Better can be measued in two ways - the technical performance and duability of the RAM purchsed, or the ease of buying it. In general buying Apple stuff (In NZ we have no Apple Stores, only a few retailers and the Apple website) is extremely simple. From a vendor - Very little chance of good specials or no interest HP schemes or rebate vouchers - Apple doesn't offer them, so the resellers don't either. From the website - Thats the price, and will probably stay that price until obsoleted or refreshed. - Click buy, pay the money, and in a couple of days it arrives in a box soo cool you want to keep that too 8). It is actually a pleasure to open most apple gear (ipod touch excluded, that just felt like 20 minutes with a cheap hooker in comparison to my Mac Mini) Then the simplicity of the setup - Plugin ehternet, power brick, USB KB and mouse, and DVI screen and off you go. Two manuals - "Everything Mac" and "Everything Else" Boot, Create account and all done.
Compare to Acer Veriton mini PC I also have, open box, open up all the bags of cables, screw on wifi antenna, Undo a number of wire ties on all of the cables, then I the the remaining styrene and cardboard in the bin. Then boot, and register all the Office Apps, remove the junkware, then reinstall because I wanted Vista Pro, not Home Premium just to join a domain, then install another media centre App because Pro doesn't have MS's one.
Now it was nice my Acer came with a 17" LCD and kb and mouse, but they were junk, but I did get $150 on trademe for them.
If I compared the two, the Mac was the easiest to setup, and the instructions were the clearest and showed a passing knowledge of common English, but is not as much memory or disk as the Acer. Once running though OS X on the mini is just as responsive as Vista on the Acer, but boots faster, sleeps and wakes faster, and is smaller and quieter. If those things are more important than how fast it is, then the Mac is worth the premium. If not, go buy a PC with Windows, Apple wont miss you. Me, I like both, so I have both. I enjoy using my Mac more than the Acer though 8)
Language and computers isnt the problems, but I am sick of US Letter page sizes as a default in so many applciations when the rest of the world have moved on and use the ISO standard A4.
It has gotten a ittle better in recent OS's but still crops up every now and then.
Pimp my Netbook? Carbon-fibre vynal stick on cover for the lid! Taking a base AspireOne and adding 2GB RAM and 120GB proper solid sate HDD! Leather satchel for it!
I know with my acer One I've had lots of comments from workmates, ladies in lifts, cute shop assistants when I put it down on the counter to fish out my wallet, but no date offers so far. Maybe the wedding ring puts them off?
Technically you are more likely to infringe copyright by the mere act of playing the file. Here in NZ there is no protectin for copying for personal use or media shifing to allow you to rip a CD/DVD you even own, so when my computer copies the file from harddrive into memory, is that is infriging the copyright?,
For desktops, I probably wouldnt worry about the cost of ECC RAM, but afor a server requiring 99% or higher uptime, or lots of memory activity like a virtual server host, I would specify nothing but ECC RAM, and if the server is not able to vmotion guests off for downtime, I would also investigate RAID RAM.
So now spaceflight must be routine if slashdotters think a private citizen being able to fly to space with nothing but money is no longer newsworthy 8)
It would actually be easy to have the computer lab where ever you want these days. Host the resources on powerful enough farm of servers and provide virtual desktops. The computer lab PCs could then be terminals or surays etc, and the student could use their own desktop/laptop at home or elsewhere on campus where network can be obtained, or use the terminals in the lab when they want. Assuming 100% of the students have a working machine of their own is a far stretch to me. This can easily be stuffed up by flat batteries, broken hardware from being dropped, lost data from HDD crashes or laptops being stolen etc. There is also the case of IT students needing access to equipment that will invariably be beyond their budget. Networks of virtual switches, large super-computing clusters, Unix systems. There is also the actual social aspect. I studied Software Engineering, and it was absolutely helpful to be able to discuss things with classmates in the labs between lectures or formal teaching sessions.
Initially dust did seem to seem sucked into the plastic underside like a vacuum cleaner, but is better now. My desk is wooden so I would guess I don't get too much static build-up. You might find your air is very dry, which can lead to static build-up on metal surfaces.
I have to admit my favourite keyboad is Apples current aluminium full wired keyboard.
The keyboard chassis does not flex or creak like a plastic one, it is slim, so is really only as big as it needs to be, and I find the fact it is so flat means I don't have to arch my fingers so much and the keys don't require much effort to push them, but enough travel that accidental presses are rare. It's also easier to clean than a regular keyboard, simple wipe down with an antistatic cloth with a little LCD screen cleaner on the cloth takes care of marks and finger grease of the keys very easily. Also having no Windows key appeals to me. "clover-leaf symbol" is much more OS agnostic 8) and tons of Funtion keys that are easily mapped to useful things.
I just wish the USB ports were powered or USB2 8( or the wireless option included the full key layout with the number pad etc.
now for me at home I use an old desktop. I maxed out the memory and added a pair of 200gb sata drives. Host os is suse Linux in console mode only, vmWare server provides free virtualization. In this I run an ifolder server, web server and a mail server. A win2003 server taxes the system a little but this is only for study and compatibility testing for me. Cost: about ms$300 for disk and ram.
I used a plugin for firefox called Glubble when my kids were younger, it has great family controls, and allows different profiles for different kids. They can build their own favourites pages and if they want to go to a site not listed, it sends a link to a "Helper" such as a named parent or guardian, this can even be an email to your work address if like mine they are being looked after by a sitter after school while I am at work. They can also share allowed links with their friends if they sign up for glubble too, and these also get approved by their helpers.
But nothing compares to making sure the internet access PC is in a family space, and logins are restricted to certain times. I must admit, OS X is fantastic as it allows to to set maximum hours per day as well, so with two kids it makes sure they both get a turn and arne't spending all day on the net - also as I use the Mac as their TV, it limits their TV/DVD time too. Does anyone know of a good login manager that can add this funtionality to Linux?
I found this too. I used to love Zenworks, it was fraggin fantastic, but never get the.0 version. That would suck.
I tied setting up a lab with Open Enterprise Server, I went with the Small Business Server one, as I thought that might appeal to small operators who don't want to fork out NZ$60G plus in licensing for a good portal website (licensing for sharepoint for individually tracked users is hugely expensive), VPN, remote desktop, groupwise for mail, etc. but I couldn't even activate the damn eval product. Talk about screwing up an evaluation. After a week of getitng nowhere on the forums (only two people in the world seemed to be able to answer any questions, and their last post was months ago) I couldn't get official Novell support without paying through the nose, I gave up.
This BTW would have been a great starter pack: Take base server hardware - any platform, even Dell would be fine and make sure you have atleast 3 ethernet ports and one switch and an internet connection - Add VMWare VI3 (free for 2 CPUs) at a large disk and 8 GB RAM, and SLES OES Small Business. On the VI3 server, create 4 VMs, one bordermanager server, one file/print/mail server, One NDS (DNS, DHCP etc) only server, and another utility/Application server (for managing backups, internal websites, databases with MySQL etc)
Clients could be anything you want - even 24" iMacs if you like, as you are saving many thousands in software costs, may as well make the clients nice to use.
RIM also have a free 5 user blackberry server plugin for Groupwise)
This would handle up to 5 users easlily. For a small business this might be a great startup pack. Also this would easily allow secure remote access for support from their vendor, Me!
Once setup, image the whole thing. Sell again and again.
Doesn't matter what hardware the client wants to use, as long as it supports VI3 and has lots of local disk.
When the client grows, just add more VM capacity, and licence appropriately..... Sell a support package with monthly admin time and an hourly rate for extra stuff.......
Profit 8)
Advantage over MS, MS-SBS is still all one one server, I still don't think it can be broken down easily and I think the licence specifically forbids virtualisation, and if you want to go from SBS to full AD or windows server, be prepared for more CALs than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and don't forget the patch and reboot cycle for Windows taking down the whole network for the client every patch Tuesday.
BTW, SLED10 runs great on a mac mini and so does Windows Vista (havn't tried 7 yet) or OSX and all are supported clients for OES.
Novell may be finding out that resellers cant sell a product if they haven't got experiance with it, and you can t get experiance in it without a reseller channel coming along and giveing lots of tech and sales presentaitons, and getting customers to come along to these too. IN NZ, I think the Novell presence is just about dead. I've got one major customer who is using SLES for their linux requirements, but there wasn't one single cent of Novell assistance in the sale. It was only that the customer required a couple of linux servers for a role, and I was familiar with Ubuntu and OpenSuse. They wanted support, and Novell were the only ones with offices in NZ at the time.
Major companies wont go out and buy serious infrastructure just from looking at a website. The will require serious faceime form the vendors and the resellers. Large corps who require Linux, probably already have an experianced in-house team, so may just be using open source, free versions and supporting it themselves. Those in the middle will be buing MS stuff, because that is all their CIOs see in magazines and all that in use by the middle sized companies around them. In these recession times, it would take a very brave CIO to recommend a major infrastructure change from MS to Linux right now. Now the other issue is that out of the 20 or so linux servers i do administer, only 2 of them are actually SLES boxes, the rest are appliances with whatever distro is supported by that vendor. We have centos, Debian, a few boxes with some mini distro for VM appliances, etc. However, with the SLES servers, I do appreciate their uptime over 300 days 8) Thats just like the Novell Netware I used to know and love!
I'm starting to really like Dollhouse. I ususally give a new show 5 or 6 episodes for the characters to start developing and the network to stop futzing with it before deciding to keep downloading it. 8) It's even worse out here in NZ. Trueblood had to win several awards before being picked up here for broadcast. It hasn't even aired here yet. When will they realize that using the Internet they coils broadcast to the whole world?
There also needs to bee immediate disclosure if the search comes up empty. That way teh searches will only be done if they actually have something concrete rather than just going on fishing expidetitons. Oh , I'm sorry Mr Human Rights activist, we didnt find any child porn on your computer this time, but I'm sure well get SOMETHING next time after the keylogger we installed reports back to us.
It does worry me when even for the best reasons the police are given permission to act in secret. I mean, there has NEVER been a crooked cop in NSW has there?
Or for stationary fuel cells, you can truck in the aluminium in powder form, deposit in a bunker or tank and have the system churn that into Hydrogen in safe to store quantaties. You dont need much to run a house if you add solar/wind and good thermal design into the mix, even in countries with lower output from solar, or wind. I dont see hwo this would be much different to how my father had an oil tank at home and had it filled once a year to run the central heating.
As Amazon have all of your marketing data, they could even offer discounts on the hardcovers to those who have bought the ebook. If the demand is low, even doing print on demand runs at the regular cost. Surely this must be cheaper than storing tons of pulped trees hoping someone will buy a certain number of them before returning them to a publisher to be re-pulped.
I was wondering, could a newspaper sell ther editions on Amazon? If so, they could still charge their normal rate but by bypassing all the messy printing delivering and recycling, wouldn't they need fewer or no ads? Also as all of your Amazon books are still available for you to download even after you have deleted them from the Kindle, you could still go back and read stuff that is older, and not have to worry about all that paper left lying around the house 8) Mybe there should be another class of download for the kindle, the kindle-cast! Browse an RSS feed to know when new editions are ready to read, download them, and keep only the latest two or three. then delete the rest. Shit, I should patent this idea now and stop anyone actually doing it.
Now publishers offer similar services as record labels. Professional editing, distribution and marketing. Like traditional music publishing, it is expensive to get someone started, and they only make money back on 10% of authors they sign. eBooks turn this upside down because it cost very little to get someone started, but it is difficult to get buzz and word out to get eyeballs on the page. They need to work out what service they can make money with. The traditional markets don't make sence, I can download a book fro a US server just as fast as someone in the US, nit like having to wait for a book to be printed and shipped here. And unsold ebooks don't have to be returned if they wern't shipped. But what happens when anyone can be published, is that you do get quite a lot of unreadable rubbish out there and it is hard to actually find the quality stuff. An interactive book store with social recomendations would be useful here.
Slashdot Mirror
I've only installed my copy of windows 2008 server on one "Computer", it just happens to be running VMWare ESX3i as it's primary OS 8)
Yup, this could reveal state secrets, especially the one about allowing warrantless wiretapping.
Obama's government also still allows Rendition of prisoners not yet charged with any crimes to other countries for torture.
Nomatter what changes, things still remain the same.
Better can be measued in two ways - the technical performance and duability of the RAM purchsed, or the ease of buying it.
In general buying Apple stuff (In NZ we have no Apple Stores, only a few retailers and the Apple website) is extremely simple.
From a vendor - Very little chance of good specials or no interest HP schemes or rebate vouchers - Apple doesn't offer them, so the resellers don't either.
From the website - Thats the price, and will probably stay that price until obsoleted or refreshed. - Click buy, pay the money, and in a couple of days it arrives in a box soo cool you want to keep that too 8). It is actually a pleasure to open most apple gear (ipod touch excluded, that just felt like 20 minutes with a cheap hooker in comparison to my Mac Mini)
Then the simplicity of the setup - Plugin ehternet, power brick, USB KB and mouse, and DVI screen and off you go. Two manuals - "Everything Mac" and "Everything Else" Boot, Create account and all done.
Compare to Acer Veriton mini PC I also have, open box, open up all the bags of cables, screw on wifi antenna, Undo a number of wire ties on all of the cables, then I the the remaining styrene and cardboard in the bin. Then boot, and register all the Office Apps, remove the junkware, then reinstall because I wanted Vista Pro, not Home Premium just to join a domain, then install another media centre App because Pro doesn't have MS's one.
Now it was nice my Acer came with a 17" LCD and kb and mouse, but they were junk, but I did get $150 on trademe for them.
If I compared the two, the Mac was the easiest to setup, and the instructions were the clearest and showed a passing knowledge of common English, but is not as much memory or disk as the Acer.
Once running though OS X on the mini is just as responsive as Vista on the Acer, but boots faster, sleeps and wakes faster, and is smaller and quieter. If those things are more important than how fast it is, then the Mac is worth the premium. If not, go buy a PC with Windows, Apple wont miss you. Me, I like both, so I have both. I enjoy using my Mac more than the Acer though 8)
Language and computers isnt the problems, but I am sick of US Letter page sizes as a default in so many applciations when the rest of the world have moved on and use the ISO standard A4.
It has gotten a ittle better in recent OS's but still crops up every now and then.
Pimp my Netbook?
Carbon-fibre vynal stick on cover for the lid!
Taking a base AspireOne and adding 2GB RAM and 120GB proper solid sate HDD!
Leather satchel for it!
I know with my acer One I've had lots of comments from workmates, ladies in lifts, cute shop assistants when I put it down on the counter to fish out my wallet, but no date offers so far. Maybe the wedding ring puts them off?
Technically you are more likely to infringe copyright by the mere act of playing the file. Here in NZ there is no protectin for copying for personal use or media shifing to allow you to rip a CD/DVD you even own, so when my computer copies the file from harddrive into memory, is that is infriging the copyright?,
For desktops, I probably wouldnt worry about the cost of ECC RAM, but afor a server requiring 99% or higher uptime, or lots of memory activity like a virtual server host, I would specify nothing but ECC RAM, and if the server is not able to vmotion guests off for downtime, I would also investigate RAID RAM.
So now spaceflight must be routine if slashdotters think a private citizen being able to fly to space with nothing but money is no longer newsworthy 8)
It would actually be easy to have the computer lab where ever you want these days. Host the resources on powerful enough farm of servers and provide virtual desktops. The computer lab PCs could then be terminals or surays etc, and the student could use their own desktop/laptop at home or elsewhere on campus where network can be obtained, or use the terminals in the lab when they want. Assuming 100% of the students have a working machine of their own is a far stretch to me. This can easily be stuffed up by flat batteries, broken hardware from being dropped, lost data from HDD crashes or laptops being stolen etc.
There is also the case of IT students needing access to equipment that will invariably be beyond their budget. Networks of virtual switches, large super-computing clusters, Unix systems.
There is also the actual social aspect. I studied Software Engineering, and it was absolutely helpful to be able to discuss things with classmates in the labs between lectures or formal teaching sessions.
Initially dust did seem to seem sucked into the plastic underside like a vacuum cleaner, but is better now. My desk is wooden so I would guess I don't get too much static build-up. You might find your air is very dry, which can lead to static build-up on metal surfaces.
I have to admit my favourite keyboad is Apples current aluminium full wired keyboard.
The keyboard chassis does not flex or creak like a plastic one, it is slim, so is really only as big as it needs to be, and I find the fact it is so flat means I don't have to arch my fingers so much and the keys don't require much effort to push them, but enough travel that accidental presses are rare.
It's also easier to clean than a regular keyboard, simple wipe down with an antistatic cloth with a little LCD screen cleaner on the cloth takes care of marks and finger grease of the keys very easily.
Also having no Windows key appeals to me. "clover-leaf symbol" is much more OS agnostic 8) and tons of Funtion keys that are easily mapped to useful things.
I just wish the USB ports were powered or USB2 8( or the wireless option included the full key layout with the number pad etc.
now for me at home I use an old desktop. I maxed out the memory and added a pair of 200gb sata drives. Host os is suse Linux in console mode only, vmWare server provides free virtualization. In this I run an ifolder server, web server and a mail server. A win2003 server taxes the system a little but this is only for study and compatibility testing for me.
Cost: about ms$300 for disk and ram.
I used a plugin for firefox called Glubble when my kids were younger, it has great family controls, and allows different profiles for different kids. They can build their own favourites pages and if they want to go to a site not listed, it sends a link to a "Helper" such as a named parent or guardian, this can even be an email to your work address if like mine they are being looked after by a sitter after school while I am at work. They can also share allowed links with their friends if they sign up for glubble too, and these also get approved by their helpers.
But nothing compares to making sure the internet access PC is in a family space, and logins are restricted to certain times. I must admit, OS X is fantastic as it allows to to set maximum hours per day as well, so with two kids it makes sure they both get a turn and arne't spending all day on the net - also as I use the Mac as their TV, it limits their TV/DVD time too. Does anyone know of a good login manager that can add this funtionality to Linux?
But they wouldn't capitalise it, as that would just be too hard 8)
I did, they had noone in NZ who understood the product. They referred me straight to Novell support in the US.
I found this too. I used to love Zenworks, it was fraggin fantastic, but never get the .0 version. That would suck.
I tied setting up a lab with Open Enterprise Server, I went with the Small Business Server one, as I thought that might appeal to small operators who don't want to fork out NZ$60G plus in licensing for a good portal website (licensing for sharepoint for individually tracked users is hugely expensive), VPN, remote desktop, groupwise for mail, etc. but I couldn't even activate the damn eval product. Talk about screwing up an evaluation. After a week of getitng nowhere on the forums (only two people in the world seemed to be able to answer any questions, and their last post was months ago)
I couldn't get official Novell support without paying through the nose, I gave up.
This BTW would have been a great starter pack:
Take base server hardware - any platform, even Dell would be fine and make sure you have atleast 3 ethernet ports and one switch and an internet connection - Add VMWare VI3 (free for 2 CPUs) at a large disk and 8 GB RAM, and SLES OES Small Business. On the VI3 server, create 4 VMs, one bordermanager server, one file/print/mail server, One NDS (DNS, DHCP etc) only server, and another utility/Application server (for managing backups, internal websites, databases with MySQL etc)
Clients could be anything you want - even 24" iMacs if you like, as you are saving many thousands in software costs, may as well make the clients nice to use.
RIM also have a free 5 user blackberry server plugin for Groupwise)
This would handle up to 5 users easlily. For a small business this might be a great startup pack. Also this would easily allow secure remote access for support from their vendor, Me!
Once setup, image the whole thing.
Sell again and again.
Doesn't matter what hardware the client wants to use, as long as it supports VI3 and has lots of local disk.
When the client grows, just add more VM capacity, and licence appropriately. .... .......
Sell a support package with monthly admin time and an hourly rate for extra stuff
Profit 8)
Advantage over MS, MS-SBS is still all one one server, I still don't think it can be broken down easily and I think the licence specifically forbids virtualisation, and if you want to go from SBS to full AD or windows server, be prepared for more CALs than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and don't forget the patch and reboot cycle for Windows taking down the whole network for the client every patch Tuesday.
BTW, SLED10 runs great on a mac mini and so does Windows Vista (havn't tried 7 yet) or OSX and all are supported clients for OES.
Novell may be finding out that resellers cant sell a product if they haven't got experiance with it, and you can t get experiance in it without a reseller channel coming along and giveing lots of tech and sales presentaitons, and getting customers to come along to these too. IN NZ, I think the Novell presence is just about dead. I've got one major customer who is using SLES for their linux requirements, but there wasn't one single cent of Novell assistance in the sale. It was only that the customer required a couple of linux servers for a role, and I was familiar with Ubuntu and OpenSuse. They wanted support, and Novell were the only ones with offices in NZ at the time.
Major companies wont go out and buy serious infrastructure just from looking at a website. The will require serious faceime form the vendors and the resellers.
Large corps who require Linux, probably already have an experianced in-house team, so may just be using open source, free versions and supporting it themselves.
Those in the middle will be buing MS stuff, because that is all their CIOs see in magazines and all that in use by the middle sized companies around them. In these recession times, it would take a very brave CIO to recommend a major infrastructure change from MS to Linux right now.
Now the other issue is that out of the 20 or so linux servers i do administer, only 2 of them are actually SLES boxes, the rest are appliances with whatever distro is supported by that vendor. We have centos, Debian, a few boxes with some mini distro for VM appliances, etc.
However, with the SLES servers, I do appreciate their uptime over 300 days 8) Thats just like the Novell Netware I used to know and love!
I'm starting to really like Dollhouse. I ususally give a new show 5 or 6 episodes for the characters to start developing and the network to stop futzing with it before deciding to keep downloading it. 8)
It's even worse out here in NZ. Trueblood had to win several awards before being picked up here for broadcast. It hasn't even aired here yet.
When will they realize that using the Internet they coils broadcast to the whole world?
There also needs to bee immediate disclosure if the search comes up empty. That way teh searches will only be done if they actually have something concrete rather than just going on fishing expidetitons.
Oh , I'm sorry Mr Human Rights activist, we didnt find any child porn on your computer this time, but I'm sure well get SOMETHING next time after the keylogger we installed reports back to us.
It does worry me when even for the best reasons the police are given permission to act in secret. I mean, there has NEVER been a crooked cop in NSW has there?
Or for stationary fuel cells, you can truck in the aluminium in powder form, deposit in a bunker or tank and have the system churn that into Hydrogen in safe to store quantaties. You dont need much to run a house if you add solar/wind and good thermal design into the mix, even in countries with lower output from solar, or wind.
I dont see hwo this would be much different to how my father had an oil tank at home and had it filled once a year to run the central heating.
As Amazon have all of your marketing data, they could even offer discounts on the hardcovers to those who have bought the ebook. If the demand is low, even doing print on demand runs at the regular cost. Surely this must be cheaper than storing tons of pulped trees hoping someone will buy a certain number of them before returning them to a publisher to be re-pulped.
I was wondering, could a newspaper sell ther editions on Amazon? If so, they could still charge their normal rate but by bypassing all the messy printing delivering and recycling, wouldn't they need fewer or no ads? Also as all of your Amazon books are still available for you to download even after you have deleted them from the Kindle, you could still go back and read stuff that is older, and not have to worry about all that paper left lying around the house 8)
Mybe there should be another class of download for the kindle, the kindle-cast! Browse an RSS feed to know when new editions are ready to read, download them, and keep only the latest two or three. then delete the rest.
Shit, I should patent this idea now and stop anyone actually doing it.
Now publishers offer similar services as record labels. Professional editing, distribution and marketing. Like traditional music publishing, it is expensive to get someone started, and they only make money back on 10% of authors they sign.
eBooks turn this upside down because it cost very little to get someone started, but it is difficult to get buzz and word out to get eyeballs on the page. They need to work out what service they can make money with. The traditional markets don't make sence, I can download a book fro a US server just as fast as someone in the US, nit like having to wait for a book to be printed and shipped here. And unsold ebooks don't have to be returned if they wern't shipped.
But what happens when anyone can be published, is that you do get quite a lot of unreadable rubbish out there and it is hard to actually find the quality stuff. An interactive book store with social recomendations would be useful here.
Actually, doesn't that make it a Terran eclipse, from the lunar point of view?
Maybe she was banned because unlike the majority of the xbox live gamers, she might actually be able to get a girlfriend?