Seriously. You are the sysadmin, not a digital janitor. OK, so even if you can do all of this maintenance work from home via Remote Desktop on a Sunday afternoon -- do you really want to? Is this in your job description? As you pointed out, you still have do do the monkey clicks. Even if you script everything, you'll still need to do basic functional tests after the smoke has cleared.
I know of at least one shop in town that has hired weekend help (usually honest and lonely college students) to maintain their end-user Windows PCs. At the end of the year the monkey salary still adds up so little that it's still cheaper than moving to a new platform (Linux, Mac OS X).
I'm willing to bet it's in Flash because he did the presentation in Keynote. Too bad he didn't export it to PDF. Keynote 2 (the version that ships in iWork 05) has an excellent PDF exporter.
kernel's secret recipie You don't need 11 herbs and spices, that's for sure. "Seasoned Oven Fried Chicken" spiced with cheap McCormick Season-All Seasoned Salt from your local grocery store will give you almost the same flavor. As an added bonus, you can control exactly how much or how little grease you want! Take that, KFC!
I call BS until someone posts a photo of this wallhanging. Seriously. If it's really that cool, someone would have taken a snapshot with their cameraphone by now.
It's not like Steve Jobs invented the iPod or the MP3 player concept himself anyway. The Diamond Rio was one of the originals and AFAIK, Apple outsourced the iPod development to a freelance EE.
Worthiness is relative. Ten years ago I spent a small fortune on games with no regrets. That was money well spent to me, very worthwhile, I loved most new games and I loved the variety. Today I have a very different gaming tastes and won't spend more than $10 on any game, it's just not worth it to me in my present state.
I know many people who will spend $50 - $60 on brand new games. I also know many people who refuse to spend that much and will instead wait until those same games are on the $10 - $20 bargain rack.
I'm not going to argue, but I do think there are probably at least 30 new commerical Mac games in the past 12 months, and certainly many more freeware/shareware games. There are at least 100 commerical games that run native on Mac OS X (ie, not "Classic" Mac OS 9).
HOWEVER... the latest nightly builds (from the development branch that will eventually become Firefox 1.1) are much faster than the official 1.0.4 you are probably currently using. Also, if you have a newer G4 (PowerPC 744x/745x series... 1GHz or better "G4+") or a G5 you can grab an optimized build for even more performance.
As of this posting, the newest version for each is the 20050704 (July 4, 2005) build. I am posting this from the July 3 G4 version, it zooms compared to Safari here on OS X 10.4.1.
i don't understand why every slashdot post has to make a mountain out of a molehill. I was *very* amazed (and pleased!) that he didn't get jail time. Maybe if this had happened in the USA he could have ended up sitting in prison for a few years. Sounds like he got off a little easy, but maybe in this case the punishment finally fit the crime a little better.
I'm personally calling BS on this whole story until proven otherwise. I hope Snopes.com and the other hoax websites check it out soon. Just because a few websites have these images doesn't make it true.
I know I don't trust Apple and don't buy their geer, no matter how nice people tell me it is. Maybe I am not a big dent in Job's bank account but don't forget they went from a market leadership position in PCs to what, less than 3% today? The late 1970s home computer user could choose from either a an S-100 based system or an Apple II. The Apple was far more humane and sold very well for its time.
Every since the introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s, Apple has offered too little for too much. Sort of like BMW or Mercedes. You pay a huge price premium in return for minimal perks and often times, added restrictions. I could have paid more money for a BMW, but then I would be limited to just one dealership / shop in town. If I need parts for my Honda, there are three places I can go. If I need parts for my Chevy, there are about six places I can go.
Frankly, I don't trust ***ANY*** business.
I do have a PowerBook, I bought it two years ago when Apple first started shipping the 15" Aluminum PowerBook G4. It had an excellent performance/features to price ratio at the time and I'm very happy with it. Just about every other computer I have is a cheap PC running a free OS. I don't trust any company to treat me right, support me, or even be in business tomorrow. I'm careful, but not paranoid.Apple doesn't scare me, neither does Abit or Asus, but none of those make me feel warm and fuzzy either.
Apple sold 876,000 computers in Q3 2004 alone, which is about 3 times as many Macintoshes as they sold in *all* of 1988, when their market share was around 10%.
Apples to Oranges.
In 1988 most people didn't even know what a computer was. Today there are more computers in the average office than there are humans.
He cheated his friend and partner Steve Wozniak out of money before the early days of Apple. This is true. Woz later said he actually wept when he learned that Jobs had cheated him out of a few hundred bucks on that Atari project you mentioned.
But...
And when Wozniak set up his own company in 1986, Jobs threatened Wozniak's suppliers against doing business with Wozniak. I call bullshit on this one. I really don't think Jobs felt threatened by CL9, Woz's unversal remote control company (which, BTW, made a dual CPU, fully programmable remote that AV geeks drooled over for more than a decade). In 1986 Jobs was too busy working on NeXT and Pixar to worry about Woz.
Most Silicon Graphics systems are indeed built with military-grade strength and quality, especially the big old black Onyx beast and other Challenge L and XL machines from that era.
But iron like that is old. Really, really Old. The host system architecture dates back to 1993 and the original InfiniteReality 1 graphics date back to about 1995. In those days a wicked cool PC had, at best, a 166 MHz Pentium and a 8 MB Matrox PCI card. Most people were still using Windows 3.1 in VGA resolution on their 486's in 1995.
Times have changed. SGI is a has-been. Cray beats them on raw CPU and bandwidth performance (the version of UNICOS that runs on the Cray X1 is actually based on SGI's IRIX 6.5). SGI's graphics these days are just a bunch of ATI FireGL AGP cards.
For most people, a dual or quad opteron with a pair of PCI-E graphics cards (driving 2 monitors each for 4 monitors total) is plenty of power. You can even use SGI's wonderful OpenGL Perfomer software on Linux or Windows to ease the development pains of your multi-CPU, multi-headed graphics applications.
If you need a *single system* with 16 or more CPUs and a dozen or so graphics cards, then you may be a good candidate for one of SGI's Itanium2/FireGL powered Prisim monsters. Just don't expect it to be any more stable than a PC.
Am I the only one who thinks NASA / JPL needs to outsource the next rovers to a Monster Garage* build team?
*Monster Garage is a reality show on The Discovery Channel in which a team of professional and hobbyist mechanics build a vehicle related contraption in 5 days.
You're not a geek until you have at least a few items from this checklist:
FDDI used in home LAN Cabletron brand network gear Extreme Networks brand gear Rackmount Cisco network gear Utilizing a server that's at least 10 years old 4+ kVA UPS
No mention of it in the release notes, I wonder if USB finally works properly on the VIA CLE266 / VT8235 chipset. That's the only thing that keeps me on Linux.
Can I sell you my socket 7 board? How about my slot 1 440BX board?
Seriously, though...
Check Intel's website, they generally have the most bare bones motherboards on the market. Shuttle also has some pretty simple boards if you're going the AMD K7 or K8 route. If you want anything more basic than that, or more oldschool, check out ebay. It's very easy to make a decent midrange PC for less than $100 in parts bought via eBay.
If you want wizbang modern, you only have to spend about $300 at NewEgg. These days the most expensive part of a PC is the OEM version of Windows XP.
Ugh. Firefox is already too bloated. More features are the last thing we need. How about working on the CPU and memory usage? (Yes I realize those are Gecko issues, but with Mozilla Suite basiclly dead...)
Or you can setup ff in kiosk mode and closing the browser clears it all autmatically. How do you set FF into kiosk mode? Everything I've read about that is horribly out of date. I would like to know more about modern kiosk modes, would make my life much easier!
Does anyone know if any of the bits of the Silicon Graphics accelerating apache project were ever rolled into Apache 1.3.x or 2.x? http://aap.sourceforge.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. You are the sysadmin, not a digital janitor. OK, so even if you can do all of this maintenance work from home via Remote Desktop on a Sunday afternoon -- do you really want to? Is this in your job description? As you pointed out, you still have do do the monkey clicks. Even if you script everything, you'll still need to do basic functional tests after the smoke has cleared.
I know of at least one shop in town that has hired weekend help (usually honest and lonely college students) to maintain their end-user Windows PCs. At the end of the year the monkey salary still adds up so little that it's still cheaper than moving to a new platform (Linux, Mac OS X).
I'm willing to bet it's in Flash because he did the presentation in Keynote.
Too bad he didn't export it to PDF. Keynote 2 (the version that ships in iWork 05) has an excellent PDF exporter.
kernel's secret recipie
You don't need 11 herbs and spices, that's for sure. "Seasoned Oven Fried Chicken" spiced with cheap McCormick Season-All Seasoned Salt from your local grocery store will give you almost the same flavor. As an added bonus, you can control exactly how much or how little grease you want! Take that, KFC!
I call BS until someone posts a photo of this wallhanging. Seriously. If it's really that cool, someone would have taken a snapshot with their cameraphone by now.
It's not like Steve Jobs invented the iPod or the MP3 player concept himself anyway. The Diamond Rio was one of the originals and AFAIK, Apple outsourced the iPod development to a freelance EE.
I did say "...that are worth buying..."
Worthiness is relative. Ten years ago I spent a small fortune on games with no regrets. That was money well spent to me, very worthwhile, I loved most new games and I loved the variety. Today I have a very different gaming tastes and won't spend more than $10 on any game, it's just not worth it to me in my present state.
I know many people who will spend $50 - $60 on brand new games. I also know many people who refuse to spend that much and will instead wait until those same games are on the $10 - $20 bargain rack.
Companies that publish (and sell) Mac games:
Additional Mac Game Resources:
Firefox is simply fastest on Windows, period.
5 17
HOWEVER... the latest nightly builds (from the development branch that will eventually become Firefox 1.1) are much faster than the official 1.0.4 you are probably currently using. Also, if you have a newer G4 (PowerPC 744x/745x series... 1GHz or better "G4+") or a G5 you can grab an optimized build for even more performance.
Grab the G4 version here:
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
Grab the G5 version here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=256
As of this posting, the newest version for each is the 20050704 (July 4, 2005) build. I am posting this from the July 3 G4 version, it zooms compared to Safari here on OS X 10.4.1.
i don't understand why every slashdot post has to make a mountain out of a molehill.
I was *very* amazed (and pleased!) that he didn't get jail time. Maybe if this had happened in the USA he could have ended up sitting in prison for a few years. Sounds like he got off a little easy, but maybe in this case the punishment finally fit the crime a little better.
I'm personally calling BS on this whole story until proven otherwise. I hope Snopes.com and the other hoax websites check it out soon. Just because a few websites have these images doesn't make it true.
I don't think Union Pacific builds their own equipment anymore. But maybe General Electric or Electro-Motive / GM EMD could provide build the ship.
Hmm, I can't seem to find the "Add To Shopping Cart" button on either of those websites. Internet shopping revolution my foot!
I know I don't trust Apple and don't buy their geer, no matter how nice people tell me it is. Maybe I am not a big dent in Job's bank account but don't forget they went from a market leadership position in PCs to what, less than 3% today?
The late 1970s home computer user could choose from either a an S-100 based system or an Apple II. The Apple was far more humane and sold very well for its time.
Every since the introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s, Apple has offered too little for too much. Sort of like BMW or Mercedes. You pay a huge price premium in return for minimal perks and often times, added restrictions. I could have paid more money for a BMW, but then I would be limited to just one dealership / shop in town. If I need parts for my Honda, there are three places I can go. If I need parts for my Chevy, there are about six places I can go.
Frankly, I don't trust ***ANY*** business.
I do have a PowerBook, I bought it two years ago when Apple first started shipping the 15" Aluminum PowerBook G4. It had an excellent performance/features to price ratio at the time and I'm very happy with it. Just about every other computer I have is a cheap PC running a free OS. I don't trust any company to treat me right, support me, or even be in business tomorrow. I'm careful, but not paranoid.Apple doesn't scare me, neither does Abit or Asus, but none of those make me feel warm and fuzzy either.
Apple sold 876,000 computers in Q3 2004 alone, which is about 3 times as many Macintoshes as they sold in *all* of 1988, when their market share was around 10%.
Apples to Oranges.
In 1988 most people didn't even know what a computer was. Today there are more computers in the average office than there are humans.
He cheated his friend and partner Steve Wozniak out of money before the early days of Apple.
This is true. Woz later said he actually wept when he learned that Jobs had cheated him out of a few hundred bucks on that Atari project you mentioned.
But...
And when Wozniak set up his own company in 1986, Jobs threatened Wozniak's suppliers against doing business with Wozniak.
I call bullshit on this one. I really don't think Jobs felt threatened by CL9, Woz's unversal remote control company (which, BTW, made a dual CPU, fully programmable remote that AV geeks drooled over for more than a decade).
In 1986 Jobs was too busy working on NeXT and Pixar to worry about Woz.
Do you have a link to an image of the old logo?
Most Silicon Graphics systems are indeed built with military-grade strength and quality, especially the big old black Onyx beast and other Challenge L and XL machines from that era.
But iron like that is old. Really, really Old. The host system architecture dates back to 1993 and the original InfiniteReality 1 graphics date back to about 1995. In those days a wicked cool PC had, at best, a 166 MHz Pentium and a 8 MB Matrox PCI card. Most people were still using Windows 3.1 in VGA resolution on their 486's in 1995.
Times have changed. SGI is a has-been. Cray beats them on raw CPU and bandwidth performance (the version of UNICOS that runs on the Cray X1 is actually based on SGI's IRIX 6.5). SGI's graphics these days are just a bunch of ATI FireGL AGP cards.
For most people, a dual or quad opteron with a pair of PCI-E graphics cards (driving 2 monitors each for 4 monitors total) is plenty of power. You can even use SGI's wonderful OpenGL Perfomer software on Linux or Windows to ease the development pains of your multi-CPU, multi-headed graphics applications.
If you need a *single system* with 16 or more CPUs and a dozen or so graphics cards, then you may be a good candidate for one of SGI's Itanium2/FireGL powered Prisim monsters. Just don't expect it to be any more stable than a PC.
Just do like Homer and drive off with the clamp/boot still attached to the tire.
Am I the only one who thinks NASA / JPL needs to outsource the next rovers to a Monster Garage* build team?
*Monster Garage is a reality show on The Discovery Channel in which a team of professional and hobbyist mechanics build a vehicle related contraption in 5 days.
[FDDI, CDDI, ATM...]
What's my score?
Forget the score, you win!
You're not a geek until you have at least a few items from this checklist:
FDDI used in home LAN
Cabletron brand network gear
Extreme Networks brand gear
Rackmount Cisco network gear
Utilizing a server that's at least 10 years old
4+ kVA UPS
No mention of it in the release notes, I wonder if USB finally works properly on the VIA CLE266 / VT8235 chipset. That's the only thing that keeps me on Linux.
Sweet. Thanks!
Can I sell you my socket 7 board? How about my slot 1 440BX board?
Seriously, though...
Check Intel's website, they generally have the most bare bones motherboards on the market. Shuttle also has some pretty simple boards if you're going the AMD K7 or K8 route. If you want anything more basic than that, or more oldschool, check out ebay. It's very easy to make a decent midrange PC for less than $100 in parts bought via eBay.
If you want wizbang modern, you only have to spend about $300 at NewEgg. These days the most expensive part of a PC is the OEM version of Windows XP.
Ugh. Firefox is already too bloated. More features are the last thing we need. How about working on the CPU and memory usage? (Yes I realize those are Gecko issues, but with Mozilla Suite basiclly dead...)
Or you can setup ff in kiosk mode and closing the browser clears it all autmatically.
How do you set FF into kiosk mode? Everything I've read about that is horribly out of date. I would like to know more about modern kiosk modes, would make my life much easier!
Replying to my own post, sad...
Does anyone know if any of the bits of the Silicon Graphics accelerating apache project were ever rolled into Apache 1.3.x or 2.x?
http://aap.sourceforge.net/