That's my POV too,but I'm not a developer. I'm a sysadmin for the macs in a PC environment, and I'm advocating a wait for 64-bit apps to mature before we make a serious commitment. I can see now that most of the mainboards and CPUs purchased are 64-bit, but I know they're running 32-bit apps and OS's. I think the best bet for those of us waiting for the 'next big thing' is to wait for the CPU, chipset, and memory market to calm down and make a decision before we committ to another dead-end.
I'm taking care of too many i820 boards to jump to a quick conclusion here.
I remember when I was 16, I spent all of two days trying to figure out/etc/X11/XF86Config, and I knew NOTHING about *NIX, I was a 'mac boy', I didn't even know how to edit text before I read how to use vi on a web-connected Mac. Anyway, I spent two days getting X up and running, only to use it to have 10 terminals in plain view (and high-resolution). Ever since the I've been a CLI guy, people ask how I can work that way, and I ask how they can work with their mice.
Um, just as an aside, it seems like you did an 'upgrade' install. Next time I highly recommend a 'full install', back your files up yourself, format the drive, and install fresh. It's good housekeeping in ANY system, and it really reduces any built-up fragmentation and/or corruption.
Also, I've got a machine running Panther here that I formatted as UFS, and I'm happier with it than HFS+-formatted systems. I'm not sure why, and I didn't get this feeling with Jaguar-over-UFS, but I just like the way things work now. Probably because I use Linux at home, and expect similar case-sensitivity rules.
It will mean nothing for them. All this is is a consolidation of duplicate functions in administration of the projects, and maybe not even that.
KDE and GNOME are totally insulated from the poitics and even a lot of tht technical issues surrounding XFree86. X11 and the projects that run under it are very different beasts.
Now if users migrated from X11 and started using display projects like Fresco, Y, or even FrameBuffer, the KDE and GNOME teams would have to write a air amount of new 'connector' code and rework some libraries.
OOPS, we actually spent $150k on the NAS, it's just a rack of SCSI drives totaling about 2TB connected to some Dell PowerEdge server. All it does is serve files via SMB to the entire school. I misued the term SAN.
Panther is FASTER on the same hardware. OS X is getting better and better about resource management, optimization, etc. as time goes on. Remember that the whole system benefits from improvements to GCC, binutils, and other OSS projects, because the whole system is compiled with them. Opening apps in Panther on older hardware seems much snappier than when using Jaguar, and I chalk it up to better disk-access, caching, optimization, prelinking, and drivers.
Also, Apple really rushed to get OS X out the door, now the developers are getting their hands dirty with tweaks, getting much more proficient with Objective-C, and they have a user base to check things with.
I think this will continue for some time too, possibly until Apple stops supporting G3 CPUs. The architecture of the whole system seems to lend itself well to growing without 'bloating'.
Well my place of work just dropped $150K on a SAN that dosn't do nearly as well (or hold half as much) as a $15K XServe RAID would.
Apple hardware is 'heavy metal', all their pro-desktops are workstation-class hardware, and the servers are rock-solid.
As for file serving, I haven't seen a properly-configured file server have more than 10% CPU load from just serving files in over five years now. File serving for our entire school (over 1000 users, about 2TB data) would be just as fast from the end-user perspective with a 400MHz G3 as it is with our dual-Xeon PIII monster.
Well before OSX had the Active Directory services plugin we paid a consultant over $5000 to integrate the systems and the end-product was WAY below acceptable levels. Buying the farm from Apple lets our system 'just work' without the headache of months of project labor on my part. I've got a lot of other things on my plate, I'm willing to front up the money for the lickable GUI for the streaming server, the AD integration, Workgroup Manager, the native server monitoring tools, print drivers that I don't have to 'foomatic' myself, support from Apple if I need it, and a system that's the same on our server as it is on the desktop.
Now I'm a UNIX guy by all means, I'm using the CLI quite a bit to get things done on these systems, but I would have NO IDEA how to get the server to feed the Active Directory here to the Macintosh clients if it weren't for OS X Server. The investment in 10.3 server has paid for itself in weeks just in savings in consulting fees, ARD lets me do software repairs on machines across campus (often in in-session classrooms) from my office, that's worth a lot in sub-zero temperatures or sweltering heat (Boston area).
Do you have ANY idea what happens to you if you end up hooking up though? You'll e snickered at for the rest of your time there. Not anything bad, but they'll make you know that they know that you bonked Jenna. I'd rather not deal with that shit at work, I have too much to do, and would prefer that the topic at lunch when I'm covering the phones isn't my sexual style.
Even funnier is that you and I BOTH saw a female name and went to look at her other posts right away, like we've got some chance of... um... getting our... semen swallowed.
But in all seriousness Anna, welcome to Slashdot! We can be rude and crude at times, but I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay. Don't forget to read the Slashdot FAQ, which can deconfuse a lot of things for you.
small-operation data entry can pay quite well. The guy directly above me catalogs shit for the library all day, typing in all the info from the covers of books, videos, and CDs. He makes $50K/yr because it's not the kind of thing the school wants fucked-up. Accuracy costs big money.
Meanwhile I run a *NIX server, 200 desktops, repair hardware, master images, set policies, and do projects for the departments for well under $40K/yr.
Well, I admin an XServe in a mixed Mac/Win32 environment, we've got the XServe pulling accounts out of the AD and serving them up to the Macs in a 'native' fashion. The XServe is also streaming over 7000 files from the AV department, running LPD print queues for ALL the network printers, and doing whatevr else I feel like making it do.
As for the 'lickable' GUI, I never really have to see it, there's a problem if you're looking at your server's desktop a lot. And honestly, doing all that it does, the CPU load rarely hits 3%, do I really give a flying shit if the GUI sucks a few cycles off the top? Nope. The GUI doesn't slow things down when it's not being used, after all.
And for what we use it for, it really is the best solution out there.
Alright, downtown Boston has almost no curb parking, but the painters still get to paint, the deliveries all get made, and the CEOs still get picked up in their limos. If you're 'in business' you're generally willing to spend some to make some, money finds a way.
City services won't have any trouble, they don't today, and shrinking down the parked vehicles' sizes won't change a thing from their POV, except that in an extreme situation it's a LOT easier for a fire truck to 'move' a Civic than an Explorer.
As for large families, I rode VERY comfortably with my two sisters and both parents in a compact station wagon.
We SHOULD make things a bit harder and more expensive for people who want to breed prodigously, it's good long-term policy.
I had the same type of trouble, a decent work setup but a REALLY crapola computer running a lame OS.
I ended up purchasing my own new laptop, but I made sure it was he same brand/model/config as the ones people in the office were getting. I got two drives for it too, I had one for work and one for everything else. I got permission from the IT director to beta-test Windows 2000 and loaded it onto the work drive as per IT documentation.
All's well over here now. Really, life's too short to sit in front of a computer you hate all day. And the laptop's MINE ALL MINE, which ain't such a bad thing if you think about it.
Well, that's why you have to get out onto some ice late at night some time and try it. There's no magic number to how many pumps per second it takes to regain traction, but with even a few minutes of 'icy parking lot' training you should be confident in your low-traction abilities.
Another poster (the next after you in this thread) and I share the POV that the best way isn't even to pump, but to find when the wheels lock and back out slightly from there, you get maximum traction.
Not on a G4! Any self-respecting encoder on the Mac will be tuned for AltiVec, and the CD-ROM will easily be the bottleneck.
People really underestimate the signal-processing capabilities of these processors. The machines might take their time at day-to-day application use, but when you need to encode video, apply effects, or generally do very multimedia-intensive stuff the G-series CPUs really take Intel and AMD to the cleaner.
Alright, I had this great idea. I live in Providence, we have a lot of bike and pedestrian traffic and really shitty downtown and campus parking. I think they should paint ALL parking spaces the size of small cars and give $50 tickets to violators. Of course the city would have to put up a few more garages for SUVs and trucks, but the revenue from tose operations could go straight to the city.
Overall, driving expenditures, be it buying the car or paying gas just removes money from the local economy here. We'd be doing ourselves a huge favor here if we implemented strict laws to reduce dumb consumer spending.
I drive a Ford Escort Wagon, no ABS, no traction-control, no electronics in the mix besides engine timings, and it handles BEAUTIFULLY in the snow if you know how to drive. I agree with the parent that the VAST majority of accidents in foul weather are from people not understanding the physics of braking and steering.
As for ABS brakes, they're great if you know what they are and how to use them, but I've been rear-ended THREE TIMES by kids who slammed on the brakes only to back off once they felt the 'kicking' of ABS start, they thought it was their brakes failing. I think I've seen studies that show that they've probably caused as many accidents as they've prevented. I can't stand ABS brakes, braking is a very important function of the car that I'd like as much control of as possible, and as few things possible to go wrong.
As for SUV observations, I've noticed that SUV drivers tend to fall into two categories: One is the testosterone crowd who push ANY type of car beyond reasonable limits and end up rolling over/crashing/or spinning out. The other type drives their giant 4WD tank as if it were a honda civic that they can't see the back of, never actually taking advantage of their superior ground clearance and extended suspension.
How many times do you see girls backing out of a spot at the grocery and they have to make five attempts because they can't judge the distance between the back of their car to a parked vehicle? I can reliably place my car within a 5cm of any point outside the vehicle, because I spent the time to practice and LEARN my car. But then again, I like driving in Boston and Manhattan too, I must be a whacko.
I think there are some 'hard limits' though, the LVD drives introduced with U2W and U160 SCSI weren't electrically compatible with the ancient pre-ultra controllers. I might be wrong, but I'm not about to try out this adapter that PHYSICALLY fits my brand-new U320 SCSI drive to my Quadra 660av SCSI-2 machine, I'll leave that to the SCSI-FAQ people to figure out on their own.
They really thought those buggers out. Steve though 1MB was enough, and the only thing you'd want to ever change was that PRAM battery. He'd be glad to know how right he was. The machine was designed to last over a decade.
WEll from what I can see GCC is moving inthe right direction, the new DFA pipeline descriptors will allow the optimizer to operate MUCH more efficiently (and they're easier to write!). GCC-3.4 has a lot of goodies for the AMD-K[7,8] series of CPUs.
Development has always been and probably always will be one of the most demanding tasks you can do, even the most complex compiles on my machine (KDE, Glibc, Mozilla, etc.) max out at abot 70MB/process, which leaves me PLENTY of RAM to play with on a -j3 compile before I hit swap on my now industry-standard 512MB machine. If you're doing a lot of compiling on a less-than-standard machine you ought to buy some DIMMS, not complain about the world's most broadly-based compiler not running a tight ship on your system.
I for one would welcome a 20% runtime performance boost for an 80% increase in GCC compile-time. Compiles happen MUCH more rarely than executes in ANY circumstance.
I think I tossed about 50 of those into a dumpster where I worked.
I recall feeling odd about throwing away LAN-enabled, PCI-bearing 486 machines with soldered-in CPUs that didn't need heatsinks or fans.
They were built on a principle I still hold to, buy last year's tech manufactured on this year's process. I've got an Athlon 2500+ runnning at 2/3 of it's top speed, and a RADEON 7500 from crucial (late model) with no heatsink, the only fans in my fast-enough Athlon box are on the CPU and heatsink; the chipset, video, sound, LAN, and CPU are all late models of previous generation tech, they run cool and without fans because they're last year's transistor counts on this year's die sizes. Overall I think my system is more Mac-like than most performance-oriented PCs, less fans mean less time 'under the hood.'
I disagree, I live down the street from Brown University and they've had a TON of macs there since the mid 1980s. Several of my neighbors were professors or researchers and they all used Macs, because back then getting a PC with similar horsepower, networking, color display, and WYSIWYG printing was a pipe dream. Remember that the Mac has had 32-bit processing long before Intel caught on, and that mattered a lot to the scientific community. The macs also had superior SCSI drives, built-in 250Kb/sec networking, no-fuss hi-resolution displays, and the CPU architecture was more friendly to developers, not to mention the Macintosh Toolkit (the core API of the Macintosh that allowed all programs to look/feel the same).
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That's my POV too ,but I'm not a developer. I'm a sysadmin for the macs in a PC environment, and I'm advocating a wait for 64-bit apps to mature before we make a serious commitment. I can see now that most of the mainboards and CPUs purchased are 64-bit, but I know they're running 32-bit apps and OS's. I think the best bet for those of us waiting for the 'next big thing' is to wait for the CPU, chipset, and memory market to calm down and make a decision before we committ to another dead-end.
I'm taking care of too many i820 boards to jump to a quick conclusion here.
I remember when I was 16, I spent all of two days trying to figure out /etc/X11/XF86Config, and I knew NOTHING about *NIX, I was a 'mac boy', I didn't even know how to edit text before I read how to use vi on a web-connected Mac. Anyway, I spent two days getting X up and running, only to use it to have 10 terminals in plain view (and high-resolution). Ever since the I've been a CLI guy, people ask how I can work that way, and I ask how they can work with their mice.
Um, just as an aside, it seems like you did an 'upgrade' install. Next time I highly recommend a 'full install', back your files up yourself, format the drive, and install fresh. It's good housekeeping in ANY system, and it really reduces any built-up fragmentation and/or corruption.
Also, I've got a machine running Panther here that I formatted as UFS, and I'm happier with it than HFS+-formatted systems. I'm not sure why, and I didn't get this feeling with Jaguar-over-UFS, but I just like the way things work now. Probably because I use Linux at home, and expect similar case-sensitivity rules.
It will mean nothing for them. All this is is a consolidation of duplicate functions in administration of the projects, and maybe not even that.
KDE and GNOME are totally insulated from the poitics and even a lot of tht technical issues surrounding XFree86. X11 and the projects that run under it are very different beasts.
Now if users migrated from X11 and started using display projects like Fresco, Y, or even FrameBuffer, the KDE and GNOME teams would have to write a air amount of new 'connector' code and rework some libraries.
OOPS, we actually spent $150k on the NAS, it's just a rack of SCSI drives totaling about 2TB connected to some Dell PowerEdge server. All it does is serve files via SMB to the entire school. I misued the term SAN.
Panther is FASTER on the same hardware. OS X is getting better and better about resource management, optimization, etc. as time goes on. Remember that the whole system benefits from improvements to GCC, binutils, and other OSS projects, because the whole system is compiled with them. Opening apps in Panther on older hardware seems much snappier than when using Jaguar, and I chalk it up to better disk-access, caching, optimization, prelinking, and drivers.
Also, Apple really rushed to get OS X out the door, now the developers are getting their hands dirty with tweaks, getting much more proficient with Objective-C, and they have a user base to check things with.
I think this will continue for some time too, possibly until Apple stops supporting G3 CPUs. The architecture of the whole system seems to lend itself well to growing without 'bloating'.
Well my place of work just dropped $150K on a SAN that dosn't do nearly as well (or hold half as much) as a $15K XServe RAID would.
Apple hardware is 'heavy metal', all their pro-desktops are workstation-class hardware, and the servers are rock-solid.
As for file serving, I haven't seen a properly-configured file server have more than 10% CPU load from just serving files in over five years now. File serving for our entire school (over 1000 users, about 2TB data) would be just as fast from the end-user perspective with a 400MHz G3 as it is with our dual-Xeon PIII monster.
Very important to do that. I don't even log into slashdot before I've checked if anything's changed on that site.
Well before OSX had the Active Directory services plugin we paid a consultant over $5000 to integrate the systems and the end-product was WAY below acceptable levels. Buying the farm from Apple lets our system 'just work' without the headache of months of project labor on my part. I've got a lot of other things on my plate, I'm willing to front up the money for the lickable GUI for the streaming server, the AD integration, Workgroup Manager, the native server monitoring tools, print drivers that I don't have to 'foomatic' myself, support from Apple if I need it, and a system that's the same on our server as it is on the desktop.
Now I'm a UNIX guy by all means, I'm using the CLI quite a bit to get things done on these systems, but I would have NO IDEA how to get the server to feed the Active Directory here to the Macintosh clients if it weren't for OS X Server. The investment in 10.3 server has paid for itself in weeks just in savings in consulting fees, ARD lets me do software repairs on machines across campus (often in in-session classrooms) from my office, that's worth a lot in sub-zero temperatures or sweltering heat (Boston area).
Do you have ANY idea what happens to you if you end up hooking up though? You'll e snickered at for the rest of your time there. Not anything bad, but they'll make you know that they know that you bonked Jenna. I'd rather not deal with that shit at work, I have too much to do, and would prefer that the topic at lunch when I'm covering the phones isn't my sexual style.
Even funnier is that you and I BOTH saw a female name and went to look at her other posts right away, like we've got some chance of... um... getting our... semen swallowed.
But in all seriousness Anna, welcome to Slashdot! We can be rude and crude at times, but I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay. Don't forget to read the Slashdot FAQ, which can deconfuse a lot of things for you.
small-operation data entry can pay quite well. The guy directly above me catalogs shit for the library all day, typing in all the info from the covers of books, videos, and CDs. He makes $50K/yr because it's not the kind of thing the school wants fucked-up. Accuracy costs big money.
Meanwhile I run a *NIX server, 200 desktops, repair hardware, master images, set policies, and do projects for the departments for well under $40K/yr.
Well, I admin an XServe in a mixed Mac/Win32 environment, we've got the XServe pulling accounts out of the AD and serving them up to the Macs in a 'native' fashion. The XServe is also streaming over 7000 files from the AV department, running LPD print queues for ALL the network printers, and doing whatevr else I feel like making it do.
As for the 'lickable' GUI, I never really have to see it, there's a problem if you're looking at your server's desktop a lot. And honestly, doing all that it does, the CPU load rarely hits 3%, do I really give a flying shit if the GUI sucks a few cycles off the top? Nope. The GUI doesn't slow things down when it's not being used, after all.
And for what we use it for, it really is the best solution out there.
Alright, downtown Boston has almost no curb parking, but the painters still get to paint, the deliveries all get made, and the CEOs still get picked up in their limos. If you're 'in business' you're generally willing to spend some to make some, money finds a way.
City services won't have any trouble, they don't today, and shrinking down the parked vehicles' sizes won't change a thing from their POV, except that in an extreme situation it's a LOT easier for a fire truck to 'move' a Civic than an Explorer.
As for large families, I rode VERY comfortably with my two sisters and both parents in a compact station wagon.
We SHOULD make things a bit harder and more expensive for people who want to breed prodigously, it's good long-term policy.
I had the same type of trouble, a decent work setup but a REALLY crapola computer running a lame OS.
I ended up purchasing my own new laptop, but I made sure it was he same brand/model/config as the ones people in the office were getting. I got two drives for it too, I had one for work and one for everything else. I got permission from the IT director to beta-test Windows 2000 and loaded it onto the work drive as per IT documentation.
All's well over here now. Really, life's too short to sit in front of a computer you hate all day. And the laptop's MINE ALL MINE, which ain't such a bad thing if you think about it.
Well, that's why you have to get out onto some ice late at night some time and try it. There's no magic number to how many pumps per second it takes to regain traction, but with even a few minutes of 'icy parking lot' training you should be confident in your low-traction abilities.
Another poster (the next after you in this thread) and I share the POV that the best way isn't even to pump, but to find when the wheels lock and back out slightly from there, you get maximum traction.
Not on a G4! Any self-respecting encoder on the Mac will be tuned for AltiVec, and the CD-ROM will easily be the bottleneck.
People really underestimate the signal-processing capabilities of these processors. The machines might take their time at day-to-day application use, but when you need to encode video, apply effects, or generally do very multimedia-intensive stuff the G-series CPUs really take Intel and AMD to the cleaner.
Ahh, the beauty of Mozilla for browsing and mail. Granted, the mail totally sucked ass before about 1.2, but I really like the integration.
Alright, I had this great idea. I live in Providence, we have a lot of bike and pedestrian traffic and really shitty downtown and campus parking. I think they should paint ALL parking spaces the size of small cars and give $50 tickets to violators. Of course the city would have to put up a few more garages for SUVs and trucks, but the revenue from tose operations could go straight to the city.
Overall, driving expenditures, be it buying the car or paying gas just removes money from the local economy here. We'd be doing ourselves a huge favor here if we implemented strict laws to reduce dumb consumer spending.
I drive a Ford Escort Wagon, no ABS, no traction-control, no electronics in the mix besides engine timings, and it handles BEAUTIFULLY in the snow if you know how to drive. I agree with the parent that the VAST majority of accidents in foul weather are from people not understanding the physics of braking and steering.
As for ABS brakes, they're great if you know what they are and how to use them, but I've been rear-ended THREE TIMES by kids who slammed on the brakes only to back off once they felt the 'kicking' of ABS start, they thought it was their brakes failing. I think I've seen studies that show that they've probably caused as many accidents as they've prevented. I can't stand ABS brakes, braking is a very important function of the car that I'd like as much control of as possible, and as few things possible to go wrong.
As for SUV observations, I've noticed that SUV drivers tend to fall into two categories: One is the testosterone crowd who push ANY type of car beyond reasonable limits and end up rolling over/crashing/or spinning out. The other type drives their giant 4WD tank as if it were a honda civic that they can't see the back of, never actually taking advantage of their superior ground clearance and extended suspension.
How many times do you see girls backing out of a spot at the grocery and they have to make five attempts because they can't judge the distance between the back of their car to a parked vehicle? I can reliably place my car within a 5cm of any point outside the vehicle, because I spent the time to practice and LEARN my car. But then again, I like driving in Boston and Manhattan too, I must be a whacko.
I think there are some 'hard limits' though, the LVD drives introduced with U2W and U160 SCSI weren't electrically compatible with the ancient pre-ultra controllers. I might be wrong, but I'm not about to try out this adapter that PHYSICALLY fits my brand-new U320 SCSI drive to my Quadra 660av SCSI-2 machine, I'll leave that to the SCSI-FAQ people to figure out on their own.
They really thought those buggers out. Steve though 1MB was enough, and the only thing you'd want to ever change was that PRAM battery. He'd be glad to know how right he was. The machine was designed to last over a decade.
WEll from what I can see GCC is moving inthe right direction, the new DFA pipeline descriptors will allow the optimizer to operate MUCH more efficiently (and they're easier to write!). GCC-3.4 has a lot of goodies for the AMD-K[7,8] series of CPUs.
Development has always been and probably always will be one of the most demanding tasks you can do, even the most complex compiles on my machine (KDE, Glibc, Mozilla, etc.) max out at abot 70MB/process, which leaves me PLENTY of RAM to play with on a -j3 compile before I hit swap on my now industry-standard 512MB machine. If you're doing a lot of compiling on a less-than-standard machine you ought to buy some DIMMS, not complain about the world's most broadly-based compiler not running a tight ship on your system.
I for one would welcome a 20% runtime performance boost for an 80% increase in GCC compile-time. Compiles happen MUCH more rarely than executes in ANY circumstance.
I think I tossed about 50 of those into a dumpster where I worked.
I recall feeling odd about throwing away LAN-enabled, PCI-bearing 486 machines with soldered-in CPUs that didn't need heatsinks or fans.
They were built on a principle I still hold to, buy last year's tech manufactured on this year's process. I've got an Athlon 2500+ runnning at 2/3 of it's top speed, and a RADEON 7500 from crucial (late model) with no heatsink, the only fans in my fast-enough Athlon box are on the CPU and heatsink; the chipset, video, sound, LAN, and CPU are all late models of previous generation tech, they run cool and without fans because they're last year's transistor counts on this year's die sizes. Overall I think my system is more Mac-like than most performance-oriented PCs, less fans mean less time 'under the hood.'
I disagree, I live down the street from Brown University and they've had a TON of macs there since the mid 1980s. Several of my neighbors were professors or researchers and they all used Macs, because back then getting a PC with similar horsepower, networking, color display, and WYSIWYG printing was a pipe dream. Remember that the Mac has had 32-bit processing long before Intel caught on, and that mattered a lot to the scientific community. The macs also had superior SCSI drives, built-in 250Kb/sec networking, no-fuss hi-resolution displays, and the CPU architecture was more friendly to developers, not to mention the Macintosh Toolkit (the core API of the Macintosh that allowed all programs to look/feel the same).