I can stuff the noisy stuff in a closet and run a (relatively) thin client in the location where I want to view stuff.
I can make the entire thing a remote display or just make the storage remote. This was all being done in the 80s by Unix vendors.
I can even run things like HDMI and USB over Cat5 if I am so inclined. Thunderbolt really doesn't offer that's much that's is genuinely new and a lot of what it is overhyped for is an entirely self inflicted limitation that a particular hardware vendor imposes upon itself.
> Since you can run both display, keyboard and mouse over > one cable natively, this means that you can put your > computer with its noisy fans into the basement, use a single > thunderbolt cable, and just have an extremely thin client at > your workstation.
Sounds like an Xterminal from 1988.
I do that sort of thing with my Linux boxes all the time. I even do that sort of thing with Windows boxes already.
I don't need a proprietary cable run. I don't need an relatively obscure bit of technology that isn't even available on an expansion card.
I bet you there is a strong inverse relationship between those excited about Thunderbolt and those that actually have the wiring to take advantage of it.
Even USB2 will do for that. Not a big deal. There are plenty of better options available assuming I tire of the relative slowness of USB2.
I move files around by the terabyte. In that use case, the slowness of other options becomes annoying. However, there's only so much I am willing to spend on a better solution. Also, if I blow a big wad of cash for it I will have very high expectations and be very easily disappointed.
My non-cheap machines all have USB3. My cheap machines all have eSATA.
Thunderbolt is more like an option that wants to displace DVD and BluRay.
Collectively DVD and BD have this massive legacy library. A newer player has legacy support for the older content.
An entirely new option has to completely ditch all of that and may have inferior selection. There may be things that are simply not available on the "hot shiny new" option despite the fact that it is "hot, shiny, and new".
However, that is called "popularizing" a product rather than "inventing" it.
You can acknowledge Steve's true talents without turning your claims into a total fanboy fantasy.
I cringe every time I hear Jobs get credit for the Apple when it was Woz that actually built it. The guys that do the actual engineering are all getting overshadowed here. This is true even for the people that shared the garage with Jobs. Nevermind people that came to the company later or people from the outside.
The platform du jour of Apple is PhoneOS. It's not even as open as MS-DOS or Windows is.
I am not free to move data around as I see fit. I am not free to install whatever applications I want on it.
It is so closed that the idea of Free Software is moot.
Even the App Store license terms are Free Software hostile.
The entire platform is hostile to end user control by design. If you don't control a thing then you can't really own it.
You may also find yourself with a horrendous legal liability at some point in the future. You can never vouch for what your device is doing and it could be as much of a bot.net zombie as any PC. You may never know because you aren't allowed that level of awareness.
The problem with the walled garden approach is that certain things don't "just work" or they require a level of finagle that is inappropriate to the non-geek consumer.
You end up with the contortions needed to move stuff around or print it. You end up with nonsense that the Fanboys would screech bloody murder about if it was don't on ANY OTHER PLATFORM. Nonsense is excused for no other reason than brand loyalty.
Sometimes even simple things are neglected. You don't necessarily have to be disgruntled about "lack of hackability" to decide that the Apple option is inferior and want to seek out alternatives.
That is a big problem with the "design focus". It's easy for clueless journalists to confuse a good presentation with good technology and help increase the hype and nonsense surrounding a product.
> Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS,
If Apple were about nothing but MacOS, then you would have a point.
However, MacOS is now the minority part of Apple's business.
The problem that people have with RMS is that he points out all of the things that people would like to ingore for the sake of expediency. People don't like being exposed as foolish. People don't appreciate enlightenment. People can't handle being confronted with the things they try to hide from themselves.
Those that try to tell others how they are harming themselves tend to get set out in the desert sun.
> It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do....a specious argument.
The problem with computing, the real problem with computing, is that it is prone to tolerate only one option. The reign of MS-DOS was ample demonstration of this. It's not like cars, or soup, or burgers, or even web search engines where it is pretty trivial to avoid a market leader. What morons allow to happen to the computing market impacts everyone's choices.
Free Software is one thing that is able to effectively resist the effects that destroy commercial competitors to the monopoly du jour.
Once you take away end user freedom just run what they want (never mind the source code), then something like Free Software becomes impossible.
The problem with the "user choice" mantra of yours is that it is unlikely that consumers are screaming "put me in chains". They simply don't understand the bargain they are making.
Hollywood has to compete with the last 100 years of it's own best material. Technology makes it easier and easier to access all of that material way in a convenient and legal manner. You can just watch stuff from your own media stockpile instead of buying something new.
Plus, Hollywood also has to compete with every new distraction that's been invented.
Slashdot Mirror
If you aren't just a cheap bastard, then you wire your house.
Mine has GigE and Fiber.
It doesn't need to.
I can stuff the noisy stuff in a closet and run a (relatively) thin client in the location where I want to view stuff.
I can make the entire thing a remote display or just make the storage remote. This was all being done in the 80s by Unix vendors.
I can even run things like HDMI and USB over Cat5 if I am so inclined. Thunderbolt really doesn't offer that's much that's is genuinely new and a lot of what it is overhyped for is an entirely self inflicted limitation that a particular hardware vendor imposes upon itself.
Linus didn't "invent" anything. He cloned a well known design and and used another lesser Unix clone as a starting point.
Linus is a great project manager. He might even be a great coder but it's hard to tell since Linux got away from him so quickly.
Besides, having a kernel only gets you so far. You need the rest of the system too. Which brings us around to the demon of the hour.
My dead Mini and my wounded one beg to differ.
Looking good is no substitute for working well, being well equipped, or being durable.
Except on a certain level he's right and that's not a problem really.
We don't need to tell stupid lies.
Sometimes the truth is actually better if you spend a moment to think about it.
Apple owns CUPS now.
There is simply no excuse for the proprietary printing mess that is PhoneOS.
Ease of use on Apple products is mostly smoke and mirrors.
> Since you can run both display, keyboard and mouse over
> one cable natively, this means that you can put your
> computer with its noisy fans into the basement, use a single
> thunderbolt cable, and just have an extremely thin client at
> your workstation.
Sounds like an Xterminal from 1988.
I do that sort of thing with my Linux boxes all the time. I even do that sort of thing with Windows boxes already.
I don't need a proprietary cable run. I don't need an relatively obscure bit of technology that isn't even available on an expansion card.
I bet you there is a strong inverse relationship between those excited about Thunderbolt and those that actually have the wiring to take advantage of it.
> It is if transferring an hour of 1080p video.
Even USB2 will do for that. Not a big deal. There are plenty of better options available assuming I tire of the relative slowness of USB2.
I move files around by the terabyte. In that use case, the slowness of other options becomes annoying. However, there's only so much I am willing to spend on a better solution. Also, if I blow a big wad of cash for it I will have very high expectations and be very easily disappointed.
My non-cheap machines all have USB3. My cheap machines all have eSATA.
Thunderbolt is more like an option that wants to displace DVD and BluRay.
Collectively DVD and BD have this massive legacy library. A newer player has legacy support for the older content.
An entirely new option has to completely ditch all of that and may have inferior selection. There may be things that are simply not available on the "hot shiny new" option despite the fact that it is "hot, shiny, and new".
...I forgot about that in my other response.
I scaled back my Netflix account. I got a RedBox account. I may cancel my Netflix DVD service if RedBox works out.
I am also looking into and watching Amazon Prime more. It works just as well on my Roku and even better under Linux.
I have reduced my service.
I have created a RedBox account.
If the whole RedBox thing works out, I might cancel Netflix entirely.
THIS is the problem that RMS has.
We have gone to PCs being a device to empower individuals to them being conflated with an oven.
An oven is not a general purpose programmable computing device and doesn't pretend to be (like an iPhone or iPad).
...which is all well and good.
However, that is called "popularizing" a product rather than "inventing" it.
You can acknowledge Steve's true talents without turning your claims into a total fanboy fantasy.
I cringe every time I hear Jobs get credit for the Apple when it was Woz that actually built it. The guys that do the actual engineering are all getting overshadowed here. This is true even for the people that shared the garage with Jobs. Nevermind people that came to the company later or people from the outside.
Did you have $400 to spring for a copy of Solaris in 1994 as well as the money to build a SCSI based PC?
Otherwise, STFU.
Proprietary Unix always had a pricing issue. That pricing issue was bound to destroy it sooner or later if it didn't get some sort of wakup call.
Whatever else you might think of Linux, it did help make the world safe for overpriced Unix and helped blunt the onslaught of Windows NT.
The platform du jour of Apple is PhoneOS. It's not even as open as MS-DOS or Windows is.
I am not free to move data around as I see fit. I am not free to install whatever applications I want on it.
It is so closed that the idea of Free Software is moot.
Even the App Store license terms are Free Software hostile.
The entire platform is hostile to end user control by design. If you don't control a thing then you can't really own it.
You may also find yourself with a horrendous legal liability at some point in the future. You can never vouch for what your device is doing and it could be as much of a bot.net zombie as any PC. You may never know because you aren't allowed that level of awareness.
A hacked AppleTV is like the ultra-geek option.
It is so beyond the norm that it even goes beyond the idea of installing software on a low profile PC.
It's called "jailbreaking" for a reason.
The problem with the walled garden approach is that certain things don't "just work" or they require a level of finagle that is inappropriate to the non-geek consumer.
You end up with the contortions needed to move stuff around or print it. You end up with nonsense that the Fanboys would screech bloody murder about if it was don't on ANY OTHER PLATFORM. Nonsense is excused for no other reason than brand loyalty.
Sometimes even simple things are neglected. You don't necessarily have to be disgruntled about "lack of hackability" to decide that the Apple option is inferior and want to seek out alternatives.
That is a big problem with the "design focus". It's easy for clueless journalists to confuse a good presentation with good technology and help increase the hype and nonsense surrounding a product.
Edison is not a bad comparison either. You just have to understand that Edison wasn't what Americans pretend him to be either.
Tomorrow's bullshit history is being written right here and now.
100 years from now geeks will be arguing about Jobs and Gates just like they argue about Edison and Tesla now.
The masses will believe the nonsense. A little depressing really...
Ok. So now fanboys are Steve's illegitmate children.
That's a great rhetorical corner you've painted yourself into there.
> Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS,
If Apple were about nothing but MacOS, then you would have a point.
However, MacOS is now the minority part of Apple's business.
The problem that people have with RMS is that he points out all of the things that people would like to ingore for the sake of expediency. People don't like being exposed as foolish. People don't appreciate enlightenment. People can't handle being confronted with the things they try to hide from themselves.
Those that try to tell others how they are harming themselves tend to get set out in the desert sun.
> It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do. ...a specious argument.
The problem with computing, the real problem with computing, is that it is prone to tolerate only one option. The reign of MS-DOS was ample demonstration of this. It's not like cars, or soup, or burgers, or even web search engines where it is pretty trivial to avoid a market leader. What morons allow to happen to the computing market impacts everyone's choices.
Free Software is one thing that is able to effectively resist the effects that destroy commercial competitors to the monopoly du jour.
Once you take away end user freedom just run what they want (never mind the source code), then something like Free Software becomes impossible.
The problem with the "user choice" mantra of yours is that it is unlikely that consumers are screaming "put me in chains". They simply don't understand the bargain they are making.
Hollywood is still making movies out of 3500 Greek stories and 2000 year old Viking ones.
Also, your art house pictures that don't make any money but some how are "better" don't really address the actual question.
If you forced Hollywood to be restricted to art house pictures, they would probably prefer rampant piracy.
...like I just said.
Hollywood has to compete with the last 100 years of it's own best material. Technology makes it easier and easier to access all of that material way in a convenient and legal manner. You can just watch stuff from your own media stockpile instead of buying something new.
Plus, Hollywood also has to compete with every new distraction that's been invented.
There is simply no point in remaking Footloose when I can probably buy the original in the $5 bargain bin at Walmart.
Piracy is not the biggest threat to Hollywood, their own back catalog is.
Yes. This is by no means a cheap option.
Besides, if you are going to put xboxes under all of your TVs you could just use Media Center and avoid channel specific streaming.
Stream everything.
This does nothing to displace conventional cable like an AppleTV or Roku does or even XBMC.