Well, maybe, but a more direct genetic tinkering approach is more likely to yield progress there.
As we understand more and more of the human genome, and biochemistry in general, we will be able to do some amazing things. Like sci-fi amazing.
We're close to some amazing things already, with prototypes of plants that produce plastic. But someday in the not too distant future we're going to learn how to manipulate our aging and self-repair mechanisms. We'll also be able to twiddle with our kids, just like they were doing in the movie Gattaca. And we'll be able to create some new, awful diseases.
This stuff is right around the corner, folks. Biotech has great potential for good, and ill. And we thought our NUCLEAR adolescence was bad -- we ain't seen nothin' yet.
>Right, I am a FreeBSD and Mac OS X user (and sometimes Linux too).
Ditto. I think we are really on the same side here.
>Erhm, you are forgetting that Mac OS X PB is time limited (rumoured to stop working May 15, 2001). Oh, and to run older MacOS apps you need MacOS 9 too.
Well, yeah it's time limited, it's a public beta/demo. I'm just talking about the technology, which we got a good preview of via the PB. I'm not saying people will be using the PB in a production environment. That's loco.
Yes, the old apps need the "classic" environment, but that will be included in the final release of OSX. Not like you have to buy anything extra. So your OS9 argument doesn't hold water.
> That's a piece of crock, because you can switch that off.
Of course you can, I know about the ">console" trick too. My point is that if you need to do that, you may as well use a "freenix" instead.
> Darwin != Aqua, but MacOS X == Darwin + Aqua + probably some more stuff.
Correct. And I was talking about Mac OSX, not just Darwin. MacOSX isn't free. Which I don't care too much about, but there are zealots around here who wouldn't use payware to save their life. That's the observation I was making. You seem to be confusing ME with one of the aforementioned zealots.
>Okay, name 10 people in your direct vicinity that *use* Mac OS X PB _right_ _now_. You can't huh? Well, *that*'s how mainstream it is...
I can't name 10 people who use MACS. "Mainstream" is more than just market share in the area where I live though. It has to do with mindshare, marketing, etc. Are you telling me that the MacOS 9 isn't mainstream? It is, and soon it will be replaced with OSX on shipping machines.
>imho, you should check your facts better before you start spouting.
IMHO you should not read too much into what other people say. Take my post at face value, and don't start the Aqua/Darwin nitpicking. That's not what the conversation was about.
I recently installed Debian. Do the Debian folks have anything like the FreeBSD handbook available? I am finding Debian documentation difficult to locate. Every time I need to install something I have to sift through Deja and Google searches looking for clues.
Heck, if you click on "Support" at the Debian home page, it just tells you about the mailing lists and bug reporting system. Tell me there's more. I'm having fun with it, but I could have a lot more.
Naturally, because of all the advantages Linux offers over OSX.
Er, like what?
If you consider difficult installation and maintenance a feature, Linux comes out way ahead. Hell, I'll throw the BSDs in here too.
Have you *used* OSX, even the preview release? It's miles ahead of the free OSes in ease of use, and not far behind in power and flexibility. Granted, a sophisticated Linux/*BSD user could config up a really slick system, but OSx gives that to ANYONE... including the ability to run free Mac OS apps. And all the free stuff too.
For a pure server, OSX is overkill, with that GUI and everything. I bet it sucks speed away from any internet services the box may be running, and I would advise a straight BSD install for users needing hardcore Apache/PHP/etc. But for the desktop, I think it smokes any "freenix" distro you can name. And that's just the beta version.
OSX's significant weaknesses, the things that will keep it from edging into BSD's/Linux's market share, are these:
- It only runs on Mac hardware.
- It isn't free. As in beer, speech, porn, rifles, or whatever.
- It's mainstream, and image-conscious Linux/BSD advocates won't like that. Easy to use? That's for chumps!
That said, MacOS X, Linux and the BSDs all have their place. Can't we stop fighting, and all get along?
Side rant: Why are these things always couched in terms of the "threat to Linux?" There are other free Unix-like OSes out there, you know.
I have said it before, I'll say it again. Apple doesn't do a lot of marketing research. Apple produces what Apple thinks is COOL -- "insanely great," as they say.
Sometimes, Apple produces products that the world is ready for -- things that are cool AND useful. For example, the iMac, the original LaserWriter, and maybe now the cheap DVD authoring. Good stuff. Clever stuff. Useful. Foresighted.
But sometimes, Apple produces something that is cool, but NO ONE WANTS. Best example: the Newton. Foresighted. Clever. Crippled by price and size. They were impressive toys, especially the 2000 series, but they were too early and too expensive. No one outside Apple understood PDAs until later. Even Apple didn't understand them totally.
Apple stays in business ONLY because their instincts about what's cool/useful overlaps with what people WANT often enough to turn a profit.
If Apple ever got their act together, they'd be a real force in the market, instead of a niche player. But they haven't learned yet that they can't force us into something we're not ready for. (OK, *I* was ready for the Newton, but most people weren't.)
I read it when I was about 19, as part of a sci-fi literature class at UC Santa Barbara. (That was a COOL class -- we read Watchmen and Dark Knight returns too!)
I am 29 now, and I just finished re-reading LOTR, and I also enjoyed it a lot more than when I was 10, or 12, or whenever I first found it.
I love SF and I have read all the classics, and as much modern stuff as I have time for. But man, I just could NOT get into Ender's Game. Mod me down, but there it is -- I didn't like the book. Couldn't even finish the sequel. I know this is high treason on/., but I gotta be me.
I don't think a movie adaptation is a good idea. It's rare enough to find one kid who can act, let alone a whole gaggle of them. It will probably be painful to watch if it's ever made. Imagine a dozen Anakin Skywalkers. Ack.
I think I'll go read some Larry Niven now. Some OLD Niven... his latest books haven't been so hot. (Speaking of movies that shouldn't be made... Ringworld. What a great book; what a terrible movie it will probably make. I hear Phil Tippet is the director, and Chow yun-Fat may play Louis Wu. They have a hard road ahead.)
Oh, off-topic public service message: Avoid "Teranesia" by Greg Egan. How could the guy who wrote "Quarantine," and that GREAT short story "Luminous" turn out this trash?
In closing, let me say, "... and I would have done it, too, if it weren't for you MEDDLING KIDS!"
Just because it makes a good golf club doesn't mean it would make a good laptop enclosure. I bet it's expensive too -- it's got beryllium in it, and that isn't cheap.
But, with the information available to us at this time, I can't stick my neck out on this guy's behalf.
IF everything is as it APPEARS to be then yes, this is an unjust bust, and the guy should sue the pants off everyone involved. It would be wonderful to see. And my gut says that there's nothing fishy going on here.
But the fact is, dear slashdotters, that we can't be sure we know the REAL story. For example, maybe the porno images the kid used were the vilest, most stomach-churning kind. Any of you willing to mirror that? Any of you guys SURE that his site would fail an obscenity test?
I think we should support the guy, but be cautious about your approach until all the facts are in. When the facts ARE in, if things stack up, I'll contribute to his legal fun myself, and I encourage you to also.
"Dirty" Harry Callahan was a great cop. Sure, he blew a lot of guys away -- but if you watch the movies they all deserved it. There was no grey area. It was black and white. They were bad, and they paid the price.
If Dirty Harry ever made a non-righteous shoot, please post and I will eat my proverbial hat.
It is a simplistic view of the world, but I can sure see why a cop would like it.
On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. There are just some times when the military needs a couple of gigawatts of directed energy in a self-propelled package! If we had a couple of these in the Gulf War, we probably would have done better shooting down SCUDs. That's the sort of thing these are made for -- theater missile defense.
This weapons platform isn't made for popping fighter planes or tanks. I'm sure it could be re-tasked to that if they wanted. That would be an interesting battlefield...
The CNN article is quite good. It pulls together facts that I have in the past seen scattered all over, or that I had to get from the ABL guys when I met them at an air show. And when it talks about a fleet of these things -- they are serious. They will test a couple of prototypes, and if they work out, they'll build like 20 of them, according to the guy I talked to and the flyer he gave me.
One thing the article didn't mention was range, which I was told would be 120-150 miles. Whoop! I want one.
I can't think of anything better than something made by Unisys, Dell and Microsoft, especially if it is part of the American political process. Heck, the only way this could get better is if we got DoubleClick involved! New for 2004: Microsoft DirectBallot.
But seriously, this is lunacy. I don't think that computerized voting is the way to go. Paper ballots have their place. It's a lot harder to make votes magically appear when they are represented on paper rather than bits. And one standard for voting makes some kind of security compromise easier... as screwy as it looks, having a variety of different machines making marks on paper makes an election harder to rig.
And please -- no comments about the last Presidential election, we've been there and done that.
Good price. I paid a lot more than that, but it was a couple of years ago.
Is that dealer an official Energy dealer? When I was shopping there were a lot of mail-order deals, but they were all classified as "grey market" and Energy would NOT honor a warranty on them. I ended up going retail and paying more to get the warranty.
The same, by the way, goes for a lot of other makers. Yamaha, for example -- you can get some great deals on mail-order Yamaha stuff, but when I was shopping it was the case that all those places were selling you a unit with no warranty. I had to go retail on my AV receiver as well because of this.
Now, of course, I am out of warranty on everything with no problems. Should have bought mail order and saved the money.:)
On Usenet, that post would touch off a 5-day flamewar between the DTS/DD camps.:)
I haven't done an A/B test yet on my system, but from what I have heard DTS is mostly just LOUDER than DD, for the same setting of the volume knob. It does sound good, but if the imaging, etc. was better it wasn't better enough to make me sit up and take notice. Someday I'll have to do a direct comparison on my Gladiator DVD.
But yes, anyone buying today should make sure they have DD AND DTS support.
I have an Energy home theater setup, and it rules. It's the "Take 5" stellite system with the 8" sub. You can get a 12" sub for a few hundred bucks more, but depending on the size of your viewing area you may not need it.
The Take 5 with sub was, like $800-850, something like that when I got it almost 2 years ago. I don't know if they even make it anymore, but Energy has a good reputation for price:quality. I would definitely investigate them if I was shopping again.
I run everything off my Yamaha RX-V995 receiver. Yes, I will get slammed by the audiophiles for not buying an external decoder, separate amps, separate preamp, etc. But I saved a bundle and the Yamaha does everything I need (including 5 SVHS video inputs). It can acomodate an external decoder if there is another 5-channel surround sound standard I want to support later.
Oh, it sounds great too, to the limit of my hearing anyway. It was a $1000 unit. Unless you have golden ears, I don't think you need to spend more than than on decoding/amplification/input switching. Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon are all pretty good. Harmon Kardon stuff tends to be quirky from what I have read, read up on any HK unit you are interested in.
I'm sure it's great, but I doubt it is the best you can get. And only 4+1 speakers? What about center channel sound? You need 5 speakers + sub for DD and DTS.
A while back, I hacked a PC keyboard up so I could plug hand buzzers and other controls into it. Idea being, you mash a button and it registers a keystroke.
On my site I cover, with photos, how to dissect a keyboard for this purpose. The photos are crummy, sorry, this was years ago before I had a nicer digital camera.
Once you have wired up the keyboard, get an industrial foot pedal or three and stomp away! You can get foot pedals at Grainger.com. I bought one and used it for a home-made Time Crisis reload pedal.
OSX takes a modern Mac UI, and the ability to run Mac apps, and puts it on top of a modern kernel with preemptive multitasking and all that other BSD type goodness.
It's apparently also a good development environment, though I am a crummy programmer and can't address that.
OSX is basically a Mac OS that has Unix guts. That is the added value. If you don't care about Mac apps, by all means stick to Linux and the Gimp.
Would I buy a Mac to run Apache? No, that isn't the best value. FreeBSD on Intel hardware is a high-value solution for that kind of thing. But if I wanted a "real" desktop type OS that had a strong Unix foundation, I would use MacOS X. (And yes, I have used today's free GUIs... Debian, for example, has a long way to go before it is as easy to install and use as MacOS X. OK, go ahead, mod me down... but you know it's true.)
If you were hiding under your desk, and some nutty coworker was blazing away, trying to kill everyone in your office, would you really be unhappy if another officemate produced a pistol and returned fire? "Better put that down Bob, someone might get hu-- OH DEAR GOD THE NUTBALL SHOT ME! PUT THAT GUN DOWN BOB AND LET HIM FINISH ME OFF!"
I would rather take my chances with "Bob's" marksmanship than cower there waiting for the end.
If you guys knew how well the average cop shoots, you'd feel the same way. Those guys with the badges and the guns? They are great, and I am a big cop supporter, but check this out:
- They are, on average, terrible marksmen. Your average hobbyist shooter is more skilled than your average cop, who regards the periodic pistol qualification as work, and something to put as little effort as possible into. They don't like shooting and they do as little as they can.
- Cops have no legal responsibility to run into the crime scene and shoot the bad guy. In the US, anyway -- the Supreme Court is very clear on that. Cops are good people, mostly, but they do NOT have to get into a gun battle to save your ass.
- There won't be a cop there anyway when someone goes nuts. You have to be responsible for your own life.
These are some of the reasons that I live in a pro-freedom state, where I can carry a weapon if I decided I need to. And do the streets of Seattle run red with blood every night? Hardly.
I am extremely safety conscious. That doesn't mean I have to be scared all the time. It means you I to be cautious, repectful and aware of the consequences of my actions.
Fear has its uses, but it impairs your functioning too.
I have thought about this before too, but even my cynical self doesn't think that things will go this way. There is obviously value in exerting control on the hardware world, but there is MORE value in dominating the software world.
Microsoft will, IMHO, run with their.NET lunacy, and move all of their software to a "pay-per-view" model. (Heck, they've plain SAID as much, haven't they? Somewhere?)
Software will become a service, not something you necessarily buy on a CD. You'll be charged subscription fees to use your word processor. Hell, they may charge you for each new document you create, or each time you use bold text, or apply a $n surcharge to any document that features colored text. Sky's the limit in this model, and they will push us right up to the edge of revold with their fees. This IS the future, and we need to prepare for it.
In this model, it is more valuable to them to have their software running on ANY hardware possible, not just MS-approved boxes.
Personally, I find the thought of subscription based software that is always in communication with the MS Home Office to be repulsive. Each day I am closer to becoming one of those wild-eyed, long-haired, sandal wearing free software advocates.:) (Oh, wait, since I run FreeBSD and now Debian on another box I guess I am!)
Slashdot Mirror
>Could this be used to reverse ageing?
Well, maybe, but a more direct genetic tinkering approach is more likely to yield progress there.
As we understand more and more of the human genome, and biochemistry in general, we will be able to do some amazing things. Like sci-fi amazing.
We're close to some amazing things already, with prototypes of plants that produce plastic. But someday in the not too distant future we're going to learn how to manipulate our aging and self-repair mechanisms. We'll also be able to twiddle with our kids, just like they were doing in the movie Gattaca. And we'll be able to create some new, awful diseases.
This stuff is right around the corner, folks. Biotech has great potential for good, and ill. And we thought our NUCLEAR adolescence was bad -- we ain't seen nothin' yet.
>Right, I am a FreeBSD and Mac OS X user (and sometimes Linux too).
Ditto. I think we are really on the same side here.
>Erhm, you are forgetting that Mac OS X PB is time limited (rumoured to stop working May 15, 2001). Oh, and to run older MacOS apps you need MacOS 9 too.
Well, yeah it's time limited, it's a public beta/demo. I'm just talking about the technology, which we got a good preview of via the PB. I'm not saying people will be using the PB in a production environment. That's loco.
Yes, the old apps need the "classic" environment, but that will be included in the final release of OSX. Not like you have to buy anything extra. So your OS9 argument doesn't hold water.
> That's a piece of crock, because you can switch that off.
Of course you can, I know about the ">console" trick too. My point is that if you need to do that, you may as well use a "freenix" instead.
> Darwin != Aqua, but MacOS X == Darwin + Aqua + probably some more stuff.
Correct. And I was talking about Mac OSX, not just Darwin. MacOSX isn't free. Which I don't care too much about, but there are zealots around here who wouldn't use payware to save their life. That's the observation I was making. You seem to be confusing ME with one of the aforementioned zealots.
>Okay, name 10 people in your direct vicinity that *use* Mac OS X PB _right_ _now_. You can't huh? Well, *that*'s how mainstream it is...
I can't name 10 people who use MACS. "Mainstream" is more than just market share in the area where I live though. It has to do with mindshare, marketing, etc. Are you telling me that the MacOS 9 isn't mainstream? It is, and soon it will be replaced with OSX on shipping machines.
>imho, you should check your facts better before you start spouting.
IMHO you should not read too much into what other people say. Take my post at face value, and don't start the Aqua/Darwin nitpicking. That's not what the conversation was about.
>Use Debian, cause it's the right thing to do.
I recently installed Debian. Do the Debian folks have anything like the FreeBSD handbook available? I am finding Debian documentation difficult to locate. Every time I need to install something I have to sift through Deja and Google searches looking for clues.
Heck, if you click on "Support" at the Debian home page, it just tells you about the mailing lists and bug reporting system. Tell me there's more. I'm having fun with it, but I could have a lot more.
Naturally, because of all the advantages Linux offers over OSX.
Er, like what?
If you consider difficult installation and maintenance a feature, Linux comes out way ahead. Hell, I'll throw the BSDs in here too.
Have you *used* OSX, even the preview release? It's miles ahead of the free OSes in ease of use, and not far behind in power and flexibility. Granted, a sophisticated Linux/*BSD user could config up a really slick system, but OSx gives that to ANYONE... including the ability to run free Mac OS apps. And all the free stuff too.
For a pure server, OSX is overkill, with that GUI and everything. I bet it sucks speed away from any internet services the box may be running, and I would advise a straight BSD install for users needing hardcore Apache/PHP/etc. But for the desktop, I think it smokes any "freenix" distro you can name. And that's just the beta version.
OSX's significant weaknesses, the things that will keep it from edging into BSD's/Linux's market share, are these:
- It only runs on Mac hardware.
- It isn't free. As in beer, speech, porn, rifles, or whatever.
- It's mainstream, and image-conscious Linux/BSD advocates won't like that. Easy to use? That's for chumps! That said, MacOS X, Linux and the BSDs all have their place. Can't we stop fighting, and all get along? Side rant: Why are these things always couched in terms of the "threat to Linux?" There are other free Unix-like OSes out there, you know.
I have said it before, I'll say it again. Apple doesn't do a lot of marketing research. Apple produces what Apple thinks is COOL -- "insanely great," as they say.
Sometimes, Apple produces products that the world is ready for -- things that are cool AND useful. For example, the iMac, the original LaserWriter, and maybe now the cheap DVD authoring. Good stuff. Clever stuff. Useful. Foresighted.
But sometimes, Apple produces something that is cool, but NO ONE WANTS. Best example: the Newton. Foresighted. Clever. Crippled by price and size. They were impressive toys, especially the 2000 series, but they were too early and too expensive. No one outside Apple understood PDAs until later. Even Apple didn't understand them totally.
Apple stays in business ONLY because their instincts about what's cool/useful overlaps with what people WANT often enough to turn a profit.
If Apple ever got their act together, they'd be a real force in the market, instead of a niche player. But they haven't learned yet that they can't force us into something we're not ready for. (OK, *I* was ready for the Newton, but most people weren't.)
I read it when I was about 19, as part of a sci-fi literature class at UC Santa Barbara. (That was a COOL class -- we read Watchmen and Dark Knight returns too!)
I am 29 now, and I just finished re-reading LOTR, and I also enjoyed it a lot more than when I was 10, or 12, or whenever I first found it.
I love SF and I have read all the classics, and as much modern stuff as I have time for. But man, I just could NOT get into Ender's Game. Mod me down, but there it is -- I didn't like the book. Couldn't even finish the sequel. I know this is high treason on
I don't think a movie adaptation is a good idea. It's rare enough to find one kid who can act, let alone a whole gaggle of them. It will probably be painful to watch if it's ever made. Imagine a dozen Anakin Skywalkers. Ack.
I think I'll go read some Larry Niven now. Some OLD Niven... his latest books haven't been so hot. (Speaking of movies that shouldn't be made... Ringworld. What a great book; what a terrible movie it will probably make. I hear Phil Tippet is the director, and Chow yun-Fat may play Louis Wu. They have a hard road ahead.)
Oh, off-topic public service message: Avoid "Teranesia" by Greg Egan. How could the guy who wrote "Quarantine," and that GREAT short story "Luminous" turn out this trash?
In closing, let me say, "... and I would have done it, too, if it weren't for you MEDDLING KIDS!"
>Earth to IronChef: Dirty Harry Callahan is a MOVIE character!
I'm aware of that.
Just because it makes a good golf club doesn't mean it would make a good laptop enclosure. I bet it's expensive too -- it's got beryllium in it, and that isn't cheap.
I would like to help.
But, with the information available to us at this time, I can't stick my neck out on this guy's behalf.
IF everything is as it APPEARS to be then yes, this is an unjust bust, and the guy should sue the pants off everyone involved. It would be wonderful to see. And my gut says that there's nothing fishy going on here.
But the fact is, dear slashdotters, that we can't be sure we know the REAL story. For example, maybe the porno images the kid used were the vilest, most stomach-churning kind. Any of you willing to mirror that? Any of you guys SURE that his site would fail an obscenity test?
I think we should support the guy, but be cautious about your approach until all the facts are in. When the facts ARE in, if things stack up, I'll contribute to his legal fun myself, and I encourage you to also.
"Dirty" Harry Callahan was a great cop. Sure, he blew a lot of guys away -- but if you watch the movies they all deserved it. There was no grey area. It was black and white. They were bad, and they paid the price.
If Dirty Harry ever made a non-righteous shoot, please post and I will eat my proverbial hat.
It is a simplistic view of the world, but I can sure see why a cop would like it.
(ATTENTION: This is sarcasm.)
Then clearly the personal computer is a wild frontier too -- I mean look at all those Linux distros. ANYONE can put one out. That's not right!
We should welcome the "civilization" of the home computer as well. Thank goodness we have Microsoft and other big businesses to help us with this.
On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. There are just some times when the military needs a couple of gigawatts of directed energy in a self-propelled package! If we had a couple of these in the Gulf War, we probably would have done better shooting down SCUDs. That's the sort of thing these are made for -- theater missile defense.
This weapons platform isn't made for popping fighter planes or tanks. I'm sure it could be re-tasked to that if they wanted. That would be an interesting battlefield...
The CNN article is quite good. It pulls together facts that I have in the past seen scattered all over, or that I had to get from the ABL guys when I met them at an air show. And when it talks about a fleet of these things -- they are serious. They will test a couple of prototypes, and if they work out, they'll build like 20 of them, according to the guy I talked to and the flyer he gave me.
One thing the article didn't mention was range, which I was told would be 120-150 miles. Whoop! I want one.
I can't think of anything better than something made by Unisys, Dell and Microsoft, especially if it is part of the American political process. Heck, the only way this could get better is if we got DoubleClick involved! New for 2004: Microsoft DirectBallot.
But seriously, this is lunacy. I don't think that computerized voting is the way to go. Paper ballots have their place. It's a lot harder to make votes magically appear when they are represented on paper rather than bits. And one standard for voting makes some kind of security compromise easier... as screwy as it looks, having a variety of different machines making marks on paper makes an election harder to rig.
And please -- no comments about the last Presidential election, we've been there and done that.
Good price. I paid a lot more than that, but it was a couple of years ago.
Is that dealer an official Energy dealer? When I was shopping there were a lot of mail-order deals, but they were all classified as "grey market" and Energy would NOT honor a warranty on them. I ended up going retail and paying more to get the warranty.
The same, by the way, goes for a lot of other makers. Yamaha, for example -- you can get some great deals on mail-order Yamaha stuff, but when I was shopping it was the case that all those places were selling you a unit with no warranty. I had to go retail on my AV receiver as well because of this.
Now, of course, I am out of warranty on everything with no problems. Should have bought mail order and saved the money.
On Usenet, that post would touch off a 5-day flamewar between the DTS/DD camps.
I haven't done an A/B test yet on my system, but from what I have heard DTS is mostly just LOUDER than DD, for the same setting of the volume knob. It does sound good, but if the imaging, etc. was better it wasn't better enough to make me sit up and take notice. Someday I'll have to do a direct comparison on my Gladiator DVD.
But yes, anyone buying today should make sure they have DD AND DTS support.
I have an Energy home theater setup, and it rules. It's the "Take 5" stellite system with the 8" sub. You can get a 12" sub for a few hundred bucks more, but depending on the size of your viewing area you may not need it.
The Take 5 with sub was, like $800-850, something like that when I got it almost 2 years ago. I don't know if they even make it anymore, but Energy has a good reputation for price:quality. I would definitely investigate them if I was shopping again.
I run everything off my Yamaha RX-V995 receiver. Yes, I will get slammed by the audiophiles for not buying an external decoder, separate amps, separate preamp, etc. But I saved a bundle and the Yamaha does everything I need (including 5 SVHS video inputs). It can acomodate an external decoder if there is another 5-channel surround sound standard I want to support later.
Oh, it sounds great too, to the limit of my hearing anyway. It was a $1000 unit. Unless you have golden ears, I don't think you need to spend more than than on decoding/amplification/input switching. Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon are all pretty good. Harmon Kardon stuff tends to be quirky from what I have read, read up on any HK unit you are interested in.
I'm sure it's great, but I doubt it is the best you can get. And only 4+1 speakers? What about center channel sound? You need 5 speakers + sub for DD and DTS.
> Because Mac OS updates will trash non-apple drives.
Can you provide specific examples? Recent or not.
A while back, I hacked a PC keyboard up so I could plug hand buzzers and other controls into it. Idea being, you mash a button and it registers a keystroke.
On my site I cover, with photos, how to dissect a keyboard for this purpose. The photos are crummy, sorry, this was years ago before I had a nicer digital camera.
Once you have wired up the keyboard, get an industrial foot pedal or three and stomp away! You can get foot pedals at Grainger.com. I bought one and used it for a home-made Time Crisis reload pedal.
The Difference Engine by, uh, Stirling and Gibson was it? Good book, it explores this idea.
OSX takes a modern Mac UI, and the ability to run Mac apps, and puts it on top of a modern kernel with preemptive multitasking and all that other BSD type goodness.
It's apparently also a good development environment, though I am a crummy programmer and can't address that.
OSX is basically a Mac OS that has Unix guts. That is the added value. If you don't care about Mac apps, by all means stick to Linux and the Gimp.
Would I buy a Mac to run Apache? No, that isn't the best value. FreeBSD on Intel hardware is a high-value solution for that kind of thing. But if I wanted a "real" desktop type OS that had a strong Unix foundation, I would use MacOS X. (And yes, I have used today's free GUIs... Debian, for example, has a long way to go before it is as easy to install and use as MacOS X. OK, go ahead, mod me down... but you know it's true.)
If you were hiding under your desk, and some nutty coworker was blazing away, trying to kill everyone in your office, would you really be unhappy if another officemate produced a pistol and returned fire? "Better put that down Bob, someone might get hu-- OH DEAR GOD THE NUTBALL SHOT ME! PUT THAT GUN DOWN BOB AND LET HIM FINISH ME OFF!"
I would rather take my chances with "Bob's" marksmanship than cower there waiting for the end.
If you guys knew how well the average cop shoots, you'd feel the same way. Those guys with the badges and the guns? They are great, and I am a big cop supporter, but check this out:
- They are, on average, terrible marksmen. Your average hobbyist shooter is more skilled than your average cop, who regards the periodic pistol qualification as work, and something to put as little effort as possible into. They don't like shooting and they do as little as they can.
- Cops have no legal responsibility to run into the crime scene and shoot the bad guy. In the US, anyway -- the Supreme Court is very clear on that. Cops are good people, mostly, but they do NOT have to get into a gun battle to save your ass.
- There won't be a cop there anyway when someone goes nuts. You have to be responsible for your own life.
These are some of the reasons that I live in a pro-freedom state, where I can carry a weapon if I decided I need to. And do the streets of Seattle run red with blood every night? Hardly.
I am extremely safety conscious. That doesn't mean I have to be scared all the time. It means you I to be cautious, repectful and aware of the consequences of my actions.
Fear has its uses, but it impairs your functioning too.
I have thought about this before too, but even my cynical self doesn't think that things will go this way. There is obviously value in exerting control on the hardware world, but there is MORE value in dominating the software world.
Microsoft will, IMHO, run with their
Software will become a service, not something you necessarily buy on a CD. You'll be charged subscription fees to use your word processor. Hell, they may charge you for each new document you create, or each time you use bold text, or apply a $n surcharge to any document that features colored text. Sky's the limit in this model, and they will push us right up to the edge of revold with their fees. This IS the future, and we need to prepare for it.
In this model, it is more valuable to them to have their software running on ANY hardware possible, not just MS-approved boxes.
Personally, I find the thought of subscription based software that is always in communication with the MS Home Office to be repulsive. Each day I am closer to becoming one of those wild-eyed, long-haired, sandal wearing free software advocates.