Nah! It would be useless; applications would still need to be ported to the Apple toolkit and system libs. Take linux/FreeBSD and MS, they all run the same CPUs but good luck running programs across platforms;-) No, Apple needs to push their platform out of the niche they escaped to in the System N days. Get high profile engineering/science sw to Os X: EDA, CAD, simulators... workstation markets are essentially left to windows and although linux is growing, it's not at the same rate (boh, I wonder why... probably computer science isn't a prerequisite...) I'm thinking: matlab/simulink, labview, spice, fpga tools, autocad, etc... many already run RedHat and some even link against TT-Qt. When facing the risk of dodgy security destroying weeks worth of work would you jump ship? Yeah, I bet you'd do if your tools were available. Apple should offer these developers active support (hell, subsidize the port!) although DeveloperTools are already offered for free it doesn't seem to be enough... pay for the developer, walk them through the port process. Next keynote I'd like to see fpga synthesis shootouts: blazing Dell Vs. whisper cool G5.
Whoa, do you believe Jobs is some kind of Nero? "Port and see where the market goes" sounds like setting Rome on fire and singing poetry amidst the blazing glow.
Well, iCal is cool... works, dead simple. Mail.app too, rocks and weeds out spam. Windows users on the other hand live with Outlook (express) and IE so it's not like only Apple users have a tendency to bend over... The day these programs will suffer Outlook-itis I'll dump them in a second, Mozilla is already sitting in my/Applications folder for nntp usage... But anyway I don't beleive that will ever happen;-)
I think it's a more "engineered" approach at work here. First the Apple guys chose to get the infrastructure formally cool and correct. Then they went over it to check the bugs and start with the optimizations. Compare that to the MS approach: fill C:/WINNT with gazillion.dlls full of html views, pics and scripts to sweeten the sour candy. Hey, remember DirectX? Only it's 6th iteration started becoming somewhat useful. Nah, I've lived in MSdom, enjoy linuxdom and also osxland. In my view, MS is clueless, it's only drive is to lure users with featuritis (hoping Moore's law will cover their traces) away from competitors. Linux and GNU in general is cool, I love it; but it lacks focus... so many projects, platforms, struggling to interoperate with each other's quirks... take svg on KDE... viciously cool, but only 3 folks working on it. Wouldn't it be savage if this code had some hardware support, plugged straight into the lowest levels of the ui server talking straight to the kernel device drivers? Apple, did it (with pdf and quicktime) and here we are... a unix with great potential, good research and direction; it's an orchestra, with a director. I understand you're grumpy about the pricetag on 10.2; I had it preinstalled on my pb and am facing the same sourness for 10.3. I'm particularly sorry for the fabled db-like fs missing from this release. But the rest of the features and improvements really are impressive... wonder if the finder will be a usable ftp client;-) what surprises me is that Os X is the only corporate project i know that's getting faster and better over time, much like OpenS stuff like linux, postgres, apache, etc...
Floppy Drive... 15 EUR in parts-assemble shop... more expensive in big distribution shop. Handy? When? Installing a mouse driver you mean.;-) Modern floppys are crap, most are DOA, only useful are old ones fished out of bottom of desk drawers. You're better parted from your 15 EUR for a usb flash device... today's tradable file size (average mp3, video driver, pdf) don't fit. Let the floppy go, it's time. Plus, the hardware interface is 8 bit '80 prehistory... a waste of silicon and mobo space just for the controller and logic glue...
Thus making them the next Be? The options: 1. Downloadable ISO: not many will try, just the usual geeks sitting on large pipes. Many HW config to mess with (unsupported, poor hardware) and spoil the Apple plug and play feel. Even if they got it on PC mags (those willing to give up MS ads) how many "unwased" would dare re-part-it-un their "drivers"... naah! 2. Preloaded PCs... ask Be... 3. Just sit and watch their marketshare double-quadruple with their new hw/sw lineup. Blazing fast (ok, your cousin can cobble together a beige box with really hot HW... literally...), solidly engineered (get's faster on revision counts... unlike MS), secure, idiot proof... what else do you want, a floppy drive?;-)
So basically you're advocating Apple to do the masses a favour and close shop, right? Or perhaps give computers out for free? Sorry, but you're unreasonable; athough clearly you're suggesting Apple is unreasonable...;-)
Nah, some funny remarks I enjoy reading. Well, either moderators start hitting "I for one..." comments with extreme prejudice or some client side scripting could save the/. servers from folding.
fully agree... can't slashdot put some configurable javascript to run a regexp to hide_remove_destroy overlord_soviet russia_etc crap from the displayed page? Sever side filtering up to this detail would seriously/./. itself but a js could do... I'm really sick of it... if not for anything else, it makes me think of the time delta since hot grits were all around. Please, I'm feeling old!
... I'd rather have the Talk feature back on the OsX version. It really gets on my nerves that to use voice IM I have to fire Classic up. Ok, ok... as soon as iChatAV interoperates with win AIM clients I'll ditch the whole AOL crap but until then I'm stuck with this absurdity. Games... ha! I'd sooner play one on a java phone...;)
given the amount of spam that hits it I might as well disclose my email in uncrippled form; it wouldn't make any difference. Actually my email isn't kurious but curious etc at katamail... how did you get that wrong? It's named after an Ozric Tentacles album... cool stuff...
Most probably, once the cluster is "obsoleted" they'll take the Al jewels, puff the dust away and send them to the student labs, Admin, Professors Offices... MACs are legendary for their useful production timelife. Some very smart chap must have asked the golden question: How do we plug old server blades on my secretary's desk?
... and the/. storm doesn't seem to hurt it either...
Re:PowerPC Linux users had compiled boot 'scripts'
on
Booting Linux Faster
·
· Score: 1
I've tinkered with Linux for the past what, 5 years? Make has been here since much earlier... I feel ashamed for not having thought about it myself; it makes me think that after all I'm not "creative" as I thought...
Since Microsoft EULA forbids to disclose and/or perform any sort of benchmark on.NET I don't trust any performance roundup that pitches the Microsoft.NET platform against it's competition. Peer reviewed repeatable measurements is science, all the rest is just infomercial.
Hey cool off Mr. Law & Order. As far as I've been able to understand (something for the media to learn... next time they'll make shure I "understand" the "one true version" of the story) the chap is just a semi-homeless chap (we call them punkkabbestia) that knows computers like your average PFY nerd. Just by tinkering with browsers & sniffers (no really cool costom trojan...) he managed to shame lavish executives for their gross tech spending mistakes; previously they used to eat humble pie and admit tech isn't their business but the hippysh white robed Gandalfs in the server room. Some months ago I read some IDG report calling for some sort of C*O Pride Day and threatening nerdy techies to get their suits pressed because misconduct wouldn't be tolerated in today's economy. Some idiot must have read that report and here we are...
Oh come on, except for GTK and Qt I've never used an app written in any other format for more than what, 2 minutes? I'll concede to the java gui's but only because I couldn't find an equivalent on GTK/Qt. Honestly, enumerating a bunch of semi-unknown toolkits doesn't prove anything. I can think of 2, 3 custom looks for M$WIN that totally suck and nobody even dreams using and it's just as irrelevant. What really bugs me is that the main toolkits don't look polished enough. Sometimes the button shapes have that cluttered feeling that really hurts the eye (eg. the KDE media player), spilling icons, cerebral configs, spinbox controls duplicated to rulers and occasional really nasty designs. Sometimes really cool ideas trip on small annoying clumsiness (KDE konq linked multi view with one positionally locked to have slideshows... smart, but stinks bad ass... why not generate a good 'ol html view with fw/prev links? or the GNOME smb:// extension... ever tried browsing a server with 10 shared folders? How 'bout entering uname/pass 10 times!!!!) It's these little nasties that really offend users, not having to choose amongs 10 different TKs; IMHO the other options are pretty much irrelevant...
Don't try to make me look stupid, I'm perfectly aware people die. BTW I'm not particularly uneducated, albeit slowly I'm getting a degree in Electronic Engineering and had my good deal of Math, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, etc... I admit I'm not specifically trained in nuclear physics but I'm not your usual cab-driver opinionist. Back to my comment; had you read it and understood it I compared the nuclear industry to chemical. I think it's a good example as both present noticeable risk to the environment and inflicted quite some damage in the past. In my post I argue that unlike chemical accidents whose damages over a long but relatively tolerable timespan are weathered away, nuclear ones become permanet both in time and in magnitude of the damage. Your post begins with a "people die, there's no such thing as 100 % safe nuclear or safe dose so just live with it" in a rather matter of fact fashion. But then, slamming one of the links I proposed, you minimized the relevancy of Sellafield's pollution and proceeded to state that now it's safe and clean. Trouble is: nuclear pollution doesn't wear out but adds up; dangerously radioactive elements don't just decompose but remain in the environment for centuries if not millennia. That's not a legacy I wish to spill onto my descendancy; it's already troublesome for me the thought of those chemical accidents that contaminate the environment for decades (if not centuries for particularly stable formulas) and kill a couple hundred people in the process. Your happy hearted recklessness pretty much confirms my skepticism on the nuclear industry.
You see, I'm perfectly aware that nuclear energy has some advantages; unfortunately it's a dangerous beast to handle that requires large long term investments. Whenever there's lots of money involved, MBAs start the pissing contest against the "foolish" "overly cautious" scientists (that could they themselves make grave mistakes) over who holds the purse. Then invariably the shit hits the fan and when that happens it's not like in chem industry where at most a couple of generations are affected in a relatively limited area. You get entire regions gravely contaminated for centuries, millennia, eras where no human can live without 100% chance of dying. It's a rather cynical logic but I feel it's good. A nuclear mistake is irreparable, I don't want my descendancy to pay for it forever while I can live with something more temporary.
those are smartcards you are talking about. They contain a small general purpouse microprocessor and special storage for OS and data. Once locked, data cannot be read out of the device but only used within the programs stored within. It appals me that those things aren't ubiquitous and/or used for POS C/C systems. Some cryptalalysts managed to weasel some data out of them only by physically interfering with the operating device to cause program execution failures (heating or EM interference). Still much safer than a crummy magnetic strip and a numeric code.
XML. Attaching an object to an email would require a serialized function to encapsulate it inside an xml wrapper. Interoperating with the rest of the world using MIME TYPE around the plain object to keep outlook users happy (or appending the correct extension to the file). Obviously an ftp downloader sould either use the MIME TYPE or extension to match it to a local store one but it could be done.
But it would rid us of library hell, missing symlinks, library path? Imagine having access to all libs by name, version num and dependencies without fiddling with multiple paths and environment variables. Of course an expert coder can ls grep sed ldd/usr/lib or the rpm db to have something similar but hey SELECT * FROM volume WHERE type='lib' AND dependancy='common_lib' looks cute to me. It's actually conceptually more sound rather than piping some command's string output to fish out the info. Writing an app to build lib hierarchy trees would become simple as hello world. What would become of rpm? A tar -xzvf package.tar.gz as root would pour the datafiles into the disk and update the relation tables, all that's left to do is delete superseded libs or bailout if deps query returns !=0. Look, there's nothing special about these concepts, all that's needed is a sound extended attribute filesystem, a kernel daemon to refresh indexes transparently and user/system tools to be aware of the API and use it! If ld.so still checks ld.so.conf the whole exercise would be useless. Would it be difficult to rip the SQL parser out of Postgres and plug it into linux?
SELECT * FROM volume; would return files nicely organized according to their filetype. Images, movies, documents, audio files... Libraries? SELECT * FROM root WHERE type="library"; Executables? System files? Configuration files? Trouble is techies meddling out of their home directory are too familiar with the hyerarchical vision to get out of it but the vast majority of the lusers sometimes just live within their desktop "folder". I've played with the idea of an SQL/Relational filesystem 3 years ago and was slapped by all the bozos in love with/bin/usr/bin/usr/local/bin/usr/X11/bin/opt/bin ayeee! You know? I'd love to see this in the kernel, in the VFS stack. I'd like to see my installed libs in one place, versioned and dependency checked at the filesystem level. You know, Apple patented 'piles' but that's just a general purpouse FS table: SELECT name, type FROM volume WHERE type='pile' AND name='pile_name'; $HOME is just SELECT name FROM volume WHERE username='foo'; a compat layer is just matter of choosing the directory names that would trigger these queries. My hopes are on ReiserFS.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah! It would be useless; applications would still need to be ported to the Apple toolkit and system libs. Take linux/FreeBSD and MS, they all run the same CPUs but good luck running programs across platforms ;-) No, Apple needs to push their platform out of the niche they escaped to in the System N days. Get high profile engineering/science sw to Os X: EDA, CAD, simulators... workstation markets are essentially left to windows and although linux is growing, it's not at the same rate (boh, I wonder why... probably computer science isn't a prerequisite...) I'm thinking: matlab/simulink, labview, spice, fpga tools, autocad, etc... many already run RedHat and some even link against TT-Qt. When facing the risk of dodgy security destroying weeks worth of work would you jump ship? Yeah, I bet you'd do if your tools were available. Apple should offer these developers active support (hell, subsidize the port!) although DeveloperTools are already offered for free it doesn't seem to be enough... pay for the developer, walk them through the port process. Next keynote I'd like to see fpga synthesis shootouts: blazing Dell Vs. whisper cool G5.
Whoa, do you believe Jobs is some kind of Nero? "Port and see where the market goes" sounds like setting Rome on fire and singing poetry amidst the blazing glow.
Well, iCal is cool... works, dead simple. Mail.app too, rocks and weeds out spam. Windows users on the other hand live with Outlook (express) and IE so it's not like only Apple users have a tendency to bend over... The day these programs will suffer Outlook-itis I'll dump them in a second, Mozilla is already sitting in my /Applications folder for nntp usage... But anyway I don't beleive that will ever happen ;-)
I think it's a more "engineered" approach at work here. First the Apple guys chose to get the infrastructure formally cool and correct. Then they went over it to check the bugs and start with the optimizations. Compare that to the MS approach: fill C:/WINNT with gazillion .dlls full of html views, pics and scripts to sweeten the sour candy. Hey, remember DirectX? Only it's 6th iteration started becoming somewhat useful. Nah, I've lived in MSdom, enjoy linuxdom and also osxland. In my view, MS is clueless, it's only drive is to lure users with featuritis (hoping Moore's law will cover their traces) away from competitors. Linux and GNU in general is cool, I love it; but it lacks focus... so many projects, platforms, struggling to interoperate with each other's quirks... take svg on KDE... viciously cool, but only 3 folks working on it. Wouldn't it be savage if this code had some hardware support, plugged straight into the lowest levels of the ui server talking straight to the kernel device drivers? Apple, did it (with pdf and quicktime) and here we are... a unix with great potential, good research and direction; it's an orchestra, with a director. ;-) what surprises me is that Os X is the only corporate project i know that's getting faster and better over time, much like OpenS stuff like linux, postgres, apache, etc...
I understand you're grumpy about the pricetag on 10.2; I had it preinstalled on my pb and am facing the same sourness for 10.3. I'm particularly sorry for the fabled db-like fs missing from this release. But the rest of the features and improvements really are impressive... wonder if the finder will be a usable ftp client
Floppy Drive... 15 EUR in parts-assemble shop... more expensive in big distribution shop. Handy? When? Installing a mouse driver you mean. ;-) Modern floppys are crap, most are DOA, only useful are old ones fished out of bottom of desk drawers. You're better parted from your 15 EUR for a usb flash device... today's tradable file size (average mp3, video driver, pdf) don't fit. Let the floppy go, it's time. Plus, the hardware interface is 8 bit '80 prehistory... a waste of silicon and mobo space just for the controller and logic glue...
Thus making them the next Be? The options: ;-)
1. Downloadable ISO: not many will try, just the usual geeks sitting on large pipes. Many HW config to mess with (unsupported, poor hardware) and spoil the Apple plug and play feel. Even if they got it on PC mags (those willing to give up MS ads) how many "unwased" would dare re-part-it-un their "drivers"... naah!
2. Preloaded PCs... ask Be...
3. Just sit and watch their marketshare double-quadruple with their new hw/sw lineup. Blazing fast (ok, your cousin can cobble together a beige box with really hot HW... literally...), solidly engineered (get's faster on revision counts... unlike MS), secure, idiot proof... what else do you want, a floppy drive?
So basically you're advocating Apple to do the masses a favour and close shop, right? Or perhaps give computers out for free? Sorry, but you're unreasonable; athough clearly you're suggesting Apple is unreasonable... ;-)
Except that WMP sucks on windows too! ;-)
Nah, some funny remarks I enjoy reading. Well, either moderators start hitting "I for one..." comments with extreme prejudice or some client side scripting could save the /. servers from folding.
fully agree... can't slashdot put some configurable javascript to run a regexp to hide_remove_destroy overlord_soviet russia_etc crap from the displayed page? Sever side filtering up to this detail would seriously /. /. itself but a js could do... I'm really sick of it... if not for anything else, it makes me think of the time delta since hot grits were all around. Please, I'm feeling old!
... I'd rather have the Talk feature back on the OsX version. It really gets on my nerves that to use voice IM I have to fire Classic up. Ok, ok... as soon as iChatAV interoperates with win AIM clients I'll ditch the whole AOL crap but until then I'm stuck with this absurdity. Games... ha! I'd sooner play one on a java phone... ;)
given the amount of spam that hits it I might as well disclose my email in uncrippled form; it wouldn't make any difference. Actually my email isn't kurious but curious etc at katamail... how did you get that wrong? It's named after an Ozric Tentacles album... cool stuff...
Getting to smoke a cigarette before being shot isn't exacly what I call "something"...
Most probably, once the cluster is "obsoleted" they'll take the Al jewels, puff the dust away and send them to the student labs, Admin, Professors Offices... MACs are legendary for their useful production timelife. Some very smart chap must have asked the golden question: How do we plug old server blades on my secretary's desk?
... and the /. storm doesn't seem to hurt it either...
I've tinkered with Linux for the past what, 5 years? Make has been here since much earlier... I feel ashamed for not having thought about it myself; it makes me think that after all I'm not "creative" as I thought...
Since Microsoft EULA forbids to disclose and/or perform any sort of benchmark on .NET I don't trust any performance roundup that pitches the Microsoft .NET platform against it's competition. Peer reviewed repeatable measurements is science, all the rest is just infomercial.
Hey cool off Mr. Law & Order. As far as I've been able to understand (something for the media to learn... next time they'll make shure I "understand" the "one true version" of the story) the chap is just a semi-homeless chap (we call them punkkabbestia) that knows computers like your average PFY nerd. Just by tinkering with browsers & sniffers (no really cool costom trojan...) he managed to shame lavish executives for their gross tech spending mistakes; previously they used to eat humble pie and admit tech isn't their business but the hippysh white robed Gandalfs in the server room. Some months ago I read some IDG report calling for some sort of C*O Pride Day and threatening nerdy techies to get their suits pressed because misconduct wouldn't be tolerated in today's economy. Some idiot must have read that report and here we are...
Oh come on, except for GTK and Qt I've never used an app written in any other format for more than what, 2 minutes? I'll concede to the java gui's but only because I couldn't find an equivalent on GTK/Qt. Honestly, enumerating a bunch of semi-unknown toolkits doesn't prove anything. I can think of 2, 3 custom looks for M$WIN that totally suck and nobody even dreams using and it's just as irrelevant. What really bugs me is that the main toolkits don't look polished enough. Sometimes the button shapes have that cluttered feeling that really hurts the eye (eg. the KDE media player), spilling icons, cerebral configs, spinbox controls duplicated to rulers and occasional really nasty designs. Sometimes really cool ideas trip on small annoying clumsiness (KDE konq linked multi view with one positionally locked to have slideshows... smart, but stinks bad ass... why not generate a good 'ol html view with fw/prev links? or the GNOME smb:// extension... ever tried browsing a server with 10 shared folders? How 'bout entering uname/pass 10 times!!!!) It's these little nasties that really offend users, not having to choose amongs 10 different TKs; IMHO the other options are pretty much irrelevant...
Don't try to make me look stupid, I'm perfectly aware people die. BTW I'm not particularly uneducated, albeit slowly I'm getting a degree in Electronic Engineering and had my good deal of Math, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, etc... I admit I'm not specifically trained in nuclear physics but I'm not your usual cab-driver opinionist. Back to my comment; had you read it and understood it I compared the nuclear industry to chemical. I think it's a good example as both present noticeable risk to the environment and inflicted quite some damage in the past. In my post I argue that unlike chemical accidents whose damages over a long but relatively tolerable timespan are weathered away, nuclear ones become permanet both in time and in magnitude of the damage. Your post begins with a "people die, there's no such thing as 100 % safe nuclear or safe dose so just live with it" in a rather matter of fact fashion. But then, slamming one of the links I proposed, you minimized the relevancy of Sellafield's pollution and proceeded to state that now it's safe and clean. Trouble is: nuclear pollution doesn't wear out but adds up; dangerously radioactive elements don't just decompose but remain in the environment for centuries if not millennia. That's not a legacy I wish to spill onto my descendancy; it's already troublesome for me the thought of those chemical accidents that contaminate the environment for decades (if not centuries for particularly stable formulas) and kill a couple hundred people in the process. Your happy hearted recklessness pretty much confirms my skepticism on the nuclear industry.
Sellafield
... keep googling...
Sellafield 2
You see, I'm perfectly aware that nuclear energy has some advantages; unfortunately it's a dangerous beast to handle that requires large long term investments. Whenever there's lots of money involved, MBAs start the pissing contest against the "foolish" "overly cautious" scientists (that could they themselves make grave mistakes) over who holds the purse. Then invariably the shit hits the fan and when that happens it's not like in chem industry where at most a couple of generations are affected in a relatively limited area. You get entire regions gravely contaminated for centuries, millennia, eras where no human can live without 100% chance of dying. It's a rather cynical logic but I feel it's good. A nuclear mistake is irreparable, I don't want my descendancy to pay for it forever while I can live with something more temporary.
those are smartcards you are talking about. They contain a small general purpouse microprocessor and special storage for OS and data. Once locked, data cannot be read out of the device but only used within the programs stored within. It appals me that those things aren't ubiquitous and/or used for POS C/C systems. Some cryptalalysts managed to weasel some data out of them only by physically interfering with the operating device to cause program execution failures (heating or EM interference). Still much safer than a crummy magnetic strip and a numeric code.
XML. Attaching an object to an email would require a serialized function to encapsulate it inside an xml wrapper. Interoperating with the rest of the world using MIME TYPE around the plain object to keep outlook users happy (or appending the correct extension to the file). Obviously an ftp downloader sould either use the MIME TYPE or extension to match it to a local store one but it could be done.
But it would rid us of library hell, missing symlinks, library path? Imagine having access to all libs by name, version num and dependencies without fiddling with multiple paths and environment variables. Of course an expert coder can ls grep sed ldd /usr/lib or the rpm db to have something similar but hey SELECT * FROM volume WHERE type='lib' AND dependancy='common_lib' looks cute to me. It's actually conceptually more sound rather than piping some command's string output to fish out the info. Writing an app to build lib hierarchy trees would become simple as hello world. What would become of rpm? A tar -xzvf package.tar.gz as root would pour the datafiles into the disk and update the relation tables, all that's left to do is delete superseded libs or bailout if deps query returns !=0.
Look, there's nothing special about these concepts, all that's needed is a sound extended attribute filesystem, a kernel daemon to refresh indexes transparently and user/system tools to be aware of the API and use it! If ld.so still checks ld.so.conf the whole exercise would be useless. Would it be difficult to rip the SQL parser out of Postgres and plug it into linux?
SELECT * FROM volume; would return files nicely organized according to their filetype. Images, movies, documents, audio files... /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11/bin /opt/bin ayeee!
Libraries? SELECT * FROM root WHERE type="library";
Executables? System files? Configuration files?
Trouble is techies meddling out of their home directory are too familiar with the hyerarchical vision to get out of it but the vast majority of the lusers sometimes just live within their desktop "folder".
I've played with the idea of an SQL/Relational filesystem 3 years ago and was slapped by all the bozos in love with
You know? I'd love to see this in the kernel, in the VFS stack. I'd like to see my installed libs in one place, versioned and dependency checked at the filesystem level. You know, Apple patented 'piles' but that's just a general purpouse FS table: SELECT name, type FROM volume WHERE type='pile' AND name='pile_name';
$HOME is just SELECT name FROM volume WHERE username='foo'; a compat layer is just matter of choosing the directory names that would trigger these queries.
My hopes are on ReiserFS.