Journal Journal: Anyone need a microbiologist? 4
In other news, the rest of life is good. The kids are adorable, the husband is still happy at his job, and we're about to launch headlong into a kitchen remodel.
How is everyone else?
In other news, the rest of life is good. The kids are adorable, the husband is still happy at his job, and we're about to launch headlong into a kitchen remodel.
How is everyone else?
What does the recent run on Wal-mart's $200 mean, to Microsoft, and to the PC universe in general?
Simply selling out of a product quickly doesn't testify to the product's quality or goodness. Wal-mart's recent sale of PCs loaded with a customized Linux for $200 each was probably a price for many households too good to not try. The litmus test comes after the purchase, and based on Wal-mart customer reviews on the Wal-mart web site this machine gets a solid thumbs up.
This is good news for Linux. Each interation for the Linux desktop delivers a more seamless platform, now apparently, good enough for the masses. It comes with tools necessary for what people need: word processing; spreadsheets; internet; and e-mail. To get a similarly loaded Microsoft (Vista) machine (beefed up to handle the processor hungry Microsoft versions of its applications) would require a minimum of $1000.
You would think this is bad news for Microsoft. It isn't. Microsoft is too big, and too far ahead to care. They should care. Instead, they continue to put out their notion of what users want, increasingly complex and resource heavy applications, expensive and unwieldy. They claim their software is simple and intuitive. Anecdotal experience and reviews say no.
Now, Wal-mart has seeded the market with a computer that "just works", much like Macs, but at a fraction of the price. With its price advantage over Apple, and Microsoft's new Vista foundering, this is an opportunity, maybe the beginning of a tipping point for Linux. It's a modest but encouraging start. Linux users, take heart! Microsoft, take note!
http://justamp.blogspot.com/2007/10/sony-ericsson-to-sell-half-of-uiq-unit.html
After all the trouble Sony Ericsson had to get the operating system for there UIQ3 devices stable are they now getting a alley to help them out or escape goat a to bail out.
The people who stayed all have new journals to read or have drifted away from slashdot. And I see most of the people who left. Actually I see a lot of people, people I never knew on here but that I've become fond of since getting to know them.
So... I guess I could delete this. But I won't. I hate putting things away. I could do what Nizo and tuxette have done and cross post the things I post on multiply, but I don't think there'd be anyone left to really read them or that anyone misses me in particular. I am a social poster, and most of slashdot is news/technology/politically oriented, s I fit better at multiply.
Well, after slicing a finger but still not emancipating my new mechanical pencil from its clamshell container, I'm having a V-8 moment.
NASA is looking in the wrong places for their solutions to protect the space shuttle. Heat shield tiles, who needs them! I say NASA simply talk to the vendors selling $5 crap and encasing said crap in inpenetrable and indestructible clamshell packages.
Encase the shuttle in one of these packages and NASA's good to go. (But watch your fingers when you try to get the astronauts out!)
Another morning, another 30 minutes until my Windows XP box was ready enough for me to begin productive work. Today it was an automatic reboot I'd been trying to defer all day yesterday since I had some things I wanted to finish. Apparently over night Microsoft thought better of my wish to defer and rebooted.
Aside from time needed getting all my applications back online and in a state I wanted, I also had to re-configure and recover lost session work (minor, but an annoyance).
No matter the memory, no matter the CPU, no matter the patch level of Microsoft boxes, time and again I find my start up time eroded around the edges tending to Microsoft's rough edges. (Over the last couple weeks I've begun to get "low virtual memory" dialog from XP, even with a 2G machine, and the machine is barely asked to do much work (I mostly use it to support my cygwin Xwindows, and maybe one instance of Firefox), and ultimately I must reboot to get back responsiveness.)
This is standard operating procedure it seems in corporate PC America. This is what Microsoft has brought to the IT groupthink. This is not the way it always was. Sigh.
Thirty minutes here, ten minutes there, 5 minutes there... it all adds up (including the time to finally stop and write this journal entry), and anecdotally I know others in IT experience Microsoft platforms the same way. I wonder sometimes collectively what the world pays in lost slivers of time fixing and cleaning up Microsoft's mess. I'm betting it's more than the GNP of many small countries. I'd love to have a Microsoft chargeback code... If Microsoft wants to farm out their not-so-superior technology for the world to babysit, and rake in obscene profits with their tacit monopoly, I think it only fair we should be able to charge back our time to Microsoft for our time spent working for them.
Just thought I'd check in to see how everyone's doing.
Is it lonely here with most of the circle gone? Or do you keep busy with news articles and whatnot?
I still check in from time to time to see if anything interesting is going on with you folks, but just realized I haven't posted in ages so you get this... Not that exciting but a post all the same.
It is 1½ years now that the Sony daughter SonyBMG bought us the Root-Kit. But it seem that the uproar at the time did not teach Sony a lesson. Now it is SonyEricsson which brings grieve over the user.
The Background: With 25 bugs reported SonyEricsson creases development for the P990i/M600i/W950i series. From the announcement:
These firmware releases meet the requirements of bug fixes prioritized by our operator customers and the Customer Services organization within different markets.
Well I always suspected it and now it is proven: The end user is of no concern to mobile phone producers.
Any remaining issues are of course unfortunate, but we feel that with the level of quality on the latest P990 firmware we now have a good, solid product.
May I quote from the bug list:
1. Memory leaks are still present - it's worse than Release 5.
22. The newest firmware contain a lot of defects. My P990 reboot 2-5 times per day. I can use "Exchange ActiveSync" only after a reboot cause maybe an hour later it doesn't connect to server.
24. The phone crashes on incoming SMS.
25. The phone crashes on incoming calls while another call is already active.
So that's what Sony calls a "good, solid product." — good to know. But the best quote from the announcement is certainly:
Due to all heavy features in P990, the need for RAM memory has grown. [...] The low RAM memory situation for the P990 will unfortunately remain for the heaviest users, and would not be fixed by a new firmware update since it's hardware related. Multi-tasking on the P990 however works satisfactory provided that you don't run too large and memory-consuming programs at the same time. Performance improvements have indeed been made for the new P1 phone compared to P990 and the user RAM available for applications has been increased with >400%, significantly improving multi-tasking performance and application behaviour so that you can run a lot heavier programs simultaneously.
So — Sony, you did not put enough memory into the P990i — your top of the range flagship phone — to work as expected and the solution is: Buy the now P1i. You made a mess of it by under powering the P990i and expect us to pay for your mistakes by buying a new phone?
Well, Sony did it again — treating there customers with content. I wonder if this time round Sony finally manages to destroy it's good brand name or if we are going to forgive them again.
By useless I mean you graduate and then there's no one really looking for your degree. With teaching, computer science, architecture, or mechanical, civil, chemical or computer engineering degrees it's obvious what you'll be doing. But what about biology? English? Psychology?
Why did no one warn me that Microbiology, while a great subject and very interesting requires a masters or doctorate to be truly useful?
I'm glad I feel strongly about medicine because the idea of going to graduate school is not appealing at all.
But did I email my friends? Nope. So being the super friends they are, they signed the role for me today so I wouldn't have an abscence. Yeah, not too sure how that's going to go over with the teacher.
We will probably be receiving another cranky email about attendance and the honor policy and that sort of thing.
You should totally be my friend. All of the cool kids are going to be, so get in early.
fallen: Read my journal thingy!
me: I did.
Saw your balls.
fallen:
me: Very impressive.
Lovely. Really.
fallen: Yay! I'm glad you like it
Did you hear the music too?
me: It's not unusual?
Yes.
Very painful
fallen: yeah, just wanted to make sure it
worked
me: Your ball references are delightful.
fallen: I'm glad you enjoyed it
Well I can't put up a real picture
until I get some photo edit software
me: Uh-huh.
Until then... your balls.
Great.
fallen: You almost sound sarcastic
me: No, no. Your balls are really the best
part of my Valentine's Day so far.
Me: Mommy is a girl and you're a boy.
Mercer: I'm not a boy! I'm a tiger! Grrrrrrrrr
What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie