Big city hassles without all the big city culture.
I didn't find all that much hassle when I was there, and maybe I'm not very cultured, but what is missing?
yeah, the weather's nice, but not in the Summer.
That is a matter of opinion. I happen to like hot weather... And as far as humidity goes, I've been to central Florida in the summer, and its not much worse than where I live now.
Do you enjoy fire-ants?
Like they don't have bugs everywhere?
Termites?
We've got those aplenty where I live now. Couldn't be much worse.
Do you enjoy alligators?
In Orlando? Outside a petting zoo? Its not like we are talking southern Florida here. They may have a few gators around, but not huge quantities.
Do you enjoy very large cockroaches that hit you up for protection money?
Who does, but there are bugs just about everywhere, especially in warm climates. I saw some pretty huge roaches when I lived in San Francisco (I lived in a bad neighborhood).
Now, in Orlando, you don't have nearly the redneck problem you'd have in Hotlanta. And again, you have a huge gap in property values. Housing is VERY expensive in areas where there are decent schools (for your kids. remember them?),
I've priced housing in the Orlando area, and it is comparable to where I live now. As for schools, I have no kids, and never plan on having any, so that isn't a consideration. If it was, I'd stay where I live now.
and not only are the houses expensive, but you end up more often than not with high association fees for maintenance for the golf course you live on.
I'm not in the market for that kind of upscale housing or a townhouse or condo.
If you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, too bad. And in the areas where housing is affordable, not only do the schools suck, but you're facing rather high-crime, so buying a cheap house and sending your kids to private school isn't a great plan either.
Then again, I could easily get a concealed carry permit in Florida (virtually impossible where I live now unless you are a political crony).
Plus, all the cultural richness that is Disney and disney's parasitic competitors (Universal Studios, etc.).
That stuff isn't a huge draw for me either, but my wife loves that sort of touristy crap.
No thank you.
I'm sure Orlando isn't for everyone, but then again, neither is the Bay area, and for that matter, neither is the midwest... There are ups and downs to everything.
This is hardly anything new. I lived for a while in the Bay area in the late 80's and ended up moving back to the midwest because I couldn't make a decent living out there. The salaries out there seem to only be about 1/2 again as much as what they are around here, but the cost of living is roughly double. Mostly it is housing costs that are insane out there (you can buy a decent house around here for under $100k, and you can buy a very nice house for $100-$200k), as noted above.
Car related expenses are also sky high in the Bay area... Gas is more expensive -- I can buy the 90 octane mid grade here for $1.49 a gallon. Insurance is double or triple that in the midwest. Cars themselves are more expensive because they have to have 'California Emissions'. Getting your car smogged all the time is not only expensive, it is a pain in the ass. Out here we never have to do that, or even have cars inspected -- if there is a place to screw a license plate onto it, its street legal. Registration is done entirely by mail.
Food costs are closer to reality in the Bay area, and some things are actually marginally cheaper (seafood and fresh fruits and vegetables often are), but boxed and canned goods , meat and dairy products are generally more expensive.
Taxes out there are also higher. I don't know what the sales tax is in the Bay area these days, but it was over 7% when I lived there 10 years ago. The sales tax here now is either 5 or 6% now depending on the local option tax (and that is too high). Sales taxes disproportionately burden people on the lower end of the economy. The fact that salaries are higher in the Bay area usually means that you pay more in federal income taxes too. Although many midwestern states have higher state income tax and property tax rates than California, the fact that most incomes and houses are lower in the midwest means that the actual amount of taxes paid is lower.
And if you think the midwest is the cheapest, it isn't. I'm thinking about moving to Florida... Like Tampa or Orlando No state income tax, and generally cheaper cost of living -- AND nice weather. In general the southeast is probably about the cheapest place to live, if you can stand all the rednecks...:-)
Still, 7.5.3 does almost everything 8.1 does, and on older hardware it often does it better, so I think my point is still valid.
However, we've now slid all the way back to MacOS 7.5.3 from MacOS 9. If you want to talk about old and/or spartan hardware, Slackware 3.x will run pretty smoothly on a 386... This whole tangent has strayed an awful distance from the original article.
Actually, I am pretty sure that the most recent MacOS that will work on a 68020 or 68030 based Mac is 7.6.x. I believe that you need at least a 68040 to run MacOS 8.x, although I've heard that with some limitations software hack called Pseudo040 and Wish-I-Were which can kind of kludge MacOS 8.x onto some 030 machines. I'd be surprised if it worked on an 020, especially one without a 68881 MMU, as most Mac II's didn't ship with the real MMU. At any rate, the articles I've seen describing how to do it make it sound like it is a fairly big hassle in that you have to boot 7.6.x and then restart into a different partition/drive with 8.x.
Compared to the MICROS~1 world, both Linux and Mac OS provide astonishing life-spans for the hardware they run on.
Well, there are always sweetheart deals out there, but they really can't be used for general comparisons, as they can't be reliably found. In general, I think it is fairly safe to say that Macs usually hold their value better than PC's (which is a good thing if you are a Mac owner that wants to sell, and a bad thing if you are in the market for one) and that really cheap deals on PCs are easier to find, if for no other reason than there are so many 'obsolete' PCs out there.
I've not run into very many problems using large EIDE drives even in relatively old x86 machines. I have a 486-DX4/100 machine at home with an 8.4G drive in it. Its BIOS autodetect wouldn't automagically find the correct settings, but I had no problem entering the cyl/hd/sec values in.
my reccomendation would be to buy the old Mac 6100, drop in a huge HD, and dual-boot with LinuxPPC!:)
For the price that I've seen 6100's going for ($100-$125), plus the price of a decent sized SCSI drive (I found 4G SCSI drives on pricewatch for about $120 -- of course the same $120 will buy a 13G or larger EIDE drive) and a decent amount of RAM (figuring you need at least 32M, and figuring about $40), you could probably get a reasonably equipped midrange Pentium-class x86 box. Not to mention that you either need to buy a monitor converter cable or a Mac-style monitor for the Mac which is an extra cost compared to an x86 box.
Come to think of it, for what a decently equipped first generation (6100, 7100, 8100) PowerMac costs on the used market you can just about buy a brand new low-end prebuilt x86 Linux box (I found a bunch of them for about $330 or so on Pricewatch).
How much does MacOS 9 cost anyway? That has to figure into this equation somewhere too, as used old PowerMacs are probably going to come with MacOS 8.x most of the time I would guess.
BTW, calling MacOS 9, 'OS9' is rather confusing, as there is a real-time OS by that name from a company called Microware, and it has been around since before the Mac existed (like I knew people using it on Motorola 6809 processors back in the 1980 or 1981).
True enough, but that is true in general that many people don't know much about any platform other than their own. The exception is that a large number of Linux users are ex-Windows users (or begrudging co-Windows users). The same thing is true of a lesser extent of Mac user's knowledge of Windows, as many are forced to use Windows at work/school or whatever. Cross knowledge between Linux and MacOS isn't as common. I've got some MacOS experience, but it isn't recent, or at least it isn't with recent hardware/software (I've got a couple of old IIfx's which are running MacOS 7.1 or 7.6.x). I try to limit my commentary on MacOS to what I know for sure to be true, and I certainly don't try to portray myself as being any kind of Mac expert.
When I got it (used) it had 24mb of RAM and a 700mb hd.
That is better than average for what you usually find on the used market. I was looking out on eBay, and most of the PowerMacs I saw equipped like that were selling for more than $200.
As for expandability, the 7100 could take up to 4 32MB sticks (128MB) and had 8MB on the mother board IIRC. The 486 that I have can only use single sided SIMMs and I didn't feel like searching for higher density SIMMs for that, so I'm currently stuck at 16mb on that machine.
One bad thing about x86 machines is the complete anarchy of hardware compatibility. I've got dozens (literally) of 486's, and their rules for memory expansion vary quite a bit. I've got several that have 4 72-pin sockets and can easily expand to 128M, and like I said, one really crapola Packrat Bill which can only go to 20M due to the 4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets.
I'm not complaining (too much) as it was free,
Yea, free is awfully hard to argue with. Although I'd have never bought a machine like the aforementioned PB, for free I have plenty of storage space in my basement.
but my point was that I put MacOS9 on a 7100 as it sat in my bedroom, while I have had to upgrade and limit the functionality of Linux on the "free" 486 I have.
In all fairness though, if you didn't already have a well equipped 7100, it would cost less to put a 10G drive and 32M of RAM (should run about $175 for both) in a free 486 than it would to buy a used 7100. For that matter, you could probably find a used low end Pentium machine (75-133) for similar money to a 7100.
That's OK, I have fun w/it. Both machines serve purposes in my house and I do think the whole concept of the article was silly (along the lines of: what is more masculine, a pinapple or a schoolbus?) and was argued by advocates that were woefully inadeqately knowlegable about their opponent's OS (and in some cases their own). You'll not get any argument from me on that one. The article certainly would have been more interesting and accurate if they had found a little more knowledgeable people (both on their own platform and on the other's) to advocate for each platform.
Apple is preparing to move Mac users to what... MacOS X. Which is based on... BSD. So what then, will all the 'SMART' people go to?
Personally, I don't really believe that all Mac users are complete morons. I don't even believe that all Windows users are morons. I don't understand the idea that the Linux community can't coexist with non-techies, or that if the techies must all flee from Linux just because some non-techies might be able to grok it.
Look, no matter how they wrap Linux or BSD or whatever with GUIs, they can't take away from us techies the command line tools we know and love. Even if they take them out of the distros, they can't keep us from putting them back in ourselves.
Listen, there is room enough for a wide variety of people in the Linux world. If you can't deal with diversity, maybe you should go to something else, albiet I bear FreeBSD (and the other *BSDs) no ill will, so I can't say I would wish a lot of negativity on them.
My brother has a 7100, which I believe only came with 16M of RAM and a 1G hard drive. Many of the even older PPC Macs (6100, etc) were not even equipped that well -- I've seen a number of them with 200-500M HD's and only 8M of RAM. A 1G hard drive is probably adequate, but would MacOS 9 actually run very well in 16M of RAM? Especially when it came time to try to run heavyweight applications like Microsoft Office or Photoshop as mentioned in the article?
Most of the 486's I have can be bumped up to at least 32M (if not 64), which is adequate for most things for Linux. The exceptions would be wretched abominations like a couple Packrat Bill's I've seen which could only go to 20M (4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets). I've actually used Word Perfect 8 under KDE on a 32M 486 box, and it was usable. You can actually get by for light usage on 16M, but that can be a little painful in X.
BTW, if you are at the LUG meeting, say hello so I have a clue as to who you are... You obviously know who I am.
I don't know if I would guess that she was intentionally lying. Exaggerating, probably. However, I think the sad thing is she just plain doesn't know diddly squat about Linux and what she thinks she knows is based largely on outdated hearsay. Her comments about things like lack of Plug-in support for multimedia in Linux (which Plugger handles pretty well) and digital camera support (gPhoto, amongst several others) are examples that would certainly indicate to me she is basically just ignorant. The sad thing is that the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't do a very good job of rebutting such obvious inaccuracies.
This is true. Right now (according to Netcraft) the market share of Linux web servers is only about a third (compared to Windows' approximate 20%), and is growing at a much faster rate than anything else (Microsoft's share has been holding steady or actually dropping for the past year or so). A third isn't most, but it would certainly be fair to say that Linux has moved into position as the market leader on the Internet.
It would certainly be fair to say that 'most of the internet is powered by web servers running Apache', however, as Apache and its variants account for over 60% of the publicly visible web. Of course Apache is also popular on the *BSDs and commercial UNIXes.
There are two possible motivations for writing this kind of article:
First, about a billion comparisons between Linux and Windows and MacOS and Windows have already been done, so there isn't much fodder there for more articles for a while.
Secondly, if they are really Microsoft-partisan, then it could be a 'divide and conquer' strategy, to get Mac and Linux advocates going at each other instead of teaming up against Microsoft...
Yea, the second one kinda sounds like a conspiracy theory...:-)
but they also turned a blind eye to the fact that OS9 can run just fine on first-generation power macs from 1994, which you can easilly find for under $200.
Just like Linux can run just fine on 486's from 1991 which you can get for free. It really depends on what your definition of 'just fine' is. In either case, you are probably looking at upgrading memory and hard disk with either platform, and that still leaves the Linux side as much cheaper.
Applications: Well, do you want Quicken or vi? Word or LyX?
How about GNU Cash as a better comparison to Quicken than vi? How about Word Perfect or StarWriter (from StarOffice) as a better comparison to Word than LyX? Personally, I like Word Perfect 8 a lot more than Microsoft Word. Not only does Linux have a lot more applications than this article would suggest, it is gaining new applications far faster than any other platform, including MacOS.
Interface: Becky hardly does the Mac justice here. I like KDE but the Mac blows it away. (Yes, you can buy a two, three or four button mouse. No, the flexibility of Mac cut n paste more than makes up for having to go to a menu or Cmd-C).
Personally, the convenience of middle button paste in X is something I really miss if I have to use something else.
Hardware: I'm not sure what the editor's point is. Macs support most standard interfaces so you can get most any PC hardware to work. The only problem is when there's no driver. You can bet the Linux people will write one themselves before the Mac gets one.
Macs don't really support PC-style parallel ports or ISA cards very readily.
Internet: They can't find anything to disagree about.
I can't believe the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't mention things like Plugger (multimedia plugins for Linux). Not to mention that Linux has a wide variety of GUI based mail clients, news clients, FTP clients, etc. Linux isn't nearly as bad off as they make it out to be. Perhaps Corel doesn't offer quite as full a selection of those things as other distros do, but then again, many of those tools have to be downloaded and installed on MacOS as well.
Personally, I thought the same thing. I'd consider Mandrake to be a better choice for this kind of shootout than Corel Linux. For that matter, just picking one Linux distro is eliminating one of Linux's advantages, the fact that I can pick and choose the best distro for what I want to do. With MacOS (and Windows too, for that matter) I have a lot less flexibility.
Given how easy this would be to implement by modifying the ILOVEYOU virus, even if it started as a hoax, how long would it be before someone, given the suggestion, implemented it?
This is just one step further towards forcing the US gov't to relent and allow free export of encryption. This is something that most of the computer industry has been demanding for a long time. This is something that is necessary for the growth of worldwide electronic commerce.
This is an obvious sign that the Wassenaar (sp?) treaty is breaking down, thich is a good thing.
The big celebration will happen when the RSA patent expires later this year... Get ready Uncle Sam, your days of being able to casually eavesdrop on every communication are slowly fading into history.
how is this different from Bongs being sold as tobbacco prodcuts?
Probably not that much. Unfortunately, where I live the anti-'paraphernalia' laws are so vague and broadly worded that technically even old-man tobacco pipes and zig-zag papers are illegal. Of course, in typical government fashion, the law is not applied evenly. Walgreens (huge drug store chain) openly sells 'tobacco accessories' including pipes and rolling papers. They never get bothered by the police. A small locally owned shop which sells posters, t-shirts, etc., on the other hand has been repeatedly busted for selling 'paraphernalia' like the exact same zig-zag papers that Walgreens sells.
It used to be that something wasn't 'paraphernalia' unless it had 'residue' on it. Now just about anything that could possibly be used for drugs is illegal if the police choose to say it is.
BTW, for all the 'liberals' out there, the local city and county governments are almost completely controlled by good-ol-boy Democrats.
All vendor-run 'certification' programs are a scam to enrich the pockets of the vendors. While Microsoft's MSCE program is probably the biggest and worst example out there right now, it was actually Novell that invented this sort of program. As long as the pointy-haired-boss types are convinced that 'certified' means something, this sort of program will continue to flourish.
That being said, I think your criticism of Red Hat is a little harsh. While their distribution isn't perfect, neither is Debian, neither is any other. Red Hat is certainly motivated by profit, but I don't think they have tried to hide that, and all in all, I think they have done pretty well in acting responsibly towards the Linux community.
Of course, the first question that comes to mind is: how is this going to influence the recent legal actions Microsoft pulled against/.
I doubt it will make much of an impact there. At this point it looks like Microsoft is backing away from this due to the incredible amount of bad press they got. I expect for the whole situation to slowly fade away.
The second is, why is the IETF not in control of Kerberos completely, how could it happen that Microsoft made proprietary extension to the protocol?
IETF doesn't really have any legal powers. There is little to nothing keeping anyone from coming up with nonstandard implementations of, or proprietary extensions to, IETF protocols. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is any GPL-like provisions to IETF's licensing that requires any derivative works to be published under the same type of license. If bullying companies like Microsoft continue to abuse that, I'd suggest that IETF might have to change their policies.
MIT might have more control over certain aspects of Kerberos, as it was people working for/with MIT originally that were the core designers of it. Unfortunately, I've heard that Microsoft has made significant donations to MIT over the past few years, so MIT may not be too likely to try to fight Microsoft.
My question is this: does the development of 'free beer' software (or for that matter commercial software) for free OSes slow down or stop development of free/open software?
Availability of Windows hasn't stopped development of Linux or the *BSDs (although Windows isn't really 'free beer', it is beer most people have already been forced to pay for).
There are also quite a number of free/open office productivity products out there, despite StarOffice being available as 'free beer' for quite a while and despite commercial packages like Word Perfect and Applix being available. The CAD software situation is a little more tricky to judge, since CAD software is generally very high end and complex. I do know that there are at least a couple of free/open CAD projects going out there, and at least a couple of commercial CAD packages out for Linux at least. I'd be hesitant to try to predict the future on how that situation shakes out.
Some people will still be more interested in free software because of idealogical reasons, or merely due to long term fear for their wallets. 'Free beer' or commercial software may also provide competition that spurs free software developers to work harder. If the free OS market continues to grow, is there room for both free/open software and 'free beer'/commercial software? More competition and more options is generally a good thing.
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Big city hassles without all the big city culture.
I didn't find all that much hassle when I was there, and maybe I'm not very cultured, but what is missing?
yeah, the weather's nice, but not in the Summer.
That is a matter of opinion. I happen to like hot weather... And as far as humidity goes, I've been to central Florida in the summer, and its not much worse than where I live now.
Do you enjoy fire-ants?
Like they don't have bugs everywhere?
Termites?
We've got those aplenty where I live now. Couldn't be much worse.
Do you enjoy alligators?
In Orlando? Outside a petting zoo? Its not like we are talking southern Florida here. They may have a few gators around, but not huge quantities.
Do you enjoy very large cockroaches that hit you up for protection money?
Who does, but there are bugs just about everywhere, especially in warm climates. I saw some pretty huge roaches when I lived in San Francisco (I lived in a bad neighborhood).
Now, in Orlando, you don't have nearly the redneck problem you'd have in Hotlanta. And again, you have a huge gap in property values. Housing is VERY expensive in areas where there are decent schools (for your kids. remember them?),
I've priced housing in the Orlando area, and it is comparable to where I live now. As for schools, I have no kids, and never plan on having any, so that isn't a consideration. If it was, I'd stay where I live now.
and not only are the houses expensive, but you end up more often than not with high association fees for maintenance for the golf course you live on.
I'm not in the market for that kind of upscale housing or a townhouse or condo.
If you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, too bad. And in the areas where housing is affordable, not only do the schools suck, but you're facing rather high-crime, so buying a cheap house and sending your kids to private school isn't a great plan either.
Then again, I could easily get a concealed carry permit in Florida (virtually impossible where I live now unless you are a political crony).
Plus, all the cultural richness that is Disney and disney's parasitic competitors (Universal Studios, etc.).
That stuff isn't a huge draw for me either, but my wife loves that sort of touristy crap.
No thank you.
I'm sure Orlando isn't for everyone, but then again, neither is the Bay area, and for that matter, neither is the midwest... There are ups and downs to everything.
This is hardly anything new. I lived for a while in the Bay area in the late 80's and ended up moving back to the midwest because I couldn't make a decent living out there. The salaries out there seem to only be about 1/2 again as much as what they are around here, but the cost of living is roughly double. Mostly it is housing costs that are insane out there (you can buy a decent house around here for under $100k, and you can buy a very nice house for $100-$200k), as noted above.
:-)
Car related expenses are also sky high in the Bay area... Gas is more expensive -- I can buy the 90 octane mid grade here for $1.49 a gallon. Insurance is double or triple that in the midwest. Cars themselves are more expensive because they have to have 'California Emissions'. Getting your car smogged all the time is not only expensive, it is a pain in the ass. Out here we never have to do that, or even have cars inspected -- if there is a place to screw a license plate onto it, its street legal. Registration is done entirely by mail.
Food costs are closer to reality in the Bay area, and some things are actually marginally cheaper (seafood and fresh fruits and vegetables often are), but boxed and canned goods , meat and dairy products are generally more expensive.
Taxes out there are also higher. I don't know what the sales tax is in the Bay area these days, but it was over 7% when I lived there 10 years ago. The sales tax here now is either 5 or 6% now depending on the local option tax (and that is too high). Sales taxes disproportionately burden people on the lower end of the economy. The fact that salaries are higher in the Bay area usually means that you pay more in federal income taxes too. Although many midwestern states have higher state income tax and property tax rates than California, the fact that most incomes and houses are lower in the midwest means that the actual amount of taxes paid is lower.
And if you think the midwest is the cheapest, it isn't. I'm thinking about moving to Florida... Like Tampa or Orlando No state income tax, and generally cheaper cost of living -- AND nice weather. In general the southeast is probably about the cheapest place to live, if you can stand all the rednecks...
Still, 7.5.3 does almost everything 8.1 does, and on older hardware it often does it better, so I think my point is still valid.
However, we've now slid all the way back to MacOS 7.5.3 from MacOS 9. If you want to talk about old and/or spartan hardware, Slackware 3.x will run pretty smoothly on a 386... This whole tangent has strayed an awful distance from the original article.
Ah, but MacOS version 8.x will
Actually, I am pretty sure that the most recent MacOS that will work on a 68020 or 68030 based Mac is 7.6.x. I believe that you need at least a 68040 to run MacOS 8.x, although I've heard that with some limitations software hack called Pseudo040 and Wish-I-Were which can kind of kludge MacOS 8.x onto some 030 machines. I'd be surprised if it worked on an 020, especially one without a 68881 MMU, as most Mac II's didn't ship with the real MMU. At any rate, the articles I've seen describing how to do it make it sound like it is a fairly big hassle in that you have to boot 7.6.x and then restart into a different partition/drive with 8.x.
Compared to the MICROS~1 world, both Linux and Mac OS provide astonishing life-spans for the hardware they run on.
That is true.
Well, there are always sweetheart deals out there, but they really can't be used for general comparisons, as they can't be reliably found. In general, I think it is fairly safe to say that Macs usually hold their value better than PC's (which is a good thing if you are a Mac owner that wants to sell, and a bad thing if you are in the market for one) and that really cheap deals on PCs are easier to find, if for no other reason than there are so many 'obsolete' PCs out there.
I've not run into very many problems using large EIDE drives even in relatively old x86 machines. I have a 486-DX4/100 machine at home with an 8.4G drive in it. Its BIOS autodetect wouldn't automagically find the correct settings, but I had no problem entering the cyl/hd/sec values in.
my reccomendation would be to buy the old Mac 6100, drop in a huge HD, and dual-boot with LinuxPPC! :)
For the price that I've seen 6100's going for ($100-$125), plus the price of a decent sized SCSI drive (I found 4G SCSI drives on pricewatch for about $120 -- of course the same $120 will buy a 13G or larger EIDE drive) and a decent amount of RAM (figuring you need at least 32M, and figuring about $40), you could probably get a reasonably equipped midrange Pentium-class x86 box. Not to mention that you either need to buy a monitor converter cable or a Mac-style monitor for the Mac which is an extra cost compared to an x86 box.
Come to think of it, for what a decently equipped first generation (6100, 7100, 8100) PowerMac costs on the used market you can just about buy a brand new low-end prebuilt x86 Linux box (I found a bunch of them for about $330 or so on Pricewatch).
How much does MacOS 9 cost anyway? That has to figure into this equation somewhere too, as used old PowerMacs are probably going to come with MacOS 8.x most of the time I would guess.
BTW, calling MacOS 9, 'OS9' is rather confusing, as there is a real-time OS by that name from a company called Microware, and it has been around since before the Mac existed (like I knew people using it on Motorola 6809 processors back in the 1980 or 1981).
True enough, but that is true in general that many people don't know much about any platform other than their own. The exception is that a large number of Linux users are ex-Windows users (or begrudging co-Windows users). The same thing is true of a lesser extent of Mac user's knowledge of Windows, as many are forced to use Windows at work/school or whatever. Cross knowledge between Linux and MacOS isn't as common. I've got some MacOS experience, but it isn't recent, or at least it isn't with recent hardware/software (I've got a couple of old IIfx's which are running MacOS 7.1 or 7.6.x). I try to limit my commentary on MacOS to what I know for sure to be true, and I certainly don't try to portray myself as being any kind of Mac expert.
When I got it (used) it had 24mb of RAM and a 700mb hd.
That is better than average for what you usually find on the used market. I was looking out on eBay, and most of the PowerMacs I saw equipped like that were selling for more than $200.
As for expandability, the 7100 could take up to 4 32MB sticks (128MB) and had 8MB on the mother board IIRC. The 486 that I have can only use single sided SIMMs and I didn't feel like searching for higher density SIMMs for that, so I'm currently stuck at 16mb on that machine.
One bad thing about x86 machines is the complete anarchy of hardware compatibility. I've got dozens (literally) of 486's, and their rules for memory expansion vary quite a bit. I've got several that have 4 72-pin sockets and can easily expand to 128M, and like I said, one really crapola Packrat Bill which can only go to 20M due to the 4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets.
I'm not complaining (too much) as it was free,
Yea, free is awfully hard to argue with. Although I'd have never bought a machine like the aforementioned PB, for free I have plenty of storage space in my basement.
but my point was that I put MacOS9 on a 7100 as it sat in my bedroom, while I have had to upgrade and limit the functionality of Linux on the "free" 486 I have.
In all fairness though, if you didn't already have a well equipped 7100, it would cost less to put a 10G drive and 32M of RAM (should run about $175 for both) in a free 486 than it would to buy a used 7100. For that matter, you could probably find a used low end Pentium machine (75-133) for similar money to a 7100.
That's OK, I have fun w/it. Both machines serve purposes in my house and I do think the whole concept of the article was silly (along the lines of: what is more masculine, a pinapple or a schoolbus?) and was argued by advocates that were woefully inadeqately knowlegable about their opponent's OS (and in some cases their own).
You'll not get any argument from me on that one. The article certainly would have been more interesting and accurate if they had found a little more knowledgeable people (both on their own platform and on the other's) to advocate for each platform.
Apple is preparing to move Mac users to what... MacOS X. Which is based on ... BSD. So what then, will all the 'SMART' people go to?
Personally, I don't really believe that all Mac users are complete morons. I don't even believe that all Windows users are morons. I don't understand the idea that the Linux community can't coexist with non-techies, or that if the techies must all flee from Linux just because some non-techies might be able to grok it.
Look, no matter how they wrap Linux or BSD or whatever with GUIs, they can't take away from us techies the command line tools we know and love. Even if they take them out of the distros, they can't keep us from putting them back in ourselves.
Listen, there is room enough for a wide variety of people in the Linux world. If you can't deal with diversity, maybe you should go to something else, albiet I bear FreeBSD (and the other *BSDs) no ill will, so I can't say I would wish a lot of negativity on them.
Interesting, that it is such a small world.
My brother has a 7100, which I believe only came with 16M of RAM and a 1G hard drive. Many of the even older PPC Macs (6100, etc) were not even equipped that well -- I've seen a number of them with 200-500M HD's and only 8M of RAM. A 1G hard drive is probably adequate, but would MacOS 9 actually run very well in 16M of RAM? Especially when it came time to try to run heavyweight applications like Microsoft Office or Photoshop as mentioned in the article?
Most of the 486's I have can be bumped up to at least 32M (if not 64), which is adequate for most things for Linux. The exceptions would be wretched abominations like a couple Packrat Bill's I've seen which could only go to 20M (4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets). I've actually used Word Perfect 8 under KDE on a 32M 486 box, and it was usable. You can actually get by for light usage on 16M, but that can be a little painful in X.
BTW, if you are at the LUG meeting, say hello so I have a clue as to who you are... You obviously know who I am.
Ummm... I am probably feeding the trolls here... But:
There are several million Mac users.
As noted, Macs are fairly expensive. This means that Mac users have money, and aren't afraid to spend it.
Now, doesn't that sound like a group of people you'd like as customers? You can bet that if Linux doesn't think so, Microsoft does.
I don't know if I would guess that she was intentionally lying. Exaggerating, probably. However, I think the sad thing is she just plain doesn't know diddly squat about Linux and what she thinks she knows is based largely on outdated hearsay. Her comments about things like lack of Plug-in support for multimedia in Linux (which Plugger handles pretty well) and digital camera support (gPhoto, amongst several others) are examples that would certainly indicate to me she is basically just ignorant. The sad thing is that the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't do a very good job of rebutting such obvious inaccuracies.
This is true. Right now (according to Netcraft) the market share of Linux web servers is only about a third (compared to Windows' approximate 20%), and is growing at a much faster rate than anything else (Microsoft's share has been holding steady or actually dropping for the past year or so). A third isn't most, but it would certainly be fair to say that Linux has moved into position as the market leader on the Internet.
It would certainly be fair to say that 'most of the internet is powered by web servers running Apache', however, as Apache and its variants account for over 60% of the publicly visible web. Of course Apache is also popular on the *BSDs and commercial UNIXes.
There are two possible motivations for writing this kind of article:
:-)
First, about a billion comparisons between Linux and Windows and MacOS and Windows have already been done, so there isn't much fodder there for more articles for a while.
Secondly, if they are really Microsoft-partisan, then it could be a 'divide and conquer' strategy, to get Mac and Linux advocates going at each other instead of teaming up against Microsoft...
Yea, the second one kinda sounds like a conspiracy theory...
but they also turned a blind eye to the fact that OS9 can run just fine on first-generation power macs from 1994, which you can easilly find for under $200.
Just like Linux can run just fine on 486's from 1991 which you can get for free. It really depends on what your definition of 'just fine' is. In either case, you are probably looking at upgrading memory and hard disk with either platform, and that still leaves the Linux side as much cheaper.
IIRC, Localtalk was a shared broadcast network running at 400Kbps
I believe it was 230Kbps, unless you purchased 3rd party add-ons to upgrade it to 400Kbps.
Applications: Well, do you want Quicken or vi? Word or LyX?
How about GNU Cash as a better comparison to Quicken than vi? How about Word Perfect or StarWriter (from StarOffice) as a better comparison to Word than LyX? Personally, I like Word Perfect 8 a lot more than Microsoft Word. Not only does Linux have a lot more applications than this article would suggest, it is gaining new applications far faster than any other platform, including MacOS.
Interface: Becky hardly does the Mac justice here. I like KDE but the Mac blows it away. (Yes, you can buy a two, three or four button mouse. No, the flexibility of Mac cut n paste more than makes up for having to go to a menu or Cmd-C).
Personally, the convenience of middle button paste in X is something I really miss if I have to use something else.
Hardware: I'm not sure what the editor's point is. Macs support most standard interfaces so you can get most any PC hardware to work. The only problem is when there's no driver. You can bet the Linux people will write one themselves before the Mac gets one.
Macs don't really support PC-style parallel ports or ISA cards very readily.
Internet: They can't find anything to disagree about.
I can't believe the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't mention things like Plugger (multimedia plugins for Linux). Not to mention that Linux has a wide variety of GUI based mail clients, news clients, FTP clients, etc. Linux isn't nearly as bad off as they make it out to be. Perhaps Corel doesn't offer quite as full a selection of those things as other distros do, but then again, many of those tools have to be downloaded and installed on MacOS as well.
Personally, I thought the same thing. I'd consider Mandrake to be a better choice for this kind of shootout than Corel Linux. For that matter, just picking one Linux distro is eliminating one of Linux's advantages, the fact that I can pick and choose the best distro for what I want to do. With MacOS (and Windows too, for that matter) I have a lot less flexibility.
Given how easy this would be to implement by modifying the ILOVEYOU virus, even if it started as a hoax, how long would it be before someone, given the suggestion, implemented it?
Reality immitates fiction immitates reality.
This is just one step further towards forcing the US gov't to relent and allow free export of encryption. This is something that most of the computer industry has been demanding for a long time. This is something that is necessary for the growth of worldwide electronic commerce.
This is an obvious sign that the Wassenaar (sp?) treaty is breaking down, thich is a good thing.
The big celebration will happen when the RSA patent expires later this year... Get ready Uncle Sam, your days of being able to casually eavesdrop on every communication are slowly fading into history.
how is this different from Bongs being sold as tobbacco prodcuts?
Probably not that much. Unfortunately, where I live the anti-'paraphernalia' laws are so vague and broadly worded that technically even old-man tobacco pipes and zig-zag papers are illegal. Of course, in typical government fashion, the law is not applied evenly. Walgreens (huge drug store chain) openly sells 'tobacco accessories' including pipes and rolling papers. They never get bothered by the police. A small locally owned shop which sells posters, t-shirts, etc., on the other hand has been repeatedly busted for selling 'paraphernalia' like the exact same zig-zag papers that Walgreens sells.
It used to be that something wasn't 'paraphernalia' unless it had 'residue' on it. Now just about anything that could possibly be used for drugs is illegal if the police choose to say it is.
BTW, for all the 'liberals' out there, the local city and county governments are almost completely controlled by good-ol-boy Democrats.
All vendor-run 'certification' programs are a scam to enrich the pockets of the vendors. While Microsoft's MSCE program is probably the biggest and worst example out there right now, it was actually Novell that invented this sort of program. As long as the pointy-haired-boss types are convinced that 'certified' means something, this sort of program will continue to flourish.
That being said, I think your criticism of Red Hat is a little harsh. While their distribution isn't perfect, neither is Debian, neither is any other. Red Hat is certainly motivated by profit, but I don't think they have tried to hide that, and all in all, I think they have done pretty well in acting responsibly towards the Linux community.
That is true. I think it is also further evidence that free-as-in-beer and even free as in five-finger-discount won't stop free-as-in-speech software.
Of course, the first question that comes to mind is: how is this going to influence the recent legal actions Microsoft pulled against /.
I doubt it will make much of an impact there. At this point it looks like Microsoft is backing away from this due to the incredible amount of bad press they got. I expect for the whole situation to slowly fade away.
The second is, why is the IETF not in control of Kerberos completely, how could it happen that Microsoft made proprietary extension to the protocol?
IETF doesn't really have any legal powers. There is little to nothing keeping anyone from coming up with nonstandard implementations of, or proprietary extensions to, IETF protocols. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is any GPL-like provisions to IETF's licensing that requires any derivative works to be published under the same type of license. If bullying companies like Microsoft continue to abuse that, I'd suggest that IETF might have to change their policies.
MIT might have more control over certain aspects of Kerberos, as it was people working for/with MIT originally that were the core designers of it. Unfortunately, I've heard that Microsoft has made significant donations to MIT over the past few years, so MIT may not be too likely to try to fight Microsoft.
My question is this: does the development of 'free beer' software (or for that matter commercial software) for free OSes slow down or stop development of free/open software?
Availability of Windows hasn't stopped development of Linux or the *BSDs (although Windows isn't really 'free beer', it is beer most people have already been forced to pay for).
There are also quite a number of free/open office productivity products out there, despite StarOffice being available as 'free beer' for quite a while and despite commercial packages like Word Perfect and Applix being available. The CAD software situation is a little more tricky to judge, since CAD software is generally very high end and complex. I do know that there are at least a couple of free/open CAD projects going out there, and at least a couple of commercial CAD packages out for Linux at least. I'd be hesitant to try to predict the future on how that situation shakes out.
Some people will still be more interested in free software because of idealogical reasons, or merely due to long term fear for their wallets.
'Free beer' or commercial software may also provide competition that spurs free software developers to work harder. If the free OS market continues to grow, is there room for both free/open software and 'free beer'/commercial software? More competition and more options is generally a good thing.