Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I've been a PC user for a number of years now and I plan on moving from Debian to OS X
As do I. Even as a beta OSX rocks...I can't wait for the final.
It's so cool to be able to use Photoshop or Flash AND hack in a BSD UNIX environment without having to reboot.
Not to mention the IDE (Project Builder?) looks really nifty, although I haven't had much time to play with it.
"Oh, wow! I can use something besides the hardware that came with the system"
So, you're telling me that the ATA drive I installed in my G3 doesn't work?
Or that the Logitech USB mouse I replaced the god-awful hockeypuck with doesn't work either?
Or that I didn't swap a 128Mb DIMM from my PII into my G3?
average people know when their video card sucks or when they can't get sound out of their sound card. They would like an alternative other than "ship it back and pay the bill".
I'd argue that a) average consumer computer users do not know when their video card sucks (their kids prolly do tho), or even what a video card is, and b) 'ship it back and pay the bill' is one of the most common things to do when a home user has a problem.
I won't go into how inane time-wasting crap like soundcards (or other devices) suddenly not working generally doesn't happen on Macs...
--K
Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 4
Apple has a real problem with their CPUs that other server RISC based CPUs do not have - they are about two times too slow to keep up with the AMDs and Intels of the world.
First of all, Apple makes workstations not servers. Comparing a G4 to an 8 way Xeon is bullcrap.
Second, I guess Sun is too 'slow' as well. Their Ultra series workstations max out at 450Mhz...The
new Blade 1000 peaks at 750Mhz.
Why would people buy those? They're so much 'slower' than a P4!
I wonder why Sun's sales were up 85% from last year...Could it be that there is *still* demand for real UNIX hardware, even with the PeeCee?
I think if you had a clue about anything other than PeeCees you'd realize the only 'race' Apple is losing is the marketing race - Mhz is not an accurate measure of real-world performance.
People will NOT switch to OS X when it comes out
That's a huge generalization.
I know several people that are lusting after OSX right now.
Will appreciable amounts of people buy Apple boxen? I don't know, but I think there will be more than you expect.
It's a file you can put in your web root that (well behaved) spiders look for.
You can use it to tell spiders not to index your whole site, or certain parts of it.
Normally good for keeping bots out of places they shouldn't be, but it can be used to ban bots.
Or, you could just drop any traffic coming from *.altavista.com...
Think about this.
Walnut Creek has been helping the FreeBSD people for *years*.
Tucows was just jumping on the bandwagon because BSD might be the 'next big thing'.
When the BSD people asked them to correct mistakes on their site, they dropped BSD.
Does this sound like the actions of a company that supports the BSD community?
Let 'em take the easy way out - we have plenty of other, better ways of getting software.
(And none of them have massive amounts of banner ads, either!)
The point is that the signal is broadcast to *everyone*, not just paying customers.
You're not/stealing/ it, you're merely using a signal in a way that goes against what the originator intended.
I don't see this as 'theft' in any way - denying *potential* profits, yes, but not theft.
IMO, Hughes did the Right Thing.
The crackers cracked their signal, so they cracked the crackers cracks. I think that's pretty nifty.
It's nice to see a company that tries a more novel approach to fighting media 'piracy' than just herds of lawyers.
(Which, as we see in the RIAA and MPAA cases, doesn't really *do* anything at all, aside from annoying people.)
They solved their illicit reception problem, while at the same time gained some respect from the 'hacker' community.
Now the question is, will the blackhats try to crack the new firmware, or will they look for a new target?
That might be what I heard, but I/thought/ the format was already open...
I know there are a couple GPL'd Flash generators/players out now, but they may have just reversed the format.
Don't trust anything that keeps you from looking inside.
Definately. But IE has been getting a lot of 'attention';) from security analysts lately,
and I have yet to see any evidence of covert data collection. I consider it relatively safe and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks at this time.
>Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
The difference here is that you choose to put (and setup) these on your machines. If you decide you want to log certain transfers, so be it. At least you got the choice.
If your ISP is doing it, well, that's no good. I'd get the heck away from them and get on a real ISP that respects your privacy.
Agreed.
I am in NO way saying covert logging is acceptable. I was stating that you don't NEED something to be open to see if it's sending out covert packets, you can use any common network tools to check.
Hell, I think I'd rather check open products with the packet sniffer than reading the code....
Certainly takes less time than wading through 10k lines of network code looking for evil write()s.
(And if you ever HAVE looked at Mozilla code, you'll know what I mean...)
Having the source does make it easier to PROVE there is a problem tho.
Three words: Bell Phone Book.:-) Just because you have lots of money already and are a monopoly doesn't stop you from getting even more greedy.
True, although I see service providers tend to be more insidious than companies that ship actual products (even if those products are intangible).
This is part of the reason I find AOL to be scarier than M$.
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
Oh, they haven't stopped with this yet. They're trying to get a similar anti-'piracy' 'feature' into Whistler.
BUT, this thread isn't about Windoze OS, it's about IE, and more specifically, Mac IE.
M$ is evil and controlling - we already know this.
While Microsoft is better than AOL, it's sort of like comparing being stamped on by an elephant and mauled by a bear. They both suck.
Very true, but just because a company puts out turds 98% of the time doesn't mean they CAN'T put out an acceptable, even useful, product.
I'm actually using Mozilla 0.7 right now. It's great. It feels like Netscape 4 (which was easy to use, when it worked), and is really fast. Plus it renders HTML quite well.
Mozilla isn't bad. It's getting there, but I still like IE better for daily browsing.
Maybe in three months it'll be good enough for daily use.
Konqueror, on the other hand, is prolly the best one for freenixes right now.
Just a sidenote: Any particular reason why your website just forwards you to slashdot? Just wondering...:)
Just a bit of satirical commentary about blind linux and open source zealotry.
The attitude of 'Linux is the be-all end-all One True OS for Every Purpose' just grates after a while.
My real site will be here.
(No, it's not a redirect to goatse.cx, either.)
Agreed. Konqueror is/really/ good. I'd even venture to say it beats Moz in everyday usability.
the good 'ole Flash plugin. (Now there's someting that ought to be OpenSource'd..)
Actually, I seem to remember hearing that Macromedia was planning on opening the Flash plugin, but I may be very wrong.
Anyone else heard of such things?
Do you trust MS enough to let them know your entire purchasing history?
No, but I don't have much evidence that M$ is stealing my purchasing history.
I haven't seen any security advisories about M$ stealing user data, and IMO, they don't have to.
They are a monopoly, so they don't need to make bits of cash on the side selling demographics.
To be completely honest with you, I trust M$ more than AOL. Keep in mind the source for Netscape is NOT open, only the source for Mozilla, which is a different product.
I'm a lot more concerned with things like RealPlayer, which have proven security/privacy holes.
You can see there isn't a "report https accesses" module.
Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
Network traffic analysis may not be built in, but it is readily available.
There's no denying M$ is evil, but AOL is just as, if not more so, and Mozilla is still a ways from being done.
--K
Gotta go, I think some black helicopters just flew over.
Oh come on.
This is Slashdot. In Slashdot-land, M$ cannot make a product that's better than a competitior.
Even if that competitor is AOLScape.
Even if that product renders CSS1/2 better than the competitor.
Even if that product is faster than the competitor.
Even if that product is more stable than the competitor.
EVAS and Jubei? Is this '*nix apps named after anime characters' day?;)
Annnnyways...I had been wondering when someone was gonna use OpenGL
acceleration to render stuff in X... The idea has popped up in more than one
cofeeshop discussion between me and my friends, but no one
ever had the mad X hacking skillz to do it.
Way to go Raster!
Even though Linux might be superior, only Windows has the commercial
support and marketing potential to succeed on a large scale.
Therefore support is better lent for improving Windows.
It might make a n33t little MP3 jukebox, but there's no way I can see it recording video.
According to the FAQ, it's only got a K5-133 in it.
I think it's pretty unlikely that it could do realtime encoding even if it had dedicated MPEG hardware. (Which it doesn't.)
Besides, I don't think the Tivo software is open source, or even available outside of a Tivo.
The Linux OS stuff is open, but that's only a fraction of what ya need.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Sounds like TEMPEST caliber stuff...
I'm pretty sure static can be kept to a minimum with far less drastic measures.
However, it doesn't really surprise me considering who the former tenants were.
The average web'master' can't even write HTML nowadays, or that's what you'd think looking at websites owned by large corps.
Absolutely true. I've had cow-orkers ask me (in an almost disbelieving tone) why I
was writing HTML by hand when "Frontpage is already installed"...
I've also heard people talk about "learning HTML" when what they mean is "learning Frontpage".
I kinda like Flash tho, it's nice for making slick, compact, artsy-fartsy things that won't get broken
by crappy HTML renderers. It either works, or it doesn't, and chances are it will work,
because 95% of the viewing population is Win/Mac.
And for the other 5%, it's not hard to include a less 'cool', but equally informative text version.
It all depends on who's doing the work and weather they give a shit.
Not to mention I have yet to see a Flash page with a static image - they're always animating with a rotating logo or some other action. Boom there goes all your bandwidth for that remote X connection.
As I said before, Flash designers care about your
remote X sessions about as much as you care about their silly animations. I'd estimate people browsing across remote
X connections make up less than 1% of page views. It's an insignificant amount.
Remember, most 'normal' people aren't impressed by text-only pages written in HTML2, even though it's an effective way of disseminating info.
Then you factor in the fact Flash renders the animations in realtime, add in that constant animation with transitions/fades and there goes all your CPU power.
This is both a blessing and a curse. By rendering on the client side, you don't need to transfer a zillion frames of a raster animation. BUT, it does suck up processor cycles.
That said, I find I have MANY more processor cycles than kb/s of bandwidth, even on my slowest boxen.
There doesn't appear to be any concept of idle time - it's development is similar to Director which I've worked on for 3 years, and in order to pull off a "Press here to continue" with an animation, you have to loop it. Ick.
(Forgive me if I'm thinking of something else.)
Ummm...Of course you have to loop it.
You can't make a repeating function (like an animation clip) without looping. Some programs
can hide it, but in the end, the processor is still executing a loop.
But then again what do you expect from a product from a company originally developing on the Mac?
Ahhh, the joys of teenage Linux bigotry.:P
I'm not saying Flash is perfect. It's far from it,
but it's not technology from the smoking pits of hell, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've been a PC user for a number of years now and I plan on moving from Debian to OS X
As do I. Even as a beta OSX rocks...I can't wait for the final.
It's so cool to be able to use Photoshop or Flash AND hack in a BSD UNIX environment without having to reboot.
Not to mention the IDE (Project Builder?) looks really nifty, although I haven't had much time to play with it.
--K
"Oh, wow! I can use something besides the hardware that came with the system"
So, you're telling me that the ATA drive I installed in my G3 doesn't work?
Or that the Logitech USB mouse I replaced the god-awful hockeypuck with doesn't work either?
Or that I didn't swap a 128Mb DIMM from my PII into my G3?
average people know when their video card sucks or when they can't get sound out of their sound card. They would like an alternative other than "ship it back and pay the bill".
I'd argue that a) average consumer computer users do not know when their video card sucks (their kids prolly do tho), or even what a video card is, and b) 'ship it back and pay the bill' is one of the most common things to do when a home user has a problem.
I won't go into how inane time-wasting crap like soundcards (or other devices) suddenly not working generally doesn't happen on Macs...
--K
Apple has a real problem with their CPUs that other server RISC based CPUs do not have - they are about two times too slow to keep up with the AMDs and Intels of the world.
First of all, Apple makes workstations not servers. Comparing a G4 to an 8 way Xeon is bullcrap.
Second, I guess Sun is too 'slow' as well. Their Ultra series workstations max out at 450Mhz...The
new Blade 1000 peaks at 750Mhz.
Why would people buy those? They're so much 'slower' than a P4!
I wonder why Sun's sales were up 85% from last year...Could it be that there is *still* demand for real UNIX hardware, even with the PeeCee?
I think if you had a clue about anything other than PeeCees you'd realize the only 'race' Apple is losing is the marketing race - Mhz is not an accurate measure of real-world performance.
People will NOT switch to OS X when it comes out
That's a huge generalization.
I know several people that are lusting after OSX right now.
Will appreciable amounts of people buy Apple boxen? I don't know, but I think there will be more than you expect.
--K
dreadlocked Rastafarian animal.
Chronic the Hemphog's brother, perhaps?
--K
Is there a page that describes how to do this?
(Even just a man page reference would work...)
I gotta try it on my Indy.
--K
Woohoo! Perl bot!
--K
Read up on robots.txt.
It's a file you can put in your web root that (well behaved) spiders look for.
You can use it to tell spiders not to index your whole site, or certain parts of it.
Normally good for keeping bots out of places they shouldn't be, but it can be used to ban bots.
Or, you could just drop any traffic coming from *.altavista.com...
--K
Think about this.
Walnut Creek has been helping the FreeBSD people for *years*.
Tucows was just jumping on the bandwagon because BSD might be the 'next big thing'.
When the BSD people asked them to correct mistakes on their site, they dropped BSD.
Does this sound like the actions of a company that supports the BSD community?
The *BSD community owes Tucows nothing.
--K
When you've got the Ports Collection! :)
Let 'em take the easy way out - we have plenty of other, better ways of getting software.
(And none of them have massive amounts of banner ads, either!)
--K
The point is that the signal is broadcast to *everyone*, not just paying customers. /stealing/ it, you're merely using a signal in a way that goes against what the originator intended.
You're not
I don't see this as 'theft' in any way - denying *potential* profits, yes, but not theft.
IMO, Hughes did the Right Thing.
The crackers cracked their signal, so they cracked the crackers cracks. I think that's pretty nifty.
--K
It's nice to see a company that tries a more novel approach to fighting media 'piracy' than just herds of lawyers.
(Which, as we see in the RIAA and MPAA cases, doesn't really *do* anything at all, aside from annoying people.)
They solved their illicit reception problem, while at the same time gained some respect from the 'hacker' community.
Now the question is, will the blackhats try to crack the new firmware, or will they look for a new target?
--K
Taco screwed up the link, here's the right one:
Ninja Assassin
That might be what I heard, but I /thought/ the format was already open...
I know there are a couple GPL'd Flash generators/players out now, but they may have just reversed the format.
--K
Don't trust anything that keeps you from looking inside.
;) from security analysts lately,
:-) Just because you have lots of money already and are a monopoly doesn't stop you from getting even more greedy.
:)
Definately. But IE has been getting a lot of 'attention'
and I have yet to see any evidence of covert data collection. I consider it relatively safe and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks at this time.
>Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
The difference here is that you choose to put (and setup) these on your machines. If you decide you want to log certain transfers, so be it. At least you got the choice.
If your ISP is doing it, well, that's no good. I'd get the heck away from them and get on a real ISP that respects your privacy.
Agreed.
I am in NO way saying covert logging is acceptable.
I was stating that you don't NEED something to be open to see if it's sending out covert packets, you can use any common network tools to check.
Hell, I think I'd rather check open products with the packet sniffer than reading the code....
Certainly takes less time than wading through 10k lines of network code looking for evil write()s.
(And if you ever HAVE looked at Mozilla code, you'll know what I mean...)
Having the source does make it easier to PROVE there is a problem tho.
Three words: Bell Phone Book.
True, although I see service providers tend to be more insidious than companies that ship actual products (even if those products are intangible).
This is part of the reason I find AOL to be scarier than M$.
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
Oh, they haven't stopped with this yet. They're trying to get a similar anti-'piracy' 'feature' into Whistler.
BUT, this thread isn't about Windoze OS, it's about IE, and more specifically, Mac IE.
M$ is evil and controlling - we already know this.
And lets not forget the NSA key.
The NSA Key is probably not:
Here's what Schneier has to say about it.
While Microsoft is better than AOL, it's sort of like comparing being stamped on by an elephant and mauled by a bear. They both suck.
Very true, but just because a company puts out turds 98% of the time doesn't mean they CAN'T put out an acceptable, even useful, product.
I'm actually using Mozilla 0.7 right now. It's great. It feels like Netscape 4 (which was easy to use, when it worked), and is really fast. Plus it renders HTML quite well.
Mozilla isn't bad. It's getting there, but I still like IE better for daily browsing.
Maybe in three months it'll be good enough for daily use.
Konqueror, on the other hand, is prolly the best one for freenixes right now.
Just a sidenote: Any particular reason why your website just forwards you to slashdot? Just wondering...
Just a bit of satirical commentary about blind linux and open source zealotry.
The attitude of 'Linux is the be-all end-all One True OS for Every Purpose' just grates after a while.
My real site will be here.
(No, it's not a redirect to goatse.cx, either.)
--K
Agreed. Konqueror is /really/ good. I'd even venture to say it beats Moz in everyday usability.
the good 'ole Flash plugin. (Now there's someting that ought to be OpenSource'd..)
Actually, I seem to remember hearing that Macromedia was planning on opening the Flash plugin, but I may be very wrong.
Anyone else heard of such things?
--K
Do you trust MS enough to let them know your entire purchasing history?
No, but I don't have much evidence that M$ is stealing my purchasing history.
I haven't seen any security advisories about M$ stealing user data, and IMO, they don't have to.
They are a monopoly, so they don't need to make bits of cash on the side selling demographics.
To be completely honest with you, I trust M$ more than AOL.
Keep in mind the source for Netscape is NOT open, only the source for Mozilla, which is a different product.
I'm a lot more concerned with things like RealPlayer, which have proven security/privacy holes.
You can see there isn't a "report https accesses" module.
Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
Network traffic analysis may not be built in, but it is readily available.
There's no denying M$ is evil, but AOL is just as, if not more so, and Mozilla is still a ways from being done.
--K
Gotta go, I think some black helicopters just flew over.
Oh come on.
This is Slashdot. In Slashdot-land, M$ cannot make a product that's better than a competitior.
Even if that competitor is AOLScape.
Even if that product renders CSS1/2 better than the competitor.
Even if that product is faster than the competitor.
Even if that product is more stable than the competitor.
It's all about the rational decisions, baby.
--K
(Me? I just think he's 'trolling')
My life is now complete.
shows how strong the legions of doom are becoming.
;P
Couldn't have said it better myself.
(Ed. Note: I can't believe I did that twice in less than a week.)
--K
EVAS and Jubei? Is this '*nix apps named after anime characters' day? ;)
Annnnyways...I had been wondering when someone was gonna use OpenGL
acceleration to render stuff in X... The idea has popped up in more than one
cofeeshop discussion between me and my friends, but no one
ever had the mad X hacking skillz to do it.
Way to go Raster!
--K
Even though Linux might be superior, only Windows has the commercial
support and marketing potential to succeed on a large scale.
Therefore support is better lent for improving Windows.
--K
It might make a n33t little MP3 jukebox, but there's no way I can see it recording video.
According to the FAQ, it's only got a K5-133 in it.
I think it's pretty unlikely that it could do realtime encoding even if it had dedicated MPEG hardware. (Which it doesn't.)
Besides, I don't think the Tivo software is open source, or even available outside of a Tivo.
The Linux OS stuff is open, but that's only a fraction of what ya need.
--K
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Sounds like TEMPEST caliber stuff...
I'm pretty sure static can be kept to a minimum with far less drastic measures.
However, it doesn't really surprise me considering who the former tenants were.
--K
The average web'master' can't even write HTML nowadays, or that's what you'd think looking at websites owned by large corps.
Absolutely true. I've had cow-orkers ask me (in an almost disbelieving tone) why I
was writing HTML by hand when "Frontpage is already installed"...
I've also heard people talk about "learning HTML" when what they mean is "learning Frontpage".
I kinda like Flash tho, it's nice for making slick, compact, artsy-fartsy things that won't get broken
by crappy HTML renderers. It either works, or it doesn't, and chances are it will work,
because 95% of the viewing population is Win/Mac.
And for the other 5%, it's not hard to include a less 'cool', but equally informative text version.
It all depends on who's doing the work and weather they give a shit.
--K
Not to mention I have yet to see a Flash page with a static image - they're always animating with a rotating logo or some other action. Boom there goes all your bandwidth for that remote X connection.
:P
As I said before, Flash designers care about your
remote X sessions about as much as you care about their silly animations. I'd estimate people browsing across remote
X connections make up less than 1% of page views. It's an insignificant amount.
Remember, most 'normal' people aren't impressed by text-only pages written in HTML2, even though it's an effective way of disseminating info.
Then you factor in the fact Flash renders the animations in realtime, add in that constant animation with transitions/fades and there goes all your CPU power.
This is both a blessing and a curse. By rendering on the client side, you don't need to transfer a zillion frames of a raster animation. BUT, it does suck up processor cycles.
That said, I find I have MANY more processor cycles than kb/s of bandwidth, even on my slowest boxen.
There doesn't appear to be any concept of idle time - it's development is similar to Director which I've worked on for 3 years, and in order to pull off a "Press here to continue" with an animation, you have to loop it. Ick.
(Forgive me if I'm thinking of something else.)
Ummm...Of course you have to loop it.
You can't make a repeating function (like an animation clip) without looping. Some programs
can hide it, but in the end, the processor is still executing a loop.
But then again what do you expect from a product from a company originally developing on the Mac?
Ahhh, the joys of teenage Linux bigotry.
I'm not saying Flash is perfect. It's far from it,
but it's not technology from the smoking pits of hell, either.
--K