Example: Apple users are referred to as "gay" due to their choices.
No, they're referred to as "gay" because they whinge and whine and have a martyr complex. I'm a Mac user and I find other Mac users to be plain embarrassing.
When you accuse several million people of demonstrating "indefensible smugness" based solely on the type of computer they're sitting in front of, you must certainly expect something of a backlash from those of us who do, in fact, take security seriously.
Given the vitriolic and indignant responses I read on/. to what was a very reasonable statement by Bill Thompson, I think he was correct in his identification of "indefensible smugness". Mac users need to move past the infatuation phase with OS X and realise that OS X has many of the same weaknesses as Linux, Solaris and BSD. I run a virus scanner and I practise good security on my network. Why is that so many OS X users think they're beyond all that?
It was amusing that the most popular response to Thompson's article about "indefensible smugness" was a variant of "OS X doesn't have any known viruses" followed by various rants about Windows. Proved his point rather well, I thought.
Fortunately for me, I know better than to make such outrageous statements.
Wish I had known that before I made a not-so-nice comment about Apple which resulted in several mods going well out of their way to mod me down until I couldn't post on Slashdot for a couple of weeks.
You hit the nail on the head, Nanogator.
I have also noticed extremist Apple fanboy moderation around here lately. My Mac credentials extend back to the late 80s on System 6 and I've owned a half dozen Macs over the years. I'm even typing this from a Powerbook (running Linux admittedly). I'm a strong supporter of Apple and I love to read books about their history. Yet even the most mild criticism of Apple or MacOS on/. will result in my comments being moderated down as Flamebait, Troll and Overrated. I never get similar mistreatment for negative comments about Linux or Windows. It seems Apple fanboys have no qualms abusing the moderation system to ensure that only positive Apple comments are seen.
Unfortunately this isn't new behaviour for Apple fanboys. As far back as I can remember - including the glory days of Usenet - the Apple fanboys have been the most intolerant, the least receptive to criticism, the most judgemental and often the least educated of all the enthusiast groups. The negative moderation of any criticism of the latest Macs is yet another example of this behaviour. Anybody who thinks Linux fanatics can be over the top has never seen an Apple fanboy in full swing. Even the Amiga users were never so extreme. That sort of stupid fanatacism is what led to one of my earlier sigs: "I love Apple hardware but goddamn I hate Apple users".
The example at the start of this thread epitomizes everything I hate about Apple fanboyism. Steve said something that deservedly should be called out for being deceitful bullshit. If any other CEO - Gates, McNealy, Ellison - had said something similar we'd have people throwing figures around and using datasheets to prove that the CEO was a lying bastard. Even when a relative nobody from GNOME or Xorg attempts to massage the figures there will be 100s of/. comments crying "Bullshit". Yet when Steve does the same thing the Apple fanboys are rallying behind him, providing him with excuses, apologising for his behaviour, rationalising the lies, and moderating or shouting down anybody who points out that the emperor has no clothes. Apple gets "special treatment" and I find that despicable.
No, because a baking thermometer does not track progress. During baking the temp usually remains constant.
I'm guessing you've never baked. A baking thermometer doesn't measure the temperature of the oven, it measures the temperature of the food, and the temperature of the food does increase throughout the baking process. You know the roast is cooked through when the temperature at the centre of the roast reaches an upper limit.
So I have an NSLU2 at home. Had it for about a year. The length of time the thing has been actually useful is maybe two days. Let me give you the counterpoint...
Hrm, I don't dispute your experience however the NSLU2 has been an absolute godsend to my network. I regularly push 25-30Mbps through the thing (SMB) and while I agree that's slow it is plenty fast enough for my needs. I can play DivX and XviD files directly off the device on my Xbox. I use it for the central MP3/OGG store for iTunes. It is my backup device (rsync on my other machines). It takes up an otherwise unused cupboard shelf and the slug is absolutely *silent* because the USB enclosures are fanless. Perhaps there's some disk chatter when it's pushing bits but I honestly wouldn't know because I'ver never heard it. Mine has been perfectly reliable for the past 12 months; no moving parts means I'm confident it will give me years of reliable service.
For the price, and the fact that you can upgrade to UNSLUNG firmware and use it for a general purpose always-on Linux server, I can't recommend the NSLU2 strongly enough.
If Apple wants to limit Mac OS use to Apple equipment, then Apple should just say it won't support anyone who is not using Apple equpipment.
If Apple did that then lots of people would buy beige boxes instead of Macs. Apple wants people to buy Macs because the Mac is one of their cash cows. OSX is the carrot to entice you to buy a Mac.
But the facts remains that the move to intel will expose Apple to a greater risk of unlicensed use of thier product, and they are likely to react accordingly, no matter how silly.
It's only silly if you don't own a Mac. If you own a Mac then you get the software in the bundle and you don't care. If you don't own a Mac then... well... Apple wants you to buy a Mac!
If I recall correctly, as of 3 years ago when I was a junior in college, one windmill could power one house. A small house, at that. I don't think technology has improved substantially in the three years since.
It would have been helpful if you'd spent a few minutes with Google before posting. Wind turbines range in production capacity between 500kW and 6MW. For comparison, a 5MW wind turbine produces enough electric power for 1000 homes and that's after taking into account fluctuating wind conditions.
I suppose a 5kW wind turbine would be enough for one house. That's the eletrical production capacity of wind turbines back from 1890. That's right; wind turbines have been used to produce electricity since the late 1800s. They produced enough power back in 1890 to power a single house today.
You have three categories, the ones that do and admit it, the ones that don't and are proud of it, and the ones that do but say they don't because they are too self conscious.
There is a fourth category: the ones that do not J-walk but claim that they do. There was a recent current affairs show that had a story on children committing crimes in outback towns. This particular current affairs show is tabloid journalism at its worst and this story was no exception. The reporter asked a bunch of children on the street ranging between 9 and 12 years old "have you ever stolen a car" and of course the children were claiming they did to gain respect in the eyes of their peers. Even a fool could see that they were lying; they had that tell-tale smirk that a child gets when they think they're getting away with a whopping great lie. However the reporter was obviously dumber than a fool because he used their prompted testimony as evidence that crime was out of control and went off on a right-wing rant about declining morals and lazy parents.
Of course, the reporter never thought to ask the local police. Another (much less popular) TV show that debunks the current affairs shows did ask the police and found that car theft in this town was no higher than in any other regional town and the car-thieves that had been caught had never been children.
Where is this all leading? Don't forget that fourth category like the tabloid journalist did.
As of this keynote, Intel chips are going into the iMac and the replacement for the Powerbook... just about the only systems which NOBODY predicted upgrades for.
Lots of people predicted that the PowerBook would be the first Mac to get the Intel chips. I did. It made no sense to upgrade their low-end first and cannabalise sales of the high-end equipment. It's simply that people who make sensible statements rarely get paid any attention. Sensationalism rules the roost and idiotic claims that Apple was going to compete with Sony, Panasonic and Tivo in 2006 were obviously more interesting than plain common sense.
How many have blown away OS X to put a PPC linux distro on there?
I have.
I've tried MacOS X but honestly Debian is better. Too many trivial applications on MacOS X come with a shareware pricetag. The one that really made me laugh was App Zapper; an expensive app to remove apps because MacOS X package management is so poor and the "just drag the icon to the Trash" myth is... well it's simply bullshit. This stuff shouldn't be third party software and I shouldn't be forking over $50 at a pop for apps this trivial. Hunting around websites to find software is a pain and every app has a different installation method - dmg, zip, stuffit, drag to installer, custom installer, why can't this all be consistent? - and I have to manually check for updates? What is this, a time warp back to the 90s?
The bundled applications are meh. The mail client isn't as good as Evolution, the web browser isn't as good as Firefox, the text editor isn't as good as... wordpad.exe. Sure I could install those apps onto MacOS X but why wouldn't I just complete the process and install Debian? Both iPhoto and iTunes are acceptable but neither is an application I'd care much to use on a laptop; those are apps I'd prefer to use on my hifi system (where I have a Mac mini running OS X for just that reason). My needs are very simple - browser, mail, editor, word processor - so support for commercial software like Final Cut or Photoshop or Office isn't a big deal to me.
I despise the Dock, especially the human interface disaster that is Dock Magnification, and I rue the day they took away spring folders. The Finder is a huge leap backwards into the 80s UI fiasco that was the NeXT FiLe BrOwSeR. Give me back the MacOS 7 Finder damnit; Apple had perfection and they threw it away. There are numerous things about the interface that annoy me; stuff like the button focus problems, or the KDE like dialogs within dialogs within dialogs. I can't make anything fullscreen - on GNOME I've configured F11 to fullscreen any application - but on MacOS X apps like Safari run on this tiny 12" screen and 20% of the real estate is taken up with menu bars. That's just retarded; give me a FULL SCREEN button. GNOME isn't perfect either and honestly MacOS X is arguably the least crappy but MacOS X isn't the pinnacle of UI design; I wish the fanbois would stop pretending otherwise.
The hardware support is good. Very slick. The 3-second sleep and the integration with the hardware is commendable. However that's not enough to overcome the other problems. I ran MacOS X exclusively for two months and I'm glad that the experiment is over. Debian is a much better desktop OS for a laptop. MacOS X has been pushed to the hifi for iTunes and VLC where it sits alongside video game consoles; as far as I'm concerned that's the proper place for it.
My current PowerBook (12" G4 1GHz) blew its subwoofer speaker within the 1st month. I never bothered getting it replaced under warranty (didn't care that much). The 80GB drive failed catastrophically after 14 months and I didn't have AppleCare so I replaced it myself with a 40GB drive. The keys have "eroded"; that's the best description I've got for the pitting and cracked surfaces.
My previous iBook (12" G4) had the paint wear off both palmrests and the touchpad stopped working. That was under warranty so the whole top panel was replaced. My iBook luckily wasn't one of the iBooks where the lid hinge would damage the video cable.
My family uses Macs as well. My brother's PowerBook had the modem port stop working (looked like the connector had broken loose). His hard drive also stopped working (replaced with a 10GB). My father's power connector disintegrated; no better description for what happened to the connector and although it looks vaguely like a standard RCA plug it's actually an extremely difficult to find connector. All of these failures were outside of warranty, of course.
Where am I leading with all this anecdotal evidence? These have been the most reliable laptops I've ever seen. I have owned dozens of laptops and the problems with the Apple laptops have been minor compared to some of the grief I've put up with from IBM or Toshiba. My current PowerBook has also survived a trip down the stairs, had a brick (an actual paving brick) dropped on its lid, yet it still keeps on ticking. The last non-Apple laptop I owned was DOA and it took 3 months of back-and-forth with the vendor before it worked properly, during which time the vendor stuffed me around so many times that I swore I've never again buy a laptop from IBM^Wthe unmentioned laptop manufacturer.
Apple didn't used to be this good. I've owned quadras, powerpc macs, powerbook 100s, duos and many others. Apple's production quality was traditionally pretty poor. The latest range of equipment has been a dramatic and very welcome improvement.
I think people generally misunderstand the sheer amount of work put into those proprietary graphics drivers. It's not something where you can throw a few bucks at some garage coders and turn out the same thing. These are done by large teams of highly payed developers (I think 100 developers is the right order of magnitude, plus or minus), working for years. It takes *serious* amounts of money to fund that sort of development staff, and it's not something you and me and a few other likeminded folks are going to be able to fund.
The same thing used to be said about operating systems.
Coal?
Oil?
Natural gas?
Nuclear?
Which of these is the least-worst to you?
Natural gas, followed by nuclear fission (nuclear fusion being an unknown), followed by oil, with coal being the least preferred. There are many reasons to choose natural gas.
Many houses in developed countries already have natural gas piped directly to their homes. For homes without piped natural gas there is well developed bottle technology which is only slightly more expensive than piped gas. The transportation and storage of natural gas in tankers and bottles is therefore a solved problem, with known costs and known dangers. Firemen are already trained to deal with natural gas fires and most people are aware of the dangers of sparks and flames near a gas leak (natural gas is conveniently laced with an odour so you can detect leaks).
Natural gas is easily and very efficiently converted to heat for the purposes of cooking, hot water and home heating. Electricity is actually a very poor method to create heat; although electric heaters are themselves very efficient the distribution of electricity is not efficient and power plants aren't efficient so the overall energy cycle is not efficient. In Australia, where natural gas is very cheap compared to electricity, many homes use natural gas for purely economic reasons. It makes much more sense to pipe natural gas to a home for heating than it does to convert any fuel into electricity (at a loss), distribute the electricity to the homes (at a loss), then convert the electricity into heat. The energy losses required to distribute natural gas are relatively insignificant.
One problem with a centralised power source - ie, nuclear fission with existing technology - is that there is a heavy reliance on a complex infrastructure; the electricity grid. This infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain and the central power plant is a catastrophic point of failure (a single power plant going offline affects 10s of 1000s of homes). Natural gas is to a large extent already decentralised; bottles mean you can operate "off the grid" and even for piped gas there are fewer homes supplied per reserve. This makes a natural gas energy system more resilient to damage. It is certainly a safer bet than the fragile centralised model provided by large-scale power plants.
Cars can easily be converted to run off compressed natural gas instead of petrol. In Australia we have a high proportion of cars that use liquid petroleum gas and it is common to find LPG bowsers at petrol stations in all capital cities. In my own city the majority of taxis have been converted to LPG for economic reasons; nearly any car can be converted to LPG for a few thousand dollars and LPG is so much cheaper than petrol that the taxi pays for the conversion within a year (or so I've been told when chatting with the taxi drivers). Now although LPG and CNG aren't the same thing (not even close) the popularity of LPG does prove that compressed gas power for cars is possible, the converted cars are acceptably safe, the infrastructure is feasible, the entire system is economical, and so CNG is likely to be a feasible solution for vehicular power.
Natural gas is an exceptionally clean burning fuel, basically producing not much more than CO2 and H20. There are some impurities (eg, sulphur, butane) but even then the pollutants produced pale into insignificance compared to the pollutants produced by burning petrol or, even worse, diesel. I'm struggling to remember the exact formulae (it's been years since I studied this) but I recall natural gas produced less than 10% of the pollutants when compared to petrol. Also the pollution produced by gas, oil and coal are nothing compared with the negative social stigma associated with nuclear pollution, no matter what the facts are regarding nuclear fission's actual contribution to pollution. For right or for wrong, nuclear power is socially unacceptable because of perceived problems with nuclear waste, and no amount of logi
Sorry mate, but in WA it's Emu Bitter - not much Swan draft is downed over here:P
My bad. I've never visited WA. The closest I ever got was Port Augusta and the prospect of another day in the car crossing the desert was unappealing to say the least.
For a unique beer try Bees Knees.. couldn't drink it all the time but very nice to have while cooking up a Barby.
The honey beer? Ugh, no thanks. I've downed a few pints and it's too sweet. If I'm mad keen for boutique beer then I tend to visit the local microbrewery - the Wig and Pen - which produces the finest stout in Australia (IMHO, of course).
I'm not a big fan of Foster's myself. Out of curiousity, what is considered good beer in Australia (Australian beer or otherwise)?
"Good beer" is subjective - there are literally thousands of popular brands on the market... did you know that Australians like beer? - but it's easy to identify the popular beers though it varies from state to state. In NSW and Victoria the most popular beer is Victoria Bitter followed by Carlton Draught. Queensland drinks a lot of Castlemaine XXXX. In Tasmania they drink a lot of Cascade and Boags. In South Australia the locally produced Coopers beer is very popular. Over in the west they prefer to drink Swan Lager. In the Northern Territory they drink dirty water, near as anybody can tell.
There are dozens of other popular brands but I'm not going to attempt to list them all. You can buy all the beers pretty much anywhere these days, so the regional preference is blurring. Of those beers just mentioned I'd only rate Coopers or Cascade.
Though in my not so humble opinion they still can't hold a candle to that beautiful C64.
I read your post. I think you are projecting some of your personal preferences onto the memories of these old computers and end up with surprising results.
No shit sherlock. I did say that the beauty of the C64 was in my not so humble opinion.
However that doesn't attract from the non-subjective examples I gave to demolish the claim that computers "back in the day" were ugly off-white boxes. I gave several examples of personal computers that were not ugly, not off-white and not boxes. They were innovative designs that were both attractive and functional. Disagreeing with my opinion is pointless; my opinion wasn't the meat of my comment.
For instance - and as we are talking subjectives here it can't go far - I simply cannot understand how you decide a C64 is 'better designed', aesthetically, than a Mac II? They use practically the same school of thought, that Star Trek II man-ridges and swiss lines sort of thing that was big in the early 80s. I mean, I can understand a slight preference for one over the other (in my case definitely the Mac) but saying they are worlds apart is baffling.
Huh? Do you even know what a Mac II looks like? It's an ugly off-white box. It's a horrible looking computer. It's got nothing on the sleek all-in-one design of the C64 with its sloped keyboard, rounded edges and chunky appearance. The C64 looked like something that belonged in the Star Wars universe. The Mac II looked like something you used in the construction of buildings.
The Sinclair was beautiful I'll give you that. But the rest, I think you are basking in the warm glow of Amiga memories
Man, I didn't use the word Amiga even once in my earlier comment. Who the fuck are you replying to, because it's obviously not me.
The Smithsonian agrees with me.
Yeah, because we all know that the Smithsonian is renowned for their opinions on fashion and aesthetics. Though even disregarding that nonsensical justification - the Smithsonian? - I agree that the Mac Classic was an awesome design. Easily the best PC design from the 80s.
(sigh. Just goes to show you, its all about tone on slashdot.)
By the way, I really despise it when people use words like "sigh" in their posts, as if somehow they were dictacting to the computer and it was capturing their every grunt and exhalation. Do you write "umm" and "burp" as well? If not, then don't be a pompous ass and write "sigh" as if somehow that conveys your exasperation with the world that lies beneath you.
That's part of the magic behind Apple's product line. "Back in the day," computers were ugly, huge, clunky, off-white boxes that people generally kept out of sight of guests, perhaps in a spare room somewhere along with their model rockets and comic books--as per a good friend of mine at the time. And this was fine; computers were not mainstream in the individual citizens' world. As computers became more and more integrated in our lives, form became just as important as functionality.
Revisionist bullshit. Computers were not all ugly off-white boxes "back in the day", and Apple has made some damn ugly hardware over the years.
To the first point, computers have always been an assorted bag of good looking equipment and ugly beige boxes. The IBM PC was infamous for being an ugly beige box but it was the exception rather than the rule. Most companies competed for attention by producing eye-catching hardware. Commodore was famous for their attractive designs - chunky styling and rounded edges with colours that were fashionable (in the 70s). I still find the C64 to be one of the most stylish personal computers ever made.
Here's another gorgeous design from "back in the day", the Sinclair ZX81. The slim case meant it slipped easily into the television cabinet and the jet-black casing was revolutionary for the time. Remember that back when this computer was released most TVs still had wooden (actually veneer) cabinets and hi-fi stereos were rarely connected to the television. This computer was positively space-aged looking by comparison. It was exceptionally attractive and many houses had this proudly seated under the TV.
Outside the PC world, mainframe companies used impressive designs to showcase their hardware. Cray had achieved legendary status for the bench seat inspired Cray-1. That particular design is still recognized today as one of the most distinctive mainframes ever built. However Cray was never content to stay still and they outdid themselves with the Cray-2 which had waterfall cooling towers. There's still nothing in the PC world that can even begin to compete with Cray for distinctive and attractive form.
Apple's decision to make their products just as appealing outside as inside is a major part of why I am one of their many fans.
Apple has produced some awfully ugly crap over the years as well. Take a look at the horrendous beige box that was the Mac II. It was by far the ugliest PC on the market at the time; even the IBM PC at that time wasn't as cringe worthy as the Mac II. How about the uninspiring Performa 575 which was also an unreliable piece of crap. Or take a look at the ugliest computer that Apple ever made... the PowerPC 4400 (argh, my eyes, the goggles do nothing).
Recently Apple has started making their computers attractive - the trend seems to have started with the iMac - but so what, the rest of the industry is doing the same thing. Everybody is making attractive cases these days; the only difference is that in the x86 world it's a choice and if you don't want to pay the premium for style then you don't have to.
So to your original points - it is not true that "back in the day" all computers were ugly off-white boxes, and it's not true that Apple has some sort of "magic" in their product line. Apple is like the rest of the companies; they've made ugly hardware to cut costs, and now like most PC manufacturers they're producing more attractive hardware to
that I could create any account I wanted on my local machine, and it would allow me, using that account name, to access shares on the network, doing whatever I wanted to files my username 'owned'. I am talking about the network that a company that makes implantable medical devices kept their work on. I suspect the 'defect' had something to do with NIS and 'travelling profiles' in Solaris
Nah, that's just a standard limitation of NFS. There is no security in NFS; the unofficial expansion of the acronym is No Fucking Security. The server trusts the client is providing a valid userid. You spoofed the userid and NFS has no way to detect that because the server assumes the client always tells the truth.
Some environments implement netgroups to limit the opportunity for attack. The server checks incoming client connections against this list; clients on the list are assumed to be properly secured so nobody using the machine can spoof a userid. This is not very effective either because spoofing a client IP address is almost as trivial as spoofing a userid.
What you found was simply standard practise for NFS, as frightening as that might be.
If you're an admin, do you allow your users basic SUDO rights like chmod, cp, mv, etc (assuming all SUDO commands are logged to a remote system)?
No.
If no, why don't you
Because they will break the system and then they will blame the IT department. Logging lets you know who did it but the blame is still entirely assigned to the IT department.
If you allow root access to your knowledgeable users (ie developers with Linux experience), what do you do to keep them 'in line'?
Developers are even worse because they think they know it all but 9 times out of 10 they know next to nothing about system administration. I would be more willing to give sudo rights to a normal user who follows a documented procedure than I would to a gung-ho know-it-all "hey I run Linux at home gimme full root access" developer. I've seen developers chmod 777 their files because they don't understand permissions. Do you think I'm going to trust them with root access to mv or cp? No chance.
I've seen developers ask for sudo access to run patchadd, to run pkgadd, to run pkgrm, to run vi (how I laughed at that one). They are rejected every single time. If they have a process that needs to run regularly as root then it can go into a script in/usr/local, permissions will be locked down so only root can modify the script, and a limited number of users will be granted access to run that script. That's as good as it will get without divine intervention (aka the CEO).
If the application developers are making changes that require frequent superuser access - especially to commands like chmod and mv and cp - then perhaps they need to rethink what they're doing. It sounds to me like they're doing something wrong.
Who's "we", buddy? I never joined in the silly boycott against Metallica. All they asked was that people stop illegally copying their studio recorded songs. Metallica has always been good to the fans - they even allow trading of live bootlegs as long as you made the recording yourself - and their albums and videos have always been above par in terms of quality and features. What they asked for was perfectly reasonable and the unjustiifed anger expressed to them by the 14 year old thieves on Slashdot did more to turn me off Slashdot than all the trolls combined.
From the same article:
Adm. Roy F. Hoffman, who is retired and who says in the advertisement, "John Kerry has not been honest,"
Feel free to quote Hoffman all you like because the man has no credibility.
HOFFMANN: Well, I can tell you that I did not know Kerry personally. I didn't ride the boat with him.
But this highlights yet another tactic of the smear campaigns that are making a mockery of democracy in America. Start with an outlandish and dishonorable claim, such as claiming that Kerry's three Purple Hearts and Bronze medal were undeserved. Wait until the election time rather than disputing their worth in the decades since they were awarded. Then bury the counterclaims in trivia and minutiae that doesn't even have to be true; the barrage of lies and half-truths simply has to be so overwhelming that it overwhelms the common man so they tune out before the protests can be heard. The barrage of nonsense from Hoffman is simply part of this carpet-bombing media tactic.
I'm not American and I couldn't give two hoots about Kerry but I'm disgusted with the way you partisan idiots are destroying your democracy. You are turning democracy into a childish football match, with teams and cheerleaders and points to be scored. Waiting several decades before calling somebody's war record into dispute is pathetic. It is a grave dishonour to somebody who risked their life to serve your country. Everybody who defends these SBV numbskulls should be ashamed and appalled at what you've turned your political system into. Between the partisan hackery and the voting scandals your democratic process is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the world.
Pay attention to people like Jon Stewart and Stop Hurting America. Your country deserves far better than you partisan idiots are providing.
Though IMO the biggest torpedo that sank the Swift Vets claims came from the New York Times.
The New York Times reported on August 5, the Kerry campaign noted that "none of the men had actually served on the Swift boats that Mr. Kerry commanded."
Though none of that matters. Kerry was made out to be a coward and a liar - his three Purple Hearts amounted to nothing after the character assassination - and he lost votes as a result. The Republican funding of the group was shameful yet I bet you won't see anything happen about that either.
You're forgetting that Australia is a nation that was founded by criminals. They are truly a nation where everyone was once a criminal.
And America was founded by puritans. Australians are forever grateful that we got the better deal.
Back to reality, Australia was neither founded by criminals nor was everyone once a criminal. Australia was founded by the British as a penal colony. God bless America for doing a bang up job on your education.
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No, they're referred to as "gay" because they whinge and whine and have a martyr complex. I'm a Mac user and I find other Mac users to be plain embarrassing.
Given the vitriolic and indignant responses I read on /. to what was a very reasonable statement by Bill Thompson, I think he was correct in his identification of "indefensible smugness". Mac users need to move past the infatuation phase with OS X and realise that OS X has many of the same weaknesses as Linux, Solaris and BSD. I run a virus scanner and I practise good security on my network. Why is that so many OS X users think they're beyond all that?
It was amusing that the most popular response to Thompson's article about "indefensible smugness" was a variant of "OS X doesn't have any known viruses" followed by various rants about Windows. Proved his point rather well, I thought.
Indefensible smugness, indeed.
You hit the nail on the head, Nanogator.
I have also noticed extremist Apple fanboy moderation around here lately. My Mac credentials extend back to the late 80s on System 6 and I've owned a half dozen Macs over the years. I'm even typing this from a Powerbook (running Linux admittedly). I'm a strong supporter of Apple and I love to read books about their history. Yet even the most mild criticism of Apple or MacOS on /. will result in my comments being moderated down as Flamebait, Troll and Overrated. I never get similar mistreatment for negative comments about Linux or Windows. It seems Apple fanboys have no qualms abusing the moderation system to ensure that only positive Apple comments are seen.
Unfortunately this isn't new behaviour for Apple fanboys. As far back as I can remember - including the glory days of Usenet - the Apple fanboys have been the most intolerant, the least receptive to criticism, the most judgemental and often the least educated of all the enthusiast groups. The negative moderation of any criticism of the latest Macs is yet another example of this behaviour. Anybody who thinks Linux fanatics can be over the top has never seen an Apple fanboy in full swing. Even the Amiga users were never so extreme. That sort of stupid fanatacism is what led to one of my earlier sigs: "I love Apple hardware but goddamn I hate Apple users".
The example at the start of this thread epitomizes everything I hate about Apple fanboyism. Steve said something that deservedly should be called out for being deceitful bullshit. If any other CEO - Gates, McNealy, Ellison - had said something similar we'd have people throwing figures around and using datasheets to prove that the CEO was a lying bastard. Even when a relative nobody from GNOME or Xorg attempts to massage the figures there will be 100s of /. comments crying "Bullshit". Yet when Steve does the same thing the Apple fanboys are rallying behind him, providing him with excuses, apologising for his behaviour, rationalising the lies, and moderating or shouting down anybody who points out that the emperor has no clothes. Apple gets "special treatment" and I find that despicable.
I'm guessing you've never baked. A baking thermometer doesn't measure the temperature of the oven, it measures the temperature of the food, and the temperature of the food does increase throughout the baking process. You know the roast is cooked through when the temperature at the centre of the roast reaches an upper limit.
Hrm, I don't dispute your experience however the NSLU2 has been an absolute godsend to my network. I regularly push 25-30Mbps through the thing (SMB) and while I agree that's slow it is plenty fast enough for my needs. I can play DivX and XviD files directly off the device on my Xbox. I use it for the central MP3/OGG store for iTunes. It is my backup device (rsync on my other machines). It takes up an otherwise unused cupboard shelf and the slug is absolutely *silent* because the USB enclosures are fanless. Perhaps there's some disk chatter when it's pushing bits but I honestly wouldn't know because I'ver never heard it. Mine has been perfectly reliable for the past 12 months; no moving parts means I'm confident it will give me years of reliable service.
For the price, and the fact that you can upgrade to UNSLUNG firmware and use it for a general purpose always-on Linux server, I can't recommend the NSLU2 strongly enough.
If Apple did that then lots of people would buy beige boxes instead of Macs. Apple wants people to buy Macs because the Mac is one of their cash cows. OSX is the carrot to entice you to buy a Mac.
It's only silly if you don't own a Mac. If you own a Mac then you get the software in the bundle and you don't care. If you don't own a Mac then... well... Apple wants you to buy a Mac!
It would have been helpful if you'd spent a few minutes with Google before posting. Wind turbines range in production capacity between 500kW and 6MW. For comparison, a 5MW wind turbine produces enough electric power for 1000 homes and that's after taking into account fluctuating wind conditions.
I suppose a 5kW wind turbine would be enough for one house. That's the eletrical production capacity of wind turbines back from 1890. That's right; wind turbines have been used to produce electricity since the late 1800s. They produced enough power back in 1890 to power a single house today.
Or that iPod users are dishonest and will lie about where they got their MP3s.
Or that iPod users are lazy and tend towards the convenience of iTunes.
Or that iPod users are technically incompetent and can't figure out P2P.
Or that the statistical sampling and analysis was flawed.
There are so many possible reasons. Why did the submitter need to state a false dichotomy?
Oh, now I see why.
There is a fourth category: the ones that do not J-walk but claim that they do. There was a recent current affairs show that had a story on children committing crimes in outback towns. This particular current affairs show is tabloid journalism at its worst and this story was no exception. The reporter asked a bunch of children on the street ranging between 9 and 12 years old "have you ever stolen a car" and of course the children were claiming they did to gain respect in the eyes of their peers. Even a fool could see that they were lying; they had that tell-tale smirk that a child gets when they think they're getting away with a whopping great lie. However the reporter was obviously dumber than a fool because he used their prompted testimony as evidence that crime was out of control and went off on a right-wing rant about declining morals and lazy parents.
Of course, the reporter never thought to ask the local police. Another (much less popular) TV show that debunks the current affairs shows did ask the police and found that car theft in this town was no higher than in any other regional town and the car-thieves that had been caught had never been children.
Where is this all leading? Don't forget that fourth category like the tabloid journalist did.
Lots of people predicted that the PowerBook would be the first Mac to get the Intel chips. I did. It made no sense to upgrade their low-end first and cannabalise sales of the high-end equipment. It's simply that people who make sensible statements rarely get paid any attention. Sensationalism rules the roost and idiotic claims that Apple was going to compete with Sony, Panasonic and Tivo in 2006 were obviously more interesting than plain common sense.
I do.
I have.
I've tried MacOS X but honestly Debian is better. Too many trivial applications on MacOS X come with a shareware pricetag. The one that really made me laugh was App Zapper; an expensive app to remove apps because MacOS X package management is so poor and the "just drag the icon to the Trash" myth is... well it's simply bullshit. This stuff shouldn't be third party software and I shouldn't be forking over $50 at a pop for apps this trivial. Hunting around websites to find software is a pain and every app has a different installation method - dmg, zip, stuffit, drag to installer, custom installer, why can't this all be consistent? - and I have to manually check for updates? What is this, a time warp back to the 90s?
The bundled applications are meh. The mail client isn't as good as Evolution, the web browser isn't as good as Firefox, the text editor isn't as good as ... wordpad.exe. Sure I could install those apps onto MacOS X but why wouldn't I just complete the process and install Debian? Both iPhoto and iTunes are acceptable but neither is an application I'd care much to use on a laptop; those are apps I'd prefer to use on my hifi system (where I have a Mac mini running OS X for just that reason). My needs are very simple - browser, mail, editor, word processor - so support for commercial software like Final Cut or Photoshop or Office isn't a big deal to me.
I despise the Dock, especially the human interface disaster that is Dock Magnification, and I rue the day they took away spring folders. The Finder is a huge leap backwards into the 80s UI fiasco that was the NeXT FiLe BrOwSeR. Give me back the MacOS 7 Finder damnit; Apple had perfection and they threw it away. There are numerous things about the interface that annoy me; stuff like the button focus problems, or the KDE like dialogs within dialogs within dialogs. I can't make anything fullscreen - on GNOME I've configured F11 to fullscreen any application - but on MacOS X apps like Safari run on this tiny 12" screen and 20% of the real estate is taken up with menu bars. That's just retarded; give me a FULL SCREEN button. GNOME isn't perfect either and honestly MacOS X is arguably the least crappy but MacOS X isn't the pinnacle of UI design; I wish the fanbois would stop pretending otherwise.
The hardware support is good. Very slick. The 3-second sleep and the integration with the hardware is commendable. However that's not enough to overcome the other problems. I ran MacOS X exclusively for two months and I'm glad that the experiment is over. Debian is a much better desktop OS for a laptop. MacOS X has been pushed to the hifi for iTunes and VLC where it sits alongside video game consoles; as far as I'm concerned that's the proper place for it.
My current PowerBook (12" G4 1GHz) blew its subwoofer speaker within the 1st month. I never bothered getting it replaced under warranty (didn't care that much). The 80GB drive failed catastrophically after 14 months and I didn't have AppleCare so I replaced it myself with a 40GB drive. The keys have "eroded"; that's the best description I've got for the pitting and cracked surfaces.
My previous iBook (12" G4) had the paint wear off both palmrests and the touchpad stopped working. That was under warranty so the whole top panel was replaced. My iBook luckily wasn't one of the iBooks where the lid hinge would damage the video cable.
My family uses Macs as well. My brother's PowerBook had the modem port stop working (looked like the connector had broken loose). His hard drive also stopped working (replaced with a 10GB). My father's power connector disintegrated; no better description for what happened to the connector and although it looks vaguely like a standard RCA plug it's actually an extremely difficult to find connector. All of these failures were outside of warranty, of course.
Where am I leading with all this anecdotal evidence? These have been the most reliable laptops I've ever seen. I have owned dozens of laptops and the problems with the Apple laptops have been minor compared to some of the grief I've put up with from IBM or Toshiba. My current PowerBook has also survived a trip down the stairs, had a brick (an actual paving brick) dropped on its lid, yet it still keeps on ticking. The last non-Apple laptop I owned was DOA and it took 3 months of back-and-forth with the vendor before it worked properly, during which time the vendor stuffed me around so many times that I swore I've never again buy a laptop from IBM^Wthe unmentioned laptop manufacturer.
Apple didn't used to be this good. I've owned quadras, powerpc macs, powerbook 100s, duos and many others. Apple's production quality was traditionally pretty poor. The latest range of equipment has been a dramatic and very welcome improvement.
The same thing used to be said about operating systems.
Natural gas, followed by nuclear fission (nuclear fusion being an unknown), followed by oil, with coal being the least preferred. There are many reasons to choose natural gas.
Many houses in developed countries already have natural gas piped directly to their homes. For homes without piped natural gas there is well developed bottle technology which is only slightly more expensive than piped gas. The transportation and storage of natural gas in tankers and bottles is therefore a solved problem, with known costs and known dangers. Firemen are already trained to deal with natural gas fires and most people are aware of the dangers of sparks and flames near a gas leak (natural gas is conveniently laced with an odour so you can detect leaks).
Natural gas is easily and very efficiently converted to heat for the purposes of cooking, hot water and home heating. Electricity is actually a very poor method to create heat; although electric heaters are themselves very efficient the distribution of electricity is not efficient and power plants aren't efficient so the overall energy cycle is not efficient. In Australia, where natural gas is very cheap compared to electricity, many homes use natural gas for purely economic reasons. It makes much more sense to pipe natural gas to a home for heating than it does to convert any fuel into electricity (at a loss), distribute the electricity to the homes (at a loss), then convert the electricity into heat. The energy losses required to distribute natural gas are relatively insignificant.
One problem with a centralised power source - ie, nuclear fission with existing technology - is that there is a heavy reliance on a complex infrastructure; the electricity grid. This infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain and the central power plant is a catastrophic point of failure (a single power plant going offline affects 10s of 1000s of homes). Natural gas is to a large extent already decentralised; bottles mean you can operate "off the grid" and even for piped gas there are fewer homes supplied per reserve. This makes a natural gas energy system more resilient to damage. It is certainly a safer bet than the fragile centralised model provided by large-scale power plants.
Cars can easily be converted to run off compressed natural gas instead of petrol. In Australia we have a high proportion of cars that use liquid petroleum gas and it is common to find LPG bowsers at petrol stations in all capital cities. In my own city the majority of taxis have been converted to LPG for economic reasons; nearly any car can be converted to LPG for a few thousand dollars and LPG is so much cheaper than petrol that the taxi pays for the conversion within a year (or so I've been told when chatting with the taxi drivers). Now although LPG and CNG aren't the same thing (not even close) the popularity of LPG does prove that compressed gas power for cars is possible, the converted cars are acceptably safe, the infrastructure is feasible, the entire system is economical, and so CNG is likely to be a feasible solution for vehicular power.
Natural gas is an exceptionally clean burning fuel, basically producing not much more than CO2 and H20. There are some impurities (eg, sulphur, butane) but even then the pollutants produced pale into insignificance compared to the pollutants produced by burning petrol or, even worse, diesel. I'm struggling to remember the exact formulae (it's been years since I studied this) but I recall natural gas produced less than 10% of the pollutants when compared to petrol. Also the pollution produced by gas, oil and coal are nothing compared with the negative social stigma associated with nuclear pollution, no matter what the facts are regarding nuclear fission's actual contribution to pollution. For right or for wrong, nuclear power is socially unacceptable because of perceived problems with nuclear waste, and no amount of logi
My bad. I've never visited WA. The closest I ever got was Port Augusta and the prospect of another day in the car crossing the desert was unappealing to say the least.
The honey beer? Ugh, no thanks. I've downed a few pints and it's too sweet. If I'm mad keen for boutique beer then I tend to visit the local microbrewery - the Wig and Pen - which produces the finest stout in Australia (IMHO, of course).
"Good beer" is subjective - there are literally thousands of popular brands on the market... did you know that Australians like beer? - but it's easy to identify the popular beers though it varies from state to state. In NSW and Victoria the most popular beer is Victoria Bitter followed by Carlton Draught. Queensland drinks a lot of Castlemaine XXXX. In Tasmania they drink a lot of Cascade and Boags. In South Australia the locally produced Coopers beer is very popular. Over in the west they prefer to drink Swan Lager. In the Northern Territory they drink dirty water, near as anybody can tell.
There are dozens of other popular brands but I'm not going to attempt to list them all. You can buy all the beers pretty much anywhere these days, so the regional preference is blurring. Of those beers just mentioned I'd only rate Coopers or Cascade.
No shit sherlock. I did say that the beauty of the C64 was in my not so humble opinion.
However that doesn't attract from the non-subjective examples I gave to demolish the claim that computers "back in the day" were ugly off-white boxes. I gave several examples of personal computers that were not ugly, not off-white and not boxes. They were innovative designs that were both attractive and functional. Disagreeing with my opinion is pointless; my opinion wasn't the meat of my comment.
Huh? Do you even know what a Mac II looks like? It's an ugly off-white box. It's a horrible looking computer. It's got nothing on the sleek all-in-one design of the C64 with its sloped keyboard, rounded edges and chunky appearance. The C64 looked like something that belonged in the Star Wars universe. The Mac II looked like something you used in the construction of buildings.
Man, I didn't use the word Amiga even once in my earlier comment. Who the fuck are you replying to, because it's obviously not me.
Yeah, because we all know that the Smithsonian is renowned for their opinions on fashion and aesthetics. Though even disregarding that nonsensical justification - the Smithsonian? - I agree that the Mac Classic was an awesome design. Easily the best PC design from the 80s.
By the way, I really despise it when people use words like "sigh" in their posts, as if somehow they were dictacting to the computer and it was capturing their every grunt and exhalation. Do you write "umm" and "burp" as well? If not, then don't be a pompous ass and write "sigh" as if somehow that conveys your exasperation with the world that lies beneath you.
PS: How was that for tone?
Revisionist bullshit. Computers were not all ugly off-white boxes "back in the day", and Apple has made some damn ugly hardware over the years.
To the first point, computers have always been an assorted bag of good looking equipment and ugly beige boxes. The IBM PC was infamous for being an ugly beige box but it was the exception rather than the rule. Most companies competed for attention by producing eye-catching hardware. Commodore was famous for their attractive designs - chunky styling and rounded edges with colours that were fashionable (in the 70s). I still find the C64 to be one of the most stylish personal computers ever made.
Here's another gorgeous design from "back in the day", the Sinclair ZX81. The slim case meant it slipped easily into the television cabinet and the jet-black casing was revolutionary for the time. Remember that back when this computer was released most TVs still had wooden (actually veneer) cabinets and hi-fi stereos were rarely connected to the television. This computer was positively space-aged looking by comparison. It was exceptionally attractive and many houses had this proudly seated under the TV.
Outside the PC world, mainframe companies used impressive designs to showcase their hardware. Cray had achieved legendary status for the bench seat inspired Cray-1. That particular design is still recognized today as one of the most distinctive mainframes ever built. However Cray was never content to stay still and they outdid themselves with the Cray-2 which had waterfall cooling towers. There's still nothing in the PC world that can even begin to compete with Cray for distinctive and attractive form.
Apple has produced some awfully ugly crap over the years as well. Take a look at the horrendous beige box that was the Mac II. It was by far the ugliest PC on the market at the time; even the IBM PC at that time wasn't as cringe worthy as the Mac II. How about the uninspiring Performa 575 which was also an unreliable piece of crap. Or take a look at the ugliest computer that Apple ever made... the PowerPC 4400 (argh, my eyes, the goggles do nothing).
Recently Apple has started making their computers attractive - the trend seems to have started with the iMac - but so what, the rest of the industry is doing the same thing. Everybody is making attractive cases these days; the only difference is that in the x86 world it's a choice and if you don't want to pay the premium for style then you don't have to.
So to your original points - it is not true that "back in the day" all computers were ugly off-white boxes, and it's not true that Apple has some sort of "magic" in their product line. Apple is like the rest of the companies; they've made ugly hardware to cut costs, and now like most PC manufacturers they're producing more attractive hardware to
Nah, that's just a standard limitation of NFS. There is no security in NFS; the unofficial expansion of the acronym is No Fucking Security. The server trusts the client is providing a valid userid. You spoofed the userid and NFS has no way to detect that because the server assumes the client always tells the truth.
Some environments implement netgroups to limit the opportunity for attack. The server checks incoming client connections against this list; clients on the list are assumed to be properly secured so nobody using the machine can spoof a userid. This is not very effective either because spoofing a client IP address is almost as trivial as spoofing a userid.
What you found was simply standard practise for NFS, as frightening as that might be.
No.
Because they will break the system and then they will blame the IT department. Logging lets you know who did it but the blame is still entirely assigned to the IT department.
Developers are even worse because they think they know it all but 9 times out of 10 they know next to nothing about system administration. I would be more willing to give sudo rights to a normal user who follows a documented procedure than I would to a gung-ho know-it-all "hey I run Linux at home gimme full root access" developer. I've seen developers chmod 777 their files because they don't understand permissions. Do you think I'm going to trust them with root access to mv or cp? No chance.
I've seen developers ask for sudo access to run patchadd, to run pkgadd, to run pkgrm, to run vi (how I laughed at that one). They are rejected every single time. If they have a process that needs to run regularly as root then it can go into a script in /usr/local, permissions will be locked down so only root can modify the script, and a limited number of users will be granted access to run that script. That's as good as it will get without divine intervention (aka the CEO).
If the application developers are making changes that require frequent superuser access - especially to commands like chmod and mv and cp - then perhaps they need to rethink what they're doing. It sounds to me like they're doing something wrong.
That was supposed to be irony? Who are you, Alanis Morissette?
Who's "we", buddy? I never joined in the silly boycott against Metallica. All they asked was that people stop illegally copying their studio recorded songs. Metallica has always been good to the fans - they even allow trading of live bootlegs as long as you made the recording yourself - and their albums and videos have always been above par in terms of quality and features. What they asked for was perfectly reasonable and the unjustiifed anger expressed to them by the 14 year old thieves on Slashdot did more to turn me off Slashdot than all the trolls combined.
Feel free to quote Hoffman all you like because the man has no credibility.
But this highlights yet another tactic of the smear campaigns that are making a mockery of democracy in America. Start with an outlandish and dishonorable claim, such as claiming that Kerry's three Purple Hearts and Bronze medal were undeserved. Wait until the election time rather than disputing their worth in the decades since they were awarded. Then bury the counterclaims in trivia and minutiae that doesn't even have to be true; the barrage of lies and half-truths simply has to be so overwhelming that it overwhelms the common man so they tune out before the protests can be heard. The barrage of nonsense from Hoffman is simply part of this carpet-bombing media tactic.
I'm not American and I couldn't give two hoots about Kerry but I'm disgusted with the way you partisan idiots are destroying your democracy. You are turning democracy into a childish football match, with teams and cheerleaders and points to be scored. Waiting several decades before calling somebody's war record into dispute is pathetic. It is a grave dishonour to somebody who risked their life to serve your country. Everybody who defends these SBV numbskulls should be ashamed and appalled at what you've turned your political system into. Between the partisan hackery and the voting scandals your democratic process is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the world.
Pay attention to people like Jon Stewart and Stop Hurting America. Your country deserves far better than you partisan idiots are providing.
JFGI.
Though IMO the biggest torpedo that sank the Swift Vets claims came from the New York Times.
Though none of that matters. Kerry was made out to be a coward and a liar - his three Purple Hearts amounted to nothing after the character assassination - and he lost votes as a result. The Republican funding of the group was shameful yet I bet you won't see anything happen about that either.
And America was founded by puritans. Australians are forever grateful that we got the better deal.
Back to reality, Australia was neither founded by criminals nor was everyone once a criminal. Australia was founded by the British as a penal colony. God bless America for doing a bang up job on your education.