Like the article said: No standard command shell, and no remote login capability. Makes it really hard to break in. I believe that, in the "Hack a Mac" contest that ran a year or two ago, the system was only compromised through a flaw in a third-party plug-in.
With a Mac, you don't even have to give up your networking. The Mac is quite happy to talk AppleTalk through its serial port or second Ethernet while it runs Internet services on the primary Ethernet. Not that I'd recommend it for a machine that sits outside the firewall.
You're right, I am what I think should be the exact target for a Macintosh: Someone who wants a computer to work out of the box. (Don't you want your computer to work OOTB?) More to the point, I am an engineer and soi-disant computer expert who knows false economy when I see it. If being willing to spend a little more to get a better, less trouble-prone product makes me less of a geek, I'm okay with that.
Read my geek code and then come back and tell me whether or not I'm a diehard geek. If you can't find my geek code, then you aren't enough of a geek to judge me.:-)
Why, most geeks would ask, would I pay 10-20% more for a machine simply because it has translucent plastic and the Apple logo?
Because it works, and it works well. No muss, no fuss. Despite its warts (like no memory protection), the Mac is the most effective platform to use and maintain that I know. Balancing its good points (consistency, usability, expandability, hardware capabilities) against its bad points (price, no PM, no PMT, apps lag Windows versions), the Mac is still the best overall package.
In day to day use, really, there's not that much difference any more between a Mac and Win9x. But I pity the Windows user who tries to manually configure or fix anything. And, as I mentioned once in the misty past, Macs don't experience System Rot like Windows machines do. At least, mine don't.
Linux? Don't even go there. Linux is for the "Mensa" of computer users, the top 2%. Even more than Windows, once you get everything set up right (if you ever do), it's great. But when it goes wrong, it does so catastrophically. Don't tell me otherwise, 'cause it's happened to me twice this summer. Plus, even more than Mac, Linux has an application gap.
The bottom line for me is, weighing the pros and the cons of all the contenders, the Mac is my preferred platform. The only system I see challenging that is BeOS, if it ever gets any apps.
Oh, and I'm not too proud to admit I like the eye candy, too. I think the iMac is cute, if a little small. I'm measuring my desk for a white 'n' silver tower with a 22" LCD display right now, maybe over there between the puddle of drool and that stack of extra Ben Franklins.
Tom Ray did this about 8 years ago. His results were quite spectacular: Tierra's "critters" spontaneously developed self-replication, viruses, predation, symbiosis, and more! Here's a link to the Tierra Homepage.
I have to take issue with you here, too. I've stopped counting all the different OSen I use, and MacOS is in no way even in the running for worst system rot offender.
My NT sytem's C: drive can reach 95% fragmentation in a few weeks... ***with over 100MB free space at all times!*** My Exchange mailbox file is usually broken up into over 20 fragments. I try to reformat and rebuild from scratch my NT system about twice a year.
Now let's look at my Mac. Routine maintenance says you should (a) remove extensions you don't need; (b) clean out your prefs folder occasionally; (c) rebuild your desktop (rebuild your icon cache, non-Maccies) occasionally; (d) defrag your hard drive occasionally; (e) and always do a clean install when you upgrade the OS.
***I do none of these things.*** I let my system accumulate clutter for years. I install and remove applications frequently. And yet my Mac is a happy little camper. I do not see performance degradation. I do not see stability degradation. My Mac's uptime is on the order of only 1-2 weeks, but the crashes I get are due to lack of protected memory, not system rot. That's a whole different cauldron of herring.
UF could show Linux boxes crashing every day, and you would scream.
Hey! My Linux system is less stable than my WinNT or Win95 system*. I want representation! I want Stef to have a day where he lords it all over those tech weenies because a runaway expect script steals all the CPU cycles from all their precious Lintel boxes, and his happy lil' Win95 keeps on chugging.
*For real. No joke. Please don't waste BW telling me I'm a moron 'cause I can't configure Linux properly... yet. Walk a mile in my boots first.
Without GNU or GCC, some other free compiler and OS would have filled the bill. I don't believe any GPL products were/are necessary to build Minix or *BSD.
I do not believe the GPL has anything at all to do with the rise of Linux. It has everything to do with Linus being at the right place, at the right time, with the right OS. Think back to 1991. MS-DOG was king, and the OS hobbyists were playing with Minix (a cute lil' free OS by Andy Tanenbaum). Minix was an okay cross-platform Unix-like OS. Linus wanted a great 80386 Unix. (Sigh. Nostalgia. Anyone else remember the Minix-Linux flame wars? The biggest criticisms of Linux were the monolithic kernel, its x86 platform dependency, and its lack of basic utility programs.) At the time, there was no really good free Unix for IA32. (I think at the time, Minix was really an 8086 OS -- can someone confirm that?) Linus produced the first good free IA32 Unix, and the rest (up to today) is history. I'd say Linux stole the show early on and has never had a serious competitor in its home field, x86 free Unix.
All tech companies are guilty of hype. I think you would be very hard pressed to demonstrate that Apple's hype is worse than anybody else's, or that Apple is less truthful. Please, do enlighten us. How has Apple lied?
As far as Bytemarks are concerned, why don't you just bite the bullet and admit that the Pentium is not the best at everything? Given that the PPC does have some multi-operation instructions (eg, MAC) that the Pentium lacks, it is entirely credible that a benchmark that uses this sort of math runs twice as fast on the PPC. And it's not just benchmarks either, you know. It's real-world (albeit niche use) calculations like Photoshop filters. IIRC, some of those go 10x as fast.
Your snide implication that PPC compilers are either better at optimizing or more benchmark aware is pretty laughable too, given the relative amounts of money thrown at Pentium and PPC compilers. I would assume x86 compilers are the most heavily optimized that you will find anywhere.
My mental picture of a 1.0 GFLOPS cluster is one or two dual-CPU PCs. I think this is entirely achievable for under $2000 and probably doesn't really rate a photo.
I spent a little time looking into what it would cost to run this machine, just the electricity consumed by the boxes, not including AC.
By my exceedingly rough calculations, a 400-MHz Celeron can crank out about 36 times the work of a 40-MHz 486 at roughly double the electric consumption. The way I figure it, you charge users the same amount of money per work unit, at a 20% markup over the electricity consumed by the 486 processor to do the work. If you purchase a Celeron, it will pay for itself in about 21 weeks compared to the free 486, from reduced electrical cost and greater earnings produced. By the same measure, I estimate that a 400-MHz G3 Macintosh laptop would pay for itself over the 486 in 70 weeks, and over the Celeron in 100 weeks.
Laugh all you like, but Apple made many meaningful contributions to GUI development. I'm not sure of the precise timing, but the basic components of GUIs were all invented before the creation of Xerox PARC in 1970. I posted this to/. some time back. Look up Vannevar Bush, Ivan Sutherland, Alan Kay, Douglas Englebart, Jeff Raskin. However, Apple added very meaningfully to these concepts with innovations such as direct manipulation, the menu bar, and region-based drawing. Apple was also the first to price it under $10,000. Just because Apple did use ideas from earlier works doesn't mean Windows isn't a Mac rip-off.
Guess what: Open Source still is a trademark, and always was. Trademarks are like copyrights. All Eric Raymond has to do is say, "Open Source is my trademark," and it is. If someone else thinks they have a right to it, they can contest it, but unless they can show prior usage or transfer of the mark or something like that, ESR's claim stands. The fact that Open Source is not registered in no way invalidates it as a trademark. Frankly, I'm quite astonished nobody has mentioned this yet.
Thank you all; you made my point beautifully
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I think we can conclude from these responses that shutterbugs are among the nerdiest people out there. Note that only one of the replies even tried to stay within the parameters I set!:-) Slashdot should be proud to embrace photographers!
As for technical... with the above scenario, you need to be able to read a light meter and intelligently select the lens length, film speed, aperture, and shutter speed. Oh, and you have to compose the photograph, too. One person recommended exposure braketing to be on the safe side. Did I leave anything out? I won't even try to get into processing.
I think that's pretty technical.
FWIW, I couldn't solve this puzzle myself. I use auto-everything and hope for the best.:-)
Why would anyone want to use Mac hardware for Linux?
1. Controlled configuration! Unlike the PC, there aren't that many oddball hardware configurations on the Mac. With my PC, I had to scrounge all over for Linux drivers for all the different things on it. With the Mac, my model either is supported or isn't.
2. Better CPU architecture. My 75MHz Mac is at least as fast as my P90.
3. Higher least common denominator. My Mac can do everything the PC can, and it has **ZERO** cards in it. Right out of the box, the Mac has SCSI, 16-bit sound, 24-bit video, 10baseT, high-speed (288-1000+ kbps) serial ports, USB-like hot-pluggable input bus (ADB)... and its PCI slots are still empty! All of these are (see point #1) standard. Support this one family of devices, and you've got a pretty deluxe Linux build that supports a broad cross section of Apple's product line.
The paper stresses over and over again that they think the iMacs could have done much better if the LinuxPPC software were a bit more mature. They used LinuxPPC v4.0; I'd be curious to see how they do using a v2.2 Linux kernel. Or, as they mention, OS X.
The graphs make it painfully clear that even 100Mbps Ethernet is too inefficient for serious parallel computation. A token-passing system like ATM is much better.
My third comment is a "me too": It would be interesting indeed to see the test repeated with 350MHz 604E processors, which should wipe the floor with those iMacs in FP - and maybe even the Pentiums! Somebody send me a crate full of PM 9600/350s, and I'll do the tests.:-)
Photography is for the nerds.
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Slashdot is about news for nerds, remember?
Okay, so suppose Linus Torvalds comes to visit you in your wood-paneled office to congratulate you for your port of Linux on a Casio calculator wristwatch. He wants you to take a commemorative portrait of him wearing your wristwatch, and he hands you a camera bag containing the following:
A Nikon FM2n camera body A 24mm f/2.8 lens A 50mm f/1.2 lens A 85mm f/1.8 lens One roll each of ASA 100, 200, 400, and 800 Kodak color print film
It's a little cloudy outside your window, and Linus has to leave in 5 minutes. What do you do?
Followup question: Is there any non-nerdy correct response?
It sounds to me like you're making up excuses to blame the victim for the crime because you don't want to admit you're wrong and I'm right. Companies actually do go out of business due to piracy.
Small companies that lack business acumen don't stay in business for 14 years. Failing to predict that most of your customer base is going to steal your product and use it to access a new device that doens't even compete in your market space is not shortsighted. Charging a lower price than your competitors in your own market space and giving your driver away for free to your customers is not greedy. Thinking game players will pay $30 for a graphics driver is not clever, nor is failing to market such a product on a couple of months' notice lack of business acumen.
Don't make excuses for pirates. They do put companies out of business.
Had they licensed their drivers to other video card manufacturers, they'd likely be in business today.
You don't know that. You don't even know whether or not they tried to do that. The existence of the cut-price Wintel wasn't the problem. MCI sold lots of their more expensive card right up until the driver piracy started.
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Like the article said: No standard command shell, and no remote login capability. Makes it really hard to break in. I believe that, in the "Hack a Mac" contest that ran a year or two ago, the system was only compromised through a flaw in a third-party plug-in.
With a Mac, you don't even have to give up your networking. The Mac is quite happy to talk AppleTalk through its serial port or second Ethernet while it runs Internet services on the primary Ethernet. Not that I'd recommend it for a machine that sits outside the firewall.
OS X has a command shell and remote login, so one should presume that they are running MacOS 8.x, not OS X.
BTW, I think your characterization of the CGI bug is exaggerated. But that's okay; it's fair game.
You're right, I am what I think should be the exact target for a Macintosh: Someone who wants a computer to work out of the box. (Don't you want your computer to work OOTB?) More to the point, I am an engineer and soi-disant computer expert who knows false economy when I see it. If being willing to spend a little more to get a better, less trouble-prone product makes me less of a geek, I'm okay with that.
Read my geek code and then come back and tell me whether or not I'm a diehard geek. If you can't find my geek code, then you aren't enough of a geek to judge me. :-)
Because it works, and it works well. No muss, no fuss. Despite its warts (like no memory protection), the Mac is the most effective platform to use and maintain that I know. Balancing its good points (consistency, usability, expandability, hardware capabilities) against its bad points (price, no PM, no PMT, apps lag Windows versions), the Mac is still the best overall package.
In day to day use, really, there's not that much difference any more between a Mac and Win9x. But I pity the Windows user who tries to manually configure or fix anything. And, as I mentioned once in the misty past, Macs don't experience System Rot like Windows machines do. At least, mine don't.
Linux? Don't even go there. Linux is for the "Mensa" of computer users, the top 2%. Even more than Windows, once you get everything set up right (if you ever do), it's great. But when it goes wrong, it does so catastrophically. Don't tell me otherwise, 'cause it's happened to me twice this summer. Plus, even more than Mac, Linux has an application gap.
The bottom line for me is, weighing the pros and the cons of all the contenders, the Mac is my preferred platform. The only system I see challenging that is BeOS, if it ever gets any apps.
Oh, and I'm not too proud to admit I like the eye candy, too. I think the iMac is cute, if a little small. I'm measuring my desk for a white 'n' silver tower with a 22" LCD display right now, maybe over there between the puddle of drool and that stack of extra Ben Franklins.
Tom Ray did this about 8 years ago. His results were quite spectacular: Tierra's "critters" spontaneously developed self-replication, viruses, predation, symbiosis, and more! Here's a link to the Tierra Homepage.
I have to take issue with you here, too. I've stopped counting all the different OSen I use, and MacOS is in no way even in the running for worst system rot offender.
My NT sytem's C: drive can reach 95% fragmentation in a few weeks... ***with over 100MB free space at all times!*** My Exchange mailbox file is usually broken up into over 20 fragments. I try to reformat and rebuild from scratch my NT system about twice a year.
Now let's look at my Mac. Routine maintenance says you should (a) remove extensions you don't need; (b) clean out your prefs folder occasionally; (c) rebuild your desktop (rebuild your icon cache, non-Maccies) occasionally; (d) defrag your hard drive occasionally; (e) and always do a clean install when you upgrade the OS.
***I do none of these things.*** I let my system accumulate clutter for years. I install and remove applications frequently. And yet my Mac is a happy little camper. I do not see performance degradation. I do not see stability degradation. My Mac's uptime is on the order of only 1-2 weeks, but the crashes I get are due to lack of protected memory, not system rot. That's a whole different cauldron of herring.
A longer, more detailed (possibly the original?) version of the same article can be found at:
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitec h/1sci08-06-99.htm.
day, and you would scream.
Hey! My Linux system is less stable than my WinNT or Win95 system*. I want representation! I want Stef to have a day where he lords it all over those tech weenies because a runaway expect script steals all the CPU cycles from all their precious Lintel boxes, and his happy lil' Win95 keeps on chugging.
*For real. No joke. Please don't waste BW telling me I'm a moron 'cause I can't configure Linux properly... yet. Walk a mile in my boots first.
That's absolutely correct. I can write one program and have it crash with exactly the same error code under every version of Windows! ;-)
Without GNU or GCC, some other free compiler and OS would have filled the bill. I don't believe any GPL products were/are necessary to build Minix or *BSD.
I do not believe the GPL has anything at all to do with the rise of Linux. It has everything to do with Linus being at the right place, at the right time, with the right OS. Think back to 1991. MS-DOG was king, and the OS hobbyists were playing with Minix (a cute lil' free OS by Andy Tanenbaum). Minix was an okay cross-platform Unix-like OS. Linus wanted a great 80386 Unix. (Sigh. Nostalgia. Anyone else remember the Minix-Linux flame wars? The biggest criticisms of Linux were the monolithic kernel, its x86 platform dependency, and its lack of basic utility programs.) At the time, there was no really good free Unix for IA32. (I think at the time, Minix was really an 8086 OS -- can someone confirm that?) Linus produced the first good free IA32 Unix, and the rest (up to today) is history. I'd say Linux stole the show early on and has never had a serious competitor in its home field, x86 free Unix.
All tech companies are guilty of hype. I think you would be very hard pressed to demonstrate that Apple's hype is worse than anybody else's, or that Apple is less truthful. Please, do enlighten us. How has Apple lied?
As far as Bytemarks are concerned, why don't you just bite the bullet and admit that the Pentium is not the best at everything? Given that the PPC does have some multi-operation instructions (eg, MAC) that the Pentium lacks, it is entirely credible that a benchmark that uses this sort of math runs twice as fast on the PPC. And it's not just benchmarks either, you know. It's real-world (albeit niche use) calculations like Photoshop filters. IIRC, some of those go 10x as fast.
Your snide implication that PPC compilers are either better at optimizing or more benchmark aware is pretty laughable too, given the relative amounts of money thrown at Pentium and PPC compilers. I would assume x86 compilers are the most heavily optimized that you will find anywhere.
Seeing as how this is a Linux-based cluster, I think they should call it "Überpensch".
My mental picture of a 1.0 GFLOPS cluster is one or two dual-CPU PCs. I think this is entirely achievable for under $2000 and probably doesn't really rate a photo.
I spent a little time looking into what it would cost to run this machine, just the electricity consumed by the boxes, not including AC.
By my exceedingly rough calculations, a 400-MHz Celeron can crank out about 36 times the work of a 40-MHz 486 at roughly double the electric consumption. The way I figure it, you charge users the same amount of money per work unit, at a 20% markup over the electricity consumed by the 486 processor to do the work. If you purchase a Celeron, it will pay for itself in about 21 weeks compared to the free 486, from reduced electrical cost and greater earnings produced. By the same measure, I estimate that a 400-MHz G3 Macintosh laptop would pay for itself over the 486 in 70 weeks, and over the Celeron in 100 weeks.
> So what will be The Sixth Wave?
Very good question indeed. Here are my guesses for 6th wave emergent technologies:
Biotech
Nanotech
Space
Ocean
Laugh all you like, but Apple made many meaningful contributions to GUI development. I'm not sure of the precise timing, but the basic components of GUIs were all invented before the creation of Xerox PARC in 1970. I posted this to /. some time back. Look up Vannevar Bush, Ivan Sutherland, Alan Kay, Douglas Englebart, Jeff Raskin. However, Apple added very meaningfully to these concepts with innovations such as direct manipulation, the menu bar, and region-based drawing. Apple was also the first to price it under $10,000. Just because Apple did use ideas from earlier works doesn't mean Windows isn't a Mac rip-off.
Guess what: Open Source still is a trademark, and always was. Trademarks are like copyrights. All Eric Raymond has to do is say, "Open Source is my trademark," and it is. If someone else thinks they have a right to it, they can contest it, but unless they can show prior usage or transfer of the mark or something like that, ESR's claim stands. The fact that Open Source is not registered in no way invalidates it as a trademark. Frankly, I'm quite astonished nobody has mentioned this yet.
I think we can conclude from these responses that shutterbugs are among the nerdiest people out there. Note that only one of the replies even tried to stay within the parameters I set! :-) Slashdot should be proud to embrace photographers!
:-)
As for technical... with the above scenario, you need to be able to read a light meter and intelligently select the lens length, film speed, aperture, and shutter speed. Oh, and you have to compose the photograph, too. One person recommended exposure braketing to be on the safe side. Did I leave anything out? I won't even try to get into processing.
I think that's pretty technical.
FWIW, I couldn't solve this puzzle myself. I use auto-everything and hope for the best.
Why would anyone want to use Mac hardware for Linux?
1. Controlled configuration! Unlike the PC, there aren't that many oddball hardware configurations on the Mac. With my PC, I had to scrounge all over for Linux drivers for all the different things on it. With the Mac, my model either is supported or isn't.
2. Better CPU architecture. My 75MHz Mac is at least as fast as my P90.
3. Higher least common denominator. My Mac can do everything the PC can, and it has **ZERO** cards in it. Right out of the box, the Mac has SCSI, 16-bit sound, 24-bit video, 10baseT, high-speed (288-1000+ kbps) serial ports, USB-like hot-pluggable input bus (ADB)... and its PCI slots are still empty! All of these are (see point #1) standard. Support this one family of devices, and you've got a pretty deluxe Linux build that supports a broad cross section of Apple's product line.
The paper stresses over and over again that they think the iMacs could have done much better if the LinuxPPC software were a bit more mature. They used LinuxPPC v4.0; I'd be curious to see how they do using a v2.2 Linux kernel. Or, as they mention, OS X.
:-)
The graphs make it painfully clear that even 100Mbps Ethernet is too inefficient for serious parallel computation. A token-passing system like ATM is much better.
My third comment is a "me too": It would be interesting indeed to see the test repeated with 350MHz 604E processors, which should wipe the floor with those iMacs in FP - and maybe even the Pentiums! Somebody send me a crate full of PM 9600/350s, and I'll do the tests.
Slashdot is about news for nerds, remember?
Okay, so suppose Linus Torvalds comes to visit you in your wood-paneled office to congratulate you for your port of Linux on a Casio calculator wristwatch. He wants you to take a commemorative portrait of him wearing your wristwatch, and he hands you a camera bag containing the following:
A Nikon FM2n camera body
A 24mm f/2.8 lens
A 50mm f/1.2 lens
A 85mm f/1.8 lens
One roll each of ASA 100, 200, 400, and 800 Kodak color print film
It's a little cloudy outside your window, and Linus has to leave in 5 minutes. What do you do?
Followup question: Is there any non-nerdy correct response?
Small companies that lack business acumen don't stay in business for 14 years. Failing to predict that most of your customer base is going to steal your product and use it to access a new device that doens't even compete in your market space is not shortsighted. Charging a lower price than your competitors in your own market space and giving your driver away for free to your customers is not greedy. Thinking game players will pay $30 for a graphics driver is not clever, nor is failing to market such a product on a couple of months' notice lack of business acumen.
Don't make excuses for pirates. They do put companies out of business.
Had they licensed their drivers to other video card manufacturers, they'd likely be in business today.
You don't know that. You don't even know whether or not they tried to do that. The existence of the cut-price Wintel wasn't the problem. MCI sold lots of their more expensive card right up until the driver piracy started.