I'm in a similar boat. I use mostly Adobe apps, and some Macromedia, and am equally at home & happy in w2k (hate XP) and OS X. There are things I like and dislike about both OSs but when I'm in one I use what works and ignore what doesn't.
However, the UNIXness of OS X is a big plus for me. I have a native bash CLI in OS X *and* it's integrated with the OS. So not only does it beat the pants off Cygwin (no special shell to launch, no 'cygdrive' abstractions, etc.) but it goes above and beyond with features like drag and drop. I can type 'scp ', drag a file from the desktop to the window, and then finish with the remote server info. I can type 'open.' and a Finder window pops open of my PWD. And so on and so on.
I used to strongly prefer Win9x to OS 8/9. I liked w2k more than early OS Xs. But OS X got better with each release, and Windows got worse. For example, when I open my wireless iBook, the menubar scrolls to tell me it has joined a network that I've previously told it is OK. No hassles. In XP, I get several annoying prompts--"wireless networks are available!" "hey, I just joined one!", or maybe "I won't join this network because it's insecure! even though you said it was OK before!"--that stay open annoyingly for quite a while. If I click 'close', it steals focus from my current app. And then another pops up. Or plug in a USB drive, or a USB keyboard. Windows takes two minutes to run through five permutations of the New Hardware wizard. OS X just waits a couple seconds, recognizes it, and you can use it, no fuss. The OSs are like that now: a bunch of little annoying things in Windows, and a bunch of nice little things in OS X.
But then again, the professional apps I use, I use at work. I wouldn't switch if it meant I had to buy new copies of Studio MX and Creative Suite with my own money.:-)
I can tell you from personal experience (since it's what I have) that a 256k uplink is not enough to reliably stream a 128kbps file. It is just baaaarely enough to move 1 MB per minute, which is about what a 128k mp3 winds up being, and given real-world network conditions, you will never get a reliable enough link to even play one song without pauses. So, the next step down is 112k or 96k.
At that point, the files are getting pretty small. A 128k mp3 is 1/10 the size of a.wav, and if FLAC gives 50% compression, 96k files--the largest you might expect to stream smoothly--is still 1/6 the size. So that 400 GB can shrink to about 60 GB (at which point, a 60 GB iPod becomes worth considering as well*) so there's not much reason not to just compress the whole collection to 96kbps mp3 or AAC or OGG and use that compressed copy as the source of what gets served/streamed.
* an iPod would solve a lot of problems while creating very few. The main problem is the cost. OTOH, it doesn't depend on network availability. It can be used in a lot more places than a computer can. It will play mp3, aac, wav, aiff, and Apple's lossless codec. And it can store files and do other cool things.
If the author has a sixth-grade reading comprehension level, he can read his own post and find the keywords in it--personal, streaming, wav, mp3, flac, server, etc. The (-1, Troll) parent was right.
"So when that day comes to upgrade past the one optical drive I need, I'm golden."
So am I. I have a Mac Mini and an external FireWire dual-layer DVD burner. I too have a 5.25" drive for every two inches of height... and a total height (currently) of 4". Your point?
"Actually $3000 gets you 6 Mac Minis... cluster those together and you've got more juice than the PowerMac."
Eh, not really...
$3000 in Minis gets you 6 x 1.25 GHz G4 = 7.5 GHz worth of G4, bound together by 10/100 Ethernet, 1.5 GB RAM, 6 GB max; or 5.4 GHz of G5, bound together by all those fast internal buses with 512 MB RAM, 8 GB max. Despite the lower overall speed, the fact that it's a generation-newer chip with much better interconnect means there's probably nothing a cluster of 6 minis could do better than a dual-2.7 G5.
As for having one external drive bay, that drive is a DVD+R DL, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM. What else do you need it to do?
As for the RAM, it holds 8 GB. Some people might want to spend their money on CPU instead of RAM, especially since it's a lot easier to add RAM down the road than change the CPUs. There are plenty of times when I'd rather have 5.4 GHz and 512 MB RAM than 4.6 GHz and 2 GB. 512 MB makes Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro totally usable, but for rendering effects, you need CPU more than you need RAM. Sure, I'd like to have both, but I like having a *choice* even more.
For reference, between my house and my two jobs I have a G3/800 iBook, a 1.25 GHz Mini, a dual-1.25 GHz G4, a single-1.8 GHz G5, a dual-1.42 G4, and a dual-2.0 G5. Programs I use include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, and DVD Studio Pro. The video apps are usable on the single-1.8 with 512 MB and a 64 or 128 MB video card, so don't try to tell me they won't work as well or better on a dual-2.7 with the same RAM and a 9600.
And who cares what you think a "workstation" should cost. Professionals buy boxes based on what apps they run, *not* because some Opteron white box can be had for $200 less than a G5. If you want the Apple apps and you bill $100 an hour, you buy what you want and it pays for itself in a week. If a dual-2.7 can render video effects twice as fast as a single-1.8... well, do the math.
Back: FireWire, USB, and 1/8" stereo miniplug inputs 2 FireWire, 2-4 USB, and one 1/8" audio output - for permanent devices: DV bridge, FW HD, keyboard, stereo, etc.
Front: same ports as back for portable devices: headphones, iPod, DV cam, CF card reader, etc.
Optional: - hard drive - firewire-to-5.1 audio (like what griffin makes)
This is almost what I want. After using my Mini for a while I decided I wanted a base that had front and rear USB and FW ports and a headphone jack front and rear. Not that I need to use a million devices at once but it'd be nice to just leave things plugged in.
The mini has two USB and one FireWire port and I have a DV camera (FW), a DV bridge (FW), an external HD (FW), an iPod (FW), keyboard (USB), USB hub built into my monitor (USB), and a card reader (USB) for my digital camera. Messing with the closely-spaced ports on the back of the Mini is one of the few downsides of the machine.
I like significant stuff (might not have been the first, but if I could pick up a Rio cheap, I just might) but I've been finding that as we reach the hockey-stick-shaped part of Moore's Law, "interesting" just isn't enough, especially if you have limited space.
I've wanted an SGI O2 for a while and recently got one, cheap, but I haven't done much with it--as cool as it is, there's only so much you can do with 200 MHz and 64 MB these days. Use it as a test server? No reason to, my slowest machine--an 800 MHz G3 iBook--is faster.
A 32 MB Rio might be nice, but that's, what, 6 songs at 192kbps? It's not like a tube amp that you listen to just to hear what old gear sounds like. I'm pretty sure the first half of "Licensed to Ill" sounds about the same on a Rio as it does on my iPod. The difference being, with the iPod, I can go on and listen to 3,000 other songs.
It all depends who you are and what you do. I've happily done the exact opposite of most of your rules and get along fine. I use Lotus Notes (ick) with its preview feature so I can look at an email in preview mode but leave it red (i.e., marked unread) if I need to deal with it later. And I'm a big believer in low-hanging fruit--if I can answer a just-arrived email in 30 seconds and put the issue to bed forever, why not?
However, I do turn off auto-check and the noise features. Everything I do in email, I do when it's email time. Whenever I need something to do, I start with my oldest "unread" mail and work my way forward. Why should I read my mail and copy-n-paste it into a to-do list, and then have to look back at the email for details, when it's already automatically arranged for me? I do keep a paper to-do list for non-email-based queries and I'll use that to prioritize, but overall, my work is of the type where everything is about the same priority, which means I just do the oldest requests first.
And if I do happen to miss something, the requestor just sends me another email. It's like a magical self-maintaining system!;-) (Yes, I'm kidding about that last bit... mostly.)
PS: I also rarely initiate things in email. People are free to email me if they need something, but if I need something from someone else, I walk over and talk to them. If they aren't around, I email them. Phone is the last resort. Like I said, just depends on who you are and what you do.
"...it is difficult to see how CS can match expected future demand for IT workers without raising women's participation at the undergraduate level."
Um, wouldn't it work to just get male enrollment levels back up to where they used to be? What logic is there in saying "Less men are signing up, so the solution is to get more women interested." WTF? I mean, it's not like they're soldiers and they're dying and once they're gone they need to be replaced with women.
And no points for making easy jokes like "But getting more women into CS will attract men to the field! LOLOMGBBQ!!!11"
Q: Should I build a cluster of these 100 386s? [1999-05-13]
A: If it's OK with you that it'll be slower than a single Celeron-333 machine, sure. Great way to learn.
Updated for 2005:
Q: Should I build a cluster with five $100 iMacs?
A: If it's OK with you that it'll be slower than a single $500 Mini, sure.
No sense mentioning the heat, current, or space differences.:-)
Adobe can stay alive but they missed their chance for dominance. As I've thought for ages... (quoted with a couple edits)
When I first played with the professional version of Acrobat, which will let you actually edit text, I thought right away that Adobe had a better chance of killing Word than anyone else. They could have made a word processor--even one as simple as MS's WordPad--with PDF as its native format. They could have sold this for $50-100 (instead of screwing around with Acrobat Business Tools) and made a mint and would have made a huge dent in the number of.DOC files out there. If they would have combined with OO or StarOffice or AppleWorks or AbiWord or whatever and had a really powerful $150-250 word cruncher, they would have knocked Word off the block instantly.
Think about it--you could make documents that by default (key point there) would be readable on every platform with Acrobat Reader (or something similar) which everyone already has ('nuther key point there). Everyone already knows what a PDF is. (Ask the average man on the street--hell, as the average slashdotter--what SXW is and most won't know. For crying out loud, even Google says "Did you mean: swf.") For a mere $50 (or whatever), the recipient could edit the document as well, and for, say, $200, they'd have all the power of tables, revisions, authors, etc. "Office" would be no more--people would have Adobe's word processor and Excel. Bam, half the battle won, and as a bonus, Adobe would be more suited to the moniker "The Document Company" than Xerox.
My re-posting of this was in response to this part of your post: "Eventually corporations will start working in PDF directly, rather than farming out the PDFication of data to a specialist department." Adobe, still, doesn't let you work directly in PDF. Everything they make can export to PDF, but they don't offer an easy, powerful way to create a new PDF or open an existing one, edit, and save. If people understood exporting and cared about compatability, they'd already be exporting to.TXT,.RTF,.HTML, etcetera from MS Word.
As I go on to say: "Your boss, and his secretary, want to launch a word cruncher, type, click the floppy disc icon, and email the result to someone. They don't want to hear about exporting. They don't want to save two copies. If it's not interchangable by default, it has no chance to take over the world. Office won't be unseated anytime soon."
...what I really want is to be able to hit (for example) control-alt-F1 and get a full-screen command line. Every so often I've got a lot of crap open and I just want nothing but a big, empty, command window.
In Safari, the browser that comes with OS X, the bookmark-adding process isn't complete until you've named it. That is, when you bookmark something, you're prompted to give it a name right away. Smartest thing I've seen in a browser since tabs.
"What's the most important thing on your desktop? It's the data."
Right. THE data. Not just YOUR data, but EVERYONE ON THE MACHINE's data. If you do something stupid as a regular user, you're only risking your own data. If you do something dumb as root, you can wipe out your whole family's data. Won't somebody think of the children!
"...more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE..."
WHO THE FUCK CARES?!?!? All these dumbass writers need to learn that all bugs are NOT created equal. There is a BIG ASS DIFFERENCE between "small flaw that could theoretically be exploited but the good guys found it first and fixed it in two days anyway" and "gaping hole in the default configuration with thousands of exploits in the wild for months on end." I mean, fucking A, how awesome is it to run Windows Update and see a warning like this? "Identified security issues in Internet Explorer could allow an attacker to compromise a Windows-based system... This affects all computers with Internet Explorer installed (even if you don't run Internet Explorer as your Web browser). [emphasis added]"
Which would you rather live in: a city with a hundred arsonists or a thousand litterbugs?
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I'm in a similar boat. I use mostly Adobe apps, and some Macromedia, and am equally at home & happy in w2k (hate XP) and OS X. There are things I like and dislike about both OSs but when I'm in one I use what works and ignore what doesn't.
.' and a Finder window pops open of my PWD. And so on and so on.
:-)
However, the UNIXness of OS X is a big plus for me. I have a native bash CLI in OS X *and* it's integrated with the OS. So not only does it beat the pants off Cygwin (no special shell to launch, no 'cygdrive' abstractions, etc.) but it goes above and beyond with features like drag and drop. I can type 'scp ', drag a file from the desktop to the window, and then finish with the remote server info. I can type 'open
I used to strongly prefer Win9x to OS 8/9. I liked w2k more than early OS Xs. But OS X got better with each release, and Windows got worse. For example, when I open my wireless iBook, the menubar scrolls to tell me it has joined a network that I've previously told it is OK. No hassles. In XP, I get several annoying prompts--"wireless networks are available!" "hey, I just joined one!", or maybe "I won't join this network because it's insecure! even though you said it was OK before!"--that stay open annoyingly for quite a while. If I click 'close', it steals focus from my current app. And then another pops up. Or plug in a USB drive, or a USB keyboard. Windows takes two minutes to run through five permutations of the New Hardware wizard. OS X just waits a couple seconds, recognizes it, and you can use it, no fuss. The OSs are like that now: a bunch of little annoying things in Windows, and a bunch of nice little things in OS X.
But then again, the professional apps I use, I use at work. I wouldn't switch if it meant I had to buy new copies of Studio MX and Creative Suite with my own money.
and, of course, 'upling' shoild be 'uplink.'
I can tell you from personal experience (since it's what I have) that a 256k uplink is not enough to reliably stream a 128kbps file. It is just baaaarely enough to move 1 MB per minute, which is about what a 128k mp3 winds up being, and given real-world network conditions, you will never get a reliable enough link to even play one song without pauses. So, the next step down is 112k or 96k.
.wav, and if FLAC gives 50% compression, 96k files--the largest you might expect to stream smoothly--is still 1/6 the size. So that 400 GB can shrink to about 60 GB (at which point, a 60 GB iPod becomes worth considering as well*) so there's not much reason not to just compress the whole collection to 96kbps mp3 or AAC or OGG and use that compressed copy as the source of what gets served/streamed.
At that point, the files are getting pretty small. A 128k mp3 is 1/10 the size of a
* an iPod would solve a lot of problems while creating very few. The main problem is the cost. OTOH, it doesn't depend on network availability. It can be used in a lot more places than a computer can. It will play mp3, aac, wav, aiff, and Apple's lossless codec. And it can store files and do other cool things.
If the author has a sixth-grade reading comprehension level, he can read his own post and find the keywords in it--personal, streaming, wav, mp3, flac, server, etc. The (-1, Troll) parent was right.
Let me change that around a little. Why would I want an X800? Will it make my web brwoser faster or speed up my data analysis?
:-)
Silly--everyone knows you need a Pentium to make your Internet faster.
"So when that day comes to upgrade past the one optical drive I need, I'm golden."
So am I. I have a Mac Mini and an external FireWire dual-layer DVD burner. I too have a 5.25" drive for every two inches of height... and a total height (currently) of 4". Your point?
"Actually $3000 gets you 6 Mac Minis ... cluster those together and you've got more juice than the PowerMac."
Eh, not really...
$3000 in Minis gets you 6 x 1.25 GHz G4 = 7.5 GHz worth of G4, bound together by 10/100 Ethernet, 1.5 GB RAM, 6 GB max; or 5.4 GHz of G5, bound together by all those fast internal buses with 512 MB RAM, 8 GB max. Despite the lower overall speed, the fact that it's a generation-newer chip with much better interconnect means there's probably nothing a cluster of 6 minis could do better than a dual-2.7 G5.
As for having one external drive bay, that drive is a DVD+R DL, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM. What else do you need it to do?
As for the RAM, it holds 8 GB. Some people might want to spend their money on CPU instead of RAM, especially since it's a lot easier to add RAM down the road than change the CPUs. There are plenty of times when I'd rather have 5.4 GHz and 512 MB RAM than 4.6 GHz and 2 GB. 512 MB makes Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro totally usable, but for rendering effects, you need CPU more than you need RAM. Sure, I'd like to have both, but I like having a *choice* even more.
For reference, between my house and my two jobs I have a G3/800 iBook, a 1.25 GHz Mini, a dual-1.25 GHz G4, a single-1.8 GHz G5, a dual-1.42 G4, and a dual-2.0 G5. Programs I use include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, and DVD Studio Pro. The video apps are usable on the single-1.8 with 512 MB and a 64 or 128 MB video card, so don't try to tell me they won't work as well or better on a dual-2.7 with the same RAM and a 9600.
And who cares what you think a "workstation" should cost. Professionals buy boxes based on what apps they run, *not* because some Opteron white box can be had for $200 less than a G5. If you want the Apple apps and you bill $100 an hour, you buy what you want and it pays for itself in a week. If a dual-2.7 can render video effects twice as fast as a single-1.8... well, do the math.
No problem, as long as it also has a 104-button mouse.
All generalisms are wrong.
And all extremists should be shot.
wow, this guy I'm hacking may be a dick, but he's got a *really* fast connection.
"Yes, IAWAUGTOQC (I am writing an undergrad thesis on quantum computation)."
You don't have to spell it out. We're all familiar with that acronym.
"It is no coincidence that AOL is fielding so many betas concurrently."
What, did they get bought by Google?
Here's what I really want:
Back:
FireWire, USB, and 1/8" stereo miniplug inputs
2 FireWire, 2-4 USB, and one 1/8" audio output
- for permanent devices: DV bridge, FW HD, keyboard, stereo, etc.
Front:
same ports as back for portable devices: headphones, iPod, DV cam, CF card reader, etc.
Optional:
- hard drive
- firewire-to-5.1 audio (like what griffin makes)
This is almost what I want. After using my Mini for a while I decided I wanted a base that had front and rear USB and FW ports and a headphone jack front and rear. Not that I need to use a million devices at once but it'd be nice to just leave things plugged in.
The mini has two USB and one FireWire port and I have a DV camera (FW), a DV bridge (FW), an external HD (FW), an iPod (FW), keyboard (USB), USB hub built into my monitor (USB), and a card reader (USB) for my digital camera. Messing with the closely-spaced ports on the back of the Mini is one of the few downsides of the machine.
I like significant stuff (might not have been the first, but if I could pick up a Rio cheap, I just might) but I've been finding that as we reach the hockey-stick-shaped part of Moore's Law, "interesting" just isn't enough, especially if you have limited space.
I've wanted an SGI O2 for a while and recently got one, cheap, but I haven't done much with it--as cool as it is, there's only so much you can do with 200 MHz and 64 MB these days. Use it as a test server? No reason to, my slowest machine--an 800 MHz G3 iBook--is faster.
A 32 MB Rio might be nice, but that's, what, 6 songs at 192kbps? It's not like a tube amp that you listen to just to hear what old gear sounds like. I'm pretty sure the first half of "Licensed to Ill" sounds about the same on a Rio as it does on my iPod. The difference being, with the iPod, I can go on and listen to 3,000 other songs.
It all depends who you are and what you do. I've happily done the exact opposite of most of your rules and get along fine. I use Lotus Notes (ick) with its preview feature so I can look at an email in preview mode but leave it red (i.e., marked unread) if I need to deal with it later. And I'm a big believer in low-hanging fruit--if I can answer a just-arrived email in 30 seconds and put the issue to bed forever, why not?
;-) (Yes, I'm kidding about that last bit... mostly.)
However, I do turn off auto-check and the noise features. Everything I do in email, I do when it's email time. Whenever I need something to do, I start with my oldest "unread" mail and work my way forward. Why should I read my mail and copy-n-paste it into a to-do list, and then have to look back at the email for details, when it's already automatically arranged for me? I do keep a paper to-do list for non-email-based queries and I'll use that to prioritize, but overall, my work is of the type where everything is about the same priority, which means I just do the oldest requests first.
And if I do happen to miss something, the requestor just sends me another email. It's like a magical self-maintaining system!
PS: I also rarely initiate things in email. People are free to email me if they need something, but if I need something from someone else, I walk over and talk to them. If they aren't around, I email them. Phone is the last resort. Like I said, just depends on who you are and what you do.
"...it is difficult to see how CS can match expected future demand for IT workers without raising women's participation at the undergraduate level."
Um, wouldn't it work to just get male enrollment levels back up to where they used to be? What logic is there in saying "Less men are signing up, so the solution is to get more women interested." WTF? I mean, it's not like they're soldiers and they're dying and once they're gone they need to be replaced with women.
And no points for making easy jokes like "But getting more women into CS will attract men to the field! LOLOMGBBQ!!!11"
Fat Tony is a cancer on this fair city.
He is the cancer, and I am the... um... What cures cancer?
-- Chief Wiggum, "Bart the Murderer"
As I go on to say: "Your boss, and his secretary, want to launch a word cruncher, type, click the floppy disc icon, and email the result to someone. They don't want to hear about exporting. They don't want to save two copies. If it's not interchangable by default, it has no chance to take over the world. Office won't be unseated anytime soon."
...what I really want is to be able to hit (for example) control-alt-F1 and get a full-screen command line. Every so often I've got a lot of crap open and I just want nothing but a big, empty, command window.
And those of us who survive will reset the Epoch to midnight the day after the asteroid hits. :-)
In Safari, the browser that comes with OS X, the bookmark-adding process isn't complete until you've named it. That is, when you bookmark something, you're prompted to give it a name right away. Smartest thing I've seen in a browser since tabs.
"What's the most important thing on your desktop? It's the data."
Right. THE data. Not just YOUR data, but EVERYONE ON THE MACHINE's data. If you do something stupid as a regular user, you're only risking your own data. If you do something dumb as root, you can wipe out your whole family's data. Won't somebody think of the children!
"...more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE..."
WHO THE FUCK CARES?!?!? All these dumbass writers need to learn that all bugs are NOT created equal. There is a BIG ASS DIFFERENCE between "small flaw that could theoretically be exploited but the good guys found it first and fixed it in two days anyway" and "gaping hole in the default configuration with thousands of exploits in the wild for months on end." I mean, fucking A, how awesome is it to run Windows Update and see a warning like this? "Identified security issues in Internet Explorer could allow an attacker to compromise a Windows-based system... This affects all computers with Internet Explorer installed ( even if you don't run Internet Explorer as your Web browser ). [emphasis added]"
Which would you rather live in: a city with a hundred arsonists or a thousand litterbugs?