And on a "real" server, you have neither audio nor video:-) Audio is pointless, and Video is replaced by a serial console.
Serial consoles have always "just worked" and have been a standard means of console connectivity on Suns and most machines in their category. (Heck, even Apple Xserve machiens support serial consoles.) In the PC world, it is less common at the BIOS level, but that depends on what sort of PC you buy. My friend's 1U Dell server (which I'm hosting for him) does support serial console straight from the BIOS.
That's true... At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I thought I had reached the apex (given my current interests and environment) with new tinkering (and buying parts) in the computer department. As such, I went big-time into electronics and microcontroller stuff.
Once I got to college, I discovered whole new worlds of computer tinkering, and the soldering iron went back into the toolbox.
Since then, I've been trying to juggle back and forth between the two, but computers always still get the vast majority of my time.
In the rack: - Cable modem - Cisco 4500M+ router - 1U Netfinity 4000R (650MHz P3) firewall, FreeBSD 6 - Intel NetStructure 470F switch (8 x 1000Base-SX) - BayStack 450-24T switch (24 x 100Base-TX, 1 x 1000Base-SX) - Sun Netra T1 105 (360MHz US2i) auth/util server, Solaris 10 - Sun Blade 1000 (2x900MHz US3) e-mail/SunRay/etc. server, Sol 10 - Custom-built 4U PC box (2x600MHz P3) file server, FreeBSD 6 - 3 x APC Smart-UPS (2200, 1400, 700) - Lightwave ConsoleServer 800 (serial console server) - Some Dell whizbanger I'm co-lo'ing for a friend.
Oh, and that's just on the 19" equipment rack. I've got a SuSE 10 Linux desktop (Athlon64) on the desk near by, a fiber run across the attic to another 450-24T in my wiring closet (which in turn links to jacks all over my house), Sun Ray thin clients in several rooms, laptops (of course), a network-attached laser printer, etc, etc. It feels pointless to inventory every trinket bought in an afternoon at Best Buy like the parent of this discussion, honestly. I've already only mentioned a subset, and havn't even touched on the stuff I'm not presently using.
Maybe the fact that Cedega is a closed-source binary application written for Linux/x86? Oh, and I don't think MacOSX/x86 presently has a Linux compatability layer. (but FreeBSD does, and one could be written if a Darwin developer wanted to)
Which really annoys me, because if they actually got off their Windows high-horse, they probably could sell application software for Linux.
If they actually made "MS Office for Linux", and it was actually half-way decent, I wonder how many of us may actually buy it. (as in those of us for whom OpenOffice does *not* cover all the bases)
Likewise, "Windows Media Player for Linux" would also be useful. I've got some stuff I need to watch that doesn't work in anything but real WMP. (ok, it does work in WMP for MacOSX, but doesn't work in that Flip4Mac thing MS is trying to push as a replacement)
Re:The ass-backwards solution
on
Cedega 5.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That's exactly what I used to do, back when my "UNIX Desktop" was a Sun machine. But as I progressively got fed up with Sun's lack of decent 2D graphics hardware, I found the machine was probably better used as a server. (Already had a Sun server running a bunch of Sun Ray thin clients, but that desktop was a faster machine.)
For the longest time, I did want to maintain the dual-machine setup. As such, I really wanted to build some sort of Opteron super-workstation for *only* UNIX-like OSes (Linux or FreeBSD). But it always looked like it would cost me at least $2-3k, and I never had the money laying around.
As such, my "Windows gaming machine" has since become my "Linux desktop". While I could reboot, I've grown accustomed to a persistent desktop session. I also want to go straight back to *nix after playing a game. So, I try and use Cedega when it works for me, or just "deal with it" when it doesn't. (rebooting is a very rare occurance, since I don't have that much gaming time these days, and rebooting is only good if I want to spend a lot of time gaming)
Yeah, that was the first computer we had at home. Technically it wasn't mine, but I did spend the most time using it. Later my dad got an Epson Apex (XT clone,/w 20MB hard drive), followed several years later by a family IBM PS/1 (486SX-25, 2MB RAM, 120MB hard disk).
Finally, around the latter half of 7th grade, I got the first machine that was 100% mine: Custom-built 486DX2-66, 8MB of RAM, 540MB disk (ran OS/2 2.1, had DOS/Win 3.1, eventually wound up tinkering with Linux and Win95 as they became known/available to me.)
Well, you have 3 categories of users: 1) People who want it to look/work like MS Office 2) People who *need* it to be compatable with MS Office files (for more than just the basic lowest-common-denomenator features) 3) People who evangelize how it can replace MS Office, but don't personally fall into group 1 or group 2.
The reasons I'm not using OpenOffice at work are because I fall into group #2. (Oh, and OO.o 2.0 isn't so great on the Mac, at the moment, and my work machine is thankfully a PowerBook with a legal license of MS Office 2004)
At home, however, I run SuSE Linux and OO.o 2.0 works pretty well. But then again, the only MS Office files I have to interact with are the occasional simple MS Word document, and nothing fancy.
I had a setup using one of those CLARiiON FC boxes a while back. Used 20 x 36GB drives, 2 controllers, did a mix of hardware and software RAID, and managed to get >100MB/s sustained read performance (from the raw device, anyways). Only it had one major problem: power
My setup consumed about a continuous 800W, not to mention any increase in air conditioning usage that resulted. I've since moved to a 4-drive 3ware setup, which is slower on raw reads (marginally, but not by enough for me to care), has about the same capacity, and the WHOLE server uses about 230W of power. (a server which also has a separate RAID-1 for the system disk, and a redundant power supply)
If I didn't have to pay my electric bills, I'd love to get that CLARiiON up and running again, though. I do wish I could find another use for it, as it is a bit too big/heavy to conveniently resell/ship, and I really would like to find a use for it.
At least my experiences did prompt me to create this website, which includes a page with a lot of information on these arrays. (official documentation is almost unseen, and googling rarely pulls up much useful info beyond my page and some usenet posts)
Whenever I look at those CORAID boxes, compared to something like iSCSI or FC, I seriously wonder why they built them. (even heard from someone who uses one that he hasn't gotten very good performance)
Honestly, it seems like that company's products are only popular because they got a post on Slashdot. Not sure why I'd ever want one of their boxes, as the whole concept just feels "wrong". Couldn't they just have put that energy into something like low-cost iSCSI or FC boxes? (using SATA drives, of course)
Actually, software RAID works very well in Solaris for the root filesystem. In fact, Solaris is the only OS where I currently trust software RAID for the root filesystem.
Though what's even cooler is that this was when IBM came out with the POWER2, which could kick the crap out of a 200MHz Alpha, while only running at 66MHz.
Somehow, though, I think a more ideal situation would be where you no longer have to worry once they get older and you lose direct control.
And no, I don't mean external controlling forces.
What I mean is that children are probably better off it raised such that "bad external influences" don't have "negative effects" on them. The last think you want is anyone to grow up too sheltered, because then they may lose all control once they enter the real world.
This sort of reminds me of the environment that I grew up within... I basically started school in a relatively sheltered private school environment. The school ran from K-8, but people typically left for public schools in the 6-8 range. (I was there all the way from 1-8)
In any case, almost everyone there was from a upper-middle-class family (not everyone but most of 'em). No idea of anyone's true home environment, but chances are that they weren't that dissimilar.
Once entering into unsheltered public school, however, it seemed like there were a very high percentage that got "screwed up". (I turned out ok, as well as most of my class, but it seemed like many ahead of me, behind me, and even those in my younger sister's class fell into this trap.) Frankly, I'm glad for my experiences in a "normal" public high school. It didn't screw me up, and gave me exposure to more kinds of people.
Then again, I may have still been isolated from the "negative" influences even in public high school, due to a number of factors: 1) I only took "honors" or "gifted" classes when possible. (often the difference, especially with honors classes, seemed more like "decent vs. trash" than "smart vs. dumb", though I think the gifted classes were 40% druggie) 2) I was never really sociable (like the rest of you), which isolated me from the "popular kids". 3) I had a conservative enough upbringing that I always thought negatively of those "bad behaviors" such that I was never really even at risk on the few occasions where I might have been exposed.
Besides... Given the choice, would you rather: 1) Have more non-nerds/geeks going into technical fields? or 2) Have more nerds/geeks (who by their nature go into technical fields)?
Somehow I think #2 might be more useful, since non-geeks tend to not know anything outside what they learned in class, and lack any real genuine interest in their field.
Then what you're telling me is that Ubuntu (and probably a lot of 64-bit Linux users/distributions) don't understand what Solaris has known for *years*...
You can have a 64-bit OS, and run 32-bit applications!!!!
And no, it isn't painful at all!
In fact, on modern Solaris machines (where you pretty much always have a 64-bit kernel on UltraSPARC), most of the userland code is 32-bit. The only things that are 64-bit are drivers (kernel code), programs that actually have a need for 64-bit addressing, and the libraries needed to support them. (in other words, most core libraries are provided in both versions)
Actually, IRIX does this too. Wouldn't be the least bit surprised of AIX did as well, but I've never had a 64-bit AIX machine.
Probably the biggest reason people build apps 64-bit on their 64-bit PCs, though, is the extra optimizations for the x86-64 architecture that I've heard make a big difference. Sun even attacked this problem, by also supporting compilation targets that optimize for their newer 64-bit-capable processors while still building 32-bit code. (v8plus, v8plusa, v8plusb)
I know this has to be possible in Linux, and the only problem is that many people havn't realized that it is easier than they think. Heck, I'm running SuSE 10 64-bit at home, and it actually installs 32-bit Firefox so all those wonderful plugins will still work.
That actually reminds me of something that on one hand is somewhat related, and on another hand is totally unrelated.
Several months ago during the Jewish high holidays (Rosh Hashana, in particular), I found myself attending several different synagogues. (there are 2 days of services, and my parents go between two different ones, long story)
In any case, I heard sermons by totally different rabbis, who grew up in totally different places (one American, one actually Russian), mention something about being told if they had bad behavior, it was going on their "permanent record" in school.
This made me wonder just how common sermons actually may be, and that they probably all draw from the same "play book" when planning them out. Not too surprising, but irritating when you actually see it first-hand. Especially since both speaches referenced it like a personal experience, and not like a quote from someone else.
Of course this also highlights the issue that while plagarism is a "big deal" and a "very bad thing" in academic circles, it may actually be a common less-serious thing everywhere else. (Heck, how many times at work do people just recombine the work of others in things they produce. Though they may not claim sole authorship, they may also not cite like a research paper.)
And while I've run across plenty of used keyboards that look exactly like that, *NONE* of my keyboards have developed that gunk-on-keys layer. (In fact, the most visible think resembling gunk is dust in the grooves that is easily wiped out.) I seriously wonder where it comes from.
My older logitech mouse does sometimes develop something from finger oils, but at least it is easily rubbed off. But whatever those random second-hand keyboards have, it probably requires industrial-strength solvent to clean.
Actually, I think the game console industry did try to sell "more bits is better". To the point that the "number of bits" was treated similarly to "number of MHz" in the PC world.
Yup, Windows is a desktop OS that people pretend is a server OS.
Sure, MS *could* make Windows into a real server OS, but it would require some pretty substantial changes that would alienate their entire click-and-drool sysadmin community. (Not saying all Windows sysadmins are the click-and-drool type, but probably a very large percentage probably are.)
Agreed... In fact, the most important thing that makes an HTPC *special* is the software. Without special software, it is just a "PC connected to a TV".
I have an HTPC that I put together myself. The hardware is basically *just* a VIA mini-ITX board in a case, and just about nothing else. It network-boots Gentoo off my file server.
For the software, I have it running MythTV. For control, I recently got an IR remote working with it using lirc. (had been using a keyboard, until I finally stopped procrastinating and bought the IR remote) I can play music, watch videos, and even play video game emulators (with an added USB gamepad) off my TV, using a TV-friendly UI.
The sad thing is that, even without mentioning any technical details, I just gave a more relevant HTPC-specific blurb than the entire article.
I'm not saying OpenOffice is bad. In fact, I only use OpenOffice at home and for my own non-work purposes, and think it is decent at getting the job done.
What I'm saying is that OpenOffice is nowhere near as seemlessly compatable with MS Office for Windows as MS Office for Mac happens to be. While it isn't the major things you see when you run into the average simple files, more advanced features do break, have font issues, don't get formatted correctly, etc. (heck, I just opened up a document that shows change and comment bubbles in MS Word. OO.o 2.0 shows changes in-line, and does not show comment bubbles)
I'm also still hoping to someday see an Aqua-native OpenOffice 2.0 for the Mac. (NeoOffice/J feels like a kludge to me, but at least OO.o 2.0 runs in X11)
I hope Office for Mac is continued for as long as possible. Why? For some people, who are lucky enough to be able to use Macs as "work computers", it is really the *only* reason we are able to do so. The need to have "really good and mostly seemless" compatability with Windows MS Office users is practically a requirement, and no, OpenOffice does NOT fit the bill. Some day I hope to have a job where I don't have to care about office suites at all (MS Office or OpenOffice), but those days are not hear yet.
Basically, the Mac provides something that Linux currently cannot provide. It is a platform that software vendors recognize enough to willingly support as an end-user platform. Also, in the laptop world, it has 100% compatability and support with *all* the hardware features of the laptops on which it runs.
Even if I did eventually switch to a PC laptop, and tried to run Linux on it, I'd pretty much have to pay for something like CrossOver Office just to be able to use the darn thing.
If only MS (and everyone else) would realize that MS Office is an even more difficult monopoly on the buisness world than Windows itself... If somehow pigs flew and MS decided to make MS Office for Linux, two things would happen: 1. We'd all flame it while praising OpenOffice. 2. Those of us trying to use Linux as a work desktop would actually try to buy it in droves.
Or Apple pays Sun to port the Sun Ray Server software over to MacOSX Server:) Assuming OSX Server can support something like this (multiple simultaneous interactive desktops), that would rock.
Slashdot Mirror
And on a "real" server, you have neither audio nor video :-) Audio is pointless, and Video is replaced by a serial console.
Serial consoles have always "just worked" and have been a standard means of console connectivity on Suns and most machines in their category. (Heck, even Apple Xserve machiens support serial consoles.) In the PC world, it is less common at the BIOS level, but that depends on what sort of PC you buy. My friend's 1U Dell server (which I'm hosting for him) does support serial console straight from the BIOS.
Cooking isn't technology, but a family of processes.
The tools with which you cook *are* technology.
(i.e. grill, oven, blender, refrigerator, etc.)
That's true... At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I thought I had reached the apex (given my current interests and environment) with new tinkering (and buying parts) in the computer department. As such, I went big-time into electronics and microcontroller stuff.
Once I got to college, I discovered whole new worlds of computer tinkering, and the soldering iron went back into the toolbox.
Since then, I've been trying to juggle back and forth between the two, but computers always still get the vast majority of my time.
For details, look here.
In the rack:
- Cable modem
- Cisco 4500M+ router
- 1U Netfinity 4000R (650MHz P3) firewall, FreeBSD 6
- Intel NetStructure 470F switch (8 x 1000Base-SX)
- BayStack 450-24T switch (24 x 100Base-TX, 1 x 1000Base-SX)
- Sun Netra T1 105 (360MHz US2i) auth/util server, Solaris 10
- Sun Blade 1000 (2x900MHz US3) e-mail/SunRay/etc. server, Sol 10
- Custom-built 4U PC box (2x600MHz P3) file server, FreeBSD 6
- 3 x APC Smart-UPS (2200, 1400, 700)
- Lightwave ConsoleServer 800 (serial console server)
- Some Dell whizbanger I'm co-lo'ing for a friend.
Oh, and that's just on the 19" equipment rack. I've got a SuSE 10 Linux desktop (Athlon64) on the desk near by, a fiber run across the attic to another 450-24T in my wiring closet (which in turn links to jacks all over my house), Sun Ray thin clients in several rooms, laptops (of course), a network-attached laser printer, etc, etc. It feels pointless to inventory every trinket bought in an afternoon at Best Buy like the parent of this discussion, honestly. I've already only mentioned a subset, and havn't even touched on the stuff I'm not presently using.
Maybe the fact that Cedega is a closed-source binary application written for Linux/x86? Oh, and I don't think MacOSX/x86 presently has a Linux compatability layer. (but FreeBSD does, and one could be written if a Darwin developer wanted to)
Which really annoys me, because if they actually got off their Windows high-horse, they probably could sell application software for Linux.
If they actually made "MS Office for Linux", and it was actually half-way decent, I wonder how many of us may actually buy it. (as in those of us for whom OpenOffice does *not* cover all the bases)
Likewise, "Windows Media Player for Linux" would also be useful. I've got some stuff I need to watch that doesn't work in anything but real WMP. (ok, it does work in WMP for MacOSX, but doesn't work in that Flip4Mac thing MS is trying to push as a replacement)
That's exactly what I used to do, back when my "UNIX Desktop" was a Sun machine. But as I progressively got fed up with Sun's lack of decent 2D graphics hardware, I found the machine was probably better used as a server. (Already had a Sun server running a bunch of Sun Ray thin clients, but that desktop was a faster machine.)
For the longest time, I did want to maintain the dual-machine setup. As such, I really wanted to build some sort of Opteron super-workstation for *only* UNIX-like OSes (Linux or FreeBSD). But it always looked like it would cost me at least $2-3k, and I never had the money laying around.
As such, my "Windows gaming machine" has since become my "Linux desktop". While I could reboot, I've grown accustomed to a persistent desktop session. I also want to go straight back to *nix after playing a game. So, I try and use Cedega when it works for me, or just "deal with it" when it doesn't. (rebooting is a very rare occurance, since I don't have that much gaming time these days, and rebooting is only good if I want to spend a lot of time gaming)
Yeah, that was the first computer we had at home. Technically it wasn't mine, but I did spend the most time using it. Later my dad got an Epson Apex (XT clone, /w 20MB hard drive), followed several years later by a family IBM PS/1 (486SX-25, 2MB RAM, 120MB hard disk).
Finally, around the latter half of 7th grade, I got the first machine that was 100% mine:
Custom-built 486DX2-66, 8MB of RAM, 540MB disk
(ran OS/2 2.1, had DOS/Win 3.1, eventually wound up tinkering with Linux and Win95 as they became known/available to me.)
Well, you have 3 categories of users:
1) People who want it to look/work like MS Office
2) People who *need* it to be compatable with MS Office files (for more than just the basic lowest-common-denomenator features)
3) People who evangelize how it can replace MS Office, but don't personally fall into group 1 or group 2.
The reasons I'm not using OpenOffice at work are because I fall into group #2. (Oh, and OO.o 2.0 isn't so great on the Mac, at the moment, and my work machine is thankfully a PowerBook with a legal license of MS Office 2004)
At home, however, I run SuSE Linux and OO.o 2.0 works pretty well. But then again, the only MS Office files I have to interact with are the occasional simple MS Word document, and nothing fancy.
I had a setup using one of those CLARiiON FC boxes a while back. Used 20 x 36GB drives, 2 controllers, did a mix of hardware and software RAID, and managed to get >100MB/s sustained read performance (from the raw device, anyways). Only it had one major problem: power
My setup consumed about a continuous 800W, not to mention any increase in air conditioning usage that resulted. I've since moved to a 4-drive 3ware setup, which is slower on raw reads (marginally, but not by enough for me to care), has about the same capacity, and the WHOLE server uses about 230W of power. (a server which also has a separate RAID-1 for the system disk, and a redundant power supply)
If I didn't have to pay my electric bills, I'd love to get that CLARiiON up and running again, though. I do wish I could find another use for it, as it is a bit too big/heavy to conveniently resell/ship, and I really would like to find a use for it.
At least my experiences did prompt me to create this website, which includes a page with a lot of information on these arrays. (official documentation is almost unseen, and googling rarely pulls up much useful info beyond my page and some usenet posts)
Whenever I look at those CORAID boxes, compared to something like iSCSI or FC, I seriously wonder why they built them. (even heard from someone who uses one that he hasn't gotten very good performance)
Honestly, it seems like that company's products are only popular because they got a post on Slashdot. Not sure why I'd ever want one of their boxes, as the whole concept just feels "wrong". Couldn't they just have put that energy into something like low-cost iSCSI or FC boxes? (using SATA drives, of course)
Actually, software RAID works very well in Solaris for the root filesystem. In fact, Solaris is the only OS where I currently trust software RAID for the root filesystem.
Though what's even cooler is that this was when IBM came out with the POWER2, which could kick the crap out of a 200MHz Alpha, while only running at 66MHz.
Somehow, though, I think a more ideal situation would be where you no longer have to worry once they get older and you lose direct control.
And no, I don't mean external controlling forces.
What I mean is that children are probably better off it raised such that "bad external influences" don't have "negative effects" on them. The last think you want is anyone to grow up too sheltered, because then they may lose all control once they enter the real world.
This sort of reminds me of the environment that I grew up within...
I basically started school in a relatively sheltered private school environment. The school ran from K-8, but people typically left for public schools in the 6-8 range. (I was there all the way from 1-8)
In any case, almost everyone there was from a upper-middle-class family (not everyone but most of 'em). No idea of anyone's true home environment, but chances are that they weren't that dissimilar.
Once entering into unsheltered public school, however, it seemed like there were a very high percentage that got "screwed up". (I turned out ok, as well as most of my class, but it seemed like many ahead of me, behind me, and even those in my younger sister's class fell into this trap.) Frankly, I'm glad for my experiences in a "normal" public high school. It didn't screw me up, and gave me exposure to more kinds of people.
Then again, I may have still been isolated from the "negative" influences even in public high school, due to a number of factors:
1) I only took "honors" or "gifted" classes when possible. (often the difference, especially with honors classes, seemed more like "decent vs. trash" than "smart vs. dumb", though I think the gifted classes were 40% druggie)
2) I was never really sociable (like the rest of you), which isolated me from the "popular kids".
3) I had a conservative enough upbringing that I always thought negatively of those "bad behaviors" such that I was never really even at risk on the few occasions where I might have been exposed.
Besides... Given the choice, would you rather:
1) Have more non-nerds/geeks going into technical fields?
or
2) Have more nerds/geeks (who by their nature go into technical fields)?
Somehow I think #2 might be more useful, since non-geeks tend to not know anything outside what they learned in class, and lack any real genuine interest in their field.
Then what you're telling me is that Ubuntu (and probably a lot of 64-bit Linux users/distributions) don't understand what Solaris has known for *years*...
You can have a 64-bit OS, and run 32-bit applications!!!!
And no, it isn't painful at all!
In fact, on modern Solaris machines (where you pretty much always have a 64-bit kernel on UltraSPARC), most of the userland code is 32-bit. The only things that are 64-bit are drivers (kernel code), programs that actually have a need for 64-bit addressing, and the libraries needed to support them. (in other words, most core libraries are provided in both versions)
Actually, IRIX does this too. Wouldn't be the least bit surprised of AIX did as well, but I've never had a 64-bit AIX machine.
Probably the biggest reason people build apps 64-bit on their 64-bit PCs, though, is the extra optimizations for the x86-64 architecture that I've heard make a big difference. Sun even attacked this problem, by also supporting compilation targets that optimize for their newer 64-bit-capable processors while still building 32-bit code. (v8plus, v8plusa, v8plusb)
I know this has to be possible in Linux, and the only problem is that many people havn't realized that it is easier than they think. Heck, I'm running SuSE 10 64-bit at home, and it actually installs 32-bit Firefox so all those wonderful plugins will still work.
That actually reminds me of something that on one hand is somewhat related, and on another hand is totally unrelated.
Several months ago during the Jewish high holidays (Rosh Hashana, in particular), I found myself attending several different synagogues. (there are 2 days of services, and my parents go between two different ones, long story)
In any case, I heard sermons by totally different rabbis, who grew up in totally different places (one American, one actually Russian), mention something about being told if they had bad behavior, it was going on their "permanent record" in school.
This made me wonder just how common sermons actually may be, and that they probably all draw from the same "play book" when planning them out. Not too surprising, but irritating when you actually see it first-hand. Especially since both speaches referenced it like a personal experience, and not like a quote from someone else.
Of course this also highlights the issue that while plagarism is a "big deal" and a "very bad thing" in academic circles, it may actually be a common less-serious thing everywhere else. (Heck, how many times at work do people just recombine the work of others in things they produce. Though they may not claim sole authorship, they may also not cite like a research paper.)
Just some food for thought...
Yeah, definitely a Funny :-)
If the US actually *did* have a "million-man infantry", do you seriously believe we'd have an insurgency problem in Iraq?
And while I've run across plenty of used keyboards that look exactly like that, *NONE* of my keyboards have developed that gunk-on-keys layer. (In fact, the most visible think resembling gunk is dust in the grooves that is easily wiped out.) I seriously wonder where it comes from.
My older logitech mouse does sometimes develop something from finger oils, but at least it is easily rubbed off. But whatever those random second-hand keyboards have, it probably requires industrial-strength solvent to clean.
Actually, I think the game console industry did try to sell "more bits is better". To the point that the "number of bits" was treated similarly to "number of MHz" in the PC world.
Yup, Windows is a desktop OS that people pretend is a server OS.
Sure, MS *could* make Windows into a real server OS, but it would require some pretty substantial changes that would alienate their entire click-and-drool sysadmin community. (Not saying all Windows sysadmins are the click-and-drool type, but probably a very large percentage probably are.)
Agreed... In fact, the most important thing that makes an HTPC *special* is the software. Without special software, it is just a "PC connected to a TV".
I have an HTPC that I put together myself. The hardware is basically *just* a VIA mini-ITX board in a case, and just about nothing else. It network-boots Gentoo off my file server.
For the software, I have it running MythTV. For control, I recently got an IR remote working with it using lirc. (had been using a keyboard, until I finally stopped procrastinating and bought the IR remote) I can play music, watch videos, and even play video game emulators (with an added USB gamepad) off my TV, using a TV-friendly UI.
The sad thing is that, even without mentioning any technical details, I just gave a more relevant HTPC-specific blurb than the entire article.
I'm not saying OpenOffice is bad. In fact, I only use OpenOffice at home and for my own non-work purposes, and think it is decent at getting the job done.
What I'm saying is that OpenOffice is nowhere near as seemlessly compatable with MS Office for Windows as MS Office for Mac happens to be. While it isn't the major things you see when you run into the average simple files, more advanced features do break, have font issues, don't get formatted correctly, etc. (heck, I just opened up a document that shows change and comment bubbles in MS Word. OO.o 2.0 shows changes in-line, and does not show comment bubbles)
I'm also still hoping to someday see an Aqua-native OpenOffice 2.0 for the Mac. (NeoOffice/J feels like a kludge to me, but at least OO.o 2.0 runs in X11)
I hope Office for Mac is continued for as long as possible. Why? For some people, who are lucky enough to be able to use Macs as "work computers", it is really the *only* reason we are able to do so. The need to have "really good and mostly seemless" compatability with Windows MS Office users is practically a requirement, and no, OpenOffice does NOT fit the bill. Some day I hope to have a job where I don't have to care about office suites at all (MS Office or OpenOffice), but those days are not hear yet.
Basically, the Mac provides something that Linux currently cannot provide. It is a platform that software vendors recognize enough to willingly support as an end-user platform. Also, in the laptop world, it has 100% compatability and support with *all* the hardware features of the laptops on which it runs.
Even if I did eventually switch to a PC laptop, and tried to run Linux on it, I'd pretty much have to pay for something like CrossOver Office just to be able to use the darn thing.
If only MS (and everyone else) would realize that MS Office is an even more difficult monopoly on the buisness world than Windows itself... If somehow pigs flew and MS decided to make MS Office for Linux, two things would happen: 1. We'd all flame it while praising OpenOffice. 2. Those of us trying to use Linux as a work desktop would actually try to buy it in droves.
Or Apple pays Sun to port the Sun Ray Server software over to MacOSX Server :) Assuming OSX Server can support something like this (multiple simultaneous interactive desktops), that would rock.