The difference with Mac is that they don't sell you an operating system. They sell you a computer that happens to have an OS on it that Apple wrote.
You mean I don't have to pay for Leopard? Awesome! I'll hop down to the Apple Store and get my free copy today.
Apple is selling a complete package, true, but that doesn't mean you're not paying for the development of the OS (and upgrades)
They sell you a computer that happens to have an OS on it that Apple wrote. I don't think Apple cares what you run on it, if you can get it to work.
Most PCs come with Windows preinstalled. I don't think microsoft cares if you install something else, as long as the "tax" was paid by your PC vendor... which is added to the cost of the computer. At least with PC hardware you have the option of not paying for Windows. When you buy a Mac, you have no choice. You have to subsidize the development of OS X even if you are just going to wipe the machine and install Linux on it. They just don't break out OS X as a specific line item.
Apple is not a monopoly, you moron. Monopolies are constrained in their behavior in ways that other companies are not. This isn't a difficult concept, and I'm sure it's not the first time it's been introduced to you, so I can only conclude that you have a cretin-grade IQ.
Gee, don't hold back or anything. Doesn't the fact that Apple is a viable (and increasingly popular) option for home computers pretty much destroy the idea that Microsoft has a monopoly? At best you could say they have a monopoly on PC hardware, but the same goes for Apple on Apple hardware.
New Macs are bundled with Safari. Which makes it very difficult for other vendors to compete with a web browser product unless it is free like Firefox. So how is this ANY different than WIndows and IE? Two different platforms, two different browser "monopolies." Why should Microsoft not get to bundle IE with Windows but Apple can bundle Safari with OS X?
This is ironic because one of my bigger gripes about Windows is that it does not bundle *enough* software. And the software/utilities they do include are generally subpar, IMO. I usually have to spend a few hours gathering all the little pieces of software that I need for Windows to be generally useful as a base. Need a PDF reader, PDF writer (print to PDF), better archive file handling, CD/DVD burning, updated drivers, telnet/ssh client that DOESN'T feel like it was coded in 1986 and never updated, etc. A lot of it has to do with XP being so damn old, of course, but even back when it was released the bundled utilities were mostly useless. OS X (and Linux to a greater degree for obvious reasons), on the other hand, comes almost completely ready for general use (minus major apps like Adobe Suite) out of the box. I hardly have to download anything to get OS X going. And then there's iLife, which I don't use.
I wonder if/when governments are going to start going after Apple. OS X is 10x "worse" than Windows when it comes to bundled software. I use "worse" lightly, of course, because I actually want bundled software.
snapshotting & all those neat features work totally as expected.
Only if you "expect" it not to work at all. Last beta seed I tried (1.1 Oct 3), snapshotting didn't work. Well, you could technically take a snapshot, but there was no way to access it. I also had problems deeply nesting subvolumes. I couldn't follow many of the ZFS tutorials. Does this open source version offer more?
The zfs-fuse project already has 90% of the code to implement ZFS. The kernel bits are what make the driver unique from platform to platform. You'd probably learn more by looking at how ext2/3, reiser are implemented.
This is what I did with my first Gentoo install. At first I had no idea what was going on. People that only follow the instructions never find out what's happening.
I've two very distinct modes of operation when it comes to directions. If there are no directions (or limited directions), I take it upon myself to find my own way and I learn a lot in the process. But when I am put in a position where I have explicit, detailed directions, my brain just kinda shuts down and I blindly follow the directions. Like if I am driving a car and I have someone telling me exactly where and when to turn, I stop thinking about where I am and just make the turns when requested... and I never remember how to get there on my own. But left to figure out it out myself, I retain much more. For this reason I'll never get a GPS for my car. If I did, I'd become so dependent on it, it would be pathetic.
Gentoo (the installation part, anyway) put me in a position where I really couldn't install it at all without following some guide. And the guides were there. It was just too easy to blindly follow them step by step. So i fell into that "mode."
I'm not saying that it is a defect of Gentoo that it isn't easy to install. The maintainers and users are free to make it whatever they want. I'm just saying that if most users are just going to copy/paste from a howto anyway, you might as well script it or something. A lot of people are spending a lot of time writing up explicit directions for things that could just be automated and/or abstracted. Which is ironic because the usually Linux is criticized for focusing on code and generally lacking in documentation.
With FreeBSD, packages tended to break with almost every upgrade. With Gentoo, they still break after every upgrade, but at least there is revdep-rebuild to fix things. Portupgrade -L didn't really work...
Heh, reminds me of what happened on my FreeBSD mail gateway running amavisd and spamassassin. You know how those two packages alone require like 1,645 different perl modules? Well, I made the mistake of updating perl from ports. It happened to be a major version upgrade and paths changed... and every single perl module on the system was hosed. Long story short, I ended up just reinstalling FreeBSD from stratch rather than wade through the tangle of perl module dependency hell. Got a more recent version FreeBSD in the end, but man did I discover the drawbacks to not having a stable and well tested package set (as in Debian, for example). Ports (and portage for that matter) are nice if you always want to keep recent packages, but managing it all really can be a lot of work.
Sorry... I fail to understand how you simply copying and pasting is a failure on Gentoo's part for you not learning. If you go to college and copy off someone else's papers constantly, is it the college's fault you didn't get a good education?
The difference between installing Gentoo by copying/pasting from the howto and copying other people's work in college is that in the case of Gentoo, that is the accepted way of doing it. Really, it is the ONLY way to do it as far as I can tell. I mean, there's nothing obvious or intuitive about the steps. Even being a seasoned Linux user going into it, I couldn't have guessed the exact commands required to get it up and running.
It isn't Gentoo's "fault' that I didn't learn anything from it. I'm just saying that Gentoo elitists should give up the illusion that the install process is some profound leaning experience/initiation that every Linux user should have to go through.
But at least all the copy-pasting of commands from the Gentoo forums makes you feel like you're learning a lot about how Linux works, right?;o)
Ha! That's exactly what I thought when I first installed Gentoo from stage1. I was just following the howto, line for line. Great guide, but I can't really say I learned anything. If they're just going to provide step by step instructions to do everything anyway, why not just make the system easier to install/use in the first place?
Actually XP owners are running the same original installation the only thing that has changed are the updates over the years. The above also begs the question why did your mother have to reinstall XP several times over the last few years?
Can't be sure exactly as she lives on the opposite coast of the US and I'm not exactly the most eager Windows phone support guy, but I'm guessing it was just the simplest (if a little drastic) solution to the WIndows Annoyance Du Jour. It is my understanding that this is rather common practice for those either unable or unwilling to go through the trouble of effectively troubleshooting Windows problems or providing proper care and feeding. Isn't a reinstall pretty much what the Geek Squad does to solve 90% of PC problems these days?
I've been known to to do a hasty reinstall of WIndows myself just because troubleshooting it make me want to pluck my eyes out and fill the sockets with molten lead. Recently I had a problem where Windows decided there was a resource conflict between my video card and the AGP controller (I use it to play games from time to time). I'd reinstall some drivers, sacrifice a chicken, and somehow the conflict woudl magically disappear only to reappear on a subsequent reboot. Frustrating as hell. Had to reinstall.
I can effectively troubleshoot anything, Linux, Netware, DOS, OS X, Ruby, C, Python, Java, networks, you name it, but something about Windows problems in particular just get under my skin. I hate it. I have formed a career in IT around avoiding Windows support or programming unless absolutely necessary. My primary criteria for taking a job is this: "Does it, in any way, involve Windows?" Though I've been getting into web development lately and I have renewed my loathing for anything Windows by trying to make shit work right in IE6. I had heard it was bad, but damn./end rant
What if they send up a team of offshore oil drillers to land on the asteroid and drive around on it and plant the nuke? That would be awesome! You could even make a movie about it... oh wait. They already made that movie. And it sucked. Oh well.
In theory, yes; the chip is hotter than its environment, so you can put a heat engine between them and generate energy. The maximum theoretical efficiency of this process is given by Carnot cycle [wikipedia.org] and depends on the heat difference between the processor and the environment and the temperature of the environment. With current processors you can't really exceed 60 degree Celsius, or 333 Kelvin,
That is for the circuitry itself. But you can maintain a much hotter zone away from the sensitive parts. In fact, isn't that exactly what a peltier cooler does?
From the perspective of the average user, XP's install is the easiest by far. They take the computer out of the box it came in, plug it in, turn it on, and XP is right there.
Yeah, but what XP owner is still running the same original installation? My mom, for example, has reinstaled XP several times over the last few years. Granted, it is from one of those "recovery" CDs where it actually includes most of the drivers for the machine so it is easier than a vanilla install, but still.
No kidding. At the school I work for we went to great lengths to get class materials online and digital to save wear and tear on copiers as well as paper. Guess what? The usage on the laser printers in the labs skyrocketed.
If you cared about either enterprise search or enterprise content management, you would have heard of FAST. The article title might have mislead you into thinking that this has anything whatsoever to do with Web search. It doesn't.
No, i got that. I just don't estimate teh value of search technology to be anywere near 1.2 billion dollars. But clearly I'm underestimating it. I just don't know in what way.
In what line work work? I've been in IT for 13 years and not ONCE have I ever been invited to work related game of golf. And I'm relatively successful. If your goal is to move into management and eventually be an CEO/CIO/etc with a large company, maybe, but for most people, particularly technical people, golf is not even in the picture.
Microsoft is buying FAST to get this expertise, to get a software development house which can develop custom solutions for very large customers (think 10-50k employees, where the amount of documents produced are enormous) in a private and personal setting. FAST deliver quite a few consultancy services too, although they've had quite the burn rate lately and downsized a bit recently.
That I can undersatnd. But I wonder if they'll keep the expertise. From what I've heard a lot of expertise is jumping ship.
I think what's pretty clear from your post is that your bosses moved you out of programming because you weren't very good at it. Sorry but programming (and btw, it is "programming not "development". "Development" is effeminate, and probably includes other jobs not as manly as writing C code.) isn't really for everyone. Alas, someone has to clean the latrines, and so we have our sysadmins. Kudos to you for doing it!
Hey now, cleaning latrines is harder than it looks.
I would liken sysadmin more to being a plumber than a janitor. That isn't to say that there aren't "sysadmins" who are more or less just trained monkeys hitting the enter key when some script dictates that it must be done. Usually they are in some "enterprise" environment where they are not only allowed, but required to specialize in hitting "enter" key at the right moment. Similarlly, aren't there a lot of so-called developers who spend their days churning out mediocre, completely uninteresting VB.NET code?
How can a search engine that nobody has ever heard of be worth 1.3 billion? Especially if they only plan on integrating it with Office. How hard coudl it possibly be to develop a search engine for Office from scratch? Certainly it wouldn't cost anywhere near 1.2 BILLION. And when you buy someone else's engine, you still have to integrate it with your software which, depending on how different the code bases are, can be nearly as difficult as just doing it from scratch. So.. WTF? I'd understand if they were buying some big name engine to get a Brand and customers and such. But this? Sounds like a money waster.
comments like this is why most places are vurable - where i work if we come accross a possiable security hole we stop what we are doing and figure out how long it will take and how many people we need to get it doen in a reasonable amount of time and that is what they do.
"People?" You mean there's more than just one of you capable of fixing such things? Lucky you.
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You mean I don't have to pay for Leopard? Awesome! I'll hop down to the Apple Store and get my free copy today.
Apple is selling a complete package, true, but that doesn't mean you're not paying for the development of the OS (and upgrades)
Most PCs come with Windows preinstalled. I don't think microsoft cares if you install something else, as long as the "tax" was paid by your PC vendor... which is added to the cost of the computer. At least with PC hardware you have the option of not paying for Windows. When you buy a Mac, you have no choice. You have to subsidize the development of OS X even if you are just going to wipe the machine and install Linux on it. They just don't break out OS X as a specific line item.
Gee, don't hold back or anything. Doesn't the fact that Apple is a viable (and increasingly popular) option for home computers pretty much destroy the idea that Microsoft has a monopoly? At best you could say they have a monopoly on PC hardware, but the same goes for Apple on Apple hardware.
New Macs are bundled with Safari. Which makes it very difficult for other vendors to compete with a web browser product unless it is free like Firefox. So how is this ANY different than WIndows and IE? Two different platforms, two different browser "monopolies." Why should Microsoft not get to bundle IE with Windows but Apple can bundle Safari with OS X?
-matthew
This is ironic because one of my bigger gripes about Windows is that it does not bundle *enough* software. And the software/utilities they do include are generally subpar, IMO. I usually have to spend a few hours gathering all the little pieces of software that I need for Windows to be generally useful as a base. Need a PDF reader, PDF writer (print to PDF), better archive file handling, CD/DVD burning, updated drivers, telnet/ssh client that DOESN'T feel like it was coded in 1986 and never updated, etc. A lot of it has to do with XP being so damn old, of course, but even back when it was released the bundled utilities were mostly useless. OS X (and Linux to a greater degree for obvious reasons), on the other hand, comes almost completely ready for general use (minus major apps like Adobe Suite) out of the box. I hardly have to download anything to get OS X going. And then there's iLife, which I don't use.
I wonder if/when governments are going to start going after Apple. OS X is 10x "worse" than Windows when it comes to bundled software. I use "worse" lightly, of course, because I actually want bundled software.
-matthew
Only if you "expect" it not to work at all. Last beta seed I tried (1.1 Oct 3), snapshotting didn't work. Well, you could technically take a snapshot, but there was no way to access it. I also had problems deeply nesting subvolumes. I couldn't follow many of the ZFS tutorials. Does this open source version offer more?
-matthew
The zfs-fuse project already has 90% of the code to implement ZFS. The kernel bits are what make the driver unique from platform to platform. You'd probably learn more by looking at how ext2/3, reiser are implemented.
Geez, I should hope OS X would have the whole binary thing down pretty good by now.
We are a passenger sitting behind the windshield.
I've two very distinct modes of operation when it comes to directions. If there are no directions (or limited directions), I take it upon myself to find my own way and I learn a lot in the process. But when I am put in a position where I have explicit, detailed directions, my brain just kinda shuts down and I blindly follow the directions. Like if I am driving a car and I have someone telling me exactly where and when to turn, I stop thinking about where I am and just make the turns when requested... and I never remember how to get there on my own. But left to figure out it out myself, I retain much more. For this reason I'll never get a GPS for my car. If I did, I'd become so dependent on it, it would be pathetic.
Gentoo (the installation part, anyway) put me in a position where I really couldn't install it at all without following some guide. And the guides were there. It was just too easy to blindly follow them step by step. So i fell into that "mode."
I'm not saying that it is a defect of Gentoo that it isn't easy to install. The maintainers and users are free to make it whatever they want. I'm just saying that if most users are just going to copy/paste from a howto anyway, you might as well script it or something. A lot of people are spending a lot of time writing up explicit directions for things that could just be automated and/or abstracted. Which is ironic because the usually Linux is criticized for focusing on code and generally lacking in documentation.
Heh, reminds me of what happened on my FreeBSD mail gateway running amavisd and spamassassin. You know how those two packages alone require like 1,645 different perl modules? Well, I made the mistake of updating perl from ports. It happened to be a major version upgrade and paths changed... and every single perl module on the system was hosed. Long story short, I ended up just reinstalling FreeBSD from stratch rather than wade through the tangle of perl module dependency hell. Got a more recent version FreeBSD in the end, but man did I discover the drawbacks to not having a stable and well tested package set (as in Debian, for example). Ports (and portage for that matter) are nice if you always want to keep recent packages, but managing it all really can be a lot of work.
The difference between installing Gentoo by copying/pasting from the howto and copying other people's work in college is that in the case of Gentoo, that is the accepted way of doing it. Really, it is the ONLY way to do it as far as I can tell. I mean, there's nothing obvious or intuitive about the steps. Even being a seasoned Linux user going into it, I couldn't have guessed the exact commands required to get it up and running.
It isn't Gentoo's "fault' that I didn't learn anything from it. I'm just saying that Gentoo elitists should give up the illusion that the install process is some profound leaning experience/initiation that every Linux user should have to go through.
-matthew
Ha! That's exactly what I thought when I first installed Gentoo from stage1. I was just following the howto, line for line. Great guide, but I can't really say I learned anything. If they're just going to provide step by step instructions to do everything anyway, why not just make the system easier to install/use in the first place?
Can't be sure exactly as she lives on the opposite coast of the US and I'm not exactly the most eager Windows phone support guy, but I'm guessing it was just the simplest (if a little drastic) solution to the WIndows Annoyance Du Jour. It is my understanding that this is rather common practice for those either unable or unwilling to go through the trouble of effectively troubleshooting Windows problems or providing proper care and feeding. Isn't a reinstall pretty much what the Geek Squad does to solve 90% of PC problems these days?
I've been known to to do a hasty reinstall of WIndows myself just because troubleshooting it make me want to pluck my eyes out and fill the sockets with molten lead. Recently I had a problem where Windows decided there was a resource conflict between my video card and the AGP controller (I use it to play games from time to time). I'd reinstall some drivers, sacrifice a chicken, and somehow the conflict woudl magically disappear only to reappear on a subsequent reboot. Frustrating as hell. Had to reinstall.
I can effectively troubleshoot anything, Linux, Netware, DOS, OS X, Ruby, C, Python, Java, networks, you name it, but something about Windows problems in particular just get under my skin. I hate it. I have formed a career in IT around avoiding Windows support or programming unless absolutely necessary. My primary criteria for taking a job is this: "Does it, in any way, involve Windows?" Though I've been getting into web development lately and I have renewed my loathing for anything Windows by trying to make shit work right in IE6. I had heard it was bad, but damn.
What if they send up a team of offshore oil drillers to land on the asteroid and drive around on it and plant the nuke? That would be awesome! You could even make a movie about it... oh wait. They already made that movie. And it sucked. Oh well.
That is for the circuitry itself. But you can maintain a much hotter zone away from the sensitive parts. In fact, isn't that exactly what a peltier cooler does?
Yeah, but what XP owner is still running the same original installation? My mom, for example, has reinstaled XP several times over the last few years. Granted, it is from one of those "recovery" CDs where it actually includes most of the drivers for the machine so it is easier than a vanilla install, but still.
-matthew
Sure, but doesn't the energy put into compressing the air and moving the valvetrain ultimately result in heat?
No kidding. At the school I work for we went to great lengths to get class materials online and digital to save wear and tear on copiers as well as paper. Guess what? The usage on the laser printers in the labs skyrocketed.
-matthew
No, i got that. I just don't estimate teh value of search technology to be anywere near 1.2 billion dollars. But clearly I'm underestimating it. I just don't know in what way.
-matthew
In what line work work? I've been in IT for 13 years and not ONCE have I ever been invited to work related game of golf. And I'm relatively successful. If your goal is to move into management and eventually be an CEO/CIO/etc with a large company, maybe, but for most people, particularly technical people, golf is not even in the picture.
-matthew
Maybe for management, but not software development.
-matthew
That I can undersatnd. But I wonder if they'll keep the expertise. From what I've heard a lot of expertise is jumping ship.
Hey now, cleaning latrines is harder than it looks.
I would liken sysadmin more to being a plumber than a janitor. That isn't to say that there aren't "sysadmins" who are more or less just trained monkeys hitting the enter key when some script dictates that it must be done. Usually they are in some "enterprise" environment where they are not only allowed, but required to specialize in hitting "enter" key at the right moment. Similarlly, aren't there a lot of so-called developers who spend their days churning out mediocre, completely uninteresting VB.NET code?
-matthew
How can a search engine that nobody has ever heard of be worth 1.3 billion? Especially if they only plan on integrating it with Office. How hard coudl it possibly be to develop a search engine for Office from scratch? Certainly it wouldn't cost anywhere near 1.2 BILLION. And when you buy someone else's engine, you still have to integrate it with your software which, depending on how different the code bases are, can be nearly as difficult as just doing it from scratch. So.. WTF? I'd understand if they were buying some big name engine to get a Brand and customers and such. But this? Sounds like a money waster.
-matthew
"People?" You mean there's more than just one of you capable of fixing such things? Lucky you.