Heck, have you looked at the 'el cheapo' printers? THe printer costs less than replacement cartridges!! The HP DeskJet 3320 printer costs $50 (MSRP, with rebates, it's sometimes free!) But getting both black and color ink cartridges will cost you almost $40!!
Printer manufacturers don't care about the quality of the printer anymore, because they make all their money on ink and toner. (Just look at IBM's lawsuit to prevent third parties from making toner cartridges.)
Yeah, except Apple could possibly get the company sued out of business by arguing that the sole purpose of the product is to violate their license. (Hey, DeCSS got legally 'killed' that way, and it has legitimate uses!)
Although, now that I've written that, I suppose if the creator specifically advertises them as for use with Yellow Dog Linux only, he could get away with it. (After all, other companys re-package Apple hardware for use with YDL.)
The big one is the whole 'trade dress' (a.k.a. 'look and feel') of the machine. If it looks too much like real Apple hardware, they'll get them on that.
While it is possible, feigning stupidity usually isn't considered to be much of an April Fools joke. (As the world is so full of idiots, one more doesn't make a joke.)
Actually, the exact terminology in the license is 'Apple-labeled' hardware. That was done specifically to avoid this kind of rebuilding. (The first Mac clones back in the late '80s got away with their clones using this technique. Apple's new 'labeled' teminology prevents this. Unless it comes in an original Apple chassis, it's illegal.)
The poster knew, he said "...years after Apple shut down their 3 year long 'experiment' in licensing the hardware." which alludes to the previous clones.
The authorized cloners were Umax, DayStar, Motorola, PowerComputing, and Radius.
Radius was the first authorized clone, later sold to Umax. Umax later became the first company to ship a PowerPC 750 processor (a.k.a. G3) based computer, but they killed their clone division soon afterward. DayStar had the first multiprocessor Macs. Power Computing was the last clone maker, before Apple bought them outright.
Back in the late '80s, there were a few unauthorized clones, most of them skirted legality the same way this iBox supposedly will... By using old discarded Apple motherboards, with Apple-legal ROMs.
The only problem is that the current MacOS license says you need legal Apple-labeled hardware for your license to be valid. (italics mine)
Apple Computer, Inc.
Software License Agreement for Mac OS X
Single Use License ...
2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.
I used to work in Intel's server group, and we did a whole bunch of wacky things (like setting up an 8-processor Xeon with 4GB of RAM just to run Quake 3 when it first came out.) One of them was to overload the USB bus. Using every USB peripheral we could get our grubby little hands on, in Windows 98, we got just over 100 devices plugged in, seeming to all work. (I recall having seven mice, and nine keyboards, along with a couple printers, a few scanners, about a dozen webcams...) Our main problem was finding USB peripherals! We had to raid other people's cubes after normal working hours and borrow their stuff (mostly the keyboards and mice) to finally reach the 100 mark.
I do remember talking to our testing guys, who did say that they did get 127 devices running, but it was a bitch. They blamed it on Windows 98. (I left Intel before Win2k, WinMe, or WinXP came out.)
As for everyday usage, the most I've ever had on one computer is my current desktop, which has 13 USB devices plugged in at all times, with another 3 occasional.
The previous story (about blue laser DVD) also has a new icon and topic. I dunno, maybe they're on a 'new topic' kick today.
What I like is that the 'Data Storage' topic of the previous story is topic 198, and 'Windows' is topic 201... As the first stories in each of those two topics are one right after the other, you have to wonder...
Topic 199 is 'Lord of the Rings', with the one ring as it's icon, and Topic 200 is 'The Matrix', with a blue pill and a red pill. Neither one has any stories. 'Be' is the lowest-numbered topic, at number 87. (No, the topics are not in alphabetical order.)
Thanks! (Silly me, didn't even think that they would have moved to a more 'official' place... And it's not like I need to change web browser preferences very often.)
Okay, a copy of the first tab-enabled seed magically found its way to my computer, and I played with it for awhile, but finally decided to stick with the official beta for my main browsing. Then, of course, I hear about this one, and it finds its way to my computer (amazing, really, its like my Mac reads my mind and downloads things I want without my permission!) But the Debug menu doesn't list tabbed browsing anymore!
You see, I consider it more a torture of the innocent notebook. It's actually pretty snappy. (I have all the eye candy, except ClearType, turned off.) I find that aside from startup time, it's at least as fast as Win98 (which it came with,) and seems faster than Win98 regularly.
I see it as a good thing in the long run. But, OSes need to be set to double the size of everything within the OS. So that it actually uses the extra pixels to smooth things out, add detail.
I see Apple's OS X as the best option for these kind of insane resolutions, with its built-in Display PostScript (a.k.a. Quartz) handling everything. It should be a simple matter to just say that you want, say, 1" tall icons, no matter what dpi the screen has. Or that your 10 point font should be equal in size to a printer's 10 point font. 'points' are based on old physical typesetting sizes, and are based on a 72dpi base. Dell's monstrous 1920x1200 resolution more than doubles that at 147dpi. Note that the Sony Picturebook, with it's 8.9" 1280x600 display tops that at 159dpi, and their U-series ultra-micro notebooks even go beyond that at a whopping 200dpi! For reference, a 17" CRT (16" viewable) at 1024x768 has a 'measly' 80dpi. (Pumping it to 1280x960 makes it go to 100dpi. And if you run that 'bastard' resolution of 1280x1024 (a 5:4 resolution on a 4:3 screen,) you end up with non-square pixels at 100dpi horitontally, and 107dpi vertically. Note that 1280x1024 LCD screens use square pixels, so they are have a slightly different aspect ratio than most other CRTs and LCDs.)
Note that I have the original PictureBook, which has the same size screen as the current models, only with a slightly lower resolution, which comes in at 127dpi. I find it perfectly readable with WinXP's ClearType. (Yes, I'm torturing a Pentium MMX/266 with 64MB of RAM by installing XP on it...)
Yes, the early ones will be expensive. But, the whole point of this technology is that it is cheaper than LCD. Once the initial R&D has been paid for, they will be cheap. Plus, take a look at those specs. 300 Cd/m^2 at 25W. The Apple 20" Cinema Display only has 230 Cd/m^2, and it uses over twice as much power, 60W! These are a big deal because they use even less energy than an LCD, and they'll be easier to manufacture. (LCD's are actually easier to manufacture than CRTs, but economies of scale kick in, that's why CRTs are so much cheaper. Plus LCDs are prone to pixel failure, which OLED displays supposedly aren't.)
No, the U.S. government, by FAR, has more people and resources. Heck, the U.S. government even (by some measures) even has more influence... (Not that I *LIKE* some of that influence..)
Um... Do you have any empirical evidence for your claim that WD isn't reliable? Anything other than years-old anecdotes?
Check out StorageReview's reliability database, and you'll see that WD drives are just as (in some cases more) reliable than those from Maxtor and others. (About the only drive company that has had reliability problems recently is IBM, who has now gotten out of that market entirely.)
Yeah, I'm one of those wierd types that likes to maintain spreadsheets for just about anything... I have one of Display resolutions that I started awhile ago, and have been updating.
By my calculations, this new notebook has a resolution of 147.0 pixels per inch. For comparison, a 15" CRT (viewable 13.8") running at 800x600 (I know plenty of these people,) has a whopping 72.5 dots per inch. That means that anyone used to running 800x600 on a 15"er will need a magnifying glass to read this new display, at double the resolution.
A 17" CRT (16" viewable) at 1024x768 comes in at 80 dpi. So this new display isn't quite double, but it's close. (For reference, Apple's new 17" PowerBook has a 99.9 dpi, the highest dpi Apple laptops, the PowerBook and iBook 12", top out at 105.8 dpi.
Although, I shouldn't complain, my Sony PictureBook, with it's 8.9", 1024x480 screen, comes in at 127.1 dpi, and the newer models, with a 1280x600 screen, beat even the new Dell at 158.9 dpi.
Yeah, now that the site is up, and the pictures show a few controller cards, we know that he took the cheaper route. I was mainly saying that it's POSSIBLE to do it without so many cards.
Okay, with PCI, you shouldn't have to deal with IRQs. If they don't work right, just put them in different PCI slots (also be sure to read your motherboard's manual for it's interrupt routing first.)
Second, 3Ware, and a couple other companies, make 12-drive ATA RAID cards. So one of those, plus onboard ATA would reach 16 drives. Or, a second ATA RAID controller would allow an additional 4, 8, or 12 hard drives without resorting to the onboard ATA. For a max of 24 drives without using onboard ATA. (In my personal server, I have 8 10GB drives on an ATA RAID card... They're in dual 0+5, for a whopping 60GB of space, but it's fast, and reliable. Someday I'd love to upgrade them all to Maxtor 300GB drives, but I'd need a new RAID card in the process. [and a large fortune.])
Actually, it was slashdotted for the first few DAYS after it was released. Three days after release, most mirrors were down completely, and of the rest, I found one that got me 150kbps. (bits, not bytes.)
I have an All-In-Wonder Radeon paired with an Athlon XP 1.46GHz. The original 'Radeon' core, even before it had a number. I got a whopping 142 3dMarks. I'm really tempted to run it on my son's computer, which has a Pentium III 800 and a GeForce 256. Yes, the 'original' GeForce. The oldest video card that is capable of running 3dMark2003. Maybe I'll even downgrade the processor to a Pentium III 450 (the minimum processor) just for kicks.
Re:I love my Kyocera Smartphone, but...
on
Palm PDA Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Usually they go off to find someone that can 'order' me to turn it off. I finish my phone call and hang up. When they come by again, and see that I'm not on my phone (it's still on, mind you,) they leave me alone.
Of course, the last time I tried to use my cell phone on a plane was before 9-11, so I don't know what I'll do next time I try. I think I'll try to find the appropriate FAA rule, and print it out to carry with me.
Re:I love my Kyocera Smartphone, but...
on
Palm PDA Roundup
·
· Score: 1
What's even stupider? Digital (including PCS and 3G) cell phones have been PROVEN by the FAA to not cause any interference with flight instruments. There is no FAA regulation banning cell phones on planes, not even analog ones. There is a recommendation against analog phones on planes with advanced electronics, but it's only a recommendation. Whenever a steward/ess tells me to shut off my phone before the plane's engines have started, I tell them to 'stuff it', and show me the supposed FAA regulation.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, have you looked at the 'el cheapo' printers? THe printer costs less than replacement cartridges!! The HP DeskJet 3320 printer costs $50 (MSRP, with rebates, it's sometimes free!) But getting both black and color ink cartridges will cost you almost $40!!
Printer manufacturers don't care about the quality of the printer anymore, because they make all their money on ink and toner. (Just look at IBM's lawsuit to prevent third parties from making toner cartridges.)
Yeah, except Apple could possibly get the company sued out of business by arguing that the sole purpose of the product is to violate their license. (Hey, DeCSS got legally 'killed' that way, and it has legitimate uses!)
Although, now that I've written that, I suppose if the creator specifically advertises them as for use with Yellow Dog Linux only, he could get away with it. (After all, other companys re-package Apple hardware for use with YDL.)
The big one is the whole 'trade dress' (a.k.a. 'look and feel') of the machine. If it looks too much like real Apple hardware, they'll get them on that.
While it is possible, feigning stupidity usually isn't considered to be much of an April Fools joke. (As the world is so full of idiots, one more doesn't make a joke.)
Actually, the exact terminology in the license is 'Apple-labeled' hardware. That was done specifically to avoid this kind of rebuilding. (The first Mac clones back in the late '80s got away with their clones using this technique. Apple's new 'labeled' teminology prevents this. Unless it comes in an original Apple chassis, it's illegal.)
Come on, we know that any new cloners have to use this web browser...
The poster knew, he said "...years after Apple shut down their 3 year long 'experiment' in licensing the hardware." which alludes to the previous clones.
The authorized cloners were Umax, DayStar, Motorola, PowerComputing, and Radius.
Radius was the first authorized clone, later sold to Umax. Umax later became the first company to ship a PowerPC 750 processor (a.k.a. G3) based computer, but they killed their clone division soon afterward. DayStar had the first multiprocessor Macs. Power Computing was the last clone maker, before Apple bought them outright.
Back in the late '80s, there were a few unauthorized clones, most of them skirted legality the same way this iBox supposedly will... By using old discarded Apple motherboards, with Apple-legal ROMs.
The only problem is that the current MacOS license says you need legal Apple-labeled hardware for your license to be valid. (italics mine)
I used to work in Intel's server group, and we did a whole bunch of wacky things (like setting up an 8-processor Xeon with 4GB of RAM just to run Quake 3 when it first came out.) One of them was to overload the USB bus. Using every USB peripheral we could get our grubby little hands on, in Windows 98, we got just over 100 devices plugged in, seeming to all work. (I recall having seven mice, and nine keyboards, along with a couple printers, a few scanners, about a dozen webcams...) Our main problem was finding USB peripherals! We had to raid other people's cubes after normal working hours and borrow their stuff (mostly the keyboards and mice) to finally reach the 100 mark.
I do remember talking to our testing guys, who did say that they did get 127 devices running, but it was a bitch. They blamed it on Windows 98. (I left Intel before Win2k, WinMe, or WinXP came out.)
As for everyday usage, the most I've ever had on one computer is my current desktop, which has 13 USB devices plugged in at all times, with another 3 occasional.
Um... Read the whole linked article... Especially the next-to-last FAQ answer.
(In other words, they got you.)
The previous story (about blue laser DVD) also has a new icon and topic. I dunno, maybe they're on a 'new topic' kick today.
What I like is that the 'Data Storage' topic of the previous story is topic 198, and 'Windows' is topic 201... As the first stories in each of those two topics are one right after the other, you have to wonder...
Topic 199 is 'Lord of the Rings', with the one ring as it's icon, and Topic 200 is 'The Matrix', with a blue pill and a red pill. Neither one has any stories. 'Be' is the lowest-numbered topic, at number 87. (No, the topics are not in alphabetical order.)
Thanks! (Silly me, didn't even think that they would have moved to a more 'official' place... And it's not like I need to change web browser preferences very often.)
Okay, a copy of the first tab-enabled seed magically found its way to my computer, and I played with it for awhile, but finally decided to stick with the official beta for my main browsing. Then, of course, I hear about this one, and it finds its way to my computer (amazing, really, its like my Mac reads my mind and downloads things I want without my permission!) But the Debug menu doesn't list tabbed browsing anymore!
You see, I consider it more a torture of the innocent notebook. It's actually pretty snappy. (I have all the eye candy, except ClearType, turned off.) I find that aside from startup time, it's at least as fast as Win98 (which it came with,) and seems faster than Win98 regularly.
I see it as a good thing in the long run. But, OSes need to be set to double the size of everything within the OS. So that it actually uses the extra pixels to smooth things out, add detail.
I see Apple's OS X as the best option for these kind of insane resolutions, with its built-in Display PostScript (a.k.a. Quartz) handling everything. It should be a simple matter to just say that you want, say, 1" tall icons, no matter what dpi the screen has. Or that your 10 point font should be equal in size to a printer's 10 point font. 'points' are based on old physical typesetting sizes, and are based on a 72dpi base. Dell's monstrous 1920x1200 resolution more than doubles that at 147dpi. Note that the Sony Picturebook, with it's 8.9" 1280x600 display tops that at 159dpi, and their U-series ultra-micro notebooks even go beyond that at a whopping 200dpi! For reference, a 17" CRT (16" viewable) at 1024x768 has a 'measly' 80dpi. (Pumping it to 1280x960 makes it go to 100dpi. And if you run that 'bastard' resolution of 1280x1024 (a 5:4 resolution on a 4:3 screen,) you end up with non-square pixels at 100dpi horitontally, and 107dpi vertically. Note that 1280x1024 LCD screens use square pixels, so they are have a slightly different aspect ratio than most other CRTs and LCDs.)
Note that I have the original PictureBook, which has the same size screen as the current models, only with a slightly lower resolution, which comes in at 127dpi. I find it perfectly readable with WinXP's ClearType. (Yes, I'm torturing a Pentium MMX/266 with 64MB of RAM by installing XP on it...)
Yes, the early ones will be expensive. But, the whole point of this technology is that it is cheaper than LCD. Once the initial R&D has been paid for, they will be cheap. Plus, take a look at those specs. 300 Cd/m^2 at 25W. The Apple 20" Cinema Display only has 230 Cd/m^2, and it uses over twice as much power, 60W! These are a big deal because they use even less energy than an LCD, and they'll be easier to manufacture. (LCD's are actually easier to manufacture than CRTs, but economies of scale kick in, that's why CRTs are so much cheaper. Plus LCDs are prone to pixel failure, which OLED displays supposedly aren't.)
No, the U.S. government, by FAR, has more people and resources. Heck, the U.S. government even (by some measures) even has more influence... (Not that I *LIKE* some of that influence..)
Maxtor IDE 10k RPM??? What is it's model number? I don't think ANYONE had heard of any 10k RPM ATA drive before this one.
I know of plenty of 10k RPM SCSI drives, but not ATA. And, yes, the early 10k SCSI drives screamed like a jet...
Um... Do you have any empirical evidence for your claim that WD isn't reliable? Anything other than years-old anecdotes?
Check out StorageReview's reliability database, and you'll see that WD drives are just as (in some cases more) reliable than those from Maxtor and others. (About the only drive company that has had reliability problems recently is IBM, who has now gotten out of that market entirely.)
Yeah, I'm one of those wierd types that likes to maintain spreadsheets for just about anything... I have one of Display resolutions that I started awhile ago, and have been updating.
By my calculations, this new notebook has a resolution of 147.0 pixels per inch. For comparison, a 15" CRT (viewable 13.8") running at 800x600 (I know plenty of these people,) has a whopping 72.5 dots per inch. That means that anyone used to running 800x600 on a 15"er will need a magnifying glass to read this new display, at double the resolution.
A 17" CRT (16" viewable) at 1024x768 comes in at 80 dpi. So this new display isn't quite double, but it's close. (For reference, Apple's new 17" PowerBook has a 99.9 dpi, the highest dpi Apple laptops, the PowerBook and iBook 12", top out at 105.8 dpi.
Although, I shouldn't complain, my Sony PictureBook, with it's 8.9", 1024x480 screen, comes in at 127.1 dpi, and the newer models, with a 1280x600 screen, beat even the new Dell at 158.9 dpi.
Yeah, now that the site is up, and the pictures show a few controller cards, we know that he took the cheaper route. I was mainly saying that it's POSSIBLE to do it without so many cards.
Okay, with PCI, you shouldn't have to deal with IRQs. If they don't work right, just put them in different PCI slots (also be sure to read your motherboard's manual for it's interrupt routing first.)
Second, 3Ware, and a couple other companies, make 12-drive ATA RAID cards. So one of those, plus onboard ATA would reach 16 drives. Or, a second ATA RAID controller would allow an additional 4, 8, or 12 hard drives without resorting to the onboard ATA. For a max of 24 drives without using onboard ATA. (In my personal server, I have 8 10GB drives on an ATA RAID card... They're in dual 0+5, for a whopping 60GB of space, but it's fast, and reliable. Someday I'd love to upgrade them all to Maxtor 300GB drives, but I'd need a new RAID card in the process. [and a large fortune.])
Go into your preferences, and put a check box beside 'hardware'. You'll never see one of these stories again.
Actually, it was slashdotted for the first few DAYS after it was released. Three days after release, most mirrors were down completely, and of the rest, I found one that got me 150kbps. (bits, not bytes.)
I have an All-In-Wonder Radeon paired with an Athlon XP 1.46GHz. The original 'Radeon' core, even before it had a number. I got a whopping 142 3dMarks. I'm really tempted to run it on my son's computer, which has a Pentium III 800 and a GeForce 256. Yes, the 'original' GeForce. The oldest video card that is capable of running 3dMark2003. Maybe I'll even downgrade the processor to a Pentium III 450 (the minimum processor) just for kicks.
Usually they go off to find someone that can 'order' me to turn it off. I finish my phone call and hang up. When they come by again, and see that I'm not on my phone (it's still on, mind you,) they leave me alone.
Of course, the last time I tried to use my cell phone on a plane was before 9-11, so I don't know what I'll do next time I try. I think I'll try to find the appropriate FAA rule, and print it out to carry with me.
What's even stupider? Digital (including PCS and 3G) cell phones have been PROVEN by the FAA to not cause any interference with flight instruments. There is no FAA regulation banning cell phones on planes, not even analog ones. There is a recommendation against analog phones on planes with advanced electronics, but it's only a recommendation. Whenever a steward/ess tells me to shut off my phone before the plane's engines have started, I tell them to 'stuff it', and show me the supposed FAA regulation.
There is. Display Properties -> Themes -> Windows Classic
Then right-click in your start menu, select properties, and choose 'Classic Start Menu'.
See This file for a screenshot.