot of googling). unfortunately zone alarm is only for PCs and they dont sell a server version. the others I found seemed a bit complicated for installation on server 03'. If anyone has some feedback on that that is in the know I would truely appreciate it. I have never been formally trained in IT stuff(econ/finance majors) so on top of client work...getting stuck in the role of taking care of our network and computers has been interesting and hands on experience(sometimes hammer in hand to 'fix' the problem.
My current HP notebook is on it's last legs. Literally, the frame holding the screen in place has cracked so many times and is held together with epoxy. It_is_shot.
When the movers bring my stuff, I've got a pretty good desktop pc for business, but I'm going to replace the notebook to do personal stuff and for travel.
Enough background, here's the question......
Mac or PC?
I've seen one, but never operated an Apple computer....ever. Switching OS's seems a little intimidating; especially since I'm pretty much a runofthemill consumer when it comes to tech.
What's the consensus? Mac Pro or whatever it's called or continue with another pc notebook?
Getting friggin' Half Life 2 running under CentOS and Wine recently was damned near a religious experience.
I bow before your Nerdliness™. May I, sir, be honored by offering you a Jolt™ with Pixie Stix™?
Am I the only dinosaur that remembers the "gweep" noise the DEC paper terminals made when you entered an invalid APL expression? You want nerdly? Maybe embarassing but we used to play a game of "what does this APL line do?" Holy crap! A new way of taking the diagonal of a matrix without relying on Green's Theorem!
Sorry, just adding to to the growing pile of "sux" misinformation about my intellect, et al. Just trying to pad the future bottom line. ;-)
I'm SO glad the laptop I bought in September came w/XP. Phwew! I have a geek cousin who goes to Digipen and he tells me that Vista=Death. My dilema is that I usually buy a new laptop every year and pass down my old one to the wife or son. I guess I'll either wait for Vista SP1 to come out or start learning linux. I've debated the Linux thing for a while. Does anybody have a Linux for dummies type link?
With all due respect, Tony, the jump to linus is an even bigger learning curve than the jump to a mac.
Linux is not a casual user's OS. The expectation in the Linux community is that you're ready, willing, and able to spend a lot of time tinkering and have a pretty high level of technical clue if you want to run that OS. If you want to spend the time to do it, then more power to you, go for it, but just be aware of what you're getting into.
How tough is it to "Mac Yourself"? I don't mind the learning curve if it's not time travel and the OS is as good as promoted. I freakin' HATE Windows; but if I do go that route, I'll pickup an XP machine. No way will I consider any MS product until the second or third version.
$480 freakin' dollars? Affordable, reliable business notebook with 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron M 520 processor 80 GB hard drive, 512 MB installed RAM (2 GB max), DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive Connectivity: 2 USB, 1 VGA, 1 S-Video, 1 headphone, 1 microphone 54g Wi-Fi LAN (802.11b/g), 10/100 Ethernet, Intel GMA 950 video card with up to 64 MB shared memory Pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Basic
@Dude -- I didn't have too hard a time with OSX, really. The keyboard and mouse things were harder than any software issues.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird for web & e-mail, and those are cross-platform apps. MS Office is a little different under a Mac but not so different that it caused problems for me. And for the rest, well, some took more adjusting than others, but I've found some that I really like. Adium IM client, for example, kicks serious ass.
How tough is it to "Mac Yourself"? I don't mind the learning curve if it's not time travel and the OS is as good as promoted.
IMO easy. After a few stumbles of the type "how do you..." it is mere minutes before you start saying silently "ohhh, that's how it was always supposed to be done."
And yes, the OS is that good. It has issues but nothing anything less than superusers need worry about. Here's a typical scenario: You arrive at a client site. Your Mac asks if you'd like to join the local network. You ask your host for a password and click yes. You choose, add printer, search rendevous, accept. Printing now works. Problems with these complex instructions?
I was thinking of tinkering with Linux on my desktop/gaming system. My laptop is mission critical work stuff so I'll keep it XP for now. I just found the Ubuntu page. A was a geek a long time ago at Sequent but transfered to sales when I realized sales guys got hot chicks, trips, and huge cash. I remember going to some roadshow for OS/2 Warp and realizing that geeks got a project manager ass raping them while the sales team went to Hawaii.
If you're curious about trying out a Mac, get a Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM. Plug in your existing monitor, your existing keyboard and mouse, and "itsallgood". You'll never look at a beige box sitting under your desk the same way.
The Mac is extremely fast to pick up. Once you get your head around the Dock (and the fact that you can drag applications, folders, or often-used documents there) you'll never want to look at a Start Menu ever again.
That's because the casual UNIX is called MacOS. :)
Being a Linux user isn't really about getting HL2 to run out of the box, or about getting it to run under Wine.. it's about knowing that you can't brag too loudly about getting it to work because you didn't *write* Wine. Gotta be a special kind of masochist for that show.
Seriously tho, you get over the worst of the new-user-huhs after five or six years. When you catch yourself telling newbies to RTFM, you know you've arrived.
The notebook will be my primary use puter. I've got all my old business stuff on the desktop and the only reason it's around is to archive data in case I need to pull some records.
Since hanging up the work clothes, my main use will be playing online and some graphics/music/video work for fun.
My son uses a screaming Mac, but he does professional graphics and video. For him, $2500 makes sense, but for me, $1000 XP notebook makes it tough make the jump. However, if a Mac is THAT superior and I don't have to upgrade it every six months....over the long haul, there's value. Know what I mean?
Both WinXP and Mac OS X are fine operating systems. While running an ISP I had to support idiot users with both. If you are at least semi-competant you can work with either out of the box. The Geekier staff preferred OS X because of its Linux heritage. I preferred XP because It was what I spent the most time supporting.
Now you've done it. You've pissed off the penguin.
The $1100 macbook is SOLID. It'll probably do everything you want unless you are running legacy FoxPro crap. Even then $69 for Parallels and an old copy of Win whatever and you can do even that. Put in Boot Camp and the games run fine. Some of the bigger ones a little slow however. Thing is they don't "break." Well designed and tough and with long lifecycles IMO they usually end up costing less.
@Sprezz: True, although OSX = FreeBSD under the hood, not Linux. :)
Never said otherwise. :)
AFAIK, MacOS is pretty much the only UNIX strain out there that isn't a pain in the ass for new users. Like I said, bringing Mac and UNIX people together.
RobDawg, I'll see your DEC paper terminal and raise you a few. I remember using a VAX when I first started learning software analysis for molecular biology in grad school. Long before that, in my first year at university, we were the last class to use IBM cards with which we entered programs into an ancient machine. What a pain when it would crimp a corner of one card and you'd have to sort through and start over, or if you dropped your damn cards and they got all mixed up. At least the little chads could be blown under the doors of dorm rooms using a hairdryer. You damn young whippersnappers have no idea how lucky you are to have your monochrome monitors with the phosphor beam bouncing along and... what.. they're not monochrome anymore?
(woot, Rob reposted me!) I understand the mouse issue, but keep in mind the new macs come with the Mighty Mouse, which is a two button mouse - I use it daily and it's great.
(for Macbooks, the button below the trackpad is single click, holding down the control key is the right mouse button - it's pretty intuitive. The Mac is all about keyboard shortcuts, just like Windows.)
(and the new Macbooks have "expressive" trackpads...too hard to explain here, run by an Apple Store and have them show you...it's cool stuff.)
Plus, don't forget, all of the current Macs, be it towers, iMacs, Mini's, and laptops, run Windows, either with Bootcamp, or through apps like Parellels, and it's awesome. Yes, it will run Vista...but why would you? XP Pro runs just fine, just as fast. So, you get the best of both worlds, and iLife (iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iWeb, GargageBand) are absolutely a blast!
You can ignore new trojan threats, open e-mail with no qualms, and go to sites that everyone else warns against for keyloggers and malware.
If you still want the iMac, go for it. My friend bought the 24" model for his mom, and she LOVES it, especially for watching movies on. :) I wouldnt do any heavy lifting on one, like video editing, or ProTools type stuff, but for everyday use they are awesome - and when the iPhone ships, the integration between it and the iPhone will be really, really killer.
An example of why I hate Windows.
I just loaded VirtualPC on my 17" Powerbook G4, and loaded up XP, I loaned my Toshiba laptop out and I needed to access some old financial files in Windows apps. The app won't open now (it had worked fine the day before) now I was getting a wierd system error. I look it up...yerk, it's associated with malware. I think...I forgot to disconnect the wireless card, and within 5 minutes XP was infected! (I'm on a Comcast cable modem, lots of asshates like to scan Comcast's IPs for clueless home users like me). Even with Norton and all of the current malware apps and such, I got hit, simply by logging on. Absolutely unnacceptable.
The lucky thing is, it's VirtualPC. I killed the instance of XP, changes we'rent saved, I reboot VPC without internet access...no problem.
Yay Macs!
(I really do use and like XP, but it is a pain, i have to spend way too much time updating and scanning and reloading and whatever, it's fine when it runs, but if the slightest problem hits...reload the OS...reload all my apps. Rescan for viruses and malware and trojans...blah blah blah...I have to read tech sites daily to keep up on the latest exploits to watch out for, the constant stream of updates from MS is just insane, every 30 seconds it seems that stupid popup is telling me I have updates to install...bah!)
Jeff, Mr. SD real estate genius, must have missed the chapter that says the tenant never covers all the landlord's expenses, real estate always goes up, and there's no down side.
He does have one strong card in his hand....a couple of his houses are in SLC! He could contact Nigel to save his ass on the FL foreclosures AND make some sweet deals in UT.
Re: >>(I really do use and like XP, but it is a pain, i have to spend way too much time updating and scanning and reloading and whatever, it's fine when it runs, but if the slightest problem hits...reload the OS...reload all my apps. Rescan for viruses and malware and trojans...blah blah blah...I have to read tech sites daily to keep up on the latest exploits to watch out for, the constant stream of updates from MS is just insane, every 30 seconds it seems that stupid popup is telling me I have updates to install...bah!)<<
Eh? That stuff never happens to me, and I have bit torrent, emule and a binary ng downloader running 24 hours a day. I never update the damned OS. I have updates turned off. I update Firefox when new exploits are patched. I don't use IE. I run a virus scan once weekly and 3 malware scanners a couple of times a week. I've had two viruses since 1995. Surprisingly little malware. Firewall is as mentioned above. I have popups and cookies on a tight leash. I've been on this install on the dedicated online PC for over two years. XP hasn't been very troublesome for me - except for being a resource hog compared to 2K, which is on my render/audio boxes.
As for Macs, they're great - but they cost too much. I can leapfrog components in my PCs and keep costs in the basement. I have 1997-era sound cards in some of these things, GeForce 256s in others. I'm under the impression that Macs are sort of monolithic - you get the whole box, use the whole box, then discard the whole box. I have P4 render boxes that cost me less than $250, using old cases and small antique HDs and old PSUs and so on. Unfortunately, price is an object for me, so I can't grab those mouth-watering Mac towers - also, three of my workhorse apps are PC-only...and blah, and etc....
You were using the Wisconsin package, weren't you? I used that when I was a summer intern back in the late 80s. Last I saw they'd prettied it up and made it all web based and clicky, which made me feel a little sad and very old.
My primary laptop is a Mac now, and I like it a lot. The learning curve was a bit annoying and it took about 4 to 6 months before I was really comfortable with it. I won't go back, although I am thinking about a 15" MacBook Pro in a few months.
I also have access to a number of Linux servers where I do some network diagnostics and stuff. You can have my command line when you pry it from my cold dead hands, but I don't think Linux is quite ready for desktop use, mostly because the applications aren't there.
My desktop is still XP, and I don't see transferring over to Vista any time soon. The DRM restrictions are just too much.
News today is that Dell is going back to XP on some of their machine "due to customer feedback." Clearly there are a lot of people who are smart enough not to fall for the Vista hoax.
I hear you - if I worked 100% of the time I'd probably have things wired tight like you do, but I'm a casual user, so there tends to be holes in my defenses - and my point is most of those holes should'nt be there, if MS would drop the anti-bsd/linux/unix attitude and do things right.
Most of what you described simply isn't necessary or even possible on a Mac. That's the point, ya know? I have power user freinds who claim they've never had problems either...but the amount of time it took to get the knowledge to know how to set things up right is more than a little outside the abilities of the average user. Any "power user" who I've asked, "how long would it take someone with no knowledge of computers, to get to the level you're at, to even know what half of the tweaks/settings you do ARE", they generally stare at me blankly for a bit and then say sheepishy 'I don't know!".
Plus, the world at large conspires against us, I was irked as all hell recently looking at pricing on Adobe.com for CS3, and I had to *enable* pop ups to get info. Hello? Adobe? Popups BAD. (you think your hardware lust is bad, I'm a pro-level Photoshop user, going for my expert certification finally this year, and I can't afford CS3 with all the other goodies...sigh...)
And yeah, Macs are pricey. I hear you there! The only good thing is Macs hold their value pretty well, so you can sell yours off two years later and still expect to get a good return. But, they're not *really* monolithic, you can replace just about any part in the towers for the same things you buy at Fry's or NewEgg - Macs use the same drives, optical drives, ram, peripherals, cards - the only Mac only thing I've needed to get was a video card - and a lot of the Radeons can be flashed to work in a Mac. I even have a spiffy blue neon light in my G5 - c'mon, that silver grill SCREAMED "neon!" at me! :)
The one thing that still kills me about Apple is the damned processors are soldered in - with the frequency of new processors from Intel (and someday AMD...drool...), sockets would make so much more sense...but then Apple could'nt force upgrades to get the latest and greatest.
Photoshop CS3 sounds as if it's so locked-down, it's a real pain. Last time I checked you needed to be online to keep it validated? This might sound chintzy, but I've always used the $95 Paint Shop pro professionally - and I stopped upgrading in 2000. I still use version 6. Clients can't tell where the PSDs come from. If I think they might not like the idea of PSP, I strip the metadata. I don't do print-ready work, so the color calibration options and healing tools and etc are things I can live without. PS actions have not compelled me - and I hate Adobe interfaces. Tiny icons and menus on a hi=res screen. PSP follows my Windows settings - big black text on light grey. Oh yeah - PSP 6 runs blazingly fast on contemporary hardware. The new versions don't. I only use Photoshop at one clients' office occasionally - on a Mac, oddly enough.
Re: >>Any "power user" who I've asked, "how long would it take someone with no knowledge of computers, to get to the level you're at, to even know what half of the tweaks/settings you do ARE", they generally stare at me blankly for a bit<<
Good point and I hadn't looked at it that way. It seems easy now, but it took a while to get up to speed. Fortunately, I like endlessly messing with this crap for some reason.
With all due respect to Sprezzie, it's not as hard to learn Linux (particularly Ubuntu,) as you might think. That's what I use at home on my laptop, and I've sworn up and down that if there's a god, and he made an OS, it would be Ubuntu. Pick up a copy of Marcel Gagne's "Moving to Ubuntu Linux" which will hold your hand every step of the way. Best $25 I spent last year!
Perhaps I did not make myself clear. Linux is not hard the way astrophysics is hard, no. But it IS a learning curve, and depending on where you are starting from, the curve can be pretty steep.
Put another way -- there are two kinds of people who use computers -- those who do so as a means to an end, and those for whom the joy of computer use is an end in itself.
The first kind of person is probably not well-suited to being pointed in the direction of a Linux desktop.
Hi VaxPrograms, Yes, it was UWGCG on the VAX, accessed (eventually) from our lab via a 2400 bp modem. The fuss I went through back then was useful a few years ago when my wife had a client who insisted that using Xmodem was superior to using email in order to send files. Man, did I get pissed at him. I had to go through a slew of programs to find something compatible with his old kludge.
I just got home from fixing a rightfax to exchange connector that decided to just stop today (Attorneys get testy when they don't get their faxes emailed to them ASAP).
Vista blows, I realy need to get out my Ubuntu disc and fix my dual boot on my home laptop.
@Casey Fannnn I've used PSP, and it's a great program, and it's precisely for non-Photoshop users. I'm not a HUGE fan of Corel, and now that they own it I am a little leary of it, as Corel does bad things to good software, but PSP images tend to print/import just fine, unlike the rest of Corel's apps.
(Corel files tend to clog imagesetters and now direct to plate systems, they're just bad code. Many film houses and prepresses I work with will not accept them unless the client signs off that they're willing to pay for the wasted processing time they cause, or flat out won't take them.)
For web work and casual stuff, it's great. So is GIMP, although the learning curve is a bit steep.
Me, I live in the world of CMYK and heavy image composition, editing, and creating art from scratch, so the tools in Photoshop are ones I cannot live without, and can't quite find anywhere else - and I'm not talking plug ins, I don't use many of them. I also need predictable color, and Photoshop is an app I trust.
I had to laugh at your little icons comment - that's what us pro guys WANT - the least amount of screen real estate taken up by the gui. We either know the keyboard shortcut to select the tools or dialogs we want, or we have dual monitors set up with our image in one, all pallettes in the other. I run a 23" Cinema HD display, and even when I'm working on a cd cover, which is 4.75x4.75", I want that and only that filling my screen, and my pallettes on the side.
To each their own tho. 75% of Photoshop is wasted on most people, and at least 15% even us pros don't touch. I've talked people out of buying it, and steered them towards PSP myself, as I don't want to have to teach them Photoshop, and with PSP they can jump right in.
If you're ever bored, check out ArtRage2, Alias SketchbookPro, and Painter, I own them as as well, and are a lot of fun, and do unique things Photoshop can't. I believe in the right tool for the job...and lots of them. :) I don't use one paint brush, I have jars full of them.
Photoshop CS3 sounds as if it's so locked-down, it's a real pain. Last time I checked you needed to be online to keep it validated?
Not true - I installed it yesterday on an offline laptop.
You need to go online at some point within 30 days of installation to register and activate the software, but that's a one-off operation that takes seconds (and the software works perfectly even without this stage, though presumably it locks up after 30 days).
Other than that, it works fine offline - I had a two-hour session earlier today without being logged in.
Re: >>your little icons comment - that's what us pro guys WANT - the least amount of screen real estate taken up by the gui.<<
Yup. I've heard that one over and over from full-time Photoshop guys, and I can't argue with it. It's just that I do lots of different things to make money - an idiot number of different things, actually. I simply can't remember the keyboard shortcuts for all the progs I use - the 3D suites, particle generators, dynamics progs, AE plugs (greenscreen and compositing mostly), matchmoving trackers, roto, multiple video editing apps, video conversion and compression apps, web authoring apps, FLASH and other 2D cartoon apps, recording, audio editing, various musical composition progs, mixing, managing the sample collection and keeping everything backed up, file sync apps, other requisite daily apps I can't remember right now, and anyway you get the drift. Remembering keyboard shortcuts are a distant dream. Remembering how to even do all this stuff is troublesome. Also my eyesight is profoundly BAD, so everything has to be HUGE even on a large monitor or I just can't read it.
The best way for me to lose a client is to let them see me work. It's squint...hunt...peck...pull down menu...curse...spill beer on desk. Even keyboard shorties for apps I 've used several years don't "stick" because they're competing with everything else. Probably I should concentrate on one discipline but I wanna do everything. I lurvs this shit.
I, too, am a "pro guy", by the way. Details are unimportant, but I've worked with and for people who do stuff that is available at your local retail establishments. Axe your grocer or look for it in the dairy case. I'm a ninja like Nigel's super-accountant buddy! And probably that's about enough off-topic non-Casey-bashin/RE talk for a while...
Hot Tickets:
64 comments:
Fiiirst
Murst and f you all!
Murst™
You see Murst™ has been trademarked by someone so not using the ™ doesnt count as murst™
Dammit....I told you I was going to take a nap!
Ok, I'm going to Sbux, gonna ride my bike for an hour, come home, and take a nap.
And since you don't know how to spell, First Loosers!
Shark,thou hast been jumped !
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Place Your Bets":
As a Mac based user, who also likes XP, Vista is a HUGE steaming pile o' poop. There are some things I like, but the DRM issues alone are enough to guarantee a Vista machine will never be used in my home (work, who knows. I have a G5 at work, and that will never change as long as I'm there, I make the decisions, we have too much of an invetment in Mac software, and our vendors and ad agencies are all Mac based, going XP ain't worth it).
DRM is bad enough, but Vista's is not only draconian and designed to force hardware upgrades to "compliant" devices and monitors, but the speed hit that Vista suffers from the multiple layers of authorization during playback makes it a joke. I don't want to build a Vista-based home entertainment server and find my plasma isn't "certified".
I am a published artist, so I support the copyrights of others and don't pirate, but I also resent the attitude of the entertainment industry that ALL users are thieves, and with Microsoft are trying to lock down our stereos and dvd players and tvs to conform to their idiotic ideas of "ownership". If I buy a dvd, or download a song, I want the ability to archive it, play it on ALL of my devices, and not have to upgrade a damned thing to play it. I already agreed not to pirate it, so HANDS OFF once the financial transaction has occured.
----
Reposted here.
Yeah, DRM is is the partly digested corn in the huge steaming pile. 5 years late 4 times too large all the features promised removed. Instead they spent billions figuring out ways to cripple subsets to spread product features across a confusing product line. They spent billions and years making it harder to work with certain data/files. They spent more on integrating secret and unblocakable backdoors than they did on security. They spent more on lawyers than engineers. Vista = Win ME '07.
DONTHATECASEY???
my good WINFIXER?
flagged blog i did!?!?!
In our tests, we found downloads on this site that some people consider adware, spyware, or other unwanted programs.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/winantivirus.com?suite=false&premium=false&client_ver=ie_2.4.6066.0&client_type=IEPlugin
win ME. Gawd I hated working with that one. I have tossed all machines with ME. Still have couple win 98(certain legacy software only works on that in our business).
Rob, I noticed a couple months ago that Dell started offering PC's with linux installed vs. Windows. Thought that was a good sign.
Is Casey in Australia?
HERE'S WHY
I don't think he's into farm animals, but you never know.
I still don't get how M$ gets away with $399 computers with their supposedly $149 OS preinstalled. They are still practicing market cornering tactics that should have had them shut down in '92.
I'm seeing early cracks in the wall. Fry's offers $109 Home Full editions with some build-your-own components. XP Pro costs more than Vista. What does that tell you? It tells me you can have my Win2k SP4 universal install disc when you pry it from my bloody fingers.
Vista = Win ME '07
Rob beat me to it. Vista is definitely the new ME; which makes XP the new '98. I've been pleasantly surprised at how solid XP has become, and its performance is reasonably good. My system is getting old, but isn't that just what they're designed to do, sigh. I'll probably upgrade to a new processor and a new graphics card later this year, but I'm sticking with XP for probably quite some time.
Hee.. you know, it's funny. I've thought for a long time that Microsoft's lasting contribution to computer science would be to bring Mac and Unix people together in common disgust.
I started using Linux full time back in '96 because I HATED Windows 95. Refused to use a home-machine OS that couldn't run for 20 minutes without something crashing. The guys I worked with thought I was nuts for wasting my time with a "hacker OS" that would never get mainstream respect.
Double-hee. These days, being a Linux geek is an awfully sweet deal - 3rd party support, a mountain of good software, stable installs. And with Wine and VMWare, you can run almost any Windows stuff you want. Getting friggin' Half Life 2 running under CentOS and Wine recently was damned near a religious experience.
Best of all, a guy can just use his damned computer without someone trying to sell him something. A family member bought a laptop not long ago from Best Buy, and it was just obscene how many commercials you had to go through just to use it. Took me the better part of a weekend to get rid of it all - I finally had to just format and reinstall.
I still can't stand Windows. Vista? Hold on while I stop laughing. :)
Yay, a techie thread!!! Thanks Rob!
I'm looking at the iMac not the laptops for a home workstartion because of the nice big iMac screens, and because there are a couple of user habits that I have found that I really cannot break myself, and a two-button mouse is one of them. Every time I try to use an Apple mouse I inevitably get very frustrated and go running back to a nice Kensington 2-button.
I know I could use the macbook as a desktop and plug a keyboad, mouse, and bigger monitor into it, but honestly, if I'm going to do that I might just as well not buy a laptop. At least that's how I see it. YMMV.
Linux -- sorry, not going there. It's great for servers but I don't have the patience to deal with it as a desktop OS. And Open office sucks monkey balls. Not as hard as Vista does, but it still sucks. We tried to use it here at the office but bit by bit we ended up with a copy on MS Office on everyone's desktop instead.
Interestingly, a stuffed-animal version of the Linux™ penguin has roughly the same innate intelligence as does Casey Serin.
But at least the penguin has a stable job as a mascot! ;-p
I got a bunch of PCs on a network for video and audio stuff. Some apps demand XP. On graphics PCs dedicated to those picky apps, I use XP, stripped to the bone with the Fisher-Price GUI turned off. On other PCs, I use 2K, which FLIES in comparision to XP. 2K is my fave Microsoft OS. VISTA is too scary to even approach.
A couple of weeks back Dell started offering preinstalled XP on PCs again due to overwhelming demand. That's cool. Bite it, VISTA.
Microsoft admits Vista failure
Oh yeah, a good firewall is ZoneAlarm 4.5.538.0. That's the last version before the Patriot-mandated government backdoor was installed...
Cryptic. Fabulous. Let us discuss computers.
You guys are turning me on with all this computer talk. Cryptic, MS Office, Vista, Anal, Linux.
MMMM..hot stuff boys
Watch for OpenOffice to improve.
Or for Google Docs to improve further. (Good enough for Casey...)
Oh yeah, a good firewall is ZoneAlarm 4.5.538.0. That's the last version before the Patriot-mandated government backdoor was installed...
*splutter*
Backdoor?
Info please. Non-tinfoil-hat-brigade info by preference, but whatever.
Anyone know if there is an online website for BK filings in Arizona?
Re:
>>Info please. Non-tinfoil-hat-brigade info by preference, but whatever.<<
The info came from an article I read several hard drive and bookmark wipes ago. It was plausibly presented by sources I trusted - but it could still be bunk, of course.
You want tinfoil? I gots ya tinfoil:
Subject: Blackberry shutdown
I just wanted to float something out there about gwb43.com and last week's Blackberry Fiasco.
Over 60% of RIM Blackberry services from every wireless carrier is Governmental/Public Sector and it is
a very popular device with them mainly because of the security model on their Enterprise Server Edition.
Every email that went through gwb43.com was most certainly catalogued through the RIM servers at some point.
What do YOU think are the chances that the "rare shutdown" last week was a result of a "necessary purge"
to keep the heat off of Karl Rove? A shutdown, which had never occurred to this degree, is suspicious as
regards to timing and reasoning on why it needed to happen. It is not above these criminals to make RIM
do the purge due to the vast governmental usage of the devices.
Just a thought,
GP
funny you mention zone alarm. i wanted a 3rd party firewall on our winserver 03. Partly due to window firewall being a pain in the ass(could not get FTP to work and took a LONG time to do the work around via alot of googling). unfortunately zone alarm is only for PCs and they dont sell a server version. the others I found seemed a bit complicated for installation on server 03'. If anyone has some feedback on that that is in the know I would truely appreciate it. I have never been formally trained in IT stuff(econ/finance majors) so on top of client work...getting stuck in the role of taking care of our network and computers has been interesting and hands on experience(sometimes hammer in hand to 'fix' the problem.
On topic and a serious request.....
My current HP notebook is on it's last legs. Literally, the frame holding the screen in place has cracked so many times and is held together with epoxy. It_is_shot.
When the movers bring my stuff, I've got a pretty good desktop pc for business, but I'm going to replace the notebook to do personal stuff and for travel.
Enough background, here's the question......
Mac or PC?
I've seen one, but never operated an Apple computer....ever. Switching OS's seems a little intimidating; especially since I'm pretty much a runofthemill consumer when it comes to tech.
What's the consensus? Mac Pro or whatever it's called or continue with another pc notebook?
Getting friggin' Half Life 2 running under CentOS and Wine recently was damned near a religious experience.
I bow before your Nerdliness™. May I, sir, be honored by offering you a Jolt™ with Pixie Stix™?
Am I the only dinosaur that remembers the "gweep" noise the DEC paper terminals made when you entered an invalid APL expression? You want nerdly? Maybe embarassing but we used to play a game of "what does this APL line do?" Holy crap! A new way of taking the diagonal of a matrix without relying on Green's Theorem!
Sorry, just adding to to the growing pile of "sux" misinformation about my intellect, et al. Just trying to pad the future bottom line. ;-)
It depends, dude. Do you want to spend the time getting to know another OS or do you just want to get working?
Dell still sells some laptops with WinXP. If you want to stick with Windows I would buy one of those.
Aspeth said...
Cryptic. Fabulous. Let us discuss computers.
Computers? We talkin' women. Stripped down classic versions not these recent bloated models that demand too much mantainence. [ducks]
I'm SO glad the laptop I bought in September came w/XP. Phwew! I have a geek cousin who goes to Digipen and he tells me that Vista=Death. My dilema is that I usually buy a new laptop every year and pass down my old one to the wife or son. I guess I'll either wait for Vista SP1 to come out or start learning linux. I've debated the Linux thing for a while. Does anybody have a Linux for dummies type link?
With all due respect, Tony, the jump to linus is an even bigger learning curve than the jump to a mac.
Linux is not a casual user's OS. The expectation in the Linux community is that you're ready, willing, and able to spend a lot of time tinkering and have a pretty high level of technical clue if you want to run that OS. If you want to spend the time to do it, then more power to you, go for it, but just be aware of what you're getting into.
How tough is it to "Mac Yourself"? I don't mind the learning curve if it's not time travel and the OS is as good as promoted. I freakin' HATE Windows; but if I do go that route, I'll pickup an XP machine. No way will I consider any MS product until the second or third version.
@ Rob:
Am I the only dinosaur that remembers the "gweep" noise the DEC paper terminals made when you entered an invalid APL expression?
Yes.
However, I *do* remember the "gweep" noise that I made when I first saw APL code.
Dude,
Get another low end PC notebook with XP.
How about:
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/5208727?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
$480 freakin' dollars?
Affordable, reliable business notebook with 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron M 520 processor
80 GB hard drive, 512 MB installed RAM (2 GB max), DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive
Connectivity: 2 USB, 1 VGA, 1 S-Video, 1 headphone, 1 microphone
54g Wi-Fi LAN (802.11b/g), 10/100 Ethernet, Intel GMA 950 video card with up to 64 MB shared memory
Pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Basic
Oooops. Has Vista.
@Dude -- I didn't have too hard a time with OSX, really. The keyboard and mouse things were harder than any software issues.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird for web & e-mail, and those are cross-platform apps. MS Office is a little different under a Mac but not so different that it caused problems for me. And for the rest, well, some took more adjusting than others, but I've found some that I really like. Adium IM client, for example, kicks serious ass.
YMMV, of course.
How tough is it to "Mac Yourself"? I don't mind the learning curve if it's not time travel and the OS is as good as promoted.
IMO easy. After a few stumbles of the type "how do you..." it is mere minutes before you start saying silently "ohhh, that's how it was always supposed to be done."
And yes, the OS is that good. It has issues but nothing anything less than superusers need worry about. Here's a typical scenario: You arrive at a client site. Your Mac asks if you'd like to join the local network. You ask your host for a password and click yes. You choose, add printer, search rendevous, accept. Printing now works. Problems with these complex instructions?
Tony,
BLUG
I was thinking of tinkering with Linux on my desktop/gaming system. My laptop is mission critical work stuff so I'll keep it XP for now. I just found the Ubuntu page. A was a geek a long time ago at Sequent but transfered to sales when I realized sales guys got hot chicks, trips, and huge cash. I remember going to some roadshow for OS/2 Warp and realizing that geeks got a project manager ass raping them while the sales team went to Hawaii.
@The Dude: Mac or PC?
If you're curious about trying out a Mac, get a Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM. Plug in your existing monitor, your existing keyboard and mouse, and "itsallgood". You'll never look at a beige box sitting under your desk the same way.
The Mac is extremely fast to pick up. Once you get your head around the Dock (and the fact that you can drag applications, folders, or often-used documents there) you'll never want to look at a Start Menu ever again.
@Sprezz: Linux is not a casual user's OS.
That's because the casual UNIX is called MacOS. :)
Being a Linux user isn't really about getting HL2 to run out of the box, or about getting it to run under Wine.. it's about knowing that you can't brag too loudly about getting it to work because you didn't *write* Wine. Gotta be a special kind of masochist for that show.
Seriously tho, you get over the worst of the new-user-huhs after five or six years. When you catch yourself telling newbies to RTFM, you know you've arrived.
Dawg,
The notebook will be my primary use puter. I've got all my old business stuff on the desktop and the only reason it's around is to archive data in case I need to pull some records.
Since hanging up the work clothes, my main use will be playing online and some graphics/music/video work for fun.
My son uses a screaming Mac, but he does professional graphics and video. For him, $2500 makes sense, but for me, $1000 XP notebook makes it tough make the jump. However, if a Mac is THAT superior and I don't have to upgrade it every six months....over the long haul, there's value. Know what I mean?
Both WinXP and Mac OS X are fine operating systems. While running an ISP I had to support idiot users with both. If you are at least semi-competant you can work with either out of the box. The Geekier staff preferred OS X because of its Linux heritage. I preferred XP because It was what I spent the most time supporting.
"As I kept reading his story, I realized he's very intelligent and pretty shrewd about reaching his goal of avoiding foreclosure," Swaby added."
I GOT A PLAN HATAHZ!!
Casey can sell his site to this next up an commer Jeff from SDCIA who bought 14 houses in 14 months (all new?) in 2005.
now he's cryin. he rented them all out so his burn rate is slow.
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sdcia/vpost?id=1854186&trail=30
That's because the casual UNIX is called MacOS. :)
True, although OSX = FreeBSD under the hood, not Linux. :)
I GOT A PLAN HATAHZ!!
Casey...
Now you've done it. You've pissed off the penguin.
The $1100 macbook is SOLID. It'll probably do everything you want unless you are running legacy FoxPro crap. Even then $69 for Parallels and an old copy of Win whatever and you can do even that. Put in Boot Camp and the games run fine. Some of the bigger ones a little slow however. Thing is they don't "break." Well designed and tough and with long lifecycles IMO they usually end up costing less.
@Sprezz: True, although OSX = FreeBSD under the hood, not Linux. :)
Never said otherwise. :)
AFAIK, MacOS is pretty much the only UNIX strain out there that isn't a pain in the ass for new users. Like I said, bringing Mac and UNIX people together.
re: Jeff from SDCIA who bought 14 houses in 14 months (all new?) in 2005.
now he's cryin. he rented them all out so his burn rate is slow.
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sdcia/vpost?id=1854186&trail=30
Wow. What an idiot. Jeff, do you know what stop loss means to investing? You should have pulled the trigger a while ago.
RobDawg,
I'll see your DEC paper terminal and raise you a few. I remember using a VAX when I first started learning software analysis for molecular biology in grad school. Long before that, in my first year at university, we were the last class to use IBM cards with which we entered programs into an ancient machine. What a pain when it would crimp a corner of one card and you'd have to sort through and start over, or if you dropped your damn cards and they got all mixed up. At least the little chads could be blown under the doors of dorm rooms using a hairdryer. You damn young whippersnappers have no idea how lucky you are to have your monochrome monitors with the phosphor beam bouncing along and... what.. they're not monochrome anymore?
NR
(woot, Rob reposted me!)
I understand the mouse issue, but keep in mind the new macs come with the Mighty Mouse, which is a two button mouse - I use it daily and it's great.
(for Macbooks, the button below the trackpad is single click, holding down the control key is the right mouse button - it's pretty intuitive. The Mac is all about keyboard shortcuts, just like Windows.)
(and the new Macbooks have "expressive" trackpads...too hard to explain here, run by an Apple Store and have them show you...it's cool stuff.)
Plus, don't forget, all of the current Macs, be it towers, iMacs, Mini's, and laptops, run Windows, either with Bootcamp, or through apps like Parellels, and it's awesome. Yes, it will run Vista...but why would you? XP Pro runs just fine, just as fast. So, you get the best of both worlds, and iLife (iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iWeb, GargageBand) are absolutely a blast!
You can ignore new trojan threats, open e-mail with no qualms, and go to sites that everyone else warns against for keyloggers and malware.
If you still want the iMac, go for it. My friend bought the 24" model for his mom, and she LOVES it, especially for watching movies on. :) I wouldnt do any heavy lifting on one, like video editing, or ProTools type stuff, but for everyday use they are awesome - and when the iPhone ships, the integration between it and the iPhone will be really, really killer.
An example of why I hate Windows.
I just loaded VirtualPC on my 17" Powerbook G4, and loaded up XP, I loaned my Toshiba laptop out and I needed to access some old financial files in Windows apps. The app won't open now (it had worked fine the day before) now I was getting a wierd system error. I look it up...yerk, it's associated with malware. I think...I forgot to disconnect the wireless card, and within 5 minutes XP was infected! (I'm on a Comcast cable modem, lots of asshates like to scan Comcast's IPs for clueless home users like me). Even with Norton and all of the current malware apps and such, I got hit, simply by logging on. Absolutely unnacceptable.
The lucky thing is, it's VirtualPC. I killed the instance of XP, changes we'rent saved, I reboot VPC without internet access...no problem.
Yay Macs!
(I really do use and like XP, but it is a pain, i have to spend way too much time updating and scanning and reloading and whatever, it's fine when it runs, but if the slightest problem hits...reload the OS...reload all my apps. Rescan for viruses and malware and trojans...blah blah blah...I have to read tech sites daily to keep up on the latest exploits to watch out for, the constant stream of updates from MS is just insane, every 30 seconds it seems that stupid popup is telling me I have updates to install...bah!)
Jeff, Mr. SD real estate genius, must have missed the chapter that says the tenant never covers all the landlord's expenses, real estate always goes up, and there's no down side.
He does have one strong card in his hand....a couple of his houses are in SLC! He could contact Nigel to save his ass on the FL foreclosures AND make some sweet deals in UT.
missed = fixated
Ooops.
See, this is what's nice about EN. An entire techie thread and not one "OMG my OS roxx and yours SuXXors loos3r!"
Re:
>>(I really do use and like XP, but it is a pain, i have to spend way too much time updating and scanning and reloading and whatever, it's fine when it runs, but if the slightest problem hits...reload the OS...reload all my apps. Rescan for viruses and malware and trojans...blah blah blah...I have to read tech sites daily to keep up on the latest exploits to watch out for, the constant stream of updates from MS is just insane, every 30 seconds it seems that stupid popup is telling me I have updates to install...bah!)<<
Eh? That stuff never happens to me, and I have bit torrent, emule and a binary ng downloader running 24 hours a day. I never update the damned OS. I have updates turned off. I update Firefox when new exploits are patched. I don't use IE. I run a virus scan once weekly and 3 malware scanners a couple of times a week. I've had two viruses since 1995. Surprisingly little malware. Firewall is as mentioned above. I have popups and cookies on a tight leash. I've been on this install on the dedicated online PC for over two years. XP hasn't been very troublesome for me - except for being a resource hog compared to 2K, which is on my render/audio boxes.
As for Macs, they're great - but they cost too much. I can leapfrog components in my PCs and keep costs in the basement. I have 1997-era sound cards in some of these things, GeForce 256s in others. I'm under the impression that Macs are sort of monolithic - you get the whole box, use the whole box, then discard the whole box. I have P4 render boxes that cost me less than $250, using old cases and small antique HDs and old PSUs and so on. Unfortunately, price is an object for me, so I can't grab those mouth-watering Mac towers - also, three of my workhorse apps are PC-only...and blah, and etc....
Northern Renter
You were using the Wisconsin package, weren't you? I used that when I was a summer intern back in the late 80s. Last I saw they'd prettied it up and made it all web based and clicky, which made me feel a little sad and very old.
My primary laptop is a Mac now, and I like it a lot. The learning curve was a bit annoying and it took about 4 to 6 months before I was really comfortable with it. I won't go back, although I am thinking about a 15" MacBook Pro in a few months.
I also have access to a number of Linux servers where I do some network diagnostics and stuff. You can have my command line when you pry it from my cold dead hands, but I don't think Linux is quite ready for desktop use, mostly because the applications aren't there.
My desktop is still XP, and I don't see transferring over to Vista any time soon. The DRM restrictions are just too much.
News today is that Dell is going back to XP on some of their machine "due to customer feedback." Clearly there are a lot of people who are smart enough not to fall for the Vista hoax.
@Casey Fannnnn...
I hear you - if I worked 100% of the time I'd probably have things wired tight like you do, but I'm a casual user, so there tends to be holes in my defenses - and my point is most of those holes should'nt be there, if MS would drop the anti-bsd/linux/unix attitude and do things right.
Most of what you described simply isn't necessary or even possible on a Mac. That's the point, ya know? I have power user freinds who claim they've never had problems either...but the amount of time it took to get the knowledge to know how to set things up right is more than a little outside the abilities of the average user. Any "power user" who I've asked, "how long would it take someone with no knowledge of computers, to get to the level you're at, to even know what half of the tweaks/settings you do ARE", they generally stare at me blankly for a bit and then say sheepishy 'I don't know!".
Plus, the world at large conspires against us, I was irked as all hell recently looking at pricing on Adobe.com for CS3, and I had to *enable* pop ups to get info. Hello? Adobe? Popups BAD. (you think your hardware lust is bad, I'm a pro-level Photoshop user, going for my expert certification finally this year, and I can't afford CS3 with all the other goodies...sigh...)
And yeah, Macs are pricey. I hear you there! The only good thing is Macs hold their value pretty well, so you can sell yours off two years later and still expect to get a good return. But, they're not *really* monolithic, you can replace just about any part in the towers for the same things you buy at Fry's or NewEgg - Macs use the same drives, optical drives, ram, peripherals, cards - the only Mac only thing I've needed to get was a video card - and a lot of the Radeons can be flashed to work in a Mac. I even have a spiffy blue neon light in my G5 - c'mon, that silver grill SCREAMED "neon!" at me! :)
The one thing that still kills me about Apple is the damned processors are soldered in - with the frequency of new processors from Intel (and someday AMD...drool...), sockets would make so much more sense...but then Apple could'nt force upgrades to get the latest and greatest.
Anon 4:55:
Photoshop CS3 sounds as if it's so locked-down, it's a real pain. Last time I checked you needed to be online to keep it validated? This might sound chintzy, but I've always used the $95 Paint Shop pro professionally - and I stopped upgrading in 2000. I still use version 6. Clients can't tell where the PSDs come from. If I think they might not like the idea of PSP, I strip the metadata. I don't do print-ready work, so the color calibration options and healing tools and etc are things I can live without. PS actions have not compelled me - and I hate Adobe interfaces. Tiny icons and menus on a hi=res screen. PSP follows my Windows settings - big black text on light grey. Oh yeah - PSP 6 runs blazingly fast on contemporary hardware. The new versions don't. I only use Photoshop at one clients' office occasionally - on a Mac, oddly enough.
Re:
>>Any "power user" who I've asked, "how long would it take someone with no knowledge of computers, to get to the level you're at, to even know what half of the tweaks/settings you do ARE", they generally stare at me blankly for a bit<<
Good point and I hadn't looked at it that way. It seems easy now, but it took a while to get up to speed. Fortunately, I like endlessly messing with this crap for some reason.
@Rob Dawg 2:42...lol. I think you better get that out of your system here; something tells me Mrs. Dawg might really force you to duck!
With all due respect to Sprezzie, it's not as hard to learn Linux (particularly Ubuntu,) as you might think. That's what I use at home on my laptop, and I've sworn up and down that if there's a god, and he made an OS, it would be Ubuntu. Pick up a copy of Marcel Gagne's "Moving to Ubuntu Linux" which will hold your hand every step of the way. Best $25 I spent last year!
Perhaps I did not make myself clear. Linux is not hard the way astrophysics is hard, no. But it IS a learning curve, and depending on where you are starting from, the curve can be pretty steep.
Put another way -- there are two kinds of people who use computers -- those who do so as a means to an end, and those for whom the joy of computer use is an end in itself.
The first kind of person is probably not well-suited to being pointed in the direction of a Linux desktop.
Hi VaxPrograms,
Yes, it was UWGCG on the VAX, accessed (eventually) from our lab via a 2400 bp modem. The fuss I went through back then was useful a few years ago when my wife had a client who insisted that using Xmodem was superior to using email in order to send files. Man, did I get pissed at him. I had to go through a slew of programs to find something compatible with his old kludge.
NR
I just got home from fixing a rightfax to exchange connector that decided to just stop today (Attorneys get testy when they don't get their faxes emailed to them ASAP).
Vista blows, I realy need to get out my Ubuntu disc and fix my dual boot on my home laptop.
My favorite microsoft OS was windows 2000.
@Casey Fannnn
I've used PSP, and it's a great program, and it's precisely for non-Photoshop users. I'm not a HUGE fan of Corel, and now that they own it I am a little leary of it, as Corel does bad things to good software, but PSP images tend to print/import just fine, unlike the rest of Corel's apps.
(Corel files tend to clog imagesetters and now direct to plate systems, they're just bad code. Many film houses and prepresses I work with will not accept them unless the client signs off that they're willing to pay for the wasted processing time they cause, or flat out won't take them.)
For web work and casual stuff, it's great. So is GIMP, although the learning curve is a bit steep.
Me, I live in the world of CMYK and heavy image composition, editing, and creating art from scratch, so the tools in Photoshop are ones I cannot live without, and can't quite find anywhere else - and I'm not talking plug ins, I don't use many of them. I also need predictable color, and Photoshop is an app I trust.
I had to laugh at your little icons comment - that's what us pro guys WANT - the least amount of screen real estate taken up by the gui. We either know the keyboard shortcut to select the tools or dialogs we want, or we have dual monitors set up with our image in one, all pallettes in the other. I run a 23" Cinema HD display, and even when I'm working on a cd cover, which is 4.75x4.75", I want that and only that filling my screen, and my pallettes on the side.
To each their own tho. 75% of Photoshop is wasted on most people, and at least 15% even us pros don't touch. I've talked people out of buying it, and steered them towards PSP myself, as I don't want to have to teach them Photoshop, and with PSP they can jump right in.
If you're ever bored, check out ArtRage2, Alias SketchbookPro, and Painter, I own them as as well, and are a lot of fun, and do unique things Photoshop can't. I believe in the right tool for the job...and lots of them. :) I don't use one paint brush, I have jars full of them.
Photoshop CS3 sounds as if it's so locked-down, it's a real pain. Last time I checked you needed to be online to keep it validated?
Not true - I installed it yesterday on an offline laptop.
You need to go online at some point within 30 days of installation to register and activate the software, but that's a one-off operation that takes seconds (and the software works perfectly even without this stage, though presumably it locks up after 30 days).
Other than that, it works fine offline - I had a two-hour session earlier today without being logged in.
Re:
>>your little icons comment - that's what us pro guys WANT - the least amount of screen real estate taken up by the gui.<<
Yup. I've heard that one over and over from full-time Photoshop guys, and I can't argue with it. It's just that I do lots of different things to make money - an idiot number of different things, actually. I simply can't remember the keyboard shortcuts for all the progs I use - the 3D suites, particle generators, dynamics progs, AE plugs (greenscreen and compositing mostly), matchmoving trackers, roto, multiple video editing apps, video conversion and compression apps, web authoring apps, FLASH and other 2D cartoon apps, recording, audio editing, various musical composition progs, mixing, managing the sample collection and keeping everything backed up, file sync apps, other requisite daily apps I can't remember right now, and anyway you get the drift. Remembering keyboard shortcuts are a distant dream. Remembering how to even do all this stuff is troublesome. Also my eyesight is profoundly BAD, so everything has to be HUGE even on a large monitor or I just can't read it.
The best way for me to lose a client is to let them see me work. It's squint...hunt...peck...pull down menu...curse...spill beer on desk. Even keyboard shorties for apps I 've used several years don't "stick" because they're competing with everything else. Probably I should concentrate on one discipline but I wanna do everything. I lurvs this shit.
I, too, am a "pro guy", by the way. Details are unimportant, but I've worked with and for people who do stuff that is available at your local retail establishments. Axe your grocer or look for it in the dairy case. I'm a ninja like Nigel's super-accountant buddy! And probably that's about enough off-topic non-Casey-bashin/RE talk for a while...
Post a Comment