I think the point they are trying to make is OS X does a much better job of making the hardware interface invisible with all their features. If you've used computers long enough to have first made the transition from a CLI to a GUI you would get their meaning better. From what I have seen of OS X unless you call up a terminal you're pretty much abstracted entirely from the hardware you're using.
I think they ought to make the sail out of a silicon based material (like a large soap bubble) because it could double as a power source for the space craft (were it conductive enough). A 440 yard (I hope they don't screw up the conversions this time) sail would be able to produce plenty of power for a nice sized probe. Or maybe they could dope the carbon fiber sail with a conductive silicon compound. If they are going to be into massive building projects why not build a large linear accelerator on the moon. With a mile long accelerator and a few watts of electricity you could blast a probe into deep space quite easily.
Deep Space 9 == science fiction, really really far out science fiction. Neutrinos travel at roughly the speed of light yet have a very insignifigant mass, they pass right through you every second (3000 or so per second IIRC). They would pass strait through the carbon sail with basically no reaction. Neutrinos are only stopped by dense materials because they have a greater chance of hitting a particle. And besides, it wasn't neutrinos the solar sail caught it was verteron particles from the worm hole.
is not JUST a graphics API like OpenGL is. DirectX is a whole package of media libraries. Funny thing about this is I sent in an Ask Slashdot a couple months ago asking if people were using OpenGL more or D3D. Anyways, DX is very popular (in my estimation) because it is a unified set of media libraries that are all written together and in the same way. A bonus is that video and sound cards have hardware DX support. This is a boon to any game developer because it means the CPU can pump out a few extra transforms or some smarter characters and so forth. What I have yet to hear about is a completely open and cross platform media API. There probably are a few floating about, they need some attention. I really like being able to play the same game on multiple platforms, I really wish more games could be developed on multiple platforms. I would have thought a game like Unreal would have primarily cross platform development in mind, you're trying to get as many people fragging as possible. Oh well, I don't play Unreal anyways and HALO will be on Mac and PC so I'm happy.
How do you mean the internet exploded quickly? The Internet was around for many years before anyone actually built business plans around it. That means it took a while to actually become popular. Space travel COULD make a buck if people actually knew something about it. If the cost of a trip up to the moon cost about as much as a week long vacation to Europe many people including myself would rush the company providing such a trip. If you've ever watched satillite TV you'd see that space is already profitable.
The moon (had it colonies) would be a damn fine place to build luxery hotels and tourist attractions. It would also be better than Florida for retirement purposes. Besides entertainment it would be a great place to build observatories, there's little light pollution and on the far side you'd have a pretty quiet time in the radio regions.
Um...dude? 27 km is not a very low orbit (you know this I'm sure), it's only about 4 times lower than the orbit of the Shuttle's usual orbit. And besides that they don't mention a detail about the rover tracks that are important. It would be much easier to see the tracks from outside of the left track to the outside of the right track which I would venture is ~170cm. The Great Wall in China can be seen from orbit because it is fairly wide, you're calculating for a single tire track not the two tracks combined.
First of all you're posting to the wrong story, secondly the lunar landings were one hell of an achievement. See now we have all sorts of keen technology that lets us simulate things and build R/C car sized robots to explore planets. In the 50's and 60's we had slide rules and Calculus. To be a troll myself, an accurate map of the Moon is invaluable to anyone hoping to land there. Earth based observations of the Moon are hard pressed to take accurate readings because it is moving to quickly and is very bright. Luna isn't merely a source of minerals either, it wouyld be an excellent place to build observatories and bases to launch missions to the rest of the solar system.
/opt is short for optional, SuSE makes many apps an optional (stuff you'd probably only get if you bought the SuSE CD set rather than downloaded it) component. It draws a line between standard packages and stuff you may or may not want. IIRC most of the things in/usr/bin and/bin are considered "default" packages to SuSE. If you want a better answer try it for yourself.
I mean Linux code as in an app specifically written for Linux. And since you're a whiney old bastard read some of my comments on "world domination", I think any code written ought to be as portable as possible. I use three different OSes daily, I'd love to see certain programs on all of them because it would make my life much easier.
contributions are useful and then useful ones need to be checked out to make sure they're not going to break some other part of the code. If I were to start and OS project I would only accept code changes as patches because the new code may or may not fit my (or the group's) model or may just be an option. Bug fixes are another matter, but then again you could always just point out the bug and provide a fix. I would readily accept valid bug fixes. Oi, open source madness.
The whole point of marketing a distro is to put in some candy other people don't have an to package some 3rd party (sometimes non-GNU/open) software. I don't know of any distros that make it hard to download their source or binaries. Yup SuSE still lets me install from an FTP server. I would bet RedHat still does also. Thats not very hard to get ahold of I don't think. Point Mozilla over to Corel's Wordperfect site, they have a script you can easily download to fix directories and such in case WP doesn't work properly on your distro.
SuSE installs Netscape into an/opt directory. KDE, GNOME, and Applix are also installed to this directory. I prefer it over RedHat's overuse of the/usr/bin directory.
There IS such thing as source incompatibility, just look at the problems everyone had when all the distros were making the transition to glibc 2.x, there were lots of broken apps because libc 5 wasn't installed by default. Most Linux code itself can be compiled to run on Solaris and FreeBSD but theres plenty of times when you've got library problems. And there's differences between distros, SuSE installed Netscape to/opt, I can't think of other distros that do (RedHat by default installs it to/bin IIRC). It's problems like these that LSB is trying to fix.
the sake of completeness, there have been MP Macs before. The 9600 series had an MP box and so did the 7200 IIRC. They had dual PPC 604e and 603 chips rather than 7400s but were indeed multi-processor boxes. Right now the problem with SMP on any platform is the lack of SMP support in apps. I can build an 8 processor Xeon box running Linux but if none of my apps are multi-threaded it isn't going to speed anything up. This is an advantage Be has which I hope other people get a handle on soon, all of their apps are multi-threaded and they treat SMP as a de facto thing rather than something only crazy power hungry people use. Even in single processor systems multithreading boosts performance especially when you've got a good superscalar chip under the hood. Lets hear it for SMP!
Slashdot has always been whay Hemos CmdrTaco and crew have wanted to post, methinks you've been reading slashdot for a month rather than two years. I don't give a shit about what Stallman is boycotting. Just because I like GPL software doesn't make anyone my Messiah. Most if not all of your comments are merely trolling for bunnies. Go back under the bridge dude.
Uh...I doubt Netscape will be the most used app on the Mac. The only people who install Netscape are the people upgrading from older Macs that don't mind the instability. If you've used Mac OS 8 or 9 you'd notice that IE 4 (and 4.5) are the default browser with Netscape residing on the CD. People buying their first computer and choosing an iMac are most likely sticking with IE. I doubt Netscape will make it to carbonization unless AOL decides to make the DNS registry Netscape-only.
I have a five year old NEC desktop. I figured it would be stupid to waste this old system so I stuck Linux on it and made it a dedicated file server. Then I got my new hard drive and tried to put my old one in the file server to give myself a bit more space. The NEC wouldn't accept the second hard drive. Calling NEC to ask for hardware specs or something that might help me (maybe a BIOS update) they just told me to go shove my hard drive up my ass. I don't see why a company can't provide at least information on systems that are obsolete. Why hold the specs to obsolete and non-competitive product so close? Video cards are another thing, why don't the chip and card makers release free specs for their older cards that they don't even produce. Even under and agreement that says you'll only use the specs to write open drivers or some such would be nice. Sheesh. fnord.
This just means they're going to provide all level API access along with their documentation. My guess is it will be something like an NDA, they will provide you with the source you need to write an app or Windows-specific compiler but you'll need to register as a member of their development community. This would enable more access to good/free compilers which might facilitate GNU Windows software. This would also benefit the WINE people in getting their toy working with most if not all Windows apps. I'd say this is a good thing but maybe not a Good Thing.
For those of you who only use PINE for your email needs you need to understand some things about Outlook. It does not tell you if it is running any form of code embedded into an email message. If I were to send an HTML email to someone, Outlook would automatically process the HTML in it. The only way to avoid this is to turn off the preview pane and view all email messages in ASCII mode (which is how I like it anyways). IE4 and 5 do the same thing if you have a text document with HTML in it it will read and render the HTML even if the HTML isn't properly coded. This is why geophile can compare FDIV and ILUVYOU. Microsoft and Intel both designed and sold a product which could be taken advantage of to do a bad thing. M$ should take responsibility that their software has a fault which lets someone send you a macro virus or such. This is supposedly why one pays M$ for their software. If a company puts a warrenty on their software they need to back up that warrenty if they didnt do what you paid them to do. The PINE users are also probably people that say if people used Linux they wouldn't have these sorts of problems. The people who open up attachments and forward "cute" programs or joke on AOL are the sort of people who would run around on the net as root and get themselves into trouble. One might say "well why wouldnt a Linux distro be responsible if they messed something up" and one might think they were so smart. I would simply point to the GPL "this software is provided without warrenty" to paraphrase. You're made aware that you are using GNU software with no warrenty, commercial apps (which cost beaucoup cash) do have a warrenty and therefore ought to be responsible for doing their jobs. In the case of ILUVYOU I think M$ should offer some sort compensation for people who got their system trashed. The end user needs to learn to be careful but then M$ should learn that executing scripts in e-mail by default is just asking for trouble.
The point of the comparison was to show that Intel admitted its mistake and offered to replace the faulty part FOR FREE whether or not you actually had problems with the bug. Intel took one in the chin to make people happy with their products, M$ won't even admit their software has bugs most of the time.
The i-Opener's parts cost alot more than their retail price in Circuit City, the way Netpliance made the device a profitable venture was they put the cost of the hardware into the monthly service. Someone else making a similar product would be extremely hard pressed to make a product with the same capabilities for such a low price as the i-Opener.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the point they are trying to make is OS X does a much better job of making the hardware interface invisible with all their features. If you've used computers long enough to have first made the transition from a CLI to a GUI you would get their meaning better. From what I have seen of OS X unless you call up a terminal you're pretty much abstracted entirely from the hardware you're using.
I think they ought to make the sail out of a silicon based material (like a large soap bubble) because it could double as a power source for the space craft (were it conductive enough). A 440 yard (I hope they don't screw up the conversions this time) sail would be able to produce plenty of power for a nice sized probe. Or maybe they could dope the carbon fiber sail with a conductive silicon compound. If they are going to be into massive building projects why not build a large linear accelerator on the moon. With a mile long accelerator and a few watts of electricity you could blast a probe into deep space quite easily.
Deep Space 9 == science fiction, really really far out science fiction. Neutrinos travel at roughly the speed of light yet have a very insignifigant mass, they pass right through you every second (3000 or so per second IIRC). They would pass strait through the carbon sail with basically no reaction. Neutrinos are only stopped by dense materials because they have a greater chance of hitting a particle. And besides, it wasn't neutrinos the solar sail caught it was verteron particles from the worm hole.
is not JUST a graphics API like OpenGL is. DirectX is a whole package of media libraries. Funny thing about this is I sent in an Ask Slashdot a couple months ago asking if people were using OpenGL more or D3D. Anyways, DX is very popular (in my estimation) because it is a unified set of media libraries that are all written together and in the same way. A bonus is that video and sound cards have hardware DX support. This is a boon to any game developer because it means the CPU can pump out a few extra transforms or some smarter characters and so forth. What I have yet to hear about is a completely open and cross platform media API. There probably are a few floating about, they need some attention. I really like being able to play the same game on multiple platforms, I really wish more games could be developed on multiple platforms. I would have thought a game like Unreal would have primarily cross platform development in mind, you're trying to get as many people fragging as possible. Oh well, I don't play Unreal anyways and HALO will be on Mac and PC so I'm happy.
Do you have any idea what you're saying?
If it is an ISO standard (like the other MPEG compression schemes) that means anyone can get all the specs to it.
How do you mean the internet exploded quickly? The Internet was around for many years before anyone actually built business plans around it. That means it took a while to actually become popular. Space travel COULD make a buck if people actually knew something about it. If the cost of a trip up to the moon cost about as much as a week long vacation to Europe many people including myself would rush the company providing such a trip. If you've ever watched satillite TV you'd see that space is already profitable.
The moon (had it colonies) would be a damn fine place to build luxery hotels and tourist attractions. It would also be better than Florida for retirement purposes. Besides entertainment it would be a great place to build observatories, there's little light pollution and on the far side you'd have a pretty quiet time in the radio regions.
Um...dude? 27 km is not a very low orbit (you know this I'm sure), it's only about 4 times lower than the orbit of the Shuttle's usual orbit. And besides that they don't mention a detail about the rover tracks that are important. It would be much easier to see the tracks from outside of the left track to the outside of the right track which I would venture is ~170cm. The Great Wall in China can be seen from orbit because it is fairly wide, you're calculating for a single tire track not the two tracks combined.
First of all you're posting to the wrong story, secondly the lunar landings were one hell of an achievement. See now we have all sorts of keen technology that lets us simulate things and build R/C car sized robots to explore planets. In the 50's and 60's we had slide rules and Calculus. To be a troll myself, an accurate map of the Moon is invaluable to anyone hoping to land there. Earth based observations of the Moon are hard pressed to take accurate readings because it is moving to quickly and is very bright. Luna isn't merely a source of minerals either, it wouyld be an excellent place to build observatories and bases to launch missions to the rest of the solar system.
Who ever said the big bang was a law? Are you so ignorant as to be unable to understand simple English?
/opt is short for optional, SuSE makes many apps an optional (stuff you'd probably only get if you bought the SuSE CD set rather than downloaded it) component. It draws a line between standard packages and stuff you may or may not want. IIRC most of the things in /usr/bin and /bin are considered "default" packages to SuSE. If you want a better answer try it for yourself.
I mean Linux code as in an app specifically written for Linux. And since you're a whiney old bastard read some of my comments on "world domination", I think any code written ought to be as portable as possible. I use three different OSes daily, I'd love to see certain programs on all of them because it would make my life much easier.
contributions are useful and then useful ones need to be checked out to make sure they're not going to break some other part of the code. If I were to start and OS project I would only accept code changes as patches because the new code may or may not fit my (or the group's) model or may just be an option. Bug fixes are another matter, but then again you could always just point out the bug and provide a fix. I would readily accept valid bug fixes. Oi, open source madness.
The whole point of marketing a distro is to put in some candy other people don't have an to package some 3rd party (sometimes non-GNU/open) software. I don't know of any distros that make it hard to download their source or binaries. Yup SuSE still lets me install from an FTP server. I would bet RedHat still does also. Thats not very hard to get ahold of I don't think. Point Mozilla over to Corel's Wordperfect site, they have a script you can easily download to fix directories and such in case WP doesn't work properly on your distro.
SuSE installs Netscape into an /opt directory. KDE, GNOME, and Applix are also installed to this directory. I prefer it over RedHat's overuse of the /usr/bin directory.
There IS such thing as source incompatibility, just look at the problems everyone had when all the distros were making the transition to glibc 2.x, there were lots of broken apps because libc 5 wasn't installed by default. Most Linux code itself can be compiled to run on Solaris and FreeBSD but theres plenty of times when you've got library problems. And there's differences between distros, SuSE installed Netscape to /opt, I can't think of other distros that do (RedHat by default installs it to /bin IIRC). It's problems like these that LSB is trying to fix.
the sake of completeness, there have been MP Macs before. The 9600 series had an MP box and so did the 7200 IIRC. They had dual PPC 604e and 603 chips rather than 7400s but were indeed multi-processor boxes. Right now the problem with SMP on any platform is the lack of SMP support in apps. I can build an 8 processor Xeon box running Linux but if none of my apps are multi-threaded it isn't going to speed anything up. This is an advantage Be has which I hope other people get a handle on soon, all of their apps are multi-threaded and they treat SMP as a de facto thing rather than something only crazy power hungry people use. Even in single processor systems multithreading boosts performance especially when you've got a good superscalar chip under the hood. Lets hear it for SMP!
Slashdot has always been whay Hemos CmdrTaco and crew have wanted to post, methinks you've been reading slashdot for a month rather than two years. I don't give a shit about what Stallman is boycotting. Just because I like GPL software doesn't make anyone my Messiah. Most if not all of your comments are merely trolling for bunnies. Go back under the bridge dude.
Uh...I doubt Netscape will be the most used app on the Mac. The only people who install Netscape are the people upgrading from older Macs that don't mind the instability. If you've used Mac OS 8 or 9 you'd notice that IE 4 (and 4.5) are the default browser with Netscape residing on the CD. People buying their first computer and choosing an iMac are most likely sticking with IE. I doubt Netscape will make it to carbonization unless AOL decides to make the DNS registry Netscape-only.
I have a five year old NEC desktop. I figured it would be stupid to waste this old system so I stuck Linux on it and made it a dedicated file server. Then I got my new hard drive and tried to put my old one in the file server to give myself a bit more space. The NEC wouldn't accept the second hard drive. Calling NEC to ask for hardware specs or something that might help me (maybe a BIOS update) they just told me to go shove my hard drive up my ass. I don't see why a company can't provide at least information on systems that are obsolete. Why hold the specs to obsolete and non-competitive product so close? Video cards are another thing, why don't the chip and card makers release free specs for their older cards that they don't even produce. Even under and agreement that says you'll only use the specs to write open drivers or some such would be nice. Sheesh. fnord.
This just means they're going to provide all level API access along with their documentation. My guess is it will be something like an NDA, they will provide you with the source you need to write an app or Windows-specific compiler but you'll need to register as a member of their development community. This would enable more access to good/free compilers which might facilitate GNU Windows software. This would also benefit the WINE people in getting their toy working with most if not all Windows apps. I'd say this is a good thing but maybe not a Good Thing.
For those of you who only use PINE for your email needs you need to understand some things about Outlook. It does not tell you if it is running any form of code embedded into an email message. If I were to send an HTML email to someone, Outlook would automatically process the HTML in it. The only way to avoid this is to turn off the preview pane and view all email messages in ASCII mode (which is how I like it anyways). IE4 and 5 do the same thing if you have a text document with HTML in it it will read and render the HTML even if the HTML isn't properly coded. This is why geophile can compare FDIV and ILUVYOU. Microsoft and Intel both designed and sold a product which could be taken advantage of to do a bad thing. M$ should take responsibility that their software has a fault which lets someone send you a macro virus or such. This is supposedly why one pays M$ for their software. If a company puts a warrenty on their software they need to back up that warrenty if they didnt do what you paid them to do.
The PINE users are also probably people that say if people used Linux they wouldn't have these sorts of problems. The people who open up attachments and forward "cute" programs or joke on AOL are the sort of people who would run around on the net as root and get themselves into trouble. One might say "well why wouldnt a Linux distro be responsible if they messed something up" and one might think they were so smart. I would simply point to the GPL "this software is provided without warrenty" to paraphrase. You're made aware that you are using GNU software with no warrenty, commercial apps (which cost beaucoup cash) do have a warrenty and therefore ought to be responsible for doing their jobs. In the case of ILUVYOU I think M$ should offer some sort compensation for people who got their system trashed. The end user needs to learn to be careful but then M$ should learn that executing scripts in e-mail by default is just asking for trouble.
The point of the comparison was to show that Intel admitted its mistake and offered to replace the faulty part FOR FREE whether or not you actually had problems with the bug. Intel took one in the chin to make people happy with their products, M$ won't even admit their software has bugs most of the time.
The i-Opener's parts cost alot more than their retail price in Circuit City, the way Netpliance made the device a profitable venture was they put the cost of the hardware into the monthly service. Someone else making a similar product would be extremely hard pressed to make a product with the same capabilities for such a low price as the i-Opener.