MrRage

Ubuntu is more widely supported, and I have 8 GB of RAM. I don't know if using less memory is worth the effort to learn something new. For instance, I rebuilt my dad's PC with an Atom CPU and 1GB of memory and installed Ubunutu on it. It works great. I might give puppy linux a go on my netbook though.

Yes, the new Ubuntu is nicer...than previous Ubuntu versions. Got it installed on a VM and set up a clojure environment, which is a pain the the ass on Windows. Still can't wait for Windows 7 to come out though.

That depends on how you read the phrase "50% mark-up". I read it as 50% of the retail price is mark-up, the other 50% is cost.

> If my head was moving at 10mph towards brick wall, a half-inch of dense rubber would probably make a whole lot of difference.

Once, yes it would help. Do that a few thousand times, you'll still get brain damage.

I don't know how, but it's easy to imagine Excel pulling data from DBs using some sort of interface (ADO maybe?). All you need is some code the implements that interface for SQLite.

Excuse me, but how does this "lock in" students? Once they become part of this program they always have to use MS products?

Students should try to expose themselves to as many possible technologies as possible. Open source, Microsoft, Apple, etc. These sorts of programs help students do that.

And at $161 it's not going to sell as well as The Elements of Style.

I'm on a project writing browser-based pharmacy management software for hospitals. I have to make it work in IE6 because later IE version don't run on Windows 2000.

I think you memory is a bit selective. XP is good now after 3 service packs, and MB of upgrades. Actually it's not really good, just mature. Everyone seemed to hated it before SP2 came out. Before then security was really, really bad. If you were to put a pre-SP2 copy directly on the internet, it would probably compromised within the hour. And then Vista came out, your apps/hardware couldn't run (which is much better now BTW), and suddenly XP is the greatest thing in the world outside of OS X.

> I know that there is someone working on Clojure on .Net, but I don't think that really adds much vs the JVM

The .NET CLR supports tail recursion, whereas the JVM doesn't. Don't think it's worth porting simply for that, though.

The person you replied to mentioned it, not the article. I'm not making any claims either way.

It's not idiotic at all. Most musicians, even of the mega pop star variety, make most of their money performing music, not from royalties. I would go so far as to say that musicians should make most of their money by giving concerts.

You're completely right, but since when did someone need to know the Win32 API to manage windows?

I suggest that we're all getting a little too pedantic here. The point is it's basically all the same hardware. You can buy anything and put any OS on it, although it's not so nice to put OS X on hardware that didn't come from Apple.

I disagree. Doing web dev, you could easily be running a browser with multiple tabs, web servers, db servers, and a handful of virtual machines all at the same time. The more RAM you have, the smoother it all runs. That is unless you like nice little pauses when you switch apps. If you have a 32 bit system, you should have 3GB if you can. 64 bit, throw in 6 or 8 GB. Memory's cheap.

On the same token, a Mac is a PC.

I seriously want to know. Have you actually used msysgit for any length of time on a relatively large project?

Lame. I agree. By "verbose" I imagine the author means statically typed. What's so "wrong" about using a static language to do web development?

What chip in put out in the last 2 years or so couldn't run a 64 bit system? I'm pretty sure most of the AMD chips could... Edit: By chip I mean one for a desktop CPU, e.g. Atom don't count.

Supply, demand, and price are all related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

I second that. I did a lot a maturing during grad school. It is a job (especially the TA part), and is a lot of work. I think people who say grad school delays adulthood never went themselves, and they think school == for children.

>Considering all of the WebKit browsers I've used seem to crash every half-hour

Funny. I've been using Chrome regularly for about 2 weeks now, and the only crashes I've had are when it tries to start emusic's download app. I have one window open with a few tabs, and it's been open for about 2 days now.

Either something is wrong with your setup, or something is unusually great with mine.

Maybe take a lead in ability, but in an install base? I'm not sure. Even .NET has trouble with having a large enough install base (on Windows machines of course).

I've not heard of that. Can you provide more info on how/why the standardization process happened prematurely?

>The winner will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009.

Cool idea, and a trip to Tokyo sounds nice. But it's hard to get excited about going to a symposium.

> I doubt Objective C is less verbose or more dynamic than Java

Oh, Objective C is certainly more dynamic. It uses a message passing mechanism. You can do this in Objective C without a compile error (note "id" is a generic object type)

id anObject = Do some initialization; [anObject passSomeMessage];

The closest in Java would be:

Object anObject = new SomeClass(); anObject.callSomeMethod();

Which wouldn't compile.

(Please note I haven't used Objective C nor Java in a while. Please excuse any errors.)

I've got to put a vote in for white backgrounds. I find dark background terribly hard to read, especially with colored text. White backgrounds have a higher contrast with the text. I also turn the brightness down on my monitors, so I don't feel it's too blinding.

I also can't stand it if the syntax highlighting is too colorful. I like some coloring for reserved words, type names, comments, and string literals. Other than that black on white.

What I find more important that color schemes is having a nice font. If you're on Windows, and not using Consolas, you're missing out big time. Consolas is actually designed to look good with sub-pixel rendering. If you can't use Consolas, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is a nice second.

It's there now: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/14advisory.html

> Microsoft's not the only one who's blown web launches. Apple did it spectacularly with MobileMe

Oh, come on! Those aren't even in the same category. MobileMe wasn't a big file to download. If tanking on a large download means Microsoft is underestimating the web, then what the heck was Apple underestimating with MobileMe?

Are you trying to be ironic?