IIRC the UI for TNG devices was at least part 'anticipatory'. If you were walking down the corridor saying to some chick that you'd like to see a play, but you forgot what was on tonight, you could basically walk up to the nearest console and hit the "I'm feeling lucky"[sic] button and it'd be right there. The computer was the benevolent 'big brother'.
As for the actual UI, it really DIDN'T make sense, because if it did it would just feed the nitpickers, and Gene R. really wanted the focus of the show to be on the plot. It did seem that the UI was very 'flow' oriented, with very little available at a given time, but very easy to get from one task to another, sort of like my WindowMaker setup. Also, there wer no 'files' or 'applications' as we know them, the experience seemed to be very task-oriented and realtime.
Um, I actually consider my setup safer. I don't have a single point of failure. You might not THINK you do, but when the ceiling drops 500 gallons of water onto your RAID5 it's all gone. When that happens to mine, I've got all of yesterday's data on the other PC.
RAID is great, and it's extensible/scalable beyond my setup, but for one person's data, I'm better off leveraging existing storage in a redundant scripted backup scheme.
If I was running a business and ad more than three users I'd go RAID.
True. That's my 'trick' to reliability. I usually purchase the lowest-model of the newest family of drives. I recently had to replace a laptop drive, so I hit the spec sheets and found the Hitachi Travelstar 5k80, a 5400RPM 80GB drive, but the 80GB model has 2 platters, they have a 40GB model with one. It works like a dream, and I have half the number of heads to crash.
Another trick I use is to buy from a manufacturer that had problems the year BEFORE. I'm buying IBM/Hitachi exclusively, because the bad PR from years ago is still pushing their QA to high levels. The Deskstar 180GXP is an awesome drive, I've installed over ten of them for people and not one failure yet.
Ahh. I have solutions for the parent AND grandparent posters.
I'm a minimalist of sorts. I'm running all linux/OSX at home, and all the files I use are on the file server, so my hard drive requirements are quite minimal. Right now on my fully loaded-out workstation I'm using 1.5GB out of the 60 available. The file server has 2 120GB drives, but only about 30GB is used.
So what do I do with all that free space? I do automated network backups!
Every night at 4:00am the workstation mounts the second partition (primary/root is 5GB, sec is 55GB) and makes a full copy of that 30GB of data from the file server. It also makes a full copy of the file server's root drive and sends a compressed image of the workstation root drive to the file server.
That's what I do with the extra space, I'm going on six years without any data loss.
The extra CPU power? I've got plenty. I've got all my systems totaly loaded out with RAM, so the bottlenecking is minimal. I'd rather not heat the house with my CPUs though. I run my AthlonXP at 1.4GHz instead of the native 1.9GHz, and my file server at 300MHz instead of 450MHz. I honestly don't even notice the difference. When you run a system that's 1.5GB and you've got over 1GB of RAM, your 'disk cache hit ratio' is incredible, at any given moment I've got EVERYTHING I use cached, CPU speed is of little consequence to me.
In that case you SHOULD use NFS, because it's easier to set up, fast, native, and 'clean'. I use NFS internally for my Linux and OSX boxes, but I run Samba as well on the port that connects to the 'outside'.
I agree. I'm on abusy cable ring, and when these worms get around my activity light stays lit and my access speeds plummet. If people don't have their shit together enough to install and run AV software they shouldn't have Windows boxes in the first place, they need 'managed computing' and a locked-down user account.
You'd really have to be dumb to say 'Mac Skills' if you interviewed for ANY job. 'Computer Kills' are cross-platform, and using a Mac will get you quite far in Windows or Linux these days. The 'desktop' paradigm is cross-platform, file management and applications are the same on all platforms.
You wouldn't say that you only know the British dialect of English if you applied, would you? Would that make your language skills useless in America?
People like you piss me off. Macs run the core software needed in the education and office environments.
I work in a school, our Macs run almost all the same software that the PCs do, they last 40% longer 'in the field' than the PCs, and we haven't had a SINGLE virus-infected Mac since 1999. Macs run the GNU tools, which are unarguably the BEST tools for those of us who can be productive on the command line.
I do hardware repairs too, but in the last four months I've only had to do one hardware repair out of 230 Macs in operation. The PC guy is SWIMMING in broken PCs, he does three or four each day, on 600 PCs in operation.
As for skills, your Windows skills aren't going to be worth jack-shit either, Microsoft wants to totally alter the face and philosophy of computing from what we know today. Most training in the office is with custom apps and databases anyway, and no amount of time using a Windows box will help you with "Bob From Accounting's Really Cool Purchasing Database".
Computer skills are totally transferable. I watch kids everyday walk in between Windows and Mac labs, doing what they do. Maybe someone in their 30s or 40s would have trouble switching after 20 years of use, but kids these days, this upcoming generation, they can use anything with buttons.
As for Mac skills being worthless, no skill is worthless. I set up a computer for a friend last year with Linux and KDE on it, she never had a computer before, she's 25. She just got a job with Windows/Office this week and the only thing she called me about was to verify that cutting and pasting were 'different on windows'. She can lay out a table or make a chart just as easily as the next guy who's been using Office for three years.
Re:Why CIFS/Samba at all?
on
Implementing CIFS
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Alright, I can give a good reason. NFS does NOT authenticate, it blindly trusts UIDs.
So when I log into my friend's machine with his password, I'd be able to access my files on my machine as long as our UID is the same. Big trouble.
CIFS, on the other hand, has authentication, so I can put my SAMBA server on the wide-open internet and be somewhat sure that someone would need my password to get my files. Try that with NFS and you'd be owned (or fileless) in minutes.
Granted, there ARE ways to lock NFS down, and there are good arguments that maybe the modern file server SHOULDN'T authenticate, it should rely on another layer to handle that, but until it's easy as pie to get a Kerberos/PAM/NFS system working (no small task today), I'll stick to CIFS.
Laugh all you want. I know that the directory service itself isn't an 'encryption technique', but the authentication is, and MS could easily lock out lots of folks by making Longhorn server speak ONLY with XP2 or Longhorn clients. It can be done, and it wouldn't surprise me.
What I want is MS clients authenticating against OSS-based servers, but being fed the needed Windows goodness from a directory service.
I disagree, I think Microsoft is just going to push their proprietary stuf harder, in the false name of security. Sure, they'll have to drop the prices, but Linux will have a tough time 'fitting in' when it can't authenticate against the existing Active Directory servers out there.
I'm already having trouble getting Macs and Linux boxes to play nice with Active Directory, who KNOWS what sort of proprietary encryption techniques they'll use to keep Linux and Apple boxes out of the core network.
I can easily see MS dropping support for pre-NTLMv2 logons, which would force Mac users to use MS-controlled authentication modules, that would be rough if they didn't maintain them properly.
Is there a way now to run an Apache/Linux box and have it authenticate web users against an Active Directory?
Is there an open-standard directory service that can replace AD, but windows machines can still connect to? Has anyone written an 'OpenDirectory -> pseudo-AD / NT Domains' gateway?
I'm a Linux and Mac user, but every now-and-then I need to fire Windows up on a box (usually to recover someone else's Windows box). I never owned a legit copy until Windows 2000 came out, then I went out and paid $200 for it, full retail, because I thought it was only fair. I still use that copy, sometimes I load it on my laptop to access windows-only stuff at work, sometimes I run it inside Virtual PC to proof web pages, and sometimes I use it at home to verify my SAMBA configuration.
I COULD have purchased a much cheaper OEM license, but I thought that JUST ONCE I should play by the rules and give Microsoft some money for what I thought was a great product (W2K). I kick Mozilla, the EFF, FSF, and Gentoo about $250 every year, I may as well fork over a fair amount for Windows every three or four. I even intend to purchase 'XP Reloaded' when it comes out, as long as it'll run on my 500MHz laptop.
And BTW, I'm not 'well off' or anything. I live alone and make just enough to get by and go out a few weekends a month. I just think it's fair to pay for commercial software, and good to donate for OSS software. Try kicking mozilla.org $5 every time you do an install or convert a user, it feels good!
Yes, I went to high school with him up in Providence. He graduated when I was in tenth grade, IIRC. We called him 'Kersh' as an abbreviation of his last name. He has a website at www.nerv-un.net.
My fondedst memories of him were when we went to MacWorld'97 in Boston, and when he would hang out with all the gothy freaky kids and show us cool media files, like the pre-television-series South Park stuff and oddball underground videos.
Like I said, if it weren't for him I never would have moved beyond the Mac OS, he showed me Linux and BSD, and encouraged me to diversify my knowledgebase.
Chill out! I lived with a Russian family from the Ukraine, they all had health problems (my girlfriend-at-the-time included) from the pollution/radiation. I know how serious it was, and I know that there's a language gap to be respected. This is a MESSAGE BOARD on the INTERNET, jokes and political incorrectness are to be expected. The problem I have with abiding by all the politically-correct ultra-sensitive talk is that it makes me really mopey, all you can do is walk around in cirles mumbling about injustice and racism. It's a good thing that we can all read that article, shed a tear, and then write jokes about it, it helps heal the itty little hole it created in my heart.
I think it would be fun to go there myself and check things out on my bicycle for a day. Unfortunately my Russian friends would all be too chickenshit to actually go with me.
She mentions that if the guys at the checkpoint find you have too much radioactive dust they give you a shower and eat your bike. I was always under the impression that in Soviet Russia, your bike ate YOU!
Also, I'm on the page now where you can see a city, but it's so QUIET that people wat to get out ASAP after being there a few minutes. I totally want to go see this!
I clearly recall a pre-release version of Copland running on my well-connected buddie's PB 3400. I remember him trying to boot it, but it pretty much crashed whenever you tried to DO anything (open two windows, copy files, rebuild desktop, etc.).
This was the same guy who showed me OpenFirmware, Linux (pre 1.0, may I add), and South Park. He's quite responsible for the geek I've become.
Apparently he's the author and number-one on the Kismet wireless project.
Well Apple had been making serious attempts to get away from the classic codebase since System 7 came out. Everyone knew that the fundamentals were way behind where they should be. There was a team-up with IBM, Copland, Rhapsody, and who KNOWS what else was happening 'in the basement'. The on-campus attitude was quite snooty, from my understanding, and that makes innovation difficult.
The problem seemed to me to be that Apple really wanted to remain 'true' to their die-hards while reimplementing the entire OS around them. It just couldn't happen that way.
Overall I think Apple did well with OS X, I wish it were a little more lightweight and zippier, but it's poky because the fundamental technologies behind it are much more extensible than any other OS. The filesystem overhead in OS X (which seems to really slow things down) provides for single-icon cross-platform binaries. The OpenGL display system brings scaled displays much closer.
You can get that 'simple' look with WindowMaker or any of the other lightweight window managers. I run WindowMaker and some selected bits of KDE for better menus and a 'taskbar'
LOL, I practically got laughed out of a meeting when I announced that all my systems would do dates in ISO 8601-compliant formats. I also said that I would not restore file backups with dates in the filename that weren't compliant.
I'll restore 'January Newsletter.doc' but not 'newsletter-01052004.doc'. All files dated like that should comply with each other. 'Newsletter-20040105.doc'
Well they laughed, and it takes a litle bit of getting used to YYYY-MM-DD and the 24:00 clock, but with 2TB of storage and about 1TB/year growth, we're going to have to lay down some groundrules to handling filenames and dates.
But it's ALWAYS been a race to the cheapest resources. This is nothing new. It's a fundamental law of economics!
'Race to the bottom' is something we're alll guilty of, that $499 PC is part of it, just like that $4.99 sweater but you bought it anyway because it was CHEAPER. And more power to you, because that extra money in your wallet from saving so much on the PC/sweater is money you can spend on more stuff or save where before it would not have gone so far.
We can either be protectionist and get creamed in a few decades, or we can participate on the global markets and sustain at least part of what we have now. There's no question in my mind that the American standard of living will decrease as we come into step with the rest of the world, there will be some pains of coming into equilibrium, but all those people in India and China are going to have much better lives for it. If we COULD keep ourselves on top and keep all the jobs and the standard of living I'd be all for it, but we can't and I'd rather do this gracefully than burn bridges through protectionism with our future world peers (the EU, China, India).
And in the meantime, we've got to implement some more wealth distribution (universal baseline health care anyone?) or something because the cost of living is nipping at the heels of the average wages. In the 1960s my Dad managed a McDonalds and paid rent, bills, his car, and some private college on it. I make three times the minimum wage today and can barely afford to pay rent, gas, and eat.
Really, I've dealt with Apple, Compaq, HP, and IBM products in the past two years and Apple's 'problem' rate is as low or lower than the next guy's, the problem is that when an Apple laptop has a minor issue (like 'white spots') the whole community bitches about it.
When an IBM laptop exhibits a problem there's no 'community' to coagulate into a problem in the first place.
The G5 is a stunningly quiet machine compared to the Dell P4 machine's we've got at my current site, but Mac users still bitch about it being so much louder than their fanless iMac when they hover around the water cooler. The PC users here just shut up and take what they get and don't complain.
Mac68K build-from-scratch in emulation?
on
NetBSD 1.6.2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Alright, I've got a hankering to build 1.6.2 from scratch for my Mac Quadra (25MHz 68040), but I KNOW building the whole thing would take weeks.
Is there an emulator for my x86 box that would allow me to get this done faster? BasiliskII can emulate my Mac much faster than it really is.
I'm sure this is a problem on a lot of the 40 architectures, some of them are way old and limited to the sub-100MHz range. Cross-compiling seems like a hairy mess.
Also, is there a way to build the whole distribution via gcc-3.3.x? I'd like to see how well it performs against the gcc2-built system I used a while ago.
Well the FreeBSD website doesn't appear to have a PowerPC version for the taking. I know it's probably quite possible, but NetBSD runs on PowerPC quite nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC the UI for TNG devices was at least part 'anticipatory'. If you were walking down the corridor saying to some chick that you'd like to see a play, but you forgot what was on tonight, you could basically walk up to the nearest console and hit the "I'm feeling lucky"[sic] button and it'd be right there. The computer was the benevolent 'big brother'.
As for the actual UI, it really DIDN'T make sense, because if it did it would just feed the nitpickers, and Gene R. really wanted the focus of the show to be on the plot. It did seem that the UI was very 'flow' oriented, with very little available at a given time, but very easy to get from one task to another, sort of like my WindowMaker setup. Also, there wer no 'files' or 'applications' as we know them, the experience seemed to be very task-oriented and realtime.
ahh. then you do have a safer setup (faster too!).
Um, I actually consider my setup safer. I don't have a single point of failure. You might not THINK you do, but when the ceiling drops 500 gallons of water onto your RAID5 it's all gone. When that happens to mine, I've got all of yesterday's data on the other PC.
RAID is great, and it's extensible/scalable beyond my setup, but for one person's data, I'm better off leveraging existing storage in a redundant scripted backup scheme.
If I was running a business and ad more than three users I'd go RAID.
True. That's my 'trick' to reliability. I usually purchase the lowest-model of the newest family of drives. I recently had to replace a laptop drive, so I hit the spec sheets and found the Hitachi Travelstar 5k80, a 5400RPM 80GB drive, but the 80GB model has 2 platters, they have a 40GB model with one. It works like a dream, and I have half the number of heads to crash.
Another trick I use is to buy from a manufacturer that had problems the year BEFORE. I'm buying IBM/Hitachi exclusively, because the bad PR from years ago is still pushing their QA to high levels. The Deskstar 180GXP is an awesome drive, I've installed over ten of them for people and not one failure yet.
Ahh. I have solutions for the parent AND grandparent posters.
I'm a minimalist of sorts. I'm running all linux/OSX at home, and all the files I use are on the file server, so my hard drive requirements are quite minimal. Right now on my fully loaded-out workstation I'm using 1.5GB out of the 60 available. The file server has 2 120GB drives, but only about 30GB is used.
So what do I do with all that free space? I do automated network backups!
Every night at 4:00am the workstation mounts the second partition (primary/root is 5GB, sec is 55GB) and makes a full copy of that 30GB of data from the file server. It also makes a full copy of the file server's root drive and sends a compressed image of the workstation root drive to the file server.
That's what I do with the extra space, I'm going on six years without any data loss.
The extra CPU power? I've got plenty. I've got all my systems totaly loaded out with RAM, so the bottlenecking is minimal. I'd rather not heat the house with my CPUs though. I run my AthlonXP at 1.4GHz instead of the native 1.9GHz, and my file server at 300MHz instead of 450MHz. I honestly don't even notice the difference. When you run a system that's 1.5GB and you've got over 1GB of RAM, your 'disk cache hit ratio' is incredible, at any given moment I've got EVERYTHING I use cached, CPU speed is of little consequence to me.
In that case you SHOULD use NFS, because it's easier to set up, fast, native, and 'clean'. I use NFS internally for my Linux and OSX boxes, but I run Samba as well on the port that connects to the 'outside'.
I agree. I'm on abusy cable ring, and when these worms get around my activity light stays lit and my access speeds plummet. If people don't have their shit together enough to install and run AV software they shouldn't have Windows boxes in the first place, they need 'managed computing' and a locked-down user account.
You'd really have to be dumb to say 'Mac Skills' if you interviewed for ANY job. 'Computer Kills' are cross-platform, and using a Mac will get you quite far in Windows or Linux these days. The 'desktop' paradigm is cross-platform, file management and applications are the same on all platforms.
You wouldn't say that you only know the British dialect of English if you applied, would you? Would that make your language skills useless in America?
People like you piss me off. Macs run the core software needed in the education and office environments.
I work in a school, our Macs run almost all the same software that the PCs do, they last 40% longer 'in the field' than the PCs, and we haven't had a SINGLE virus-infected Mac since 1999. Macs run the GNU tools, which are unarguably the BEST tools for those of us who can be productive on the command line.
I do hardware repairs too, but in the last four months I've only had to do one hardware repair out of 230 Macs in operation. The PC guy is SWIMMING in broken PCs, he does three or four each day, on 600 PCs in operation.
As for skills, your Windows skills aren't going to be worth jack-shit either, Microsoft wants to totally alter the face and philosophy of computing from what we know today. Most training in the office is with custom apps and databases anyway, and no amount of time using a Windows box will help you with "Bob From Accounting's Really Cool Purchasing Database".
Computer skills are totally transferable. I watch kids everyday walk in between Windows and Mac labs, doing what they do. Maybe someone in their 30s or 40s would have trouble switching after 20 years of use, but kids these days, this upcoming generation, they can use anything with buttons.
As for Mac skills being worthless, no skill is worthless. I set up a computer for a friend last year with Linux and KDE on it, she never had a computer before, she's 25. She just got a job with Windows/Office this week and the only thing she called me about was to verify that cutting and pasting were 'different on windows'. She can lay out a table or make a chart just as easily as the next guy who's been using Office for three years.
Alright, I can give a good reason. NFS does NOT authenticate, it blindly trusts UIDs.
So when I log into my friend's machine with his password, I'd be able to access my files on my machine as long as our UID is the same. Big trouble.
CIFS, on the other hand, has authentication, so I can put my SAMBA server on the wide-open internet and be somewhat sure that someone would need my password to get my files. Try that with NFS and you'd be owned (or fileless) in minutes.
Granted, there ARE ways to lock NFS down, and there are good arguments that maybe the modern file server SHOULDN'T authenticate, it should rely on another layer to handle that, but until it's easy as pie to get a Kerberos/PAM/NFS system working (no small task today), I'll stick to CIFS.
Laugh all you want. I know that the directory service itself isn't an 'encryption technique', but the authentication is, and MS could easily lock out lots of folks by making Longhorn server speak ONLY with XP2 or Longhorn clients. It can be done, and it wouldn't surprise me.
What I want is MS clients authenticating against OSS-based servers, but being fed the needed Windows goodness from a directory service.
I disagree, I think Microsoft is just going to push their proprietary stuf harder, in the false name of security. Sure, they'll have to drop the prices, but Linux will have a tough time 'fitting in' when it can't authenticate against the existing Active Directory servers out there.
I'm already having trouble getting Macs and Linux boxes to play nice with Active Directory, who KNOWS what sort of proprietary encryption techniques they'll use to keep Linux and Apple boxes out of the core network.
I can easily see MS dropping support for pre-NTLMv2 logons, which would force Mac users to use MS-controlled authentication modules, that would be rough if they didn't maintain them properly.
Is there a way now to run an Apache/Linux box and have it authenticate web users against an Active Directory?
Is there an open-standard directory service that can replace AD, but windows machines can still connect to? Has anyone written an 'OpenDirectory -> pseudo-AD / NT Domains' gateway?
I'm a Linux and Mac user, but every now-and-then I need to fire Windows up on a box (usually to recover someone else's Windows box). I never owned a legit copy until Windows 2000 came out, then I went out and paid $200 for it, full retail, because I thought it was only fair. I still use that copy, sometimes I load it on my laptop to access windows-only stuff at work, sometimes I run it inside Virtual PC to proof web pages, and sometimes I use it at home to verify my SAMBA configuration.
I COULD have purchased a much cheaper OEM license, but I thought that JUST ONCE I should play by the rules and give Microsoft some money for what I thought was a great product (W2K). I kick Mozilla, the EFF, FSF, and Gentoo about $250 every year, I may as well fork over a fair amount for Windows every three or four. I even intend to purchase 'XP Reloaded' when it comes out, as long as it'll run on my 500MHz laptop.
And BTW, I'm not 'well off' or anything. I live alone and make just enough to get by and go out a few weekends a month. I just think it's fair to pay for commercial software, and good to donate for OSS software. Try kicking mozilla.org $5 every time you do an install or convert a user, it feels good!
Yes, I went to high school with him up in Providence. He graduated when I was in tenth grade, IIRC. We called him 'Kersh' as an abbreviation of his last name. He has a website at www.nerv-un.net.
My fondedst memories of him were when we went to MacWorld'97 in Boston, and when he would hang out with all the gothy freaky kids and show us cool media files, like the pre-television-series South Park stuff and oddball underground videos.
Like I said, if it weren't for him I never would have moved beyond the Mac OS, he showed me Linux and BSD, and encouraged me to diversify my knowledgebase.
Thanks Kersh!
Chill out! I lived with a Russian family from the Ukraine, they all had health problems (my girlfriend-at-the-time included) from the pollution/radiation. I know how serious it was, and I know that there's a language gap to be respected. This is a MESSAGE BOARD on the INTERNET, jokes and political incorrectness are to be expected. The problem I have with abiding by all the politically-correct ultra-sensitive talk is that it makes me really mopey, all you can do is walk around in cirles mumbling about injustice and racism. It's a good thing that we can all read that article, shed a tear, and then write jokes about it, it helps heal the itty little hole it created in my heart.
I think it would be fun to go there myself and check things out on my bicycle for a day. Unfortunately my Russian friends would all be too chickenshit to actually go with me.
She mentions that if the guys at the checkpoint find you have too much radioactive dust they give you a shower and eat your bike. I was always under the impression that in Soviet Russia, your bike ate YOU!
Also, I'm on the page now where you can see a city, but it's so QUIET that people wat to get out ASAP after being there a few minutes. I totally want to go see this!
I clearly recall a pre-release version of Copland running on my well-connected buddie's PB 3400. I remember him trying to boot it, but it pretty much crashed whenever you tried to DO anything (open two windows, copy files, rebuild desktop, etc.).
This was the same guy who showed me OpenFirmware, Linux (pre 1.0, may I add), and South Park. He's quite responsible for the geek I've become.
Apparently he's the author and number-one on the Kismet wireless project.
Well Apple had been making serious attempts to get away from the classic codebase since System 7 came out. Everyone knew that the fundamentals were way behind where they should be. There was a team-up with IBM, Copland, Rhapsody, and who KNOWS what else was happening 'in the basement'. The on-campus attitude was quite snooty, from my understanding, and that makes innovation difficult.
The problem seemed to me to be that Apple really wanted to remain 'true' to their die-hards while reimplementing the entire OS around them. It just couldn't happen that way.
Overall I think Apple did well with OS X, I wish it were a little more lightweight and zippier, but it's poky because the fundamental technologies behind it are much more extensible than any other OS. The filesystem overhead in OS X (which seems to really slow things down) provides for single-icon cross-platform binaries. The OpenGL display system brings scaled displays much closer.
You can get that 'simple' look with WindowMaker or any of the other lightweight window managers. I run WindowMaker and some selected bits of KDE for better menus and a 'taskbar'
LOL, I practically got laughed out of a meeting when I announced that all my systems would do dates in ISO 8601-compliant formats. I also said that I would not restore file backups with dates in the filename that weren't compliant.
I'll restore 'January Newsletter.doc' but not 'newsletter-01052004.doc'. All files dated like that should comply with each other. 'Newsletter-20040105.doc'
Well they laughed, and it takes a litle bit of getting used to YYYY-MM-DD and the 24:00 clock, but with 2TB of storage and about 1TB/year growth, we're going to have to lay down some groundrules to handling filenames and dates.
But it's ALWAYS been a race to the cheapest resources. This is nothing new. It's a fundamental law of economics!
'Race to the bottom' is something we're alll guilty of, that $499 PC is part of it, just like that $4.99 sweater but you bought it anyway because it was CHEAPER. And more power to you, because that extra money in your wallet from saving so much on the PC/sweater is money you can spend on more stuff or save where before it would not have gone so far.
We can either be protectionist and get creamed in a few decades, or we can participate on the global markets and sustain at least part of what we have now. There's no question in my mind that the American standard of living will decrease as we come into step with the rest of the world, there will be some pains of coming into equilibrium, but all those people in India and China are going to have much better lives for it. If we COULD keep ourselves on top and keep all the jobs and the standard of living I'd be all for it, but we can't and I'd rather do this gracefully than burn bridges through protectionism with our future world peers (the EU, China, India).
And in the meantime, we've got to implement some more wealth distribution (universal baseline health care anyone?) or something because the cost of living is nipping at the heels of the average wages. In the 1960s my Dad managed a McDonalds and paid rent, bills, his car, and some private college on it. I make three times the minimum wage today and can barely afford to pay rent, gas, and eat.
Really, I've dealt with Apple, Compaq, HP, and IBM products in the past two years and Apple's 'problem' rate is as low or lower than the next guy's, the problem is that when an Apple laptop has a minor issue (like 'white spots') the whole community bitches about it.
When an IBM laptop exhibits a problem there's no 'community' to coagulate into a problem in the first place.
The G5 is a stunningly quiet machine compared to the Dell P4 machine's we've got at my current site, but Mac users still bitch about it being so much louder than their fanless iMac when they hover around the water cooler. The PC users here just shut up and take what they get and don't complain.
Alright, I've got a hankering to build 1.6.2 from scratch for my Mac Quadra (25MHz 68040), but I KNOW building the whole thing would take weeks.
Is there an emulator for my x86 box that would allow me to get this done faster? BasiliskII can emulate my Mac much faster than it really is.
I'm sure this is a problem on a lot of the 40 architectures, some of them are way old and limited to the sub-100MHz range. Cross-compiling seems like a hairy mess.
Also, is there a way to build the whole distribution via gcc-3.3.x? I'd like to see how well it performs against the gcc2-built system I used a while ago.
Well the FreeBSD website doesn't appear to have a PowerPC version for the taking. I know it's probably quite possible, but NetBSD runs on PowerPC quite nicely.