maybe that's a sign that OS X could make an x86 debut?? (doubtful, but hopeful)
And what apps would you run on it? Think there's a lot of "OS X on Intel" developers just waiting for their chance? If there's any at all, there'd be fewer than OS X-developers-on-PPC, which are already pretty scarce.
(Microsoft's stake in Apple is now worth well over $1 billion.)
I was pretty sure that Microsoft had since converted this stake back to cash. If it really is worth $1B, that's a sizable portion of the company. Can anyone confirm? If I'm correct, it throws a lot of the rest of the article into factual doubt.
My rule is that I will fix friends and family members computers if I happen to have the time and they clearly appreciate my help and don't see it as my obligation. If they offer to pay me, I'll ask for a dinner sometime or just a case of Bass beer.
My rule is that I'll fix Macs for free, even if it means hours on the phone. I enjoy working on Macs. If you purchased a PC--and that was usually done against my recommendation--we talk about the weather. I have better things to do in life than work on Windows.
The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position.
Because their actions have not been damaging to their market position; they have succeeded wildly with those tactics. Why should they change? What could they possibly gain from a change in strategy that they don't already have? "Good feeling"? "Competitive instincts"? You can't take either of those to the bank.
The only interesting question is: if, and this is a big if, if they they ever find themselves to be losing marketshare in a substantial way, will they be able to move fast enough to change and adapt? or will they maintain their mantra to the end?
And by substantial, I don't mean FireFox and it's 3%--I mean, for a serious threat to emerge, it would have to be somewhere above 20% of the market Microsoft wants to own. Otherwise it's just an outlier.
the revenue we generate from Windows does not even equal the salary we pay our admins!
Quite frankly, that's amazing. If it's really true--it's not like if you switched to OS X only, for example that wouldn't have to replace some of your MCSE's with OS X Admins--you're doing your investors a disservice by maintaining Windows support.
While you may have contractual obligations to keep Windows support, have you (or your CFO) considered dropping future support of Windows, such that you can gradually wean yourselves away from it?
There's no reason to do charity for Windows--if support is a cost losing proposition, then moving away from it, albeit gradually, seems just like a defensive behavior--and whomever pays the bills around there would have to agree.
However, if a company has already decided on releasing a Mac port, then the additional effort required for a Linux port is far less.
You'd think that, but it's instructive that Loki had games for Linux that never made it to the Mac--eg Tribes. You would've thought that if Loki were to bother to make the port to Linux, that they would also become an engine of Mac porting too, but it wasn't so in reality.
And I daresay that if they were to have been a Mac porter, they would have seen a lot more sales: as other posts have pointed out, Linux users are frankly more likely to have a Windows OS installed somewhere than are Mac users, as Linux users already have the required hardware.
OTOH, I don't think any of the Mac porting houses release Linux versions either. It appears that either the technical differences between Linux and OS X are too great to mean much savings of effort wrt games; or the market is too different for a substantial savings of marketing effort.
The nurses would otherwise be typing in passwords about 300 times a day, as the computers lock whenever someone isn't standing at them
They really use thumbprint scanners? What if the nurse has gloves on/a cut/some liquid on their finger? What if the scanner is dirty or scratched? That seems like a strange thing to do.
Probably more likely is that they use Common Access Cards which would be just as secure as a thumbprint, but would also allow one to decertify the existing cards and force a periodic new key to be issued, say every few months--thereby expiring any exploitation of the previous code.
hey don't support this (at least majority of forums I know
Having looked at the linked product, it appears that the thumbprint device unlocks a cache of stored passwords on the host PC, and the cache then transfers the (text) user name and password to the input fields of the websites. So the websites would not have to be compatible with the thumbprint device per se; it just has to allow autocompleted user/pass info. And most do.
That being the case, is this much more secure than a password protected password cache, ala Apple's Keychain? Probably not. I wonder if the thumbrprint reader even bothers to encrypt the print between the reader and the host PC; if not, with a USB sniffer like a keylogging device you're no more secure.
But let's say that the reader does encrypt the print--maybe it does. Do you think it's easier to get my print (glass, gummy bear, etc) or to read my mind for my password? And as another poster pointed out--I can change my password and therefore limit my vulnerability window to whatever temporal limit I choose. OTOH, if my thumb is compromised then I only get one more chance.
Actually, at my high school we were censored as well and our paper was 100% advertising supported.
Then you have the freedom to buy your own presses, publish on your own paper, and distribute you literature off of school grounds. Did your advertisers pay you enough to purchases your own presses? If they didn't, then you were really supported by the school.
OTOH, if they did, then you should have done as I suggested. You would find that the principal couldn't have stopped the activity in this instance.
While I believe you, I'd be interested to know how you know that. Trial and error? Or do you examine the chipsets physically to determine manufacture? My question really is: how does one learn the manufacture of the low-level components of a MLB, when that info is not available from the vendor?
You forgot the 10/100 NIC. For God's sake, people: the mini is not meant as a server, and if you use it as one I fear that you'll get bummed on the Mac experience in general, decrying the "crap" hardware.
At most, you might use a mac Mini as a DHCP/NAT/3 person file-server for collaboration or for emergency network services. It might make a fun thing to hit when you need to do file recovery, for instance, like a portable hard drive/NAS device. But if you think you're going to run Quick Time Streaming Server off of it, buy a few minis--you'll need them, one after the other.
As for cheap Server grade hardware: interesting idea, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Folks would be too inclined to buy less than what they need, and then get pissed of when it breaks under load. Maybe a single 1.8Ghz G5 CPU, less max RAM, built in video, etc? I dunno; I'm not feeling the market. You're pretty close with the cluster Xserve, except it doesn't have video or optical drive; maybe a cluster with a single CPU option? And other stuff removed too?
I would be very surprised if you can pay Apple to install third-party product; I wouldn't when I was at an Apple store. Reasoning is simple: if it doesn't work/fails early, do you blame Apple? Apple has no control over where you purchased your third party product, or how you've treated it since, so they don't want to be culpable if it fails sooner than you think it should through no fault of their own.
If you want to do upgrades to this box, you're very likely on your own. And no, doing so doesn't void your warranty unless it causes damage to the rest of the machine; and such a thing is hard to determine anyways--so I always gave folks the benefit of the doubt.
As a mac user who's had compatibility complaints about some sites, the retort that I encountered was that the problematic site in question was designed for "95%" of the browsers going there, and if I wasn't in that 95% it just sucks to be me.
Now that it appears that FireFox is coming really close to squeezing on the 5% margin, my question is: will web designers really consider making their sites compatible with 92% of IE and 5% of FireFox? That could be a lot of work, depending on the site. Or are site designers just more likely to say "as long as we have 90% compatibility, that's good enough"? Turning away 10% of your customers seems like a lot, though, too.
Web designers in the biz care to comment? Are you guys seeing new compatibility standards? If so, that's good news for mac users. The faster ActiveX is obsoleted, the fewer problems Mac users are to face--even if the impetus for the compatibility change came from FireFox.
From TFA: the company said its Windows-only numbers are more accurate because new configurations in Apple Computer's Safari browser inadvertently skewed results
Can anyone say what this is describing? A change in Safari's UA string? I didn't realize that Safari had made such a change.
Seriously, what's the purpose of sharing your password with your SO? In case someone throws a brick at your head, and you forget everything, you can still log on? I can just imagine the damage my wife could do to my karma on/.--fortunately my pass is my girlfriend's name, she'll never figure it out;)
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Everything I just said could possibly be wrong, but may not be, and is in no way intended as any form of advice, legal or otherwise. If you believe anything I've said in this comment, you assume all risks and liability that may ensue, be they personal, civil, criminal, or otherwise. I have also never played a lawyer on TV. Confusing me with someone who has would be flattering, but incorrect and foolish.
Did the submitter not read the article himself? It clearly says that the French Police will be migrating to OpenOffice from MS Office; nothing is said of Linux.
You realize there's a difference, right? And while this is an important change, it's not the same.
Thanks for the info: I really am looking forward to this game--but the comments have just started to make me wonder if I shoulda asked for GURPS 4th Ed instead of $50 for WoW and $30 for a two month sub, at least until Blizz get the issues worked out.
www.wowcensus.com is good resource--but I wonder why Blizz doesn't publish themselves? I found their realm status page at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/serverstatus/, but it seems like that's a "current load" not a registered load--so it doesn't do me a lot of good at acct creation time when I need to pick a realm on which to play.
I expect to receive this game for my birthday in a month. It will be my first time on a MMORPG, but I've been toying with it since I finally gave up MU**ing three years ago. I'm really looking forward to an enjoyable experience based on the many reviews, but I also have the limited patience of an adult who now expects a service when I'm charged for it.
I don't have any experience with the actual outages, but I can say this: if your PS2 failed to boot 4 times out of 5, would you take it back? If Blizzard expects me to be patient while they work out their issues, are they going to be similarly patient when they request payment from me?
If they can't deliver, 99.99% of the time, on their promises, frankly they're in the wrong business. I don't have the time or the interest to fart around with waiting for them to get their act together, and I will either keep my wallet in my pocket or move to another game.
Slashdot Mirror
maybe that's a sign that OS X could make an x86 debut?? (doubtful, but hopeful)
And what apps would you run on it? Think there's a lot of "OS X on Intel" developers just waiting for their chance? If there's any at all, there'd be fewer than OS X-developers-on-PPC, which are already pretty scarce.
(Microsoft's stake in Apple is now worth well over $1 billion.)
I was pretty sure that Microsoft had since converted this stake back to cash. If it really is worth $1B, that's a sizable portion of the company. Can anyone confirm? If I'm correct, it throws a lot of the rest of the article into factual doubt.
My rule is that I will fix friends and family members computers if I happen to have the time and they clearly appreciate my help and don't see it as my obligation. If they offer to pay me, I'll ask for a dinner sometime or just a case of Bass beer.
My rule is that I'll fix Macs for free, even if it means hours on the phone. I enjoy working on Macs. If you purchased a PC--and that was usually done against my recommendation--we talk about the weather. I have better things to do in life than work on Windows.
The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position.
Because their actions have not been damaging to their market position; they have succeeded wildly with those tactics. Why should they change? What could they possibly gain from a change in strategy that they don't already have? "Good feeling"? "Competitive instincts"? You can't take either of those to the bank.
The only interesting question is: if, and this is a big if, if they they ever find themselves to be losing marketshare in a substantial way, will they be able to move fast enough to change and adapt? or will they maintain their mantra to the end?
And by substantial, I don't mean FireFox and it's 3%--I mean, for a serious threat to emerge, it would have to be somewhere above 20% of the market Microsoft wants to own. Otherwise it's just an outlier.
the revenue we generate from Windows does not even equal the salary we pay our admins!
Quite frankly, that's amazing. If it's really true--it's not like if you switched to OS X only, for example that wouldn't have to replace some of your MCSE's with OS X Admins--you're doing your investors a disservice by maintaining Windows support.
While you may have contractual obligations to keep Windows support, have you (or your CFO) considered dropping future support of Windows, such that you can gradually wean yourselves away from it?
There's no reason to do charity for Windows--if support is a cost losing proposition, then moving away from it, albeit gradually, seems just like a defensive behavior--and whomever pays the bills around there would have to agree.
Mac's have viruses too
Really? Name two. Bonus points if either of the two are self-propagating.
However, if a company has already decided on releasing a Mac port, then the additional effort required for a Linux port is far less.
You'd think that, but it's instructive that Loki had games for Linux that never made it to the Mac--eg Tribes. You would've thought that if Loki were to bother to make the port to Linux, that they would also become an engine of Mac porting too, but it wasn't so in reality.
And I daresay that if they were to have been a Mac porter, they would have seen a lot more sales: as other posts have pointed out, Linux users are frankly more likely to have a Windows OS installed somewhere than are Mac users, as Linux users already have the required hardware.
OTOH, I don't think any of the Mac porting houses release Linux versions either. It appears that either the technical differences between Linux and OS X are too great to mean much savings of effort wrt games; or the market is too different for a substantial savings of marketing effort.
The nurses would otherwise be typing in passwords about 300 times a day, as the computers lock whenever someone isn't standing at them
They really use thumbprint scanners? What if the nurse has gloves on/a cut/some liquid on their finger? What if the scanner is dirty or scratched? That seems like a strange thing to do.
Probably more likely is that they use Common Access Cards which would be just as secure as a thumbprint, but would also allow one to decertify the existing cards and force a periodic new key to be issued, say every few months--thereby expiring any exploitation of the previous code.
hey don't support this (at least majority of forums I know
Having looked at the linked product, it appears that the thumbprint device unlocks a cache of stored passwords on the host PC, and the cache then transfers the (text) user name and password to the input fields of the websites. So the websites would not have to be compatible with the thumbprint device per se; it just has to allow autocompleted user/pass info. And most do.
That being the case, is this much more secure than a password protected password cache, ala Apple's Keychain? Probably not. I wonder if the thumbrprint reader even bothers to encrypt the print between the reader and the host PC; if not, with a USB sniffer like a keylogging device you're no more secure.
But let's say that the reader does encrypt the print--maybe it does. Do you think it's easier to get my print (glass, gummy bear, etc) or to read my mind for my password? And as another poster pointed out--I can change my password and therefore limit my vulnerability window to whatever temporal limit I choose. OTOH, if my thumb is compromised then I only get one more chance.
Actually, at my high school we were censored as well and our paper was 100% advertising supported.
Then you have the freedom to buy your own presses, publish on your own paper, and distribute you literature off of school grounds. Did your advertisers pay you enough to purchases your own presses? If they didn't, then you were really supported by the school.
OTOH, if they did, then you should have done as I suggested. You would find that the principal couldn't have stopped the activity in this instance.
How many NRA members realize that "well-regulated" is part of the 2nd Amendment?
Even Apple is catching this wave:
Xserve sales up 119% in third 1/4 '04, trend likely to continue.
I wish my TiVo would allow one to rate the content independent of the series.
+TNG AND -((holodeck) XOR (social)).
Christ I hate the holodeck stuff. If I wanted to watch Masterpiece Theater, do you think I would be watching SpikeTV?
While I believe you, I'd be interested to know how you know that. Trial and error? Or do you examine the chipsets physically to determine manufacture? My question really is: how does one learn the manufacture of the low-level components of a MLB, when that info is not available from the vendor?
Apple publishes a very nice cli reference manual
You don't have a link, by any chance?
Command-Line Administration
More docs
You forgot the 10/100 NIC. For God's sake, people: the mini is not meant as a server, and if you use it as one I fear that you'll get bummed on the Mac experience in general, decrying the "crap" hardware.
At most, you might use a mac Mini as a DHCP/NAT/3 person file-server for collaboration or for emergency network services. It might make a fun thing to hit when you need to do file recovery, for instance, like a portable hard drive/NAS device. But if you think you're going to run Quick Time Streaming Server off of it, buy a few minis--you'll need them, one after the other.
As for cheap Server grade hardware: interesting idea, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Folks would be too inclined to buy less than what they need, and then get pissed of when it breaks under load. Maybe a single 1.8Ghz G5 CPU, less max RAM, built in video, etc? I dunno; I'm not feeling the market. You're pretty close with the cluster Xserve, except it doesn't have video or optical drive; maybe a cluster with a single CPU option? And other stuff removed too?
Even if you pay Apple $50 to install it for you,
I would be very surprised if you can pay Apple to install third-party product; I wouldn't when I was at an Apple store. Reasoning is simple: if it doesn't work/fails early, do you blame Apple? Apple has no control over where you purchased your third party product, or how you've treated it since, so they don't want to be culpable if it fails sooner than you think it should through no fault of their own.
If you want to do upgrades to this box, you're very likely on your own. And no, doing so doesn't void your warranty unless it causes damage to the rest of the machine; and such a thing is hard to determine anyways--so I always gave folks the benefit of the doubt.
As a mac user who's had compatibility complaints about some sites, the retort that I encountered was that the problematic site in question was designed for "95%" of the browsers going there, and if I wasn't in that 95% it just sucks to be me.
Now that it appears that FireFox is coming really close to squeezing on the 5% margin, my question is: will web designers really consider making their sites compatible with 92% of IE and 5% of FireFox? That could be a lot of work, depending on the site. Or are site designers just more likely to say "as long as we have 90% compatibility, that's good enough"? Turning away 10% of your customers seems like a lot, though, too.
Web designers in the biz care to comment? Are you guys seeing new compatibility standards? If so, that's good news for mac users. The faster ActiveX is obsoleted, the fewer problems Mac users are to face--even if the impetus for the compatibility change came from FireFox.
From TFA: the company said its Windows-only numbers are more accurate because new configurations in Apple Computer's Safari browser inadvertently skewed results
Can anyone say what this is describing? A change in Safari's UA string? I didn't realize that Safari had made such a change.
Seriously, what's the purpose of sharing your password with your SO? In case someone throws a brick at your head, and you forget everything, you can still log on? I can just imagine the damage my wife could do to my karma on
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Everything I just said could possibly be wrong, but may not be, and is in no way intended as any form of advice, legal or otherwise. If you believe anything I've said in this comment, you assume all risks and liability that may ensue, be they personal, civil, criminal, or otherwise. I have also never played a lawyer on TV. Confusing me with someone who has would be flattering, but incorrect and foolish.
That's funny. You sure sound like a lawyer.
Did the submitter not read the article himself? It clearly says that the French Police will be migrating to OpenOffice from MS Office; nothing is said of Linux.
You realize there's a difference, right? And while this is an important change, it's not the same.
Thanks for the info: I really am looking forward to this game--but the comments have just started to make me wonder if I shoulda asked for GURPS 4th Ed instead of $50 for WoW and $30 for a two month sub, at least until Blizz get the issues worked out.
www.wowcensus.com is good resource--but I wonder why Blizz doesn't publish themselves? I found their realm status page at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/serverstatus/, but it seems like that's a "current load" not a registered load--so it doesn't do me a lot of good at acct creation time when I need to pick a realm on which to play.
Can I ask on which realm you've had so much luck?
Why not just use pigeons in spacesuits?
Stability takes time.
Baloney.
I expect to receive this game for my birthday in a month. It will be my first time on a MMORPG, but I've been toying with it since I finally gave up MU**ing three years ago. I'm really looking forward to an enjoyable experience based on the many reviews, but I also have the limited patience of an adult who now expects a service when I'm charged for it.
I don't have any experience with the actual outages, but I can say this: if your PS2 failed to boot 4 times out of 5, would you take it back? If Blizzard expects me to be patient while they work out their issues, are they going to be similarly patient when they request payment from me?
If they can't deliver, 99.99% of the time, on their promises, frankly they're in the wrong business. I don't have the time or the interest to fart around with waiting for them to get their act together, and I will either keep my wallet in my pocket or move to another game.