NuBus-based Macs indeed had configurable settings in PRAM (NVRAM).
There were parameters you could set in the Parameter RAM (PRAM), like the default boot disk and the speaker volume. Those parameters aren't really the same thing as the settings found in a PC BIOS. The PRAM wasn't a BIOS; it was a very small amount of battery-backed memory in the clock chip.
For instance, any Mac is fully capable of checking itself over for bootable devices and then starting up off one of them -- whether that's the device the user has requested by holding down a key at boot, the user's preferred startup disk, or the first available startup disk. The boot device could be an ISA hard drive, SCSI hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD, floppy, Zip disk, FireWire hard drive, flash memory drive... All this functionality is a recent addition to the PC BIOS, and getting it to work often involves delving into an ancient, arcane text-mode interface.
NuBus beat PCI to the plug-and-play arena. When Macs still had NuBus, PCs used ISA cards that often needed BIOS tweaking to play nice. NuBus (a Texas Instruments invention, not Apple's) automatically configured the bus based on configuration ROMs on the cards.
My modern "New World architecture" Mac has NVRAM, which is different from the old PRAM. (PRAM is now emulated by Open Firmware and NVRAM.) As a user, I don't have to mess with NVRAM directly, ever. As a professional systems administrator, sometimes I go in and do things in OF, just as I would on a Sun system -- setting boot-diag? to true, for example, if something odd is happening (or I just want to see a Mac spew forth a text-mode bootup).
Aside from such geeking, the end-user never has to know that there's a special setting area that needs attention on a Mac. If you want to boot from a different drive, you use the GUI control panel to select it, or you hold down a key at boot to bring up a GUI list of your bootable disks. The user doesn't have to know that there's some special place they need to go -- it's all "the computer" instead of "the OS" and "the BIOS."
If "plug and play" works, why should an end user have to know that there's two levels of software involved in booting? Yeah, the geek may want to disable cards in software, but end users don't do that -- except when they have to work around broken PnP.
Think of professional athletes as getting ungodly amounts of hazard pay.
I agree. In most cases, the large salaries of star pro athletes is justified if you look at it over a lifetime, instead of over a single year.
In any pro sport, there's a high risk of injury -- whether it's broken bones in football, tendonitis in baseball, ACL injuries in basketball, whatever. One injury can end a career.
If you've spent your life focused on that sports career, you may not have much to fall back on. There's a limited aftermarket for washed-up sports stars. ESPN only needs so many commentators.
So, I can understand wanting to get paid really well while you can still play. Eventually, you won't be able to play, and there's a good chance you'll be living off your saved income. Hopefully that day comes when you get too old, and not due to a freak accident that ruins your ability to play while you're still young.
In TiVo's case, there's something else going on that, to me, puts their infomercials in a different category -- at least, insofar as changing the channel is concerned.
The "TiVo Enhanced Content" show doesn't just contain infomercial videos. It also contains data for the program guide, and perhaps even software updates as well. By putting this data into an encoded video stream, TiVo reduces the amount of time that the recorder has to spend tying up my phone line downloading data each day. As I understand it, the common cable channels' data is transmitted through the Enhanced Content show, and the daily call takes care of local channels and oddball stations.
Since TiVo has to pay Discovery Channel for the leased airtime, and that time comes in a half-hour chunk, I can see where it makes sense to use the leftover time to push video out to the recorder. The recorder was designed to have a certain amount of scratch space for such content, so it doesn't reduce the advertised capacity of the TiVo. Occasionally, there's an interesting advertisement. It's far less obtrusive than, say, the damn ads that appear during every show on the air nowadays.
Belkin's HTTP hijacking doesn't give the user any real benefit, other than a very tenuous claim that it makes the service easier to use. TiVo's use of leased time on Discovery gives me a very useful benefit: less time with a busy phone line.
Will the phone you buy occasionaly redirect your call to a telemarketer?
Mine already does, after a fashion. Should I call someone with my SBC SNET phone line, and the number is busy, I get one or two seconds of busy tone before the call is redirected to a voice message which informs me the line is busy, but I can use the SBC automatic callback feature for just a few dozen cents a call...
Plays havoc with some devices that need to "hear" busy signals.
I've got a SPARCstation IPX (with the Weitek PowerUP chip upgrade) that I use from time to time. It runs Solaris 7, as long as you're patient. I haven't tried anything newer.
For a console, I use my old Mac Plus. The original beige version, purchased when the Plus was new. It has the Kensington System Saver fan "hat," and I upgraded the keyboard to a DataDesk 101-key model. The mouse died long ago and was replaced with a Mouse Systems optical mouse -- the Sun style with the aluminum mousepad, not the modern kind.
The Plus still has life in it. The analog board -- the third one in this unit -- is a wee bit shaky, but if it goes I can dig out my copy of
"Macintosh Repair Secrets"
and order some new capacitors to replace the troublesome components. The thing predates surface-mount.
The funny thing is, not only does the Plus make a serviceable VT100 replacement, but it fits the IPX like they were designed to go together. (Well, it'd look better if it were the later, "platinum" colored Plus, but...) The classic Mac footprint fits exactly on top of the IPX (and anything else in the stack of old Sun accessories, like the 2x cartridge-loading external CD-ROM).
The oldest piece of equipment I've used in production at a job would be an ancient Epson dot-matrix printer. I hooked it up to our loghost, so that all the important log messages were immediately printed. This served two purposes: I had a copy of the logs which could not be deleted, even if the loghost were compromised; and if something unusual was happening on one of the machines, the racket from the printer would alert me to check the logs. It had to be an old dot-matrix for this to work, because
inkjets and laser printers are page-at-once printers (as opposed to instantly printing a single line, and taking large boxes of fanfold paper as paper sources)
impact printers make noise, which is necessary to get that aural sense of system health from the rhythm of the logs
if your system is savaged over a weekend, an impact dot-matrix will leave some sort of impression on the paper even if the ribbon is dry or torn, whereas we all know how quickly inkjets go through cartridges
So, if I were in a small-to-medium shop where hacking was a big concern, an old tank-like dot matrix with a good tractor feed would be valuable to me -- and not easy to find anymore.
Anyway, I haven't used Novell in over a decade, but my understanding is that nowadays it speaks the standard Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). Mac OS X 10.2's printing system is based
on CUPS,
the Common UNIX Printing System, which speaks IPP natively. A quick Google search indicates that you ought to be able to just hand OS X the correct IPP URL, such
as "IPP://username:password@<server>/ipps/<printer >" to
talk to Novell.
Of course, again, if one goes with a proprietary print protocol as opposed to the RFC-standard protocols, of course one should expect interoperability issues.
With Mac OS X, there's no need to go running netatalk; OS X will speak NFS just fine -- or, if you don't want to go that far, there's always FTP and/or SSH. If you're in a mixed environment, OS X's SMB support is good enough that there's little point in running netatalk in addition to SAMBA.
If you want to see stuff run really slick, install CUPS on your UNIX boxes. Watch all your systems, Mac and traditional UNIX, use SLP autodiscovery to self-configure printers.
A big part of allowing Macs to be easy additions to one's IT environment is simply using actual standards, instead of "Microsoft standards." Generally, Mac OS X does an excellent job of supporting standards that have RFCs associated with 'em. For instance, OS X plays great in an LDAP directory environment. If you're using Active Directory, OS X can still be made to work -- but as with any non-Microsoft OS trying to use a proprietary Microsoft "standard," it's going to be awkward.
It's not that Macs are hard to put into an IT environment. It's that a lot of IT environments have been designed using protocols and tools that only work well under Microsoft OSes, because Microsoft designed them that way. If Ford came out with a car that only worked with a special Shell gasoline, you shouldn't blame Mobil for not being able to fill your tank.
Global Crossing's biggest claim to fame is its undersea cables. It was one of a very small number of companies -- two or three -- to own ships capable of laying undersea cable. Global Crossing's original mission was to build a network of modern, high-speed undersea cables linking the major continents. Not only would this be useful as part of their own network, but they could resell capacity to other companies that didn't have a fleet of their own.
The missing part of that plan was a connection across the continental U.S., so they set out to acquire a landline fiber network. They purchased Frontier Corporation for their nationwide fiber. Frontier was formerly Rochester Telephone of Rochester, NY, one of the largest local telephone companies that was never part of the Bell System.
I can remember the days when transferring a file from overseas was done only as a last resort, because the Internet links across the oceans were low-bandwidth copper or satellite links. Global Crossing's undersea fiber, and the competition it spurred, brought that era to an end.
Technically, Global Crossing is a Bermuda corporation; that's a tax dodge used by a number of companies because of Bermuda's very liberal attitude towards incorporation and taxes. (The prerequisite "corporate presence" in the company can consist of a mailbox, for example. It's not a major hardship for a Board of Directors to hold at least one meeting annually in Bermuda, either.)
The reason that Global Crossing's sale to a Singapore concern is of national interest is Global Crossing's contracts with the U.S. Government. Because of its undersea fiber, Global Crossing is one of a few companies that can provide the government with a worldwide communications network that isn't sub-leased. The Department of Defense has several contracts with Global Crossing. They were concerned about their calls and data being sent over a network owned by ST Telemedia, which is itself owned by the Singapore government.
More worrisome was the original plan, in which ST Telemedia would share ownership with Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd., a company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, believed to be closely tied to the Chinese government. ST Telemedia bought out Hutchinson's share in the reorganization plan, probably helping clear the way for the approval. It's hard to imagine the U.S. government permitting Department of Defense communications networks to be partly owned by the Chinese.
I use a/24 chunk of 172.16.0.0/12, because it's a chunk that is easy for me to remember -- it maps to my birth date.
Plus, if I wind up with more than 254 networked devices in the house, I'll either go bankrupt paying the power bill, or the girlfriend will kill me once she finds her way through the Cat5 to throttle my neck.
Re:if you are into this ....
on
Masters of Doom
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· Score: 1
Except that COLECO stands for Connecticut Leather Company, not Colorado.
The daughter of Coleco's CEO is a close personal friend of mine from high school. I know of which I speak.
AOL NEVER restricted its own userbase from downloading other IM clients.
Perhaps you haven't heard about
OSCAR,
the main protocol used by AIM. AOL has gone to great lengths to change the protocol in order to prevent others from reverse-engineering it and developing fully AIM-compatible clients.
AOL lets people use a depreciated protocol, TOC, but the TOC protocol doesn't support anywhere near the feature set of AOL's client.
Sure, you have a right to try MSN or Yahoo! clients. But if you want a better AIM client, or an all-in-one client, you may need to get used to frequent downloads as developers try to keep up with AOL's manic protocol changes.
It'd be one thing if the protocol changes were needed to implement new functionality. Often, the changes were made just to spite third-party clients. Why? Most third-party clients don't bother with displaying the banner ads, thus allowing you to "steal" AIM service by getting it "for free."
It's always interested me that Apple's iChat is done in full cooperation with AOL, and that iChat has no advertisements. I wonder how Steve Jobs convinced AOL to make that deal, and how much cash changed hands, and in what direction. (On the right day, Steve could sell refrigerators, with ice-cube makers, that dig their own oil wells to power themselves, to Alaskan Eskimos. At $50 over MSRP.)
A few hints, first and foremost: hire a pro.
on
Solving a Wiring Mess?
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· Score: 3, Informative
I'm not an electrician, but I've done a lot of my own electrical work, and I've put in a good bit of study to make sure I'm doing it right.
The problem you describe sounds like a major one, and you'll need to hire an electrician. It's what I would do, and I feel comfortable wiring anything in my house this side of the main breaker. Fact is, you may need to replace the whole panel, and that requires coordination with the utility company to pull your meter, and you'll probably need a new service entrance. That's just not a handyman job.
That said, the "old wiring" may not be as bad as it looks. Get a professional opinion, of course. There are a few kinds of old wire with paper/cloth insulation. The oldest Romex has a shellacked paper or cloth outer wrapper and rubber insulation on the wires. The rubber becomes brittle with age, and should probably be replaced to avoid shorts and arcs. Later Romex still had the shellacked paper, or asphalted paper, but the wires have modern thermoplastic insulation. The outer wrapping of the cable can get brittle and very messy, but the insulation holds up okay. As long as Romex of that era isn't totally disintegrating, it's not an issue to panic over, as the thermoplastic insulation is durable.
If you see any aluminum wires in your breaker panel other than the service entrance or a heavy-gauge subfeed, have your electrician rewire the house ASAP. Aluminum wire for branch circuits is a house fire waiting to happen, even with "aluminum rated" outlets.
If you're going to do any major electrical work, go down to Town Hall and talk with the building inspector. They're usually quite friendly and helpful. Their job is to help you do things right and follow the codes. The codes are there to keep you from making mistakes others have already made, and to keep you from doing something foolish and unsafe. If you're polite and friendly, your inspector will probably be glad to sit with you for a while and give you pointers on how to do the job right.
Of course, it helps if you already know how to do it right. The National Electrical Code can be hard to track down; a lot of libraries don't seem to carry it, and those that do classify it as a reference work, so you can't borrow it. Luckily, thanks to
a recent Supreme Court decision, building codes which are enacted into law lose any copyright protection, so you can go ahead and photocopy away.
You may also find other helpful books. I'm particularly fond of
Wiring Simplified, a book that covers most common household wiring tasks and includes Code references.
When sparks start shooting out of things, though... that's time to call the pros.
Mac OS X fully supports two-button mice with scroll wheels. There's no configuration or special drivers involved; just plug it in and go. As you'd expect, the right button calls up a contextual menu, and the scroll wheel, er, scrolls.
On Mac OS 9, you'd need to load a driver. Most mice come with the right software. There's a popular shareware program, USB Overdrive, that will work with any USB mouse (and most other USB human-interface devices, for that matter). The driver just has to map the right click to a click with the Control key held down, which brings up the contextual menu. This feature has been in Mac OS for some time.
Have you ever tried to help a person who isn't a computer expert over the telephone and walk them through using a two-button mouse? The majority of people who use a computer don't realize what the right button is for. The term "right-click" confuses them. You may think that it shouldn't be confusing, but the plain fact is, it is confusing to a whole lot of people. No amount of deeply-held personal belief will change that reality.
By shipping computers with a one-button mouse, and designing the user interface so that every feature is accessible with just one button, Apple has made the system a lot more comprehensible to people who aren't into computers. The contextual menus are shortcuts, and you can use the full system without ever knowing about them. When you're ready, you can purchase an inexpensive mouse with a second button, and away you go.
I've seen way too many Windows programs where you have to right-click to access parts of the program. Perhaps that's why the "Windows keyboard" has the almost-useless "contextual menu" key between Ctrl and Alt to the left of the spacebar, where you can hit it by accident and screw up what you were doing?
Besides, mice are a personal thing. A mouse that's comfortable for one person is hell for another. (I'd love to meet the person that thought the original Apple USB mouse, the hockey puck, was comfortable.) It's not such a bad thing for people to buy an unbundled mouse.
John Grisham's most recent book, The King of Torts, explains a lot about the mania for class-action lawsuits lately. While it's fiction, Grisham is an attorney, so he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Class-action lawsuits are easy money for lawyers. Find a big enough "class" and you can soak the defendant for lots of money. The fees can be huge, especially if there's the typical "we get one third" sort of fee structure.
Because the lawyers are looking at huge bucks because of the sheer volume of plaintiffs, they don't necessarily care how big the individual settlements are. If you get $12, and they get $4... if the class has a million people in it, that's $4 million made without going to trial.
Anyway, it's a good book, but a scary one. I'll certainly never look at a class-action notice the same way again.
(I've been out of work for a while now, thanks to Global Crossing's bankruptcy. Slashdot won't accept links to Amazon Associate URLs in comments, but if you'd like to help me out and contribute to my book-money fund without raising your cost, you could buy the Grisham book through this URL: <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385508042/macwhiztechnolog>)
DVB-S (Digital Satelite) will work with as many decoders as you have LNBs on your satelite dish.
That's how it was in the old days, but now we have multiswitches.
The reason one needs two LNBs to attach two receivers is that there are two "polarizations" of the satellite signal. The receiver sends a message to the LNB to change the polarization. Thus, receiver A can use LNB A to watch a channel with right-hand polarization, and receiver B uses LNB B to watch a channel with left-hand polarization.
What if you want to add a third box? There's not a third kind of polarization. You just need a way for the box to share the LNBs. That's what the multiswtich does.
Essentially, the multiswitch looks like a virtual LNB to the receiver. It keeps one of the real LNBs on right-hand polarization, the other on left-hand, and switches its outputs between them as needed to satisfy requests from the receivers.
Things get more interesting when you have an oval dish with a third LNB for satellites in a different orbital slot, of course.
I haven't used a SA 8000 myself, but I've talked to people who have. I've also played with other "advanced" SA boxes, like the 3100HD. I own a TiVo. Based on all that, I'd recommend anyone considering the SA 8000 take a good look at a TiVo first. The consensus seems to be that the SA 8000 looks good only so long as you don't know what you're missing.
The SA 8000 has these advantages:
No up-front cost
Dual tuners
No need for the IR dongle
Better recording quality for digital channels
Doesn't require phone line connection
However, the TiVo has advantages over the SA 8000:
Season Pass function is far smarter about multiple shows, reruns, etc.
Suggestions feature will often record things you want to see that you didn't know to record
Rarely if ever crashes
Doesn't lose all your shows when the power goes out or the box crashes
Isn't tied to your current cable system -- operates without the cable line attached, can be taken with you on vacation or to a friend's house
If you are comfortable with computers, can be easily modified
Better user interface doesn't get in the way of watching TV
Can play MP3s from your home computer when connected to your home LAN*
Can display JPEGs from your home computer when connected to your home LAN*
Can be programmed remotely from any web browser -- so if you're at work and you realize you forgot to record a show (or you are about to stay late), you're a few clicks away from having no problem*
* Requires Series2 TiVo and Home Media Option (extra cost)
The Season Pass is the key to DVRs. The power of the DVR is the ability to say, "I want you to record every new episode of ER." The DVR then figures out which episodes are new, when they come on, which ones to record, etc. My understanding is that SA's DVR has a fairly rudimentary ability to record shows by name. The Season Pass has an ability to distinguish reruns from new shows, determine when a show is on six times in a week and record it just once, automatically determine which of six showings in a week doesn't conflict with other recordings, and even record shows based on keyword searches of the actors, title, or description. What point is there in owning (or renting) a DVR if it's as cumbersome to use as a VCR?
Some important points about the SA 8000 that aren't immediately obvious from the hype:
Although it does record digital channels without recompressing, it must compress analog channels itself. Any channel that you could get without the digital converter box is still analog, even with the digital box.
If your cable connection is out, and the box can't get authorization to operate from the cable company, you may not be able to watch the stuff on the hard drive.
In my opinion, SA has work to do on their line of digital boxes. My 3100HD was plagued with issues. It had trouble with digital sound. It would occasionally reset for no apparent reason. It seemed to degrade analog channels quite a bit -- its comb filter was terrible. From all the reports I've read, the 8000 is even worse, suffering from annoying, crippling bugs that haven't been resolved in a year of deployment. I question whether or not SA is dedicated to making these boxes work properly, or if they're "good enough" to generate extra revenue for cable system operators.
The TiVo works great, it's stable, it's the standard to which others are compared, and I own it. I can modify it. I can use it as I see fit -- it doesn't require "authorization" to work.
Don't get taken in by the "invasion of privacy" FUD. Yes, the TiVo will report back on your viewing habits. The data is anonymized. Personally, I like the idea that my viewing habits may be scrutinized by the networks. Too many good shows that I like are taken off the air for "poor ratings." I firmly hope that someday, TiVo data is taken as seriously as Nielsen est
The majority of "generic" non-rechargeable batteries sold in the U.S. are made by the same "major" manufacturers. Unless the ink used to print the brand name on the battery is somehow causing a performance increase, any apparent performance improvement is probably due to good advertising.
However, among the major manufacturers (and therefore also among the brands of "generic" battery they OEM), there are differences in construction that make some batteries better for some tasks than others.
While working at Kodak, I found that Kodak's Supralife AAA batteries lasted noticeably longer in my Palm than Duracell or Energizer. When I installed a program that tracked battery voltage, I found that the Supralife batteries' voltage declined in a very predictable curve, where Duracell and Energizer tended to fluctuate, sometimes causing the Palm to decide the batteries were near death when they still had useful life. This was several years ago, and the battery formulations may have changed.
The best advice with disposable batteries is: try a few different brands and find out what works best among the brands in your area, in your device, the way you use it.
Sure, POP/IMAP work, but what about all the public folders I need and Calendar stuff?
Yeah, too bad that Apple doesn't have some technology for managing calendars and synchronizing them with other networked sources that they could build upon...
Oh, wait!;)
If Apple is pursuing a strategy of replacing Microsoft technology wholesale, then I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find an update to iSync that knows how to push bits between an Exchange server and iCal.
Seems to me that's a better rationalization for iCal's existence than trying to push Palm out of the Palm Desktop business... even if Palm Desktop for Mac could use the competition.
Are there hosting providers using AIX in their hosting environments? I would think that RS6000s would be just too expensive in comparison to blades or generic 1 or 2U x86s for hosting environments.
I worked at a major telco ISP that used AIX. In fact, not only were the web services hosted on AIX, but they were hosted on a RS/6000 SP2 parallel supercomputer.
This sounds like overkill, and in some ways, it is... but the SP2 is, in essence, a very fancy rack. Each SP2 frame has a number of nodes in it; each node is a self-contained RS/6000 system. The major difference in an SP2 node is that it has a SP Switch connection. The SP Switch is a very high speed switch fabric that allows the nodes to communicate. Combined with heavy-duty software and fault-tolerant design, you wind up with a parallel supercomputer...
...or one heck of a rack system that lets you run the nodes as individual servers, or in clusters, with lots of bandwidth and control.
For a service provider that wants to lure people in with a low starting cost, and hope that turnover from downtime isn't too bad, AIX can be expensive. I used to dislike AIX, because of its reputation as "not quite UNIX." Once I had the opportunity to use it, I found that it really is well suited to many ISP tasks. AIX has inherited a lot of attitude from IBM's mainframe days. IBM's mainframes were used in "can't go down" environments. AIX has many features that share that design philosophy.
As for the cost... as with any major manufacturer system, there's the published cost, and there's the cost you negotiate. If you are buying a whole setup, you can usually cut a deal. Of course, if you're buying major manufacturer equipment, you're already committed to paying more than you would for a white-box open source system, presumably because you want advanced features that haven't made it into OSS yet, or you want support.
(I've found that IBM's AIX support kicks ass. When I'd call Sun, even with a Platinum contract, I'd usually get someone who'd do the same SunSolve search I already tried, then promise to get back to me some day. Calling IBM gets results... they will put as many people into conference as they have to in order to get enough subject-area experts talking to figure out the problem and resolve it, preferably on the same call. A far cry from "RTFM and then post to the mailing list!")
The only ISP task that I found AIX had trouble supporting was INN. At least at the time I was working with it, AIX had resource limitations that caused trouble for very large INN installations. (This ISP was working with a two terabyte news spool.)
What's the motivation?
on
Open Source Law
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What's the motivation for a third party to write a model building code and get it enacted as a law?
Is it an altruistic urge to ensure the safety of the general public?
I submit that, if such an urge were the chief reason for writing a model building code, groups like SBCCI wouldn't care if people copied the code. After all, if you keep people from easily getting the code -- which is supposed to keep people safe -- you're encouraging people to be less safe. No code, no idea if you're doing it right.
What other motivation could there be?
By trying to assert copyright on the enacted model laws, groups like SBCCI show that money is a major motivation. As long as the drafting group holds a legally-recognized copyright, they can soak the populace for any amount they wish. People need access to these codes, whether it's a contractor building a skyscraper or a homeowner building a deck. If the only source for the text of the code is the drafting group, it's a huge opportunity for profit.
If you agree with my opinion that money, not safety, seems to be the biggest motivation for the drafters of model codes, consider this: The codes are frequently updated. When the code is updated, those who needed it must have purchased it again. I think that perhaps this might have lead to code revisions that weren't strictly necessary for safety, but rather, revisions that ensured everyone would need to buy a new copy of the code.
Kind of like how a lot of software upgrades work. Remember the days when word processors changed file formats with every major revision?
I hope this court decision will ensure that building codes are about safety, and not profit. Those who draft the code need to be concerned about safety first and foremost, not about the money to be made in publication.
Re:Here's an interesting quote
on
Open Source Law
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
SBCCI may have put work and thought into those codes... but I suspect that their motive wasn't an altruistic urge to help humanity by helping government. Perhaps their motive was to make oodles of cash by selling copies of the code.
I think that SBCCI, and the other building-code organizations, thought they had the ultimate legal monopoly. By convincing municipalities to enact building codes that amount to "see SBCCI's code," they'd retain the copyright and soak every Joe Handyman that wanted to repair a light switch.
I tried to get a copy of my local building codes recently, before putting new shingles on the roof. Although the building inspector was helpful in telling me what I needed to know, I wanted to see the whole text of the law.
I went to my library. They don't have a copy; it's a small town and they can't afford it. There's several different model codes, each costing exorbitant sums, and they change every two or three years.
I tried to get a copy from another state library. It seems that there's two copies of the code I need in the state; both of those copies are "reference" and can't leave their libraries.
I could go down to the Building Inspector's office and photocopy the code. That'd take a long time, cost a lot, and if the codes were copyrighted it'd be illegal.
How am I to comply with the building codes when I make repairs? As others have pointed out, I could be fined or even jailed for failure to comply.
Before this ruling, my choice would have to be: cough up the dough to the extortionists.
Thankfully, this ruling eliminates that copyright, and hopefully the codes will show up online soon. Perhaps low-cost paperback editions will come out.
Perhaps, too, towns will have to do some work of their own to create these codes, instead of accepting model codes that were created in hopes of a cash windfall. I know it will be tough, but I'm sure that the towns can work together, and work with other organizations, such as Underwriters' Laboratories, to develop "open source model codes" that can be used by many towns.
What's the news here? That only 8 years later Apple finally put video conferencing into their OS? !?!?!?!
Video Conferencing has been BUILT into Windows since 1995 (or was it Windows For Workgroups 3.1?)
Video wasn't a feature of NetMeeting until version 2.0, which was released in December 1996.
A year previously, in December 1995, Apple released QuickTime Conferencing, a standards-based videoconferencing suite for Macs. It didn't catch on, presumably because there were few users with fat network connections needed to support its features: audio and video chat, shared whiteboard, support for the H.320 ISDN videoconferencing standard used in businesses at the time.
Of course, people forget that Microsoft Excel was written for the Mac, and ported to Windows, as well...
Not everyone has the money to buy some bad ass digital camcorder!
Of those people who own Macs capable of running iChat AV, I suspect a great many have a digital camcorder already. Why? iMovie.
For those who haven't played with it, iMovie is one of those products that changes the way you do things. Few people are apt to edit movies using an analog camcorder and a VCR. The results rarely look good, and it's tedious as hell. Instead, you try to videotape only what will be interesting... or you end up with a super-boring home movie.
With iMovie, you can film everything, and then edit it into something entertaining later. You no longer have to be thinking "should I stop recording this?" while you're using the camcorder... just film it all! You can fix it in post-production!
Granted, there are several Windows programs that can do this. I have yet to see a review of such software that gives a Windows program high marks for ease of use. Because iMovie is straightforward, and doesn't require users to understand professional video editing terms and skills, it encourages people to use it. I think it even encourages people to buy digital camcorders.
That's why I suspect Mac users, as a group, are more likely to already have digital camcorders.
I've played with using my digital camcorder as a webcam. I've compared it to both USB-based webcams and FireWire webcams like the 1394 Pyro. It blows them away. The optics (lens) on a consumer-grade camcorder, as well as the CCD image sensor, are far superior to those in any "affordable" webcam. The camcorder works in low-light conditions. It auto-focuses. It has a remote control I can use to control the zoom. These are valuable features in a webcam or chat function.
Yes, there are webcams that offer these features, but they're in the same price range as a cheap digital camcorder. Why, then, would you buy a webcam that can't be unplugged and used to record home movies?
Sure, there are people for whom a cheap USB webcam is a sufficient solution. Those people can still use a Mac; there's software available that uses USB webcams and speaks the standard H.323 videoconferencing protocol used by Microsoft NetMeeting. Of course, the usual acute pains of getting H.323 to work through any kind of odd network connection apply.
Like the iPod, iChat AV isn't a product for everyone, but for those who need what it offers, it's a much slicker solution than the other stuff on the market.
Linux is for people who want to spend as little as possible, and put the value of their own time at zero.
Windows is for people who are willing to spend some money to improve their ease-of-use, and who put the value of their own time near zero.
Mac OS is for people who understand the difference between "frugal" and "cheap," and value their own time, and thus understand buying a bargain basement computer may be a decision that bites them in the ass.
If you buy an el cheapo PC and a bargain basement monitor with it, how long will it last? How quickly will you need to get rid of it, or spend big bucks on upgrades, to run new software or OS upgrades? How long before parts die because they're made cheap? Will you get eyestrain because that cheap monitor has a dot pitch that was mediocre in 1989?
Macs last longer. They're built better. (Compare customer satisfaction of the iMac and eMac vs. the bargain-basement PCs.) Apple rarely requires you to go out and buy lots of new hardware to run OS upgrades. I've got a Power Mac G4 that runs OS X just fine. The Compaq Presario I bought about the same time cost half as much, but already it's painful to use WinXP on it, especially to play games. For example, Civ III isn't a terribly demanding game, but it crawls on the Compaq. It flies on the Mac.
But even ignoring all that, what's your time worth? How often do you need to figure out why OpenOffice barfed on a Word document before you feel you've wasted your time? How many reboots before Windows seems less of a bargain?
The "Macs are more expensive" argument only works when you use a cut-rate machine of dubious quality, and assume that your time is worthless. I think that's a poor assumption for most consumers.
Perhaps the problem is that, indeed, Linux folks try to get "someone" to "hack together" a user interface.
Mac OS X's interface (rough edges and all) is the result of:
A team of programmers who are paid to do nothing but write the GUI code, rather than work on it in their spare time as they feel like it
Underlying graphics hardware that is predictable (Macs that can run OS X are either going to have ATi or Nvidia cards, not some oddball OEM card dug out of a dusty closet)
Years of research into human/computer interaction, psychology, and ease-of-use
Almost two decades of experience refining the interface
The foresight to write a "bible" that details how various user interface elements work
An API that defines user interface elements, instead of various packages of "widgets" that are mixed and matched
A philosophy that it's better to have one design that is reasonably good for everyone, so that you can sit down at any Mac and use any program and feel comfortable, rather than skins and themes and mods up the wazoo
In short, perhaps the reason that open-source software hasn't duplicated the Mac's ease of use and consistency is that it just ain't that easy to pull off!
From a technical standpoint, a lot of the neat "small touches" of Mac OS X are a feature of basing the GUI on PDF and OpenGL. Duplicating those features with X11 would be difficult at best. Example: When an iChat AV window pops up because someone IM'd you, it's mostly transparent. It truly shows what's underneath the window--even a playing movie. Most X11 programs I've seen that have "transparency" are poor imitations using workarounds.
As for "blinded by its NeXT heritage," well... the Dock.;)
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There were parameters you could set in the Parameter RAM (PRAM), like the default boot disk and the speaker volume. Those parameters aren't really the same thing as the settings found in a PC BIOS. The PRAM wasn't a BIOS; it was a very small amount of battery-backed memory in the clock chip.
For instance, any Mac is fully capable of checking itself over for bootable devices and then starting up off one of them -- whether that's the device the user has requested by holding down a key at boot, the user's preferred startup disk, or the first available startup disk. The boot device could be an ISA hard drive, SCSI hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD, floppy, Zip disk, FireWire hard drive, flash memory drive... All this functionality is a recent addition to the PC BIOS, and getting it to work often involves delving into an ancient, arcane text-mode interface.
NuBus beat PCI to the plug-and-play arena. When Macs still had NuBus, PCs used ISA cards that often needed BIOS tweaking to play nice. NuBus (a Texas Instruments invention, not Apple's) automatically configured the bus based on configuration ROMs on the cards.
My modern "New World architecture" Mac has NVRAM, which is different from the old PRAM. (PRAM is now emulated by Open Firmware and NVRAM.) As a user, I don't have to mess with NVRAM directly, ever. As a professional systems administrator, sometimes I go in and do things in OF, just as I would on a Sun system -- setting boot-diag? to true, for example, if something odd is happening (or I just want to see a Mac spew forth a text-mode bootup).
Aside from such geeking, the end-user never has to know that there's a special setting area that needs attention on a Mac. If you want to boot from a different drive, you use the GUI control panel to select it, or you hold down a key at boot to bring up a GUI list of your bootable disks. The user doesn't have to know that there's some special place they need to go -- it's all "the computer" instead of "the OS" and "the BIOS."
If "plug and play" works, why should an end user have to know that there's two levels of software involved in booting? Yeah, the geek may want to disable cards in software, but end users don't do that -- except when they have to work around broken PnP.
I agree. In most cases, the large salaries of star pro athletes is justified if you look at it over a lifetime, instead of over a single year.
In any pro sport, there's a high risk of injury -- whether it's broken bones in football, tendonitis in baseball, ACL injuries in basketball, whatever. One injury can end a career.
If you've spent your life focused on that sports career, you may not have much to fall back on. There's a limited aftermarket for washed-up sports stars. ESPN only needs so many commentators.
So, I can understand wanting to get paid really well while you can still play. Eventually, you won't be able to play, and there's a good chance you'll be living off your saved income. Hopefully that day comes when you get too old, and not due to a freak accident that ruins your ability to play while you're still young.
In TiVo's case, there's something else going on that, to me, puts their infomercials in a different category -- at least, insofar as changing the channel is concerned.
The "TiVo Enhanced Content" show doesn't just contain infomercial videos. It also contains data for the program guide, and perhaps even software updates as well. By putting this data into an encoded video stream, TiVo reduces the amount of time that the recorder has to spend tying up my phone line downloading data each day. As I understand it, the common cable channels' data is transmitted through the Enhanced Content show, and the daily call takes care of local channels and oddball stations.
Since TiVo has to pay Discovery Channel for the leased airtime, and that time comes in a half-hour chunk, I can see where it makes sense to use the leftover time to push video out to the recorder. The recorder was designed to have a certain amount of scratch space for such content, so it doesn't reduce the advertised capacity of the TiVo. Occasionally, there's an interesting advertisement. It's far less obtrusive than, say, the damn ads that appear during every show on the air nowadays.
Belkin's HTTP hijacking doesn't give the user any real benefit, other than a very tenuous claim that it makes the service easier to use. TiVo's use of leased time on Discovery gives me a very useful benefit: less time with a busy phone line.
Mine already does, after a fashion. Should I call someone with my SBC SNET phone line, and the number is busy, I get one or two seconds of busy tone before the call is redirected to a voice message which informs me the line is busy, but I can use the SBC automatic callback feature for just a few dozen cents a call...
Plays havoc with some devices that need to "hear" busy signals.
I've got a SPARCstation IPX (with the Weitek PowerUP chip upgrade) that I use from time to time. It runs Solaris 7, as long as you're patient. I haven't tried anything newer.
For a console, I use my old Mac Plus. The original beige version, purchased when the Plus was new. It has the Kensington System Saver fan "hat," and I upgraded the keyboard to a DataDesk 101-key model. The mouse died long ago and was replaced with a Mouse Systems optical mouse -- the Sun style with the aluminum mousepad, not the modern kind.
The Plus still has life in it. The analog board -- the third one in this unit -- is a wee bit shaky, but if it goes I can dig out my copy of "Macintosh Repair Secrets" and order some new capacitors to replace the troublesome components. The thing predates surface-mount.
The funny thing is, not only does the Plus make a serviceable VT100 replacement, but it fits the IPX like they were designed to go together. (Well, it'd look better if it were the later, "platinum" colored Plus, but...) The classic Mac footprint fits exactly on top of the IPX (and anything else in the stack of old Sun accessories, like the 2x cartridge-loading external CD-ROM).
The oldest piece of equipment I've used in production at a job would be an ancient Epson dot-matrix printer. I hooked it up to our loghost, so that all the important log messages were immediately printed. This served two purposes: I had a copy of the logs which could not be deleted, even if the loghost were compromised; and if something unusual was happening on one of the machines, the racket from the printer would alert me to check the logs. It had to be an old dot-matrix for this to work, because
So, if I were in a small-to-medium shop where hacking was a big concern, an old tank-like dot matrix with a good tractor feed would be valuable to me -- and not easy to find anymore.
Novell? People still use that? :)
Anyway, I haven't used Novell in over a decade, but my understanding is that nowadays it speaks the standard Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). Mac OS X 10.2's printing system is based on CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, which speaks IPP natively. A quick Google search indicates that you ought to be able to just hand OS X the correct IPP URL, such as "IPP://username:password@<server>/ipps/<printer >" to talk to Novell.
Of course, again, if one goes with a proprietary print protocol as opposed to the RFC-standard protocols, of course one should expect interoperability issues.
netatalk? How quaint :)
With Mac OS X, there's no need to go running netatalk; OS X will speak NFS just fine -- or, if you don't want to go that far, there's always FTP and/or SSH. If you're in a mixed environment, OS X's SMB support is good enough that there's little point in running netatalk in addition to SAMBA.
If you want to see stuff run really slick, install CUPS on your UNIX boxes. Watch all your systems, Mac and traditional UNIX, use SLP autodiscovery to self-configure printers.
A big part of allowing Macs to be easy additions to one's IT environment is simply using actual standards, instead of "Microsoft standards." Generally, Mac OS X does an excellent job of supporting standards that have RFCs associated with 'em. For instance, OS X plays great in an LDAP directory environment. If you're using Active Directory, OS X can still be made to work -- but as with any non-Microsoft OS trying to use a proprietary Microsoft "standard," it's going to be awkward.
It's not that Macs are hard to put into an IT environment. It's that a lot of IT environments have been designed using protocols and tools that only work well under Microsoft OSes, because Microsoft designed them that way. If Ford came out with a car that only worked with a special Shell gasoline, you shouldn't blame Mobil for not being able to fill your tank.
Global Crossing's biggest claim to fame is its undersea cables. It was one of a very small number of companies -- two or three -- to own ships capable of laying undersea cable. Global Crossing's original mission was to build a network of modern, high-speed undersea cables linking the major continents. Not only would this be useful as part of their own network, but they could resell capacity to other companies that didn't have a fleet of their own.
The missing part of that plan was a connection across the continental U.S., so they set out to acquire a landline fiber network. They purchased Frontier Corporation for their nationwide fiber. Frontier was formerly Rochester Telephone of Rochester, NY, one of the largest local telephone companies that was never part of the Bell System.
I can remember the days when transferring a file from overseas was done only as a last resort, because the Internet links across the oceans were low-bandwidth copper or satellite links. Global Crossing's undersea fiber, and the competition it spurred, brought that era to an end.
Technically, Global Crossing is a Bermuda corporation; that's a tax dodge used by a number of companies because of Bermuda's very liberal attitude towards incorporation and taxes. (The prerequisite "corporate presence" in the company can consist of a mailbox, for example. It's not a major hardship for a Board of Directors to hold at least one meeting annually in Bermuda, either.)
The reason that Global Crossing's sale to a Singapore concern is of national interest is Global Crossing's contracts with the U.S. Government. Because of its undersea fiber, Global Crossing is one of a few companies that can provide the government with a worldwide communications network that isn't sub-leased. The Department of Defense has several contracts with Global Crossing. They were concerned about their calls and data being sent over a network owned by ST Telemedia, which is itself owned by the Singapore government.
More worrisome was the original plan, in which ST Telemedia would share ownership with Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd., a company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, believed to be closely tied to the Chinese government. ST Telemedia bought out Hutchinson's share in the reorganization plan, probably helping clear the way for the approval. It's hard to imagine the U.S. government permitting Department of Defense communications networks to be partly owned by the Chinese.
I use a /24 chunk of 172.16.0.0/12, because it's a chunk that is easy for me to remember -- it maps to my birth date.
Plus, if I wind up with more than 254 networked devices in the house, I'll either go bankrupt paying the power bill, or the girlfriend will kill me once she finds her way through the Cat5 to throttle my neck.
Except that COLECO stands for Connecticut Leather Company, not Colorado.
The daughter of Coleco's CEO is a close personal friend of mine from high school. I know of which I speak.
Perhaps you haven't heard about OSCAR, the main protocol used by AIM. AOL has gone to great lengths to change the protocol in order to prevent others from reverse-engineering it and developing fully AIM-compatible clients.
AOL lets people use a depreciated protocol, TOC, but the TOC protocol doesn't support anywhere near the feature set of AOL's client.
Sure, you have a right to try MSN or Yahoo! clients. But if you want a better AIM client, or an all-in-one client, you may need to get used to frequent downloads as developers try to keep up with AOL's manic protocol changes.
It'd be one thing if the protocol changes were needed to implement new functionality. Often, the changes were made just to spite third-party clients. Why? Most third-party clients don't bother with displaying the banner ads, thus allowing you to "steal" AIM service by getting it "for free."
It's always interested me that Apple's iChat is done in full cooperation with AOL, and that iChat has no advertisements. I wonder how Steve Jobs convinced AOL to make that deal, and how much cash changed hands, and in what direction. (On the right day, Steve could sell refrigerators, with ice-cube makers, that dig their own oil wells to power themselves, to Alaskan Eskimos. At $50 over MSRP.)
I'm not an electrician, but I've done a lot of my own electrical work, and I've put in a good bit of study to make sure I'm doing it right.
The problem you describe sounds like a major one, and you'll need to hire an electrician. It's what I would do, and I feel comfortable wiring anything in my house this side of the main breaker. Fact is, you may need to replace the whole panel, and that requires coordination with the utility company to pull your meter, and you'll probably need a new service entrance. That's just not a handyman job.
That said, the "old wiring" may not be as bad as it looks. Get a professional opinion, of course. There are a few kinds of old wire with paper/cloth insulation. The oldest Romex has a shellacked paper or cloth outer wrapper and rubber insulation on the wires. The rubber becomes brittle with age, and should probably be replaced to avoid shorts and arcs. Later Romex still had the shellacked paper, or asphalted paper, but the wires have modern thermoplastic insulation. The outer wrapping of the cable can get brittle and very messy, but the insulation holds up okay. As long as Romex of that era isn't totally disintegrating, it's not an issue to panic over, as the thermoplastic insulation is durable.
If you see any aluminum wires in your breaker panel other than the service entrance or a heavy-gauge subfeed, have your electrician rewire the house ASAP. Aluminum wire for branch circuits is a house fire waiting to happen, even with "aluminum rated" outlets.
If you're going to do any major electrical work, go down to Town Hall and talk with the building inspector. They're usually quite friendly and helpful. Their job is to help you do things right and follow the codes. The codes are there to keep you from making mistakes others have already made, and to keep you from doing something foolish and unsafe. If you're polite and friendly, your inspector will probably be glad to sit with you for a while and give you pointers on how to do the job right.
Of course, it helps if you already know how to do it right. The National Electrical Code can be hard to track down; a lot of libraries don't seem to carry it, and those that do classify it as a reference work, so you can't borrow it. Luckily, thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, building codes which are enacted into law lose any copyright protection, so you can go ahead and photocopy away.
You may also find other helpful books. I'm particularly fond of Wiring Simplified, a book that covers most common household wiring tasks and includes Code references.
When sparks start shooting out of things, though... that's time to call the pros.
Mac OS X fully supports two-button mice with scroll wheels. There's no configuration or special drivers involved; just plug it in and go. As you'd expect, the right button calls up a contextual menu, and the scroll wheel, er, scrolls.
On Mac OS 9, you'd need to load a driver. Most mice come with the right software. There's a popular shareware program, USB Overdrive, that will work with any USB mouse (and most other USB human-interface devices, for that matter). The driver just has to map the right click to a click with the Control key held down, which brings up the contextual menu. This feature has been in Mac OS for some time.
Have you ever tried to help a person who isn't a computer expert over the telephone and walk them through using a two-button mouse? The majority of people who use a computer don't realize what the right button is for. The term "right-click" confuses them. You may think that it shouldn't be confusing, but the plain fact is, it is confusing to a whole lot of people. No amount of deeply-held personal belief will change that reality.
By shipping computers with a one-button mouse, and designing the user interface so that every feature is accessible with just one button, Apple has made the system a lot more comprehensible to people who aren't into computers. The contextual menus are shortcuts, and you can use the full system without ever knowing about them. When you're ready, you can purchase an inexpensive mouse with a second button, and away you go.
I've seen way too many Windows programs where you have to right-click to access parts of the program. Perhaps that's why the "Windows keyboard" has the almost-useless "contextual menu" key between Ctrl and Alt to the left of the spacebar, where you can hit it by accident and screw up what you were doing?
Besides, mice are a personal thing. A mouse that's comfortable for one person is hell for another. (I'd love to meet the person that thought the original Apple USB mouse, the hockey puck, was comfortable.) It's not such a bad thing for people to buy an unbundled mouse.
John Grisham's most recent book, The King of Torts, explains a lot about the mania for class-action lawsuits lately. While it's fiction, Grisham is an attorney, so he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Class-action lawsuits are easy money for lawyers. Find a big enough "class" and you can soak the defendant for lots of money. The fees can be huge, especially if there's the typical "we get one third" sort of fee structure.
Because the lawyers are looking at huge bucks because of the sheer volume of plaintiffs, they don't necessarily care how big the individual settlements are. If you get $12, and they get $4... if the class has a million people in it, that's $4 million made without going to trial.
Anyway, it's a good book, but a scary one. I'll certainly never look at a class-action notice the same way again.
(I've been out of work for a while now, thanks to Global Crossing's bankruptcy. Slashdot won't accept links to Amazon Associate URLs in comments, but if you'd like to help me out and contribute to my book-money fund without raising your cost, you could buy the Grisham book through this URL: <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385508042 /macwhiztechnolog>)
That's how it was in the old days, but now we have multiswitches.
The reason one needs two LNBs to attach two receivers is that there are two "polarizations" of the satellite signal. The receiver sends a message to the LNB to change the polarization. Thus, receiver A can use LNB A to watch a channel with right-hand polarization, and receiver B uses LNB B to watch a channel with left-hand polarization.
What if you want to add a third box? There's not a third kind of polarization. You just need a way for the box to share the LNBs. That's what the multiswtich does.
Essentially, the multiswitch looks like a virtual LNB to the receiver. It keeps one of the real LNBs on right-hand polarization, the other on left-hand, and switches its outputs between them as needed to satisfy requests from the receivers.
Things get more interesting when you have an oval dish with a third LNB for satellites in a different orbital slot, of course.
There's a good basic explanation at the HomeTech site.
I haven't used a SA 8000 myself, but I've talked to people who have. I've also played with other "advanced" SA boxes, like the 3100HD. I own a TiVo. Based on all that, I'd recommend anyone considering the SA 8000 take a good look at a TiVo first. The consensus seems to be that the SA 8000 looks good only so long as you don't know what you're missing.
The SA 8000 has these advantages:
However, the TiVo has advantages over the SA 8000:
* Requires Series2 TiVo and Home Media Option (extra cost)
The Season Pass is the key to DVRs. The power of the DVR is the ability to say, "I want you to record every new episode of ER." The DVR then figures out which episodes are new, when they come on, which ones to record, etc. My understanding is that SA's DVR has a fairly rudimentary ability to record shows by name. The Season Pass has an ability to distinguish reruns from new shows, determine when a show is on six times in a week and record it just once, automatically determine which of six showings in a week doesn't conflict with other recordings, and even record shows based on keyword searches of the actors, title, or description. What point is there in owning (or renting) a DVR if it's as cumbersome to use as a VCR?
Some important points about the SA 8000 that aren't immediately obvious from the hype:
In my opinion, SA has work to do on their line of digital boxes. My 3100HD was plagued with issues. It had trouble with digital sound. It would occasionally reset for no apparent reason. It seemed to degrade analog channels quite a bit -- its comb filter was terrible. From all the reports I've read, the 8000 is even worse, suffering from annoying, crippling bugs that haven't been resolved in a year of deployment. I question whether or not SA is dedicated to making these boxes work properly, or if they're "good enough" to generate extra revenue for cable system operators.
The TiVo works great, it's stable, it's the standard to which others are compared, and I own it. I can modify it. I can use it as I see fit -- it doesn't require "authorization" to work.
Don't get taken in by the "invasion of privacy" FUD. Yes, the TiVo will report back on your viewing habits. The data is anonymized. Personally, I like the idea that my viewing habits may be scrutinized by the networks. Too many good shows that I like are taken off the air for "poor ratings." I firmly hope that someday, TiVo data is taken as seriously as Nielsen est
The majority of "generic" non-rechargeable batteries sold in the U.S. are made by the same "major" manufacturers. Unless the ink used to print the brand name on the battery is somehow causing a performance increase, any apparent performance improvement is probably due to good advertising.
However, among the major manufacturers (and therefore also among the brands of "generic" battery they OEM), there are differences in construction that make some batteries better for some tasks than others.
While working at Kodak, I found that Kodak's Supralife AAA batteries lasted noticeably longer in my Palm than Duracell or Energizer. When I installed a program that tracked battery voltage, I found that the Supralife batteries' voltage declined in a very predictable curve, where Duracell and Energizer tended to fluctuate, sometimes causing the Palm to decide the batteries were near death when they still had useful life. This was several years ago, and the battery formulations may have changed.
The best advice with disposable batteries is: try a few different brands and find out what works best among the brands in your area, in your device, the way you use it.
Yeah, too bad that Apple doesn't have some technology for managing calendars and synchronizing them with other networked sources that they could build upon...
Oh, wait! ;)
If Apple is pursuing a strategy of replacing Microsoft technology wholesale, then I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find an update to iSync that knows how to push bits between an Exchange server and iCal.
Seems to me that's a better rationalization for iCal's existence than trying to push Palm out of the Palm Desktop business... even if Palm Desktop for Mac could use the competition.
I worked at a major telco ISP that used AIX. In fact, not only were the web services hosted on AIX, but they were hosted on a RS/6000 SP2 parallel supercomputer.
This sounds like overkill, and in some ways, it is... but the SP2 is, in essence, a very fancy rack. Each SP2 frame has a number of nodes in it; each node is a self-contained RS/6000 system. The major difference in an SP2 node is that it has a SP Switch connection. The SP Switch is a very high speed switch fabric that allows the nodes to communicate. Combined with heavy-duty software and fault-tolerant design, you wind up with a parallel supercomputer...
...or one heck of a rack system that lets you run the nodes as individual servers, or in clusters, with lots of bandwidth and control.
For a service provider that wants to lure people in with a low starting cost, and hope that turnover from downtime isn't too bad, AIX can be expensive. I used to dislike AIX, because of its reputation as "not quite UNIX." Once I had the opportunity to use it, I found that it really is well suited to many ISP tasks. AIX has inherited a lot of attitude from IBM's mainframe days. IBM's mainframes were used in "can't go down" environments. AIX has many features that share that design philosophy.
As for the cost... as with any major manufacturer system, there's the published cost, and there's the cost you negotiate. If you are buying a whole setup, you can usually cut a deal. Of course, if you're buying major manufacturer equipment, you're already committed to paying more than you would for a white-box open source system, presumably because you want advanced features that haven't made it into OSS yet, or you want support.
(I've found that IBM's AIX support kicks ass. When I'd call Sun, even with a Platinum contract, I'd usually get someone who'd do the same SunSolve search I already tried, then promise to get back to me some day. Calling IBM gets results... they will put as many people into conference as they have to in order to get enough subject-area experts talking to figure out the problem and resolve it, preferably on the same call. A far cry from "RTFM and then post to the mailing list!")
The only ISP task that I found AIX had trouble supporting was INN. At least at the time I was working with it, AIX had resource limitations that caused trouble for very large INN installations. (This ISP was working with a two terabyte news spool.)
What's the motivation for a third party to write a model building code and get it enacted as a law?
Is it an altruistic urge to ensure the safety of the general public?
I submit that, if such an urge were the chief reason for writing a model building code, groups like SBCCI wouldn't care if people copied the code. After all, if you keep people from easily getting the code -- which is supposed to keep people safe -- you're encouraging people to be less safe. No code, no idea if you're doing it right.
What other motivation could there be?
By trying to assert copyright on the enacted model laws, groups like SBCCI show that money is a major motivation. As long as the drafting group holds a legally-recognized copyright, they can soak the populace for any amount they wish. People need access to these codes, whether it's a contractor building a skyscraper or a homeowner building a deck. If the only source for the text of the code is the drafting group, it's a huge opportunity for profit.
If you agree with my opinion that money, not safety, seems to be the biggest motivation for the drafters of model codes, consider this: The codes are frequently updated. When the code is updated, those who needed it must have purchased it again. I think that perhaps this might have lead to code revisions that weren't strictly necessary for safety, but rather, revisions that ensured everyone would need to buy a new copy of the code.
Kind of like how a lot of software upgrades work. Remember the days when word processors changed file formats with every major revision?
I hope this court decision will ensure that building codes are about safety, and not profit. Those who draft the code need to be concerned about safety first and foremost, not about the money to be made in publication.
SBCCI may have put work and thought into those codes... but I suspect that their motive wasn't an altruistic urge to help humanity by helping government. Perhaps their motive was to make oodles of cash by selling copies of the code.
I think that SBCCI, and the other building-code organizations, thought they had the ultimate legal monopoly. By convincing municipalities to enact building codes that amount to "see SBCCI's code," they'd retain the copyright and soak every Joe Handyman that wanted to repair a light switch.
I tried to get a copy of my local building codes recently, before putting new shingles on the roof. Although the building inspector was helpful in telling me what I needed to know, I wanted to see the whole text of the law.
I went to my library. They don't have a copy; it's a small town and they can't afford it. There's several different model codes, each costing exorbitant sums, and they change every two or three years.
I tried to get a copy from another state library. It seems that there's two copies of the code I need in the state; both of those copies are "reference" and can't leave their libraries.
I could go down to the Building Inspector's office and photocopy the code. That'd take a long time, cost a lot, and if the codes were copyrighted it'd be illegal.
How am I to comply with the building codes when I make repairs? As others have pointed out, I could be fined or even jailed for failure to comply.
Before this ruling, my choice would have to be: cough up the dough to the extortionists.
Thankfully, this ruling eliminates that copyright, and hopefully the codes will show up online soon. Perhaps low-cost paperback editions will come out.
Perhaps, too, towns will have to do some work of their own to create these codes, instead of accepting model codes that were created in hopes of a cash windfall. I know it will be tough, but I'm sure that the towns can work together, and work with other organizations, such as Underwriters' Laboratories, to develop "open source model codes" that can be used by many towns.
Video wasn't a feature of NetMeeting until version 2.0, which was released in December 1996.
A year previously, in December 1995, Apple released QuickTime Conferencing, a standards-based videoconferencing suite for Macs. It didn't catch on, presumably because there were few users with fat network connections needed to support its features: audio and video chat, shared whiteboard, support for the H.320 ISDN videoconferencing standard used in businesses at the time.
Of course, people forget that Microsoft Excel was written for the Mac, and ported to Windows, as well...
Of those people who own Macs capable of running iChat AV, I suspect a great many have a digital camcorder already. Why? iMovie.
For those who haven't played with it, iMovie is one of those products that changes the way you do things. Few people are apt to edit movies using an analog camcorder and a VCR. The results rarely look good, and it's tedious as hell. Instead, you try to videotape only what will be interesting... or you end up with a super-boring home movie.
With iMovie, you can film everything, and then edit it into something entertaining later. You no longer have to be thinking "should I stop recording this?" while you're using the camcorder... just film it all! You can fix it in post-production!
Granted, there are several Windows programs that can do this. I have yet to see a review of such software that gives a Windows program high marks for ease of use. Because iMovie is straightforward, and doesn't require users to understand professional video editing terms and skills, it encourages people to use it. I think it even encourages people to buy digital camcorders.
That's why I suspect Mac users, as a group, are more likely to already have digital camcorders.
I've played with using my digital camcorder as a webcam. I've compared it to both USB-based webcams and FireWire webcams like the 1394 Pyro. It blows them away. The optics (lens) on a consumer-grade camcorder, as well as the CCD image sensor, are far superior to those in any "affordable" webcam. The camcorder works in low-light conditions. It auto-focuses. It has a remote control I can use to control the zoom. These are valuable features in a webcam or chat function.
Yes, there are webcams that offer these features, but they're in the same price range as a cheap digital camcorder. Why, then, would you buy a webcam that can't be unplugged and used to record home movies?
Sure, there are people for whom a cheap USB webcam is a sufficient solution. Those people can still use a Mac; there's software available that uses USB webcams and speaks the standard H.323 videoconferencing protocol used by Microsoft NetMeeting. Of course, the usual acute pains of getting H.323 to work through any kind of odd network connection apply.
Like the iPod, iChat AV isn't a product for everyone, but for those who need what it offers, it's a much slicker solution than the other stuff on the market.
Try looking at it this way:
If you buy an el cheapo PC and a bargain basement monitor with it, how long will it last? How quickly will you need to get rid of it, or spend big bucks on upgrades, to run new software or OS upgrades? How long before parts die because they're made cheap? Will you get eyestrain because that cheap monitor has a dot pitch that was mediocre in 1989?
Macs last longer. They're built better. (Compare customer satisfaction of the iMac and eMac vs. the bargain-basement PCs.) Apple rarely requires you to go out and buy lots of new hardware to run OS upgrades. I've got a Power Mac G4 that runs OS X just fine. The Compaq Presario I bought about the same time cost half as much, but already it's painful to use WinXP on it, especially to play games. For example, Civ III isn't a terribly demanding game, but it crawls on the Compaq. It flies on the Mac.
But even ignoring all that, what's your time worth? How often do you need to figure out why OpenOffice barfed on a Word document before you feel you've wasted your time? How many reboots before Windows seems less of a bargain?
The "Macs are more expensive" argument only works when you use a cut-rate machine of dubious quality, and assume that your time is worthless. I think that's a poor assumption for most consumers.
Perhaps the problem is that, indeed, Linux folks try to get "someone" to "hack together" a user interface.
Mac OS X's interface (rough edges and all) is the result of:
In short, perhaps the reason that open-source software hasn't duplicated the Mac's ease of use and consistency is that it just ain't that easy to pull off!
From a technical standpoint, a lot of the neat "small touches" of Mac OS X are a feature of basing the GUI on PDF and OpenGL. Duplicating those features with X11 would be difficult at best. Example: When an iChat AV window pops up because someone IM'd you, it's mostly transparent. It truly shows what's underneath the window--even a playing movie. Most X11 programs I've seen that have "transparency" are poor imitations using workarounds.
As for "blinded by its NeXT heritage," well... the Dock. ;)