Ever found yourself waiting for a commercial vendor to include a feature that you consider obvious or was available in their last version? I'm sure I could knock on Microsoft's door and ask them to add, say, official support for the ext3 filesystem but I don't think I would like the price they will quote me . . . or for a bug fix.
I am faced with this right now. An oss project has a feature that some consider a security flaw and I am having some contributors to the project price out the cost of the fix. I am not paying them to write SINGLE LINE OF CODE for me, but rather paying them to fix a feature/bug that is low priority on the PROJECT's todo list, that I and other will in turn use. Only non-commercial open source allows for this kind of proactivity. Sending suggestions to RedHat in the past sure didn't work.
For years Apple has put up and taken down suggestion pages claiming that if they use one of your ideas, you could sue them for stealing it, so they make a very concerned point of NOT listening to customer feedback unless it is part of a survey with a disclaimer. Send in the lawyers!
So, in fantasy land: What if Microsoft's software was free of charge and its users paid them the exact same amount of money to fix bugs and sponsor features of THEIR design. While MS may sell a certain feature (or disabling of another) to the highest bidder, I don't see Linus Torvalds rejecting a sane fix simply because someone paid to have it written.
Most OSS appears to be need-driven, making the developer the number one customer. What's wrong with a second, paying customer? I can "love it or leave it" with commercial software (and often have left) while OSS allows me to "love it or improve it."
"The plan I've been mulling about is to have SATA RAID 0 with two 60 Gig drives and then a 120 Gig drive that I rsync up with nightly so that I have a relatively easy way of recovering things if they fail."
In short, yes. Some time ago, I would unmount a drive and use dd to mirror it daily, though it required an identical drive.
Rsync is your friend and note that you can separately synchronize your mail spool more frequently then your binaries. But... this does not account for human error or malice: my hourly cron job diligently mirrored my one hack before I could deactivate it. Doh! Solution: hourly, daily and weekely mirrors (rsyncs), allowing you to rollback. To be really safe, mirror your two 60GB's and have one rollback on your 120GB.
A unit like the MFC-8600/9600 is NOT priced like an inkjet printer but gives you a real flat-bed which when combined with a real laser engine gives you a ture copy machine with the added bonus of real fax and your-mileage-may-vary scanning (especially on a Mac) factory print servers are available but the LPT port should allow any of your choice, or a linux box etc.
I seriously considered the HP one given that it uses cartridges from their desktop laser models BUT the thing reportedly WILL NOT FAX FROM THE FLAT BED. The work-around is to copy the page and then fax it. (!) For those who don't think they need a flat-bed, consider the occasional need to copy or fax a collection of receipts or ANY non-letter/legal/A4 document.
Plus the high-end Brothers have real paper cassetes that may even take a full 250-page ream.
Plus... by several accounts, including one from a distributor at CeBIT, Brother has not (yet) gone fascist with ink/toner cartridges. This cartridge will self-destruct in ten seconds...
MD
Re:Why can't it be more like Linux?
on
Absolute OpenBSD
·
· Score: 1
At the risk of bringing this back on topic...
Does Mr. Lucas address OpenBSD's compat_linux?
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq9.html
He does in the book's predecessor "Absolute (Free)BSD" and has a rocking article on compat_linux "the hard way" at OnLamp
"OSX killed Extension Manager by way of UNIX, SoundJam by way of buyout, and Spellchecker with built in Cocoa services."
Not so fast. C&G SpellCatcher, formerly Thunder 7 is an excellent, unique app that Cocoa services fail to replace because so few applications use Cocoa services. In-line red-squiggle spell checking has changed some things but does little for spell checking the text box I am writing into right now. SpellCatcher captures all text input and can log it if you want to snoop/document. What killed it in part was the unfortunate amount of time it required to port to OS X. Fortunately, the C&G site points to another company that has picked it up.
troll/ To say that Cocoa services replaced SpellCatcher is to say that Spring-loaded folders replaced PopUpFolder, for those who remember it./troll
"IBM is doing precisely what any 800lb gorilla would do in the circumstances. Very little. Why bother?"
True but that gorilla could do some good:
Buying SCO and re-licensing its non-sub-licensed assets under a BSD license would allow Sun, SGI and every other Unix-licensee to go on with business as usual. The contamination issues would be resolved in one fell swoop, as I understand it. Should IBM go this route, we just may get a healthy FreeBSD PPC. Open letter time?
The question is: How does one use a true deadkey such as apostrophe, AND ONLY APOSTROPHE for accented characters in Mac OS X?
Think back to touch typing class: you learned SHIFT and only SHIFT to modify characters. OPTION is a computer convention great for keyboard short cuts but is maddening for touch typists who hope to type as quickly in their native language as one can in English.
The only valid answers have been those regarding non-English keyboard maps that introduce non-OPTION deadkeys. So far, the question is not answered.
OT:/. Moderators: Responses that include the phrase "dumb ass" often indicate that the reader did not understand the question, rather than his or her haxor guru wisdom. Take a look at all of the "duh, use the option key" posts that you declared "Informative." They're not. They completely miss the point of the original question and you fell for it.
"I wonder what the reason behind it is? With only two main PPC mobo makers surely there would be a market."
Think back to the ATX-factor Dec Alpha motherboards that tried to fill a similar niche: off-the-shelf components with a "real" processor, so the logic went with "niche" being the key word.
Based on my observations at CeBIT, motherboard economics follow this pattern:
Designing a new motherboard is nothing more than a question some time and money but you had be very sure of what market you are targeting:
1. The volume PC market where price is the key factor at the cost of random-sampling quality control.
2. The industrial PC market where buyers will pay a premium, get their exact specs (PPC if you want PPC) and take individual board quality assurance testing for granted.
3. Volume vertical markets such as set-top boxes. A PPC processor will be used if either the application or economics warrant it, and the volume makes up for the design costs plus the cost of the stylish injection-molded/whatever case.
While TerraSoft did not give details, they could have easily concluded that targeting such a niche market would not allow them to meet their price points or cover development costs, especially as the current PPC line ages and a new processor socket could be on the horizon, requiring additional engineering.
To further complicate things, an ITX-form factor vendor informed me that VIA will only sell its older chips in small quantities, giving first choice on new processors to larger customers. The same may be true of the PPC, making a TerraSoft board less attractive to users who are building their own box to achieve maximum performance.
On a positive but mildly off-topic note, if you are a large organization requiring a large number of boards to your specific specs (including PPC), do not hesitate to shop around for a fab that will accommodate. You might be surprised at what you hear. (No, I am not affiliated with any fab or any fab organization u.t.t, I just got that impression from vendors I talked to.)
"You are now already complaining that Apple ships some buggy stuff. Do you think the situation would improve if they started shipping a lot more programs?"
I perceived a desire (personal and in others) for (1) a native package manager in OS X (just as existed long ago in NeXTStep) and (2) and X11 package... just as existed for NeXTStep long ago (granted, not out of the box).
How do you guys keep interpreting this as a request for "a lot more programs?" Am I going out on a limb to suggest that the loss or three.1's-late release of these cannot be considered a loss of features/functionality? I just want, if anything to 'rpm -e' the default apache and have the option of replacing it with one in a standard package that conforms to Apple's package guidlines, which exist, really. If somehow you think that it is perfectly logical not to be able to remove/uninstall a package you've added, try searching for "how do I remove a package in OS X." You will find that people disagree with you. YES, I know, removing the default apache could break something and compromise Apple's ease-of-use. That same logic dictates that they shouldn't have included the command line.
Help me here, please: It is illogical to think that having a default apache and a Fink-installed apache is redundant? Obviously I am missing something.
"Red Hat also didn't create/port all that software themselves, nor are all the maintainers Red Hat employees. Linux is simply a more established/older Unix variant, so more software has already been ported to it and thoroughly tested."
Mac OS X's Darwin is based on NeXTStep. NeXTStep shipped in 1988. How is Linux older? Going out on a limb... maybe in OSS years if you compare the man hours spend inside Apple on Darwin to those outside working on Linux but calendar years are calendar years.
"What do developer tools have to do with X11? You can perfectly create programs that have nothing to do with X11. In fact, a non-X11 program is likely to be of much greater value (in the sense of usability and attractiveness) to the Mac community than an X11 program."
I am getting a very mixed message from you, Apple and the gentleman who reamed me earlier that Mac OS X IS, and ISN'T a recognized out-of-the-box *nix flavor. The topic at hand (Fink) seems to go, "it is, but it ins't, but it really is if you add Fink." So it isn't? You should port to Aqua and Carbon, not compile the code you have, and perhaps used on Ultrix, NeXT, Linux and now Mac OS X?
"It's true that Mac OS X is probably the only modern Unix variant that doesn't ship with X11 by default (yet), but has it ever occurred to you that the reason for that may be that Mac OS X already has a different window manager on board (while for the others it's either XWindows or nothing) which is much more important to most Mac users? I really don't understand why you are so obsessed with X11 not being included by default."
Clearly we are not talking about the needs of "most mac users." That's an easy out and we're talking about Apple's addressing the needs of *nix users. I guess here's my hangup: I'm not sure if the unix admin in me should consider Mac OS X a slow-to-catch-up joke of a Unix or the Mac guy in me should weep in gratitude at Apple's boots for throwing me scraps of *nix features that are taken for granted on other *nix systems. Perhaps the end-all-be-all flame-war topic is in order: Is Mac OS X really *nix?
"It's BSD, making it more UNIX than Linux" "It has no X11, what do you mean it's *nix?" And on and on. (Two of your own points, one turned around given the history.)
"Those "mainstream open source OS"'s lacked several key features Apple needed in its OS at the time Mac OS X development started and they are only now catching up."
Started when Steve left Apple to form NeXT? Granted, there was no NeXT SMP. Out of curiosity, has anyone benchmarked the GNU/Darwin kernel vs. GNU/Linux?
"I really don't understand why you think Apple should do everything base
You said: "Congratulations, you just demonstrated a complete and total lack of knowledge of how the proprietary software cycle works."
Indeed, I naively assumed that Apple's Open Source OS initiative would deliver a few system administration tools (such as a full-featured package manager) that I had taken for granted under RedHat Linux. Ha ha on me. Moving on, thank you Fink for filling the gap. I admire your endurance as an Apple apologetic. I lost that zeal years ago.
Wow! I will take the time to address this out of the sheer enjoyment, AC. Keep square in your mind that I am both an over dozen-year supporter of Apple (hence my concerns) AND I voted for Gore.
YES, it is a dated joke but "raping a dead horse?" This will require a recount from the judges.
Here goes:
"Gore never said he invented the Internet.... He heard about it, thought it was a good idea, supported it, and hey look! You fucking use it, and I bet 90% or more of the people you know use it or have used it at one time."
In support of your vulgar but correct argument, he helped make it free of taxation and other government restraints to its growth. Go GORE! Indeed, the results have been extremely positive and billions use it every day. Only recently have laws been introduced to stifle its use in the thinly-veiled name of fascism. Going out on a limb here... You are probably upset by what you are seeing on your television set and opted to take that aggression out on my friendly jab at the man who one the popular vote in the last (dare I say LAST) election.
"So what you really mean to say is. You look forward to an announcement that Apple is going to increase and/or continue its support of OSS, because it thinks its a great idea. Now which one of those do you think is more likely?"
Uh, you're giving me a choice between "increase" and "continue?" I supposedly I'd like "increase" but "continue" will do.
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
Which did I choose?
"It's not what you know, it's who you know. This is something everyone over the age of 20 should understand. Knowing people = connection = good thing."
So Al will increase Apple's commitment to OSS? I'm all for that.
"Al Gore was the VP of the United States of America. Although our current leader is no genius, I'd argue that Gore is an intelligent guy."
I agree completely and voted for him accordingly. I told my friends, "I want the guy who knows what an IP address." Yes, silly but true and hopefully is a lesson to you that my jab at his gaff is NOT a position statement in any way shape or form, given MY SUPPORT OF HIM.
"They can't seem to get that NIH attitude out of their heads even when they go open source."
>Or do you mean things like gcc3.1, gprof, XFree86, libtool, automake, KHTML, &c?
Do a search for the bugs Apple has introduced to IPSec and GCC. Where on the Jaguar disc can I find XFee86?
"Fink and GNU/Darwin are clean up efforts in reponse to Apple's failure to:"
>You do realize that it isn't Apple's responsability to do everything for you?
You don't find that Apple is again returning to an era of having a full-featured OS (in the BSD sense of the term) and a broad application suite? I can safely say they ARE trying to do everything for me and let's try an analogy:
Why can't Apple's out-of-the-box Unix be as compelling to RedHat users as say, their Final Cut Pro is to Avid users?
I don't want to get into "my Apple loyalty is bigger than yours" but it is my 13-year admiration of their complete product line that makes me so critical of their half (3/4?)-hearted OSS unix implementation.
I am baffled by your defense of MacOS X 1.0 not shipping with a working package manager and X11 implenation out of the box by saying it has them years later thanks to a number of third party projects. Most people simply say "it's aimed at consumers yadda yadda."
If I am such a trolling idiot, explain how I perform the equivalent of 'rpm -e apache' on a freshly-installed Mac OS X box? Where's the built-package manager? NeXT had it?
Look at the Darwin discs you download. The installer relies on packages, but then doesn't and the whole idea is swept under the table.
Kudos to Fink and and GNU/Darwin to finding workarounds to this situation. I simply don't understand why it is a problem in the first place. Going from RedHat's out-of-the box *nix environment to Apple's was a step back for me, clearly it was not for you.
" X11 from day one. "
>I don't suppose that you have heard of the XonX project?
That was on Mac OS X 1.0 install disc 3?
"useable AND would have convinced more traditional workstation users that Apple is serious about open environments."
This statement does not grok. Most "tradiational workstation users" don't give a damn whether Apple is "serious about open environments."
These guys seem to: www.macdevcenter.com Do you put O'Reilly and Associates in the same Trolling Idiot category as you put me?
"The official X11 for OS X package remains in beta to this day."
>Considering it was released in January and we are on Beta 3 right now, which is more than useable. It took Mozilla how long to get through its own Beta stage?
Perhaps I've failed to make my point that in my humble opinion, Mac OS X 1.0 should have shipped with an X11 implementation right out of the box given that is shipping with say... developer tools.
We seem to disagree on this point.
"Fully embrace a mainstream open source OS. "
>'They have done so much that no-one else in the field ever has... but damn them! They aren't doing enough!'
At what point did I say they need a single additional piece of code other than those they are working, short of working package manager, which they had in NeXT? I will dig up the links to the IPSec and GCC bugs if you like. If you think shipping broken code is the same as 1.0 release, I am find disagreeing on that too.
>Am I getting the gist of your argument?
>You do realize that, for the vast majority of us, we try to use what works best for us and do not choose our platform soley on the basis of religious zeal.
??? I've gone from Troll to religious zealot? I just want a working package manager and X11 out of the box! This requires sacrificing a chicken?
" I don't care how black-turtle-kneck-sweater cool the MACH kernel is"
>The variant of mach they are using is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike mach. It has been so heavily revised it isn't even funny.
I can't help but share the thought that with Al Gore on the Apple board, we can look forward to an announcement that Apple "Invented Open Source" at the upcoming WWDC.
No... Apple is a problem. They can't seem to get that NIH attitude out of their heads even when they go open source. Fink and GNU/Darwin are clean up efforts in reponse to Apple's failure to:
1. Offer a true package manager like the one on NeXT that they are using, sans all of its useful features.
2. X11 from day one. This may be the one thing that would have made MacOS X 1.0 useable AND would have convinced more traditional workstation users that Apple is serious about open environments. The official X11 for OS X package remains in beta to this day.
3. Fully embrace a mainstream open source OS. Using FreeBSD at arms-length with a kernel of questionable performance and need does NOT make for a main-stream OS. I don't care how black-turtle-kneck-sweater cool the MACH kernel is - I don't want to use it if I'm paying a performance penalty or can't build it as easily as a FreeBSD kernel.
I am aware that their fully-adopting Linux or FreeBSD, in their rapidly-evolving, somewhat moving-target states would be a major LEAP OF FAITH but haven't they already made such a leap by going semi-open source? If they aren't ready with a mechanism for weekly or daily patches, they must not realize what they have signed up for and are NOT leveraging as many deveoplers as possible. I see this as a clear reminder of their Not Invented Here attidude. What, Not Debugged Here?
Mind you these are the words of a guy who has waited for MacOS X from the moment he discovered NeXTStep. OS X is good but could be so much better. NetBSD's compat_darwin gives us hope that a real BSD drop-in for OS X could happen but again, this sure looks like a lot of time spent CLEANING UP Apple's kinda-open-source mess.
I once berated MultiFunctionContraptions until I really needed a laser-based flatbed copier and fax with a real paper cassette. (Try faxing reciepts from a sheet fed!) I ended up with a Brother MFC-8600 for my home office and am surprisiningly happy with it. I now need one for a second office where I will be relying on it as a printer too. HP's 3330 has since come on the scene but reports indicate that its software is terrible and you cant say... fax receipts from its flatbed. (But it has PostScript emmulation which would make for a better printer.) Canon's entries don't seem to have a strong market presense and their web site isn't very helpful. That said:
Has anyone operated a number of MFC's in a high-volume environment? Do any models stand out?
Should I instead buy a copy machine, laser printer, scanner and laser-based fax machine? No, fax software is NOT an option...
>Unless you have evidence that Cheney is still on Halliburton's payroll, and that Halliburton is incapable of doing the work at the best price, all you've got is innuendo.
Well actually... Mr. Cheney is making a million dollars a year in "deferred compensation" from Halliburton. Search his name and that phrase at Google News.
Clearly their new core is hard core: the iBoob is clearly the iBook's sister, bringing new meaning to Apple's past "Rev. A, B, C and D" iMac versioning.
Indeed, MS is treading more and more on hardware ground and made a significant move with WindowsCE: PC vendors manufacture it but it is truly not meant to run anything other than a Microsoft OS (iPaq notwithstanding), adhering to tight MS specifications.
In fact, the average off-the-shelf PC is already quite Microsoft-specific, WinModems and all.
One might argue that the majority of PC systems are already as proprietary as Apple systems. It only takes one component.
Doug Wrote: "A graphics class teaching photoshop can't use the linux solution. A business class using MS Project can't use Linux or Mac."
Okay, assuming that a fifth grade class (this is K-12 remember) is working with MS Project, do you really think they will be using MS Project 98 when they enter the workplace?
Are you using the same software at your job that you used in third grade? Did you use any software, let alone Microsoft or Adobe software when you were in third grade? One of my summer camps had brand-new C64's.
Furthermore, a kid presented with a powerful toy will use that toy until they are bored of it and not once think for about who holds the copyrights to that software nor if the CAL's are in proper order.
Which do you think an inquisitive kid will tire of first, Windows 98 or GNU/Linux? Some of these kids are even using FreeBSD.
We must then consider which skills are more marketable, or rather, will be more marketable a decade later when they enter the workplace, group scheduling in Project 98 or Unix use and system administration? Come to think of it, had I learned Unix the day I was born, I would be using it to this day while MS Project 98 probably originated some time after I had started my company.
Granted, I might be a bit more organized if I used Project 98 around the shop but that $9 worth of manila folders and a calendar have wonders AND have been bug free. Actually, a manila folder full of client documents is an EXCELLENT tool for eliminating bugs from the system.
With spiders you can usually walk them onto the folder and escort them outside while the quicker winged ones just ask for a good whack. (My apologies to any Jains in the audience.)
I detect an assumption that all schools have healthy budgets for teaching all of the skills that you and I are taking for granted at this very moment. Not to mention on the hardware we are taking for granted.
Yes, Photoshop is best taught on a high-end workstation but when a school can hardly afford that one workstation, it is a GOOD THING when the those same dollars can outfit a class lab with several Internet-equipped clients.
You are suggesting $7000 (in licensing fees alone) Citrix solutions, $129 MacOS X solutions (software alone) and $500 Microsoft office solutions (software alone) when this project is delivering workstations for $200 a seat with the servers for a few hundred more.
I would speculate that it is a GOOD THING if they can outfit an entire class lab for the same amount of money the average SlashDot user spend on the computer on which they are reading this.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever found yourself waiting for a commercial vendor to include a feature that you consider obvious or was available in their last version? I'm sure I could knock on Microsoft's door and ask them to add, say, official support for the ext3 filesystem but I don't think I would like the price they will quote me . . . or for a bug fix.
I am faced with this right now. An oss project has a feature that some consider a security flaw and I am having some contributors to the project price out the cost of the fix. I am not paying them to write SINGLE LINE OF CODE for me, but rather paying them to fix a feature/bug that is low priority on the PROJECT's todo list, that I and other will in turn use. Only non-commercial open source allows for this kind of proactivity. Sending suggestions to RedHat in the past sure didn't work.
For years Apple has put up and taken down suggestion pages claiming that if they use one of your ideas, you could sue them for stealing it, so they make a very concerned point of NOT listening to customer feedback unless it is part of a survey with a disclaimer. Send in the lawyers!
So, in fantasy land: What if Microsoft's software was free of charge and its users paid them the exact same amount of money to fix bugs and sponsor features of THEIR design. While MS may sell a certain feature (or disabling of another) to the highest bidder, I don't see Linus Torvalds rejecting a sane fix simply because someone paid to have it written.
Most OSS appears to be need-driven, making the developer the number one customer. What's wrong with a second, paying customer? I can "love it or leave it" with commercial software (and often have left) while OSS allows me to "love it or improve it."
MD
"The plan I've been mulling about is to have SATA RAID 0 with two 60 Gig drives and then a 120 Gig drive that I rsync up with nightly so that I have a relatively easy way of recovering things if they fail."
In short, yes. Some time ago, I would unmount a drive and use dd to mirror it daily, though it required an identical drive.
Rsync is your friend and note that you can separately synchronize your mail spool more frequently then your binaries. But... this does not account for human error or malice: my hourly cron job diligently mirrored my one hack before I could deactivate it. Doh! Solution: hourly, daily and weekely mirrors (rsyncs), allowing you to rollback. To be really safe, mirror your two 60GB's and have one rollback on your 120GB.
MD.
"A Firewire audio interface would be better of course"
Does it help any that the DV aspect of FireWire supports 12bit 4-channel and 16bit 2-channel? Just ignore the video signal.
M.
I second the Brother recommendation.
A unit like the MFC-8600/9600 is NOT priced like an inkjet printer but gives you a real flat-bed which when combined with a real laser engine gives you a ture copy machine with the added bonus of real fax and your-mileage-may-vary scanning (especially on a Mac) factory print servers are available but the LPT port should allow any of your choice, or a linux box etc.
I seriously considered the HP one given that it uses cartridges from their desktop laser models BUT the thing reportedly WILL NOT FAX FROM THE FLAT BED. The work-around is to copy the page and then fax it. (!) For those who don't think they need a flat-bed, consider the occasional need to copy or fax a collection of receipts or ANY non-letter/legal/A4 document.
Plus the high-end Brothers have real paper cassetes that may even take a full 250-page ream.
Plus... by several accounts, including one from a distributor at CeBIT, Brother has not (yet) gone fascist with ink/toner cartridges. This cartridge will self-destruct in ten seconds...
MD
At the risk of bringing this back on topic...
Does Mr. Lucas address OpenBSD's compat_linux?
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq9.html
He does in the book's predecessor "Absolute (Free)BSD" and has a rocking article on compat_linux "the hard way" at OnLamp
MD
"Did anyone else think of that subject as the title of a new Harry Potter book instead?"
Acutally, the next title has already been leaked:
Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Cash
Sorry, had to.
"OSX killed Extension Manager by way of UNIX, SoundJam by way of buyout, and Spellchecker with built in Cocoa services."
/troll
Not so fast. C&G SpellCatcher, formerly Thunder 7 is an excellent, unique app that Cocoa services fail to replace because so few applications use Cocoa services. In-line red-squiggle spell checking has changed some things but does little for spell checking the text box I am writing into right now. SpellCatcher captures all text input and can log it if you want to snoop/document. What killed it in part was the unfortunate amount of time it required to port to OS X. Fortunately, the C&G site points to another company that has picked it up.
troll/ To say that Cocoa services replaced SpellCatcher is to say that Spring-loaded folders replaced PopUpFolder, for those who remember it.
"IBM is doing precisely what any 800lb gorilla would do in the circumstances. Very little. Why bother?"
True but that gorilla could do some good:
Buying SCO and re-licensing its non-sub-licensed assets under a BSD license would allow Sun, SGI and every other Unix-licensee to go on with business as usual. The contamination issues would be resolved in one fell swoop, as I understand it. Should IBM go this route, we just may get a healthy FreeBSD PPC. Open letter time?
MD.
People, re-read the question before responding!
/. Moderators: Responses that include the phrase "dumb ass" often indicate that the reader did not understand the question, rather than his or her haxor guru wisdom. Take a look at all of the "duh, use the option key" posts that you declared "Informative." They're not. They completely miss the point of the original question and you fell for it.
The question is: How does one use a true deadkey such as apostrophe, AND ONLY APOSTROPHE for accented characters in Mac OS X?
Think back to touch typing class: you learned SHIFT and only SHIFT to modify characters. OPTION is a computer convention great for keyboard short cuts but is maddening for touch typists who hope to type as quickly in their native language as one can in English.
The only valid answers have been those regarding non-English keyboard maps that introduce non-OPTION deadkeys. So far, the question is not answered.
OT:
"I wonder what the reason behind it is? With only two main PPC mobo makers surely there would be a market."
Think back to the ATX-factor Dec Alpha motherboards that tried to fill a similar niche: off-the-shelf components with a "real" processor, so the logic went with "niche" being the key word.
Based on my observations at CeBIT, motherboard economics follow this pattern:
Designing a new motherboard is nothing more than a question some time and money but you had be very sure of what market you are targeting:
1. The volume PC market where price is the key factor at the cost of random-sampling quality control.
2. The industrial PC market where buyers will pay a premium, get their exact specs (PPC if you want PPC) and take individual board quality assurance testing for granted.
3. Volume vertical markets such as set-top boxes. A PPC processor will be used if either the application or economics warrant it, and the volume makes up for the design costs plus the cost of the stylish injection-molded/whatever case.
While TerraSoft did not give details, they could have easily concluded that targeting such a niche market would not allow them to meet their price points or cover development costs, especially as the current PPC line ages and a new processor socket could be on the horizon, requiring additional engineering.
To further complicate things, an ITX-form factor vendor informed me that VIA will only sell its older chips in small quantities, giving first choice on new processors to larger customers. The same may be true of the PPC, making a TerraSoft board less attractive to users who are building their own box to achieve maximum performance.
On a positive but mildly off-topic note, if you are a large organization requiring a large number of boards to your specific specs (including PPC), do not hesitate to shop around for a fab that will accommodate. You might be surprised at what you hear. (No, I am not affiliated with any fab or any fab organization u.t.t, I just got that impression from vendors I talked to.)
MD
"You are now already complaining that Apple ships some buggy stuff. Do you think the situation would improve if they started shipping a lot more programs?"
.1's-late release of these cannot be considered a loss of features/functionality? I just want, if anything to 'rpm -e' the default apache and have the option of replacing it with one in a standard package that conforms to Apple's package guidlines, which exist, really. If somehow you think that it is perfectly logical not to be able to remove/uninstall a package you've added, try searching for "how do I remove a package in OS X." You will find that people disagree with you. YES, I know, removing the default apache could break something and compromise Apple's ease-of-use. That same logic dictates that they shouldn't have included the command line.
I perceived a desire (personal and in others) for (1) a native package manager in OS X (just as existed long ago in NeXTStep) and (2) and X11 package... just as existed for NeXTStep long ago (granted, not out of the box).
How do you guys keep interpreting this as a request for "a lot more programs?" Am I going out on a limb to suggest that the loss or three
Help me here, please: It is illogical to think that having a default apache and a Fink-installed apache is redundant? Obviously I am missing something.
"Red Hat also didn't create/port all that software themselves, nor are all the maintainers Red Hat employees. Linux is simply a more established/older Unix variant, so more software has already been ported to it and thoroughly tested."
Mac OS X's Darwin is based on NeXTStep. NeXTStep shipped in 1988. How is Linux older? Going out on a limb... maybe in OSS years if you compare the man hours spend inside Apple on Darwin to those outside working on Linux but calendar years are calendar years.
"What do developer tools have to do with X11? You can perfectly create programs that have nothing to do with X11. In fact, a non-X11 program is likely to be of much greater value (in the sense of usability and attractiveness) to the Mac community than an X11 program."
I am getting a very mixed message from you, Apple and the gentleman who reamed me earlier that Mac OS X IS, and ISN'T a recognized out-of-the-box *nix flavor. The topic at hand (Fink) seems to go, "it is, but it ins't, but it really is if you add Fink." So it isn't? You should port to Aqua and Carbon, not compile the code you have, and perhaps used on Ultrix, NeXT, Linux and now Mac OS X?
"It's true that Mac OS X is probably the only modern Unix variant that doesn't ship with X11 by default (yet), but has it ever occurred to you that the reason for that may be that Mac OS X already has a different window manager on board (while for the others it's either XWindows or nothing) which is much more important to most Mac users? I really don't understand why you are so obsessed with X11 not being included by default."
Clearly we are not talking about the needs of "most mac users." That's an easy out and we're talking about Apple's addressing the needs of *nix users. I guess here's my hangup: I'm not sure if the unix admin in me should consider Mac OS X a slow-to-catch-up joke of a Unix or the Mac guy in me should weep in gratitude at Apple's boots for throwing me scraps of *nix features that are taken for granted on other *nix systems. Perhaps the end-all-be-all flame-war topic is in order: Is Mac OS X really *nix?
"It's BSD, making it more UNIX than Linux" "It has no X11, what do you mean it's *nix?" And on and on. (Two of your own points, one turned around given the history.)
"Those "mainstream open source OS"'s lacked several key features Apple needed in its OS at the time Mac OS X development started and they are only now catching up."
Started when Steve left Apple to form NeXT? Granted, there was no NeXT SMP. Out of curiosity, has anyone benchmarked the GNU/Darwin kernel vs. GNU/Linux?
"I really don't understand why you think Apple should do everything base
You said:
"Congratulations, you just demonstrated a complete and total lack of knowledge of how the proprietary software cycle works."
Indeed, I naively assumed that Apple's Open Source OS initiative would deliver a few system administration tools (such as a full-featured package manager) that I had taken for granted under RedHat Linux. Ha ha on me. Moving on, thank you Fink for filling the gap. I admire your endurance as an Apple apologetic. I lost that zeal years ago.
Peace.
Wow! I will take the time to address this out of the sheer enjoyment, AC. Keep square in your mind that I am both an over dozen-year supporter of Apple (hence my concerns) AND I voted for Gore.
... He heard about it, thought it was a good idea, supported it, and hey look! You fucking use it, and I bet 90% or more of the people you know use it or have used it at one time."
YES, it is a dated joke but "raping a dead horse?" This will require a recount from the judges.
Here goes:
"Gore never said he invented the Internet.
In support of your vulgar but correct argument, he helped make it free of taxation and other government restraints to its growth. Go GORE! Indeed, the results have been extremely positive and billions use it every day. Only recently have laws been introduced to stifle its use in the thinly-veiled name of fascism. Going out on a limb here... You are probably upset by what you are seeing on your television set and opted to take that aggression out on my friendly jab at the man who one the popular vote in the last (dare I say LAST) election.
"So what you really mean to say is. You look forward to an announcement that Apple is going to increase and/or continue its support of OSS, because it thinks its a great idea. Now which one of those do you think is more likely?"
Uh, you're giving me a choice between "increase" and "continue?" I supposedly I'd like "increase" but "continue" will do.
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
Which did I choose?
"It's not what you know, it's who you know. This is something everyone over the age of 20 should understand. Knowing people = connection = good thing."
So Al will increase Apple's commitment to OSS? I'm all for that.
"Al Gore was the VP of the United States of America. Although our current leader is no genius, I'd argue that Gore is an intelligent guy."
I agree completely and voted for him accordingly. I told my friends, "I want the guy who knows what an IP address." Yes, silly but true and hopefully is a lesson to you that my jab at his gaff is NOT a position statement in any way shape or form, given MY SUPPORT OF HIM.
""
Al, is that you?
Michael.
"They can't seem to get that NIH attitude out of their heads even when they go open source."
>Or do you mean things like gcc3.1, gprof, XFree86, libtool, automake, KHTML, &c?
Do a search for the bugs Apple has introduced to IPSec and GCC. Where on the Jaguar disc can I find XFee86?
"Fink and GNU/Darwin are clean up efforts in reponse to Apple's failure to:"
>You do realize that it isn't Apple's responsability to do everything for you?
You don't find that Apple is again returning to an era of having a full-featured OS (in the BSD sense of the term) and a broad application suite? I can safely say they ARE trying to do everything for me and let's try an analogy:
Why can't Apple's out-of-the-box Unix be as compelling to RedHat users as say, their Final Cut Pro is to Avid users?
I don't want to get into "my Apple loyalty is bigger than yours" but it is my 13-year admiration of their complete product line that makes me so critical of their half (3/4?)-hearted OSS unix implementation.
I am baffled by your defense of MacOS X 1.0 not shipping with a working package manager and X11 implenation out of the box by saying it has them years later thanks to a number of third party projects. Most people simply say "it's aimed at consumers yadda yadda."
If I am such a trolling idiot, explain how I perform the equivalent of 'rpm -e apache' on a freshly-installed Mac OS X box? Where's the built-package manager? NeXT had it?
Look at the Darwin discs you download. The installer relies on packages, but then doesn't and the whole idea is swept under the table.
Kudos to Fink and and GNU/Darwin to finding workarounds to this situation. I simply don't understand why it is a problem in the first place. Going from RedHat's out-of-the box *nix environment to Apple's was a step back for me, clearly it was not for you.
" X11 from day one. "
>I don't suppose that you have heard of the XonX project?
That was on Mac OS X 1.0 install disc 3?
"useable AND would have convinced more traditional workstation users that Apple is serious about open environments."
This statement does not grok. Most "tradiational workstation users" don't give a damn whether Apple is "serious about open environments."
These guys seem to: www.macdevcenter.com Do you put O'Reilly and Associates in the same Trolling Idiot category as you put me?
"The official X11 for OS X package remains in beta to this day."
>Considering it was released in January and we are on Beta 3 right now, which is more than useable. It took Mozilla how long to get through its own Beta stage?
Perhaps I've failed to make my point that in my humble opinion, Mac OS X 1.0 should have shipped with an X11 implementation right out of the box given that is shipping with say... developer tools.
We seem to disagree on this point.
"Fully embrace a mainstream open source OS. "
>'They have done so much that no-one else in the field ever has... but damn them! They aren't doing enough!'
At what point did I say they need a single additional piece of code other than those they are working, short of working package manager, which they had in NeXT? I will dig up the links to the IPSec and GCC bugs if you like. If you think shipping broken code is the same as 1.0 release, I am find disagreeing on that too.
>Am I getting the gist of your argument?
>You do realize that, for the vast majority of us, we try to use what works best for us and do not choose our platform soley on the basis of religious zeal.
??? I've gone from Troll to religious zealot? I just want a working package manager and X11 out of the box! This requires sacrificing a chicken?
" I don't care how black-turtle-kneck-sweater cool the MACH kernel is"
>The variant of mach they are using is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike mach. It has been so heavily revised it isn't even funny.
So they've establishe
I can't help but share the thought that with Al Gore on the Apple board, we can look forward to an announcement that Apple "Invented Open Source" at the upcoming WWDC.
Sigh...
MD
michaeldexter.com
No... Apple is a problem. They can't seem to get that NIH attitude out of their heads even when they go open source. Fink and GNU/Darwin are clean up efforts in reponse to Apple's failure to:
1. Offer a true package manager like the one on NeXT that they are using, sans all of its useful features.
2. X11 from day one. This may be the one thing that would have made MacOS X 1.0 useable AND would have convinced more traditional workstation users that Apple is serious about open environments. The official X11 for OS X package remains in beta to this day.
3. Fully embrace a mainstream open source OS. Using FreeBSD at arms-length with a kernel of questionable performance and need does NOT make for a main-stream OS. I don't care how black-turtle-kneck-sweater cool the MACH kernel is - I don't want to use it if I'm paying a performance penalty or can't build it as easily as a FreeBSD kernel.
I am aware that their fully-adopting Linux or FreeBSD, in their rapidly-evolving, somewhat moving-target states would be a major LEAP OF FAITH but haven't they already made such a leap by going semi-open source? If they aren't ready with a mechanism for weekly or daily patches, they must not realize what they have signed up for and are NOT leveraging as many deveoplers as possible. I see this as a clear reminder of their Not Invented Here attidude. What, Not Debugged Here?
Mind you these are the words of a guy who has waited for MacOS X from the moment he discovered NeXTStep. OS X is good but could be so much better. NetBSD's compat_darwin gives us hope that a real BSD drop-in for OS X could happen but again, this sure looks like a lot of time spent CLEANING UP Apple's kinda-open-source mess.
MD
Great rundown but how about MFC's?
I once berated MultiFunctionContraptions until I really needed a laser-based flatbed copier and fax with a real paper cassette. (Try faxing reciepts from a sheet fed!) I ended up with a Brother MFC-8600 for my home office and am surprisiningly happy with it. I now need one for a second office where I will be relying on it as a printer too. HP's 3330 has since come on the scene but reports indicate that its software is terrible and you cant say... fax receipts from its flatbed. (But it has PostScript emmulation which would make for a better printer.) Canon's entries don't seem to have a strong market presense and their web site isn't very helpful. That said:
Has anyone operated a number of MFC's in a high-volume environment? Do any models stand out?
Should I instead buy a copy machine, laser printer, scanner and laser-based fax machine? No, fax software is NOT an option...
Thanks,
MD
Well actually... Mr. Cheney is making a million dollars a year in "deferred compensation" from Halliburton. Search his name and that phrase at Google News.
Would $1M a year cloud your judgement?
You might find this funny:
Xenix XP
MD
I believe the new iMac brings new meaning to Apple's past "Rev. A, B, C and D" iMac versioning.
Clearly their new core is hard core: the iBoob is clearly the iBook's sister, bringing new meaning to Apple's past "Rev. A, B, C and D" iMac versioning.
M.
Indeed, MS is treading more and more on hardware ground and made a significant move with WindowsCE: PC vendors manufacture it but it is truly not meant to run anything other than a Microsoft OS (iPaq notwithstanding), adhering to tight MS specifications.
In fact, the average off-the-shelf PC is already quite Microsoft-specific, WinModems and all.
One might argue that the majority of PC systems are already as proprietary as Apple systems. It only takes one component.
MD
Doug Wrote: "A graphics class teaching photoshop can't use the linux solution. A business class using MS Project can't use Linux or Mac."
Okay, assuming that a fifth grade class (this is K-12 remember) is working with MS Project, do you really think they will be using MS Project 98 when they enter the workplace?
Are you using the same software at your job that you used in third grade? Did you use any software, let alone Microsoft or Adobe software when you were in third grade? One of my summer camps had brand-new C64's.
Furthermore, a kid presented with a powerful toy will use that toy until they are bored of it and not once think for about who holds the copyrights to that software nor if the CAL's are in proper order.
Which do you think an inquisitive kid will tire of first, Windows 98 or GNU/Linux? Some of these kids are even using FreeBSD.
We must then consider which skills are more marketable, or rather, will be more marketable a decade later when they enter the workplace, group scheduling in Project 98 or Unix use and system administration? Come to think of it, had I learned Unix the day I was born, I would be using it to this day while MS Project 98 probably originated some time after I had started my company.
Granted, I might be a bit more organized if I used Project 98 around the shop but that $9 worth of manila folders and a calendar have wonders AND have been bug free. Actually, a manila folder full of client documents is an EXCELLENT tool for eliminating bugs from the system.
With spiders you can usually walk them onto the folder and escort them outside while the quicker winged ones just ask for a good whack. (My apologies to any Jains in the audience.)
MD.
I detect an assumption that all schools have healthy budgets for teaching all of the skills that you and I are taking for granted at this very moment. Not to mention on the hardware we are taking for granted.
Yes, Photoshop is best taught on a high-end workstation but when a school can hardly afford that one workstation, it is a GOOD THING when the those same dollars can outfit a class lab with several Internet-equipped clients.
MD
Let them eat cake!
You are suggesting $7000 (in licensing fees alone) Citrix solutions, $129 MacOS X solutions (software alone) and $500 Microsoft office solutions (software alone) when this project is delivering workstations for $200 a seat with the servers for a few hundred more.
I would speculate that it is a GOOD THING if they can outfit an entire class lab for the same amount of money the average SlashDot user spend on the computer on which they are reading this.
MD