I actually did try to install Linux/m68K on my old SE/30 once, but I couldn't get the install to complete. I never tried NetBSD, though.
Since I lack an Ethernet card for the SE/30, it's not exactly a network-friendly computer. Dang cards (required for Apple's custom SE/30 slot) still cost more money than I'd consider paying for one, too.
4 years later, we were getting disk failures, on average, 2-3 times a week.
If you were maintaining an 8TB disk farm with 8GB drives, that's 1,000 drives.
Mean Time Before Failure means that half of all drives will fail before this time, not that a hard drive will last that long.
So, assume a 40,000 hour MTBF (which was common for hard drives a few years ago). That's about 4.5 years (40,000 hours divided by 24hours/day == 1667 days divided by 365days/year == 4.57years). At that point, about half of the drives would have been expected to fail. 500 drives is half of the total, and that works out to a drive failure every 3 days or so(1667 days divided by 500 drives == 3 days/drive), which is about 2-3 a week.
Either I royally screwed up my math (always possible) or your drives performed exactly as expected.
Um, no. People (like me) who own Macs but want a Unix system at home to fiddle with would naturally be attracted to LinuxPPC. But I also want an OS which actually support my computer's hardware and has a usable UI and applications. If Mac OS X wasn't coming out in 6 weeks, I'd have a Linux partition at home and dual-boot. But Mac OS X is going to be here Real Soon Now, so I don't bother with Linux.
In fact Mac OS X could put a tiny dent in Linux x86, too. Due to the less than stellar quality of Linux for the Macs, I've considered spending a grand or so to buy an x86 box to run Linux. Now I've got no need to do that. I'd imagine that there are plenty of Mac-using people who fall in the same boat.
This does however remind of an article in The Times (UK) about a year and a half ago about Israeli attempts to create a form of 'genetic weaponry' similar to chemical weapons but discriminatory....
And that article was crap. Since there is no Jewish gene(*see note below), there would be no way to determine if someone is Jewish or non-Jewish. Basically, there is no genetic difference between Jews from Arab countries (who make up a very large percentage of the population of Israel) and Arabs from Arab countries. Pretty stupid weapon, eh?
(* note) There was a recent study which showed that Kohanim may in fact share a common ancestor. Kohanim are (in theory) all descendants of Moses' brother Aaron, the first High Priest. Being a Kohanim is passed down father to son; if your father is a Kohanim and you're a boy, you are a Kohan as well. It's a male-only thing.
By testing many Jews around the world who claimed to be Kohanim, checking for a gene on their Y chromosome (which would only be passed down, father-to-son) and plugging in some numbers for rates of mutation, some British researchers concluded that the vast majority of the modern-day Kohanim share a common male ancestor from about 3500 years ago, which would date nicely with the whole Exodus from Egypt/founding of the Kohanim line. As a nice reinforcement, this gene was virtually impossible to find in people who weren't Kohanim. Kinda neat.
However, Kohanim are relatively small portion of Jews in the world, and only includes males anyway. Once again, a stupid idea for a bio-weapon.
1. The MS-Apple look and feel thing was lost by Apple because Apple had an agreement with MS where MS licenced certain UI features as part of an ancient version of Windows. It has nothing to do with this.
2. As many people have mentioned, if you don't defend a trademark, you lose protection for that trademark. That's why Disney runs around suing preschools that have Mickey Mouse on the wall. It's not that they hate pre-schools or enjoy the ill will, it's that if they don't, any one can make use of Mickey. That's the way the law works. I take it you can see the analogy with Apple.
Well, I read/. and own 2 Macs. Must be a freak of nature or something.
The reason for the heated arguments are simple. There's a loony fringe which doesn't respect other people's property and complains mightily when people try to protect what's theirs. Unfortunately, members of this loony fringe get to have their stories posted on/. with their asinine spin on them intact.
I bet that if Microsoft or Apple published a product called Linux, complete with a cute little penguin, they'd be singing a totally different tune.
I see a thriving black market in disabling this stupid device.
A smart person would just keep the damn thing installed, but disable it. If a cop pulls you over, tell him that the device is there, and show it to him. What's he going to do, a computerized diagnostic on your car?
I swear, the Brits are getting worse and worse at passing commonsense law. That tainted beef must be starting to kick in...
Thank God, the government will never allow a rip-off like that to take place.
Um, which government would that be? The government which is headed by TWO ex-oilmen? The government which was bought by large engergy concerns? The government whose "help" to California so far has been to offer to remove pollution caps? Give me a break.
Dubya and Vice President Heart Attack are going to screw California to the wall. Since they won't win in California in 2004, anyway (and since virtually all statewide and national officials from California are Democrats), they don't care.
Maybe what California needs to do is stop passing along tax revenues to the federal government. Then we can see if they're willing to help.
Sell me a bunch of Transmeta products on price / performance / support / versatility / reliability / etc. but power savings? That's just not that big a deal to us.
It might not be a big deal now, but how about in 6 months or so when the real cost of electricity is passed on to the consumers? If you started paying 10x more for your electricity than you're paying now, will power savings be an issue?
The biggest problem that I would want to fix in Monopoly is the "Magic Money" aspect of it. Other things I suggested just fall out of that.
Getting $200 for passing Go is the real problem. Putting money on Free Parking (I know, not an official rule) makes the game more of a lottery than anything else.
If you want to eliminate the automatic $200 from GO and Free Parking, you need money to develop properties from somewhere, and that somewhere is the bank.
Furthermore, if you need to keep on borrowing to improve lots, you can't rely on mortgages alone. So interest-based loans come in.
Like I said, I've never played this way, and I don't know if it would be more fun. But it would make it possible to develop properties quickly and without hitting the jackpot which is Free Parking. My guess is that it would make for a quicker, more skill-based game, if anything. Whether that's good or bad is up to the people playing.
Regardless of who invented it, it is a fun game. In fact, removing the anti-monopoly rule that was in the original game is the secret to making it fun. We all might hate Bill Gates, but we love owning Park Place and Boardwalk with hotels...
The problem with Monopoly is that it's a highly crappy model of how capitalism actually works. The guy who created the game (Charles Darrow, IIRC) didn't believe in credit, so you couldn't borrow money from the bank or have to pay interest. You just get magic money from the heavens every time you move around the board.
I've been thinking about better Monopoly rules. Here's what I've got:
1. You can borrow money from the bank to buy the properties or houses, but you have to pay it back, plus interest.
2. Every time you pass Go, rather than collect money, you need to make a loan interest payment on your outstanding balance.
3. Every time you pass Income Tax, rather than just when you land on it, you need to pay.
It's be interesting to play-test these rules and see how they work.
It's nice that someone like you wants other people to give away their stuff. Why limit it to the richest 1%? Why doesn't everyone just give half of what they earn to some central distribution agency? Perhaps this agency could provide food for the hungy, social programs for the poor, education for the young, roads, hospitals...
Oh, wait, I already give half of my money to an organization that does that. I like to call it Uncle Sam.
Yet another useless, flamebait article at OS Opinion.
I love this line: "Jef Raskin, has recently found himself out of favor in the Mac community, a group that normally includes him with the other apostles that surround the legend of Apple Computer."
As someone who reads just about all the Mac sites on a daily (if not hourly) basis, I have NEVER heard Raskin's opinions on OS X before, or heard any site report on his opinions, comment on his opinions, or even acknoledge that he has an opinion on Mac OS X.
Of course, someone will argue that this uniform lack of interest in Raskin's opinions is PROOF that he's out of favor. That someone would be a loony.
Huh? Motif PLAF looks fine on my Windows box. Apple did release a Mac PLAF which did *very very dirty things and was not pure Java*, and would not run on anything but the Mac OS. This was bad of Apple, but certainly not Sun's fault or the fault of Swing. (AWT wasn't even designed for "cross-platform platform-native UIs", whatever that means).
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. If you use AWT or Swing to make a Java app and run it on a Mac, it just doesn't look and feel like a Mac app. It feels like a pod person from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Something is just off about it.
I spend a large part of my days doing Swing work on Win32. For Win32, Swing comes a lot closer. But it's still not quite right. Theme colors, for just one example, don't quite show through.
Is the CLR going to make EVERYTHING look like a Win32 application? If so, it doesn't matter if it's ported to MacOS X; no one will buy apps that use it. Is it going to make everything look like native Mac/Linux/Solaris/Win32/whatever apps? I'd like to see how they plan to pull this off. The single menu bar/multiple menu bar problem alone will be entertaining, to say the least.
3. Cross-platform. Let's just say that more than Win32, MacOS, and WinCE are on the roadmap for the Common Language Runtime. More will be revealed with this in time.
And how is this going to work for GUIs? AWT and Swing have proven remarkably piss-poor at handing platform-native UIs in a cross-platform way. Anyone who has tried to deal with a Java app trying for a Mac look and feel will know what I mean. Things just don't quite work right.
If MS succeeds in doing this, it'll be great news for Mac owners, since any program written to the CLR will run on a Mac. But I have a funny feeling that it's not going to happen.
but you missed the one thing it has that you can't get from any standard desktop market machine, 64bit 66mhz PCI.
Before Apple put AGP on their towers, they included one 64bit, 66MHz PCI slot and stuck a video card in it. With the introduction of 2x and 4x AGP on Macs, it's gone away.
I would...if they could prove to me that they knew what they were doing.
And if you yourself were not well-versed in the art of architecture, how would you be able to judge?
Well, you might rely on the opinions of others who were able to judge. Perhaps there would be some sort of professional organization you could check with, see if this architect is a member.
And how does the professional organization let members in? Usually some sort of coursework or test must be passed.
And how does one prepare for this test? Well, probably some practice, as well as some instruction from others versed in architecture.
Gee, sounds a lot like getting a degree and going through formal training, eh?
As I've now said repeatedly in this thread, a CS degree is NOT proof of skill as a software engineer. But lacking other tests, it's the best we've got. Discounting it because it isn't perfect is, quite simply, dumb.
The fact is you CAN'T judge everyone on a case-by-case basis. There's no time. You need to filter when hiring. And a top-notch college education is a good filter. So are verbal and written communication skills. A resume submitted on a napkin is likely to be tossed no matter how smart you are. A person who can't compose a coherent thought during an interview isn't going to be hired. Such is life.
By the by, getting into AND graduating from a good school doesn't require money, which is implied by your "snobby college kids" remark. I had friends in school whose families were of incredibly limited means; dirt poor would have been a step up. They had to work harder than everyone else (work study jobs on top of classes, large loans to pay off after school was over), but they did it.
There's nothing dangerous about Ayn Rand's books (there's nothing dangerous about ANY book); they just aren't well-written. If she had spent some time learning how to structure a story and develop characters, she might have created literature. But instead they are just the dogmatic holy books of a very silly cult.
I would LOVE to live in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. No architectural degree - he studied civil engineering briefly.
Wright's houses are known for problems like, oh, serious leaking roofs. As an architect, he made a great self-promoter.
Are you going to tell me you are a better programmer than John Carmack? Do you really think you have a better handle on software engineering than Microsoft's Chief Software Architect(funny, but yes, thats his title).
I'm certain I have a better handle on the principles of Software Engineering than BillG. He, however, is a far better businessman than I am.
Ellison, AFAIK, isn't a programmer. But I could be wrong.
I know about Carmack's game work, but I've never seen his code. I don't do game programming, but the little I do know of game programming indicates that well-ordered, maintainable code isn't a high priority--fast running, fast-completed code is. Most game codebases have about a 6 month life span, with no significant updates. In-house commercial software will last for 30 years, with constant updates. How would Carmack do in this environment? I dunno, and since he's stinking rich and happy from working on games, we'll never find out.
Something like 100,000 software jobs open up every year, while our universities only graduate about 30,000 people with CS degrees. So why not have industry-standard apprenticeship programs.
Sigh; people should read my original post before replying. I agree completely that the current CS curriculum is NOT sufficient. I agree that an apprenticeship is an excellent idea. But a CS degree from a good school is a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Non-Traditional Students present a problem to the process, as the process wasn't designed for them. But retraining as a software engineer should be formalized, even if done at nights and at odd hours. And jobs in software are great,in the meantime, just as law students work in law offices before they pass the bar.
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Since I lack an Ethernet card for the SE/30, it's not exactly a network-friendly computer. Dang cards (required for Apple's custom SE/30 slot) still cost more money than I'd consider paying for one, too.
-jon
If you were maintaining an 8TB disk farm with 8GB drives, that's 1,000 drives.
Mean Time Before Failure means that half of all drives will fail before this time, not that a hard drive will last that long.
So, assume a 40,000 hour MTBF (which was common for hard drives a few years ago). That's about 4.5 years (40,000 hours divided by 24hours/day == 1667 days divided by 365days/year == 4.57years). At that point, about half of the drives would have been expected to fail. 500 drives is half of the total, and that works out to a drive failure every 3 days or so(1667 days divided by 500 drives == 3 days/drive), which is about 2-3 a week.
Either I royally screwed up my math (always possible) or your drives performed exactly as expected.
-jon
In fact Mac OS X could put a tiny dent in Linux x86, too. Due to the less than stellar quality of Linux for the Macs, I've considered spending a grand or so to buy an x86 box to run Linux. Now I've got no need to do that. I'd imagine that there are plenty of Mac-using people who fall in the same boat.
-jon
IIRC, Data's inability to use contractions was a bit shaky at first. He very well may have said "I'm."
-jon
ssh is included in Mac OS X. You can turn it on with the click of a checkbox.
-jon
And that article was crap. Since there is no Jewish gene(*see note below), there would be no way to determine if someone is Jewish or non-Jewish. Basically, there is no genetic difference between Jews from Arab countries (who make up a very large percentage of the population of Israel) and Arabs from Arab countries. Pretty stupid weapon, eh?
(* note) There was a recent study which showed that Kohanim may in fact share a common ancestor. Kohanim are (in theory) all descendants of Moses' brother Aaron, the first High Priest. Being a Kohanim is passed down father to son; if your father is a Kohanim and you're a boy, you are a Kohan as well. It's a male-only thing.
By testing many Jews around the world who claimed to be Kohanim, checking for a gene on their Y chromosome (which would only be passed down, father-to-son) and plugging in some numbers for rates of mutation, some British researchers concluded that the vast majority of the modern-day Kohanim share a common male ancestor from about 3500 years ago, which would date nicely with the whole Exodus from Egypt/founding of the Kohanim line. As a nice reinforcement, this gene was virtually impossible to find in people who weren't Kohanim. Kinda neat.
However, Kohanim are relatively small portion of Jews in the world, and only includes males anyway. Once again, a stupid idea for a bio-weapon.
-jon
I haven't seen them myself. If Apple wants to sue, that's their right. Then it's for the courts to decide if they are similar enough to infringe.
-jon
2. As many people have mentioned, if you don't defend a trademark, you lose protection for that trademark. That's why Disney runs around suing preschools that have Mickey Mouse on the wall. It's not that they hate pre-schools or enjoy the ill will, it's that if they don't, any one can make use of Mickey. That's the way the law works. I take it you can see the analogy with Apple.
-jon
The reason for the heated arguments are simple. There's a loony fringe which doesn't respect other people's property and complains mightily when people try to protect what's theirs. Unfortunately, members of this loony fringe get to have their stories posted on /. with their asinine spin on them intact.
I bet that if Microsoft or Apple published a product called Linux, complete with a cute little penguin, they'd be singing a totally different tune.
-jon
Go ahead, mod me down. You're still an idiot.
-jon
A smart person would just keep the damn thing installed, but disable it. If a cop pulls you over, tell him that the device is there, and show it to him. What's he going to do, a computerized diagnostic on your car?
I swear, the Brits are getting worse and worse at passing commonsense law. That tainted beef must be starting to kick in...
-jon
Um, which government would that be? The government which is headed by TWO ex-oilmen? The government which was bought by large engergy concerns? The government whose "help" to California so far has been to offer to remove pollution caps? Give me a break.
Dubya and Vice President Heart Attack are going to screw California to the wall. Since they won't win in California in 2004, anyway (and since virtually all statewide and national officials from California are Democrats), they don't care.
Maybe what California needs to do is stop passing along tax revenues to the federal government. Then we can see if they're willing to help.
-jon
It might not be a big deal now, but how about in 6 months or so when the real cost of electricity is passed on to the consumers? If you started paying 10x more for your electricity than you're paying now, will power savings be an issue?
-jon
Getting $200 for passing Go is the real problem. Putting money on Free Parking (I know, not an official rule) makes the game more of a lottery than anything else.
If you want to eliminate the automatic $200 from GO and Free Parking, you need money to develop properties from somewhere, and that somewhere is the bank.
Furthermore, if you need to keep on borrowing to improve lots, you can't rely on mortgages alone. So interest-based loans come in.
Like I said, I've never played this way, and I don't know if it would be more fun. But it would make it possible to develop properties quickly and without hitting the jackpot which is Free Parking. My guess is that it would make for a quicker, more skill-based game, if anything. Whether that's good or bad is up to the people playing.
Regardless of who invented it, it is a fun game. In fact, removing the anti-monopoly rule that was in the original game is the secret to making it fun. We all might hate Bill Gates, but we love owning Park Place and Boardwalk with hotels...
-jon
I've been thinking about better Monopoly rules. Here's what I've got:
1. You can borrow money from the bank to buy the properties or houses, but you have to pay it back, plus interest.
2. Every time you pass Go, rather than collect money, you need to make a loan interest payment on your outstanding balance.
3. Every time you pass Income Tax, rather than just when you land on it, you need to pay.
It's be interesting to play-test these rules and see how they work.
-jon
Oh, wait, I already give half of my money to an organization that does that. I like to call it Uncle Sam.
-jon
I love this line: "Jef Raskin, has recently found himself out of favor in the Mac community, a group that normally includes him with the other apostles that surround the legend of Apple Computer."
As someone who reads just about all the Mac sites on a daily (if not hourly) basis, I have NEVER heard Raskin's opinions on OS X before, or heard any site report on his opinions, comment on his opinions, or even acknoledge that he has an opinion on Mac OS X.
Of course, someone will argue that this uniform lack of interest in Raskin's opinions is PROOF that he's out of favor. That someone would be a loony.
-jon
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. If you use AWT or Swing to make a Java app and run it on a Mac, it just doesn't look and feel like a Mac app. It feels like a pod person from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Something is just off about it.
I spend a large part of my days doing Swing work on Win32. For Win32, Swing comes a lot closer. But it's still not quite right. Theme colors, for just one example, don't quite show through.
Is the CLR going to make EVERYTHING look like a Win32 application? If so, it doesn't matter if it's ported to MacOS X; no one will buy apps that use it. Is it going to make everything look like native Mac/Linux/Solaris/Win32/whatever apps? I'd like to see how they plan to pull this off. The single menu bar/multiple menu bar problem alone will be entertaining, to say the least.
-jon
And how is this going to work for GUIs? AWT and Swing have proven remarkably piss-poor at handing platform-native UIs in a cross-platform way. Anyone who has tried to deal with a Java app trying for a Mac look and feel will know what I mean. Things just don't quite work right.
If MS succeeds in doing this, it'll be great news for Mac owners, since any program written to the CLR will run on a Mac. But I have a funny feeling that it's not going to happen.
-jon
Before Apple put AGP on their towers, they included one 64bit, 66MHz PCI slot and stuck a video card in it. With the introduction of 2x and 4x AGP on Macs, it's gone away.
-jon
-jon
And if you yourself were not well-versed in the art of architecture, how would you be able to judge?
Well, you might rely on the opinions of others who were able to judge. Perhaps there would be some sort of professional organization you could check with, see if this architect is a member.
And how does the professional organization let members in? Usually some sort of coursework or test must be passed.
And how does one prepare for this test? Well, probably some practice, as well as some instruction from others versed in architecture.
Gee, sounds a lot like getting a degree and going through formal training, eh?
As I've now said repeatedly in this thread, a CS degree is NOT proof of skill as a software engineer. But lacking other tests, it's the best we've got. Discounting it because it isn't perfect is, quite simply, dumb.
-jon
By the by, getting into AND graduating from a good school doesn't require money, which is implied by your "snobby college kids" remark. I had friends in school whose families were of incredibly limited means; dirt poor would have been a step up. They had to work harder than everyone else (work study jobs on top of classes, large loans to pay off after school was over), but they did it.
-jon
-jon
Wright's houses are known for problems like, oh, serious leaking roofs. As an architect, he made a great self-promoter.
Are you going to tell me you are a better programmer than John Carmack? Do you really think you have a better handle on software engineering than Microsoft's Chief Software Architect(funny, but yes, thats his title).
I'm certain I have a better handle on the principles of Software Engineering than BillG. He, however, is a far better businessman than I am.
Ellison, AFAIK, isn't a programmer. But I could be wrong.
I know about Carmack's game work, but I've never seen his code. I don't do game programming, but the little I do know of game programming indicates that well-ordered, maintainable code isn't a high priority--fast running, fast-completed code is. Most game codebases have about a 6 month life span, with no significant updates. In-house commercial software will last for 30 years, with constant updates. How would Carmack do in this environment? I dunno, and since he's stinking rich and happy from working on games, we'll never find out.
Something like 100,000 software jobs open up every year, while our universities only graduate about 30,000 people with CS degrees. So why not have industry-standard apprenticeship programs.
Sigh; people should read my original post before replying. I agree completely that the current CS curriculum is NOT sufficient. I agree that an apprenticeship is an excellent idea. But a CS degree from a good school is a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Non-Traditional Students present a problem to the process, as the process wasn't designed for them. But retraining as a software engineer should be formalized, even if done at nights and at odd hours. And jobs in software are great,in the meantime, just as law students work in law offices before they pass the bar.
-jon