On top of that, I thought that the Guitarist in the coffee shop and the band touring in a beat-up van were looking for gigs and exposure, in order to get a record label. So tell me, how have P2P users obtained the god-like powers of reaching those who don't even have a record label yet and have yet to be raped by the contract lawyers of the RIAA members.
While the Lynx was awesome and before its time, it's not really a good comparison. You have to remember people don't use the iPaq as a game console... not yet. So for right now, people use them to store offline web pages, e-mails, addresses, notes, media files, etc. which leaves little room for something like the 5 or 9 megs you speak of. The reason the Gameboy and Lynx aren't good examples is becuase of their 2d-ness.
Man I miss my Lynx though... didn't it use 8 AA's?
Keep in Mind that the iPaq only uses the 'Q' button for closing apps, so 32M/206Mhz is pretty much the peak.
Also, keep in mind many 3D games use far more- not memory- but disk space: the real premium on the iPaqs.
Rose: What's the best and worst
thing you can say about Windows?
Rose: I didn't ask you to bash
'em.
Torvalds: Well, you did ask me
to say something bad about them.
That is great. It shows someone who not only understands himself, but
he understands the world around him. He's not drawn into petty bickering,
and he is obviously not so filled with hate or angst. It's quite obvious
he wants to make a good product, but also doesn't seem to be swept up in
material gain above what he may or may not have. I remember when I first
started using Linux and was introduced to ipfw in Redhat 5.something. I
was truly shown something technically refreshing. While I encourage
desktop GUI pursuits, many a Linux contributor seems to be caught up in widgets
and not solving real problems or addressing new ideas. I don't mean that
GUI's is every contributor's focus, but it seems to be the main thrust.
Linux will be truly successful if it can go places *before* Microsoft can,
and do them better than Microsoft can. It wouldn't help to have a couple
Rockefellers to help out the cause.
Heh. Welcome to Slashdot. It's always been like this
and always will be.
Fuckin' A. This is exactly the kind of two-line, inflammatory bullshit
I was originally talking about, but much more open and crass than some of
the ones I was talking about with Malda. Just like Raistline said, quit
polarizing and posting immature crap- I didn't ask for 'news
sites pretending to be objective' , I asked for
editors to stop putting stupid shit in with the stories.
I seriously think at this point this may be the last time I read Slashdot for
quite a while... I graduated from High School years ago, and for some
reason I can't stop being reminded of the elitist assholes that ran the
yearbook- you guys think for some reason you have a handle on things- enjoy
posting for the non-profitable audience.
As much as I'd like to chime in and criticize Malda for his 'hypocrisy' as
you call it, there are some real points that prevent me from doing so. For
one, I can't agree on the statement that he hasn't contributed anything.
Perens is a great coder, possibly one of the best of all time and definitely one
for the history books- but just like a Project Manager of consultants keeps a
bunch of antisocial engineers from killing the customer, Malda has contributed
some great ideas that will have a lasting effect, even if it's not in the
incarnation we know as Slashdot.
Malda has mentioned in Geeks in Space (on of the last cool efforts by the
team) that he ran Win98 for games. I'd love to believe he's run and worked
with 2000, but I highly doubt it. XP even less so. Read the posts in
this article and you can quickly see who is now running XP and 2000 and who
isn't. And for those people who always bitch about 2000 crashing, I have
to know: how is it very real Corporations run 2000 day in and day out, for over
a year with no blue-screens? I dunno- seems to be the users.
I don't pretend to be a buddy of Rob's or even someone he would be able to
pick out of a group of 2 people- so I don't know if he really does masquerade as
other users and make troll comments as inside jokes. Big fucking deal. The
original point was not to personally attack him but to suggest he choose whether
to run a 'news' site or to play one big game we all know as Slashdot.
He'll at some point (a point that may have already come and gone) have to choose
whether he will cater to those who pay the bills- people who buy products from
advertisers and help keep Slashdot current, or to fart it all away and play some
big High School game to fight whatever demons he may have.
<rant>
Taco doesn't troll the way he does because he's one
of the linux elite.
Let me say this about the 'Linux Elite'. Big Fucking Deal. The
'Hacker Elite' can wave the threat of crashing my ISP, screwing with my
PC's, etc. etc. but what can the Linux Elite do? Not charge for obscure
software? Please. You're scaring me.
</rant>
There seems to be a lot of pent up rage on this subject, and I want to make
it clear that personal attacks are not in order, but professional criticisms
are.
But -- it has been getting consistently better, and is now much
better than it was six months or a year ago.
Jamie,
Thanks for the post, and your valiant defense of Slashdot. But that's
not the entire issue. My original post was to say that I think CmdrTaco is
starting to Flamebait with these articles. I am glad this has been a
largely-unnoticed thread so we can communicate with clarity, but the issue isn't
just the readership, but the articles and the moderation design. Here are
a couple of my own personal suggestions:
Go back to Private moderation, and publish who does the moderation -- This
works well because the people modding up/down can be held just as accountable
in the public forum as the original poster. Right now it's favored way
too much toward the moderator, and not the poster. Slashdot should be in the
business of promoting discussions that are intelligent, even if they have a
troll once and a while
Only allow people with accounts to be AC's-- This may seem futile at
first, but it significantly reduces the number of stupid posts.
Consider adopting a feedback system like
Ebay's System
-- Where someone who get's modded up or down can respond once for each post to
the person modding them up or down.
Ask us not to have faith in the Site, but in the people posting the
articles. The type of articles attract certain kinds of readers- great,
but my orginal comment was that the editor's comments have been increasingly
inflammatory.
Stick around. If it bugs you too much to read now, come back in another
six months and start reading again; I bet you'll like what you find.
We're all low-numbered users here, and I doubt we're going anywhere.
The reason this hasn't been modded down as bait or trolling is because our
desire to see Slashdot better despite some very real issues has been obvious.
How many posts actually make a point and back it up
with evidence? How many of these Linux rulez posts are by people who have never
written a line of code in their life?
This is a great point that I can prove with my own posting history. I
have a Windows background but was exposed to Linux and then Slashdot my CNet's
old News Radio, which has dissolved into blather. But the point is that
for a good year or so I did nothing but read posts, with the occasional
exception of a 'me too' post. I remember reading the better posts and I
remember being frustrated by the interface offered when meta-moderation was
installed. I am a Systems Engineer first, Developer second, and until the
past year I never had a reason or need to post on Slashdot. But with
stories by Jon Katz (his stories and mostly movie reviews have driven me to the
brink of insanity) being the norm, I simply filter his stories out to make my
Slashdot experience that much more pleasant. Don't get me wrong, the
features and overall content of Slashdot is quite nice, but the size and
readership/discovery of Slashdot is what has driven it downhill.
<rant>
It's alot like a neighborhood- you can go from living on a great treat where
everyone has block parties, they visit neighbors, etc, to one where people have
furniture and appliances on the front yard with dying grass and the long-dead
pickup truck hosting vermin underneath- which simply makes the neighborhood suck
and all the cool, nice people leave. Slashdot's own readership has driven
away alot of the cooler and more technically interesting readers/posters, and I
just wanted to comment that Malda himself is well on his way to alienating
people himself sans the help of the trolls and karma whores.
</rant>
Now you've got Malda carrying on like an angry
refugee needing a great deal of therapy.
I'd like nothing better than to see Malda drop in and post here, but I doubt
he reads anything below a +5 at this point. What would you do if
you stopped reading your own news site? I'd start another one and do alot
less advertising. I'd love to have to pay with Credit Card Only for a
Slashdot clone- it would help eliminate the crap that kids are willing to post
on free sites. I posted crap in Newsgroups when I was younger, and when I
did I was ridiculed beyond belief. I miss the old days.
I honestly have to wonder how many more of these stories Rob is going to
continue submitting on this same line of articles. We have seen over the last
year or so a steady increase in these kinds of articles by standard Slashdot
Editors, and I have read a strong increase in
support for Microsoft on
Slashdot, strangely enough. I don't mean to imply that all or even most of
Slashdot's readership is MS-biased, but I think Malda is letting his own bias
show. Most Engineers who get frustrated with a particluar release of any
software package vent by the water cooler, but I think Malda is venting via the
articles he chooses, which shows a poor display of bias.
Whether or not this post is modded up, I hope CmdrTaco takes notice that
while he has founded and continues to heavily influence one of the best
Tech-News Sites ever made, he needs to keep some kind of restraint. I'm
not defending MS, but rather trying to promote the idea that you don't sit
around all day and bash something you don't even use. I could understand
if Malda was teased all day for running Linux in a Windows Shop, but I would
guess that it's typically the other way around. When was the last time you
even saw XP in person, Taco? or 2000? I don't post criticisms about the
drivability of Ferarris and Saabs, or even Peugots- why? Because I have contact
with them, and I don't consider myself to be anywhere near an authority on them.
Maybe this kind of consideration should be taken to newer windows products with
some of the Slashdot editors.
Sorry to say, but that comment's not worth that much... SGI products
have historically gone for far more money than even the above-average computer
buyer can afford. That's like responding to an article where someone is
selling a space vehivle capable of trips to the moon and saying "FWIW,
NASA has had this technology for years now." But before
moderators mod this down as a troll, at least mod the parent thread as
off-topic, as SGI has never really even come close to marketing their hardware
at end-users.
The offerings of XP Pro (Home is for non-tech people who will never join a domain, etc) are scattered and may or may not justify the upgrade.
There are some cool features, such as:
1.) They have a display technology for laptops that helps improve LCD quality
2.) STA (Spanning Tree Architecture) that lets you use your pc as a bridge (Ethernet to Wireless for example), but beware- it causes Cisco switches without a 2 year old patch to hang- I think one of the first XP Stories here on/. covered this (it was a MS beta tester at Xerox)
3.) Mild speed improvements
4.) MY personal favorite- you can terminal service into your dektop and get redirected drives, printers, etc. You can only connect with other windows clients using the Terminal Service client, but this feature just plain rocks.
Win2k is really quite nice; XP Pro is mildly better. Readers of Slashdot who use Windows will probably want to steer clear of Home Edition.
Please do some fact checking before ranting on such topics. The whole isse with Java did not arise directly from the presence of MS'.NET platform, but from a lost legal battle with Sun. Microsoft was ruled to have to pay Sun for every copy of the Java VM that *shipped* with an OS, and dowloading was not included as a form in which MS had to pay. So MS did what many businesses bitter from a court loss would do- exlude it rather than distribute it for Sun. Now when you use an XP Machine a go to a java page, guess what it does? It downloads the required applet/control and displays the page just like the other versions of the OS/IE. It only has to download the VM once per machine, and after that it has Java support.
It seems to me you are likely complaining on other message boards about the conspiracy between Intel and MS and the increased hardware requirements of Windows 95 or Windows 3.1.
I don't want Nader making my business decisions for me, and that's what you seem to be asking him to do. Go ahead and ask, but please don't ask the Justice Department on my behalf. I can pick and choose Operating Systems just fine, thank you.
This may not be modded up high enough for the +4 folks to see it, but I have to say that the people posting at +4 and above have some really great comments.
It's nice to see Slashdot as a technical community, not just a Linux one. I know, I know, *nix is the preferred OS of many of the readers/posters, but it's nice to see such an array of comments and extremely constructive ideas and comments. Nice Comments, all.
One thing to be wary of when inter-operating OS X 10.x with Windows machines
is the Mac approach to links/shortcuts. When you make a shortcut in
Windows, it's a bit like a soft link in Unix- it's only a pointer.
When you copy a shortcut in Windows, you don't do anything with the target.exe
or whatnot.
When doing backups of OS 10.x laptops from an NT-based backup system, I found
that OS 10.x was sending the remote client (the backup agent) into a filesystem
loop. I had the user's home directory shared and the Agent backed up files
similar to \\computer\share\Library\Documents\Library\Documen ts\....
Which made for a drawn-out backup of a 300 Meg set of folders.
On a personal scale, this is easy to remember, but IIRC Apple has been
preaching about how good
of a network citizen OSX is. Quoting their site,
"We've also added support to natively connect to Windows NT,
Windows 2000 and Unix-based SAMBA file servers with the built-in SMB client.
These servers appear right in the Finder like any other file server. This makes
Mac OS X fluent in all of today's network languages."
I'm not flaming Apple, but it seems that when it comes to interoperability
between OS's, Apple could learn a lesson or two from the Unix side of the
market.
On a side not, was anyone else annoyed with the way Apple promised OS 10.1 is
September, announced it on the 23rd, then waited until the last possible day of
the month to actually ship it? I can't find the Register article stating
it, but an Apple rep was quoted as saying something to the effect of "we
promised September as a release date, and we are still technically on-target for
that".
I can affirm as much as any stranger that Malda has legitimate copies. I remember back in 1997 (maybe 1998) when he mentioned in a story that he was working on a project for quickly naming mp3's before the whole CDDB thing was big. He mentioned in an e-mail he sent me on the side that said he had a large collection.
Besides that, some of us really do want normail cd's to rip for fair use, and aren't just giving it lip service to keep a free supply of mp3's coming. I for one have a couple thousand mp3's and they've never seen the light of napster.
First off, let me praise Apple for getting much, much better about their
hardware pricing and getting more competitive. The lower end iBook
delivers a decent package for something like $1299 US. There are some
serious challenges that face Apple, and most of it comes from not licensing
their hardware platform. That argument has been rehashed a million times
but here are some ways that has hurt them with the iBook.
Between Sony, Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, HP, and the other smaller laptop
vendors out there, there really is a Laptop for everyone- you just have to do
a lot of research.
Conversely, Apple only really has two models with only slight variations
to deliver 6 different levels of laptops. The cheapest is right now
$1299 I think, with the more expensive being close to $3300.
Laptops are a great revenue source because the manufacturers can re-use
parts like memory, drives, displays and the like and have far less or no
competition from generics. Also, some manufacturers have built names
like value and reliability based on their previous models, helping to justify
higher (profits) consumer prices.
Apple can't really compete with all these other PC vendors unless they hit
just the right spot in what consumers are looking for in a laptop.
PC Laptop makers use more of a 'shotgun effect' to get all of them.
I went shopping about a month ago and found the iBooks. I was pleased
with built-in Airport abilities, along with dual USB and fire wire built in.
I was attracted by the initial $1299 laptop, and started looking at the nicer
models. I ended up getting the DVD/CDRW combo and grabbing the Airport
Card and 256M or RAM. The problem came in that the laptop just didn't
perform that well. Everyone I talked to about it said the Titanium's were
better CPU performers, but had problems wit Airport cards, etc. OSX and
the fiasco surrounding the upgrade path to OSX 10.1 left me quite frustrated.
Jobs said 10.1 would be out in September 2001, and announced the final release
date on or around the 23rd and held the retailers from releasing it until the
29th. Somewhere he seemed to forget how eager everyone was, and when
criticized about the release date he basically said "the 29th is still
September".
To cut this babble short, Apple seems to have sacrificed some serious quality
issues with OSX's performance on current hardware. As much as the Slashdot
readership might not like it, maybe Apple could learn from Microsoft, whose
current releases have worked great on current hardware since Windows 3.1.
In other words, Apple sold me a laptop that crawled with the OS they released.
I was so disappointed I sold the iBook on EBay for $50 less that I paid for all
the parts and bought a 700Mhz Dell with 256Mhz of RAM, a 20 Gig drive, and a 32
Meg GeForce 2 video card and DVD Rom drive (a refurbished laptop) for $300
less than the iBook.
Apple has good products, but they need to focus more on business that on
aesthetics.
Can we set up a mailing list of some kind to know when Slashdot is done bashing microsoft? Either way you look at it, it's getting fscking old.
Besides the fact that XP in this article could have been the Home Edition, and could be heavily influenced by a number of factors- wow. Pipes.
Does it take a rocket scientist to realize that this is probably the last factor that goes through people's heads when purchasing an OS/Platform?
Maybe the motto for Linux should be 'Fastest Pipes in the business' oh wait- successfull business don't use linux. They use BSDI. Or Solaris. Or Windows.
Don't worry- it's not really karma whoring if the OSX users have already ready that link a million times. The reason they didn't link to it probably has something to do with the fact that the Apple page has never given a specific release date.
I was just thinking about this on the way in to work this morning... Clearchannel owns 91x (quasi-alternative/pop), 95.7 (80's and 90's) and (one of those damned) star 100.7 (pop). Unless you live in San Diego, you probably wouldn't know that these three stations make up for at least 50-60 percent of the radio market in town.
I won't pretend to try to cover or re-review anything said above, but this is an interesting article for Slashdot to carry; we normally would see these things on kuro5hin. I hope you guys can continue to find good reviews/posts of this nature.
Slashdot Mirror
On top of that, I thought that the Guitarist in the coffee shop and the band touring in a beat-up van were looking for gigs and exposure, in order to get a record label. So tell me, how have P2P users obtained the god-like powers of reaching those who don't even have a record label yet and have yet to be raped by the contract lawyers of the RIAA members.
While the Lynx was awesome and before its time, it's not really a good comparison. You have to remember people don't use the iPaq as a game console... not yet. So for right now, people use them to store offline web pages, e-mails, addresses, notes, media files, etc. which leaves little room for something like the 5 or 9 megs you speak of. The reason the Gameboy and Lynx aren't good examples is becuase of their 2d-ness.
Man I miss my Lynx though... didn't it use 8 AA's?
Keep in Mind that the iPaq only uses the 'Q' button for closing apps, so 32M/206Mhz is pretty much the peak. Also, keep in mind many 3D games use far more- not memory- but disk space: the real premium on the iPaqs.
Very nice article.
Rose: What's the best and worst thing you can say about Windows?
Rose: I didn't ask you to bash 'em.
Torvalds: Well, you did ask me to say something bad about them.
That is great. It shows someone who not only understands himself, but he understands the world around him. He's not drawn into petty bickering, and he is obviously not so filled with hate or angst. It's quite obvious he wants to make a good product, but also doesn't seem to be swept up in material gain above what he may or may not have. I remember when I first started using Linux and was introduced to ipfw in Redhat 5.something. I was truly shown something technically refreshing. While I encourage desktop GUI pursuits, many a Linux contributor seems to be caught up in widgets and not solving real problems or addressing new ideas. I don't mean that GUI's is every contributor's focus, but it seems to be the main thrust.
Linux will be truly successful if it can go places *before* Microsoft can, and do them better than Microsoft can. It wouldn't help to have a couple Rockefellers to help out the cause.
Can you do the movie reviews from now on?
Heh. Welcome to Slashdot. It's always been like this and always will be.
Fuckin' A. This is exactly the kind of two-line, inflammatory bullshit I was originally talking about, but much more open and crass than some of the ones I was talking about with Malda. Just like Raistline said, quit polarizing and posting immature crap- I didn't ask for 'news sites pretending to be objective' , I asked for editors to stop putting stupid shit in with the stories.
I seriously think at this point this may be the last time I read Slashdot for quite a while... I graduated from High School years ago, and for some reason I can't stop being reminded of the elitist assholes that ran the yearbook- you guys think for some reason you have a handle on things- enjoy posting for the non-profitable audience.
Rock on. Well said.
As much as I'd like to chime in and criticize Malda for his 'hypocrisy' as you call it, there are some real points that prevent me from doing so. For one, I can't agree on the statement that he hasn't contributed anything. Perens is a great coder, possibly one of the best of all time and definitely one for the history books- but just like a Project Manager of consultants keeps a bunch of antisocial engineers from killing the customer, Malda has contributed some great ideas that will have a lasting effect, even if it's not in the incarnation we know as Slashdot.
Malda has mentioned in Geeks in Space (on of the last cool efforts by the team) that he ran Win98 for games. I'd love to believe he's run and worked with 2000, but I highly doubt it. XP even less so. Read the posts in this article and you can quickly see who is now running XP and 2000 and who isn't. And for those people who always bitch about 2000 crashing, I have to know: how is it very real Corporations run 2000 day in and day out, for over a year with no blue-screens? I dunno- seems to be the users.
I don't pretend to be a buddy of Rob's or even someone he would be able to pick out of a group of 2 people- so I don't know if he really does masquerade as other users and make troll comments as inside jokes. Big fucking deal. The original point was not to personally attack him but to suggest he choose whether to run a 'news' site or to play one big game we all know as Slashdot. He'll at some point (a point that may have already come and gone) have to choose whether he will cater to those who pay the bills- people who buy products from advertisers and help keep Slashdot current, or to fart it all away and play some big High School game to fight whatever demons he may have.
<rant>
Taco doesn't troll the way he does because he's one of the linux elite.
Let me say this about the 'Linux Elite'. Big Fucking Deal. The 'Hacker Elite' can wave the threat of crashing my ISP, screwing with my PC's, etc. etc. but what can the Linux Elite do? Not charge for obscure software? Please. You're scaring me.
</rant>
There seems to be a lot of pent up rage on this subject, and I want to make it clear that personal attacks are not in order, but professional criticisms are.
But -- it has been getting consistently better, and is now much better than it was six months or a year ago.
Jamie,
Thanks for the post, and your valiant defense of Slashdot. But that's not the entire issue. My original post was to say that I think CmdrTaco is starting to Flamebait with these articles. I am glad this has been a largely-unnoticed thread so we can communicate with clarity, but the issue isn't just the readership, but the articles and the moderation design. Here are a couple of my own personal suggestions:
Stick around. If it bugs you too much to read now, come back in another six months and start reading again; I bet you'll like what you find.
We're all low-numbered users here, and I doubt we're going anywhere. The reason this hasn't been modded down as bait or trolling is because our desire to see Slashdot better despite some very real issues has been obvious.
How many posts actually make a point and back it up with evidence? How many of these Linux rulez posts are by people who have never written a line of code in their life?
This is a great point that I can prove with my own posting history. I have a Windows background but was exposed to Linux and then Slashdot my CNet's old News Radio, which has dissolved into blather. But the point is that for a good year or so I did nothing but read posts, with the occasional exception of a 'me too' post. I remember reading the better posts and I remember being frustrated by the interface offered when meta-moderation was installed. I am a Systems Engineer first, Developer second, and until the past year I never had a reason or need to post on Slashdot. But with stories by Jon Katz (his stories and mostly movie reviews have driven me to the brink of insanity) being the norm, I simply filter his stories out to make my Slashdot experience that much more pleasant. Don't get me wrong, the features and overall content of Slashdot is quite nice, but the size and readership/discovery of Slashdot is what has driven it downhill.
<rant>
It's alot like a neighborhood- you can go from living on a great treat where everyone has block parties, they visit neighbors, etc, to one where people have furniture and appliances on the front yard with dying grass and the long-dead pickup truck hosting vermin underneath- which simply makes the neighborhood suck and all the cool, nice people leave. Slashdot's own readership has driven away alot of the cooler and more technically interesting readers/posters, and I just wanted to comment that Malda himself is well on his way to alienating people himself sans the help of the trolls and karma whores.
</rant>
Now you've got Malda carrying on like an angry refugee needing a great deal of therapy.
I'd like nothing better than to see Malda drop in and post here, but I doubt he reads anything below a +5 at this point. What would you do if you stopped reading your own news site? I'd start another one and do alot less advertising. I'd love to have to pay with Credit Card Only for a Slashdot clone- it would help eliminate the crap that kids are willing to post on free sites. I posted crap in Newsgroups when I was younger, and when I did I was ridiculed beyond belief. I miss the old days.
I honestly have to wonder how many more of these stories Rob is going to continue submitting on this same line of articles. We have seen over the last year or so a steady increase in these kinds of articles by standard Slashdot Editors, and I have read a strong increase in support for Microsoft on Slashdot, strangely enough. I don't mean to imply that all or even most of Slashdot's readership is MS-biased, but I think Malda is letting his own bias show. Most Engineers who get frustrated with a particluar release of any software package vent by the water cooler, but I think Malda is venting via the articles he chooses, which shows a poor display of bias.
XP Launch
MS FrontPage
MS Loses Delay Appeal
Whether or not this post is modded up, I hope CmdrTaco takes notice that while he has founded and continues to heavily influence one of the best Tech-News Sites ever made, he needs to keep some kind of restraint. I'm not defending MS, but rather trying to promote the idea that you don't sit around all day and bash something you don't even use. I could understand if Malda was teased all day for running Linux in a Windows Shop, but I would guess that it's typically the other way around. When was the last time you even saw XP in person, Taco? or 2000? I don't post criticisms about the drivability of Ferarris and Saabs, or even Peugots- why? Because I have contact with them, and I don't consider myself to be anywhere near an authority on them. Maybe this kind of consideration should be taken to newer windows products with some of the Slashdot editors.
Sorry to say, but that comment's not worth that much... SGI products have historically gone for far more money than even the above-average computer buyer can afford. That's like responding to an article where someone is selling a space vehivle capable of trips to the moon and saying "FWIW, NASA has had this technology for years now." But before moderators mod this down as a troll, at least mod the parent thread as off-topic, as SGI has never really even come close to marketing their hardware at end-users.
The offerings of XP Pro (Home is for non-tech people who will never join a domain, etc) are scattered and may or may not justify the upgrade.
/. covered this (it was a MS beta tester at Xerox)
There are some cool features, such as:
1.) They have a display technology for laptops that helps improve LCD quality
2.) STA (Spanning Tree Architecture) that lets you use your pc as a bridge (Ethernet to Wireless for example), but beware- it causes Cisco switches without a 2 year old patch to hang- I think one of the first XP Stories here on
3.) Mild speed improvements
4.) MY personal favorite- you can terminal service into your dektop and get redirected drives, printers, etc. You can only connect with other windows clients using the Terminal Service client, but this feature just plain rocks.
Win2k is really quite nice; XP Pro is mildly better. Readers of Slashdot who use Windows will probably want to steer clear of Home Edition.
Please do some fact checking before ranting on such topics. The whole isse with Java did not arise directly from the presence of MS' .NET platform, but from a lost legal battle with Sun. Microsoft was ruled to have to pay Sun for every copy of the Java VM that *shipped* with an OS, and dowloading was not included as a form in which MS had to pay. So MS did what many businesses bitter from a court loss would do- exlude it rather than distribute it for Sun. Now when you use an XP Machine a go to a java page, guess what it does? It downloads the required applet/control and displays the page just like the other versions of the OS/IE. It only has to download the VM once per machine, and after that it has Java support.
It seems to me you are likely complaining on other message boards about the conspiracy between Intel and MS and the increased hardware requirements of Windows 95 or Windows 3.1.
I don't want Nader making my business decisions for me, and that's what you seem to be asking him to do. Go ahead and ask, but please don't ask the Justice Department on my behalf. I can pick and choose Operating Systems just fine, thank you.
This may not be modded up high enough for the +4 folks to see it, but I have to say that the people posting at +4 and above have some really great comments.
It's nice to see Slashdot as a technical community, not just a Linux one. I know, I know, *nix is the preferred OS of many of the readers/posters, but it's nice to see such an array of comments and extremely constructive ideas and comments. Nice Comments, all.
One thing to be wary of when inter-operating OS X 10.x with Windows machines is the Mac approach to links/shortcuts. When you make a shortcut in Windows, it's a bit like a soft link in Unix- it's only a pointer. When you copy a shortcut in Windows, you don't do anything with the target .exe
or whatnot.
When doing backups of OS 10.x laptops from an NT-based backup system, I found that OS 10.x was sending the remote client (the backup agent) into a filesystem loop. I had the user's home directory shared and the Agent backed up files similar to \\computer\share\Library\Documents\Library\Documen ts\....
Which made for a drawn-out backup of a 300 Meg set of folders.
On a personal scale, this is easy to remember, but IIRC Apple has been preaching about how good of a network citizen OSX is. Quoting their site,
"We've also added support to natively connect to Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Unix-based SAMBA file servers with the built-in SMB client. These servers appear right in the Finder like any other file server. This makes Mac OS X fluent in all of today's network languages."
I'm not flaming Apple, but it seems that when it comes to interoperability between OS's, Apple could learn a lesson or two from the Unix side of the market.
On a side not, was anyone else annoyed with the way Apple promised OS 10.1 is September, announced it on the 23rd, then waited until the last possible day of the month to actually ship it? I can't find the Register article stating it, but an Apple rep was quoted as saying something to the effect of "we promised September as a release date, and we are still technically on-target for that".
I can affirm as much as any stranger that Malda has legitimate copies. I remember back in 1997 (maybe 1998) when he mentioned in a story that he was working on a project for quickly naming mp3's before the whole CDDB thing was big. He mentioned in an e-mail he sent me on the side that said he had a large collection.
Besides that, some of us really do want normail cd's to rip for fair use, and aren't just giving it lip service to keep a free supply of mp3's coming. I for one have a couple thousand mp3's and they've never seen the light of napster.
Basically the 'cam' is something like a spinning disc that controls its spin on the different axises (sp?).
So in other words, if it hits a wall and starts to spin, the cam/disc will spin in the opposite direction to stop its rotation.
First off, let me praise Apple for getting much, much better about their
hardware pricing and getting more competitive. The lower end iBook
delivers a decent package for something like $1299 US. There are some
serious challenges that face Apple, and most of it comes from not licensing
their hardware platform. That argument has been rehashed a million times
but here are some ways that has hurt them with the iBook.
vendors out there, there really is a Laptop for everyone- you just have to do
a lot of research.
to deliver 6 different levels of laptops. The cheapest is right now
$1299 I think, with the more expensive being close to $3300.
parts like memory, drives, displays and the like and have far less or no
competition from generics. Also, some manufacturers have built names
like value and reliability based on their previous models, helping to justify
higher (profits) consumer prices.
just the right spot in what consumers are looking for in a laptop.
PC Laptop makers use more of a 'shotgun effect' to get all of them.
I went shopping about a month ago and found the iBooks. I was pleased
with built-in Airport abilities, along with dual USB and fire wire built in.
I was attracted by the initial $1299 laptop, and started looking at the nicer
models. I ended up getting the DVD/CDRW combo and grabbing the Airport
Card and 256M or RAM. The problem came in that the laptop just didn't
perform that well. Everyone I talked to about it said the Titanium's were
better CPU performers, but had problems wit Airport cards, etc. OSX and
the fiasco surrounding the upgrade path to OSX 10.1 left me quite frustrated.
Jobs said 10.1 would be out in September 2001, and announced the final release
date on or around the 23rd and held the retailers from releasing it until the
29th. Somewhere he seemed to forget how eager everyone was, and when
criticized about the release date he basically said "the 29th is still
September".
To cut this babble short, Apple seems to have sacrificed some serious quality
issues with OSX's performance on current hardware. As much as the Slashdot
readership might not like it, maybe Apple could learn from Microsoft, whose
current releases have worked great on current hardware since Windows 3.1.
In other words, Apple sold me a laptop that crawled with the OS they released.
I was so disappointed I sold the iBook on EBay for $50 less that I paid for all
the parts and bought a 700Mhz Dell with 256Mhz of RAM, a 20 Gig drive, and a 32
Meg GeForce 2 video card and DVD Rom drive (a refurbished laptop) for $300
less than the iBook.
Apple has good products, but they need to focus more on business that on
aesthetics.
I guess I am just as guilty as the author,
Point taken.
Honest, this isn't a flame:
Can we set up a mailing list of some kind to know when Slashdot is done bashing microsoft? Either way you look at it, it's getting fscking old.
Besides the fact that XP in this article could have been the Home Edition, and could be heavily influenced by a number of factors- wow. Pipes.
Does it take a rocket scientist to realize that this is probably the last factor that goes through people's heads when purchasing an OS/Platform?
Maybe the motto for Linux should be 'Fastest Pipes in the business' oh wait- successfull business don't use linux. They use BSDI. Or Solaris. Or Windows.
Given the current events out there, I find it doubtful this technology will succeed. Not only is this technology inherently dangerous, but you will not be allowed to travel on a plane with these devices, not be allowed to ship these devices, and not be allowed to even stow them in your luggage when you travel.
They're simply too easy to be altered/overheated for destructive purposes.
Don't worry- it's not really karma whoring if the OSX users have already ready that link a million times. The reason they didn't link to it probably has something to do with the fact that the Apple page has never given a specific release date.
I was just thinking about this on the way in to work this morning... Clearchannel owns 91x (quasi-alternative/pop), 95.7 (80's and 90's) and (one of those damned) star 100.7 (pop). Unless you live in San Diego, you probably wouldn't know that these three stations make up for at least 50-60 percent of the radio market in town.
Food for thought, I suppose.
I won't pretend to try to cover or re-review anything said above, but this is an interesting article for Slashdot to carry; we normally would see these things on kuro5hin. I hope you guys can continue to find good reviews/posts of this nature.