NTY: Buy Apple gadgets, use Google services, buy media from Amazon

[Owen Densmore]

Given all this, ... what would you prescribe for your family members who are not particularly expert in these matters?

What computer/laptop, tablet, phone, email service, applications (assuming they need at least one of an office suite), hosting service for their new business, TV components, video services (NetFlix, Amazon, iTunes), sync service, ... I could go on.

But what?  They really want to know.

   -- Owen

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 11:36 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 02/21/2014 07:35 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

To make this relevant to the discussion...  I don't think I could ever
have come to recognize the value of such a data structure if I *hadn't*
felt obliged to re-invent (re-implement?) a number of algorithms that
had already been implemented by others... to differing degrees of quality.

The meat of the discussion lies in the person's (or organization's) agility to change paths once prior work, or a better way regardless of its source, is brought to light.  I recently had to characterize "agile" software development in comparison to ... what? ... "large-scale, entrenched process" to a CIO type who understands some of the economics, but not the technologies.  Me being largely agnostic, trying to explain the two to him in an informal setting proved more difficult than I would have thought.  (Shows how often I talk to those types these days.)

In microcosm, the contrast isn't between engineer-types and scientist-types, but between ... I don't know... authoritarian vs. egalitarian(?) types.  I've met plenty of authoritarian scientist-types and plenty of egalitarian engineer-types.  I've even met some certified PEs who showed remarkable agility when shown a better way.  Actually, "better" is loaded.  "More appropriate to the task at hand" is better than "better".

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 2/21/14 8:50 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> But what?  They really want to know.
If they don't know what they want, why do they want it?

Marcus

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[Parks, Raymond]

Because I end up providing tech support, I suggest that they use what I use.  I use the cheapest technology, with the best future, that supports my existing activity (i.e. legacy/backwards compatibility).  By "best future", I mean both future-proofing (i.e. it won't transition to the backwards compatibility requirement for the longest time) and the likelihood that it will continue to gain capability and improvements.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Feb 21, 2014, at 8:50 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Given all this, ... what would you prescribe for your family members who are not particularly expert in these matters?

What computer/laptop, tablet, phone, email service, applications (assuming they need at least one of an office suite), hosting service for their new business, TV components, video services (NetFlix, Amazon, iTunes), sync service, ... I could go on.

But what?  They really want to know.

   -- Owen

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 11:36 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 02/21/2014 07:35 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

To make this relevant to the discussion...  I don't think I could ever
have come to recognize the value of such a data structure if I *hadn't*
felt obliged to re-invent (re-implement?) a number of algorithms that
had already been implemented by others... to differing degrees of quality.

The meat of the discussion lies in the person's (or organization's) agility to change paths once prior work, or a better way regardless of its source, is brought to light.  I recently had to characterize "agile" software development in comparison to ... what? ... "large-scale, entrenched process" to a CIO type who understands some of the economics, but not the technologies.  Me being largely agnostic, trying to explain the two to him in an informal setting proved more difficult than I would have thought.  (Shows how often I talk to those types these days.)

In microcosm, the contrast isn't between engineer-types and scientist-types, but between ... I don't know... authoritarian vs. egalitarian(?) types.  I've met plenty of authoritarian scientist-types and plenty of egalitarian engineer-types.  I've even met some certified PEs who showed remarkable agility when shown a better way.  Actually, "better" is loaded.  "More appropriate to the task at hand" is better than "better".

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[glen ropella]

On 02/22/2014 04:32 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> On 2/21/14 8:50 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>> But what?  They really want to know.
> If they don't know what they want, why do they want it?

Marcus' question is critical.  Any answer I give will depend on their
answer to that.

On 02/21/2014 07:50 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Given all this, ... what would you prescribe for your family members who
> are not particularly expert in these matters?

My prescription would be for them to learn at least a little more about
these matters.  And I'm a big fan of learning _while_ doing.  So ...

> What computer/laptop, tablet, phone, email service, applications (assuming
> they need at least one of an office suite), hosting service for their new
> business, TV components, video services (NetFlix, Amazon, iTunes), sync
> service, ... I could go on.

For desktop/laptop, I'd recommend they buy one with Debian
pre-installed.  I've had good luck with both of these guys:

   https://www.thinkpenguin.com/
   http://zareason.com/shop/home.php

Tablets?  I don't have a clue.  I can't see why anyone would buy such a
thing. [*]

Phone?  Go to a local used cell phone shop and buy the best, most recent
SIM-based android phone they have.  Purchase a Cricket or Simple mobile
SIM card.  Root the thing.  Install Cyanogenmod or AOKP (Unicorns!).

Email?  Buy your own domain name and a virtual private server from a
local hosting company ... again, have them install Debian on it for you.
  Pay them to set it up, if you have to.  Use that for your e-mail.

Applications?  GNU/Debian/Gnome comes with everything you need.  Use it,
figure it out.  Donate the money you would otherwise have spent to:
http://www.spi-inc.org/

Hosting service?  Again, use your own VPS.  If you expect lots of
traffic, then consider hiring someone who knows what they're doing and
follow their advice.  I have a few friends with small businesses to
recommend if you don't have any.

TV components?  Seriously?  Kill your TV and hang some local art, maybe
a locally produced hologram?  Watch Netflix or Hulu on your new Debian
laptop.  If you simply must put it on your wall, buy a wifi-enabled
smart TV.  If you really want something more "embedded", perhaps try
XMBC... maybe on a beagle or a pi?  You can use duct tape to stick it to
the back of the TV. ;-)

I could go on. 8^)

If they don't want to learn these things, then I really have nothing to
say to them.  There are plenty of other people who will teach them to
use Cable companies, shop at Amazon, buy Apple products, etc.

[*] I type something like 60 wpm.  Lowering my productivity to a tablet
(without a keyboard) just seems stupid. Perhaps I lack empathy?  Tablets
_with_ a keyboard are just laptops, as far as I can tell.

--
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--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 02/24/2014 10:12 AM, glen wrote:
>
> Email?  Buy your own domain name and a virtual private server from a
> local hosting company ... again, have them install Debian on it for
> you.  Pay them to set it up, if you have to.  Use that for your e-mail.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/microsoft-exchange-online-email-for-business-FX103739072.aspx

I know, I know, but Microsoft killed your Pappy!

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx

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[glen ropella]

Well, it's less about grudges or even disagreements about business
practices or technology, and more about what you _learn_ from using a
service/tool.  If the objective is to learn, which I argue it should be,
at least to some satisficing extent, then you want translucent
tools/services.  If it's too opaque or too transparent, it's difficult
to learn.  E.g. you won't really learn the differences between spam
filters if you can't dig in and swap them in and out... or chain them
together.  I don't know anything about microsoft's exchange online, but
my guess is that the spam and anti-malware tools have limited control
surfaces exposed to the customer.

The deeper point is that there is no sharp line between customer and
vendor.  In order to be a good customer, you have to be a bit of a
vendor and vice versa.

On 02/24/2014 10:36 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/microsoft-exchange-online-email-for-business-FX103739072.aspx
>
>
> I know, I know, but Microsoft killed your Pappy!
>
> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 2/24/14, 12:03 PM, glen wrote:
>
> Well, it's less about grudges or even disagreements about business
> practices or technology, and more about what you _learn_ from using a
> service/tool.  If the objective is to learn, which I argue it should
> be, at least to some satisficing extent, then you want translucent
> tools/services.
Well, I want to know about compilers, because I depend on compilers for
my work.  For me, a satisfactory understanding there is a higher bar
than understanding, say, how a car works.  For that I can understand
enough to type the 1-800 number for AAA into my mobile phone.  If I were
a Formula 1 car technician or a professional driver, I'd want to know my
cars inside out.

I suppose learning about SMTP and IMAP and encryption protocols is at
some level useful to everyone, to have a feel for what would be needed
to intercept e-mail, or be defeated in doing so.

Marcus

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[Arlo Barnes]

.aspx, so you can see the disdain before clicking ;)

I liked that post, it seemed sincere - but the (extensive) comments provide more depth. You have people commenting that never use MS, always use MS, or use a mix. In each of those categories, there are various levels of animosity or lack thereof towards Microsoft, competitors.

For my part, I am typing this on a 10-year old Dell running XP, and besides being rather slow, it has worked pretty well - when something starts behaving weird I kill and restart the process, and it does not seem to break anything. But support for XP is ending in a couple months, and I do not have the budget for upgrading - and this computer could not handle a bulkier system anyway. I do not program enough (read: at all, basically) to compare something like Python vs .C# or Mono vs .NET, but it is just so much nicer to learn about how my Linux system (the laptop it was on is currently dead due to hardware problems; my fault) works and how I can interface with it (bash is nice).

And contrary to the title of the article, and as many pointed out in the comments, most of the ire directed towards MS is not past actions (monopoly-securing), but current things like UEFI deals (which gave me an annoying several nights a few months back) and the all-or-nothing manner in which their programs interact; because the community college here bought institutional Office licenses, their 'introduction to business computing' class is predominantly an Office course (the rest is Windows Explorer).

-Arlo James Barnes

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[glen ropella]

On 02/24/2014 11:27 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Well, I want to know about compilers, because I depend on compilers for
> my work.  For me, a satisfactory understanding there is a higher bar
> than understanding, say, how a car works.  For that I can understand
> enough to type the 1-800 number for AAA into my mobile phone.  If I were
> a Formula 1 car technician or a professional driver, I'd want to know my
> cars inside out.

Obviously, there's a threshold for every person, for every domain.  But
I'd argue that stopping at dialing a phone as a limit for how much one
knows about cars is a bit on the shy side.  If that's all someone knows,
then they place a very high (and costly) burden on the rest of us.  For
example, if they drive across a mountain pass and get a flat tire in an
area with no cell signal, then if for some reason they don't show up at
their destination, we (hopefully) will commit a bunch of resources like
helicopters and troopers to go out hunting for them.  They could save us
quite a bit of money by knowing how to change a tire (as well as
stocking their car with sleeping bags, water, and trail mix ;-).

But, further, I hear lots of people complain about various car-related
things like pushy salesmen, salesmen that treat women like idiots (or
completely ignore them), confusing or untrustworthy recommendations for
repair, "lemons", etc.  The more those customers know about the cars
they drive, the _happier_ they are... with their mechanics, with their
dealerships, with their current cars, ... perhaps even with their self.

So, there are plenty of reasons to learn about how cars work other than
for work.

> I suppose learning about SMTP and IMAP and encryption protocols is at
> some level useful to everyone, to have a feel for what would be needed
> to intercept e-mail, or be defeated in doing so.

Personally, all I know about those things is that I'm ignorant enough to
be at risk.  But, I take pride in knowing what I don't know, and that I
don't know it.  The real trick is paying close enough attention so that
you can change tack when you need to.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 02/24/2014 01:00 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:
> but current things like UEFI deals (which gave me an annoying several
> nights a few months back) and the all-or-nothing manner in which their
> programs interact; because the community college here bought
> institutional Office licenses, their 'introduction to business
> computing' class is predominantly an Office course (the rest is
> Windows Explorer).
>
What's wrong with UEFI?   Just turn off secure boot.

Marcus

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 01:47:48PM -0700, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

>
> On 02/24/2014 01:00 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:
> >but current things like UEFI deals (which gave me an annoying
> >several nights a few months back) and the all-or-nothing manner in
> >which their programs interact; because the community college here
> >bought institutional Office licenses, their 'introduction to
> >business computing' class is predominantly an Office course (the
> >rest is Windows Explorer).
> >
> What's wrong with UEFI?   Just turn off secure boot.
>
> Marcus

There's a certain amount of "who's moved my cheese". UEFI invalidates
quite a lot of  hard-won knowledge, such as the use of LILO and
fdisk. I have begrudgingly moved to using grub in recent years, but
I'm still not as proficient as I was with LILO. I still use fdisk
normally, but UEFI required the use of parted, so its back to "hunt
and peck" through poorly written computer manuals. Sigh.

My most recent experience was with buying a laptop that had Windows 8
preinstalled. I knew enough by now to know that the system is
distributed on hidden partitions, so I made a careful backup of the
partitions before I started. Needless to say, the UEFI change meant
that those backups were useless, so I badgered the vendor (HP in this
case) into shipping me the OEM install disks free of charge, which
they should have supplied in the first place (like Apple do).

But even after about 5 attempts (each attempt taking roughly 36 hours
to reinstall Windows 8), I could not set up a dual boot
machine. Windows 8 insisted on repartitioning and reformatting the hard
drive (unlike earlier Windows releases), and Linux cravenly refused to
resize the NTFS partitions (perhaps my Linux distro at 1 year old was
too old), but the net effect is that I have given up trying to use
Windows 8 for now. It's just too hard, I have better things to do with
my time. If and when it becomes important, I'll try to pick up a cheap
license from Microsoft, and install it in a Virtual Machine.

Cheers

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics      [hidden email]
University of New South Wales          http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 02/24/2014 04:01 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> If and when it becomes important, I'll try to pick up a cheap
> license from Microsoft, and install it in a Virtual Machine.
Isn't that the sane thing to do anyway?  Secure booting into Linux?

Marcus

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 03:59:41PM -0700, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>
> On 02/24/2014 04:01 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> >If and when it becomes important, I'll try to pick up a cheap
> >license from Microsoft, and install it in a Virtual Machine.
> Isn't that the sane thing to do anyway?  Secure booting into Linux?
>

Not necessarily. Sometimes Linux on Windows is better, which I have
done occasionally. But right now, it makes sense for me to have Linux
as the native OS on my high performant hardware, and run Windows and
MacOSX as virtual machines on that.

Cheers

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics      [hidden email]
University of New South Wales          http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 02/24/2014 04:27 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> Not necessarily. Sometimes Linux on Windows is better, which I have
> done occasionally.
Anyway, Apple hardware uses UEFI too, so it's a non-argument to blame
Microsoft for advocating that firmware standards should progress.
And the SteamOS game platform (which is Debian) initially needed UEFI to
run too.

Darned old-timers!

Marcus

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 04:36:46PM -0700, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>
> On 02/24/2014 04:27 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> >Not necessarily. Sometimes Linux on Windows is better, which I
> >have done occasionally.
> Anyway, Apple hardware uses UEFI too, so it's a non-argument to
> blame Microsoft for advocating that firmware standards should
> progress.

Absolutely. Its a problem all of us face in the IT industry. An
example from the Linux world is the move to systemd. Systemd actually
looks like a pretty neat piece of technology, and solves a number of
problems with the crufty old SysV rc.d structure, but

a) It is very poorly documented
b) It should have a facility where you can just chuck a shell script,
or add some shell commans to be run at startup or shutdown, rc.local
style.

The net effect is that it takes an inordinate amount of time to do
something extraordinarily simple.

All "vendors" have this problem, both OSS and commercial.

> And the SteamOS game platform (which is Debian) initially needed
> UEFI to run too.
>
> Darned old-timers!
>

Yes - some of us actually have stuff to do, rather than spend time
relearning how to do the same things we used to be able to do :).

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[Gary Schiltz-4]

Knowing the limits of one’s own knowledge is an admirable trait, i.e. the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. What really gripes me are people who seem to get some kind of perverse pleasure in their own ignorance. “Oh, that’s way too complex for me to understand” is not that uncommon an attitude when it comes to science and tech.

# Gary

On Feb 24, 2014, at 3:06 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Personally, all I know about those things is that I'm ignorant enough to be at risk.  But, I take pride in knowing what I don't know, and that I don't know it.  The real trick is paying close enough attention so that you can change tack when you need to.
>
> --
> ⇒⇐ glen

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[glen ropella]

On 02/24/2014 06:08 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Knowing the limits of one’s own knowledge is an admirable trait, i.e. the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. What really gripes me are people who seem to get some kind of perverse pleasure in their own ignorance. “Oh, that’s way too complex for me to understand” is not that uncommon an attitude when it comes to science and tech.

I agree.  That's one of the most annoying expressions.  It seems to come
in 2 stripes: 1) those who actually believe it, which may indicate an
inferiority complex and 2) those practicing the humility topos,
passively aggressively asserting that those who take the time to
learn/understand that subject are geeks or wasting their time or
somesuch.  I don't know which is more annoying (1) or (2).

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
I turned on my tv and somebody blew up


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[Owen Densmore]

2

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 8:54 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 02/24/2014 06:08 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Knowing the limits of one’s own knowledge is an admirable trait, i.e. the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. What really gripes me are people who seem to get some kind of perverse pleasure in their own ignorance. “Oh, that’s way too complex for me to understand” is not that uncommon an attitude when it comes to science and tech.

I agree.  That's one of the most annoying expressions.  It seems to come
in 2 stripes: 1) those who actually believe it, which may indicate an
inferiority complex and 2) those practicing the humility topos,
passively aggressively asserting that those who take the time to
learn/understand that subject are geeks or wasting their time or
somesuch.  I don't know which is more annoying (1) or (2).

--
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I turned on my tv and somebody blew up

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[Arlo Barnes]

1. 2 is easy to ignore and move on from, but one (at least, I do) sincerely wants 1 to get ahead.

I will reply regarding the UEFI thing later.

-Arlo James Barnes

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