I started with a 500Mhz iBook, which frankly seems pretty slow as far as things go, but it's sufficient as a laptop for word processing, emacs, Reunion (great genealogy software!), for a little coding, etc. Not a speed demon. I wish I had one of the newer 800Mhz iBooks which have a video chipset which is much better optimized for OSX. For that matter, I think the new ones are cheaper than what I paid for mine:-)
But I liked the OS enough that I got a Dual 867Mhz G4 as my primary home desktop, which is quite fine for compiling (the dual CPUs help) and is in general a pretty quick machine, especially for multi-threaded apps. I personally still think it could be a little faster (sometimes the interface seems a little slow), but again I really like the OS, and speed isn't my primary concern. My only other gripe about it is the well-documented fan noise problem. The hardware is beautifully engineered (other than the fan).
The iLife apps are great and I just love having great software with good interfaces on a Unix box with all the standard Unix tools, where I don't have to deal with the gory OS details unless I want to.
I don't mean to make it sound like the G4's really slow -- it's not. There's just a few things that don't seem quite as snappy as they should be. Try to find a local Apple dealer see if you can camp on one for 30 minutes or so and see if it works for you. I'd like to continue to buy Apple, I'm hoping to see them come out with new chips this year that are substantially faster than the current line -- I think that Motorola's de-emphasis of their PowerPC chips really hurt Apple and they're trying to hang on until IBM or somebody can produce the chips they need.
If you have a little bit of disposable cash, I'd suggest picking up a low-end iBook or an eMac to play with. And load up on RAM (I'd say minimum 320MB).
I agree -- I used Linux for a number of years (1998~01) and I got tired of spending way more time just trying to get the system to _work_ then actually using the system to do anything productive. I switched to FreeBSD for a while since it doesn't seem to have the dependency hell that Linux does (or at least the ports system figures it out for you). Determining the endless dependencies and recompiling kernels can be a real pain even for people who understand the stuff! I really hated when to install some program I needed a library that broke another program because of a version mis-match.
I'm a test engineer/programmer and I like to do geeky stuff, but not when that geeky stuff is getting in the way of the geeky stuff that I really want to do!
In the end, I went to OSX and I haven't looked back! (Okay, I still maintain an OpenBSD firewall, but I really don't miss Linux for a second).
Re:alternative to iDisk
on
Broken .Mac?
·
· Score: 1
er, don't feel. Sorry, no coffee yet;-) For that matter, I could set up my own WebDAV server, but I don't feel like that, either (see above comment).
Re:alternative to iDisk
on
Broken .Mac?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but I want feel like opening those ports on my OpenBSD firewall (configured very restrictively). Plus my primary work box is Win2k (not my choice).
I'm a.mac member and I can testify that there's been lots of problems. And I'm not the only one -- their support boards show many people having problems (of course, that's what support boards are for).
There's been repeated email downtimes. I had an entire email folder disappear (with some very important information) for several days before it magically re-appeared. iDisk at times is very, very slow. Apple themselves even admitted they'd had problems, blaming it on a hardware vendor.
The problems have been less frequent recently, but in order for me to renew they need to pretty much eliminate the problems or go until next September without any new ones (that's about when most folks will be up for renewal).
Having an internet-accessible iDisk is pretty handy, so is their web-based email, but they need to be 99.999% reliable. It really sucks to put a file on your iDisk at home, go to retrieve it at work and not be able to reach it.
Geez, if you're gonna be anonymous, try a little harder, Mr. lee.bolding@unixconsulting.co.uk (the email link connected to the AC).
Other people have good suggestions, but it seems consulting an attorney (and not Slashdot) would be the best suggestion.
You're essentially asking for legal advice here and Slashdot is not the place to ask for moral advice, either (see Warez thread earlier today).
Re:This book fills a niche
on
Perl & LWP
·
· Score: 2
Well, I'll agree that this is a follow-up subject-wise, but really this book has an entirely different author and title than the first book, so it's hard to call it a second edition, in my opinion.
This book fills a niche
on
Perl & LWP
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I for one am thankful this book is available and I will probably get it. I've always thought that the LWP and URI docs are cryptic and a little too streamlined. The best docs I thought were in an out-of-print O'Reilly book called Web Client Programming with Perl, but the modules have changed too much for that book to be very relevant anymore (although the book itself has been "open-sourced" at O'Reilly's Open Book Project).
It's actually not that often that I want to grep web pages with Perl, the slightly-more difficult stuff is when you want to pass cookies, etc, and that's where I always find the docs to be wanting. Yes, the docs tell you how, but to get the whole picture I remember having to flip back-and-forth between several module's docs.
I appreciate your sentiment, but really -- I have a computer in my pocket! It's called a PDA. Most modern cars have computers in them, too! Maybe not the kind you're thinking of, though.
I guess what I want to know is what's impressive about this advance? What will it actually mean as far as technology advances go? Faster chips? "Better?" Just smaller? What? How will this improve our lives? It's not immediately obvious to me, and I'd like to know!
Uh, No. I am a proud iBook owner and a big proponent of OS X, but Macs do not integrate with Windows networks easier than Windows. Like printing to a MS-network printer, browsing the network, etc. For instance, if your Mac is DHCP, it will end up having the network name of whichever Windows client previously had that IP address (rather than properly updating the local DNS/WINS server with the name of your Mac), although I'll admit this could be a server issue, the integration still isn't nice or "easier".
But my biggest gripe about Mac's SMB integration is that if you copy a file from a Mac to an SMB share, for each file it copys you get a "bonus" file with the same name preceded by a ".". So copying 10 mp3s from my iBook to an SMB share deposits 10 extra turdlets on my Win2k server.
The iBook comes with a 1 year warranty, the $249 simply extends the warranty to 3 years. You'll think that's a good deal if your LCD ever breaks. A side benefit of the extended warranty is that you also get free support for that 3 year period.
It's also worth noting that if you don't get the 3 year warranty, any time within the first year you can choose to pay the $249 to extend the warranty the additional two years.
Where can one find more information on how to execute the type of recoveries that the guy was talking about? band pass filters, etc. I'm interested in specific techniques, not generalities. Also interested in specific techniques on how to clean up bad audio (I know some but it can't hurt to know more, can it?)
That's why the jury found her 20% responsible and lowered the damages accordingly. The fact is that a jury heard all the evidence (more than just the bullet points listed) before making up their minds and then found McD's guilty egregrious behavior and awarded punative damages (punishment, not compensation for injuries) equal to 2 days worth of coffee profits. The point is that the lawsuit was not frivilous. Before the lawsuit the lady just wanted her medical bills covered. When they refused, that's when the lawsuit was filed.
This case gets perpetuated over and over as a "frivilous" lawsuit, when in fact it was not frivilous at all. People hear the headline "millions for spilled hot coffee" and don't look further than that. According to the Wall Street journal, McDonald's callousness was the issue and even jurors who thought the case was just a tempest in a coffee pot were overwhelmed by the evidence against the Corporation. Here's a great link telling the facts in the hot coffee case...
Hey, you added a little FUD of your own here -- you said
The "lifetime" subscription isn't an option, since it's only for the lifetime of the box--deceptive advertising, IMHO.
Tivo is very up front about what "Lifetime Subscription" means. Go to their website, look at their FAQ under "Lifetime Subscription," check out the first sentence:
What is product lifetime service?
A product lifetime subscription to the TiVo service covers the life of the recorder or receiver you buy - not the life of the subscriber. The Product lifetime subscription accompanies the product in case of ownership transfer. The subscription remains in effect even if you upgrade your recorder, for example, to increase storage capacity (please contact an authorized dealer or the manufacturer) or if the recorder needs to be repaired or replaced due to a malfunction (see manufacturer warranty details). Because a Product lifetime subscription is linked to a particular recorder, it cannot be transferred to any other recorder (unless the recorder is replaced due to a malfunction covered by the manufacturer's warranty). Each recorder purchased requires its own service subscription and activation.
Of course, hardware products don't last forever and their lifespan will vary. TiVo makes no representations or warranties as to the expected lifetime of the product aside from the manufacturer's warranty.
It's much easier to transition from Helpdesk to a testing department. In testing (at least the testing I've been involved in) you often get to use programming to develop test tools, scripts, etc. At the same time (depending on the organization) you have much more interaction with the development group and you may even get to review source code as part of your testing efforts. Over time as the dev group becomes more aware of your programming prowess, then you can look for a way to transfer into a rookie dev job. At that point, since the people you've been working with know your skills, it's much easier for them to justify hiring somebody who might not have a degree or other "proper" development experience.
He didn't say he couldn't connect to his Win2K box, he said he couldn't browse to his Win2K box (a la Windows Network Neighborhood). In most cases I think browsing to a machine on the network is a pain-in-the-ass thing to do, but he's right, you can't currently browse SMB networks in OS X, you have to know the machine name in advance.
Here's the Wired review, sorry I couldn't find the link earlier... a couple highlights:
Virtual PC Is Virtually Perfect
...
VPC 5 takes it one step further and will run up to 11 different operating systems on your Mac all at once --- providing you have OS X as one of those operating systems.
Slashdot Mirror
I started with a 500Mhz iBook, which frankly seems pretty slow as far as things go, but it's sufficient as a laptop for word processing, emacs, Reunion (great genealogy software!), for a little coding, etc. Not a speed demon. I wish I had one of the newer 800Mhz iBooks which have a video chipset which is much better optimized for OSX. For that matter, I think the new ones are cheaper than what I paid for mine :-)
But I liked the OS enough that I got a Dual 867Mhz G4 as my primary home desktop, which is quite fine for compiling (the dual CPUs help) and is in general a pretty quick machine, especially for multi-threaded apps. I personally still think it could be a little faster (sometimes the interface seems a little slow), but again I really like the OS, and speed isn't my primary concern. My only other gripe about it is the well-documented fan noise problem. The hardware is beautifully engineered (other than the fan).
The iLife apps are great and I just love having great software with good interfaces on a Unix box with all the standard Unix tools, where I don't have to deal with the gory OS details unless I want to.
I don't mean to make it sound like the G4's really slow -- it's not. There's just a few things that don't seem quite as snappy as they should be. Try to find a local Apple dealer see if you can camp on one for 30 minutes or so and see if it works for you. I'd like to continue to buy Apple, I'm hoping to see them come out with new chips this year that are substantially faster than the current line -- I think that Motorola's de-emphasis of their PowerPC chips really hurt Apple and they're trying to hang on until IBM or somebody can produce the chips they need.
If you have a little bit of disposable cash, I'd suggest picking up a low-end iBook or an eMac to play with. And load up on RAM (I'd say minimum 320MB).
I agree -- I used Linux for a number of years (1998~01) and I got tired of spending way more time just trying to get the system to _work_ then actually using the system to do anything productive. I switched to FreeBSD for a while since it doesn't seem to have the dependency hell that Linux does (or at least the ports system figures it out for you). Determining the endless dependencies and recompiling kernels can be a real pain even for people who understand the stuff! I really hated when to install some program I needed a library that broke another program because of a version mis-match.
I'm a test engineer/programmer and I like to do geeky stuff, but not when that geeky stuff is getting in the way of the geeky stuff that I really want to do!
In the end, I went to OSX and I haven't looked back! (Okay, I still maintain an OpenBSD firewall, but I really don't miss Linux for a second).
er, don't feel. Sorry, no coffee yet ;-) For that matter, I could set up my own WebDAV server, but I don't feel like that, either (see above comment).
Yeah, but I want feel like opening those ports on my OpenBSD firewall (configured very restrictively). Plus my primary work box is Win2k (not my choice).
There's been repeated email downtimes. I had an entire email folder disappear (with some very important information) for several days before it magically re-appeared. iDisk at times is very, very slow. Apple themselves even admitted they'd had problems, blaming it on a hardware vendor. The problems have been less frequent recently, but in order for me to renew they need to pretty much eliminate the problems or go until next September without any new ones (that's about when most folks will be up for renewal).
Having an internet-accessible iDisk is pretty handy, so is their web-based email, but they need to be 99.999% reliable. It really sucks to put a file on your iDisk at home, go to retrieve it at work and not be able to reach it.
This is now old news, it was a part of the Homeland Security bill which just passed.
In the past two weeks there has been talk of this in the New York Times (registration blah blah blah), The Washington Post and
Harper's weekly review, to name a few. NPR's All Things Considered had a commentary on this (RealAudio) the other night.
Last week was the time to prevent it, now it's probably too late -- it's law.
Geez, if you're gonna be anonymous, try a little harder, Mr. lee.bolding@unixconsulting.co.uk (the email link connected to the AC).
Other people have good suggestions, but it seems consulting an attorney (and not Slashdot) would be the best suggestion.
You're essentially asking for legal advice here and Slashdot is not the place to ask for moral advice, either (see Warez thread earlier today).
Well, I'll agree that this is a follow-up subject-wise, but really this book has an entirely different author and title than the first book, so it's hard to call it a second edition, in my opinion.
It's actually not that often that I want to grep web pages with Perl, the slightly-more difficult stuff is when you want to pass cookies, etc, and that's where I always find the docs to be wanting. Yes, the docs tell you how, but to get the whole picture I remember having to flip back-and-forth between several module's docs.
I guess what I want to know is what's impressive about this advance? What will it actually mean as far as technology advances go? Faster chips? "Better?" Just smaller? What? How will this improve our lives? It's not immediately obvious to me, and I'd like to know!
Uh, No. I am a proud iBook owner and a big proponent of OS X, but Macs do not integrate with Windows networks easier than Windows. Like printing to a MS-network printer, browsing the network, etc. For instance, if your Mac is DHCP, it will end up having the network name of whichever Windows client previously had that IP address (rather than properly updating the local DNS/WINS server with the name of your Mac), although I'll admit this could be a server issue, the integration still isn't nice or "easier".
But my biggest gripe about Mac's SMB integration is that if you copy a file from a Mac to an SMB share, for each file it copys you get a "bonus" file with the same name preceded by a ".". So copying 10 mp3s from my iBook to an SMB share deposits 10 extra turdlets on my Win2k server.
The iBook comes with a 1 year warranty, the $249 simply extends the warranty to 3 years. You'll think that's a good deal if your LCD ever breaks. A side benefit of the extended warranty is that you also get free support for that 3 year period.
It's also worth noting that if you don't get the 3 year warranty, any time within the first year you can choose to pay the $249 to extend the warranty the additional two years.
Where can one find more information on how to execute the type of recoveries that the guy was talking about? band pass filters, etc. I'm interested in specific techniques, not generalities. Also interested in specific techniques on how to clean up bad audio (I know some but it can't hurt to know more, can it?)
That's why the jury found her 20% responsible and lowered the damages accordingly. The fact is that a jury heard all the evidence (more than just the bullet points listed) before making up their minds and then found McD's guilty egregrious behavior and awarded punative damages (punishment, not compensation for injuries) equal to 2 days worth of coffee profits. The point is that the lawsuit was not frivilous. Before the lawsuit the lady just wanted her medical bills covered. When they refused, that's when the lawsuit was filed.
This case gets perpetuated over and over as a "frivilous" lawsuit, when in fact it was not frivilous at all. People hear the headline "millions for spilled hot coffee" and don't look further than that. According to the Wall Street journal, McDonald's callousness was the issue and even jurors who thought the case was just a tempest in a coffee pot were overwhelmed by the evidence against the Corporation. Here's a great link telling the facts in the hot coffee case...
There's a pretty decent Cocoa-ized version of emacs 21.1 at http://www.porkrind.org/emacs.
I don't think it uses variable-width fonts, but it's better then the terminal version, IMHO.
It's much easier to transition from Helpdesk to a testing department. In testing (at least the testing I've been involved in) you often get to use programming to develop test tools, scripts, etc. At the same time (depending on the organization) you have much more interaction with the development group and you may even get to review source code as part of your testing efforts. Over time as the dev group becomes more aware of your programming prowess, then you can look for a way to transfer into a rookie dev job. At that point, since the people you've been working with know your skills, it's much easier for them to justify hiring somebody who might not have a degree or other "proper" development experience.
Now that I think about it, for all I know I did submit it with correct grammar and the editors "corrected" me!
Hmmm....
Doh!!! That's one of my pet peeves, too -- my fingers just got carried away when submitting the story and I missed it in proofreading.
I hate misplaced apostrophes, so that's embarassing.
Not quite as embarassing as a neon sign I saw that said "Used Car's"
He didn't say he couldn't connect to his Win2K box, he said he couldn't browse to his Win2K box (a la Windows Network Neighborhood). In most cases I think browsing to a machine on the network is a pain-in-the-ass thing to do, but he's right, you can't currently browse SMB networks in OS X, you have to know the machine name in advance.
I think you're confused -- the quote said Mac OS X blew their minds, not a Linux distribution.
you can do bash in cygwin.
What is that brownish tint over Baja? It looks like smog -- is it?